| Summary Note |
Connection, according to which some truths are grounds of others, and these in turn are consequences of the former, and that such a connection is objective, i.e. subsisting independently of every cognitive activity of the subject. In the attempt to account for the distinction between subjective and objective levels of knowledge, Bolzano gradually gained the conviction that the reference of the subject to the object is mediated by a realm of entities without existence that, recalling the Stoic lectà, are here called ‘lectological’. Moreover, of the two main ways through which that reference takes place—psychic activity and linguistic activity—Bolzano favoured the first and traced back to it the problems of the second; i.e. he considered those intermediate entities first as possible content of psychic phenomena and only subordinately, on the basis of a complex theory of signs, as meanings of linguistic phenomena. This book follows this schema and treats, in great detail, first, lectological entities (ideas and propositions in themselves), second, cognitive psychic phenomena (subjective ideas and judgements), and, finally, linguistic phenomena. Moreover, it tries to bring to light the extraordinary systematic character of Bolzano’s logical thought and it does this showing that the main logical ideas developed principally in the first three parts of the Theory of Science, published in 1837, can be effortlessly formally presented within the well-known Hilbertian epsilon-calculus.: |
