Natalia Miklaszewska CLASSIFICATION of MENTAL

NataOLa MLNOaV]ewVNa

CLASSIFICATION OF MENTAL ACTS IN WORKS OF KAZIMIERZ AJDUKIEWICZ

1. IntroGuFtLon

Without a doubt the theory of mental acts has since the times of Pla- to been a traditional part of philosophy. However a real interest in it was showed by )ranz Brentano who brought the ‘barbarous period’ to an end. Brentano was the ¿rst to indicate the need to compose a classi¿cation of human mental acts based on a precise and clear analysis of predicates representing psychological processes. Nearly 20 years later philosophers of Lvov-Warsaw school elaborated on the theory of the classi¿cation of mental predicates which resulted in a profound analysis of the issue in question and created a sound basis for further investigations. The primary purpose of this paper is to outline the theory of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz. This shall be done for three reasons. Most of all his theory poses a pecu- liar ‘golden mean’ of all the ideas followed and developed by philosophers belonging to the Lvov-Warsaw school. Secondly apart from elaborating on a standard classi¿cation of mental acts Ajdukiewicz remains a founding father of another classi¿cation which goes beyond the standard thinking about mental processes and is based on the theory of syntactical categories. )inally in spite of the fact that recent philosophers are apt to somewhat neglect the problems of classi¿cation of mental acts and categorial gram- mar Ajdukiewicz’s theory shows that this subject is not devoid of impor- tance and should not be ignored by those who dream about the scintillating development of philosophy and psychology. The aim of this paper is to present and comment on the main ideas of the classi¿cation of mental acts proposed by Ajdukiewicz and moreover to draw a sketch of it and apply it to some issues of the theory of classi¿cation in general.

In: Anna BroĪek Alicja ChybiĔska Jacek Jadacki and Jan WoleĔski eds. TraGLtLon oI tKH LYoY:arVaZ 6FKooO ,GHaV anG &ontLnXatLonV Po]naĔ 6tXGLHV Ln tKH PKLOoVoSK\ oI tKH 6FLHnFHV anG tKH +XPanLtLHV vol. 106 pp. 289±311. /HLGHQ Brill _ Rodopi 2016. 290 NataOLa MLNOaV]HZVNa

The main source for this study is Ajdukiewicz 1938 . I make use also of his other works collected in Ajdukiewicz 1960 and Ajdukiewicz 1965 i.a. of Ajdukiewicz 1935 as well as many Ajdukiewicz’s remarks scattered in Ajdukiewicz 197 .

2. CharaFterLVtLFV oI Mental AFtV

The primary issue raised by Ajdukiewicz is to recognize the dissimilari- ty between mental and physical states. Every human activity consists of physical actions and mental acts yet mental acts remain a motive force of physical actions. Ajdukiewicz indicates a few features of mental acts: 1 Most of all mental acts take place in time but not in space as opposed to physical acts which are spatiotemporal Ajdukiewicz be- lieves that the physical sphere is the ‘material’ basis of mental acts but we shall not ¿nd those areas identical . 2 Mental acts can be perceived sensed only by one person as opposed to physical processes which can be observed by many people at the same time. 3 Mental acts are always subjective which means that they do e[ist only if they remain as the content of someone’s consciousness ± as opposed to physical phenomena which are of an objective nature a tree itself will never be a part of someone’s consciousness unlike the perception of that tree . I believe we should shortly elaborate on how Ajdukiewicz understands the issue of ‘being he content of consciousness.’ The philosopher indicates two elemental meanings of the concept of consciousness in reference to mental acts. It seems that if an act remains the content of consciousness it is situated in the area of consciousness. We are conscious of our mental acts because we e[perience them but there is no need to pay attention to them; just as the flame of a candle lightens things around it is also bright itself even though it doesn’t lighten itself. Let us make things more precise and differentiate between two ways of understanding of the aforemen- tioned notion: 1 A is conscious of \ if A pays attention to \. 2 A is conscious of \ if A e[periences \. In both cases the scope of a variable \ covers a class of psychical phenomena which is connected with the distinction between content and an object of mental acts. One cannot e[perience a train as opposed to an image of that train as it is impossible to e[perience physical objects.