THE DYNAMICS OF ITS MEANINGS (A HERMENEUTICAL ANALYSIS)*
A N D R Z E J B R O N K , S T A N IS Ł A W M A J D A Ń S K I
I. I N T R O D U C T O R Y R E M A R K S
The considerations presented in this paper fit into the framework of re
search on the foundations of philosophical and scientific language1. They focus on the category of description, as it is present mainly in philosophy, but also in sciences. Our considerations start from the fact that the category of description is present as a part of the program at least in three contempo
rary research traditions: in Positivism (Empiriocriticism and Neopositivism), analytic philosophy2 and phenomenology. These traditions take it as an auto
nomous value. We see our considerations as an initial grasp of the problem, which deserves further research that would deepen its understanding.
We focus mainly upon two interpretations of what description is: pheno- menalistic developed by the phenomenalists (positivists) and phenomenolo
gical - developed by the phenomenologists. Thus, our approach aims at refer
ring and presenting the sense of this concept, not at projecting it - especially projecting it normatively and conclusively. By developing a (hermeneutical) analysis of the category of description (philosophy of description) we aim at disclosing a deeper sense of its use and at revealing intentions and predi
lections of those who advance the idea of describing: what do they solidarize with and what do they struggle against? So, we ask what underlies that fact
T ranslated from: K ategoria opisu: dynam ika znaczeń (Analiza herm eneutyczna),
“Roczniki Filozoficzne”, 43(1995), fasc. I, pp. 5-39.
1 This w ork is a revised version o f the paper given at the conference "Symbol i rzeczy
w istość” (“'Sym bol and realities") organized by the Institut o f Philosophy of the Adam M ickie
wicz University, Poznań, O ctober 4-5, 1994. It contains also the history of the category of description absent in the earlier version.
W e mean tjere a descriptivistic stream in analytic philosophy (J. Kotarbińska, 1971).
178 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
that many times spontaneously and automatically description is employed by thinkers educated in a certain research tradition, whose language usus they accept quite often without being aware of its consequences.
We point here more to cognitive claims associated with the category of description and less to their actual realization. The history of philosophy shows that the divergence between philosophers’ intentions (theoretical decla
rations) and their practical realizations - often far less perfect than an inten
ded ideal - is not so rare. The category of description is certainly such a case. Description was often seen as a cognitively “cheap” enterprise, with almost zero presumptions. We should not accede to “descriptiveness” under
stood in a superficial and normative-evaluative way. And opposing it to other cognitive activities, such as explaining, constructing or theoretizing, does not need to mean establishing simple and real oppositions. The project of descrip- tivism3, so noble in intentions, practically has never been consequently car
ried over, also because essentially description is not presuppositionless.
Our remarks and considerations are thought to be a contribution to a not yet existing theory of broadly understood description. Such a theory should indicate the nature of description: its origin, structure and various functions which it may play, among others, in philosophical and scientific cognition.
Thus, we do not aim directly at reporting in details the role of description in philosophy and science. These domains serve us more as a point of reference and a source of exemplifications of certain theses, as we draw a “moral” for philosophy which characterizes itself as descriptive4. Any such “moral” is especially difficult to achieve, for "the same” categories - not only in philo
sophy - acquire ever different conventional meanings. Any characteristic of the category of description involves also other philosophical concepts. Out of necessity we put aside specific issues which result from the use of the category of description in particular disciplines.
Does a demand to develop a general theory of description arise? From a pragmatic point of view probably the answer is: no. A philosopher usually learns ways of using terms and their meanings in practice, i.e. in the process of maturing in a certain society and in a certain scientific tradition which cultivates some specific ways of speaking. The significance of a general theory of description is theoretical: it should describe (so we cannot avoid
3 The term "descriptivism ” we understand here m ore generally than for example the idea o f descriptiveness developed within ethics.
4 This is why the goal intended to be accomplish in the paper we would gladly characte
rize as an attempt to describe "herm eneutically” a contem porary status o f description.
describing) and maybe explain some mechanisms governing language (philo
sophical and scientific). Any adequate characteristic of particular types of descriptive knowledge (nature, problems, and limits of various types of de
scription) requires some appeal to a general theory o f description. At its starting point such a theory must presuppose no resolutions, especially axiolo- gical ones: it should be neither phenomenalistic nor phenomenological; nei
ther substantialistic nor eventistic Thus, such a theory - dismissing hitherto developed conceptions of description as partial and deciding in advance what description is - should embrace those conceptions: describe and explain them.
