Colloquium: Joseph Ulatowski
Department Colloquium
03 Sep 2026, 5:00pm–7:00pm, ³¢±õµþ¸é–201
Joseph Ulatowski (University of Waikato)
TRUTH, truth, and ‘truth’: on the concept-property distinction in Dąmbska and Kokoszyńska
Abstract: Adjudicating the debate between substantive and deflationary accounts of truth has been fraught by the unclear distinction between the concept and property of truth. Let's take three different features to be constitutive of concept possession: (i) the attachment of a certain meaning to a certain word or phrase, (ii) the capacity of making certain discriminations, and (iii) the attribution of ‘constituent features’. At its core, the concept, TRUTH, is then a matter of mental representation, and truth is the attribution of properties to 'things' (i.e., property-bearers). Once we have this distinction between concept and property, it becomes clear that substantive theories of truth tend to foreground the concept, TRUTH, and deflationist accounts tend to foreground the property, truth. Members of the Lwów-Warsaw School are no strangers to the concept-property distinction. However, they usually did not think of the distinction in terms of a tool to adjudicate between different conceptions of truth and instead took the distinction to be more fundamental. The concept-property distinction enabled philosophers of the Lwów-Warsaw School to distinguish between the psychological and logical sense of a philosophical term, like truth. This talk aims to show how two members of the Lwów-Warsaw School, Izydora Dąmbska and Maria Kokoszyńska, understood truth and how their views distinguished between TRUTH and a logical conception of truth. I will argue that this distinction does not necessarily mirror the concept/property distinction but does provide an interesting third element that is critical for the substantivist-deflationist debate on the nature of truth.
