Ajdukiewicz, Lakatos, and the Rationalization of Conventionalism

Adam Grobler (Uniwersytet Opolski)

Call for Participation
AP in V4 Lecture Series — Analytic Philosophy in Visegrad Countries

Title: Ajdukiewicz, Lakatos, and the Rationalization of Conventionalism
Speaker: Adam Grobler (University of Opole)
Date and time: 20 April 2026, 15:00–16:30 CET (3:00–4:30 p.m. CET)
Format: Online lecture (5/9 in the lecture series)

Organised by: Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica (Slovakia), University of Ostrava (Czech Republic), and University of Warsaw (Poland), with the support of the Visegrad Fund.
Project website: https://ff.osu.eu/ap-in-v4/
Lecture series page: https://ff.osu.eu/ap-in-v4/lectures/

If you are interested in joining, please contact: [email protected]


Abstract

In his famous paper (1970), Lakatos described the methodology of scientic rese-
arch programmes (MSRP, henceforth) as a rationalization of conventionalism.
What he had in mind was that MSRP removes the conventionalist residues from
Popperian falsicationism while retaining its general spirit. First, Lakatos’s MSRP
and Ajdukiewicz’s concept of a conceptual apparatus will be sketched. Next, it will
be argued that Ajdukiewicz, as early as 1934, although he adopted the label of radi-
cal conventionalism for his standpoint, in many ways anticipated Lakatos’s strategy
for combating the core of conventionalism. Admittedly, the two philosophers put
forward their proposals in dierent contexts of philosophical debate—the former
aiming to generalize French conventionalism, the latter attempting to rene
Popper’s falsicationism. Still, on a liberal reading of Ajdukiewicz’s concept of
a conceptual apparatus, its constitutive meaning-rules can be interpreted as de-
nitional elements of Lakatos’s hard core of a scientic research programme, while
the evolutionary tendencies of conceptual apparatuses seem to play the role
Lakatos assigned to the criteria for classifying a programme as progressive.


About the speaker

Adam Grobler is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Opole. His research centers on epistemology and the philosophy of science, with important work on knowledge, presupposition, and, more recently, hinge epistemology. He is the author of books including Prawda a względność (Truth and Relativity), Metodologia nauk (Methodology of Science), and Epistemologia. Sandwiczowa teoria wiedzy (Epistemology: A Sandwich Theory of Knowledge), and he has published over fifty scholarly works, including papers such as “Truth, Knowledge, and Presupposition,” “The Sandwich Theory of Knowledge,” and “Radical Conventionalism and Hinge Epistemology.”