II. SOME DIFFICULTIES
What strikes immediately when one starts investigating the category of description is the lack of a more general theory of description5, although there exist some fragmentary pieces that make possible to build it. Moreover, after intense discussions on cognitive function of description took place on the turn of the nineteenth century and at the beginning of the twentieth cen
tury - also in Poland - when this problematics was fashionable in conne
ction to empiriocriticism. Now logicians and methodologists show no explicit interest in this category, as they are occupied mainly with the category of explanation and justification7 and in methodology of human sciences - the category of understanding8. On most occasions the category of description is used unconsciously. Also it lacks broader information on description in dictionaries, encyclopedias and papers dealing with epistemology and the philosophy o f science. The category of description enjoys a proper interest
5 For exam ple H. Spielberg (1982) points out to this fact.
6 S. B obiński (1910), J. Kodisow a (1910), F. Sękowski (1910), K. Sośnicki (1910), A. Zie- leńczyk (1910). The paper by A. G rzegorczyk (1948) w hich respects the positivistic distinction between a descriptive and theoretical (explanatory) level o f scientific language (the author would gladly talk simply about protocol-language sim ilar to reistic language) is an attem pt at
"defining sem antic concepts on the ground o f language pragm atics.”
7 As it can be dem onstrated for exam ple on the basis o f excerpts from J.C. Pitt (1988) and D.-H. Ruben (1993), in the most recent discussions on explanation the category o f descrip
tion does not occur at all.
8 An all-em bracing attem pt at characterizing the general category o f description known to us is the paper by A. D iem er (1971), which considers it in the context of a triad: descri
bing, explaining, understanding. W e m ake use o f this paper freely and frequently.
180 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
on the part of scholars working on semiotics (in connection to B. Russell’s theory of description), on the theory of literature (“literary description”, “de
scription in literature”) and on linguistics.
It has been generally accepted that the category of description is self-evi
dent and its analysis does not create any specific difficulties. Yet, the task of developing any outline of a unified and general theory of description turns out to be more difficult than we could initially expect. Any attempt to realize this task shows a theoretical and practical complexity of the category of description as well as the heterogeneity of ideas that should by taken into account. One of the difficulties here is the following one: as any grasp of language requires language, in the same way also any characteristic of de
scription must be done - at least at its beginning - by means of description.
Thus, we deal here with a certain primary situation which creates circularity (a hermeneutic circle or some other) of considerations. And more, any at
tempt at unifying many different and at the first glance inconsistent ideas taken from philosophy and science is made difficult by the ambiguity of the term “description” resulting from the fact that both in the past and nowadays description was ascribed many various properties. The ambiguity and multi
functionality of the term “description” cause the danger that discussions on the descriptive character of cognition very easy slip into verbalism9.
Any suggested solutions cannot ignore the dialectical incongruity of that what is called description. How can one build a unified theory of description for such different domains as philosophy, particular sciences, and theology in which the paths along which this concept developed were not the same?
How can one in the context of descriptiveness (and what we describe: sub
stances or events?) unify so dialectically inconsistent understandings of cogni
tion as substantialistic and eventistic conceptions? It seems impossible to indicate what is common to all historically known views of description. We deal here with the category which is not very operational and for which there exist no uniform and evident criteria of use. The positivistic understanding generates different methodological restrictions on employing description than it does the phenomenological one. It can be shown that certain operations, seen as different, were functionally ascribed the same role or totally reverse
9 Consider for exam ple the remark made by T. Nagel: “ [...] discussions on the adequacy of a descriptive conception o f science had to a great extent a verbal character caused by the ambiguity of the term ‘description’” (1970, p. 133).
one (in their replacement function). That is it can be shown that the functio
nal unity between various operations was found .
The lax use of the term “description” (or its synonyms) leads to the situa
tion that in it difficult to determine boundaries of its technical use. What is called description is “protected” by supplementing it with categories formally opposite. In different research traditions the same or sim ilar cognitive opera
tions are called or are not - on the basis of some terminological convention - description. Along with extreme conceptions there are many intermediary understandings which allow descriptive and non-descriptive elements in cog
nition, mutually reducible. Sometimes - in theory or practice - description is equated with the category of cognition in general, and sometimes it is excluded from the domain of “good science”.
III. A N IN IT IA L C H A R A C T E R IS T IC
The term “description” has a whole range (family) of meanings linked by some genetic and sometimes functional sam eness11. The category of descrip
tion can be characterized from various points of view: for example from the point of view of semiotics, methodology, epistemology or ontology; and these various characteristics condition one another. The situation is however even more complicated, for the concept of description manifests various degrees because of the “m ix” or correlation of descriptive elements with some others:
theoretical, hypothetical, conventional, even if the latter elements - we should stress this fact here - may be seen as playing descriptive function of a higher order.
Let us quote an illustrative remark o f A. Bogusławski: '‘The prim ary part of linguistics is registration and description - both historical and explanatory [! - A.B., S.M.] - of pheno
mena occurring in particular languages or groups o f languages” (in: “Przegląd Filozoficzny", 4(1995), No. 3, p. 136.
