Kotarbiński on Intellectual Values and Intellectual Ethics
Kotarbiński on Intellectual Values and Intellectual Ethics

Summary/Abstract: Tadeusz Kotarbiński never formulates explicitly the project of an intellectual ethics, but we can reconstruct his answer from his Traktat o dobrej robocie (1955; Eng. transl.: Praxiology: An introduction to the Sciences of Efficient Action, 1965) and his ethical writings. Kotarbiński does not formulate an explicit meta-ethics of values, and seems to develop a purely functionalist conception according to which there is nothing more in intellectual ethics than a conception of efficient action. However, he has a theory of practical values and skills that can be applied to the aims and norms of the epistemic domain. But can he secure a genuine conception of intellectual values if these are merely immanent to “efficient work”?

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