“D escription - [...] 'a presentation o f details associated with the look of som ebody or something, with the course o f som e event or working of som ething, a characteristic of som e
thing; describing’: a detailed, exact, short description. A colorful, figurative, brilliant, vivid description. Apical, poetic description. A description of a journey. A technical description of a machine. To give a detailed description o f som ething. A scientific description. [...] A biblio
graphical, catalog description, ‘presenting individual features of a printed document, common to the w hole edition, expressed m ainly in the title o f a w o rk ’ [...]. A description o f a figure (technological) [...]. A patent description [...] A technical description o f a project [...]”
(M. Szym czak (ed.). Słow nik języka polskiego, vol. 2, W arszawa 1979, pp. 527 f.).
182 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
Let us initially accept that “description” (“philosophical”) (Greek grafe, Latin descriptio, Polish opis, French description, German Beschreibung) is a semiotico-methodologico-epistemological category with a dynamically differen
tiated meaning, and that it refers to some determined cognitive activities or their results. This category is characteristic for certain thought streams of 19th and 20th centuries that advocated some “ideology” of descriptivism which become obviously antimetaphysical among the positivists and analytic philoso
phers, and prometaphysical among the phenomenologists. Description is usual
ly connected with an answer to the question o f what is it like. Sometimes it is stressed that a description must be an accurate, faithful - not distorting - infallible and presuppositionless presentation of that what is somehow directly given. One speaks here about the ideal of descriptive knowledge.
Quite elementary, the term “description” denotes a certain cognitive opera
tion12, its method, or its language result. A description may be a value-la
den diagnosis (in accordance to the ideal of descriptive knowledge) concer
ning the course of cognitive acts which are - or are not - recognized as valuable. It consists in fixing and presenting in a language things, their features, relations and processes given in perception (or more broadly: in experience). As an operation13 (pragmatically) description refers to the act of characterizing (defining!) by a subject that what is directly given. It con
sists in ascribing(!) - done in a language - something to something. It is a methodic presentation of a certain state of affairs in a clear and distinct way.
In empirical sciences description as some articulation in language of what empirically given, is seen as the initial stage of scientific research and con
sists precisely in a descriptive presentation of observational or experimental results. “To describe” means to state, to assert, to note, to report, to present (deictically, ostensivly). One cannot present without describing and to de
scribe without presenting; to describe means to narrate that what is really happening or what happened. Yet description is always discursive, whereas presenting has an eidetic character.
12 "To describe [...] ‘to present in writing details o f o n e’s look, o f function, working of something; to give details, features of som ething by means o f a map, drawing, etc.; to portray or characterize som ething, som ebody in w ords’: to describe som ething brilliantly, colorfully.
To describe som ething lengthy, extensively, accurately, faithfully, exactly, shortly. To describe som ething in prose, poetry. To describe one’s life, adventures [...)” (ibid., p. 528).
13 The term "describe” (not only in Germ an) has both a static and dynamic meaning. The form er is rendered by the Latin term descriptio, and the latter - by historia (A. Diemer, 1971).
Description is usually connected to factuality, vividness, and registration, grasp o f what is directly given in “pure” experience and observation, em piri
cally. It is contrasted with a priori and indirect grasp, theoretic and conven
tional, evaluative and normative. Its typical opposita are - among others - theoretizing, explaining, justifying1 , interpreting, constructing, predicting, evaluating, and normative regulating.
The classical conception of science usually contrasts description with explanation . The “objective” concept of description was rendered by oppo
sing - in A ristotle’s spirit - two kinds of knowledge: hoti to diod. Descrip
tion is here understood as a primal characteristic of what is directly given hie et nunc in its uniqueness, i.e. individuality and distinctiveness. On the other hand it was claimed that science is not de singularibus, for that what is indi
vidual (contingent) cannot be an object of scientific cognition (non datur scientia de individuo ut individuo). O f course, it may be when we treat facts described as intentional ideal objects representing a certain class o f physical objects. Classically (A. Comte) understood, the scientific description gives - as it was said above - an answer to the question of “what is something?” and
"what does it look?” (R. Ingarden) in contrast to explanation and justification connected to the question: “why?”. Behind this distinction it lays the idea that science should be opposed to history16, general to individual, ultimate truths to probabilities (A. Diemar, 1971). The neopositivistic theory of science, stressing the explanatory function of science, ascribed the explanato
ry power to hypotheses, laws and scientific theories1 and saved “descrip
tion” for individual facts . Nowadays it is generally claimed that no science or philosophy can be “forced” into the category of description. What was in the past called description, very often turned out to be de fa cto some disguised and theory-laden explanation. Natural sciences do not describe but
14 The contrast between deductive and descriptive m ethods can be found for exam ple in A.T. Troskolański (1982, p. 69).
15 E xplanation is understood in tw o ways: in the sense o f the explanatory schem a o f C.G. Hempel and in the sense o f various explanatory procedures such as definition, logical division, paraphrase, pseudo-definitions such as for exam ple an (explanatory) characteristic of an object.
History considers what is em pirical, individual, distinct. Its aim s at exact description of that what is. N atural history m akes here an exam ple: it does not belong to science yet, but it makes an initial stage o f science.
“Explaining phenomena o f the physical world constitutes one o f the m ain tasks of natural sciences” (C.G. Hempel, 1968, p. 73)
18 “D escription is a specification o f the features o f a species or contingent properties of an individual” (W .S. Jevons, 1936, p. 290).
184 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
they construct conventional models of the world giving thereby the explana
tion of phenomena occurring in the world. On the other hand it is claimed that constructed theories describe.
Explanationism, nowadays generally accepted, does not impede ascribing the descriptive function to science (or scientific theories). It is so not only because science is seen as possessing a proper place for description (as it is the case in biology) but also because it is claimed that scientific laws are general statements describing some universal regularities of the world of nature . For example, R. W ójcicki maintains this thesis and ascribes the descriptive function to scientific laws and theories20. The author introduces the concept of descriptive models (in contrast to semantic ones): “Scientific theories will be contrasted with descriptive models of concrete empirical objects (events, processes, situations), always treated as the instruments for solving concrete problems (1991, p. 84).
In this situation some authors (A. Diemer, 1971) claim that the boundary between describing and explaining is fuzzy21. Between describing and ex
plaining there exists at most only the difference of degree, as any explanation may be understood as a description of a higher order with regard to a more
‘‘primitive”, basic description22. Description and explanation that are two fundamental cognitive functions, transform itself into each other. Description may be an element of explanation, and certain elements of explanation may
19 A natural scientist may treat scientific laws “as a description of that what is happening in a certain specific recess of the w orld” (S. Ossowski, 1967, p. 65). “Thus, laws o f physics are - as I think - the most important elem ents in the process o f exact describing the regulari
ties o f the natural world" (Smid, 1980, p. 450). T. Nagel considers w hether “ laws that are called experimental, in contrast to theoretical laws, describe relations betw een the observable (experimentally determ ined) properties o f objects” (1970, p. 81).
20 "Law s describing an ideal state o f affairs may [...] give us a starting point for con
structing models of a real state of affairs” (1991, p. 83). “A theory may become the theory that describes only one system and it may serve for describing many different system s” (1974, p. 20).
21 Compare for example the follow ing claim: "by a description made on this level we explain the behavior by giving its causes - in the form of aims, beliefs and know ledge”
(M. M aterska, T. Tyszka (eds.), 1992, p. 26).
22 "In those theories in which explaining is distinguished from describing, as for example in Mach, and now in Hempel and Oppenheim, description plays a preparing role: it gives the explanatory procedure some material, which later - in the process o f explaining - is treated causally. Explanation should provide us with an answ er to the question o f “ why" this pheno
menon occurs; and it is given in propositions and systems o f propositions. D escription informs about conditions, called initial conditions, from which that what occurs can be inferred” (F.
Kaulbach, 1971. p. 27).
become descriptions and vice versa. If in sentences containing the term “de
scription” we replace it with “explanation”, those sentences maintain their sense. No “good” science (philosophy) stops pure description but it tries to explain (“interpret”). Each language is theory-laden, although it may appa
rently look different when presumptions are pushed aside to some distant level of cognition. In writings of some philosophers of science (for example M. Bunge), who treat the term “description” very broadly, the difference between description and explanation simply disappears23. Fuzziness of the boundary between description and explanation may be confirmed by the fact that the explanans in H em pel's model o f explanation contains also proposi
tions describing individual facts (C.G. Hempel, 1968, p. 77). Sometimes the explanans is seen as the description of an investigated phenomenon.
Another approach contrasts description with reasoning. Description seems to include almost no discourse, for it does not want to be theoretically en
gaged. Per se in a description we dot not use the relation of implication, or only incidentally and trivially. To describe does not mean to reason, for in the description there are no explicit premisses and conclusions. In a natural way description is closer to experience than to theory. In its surface structure description is not a well-ordered system, although it may be in its deep struc
ture. It is rather a loose sequence of propositions tied at best by the relation of temporal succession, relations of the hypotax-type syntactically and seman
tically unstructured.
Since it is claimed that understanding is connected to explaining and science dismisses understanding, not all thinkers put a requirement that de
scription should give understanding24. To other well-known ideas there be
long the distinction - quite elementary in the speech theory - between de
scriptive expressions, whose performation is constative (asserting, negating, rejecting informing, predicting) and prescriptive expressions which require or
23 "E xplication constitutes a certain peculiar kind o f historical description, which is in turn a special type of assertion by w hich a language user expresses his mental state - belief. [...]
Explications are the m eans o f describing functions o f legis in a language that exists because [people] experim entally choose existing expressions from the discourse in a system atic way (i.e. also because [they] present sem antic/syntactic analyses of those expressions)” (J. Bartm iń- ski, R. Tokarski (eds.), 1993, pp. 64 f).
24 A. D iem ar’s view makes here an exception: "description is always an understanding description w hich places by means o f a description that what is given in the totality o f that what is given” (1971, p. 22).
186 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
forbid something25. And finally, one differentiates describing and referring.
“ 1. To describe means to say something about an object; 2. To refer means to show an object; 3. To name means to find a sign for discerning an indica
ted object. [...] A typical description is an attempt at creating the idea of an object, a thing, by specifying its properties and their configuration (Gestalt)'' (J. Srzednicki, 1993, p. 41).
The relation between description and narration is quite peculiar. In the framework of a standard view theoreticians of human sciences accept two senses of the term “description”: the one embraces narration and description in a narrower sense26; the other opposes narration associated with the cate
gory of time to description associated with the category of space27. What is at stake here are well-known problems of the relation between the catego
ries of time and space, problems of specialization of temporal categories and problems of the role of spacial concepts in cognition. The nature of our cog
nition is such that ultimately we specialize all categories, also those “op
posed” to the category of space, what was combated so vigorously by for example H. Bergson and existential philosophies. In result, some authors understand description narrowly as a characteristic (synchronic and spacial arrangement of things) of that what is static (for example descriptions of
25 This distinction makes a basis for exam ple for differentiating descriptive linguistics (gram m ar) which aims at the possibly faithful description of language given, and prescriptive gram m ar which aims at determ ining (social) norms regulating the use of language.
26 For exam ple, J. Pelc (1971) speaks about “ the concept o f narration, i.e. description, broadly understood” , “a narrative (descriptive) use o f expressions” and "narratives, i.e. descrip
tive com m unications in a broader sense” . When Pelc contrasts description with narration he sees propositions about things as descriptive, propositions about events as narrative in a nar
row er sense {ibid., p. 235). We om it here the problem o f narratives in postmodernism (A.
Bronk, A nlyfundam entalizm kultury i filo zo fii ponow oiytnej, in: M iędzy logiką a etyką. Studia z logiki, ontologii, epistem ologii, metodologii, sem iotyki i etyki. Prace ofiarowane Profesorowi L. K ojow i, Lublin 1995, pp. 399-420.
27 “A description, one o f the tw o basic - along with a story - elem ents of the narrative [...] is in principle an atem poral grasp that shows constituents and properties o f a given object in their static condition and - especially often - in their spacial arrangem ent” (M. Głowiński, T. K ostkiew icz, A. O kopień-Sław ińska, J. Sławiński, 1976, p. 280). "N arrative - a monologue [...] that presents a sequence o f events in some temporal order [...] D epending on w hether in the presentation it com es to the fore dynamic phenomena, developing in time, or static phe
nomena arranged in space, a narrative takes the form o f a story-telling or o f a description;
between the two poles there exists an extensive domain o f various narrative forms o f a mixed or interm ediatory character” (ibid, p. 258).
nature) and then they contrast it with narratives; others understand it broadly and then speak about spacial and temporal narratives .
IV. THE STRUCTURE, TYPES AND FUNCTIONS OF DESCRIPTION
The question of what to count among description’s immanent features and what among its transcendent features, although essentially connected to the former, is a matter of certain dialectics. The structure of description29 on the one hand includes data of experience, i.e. that what is given directly, and - somewhat parallel - language and systems of meanings associated with it;
on the other hand the structure of describing includes analyzing (but not con
structing), abstracting, pointing out, identifying, classifying, and noting.
Sometimes the latter operations are also seen as descriptive, or at least con
nected to describing. It should be well discerned between the object of de
scription (describendum) and that by means of what it is described (descri
bens,). For here main differences between the advocates o f various postulated general theories of description arise. The question is what is really directly given. A distinct typology is in turn obtained when we take into account the domain in which description is used, as for example in the case of the de
scription of physical instruments and their indications, historical documents or astronomic observations.
With regard to the types of description we should first distinguish three cognitive situations: when we deal with describing itself, with describing and some other cognitive activities accompanying it (for example combining description with explanation), and when we deal with operations other than describing. Each describing (description) is selective, for it consists in the selection of some possibilities, although sometimes it aims at overcoming spacio-temporal limitations and producing something what could be called
“a full description”. No description is ever a pure, objective report of pure, plain, “bare”, objective, etc. facts (empirical description) like a photograph or a map. It is - in various degrees - theoretically engaged (theoretical de
scription), if only because we must use some language when we describe.
On the issue o f historical narratives, i.e. o f descriptions o f a fragm ent o f reality with the reference to tim e, see for exam ple J. Topolski, 1968, pp. 413 f.
29 A. D iem er (1971, p. 21) distinguishes three m om ents in description: “that” (daß),
"w hat” (W as) and language.
1 8 8 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
There exist alternative languages that give us different ways of describing the same phenomenon, for example qualitative and quantitative languages. Res
pectively one distinguishes "surface description” (of phenomena) because of its minimal theory-ladenness (phenomenalistic description), and “deep (essen
tial) description” which is related to essentialism of the phenomenologists aiming at grasping the essences of things (phenomenological description).
With respect to the aim, structure or function, description may be: syste
matic or chaotic, economic, true, fictional and false, adequate (complete) and inadequate (incomplete), general and detailed, immanent and external, realistic and irrealistic, spoken (narrative) or written (description), qualitative or quan
titative (in the language of mathematics), static and dynamic (in itself or with regard to an object described), genetic, structural and functional, and causal, qualifying30, diagnostic, normative, evaluative, interpretative and explanato
ry, arranging, systematizing, classifying (kinds) and typologizing (types), generalizing and individualizing (idiographic), analytic, etc. For example T. Czeżowski (1989) - following K. Twardowski - uses the term "analytic description” and understands it as a method of describing empirical objects which leads to general statements of an apodictic character. The tasks that Czeżowski assigns to analytic description which is to provide apodictic know
ledge makes analytic description similar to phenomenological description. The types of description, those listed and others, may be combined with one another. The concept of "indirect description” - when it is said that theories and scientific constructs (theoretical terms), as well as definitions31, describe - is unspecific. Such description becomes explanation. The issue is of course connected to the question of what is really a parte rei directly given.
Although the newest methodological literature does not usually point out to the category of description (for example indexes of books belonging to the subject literature lack this entry), the descriptive function is - as it may be shown - extensively and evidently present, sometimes declaratively as a program of doing philosophy or science in a descriptive way, and sometimes implicitly as a part of other cognitive activities. The category of description
30 W ith regard to the aim it realizes description is used in tw o ways: either it is to cha
racterize particular individuals or o f a set o f individuals - kinds or species (T. Czeżowski, 1965, p. 49).
31 T. Czeżowski (1965) claim s more carefully: “an adequate and complete description of individuals o f a certain kind becom es the basis for defining the term by which - as a general name - we denote those individuals and which is the subject o f sentences building that de
scription” (p. 43).
appears always there where one claims that “good and reliable” cognition is connected to the descriptive function of language. The latter function is often understood - broadly or restrictively - as the cognitive function simpliciter.
The category of description is favored by empirical, nom inalist and positi- vistic approaches. It is present in philosophy32, descriptive ethics33, theo
logy34, the theory of science35, in natural and human sciences, in traditio
nal (such as geography) descriptive sciences (morphologic, idiographic), as well as also in those that do not have in their name the suffix "graphy” such as botanic, zoology, anatomy, and recently in cognitive sciences which refer description to the working of a computer36. The descriptive terminology is found also outside of empirical sciences: in analytic geometry (“an equation describes”) and in logical semiotics (“a sentence describes a state of affairs”).
Obviously, the fact that a certain science has been named "descriptive” does not determine its methodological status. The suffix "graphy” and the qualifier
“descriptive” serve to stress the descriptive character of science. Descriptive
ness takes various senses and various degrees (as in ethnography, biography, descriptive grammar, geometry and descriptive mathematics). Also sciences whose name ends with “logy” (like geology) may have a descriptive charac
ter. Sometimes also sciences theoretically underdeveloped or those confining themselves to “description alone” are called descriptive; sometimes sciences which do not employ mathematics37 are seen as such. By including history (ut res gestae) into the domain of science we accept the descriptive method as scientific. A classical expression of this conviction is the distinction made
12 For exam ple I. K an t's transcendental theory of description is considered in F. Kaul- bach’s paper of 1971.
33 We mean here the complex problem atic o f description in ethics and the ample literature on ethical naturalism which attempts to introduce or to define ethical concepts by means of descriptive language. Cf. M. Ossowska, 1983.
34 Cz. Bartnik, 1977.
35 Cf. A. M otycka, 1990.
36 “The w orking o f a com puter which runs a program may be described on m any different levels. On the highest o f them [...] the description contains such categories as ‘being con
vinced, thinking, having h o p e’ and other terms in which folk psychology (see: Stich 1983) used to describe and explain human behavior. 'A com puter is waiting till you insert d ata’ or
‘it thinks you m ight have m ade a m istake and therefore it asks w hether you would like to delete that som ething’ are the descriptions belonging to this level” (M. M aterska, T. Tyszka (eds.), 1992. p. 25)
“N atural sciences are divided into descriptive that confine them selves to description and causal explanation o f phenom ena and processes in nature and technology, and m athem atical- quantitative sciences w hose laws are expressed in the language o f m athem atical analyses”
(A.T. T roskolański, 1982, p. 68).
190 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
by W. Windelband and H. Rickert between nomothetic sciences and idiogra- phic sciences. Whether we should - as it was required by the logical empi
ricists - treat the former as “exact” and the latter as “non-exact” sciences is quite another issue.
Various types of philosophy (descriptive, explanatory, intuitive understan
ding, evaluative-normative) ascribe various functions to description. They treat it either as an initial stage of philosophical work which secures the empirical basis for philosophizing, or as a fundamental method of philoso
phizing which secures the objectivity of philosophical theses. Description - as implicit explanation? - is frequent in the work of philosophers with maxi- malistic aims who declare for building systems. Explanatory philosophies which want to know why something is such as it is, seen the role of descrip
tion as minimal and allow it only at the starting point of philosophizing. It seems that description is the least present in philosophies of the normative (postulative, speculative in H egel’s sense) type, for they confine themselves to postulative character of their results; the most - in philosophies of the intuitive-understanding type, for they search - in the world or outside of it - for the principles that explain the world.
V. EXPECTATIONS AND PRESUMPTIONS
The use of (the category of) description is connected to some specific cognitive expectations. It was thought that description to some extent deter
mined certain things in advance. Nowadays we know that it does not need to be so. This is why both minimalistic philosophy (positivism) and maxima- listic philosophy (phenomenology) may appeal to description.
Descriptivism in philosophy possesses some obvious empiricistic connec
tions and it is traditionally, although not necessarily correctly, associated with realism. Education in the tradition of empiricism consists in ascribing a great value to description. Empiricism is connected to the view that the category of description, as one which is closest to reality, secures in a natural and spontaneous way cognitive realism in philosophy (“adherence to being”), thanks, among other things, to the closeness of the sphere o f objects, almost the lack of the distance between what describes and what is described.
In philosophy the description is an attempt to answer the question of what really exists, as this what cannot be described does not exist. It “sticks” to facts and questions of “what exists?” and “how it exists?”; it is connected to
representation38, reference, and the sphere of description is coextensive with the sphere of being39. Various philosophies, in the name of realism, or at least objectivism, put as their aim the “realist” description of the world and not (a priori) construction of concepts and philosophical theories. In science the program of descriptivism is connected to genetic empiricism and corres
ponds to that what in the philosophy of science functions as the so-called observationism sees observations and statements concerning individual facts as chronologically prior to theories.
At the bottom of the predilection to description it lays the conviction that description is presuppositionless: that it allows to minimalize ontological, cognitive and linguistic presuppositions. W e deal here with the ideal of pre
suppositionless cognition, which has its origin on the one hand in intuitio- nism (Aristotle, scholastics, D escartes’ cogito ergo sum, phenomenology) and on the other - in radical empiricism (D. Hume) and phenomenalism. Descrip
tion is valued for it is not involved into a priori theoretical solutions, it does not appeal to some superfluous beings, and it has low costs (the principle of thought economy) and thereby it secures a neutral starting point for philoso
phy (and science). As the objective report of results of experience description relates what is directly and immediately given. The situation is made compli
cated by the fact that objects of (philosophical) description are not only em
pirical facts but also theoretical entities (for example it is said in geometry that the point describes the curve). If description had really zero presump
tions then some elementary cognitive intuition and classic logic would be sufficient to make it.
Although in the classic (Aristotelian-Thomistic) philosophy “description”
is not a technical and typical term, it may be easily associated with it be
cause of its genetic empiricism and realism. Among other things, some pecu
liar descriptiveness is here connected to the postulate of cognitive neutrality at the starting point of philosophizing, as well as to objectivism, the classical definition of truth, specific existentialism and intuitionism. In the Lublin School M.A. Krąpiec, who often employs the metaphor of “reading the being”, puts description at the starting point of philosophy. “Thus, in the starting point of philosophy we may then accept some in principle pre-scien- tific description of ‘the human fact’ and stress in this description those ele-
38 “ Human beings are the beings that represent. 1 repeat: they are not hom o fa b er but homo depictor. H um ans produce representations” (I. H acking, 1983, p. 132.)
M inim ally, one postulates that the content o f an act corresponds to the object of an act:
in realism - to a transcendent object, and in idealism - im m anent one or some other.
192 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
ments which in general consciousness, not without the influence of common education and the history of human thought, have already been emphasized”
(M.A. Krąpiec, 1974, p. 38). In various places the same operations sometimes he names explanatory, sometimes descriptive or justifying, or even uses the term (foreign to this philosophical tradition) "constructing the concept of being”. S. Kamiński, who postulates the use of T. Czeżowski's term “analytic description” in philosophizing, combines description with explanation in the term "explanatory description” within the so-called induction of the first principles: intellection, existentially important intellectual intuition which directly and undoubtfully “reads” the necessary structures of being. “Analysis should concern a chosen typical exemplar and it is at the same time an analy
sis of the meaning of the name of the described object. Its results are general statements in the form of an analytic definition possessing apodictic evi
dence” (S. Kaminski, 1993, p. 137).
V I. A C O R E O F T H E C O N T R O V E R S Y O V E R D E S C R IP T IO N A N D IT S S O L U T IO N S
To logico-philosophical problems connected with description broadly un
derstood there belong the issue of phenomenological description, of the defi
nition of logical truth by means of the description of states of the world (R. Carnap), the question of the linguistic status of descriptive and prescrip
tive expressions, the issue of the descriptive-nomothetic, descriptive-evalua- tive and descriptive-normative character of sciences (for example interpreta
tion and understanding in humanities) and philosophy (for example normative versus descriptive ethics), descriptivism (versus constructivism) with regard to the use of formal methods outside of formal sciences (the controversy between the constructivists and descriptivists, especially in formal sciences), as well as the issue of the program of descriptive metaphysics (P.F. Straw
son) directed against, among others, R ussell’s theory of description.
The dispute over the nature of description and its cognitive value may practically be reduced to the debates between various types of descriptivism (to the question how one version of descriptivism treats another): substantia- lism versus eventism and process philosophy, phenomenalism versus pheno- menologism, realist descriptivism (positivism and phenomenology) versus non-realist one (nominalistic and conceptualistic approaches). In the metho
dological debate over the category of description it is hard to ignore the classical triangle of Aristotle: being-thought-language. All problems associa-
ted with description touch epistemology, and ultimately ontology and meta
physics, for the semiotico-methodological characteristic alone is here insuffi
cient. In other words, taking a side in the debate over description depends on answers one gives to the question of what conception of being, cognition and language is accepted. The ontological issue in the debate over description amounts to the question of what is described; the epistemological issue - what kind o f cognition is seen as worthy and possible to execute; and semio- tical one - by means of what (a tool) one describes and “how” one describes.
Answers to these questions - or rather to the collections of questions - are strictly interconnected.
Different understandings of description are associated with different vi
sions of the world in a way comparable to the debate over universals. This is why we should search for the resolution to the debate over the category of description in concrete metaphysical views. As we already stressed if we do not want to say that “descriptive” means simply "cognitive”, the question arises what really exists (quid fa c ti) or what is really cognitively given,. The paradox of description consists in the fact that the one hand one assigns a low cognitive value to description (it is “only” a description), and on the other hand it is to have the highest value, for it should describe (!) reality itself: that what really exists. Positivism, that takes the cognitive or existen
tial power of that what is described to be the highest, associates strong onto
logical structures with description. The positivistic tradition is nominalistic, or at best conceptualistic . A radical realist eagerly speaks about deep de
scription, a nom inalist - about surface description, a conceptualist in turn speaks about explanation and brings to existence such constructs as the es
sence of a thing, substance, essential and deep structures, causes, and ends.
In the debate over the value of description we are confronted with various views on cognition, nowadays mainly with the positivistic and phenomenolo
gical views. Any general theory of description both heads towards a general theory of cognition and presupposes some epistemological resolutions, although the m atter looks different when - like the positivists - one values cognition of individuals and when - like the phenomenologists - one values general cognition. We meet the reverence for description in Hume-skeptic.
Avenarius-positivist, as well as in Husserl-phenomenologist. The positive or
40 A ccording to A. D iem ar (1971, p. 13) theories that attem pt to explain what the grasp of an object in its peculiarity and individuality consists in take the view either om ologizing (accepting some kind o f the existence o f universals), o r nom inalizing (allow ing only concrete individuals to exist).
194 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
negative valuation of description is connected with the idea o f valuable cog
nition (as, for example, “m irroring”), and philosophico-methodological pre
suppositions, quite often with the idea of minimalizing them, for example by identifying existence with that what is given in eidetic intuition. The concep
tion of cognition - maximal or minimal - is here decisive: measuring de
scription by the idea of cognitive maximalism and minimalism, and quite often ascribing to it self-truthfulness. Some thinkers take description to be a valuable cognitive operation, others see it as not very ambitious and contrast descriptive sciences with nomothetic ones; or they see it only as one among initial cognitive operations, for example the empirical description is to be a part of the empirical method, and the statistical description - a part of the statistical method. In Mach descriptions - since they are basic - do not re
quire any justification, and what is descriptive is at the same time self-justi- fying and self-truthful.
Description constitutes cognition with clear reference to language; verba
lization which serves cognition (we do not thereby determine whether or not extra-language cognition exists). Among other things, the etymology of the word "description” indicates this crucial connection between description and language. It does not mean that it must be written language, for it may be also spoken language. Seen from the side of language, a description is a sequence of expressions. When it is dynamically (as in the case of narrative) or statically understood, description is connected to various language func
tions: stating, ascertaining, referring, attributing, predicating, reporting41.
Description requires a proper terminology, and the latter can be procure by defining and distinguishing (logical division) that lead to scientific concepts.
The problem to be considered at this point is whether - and if yes, to what extent - the use of the language of logic in description threatens the theore
tical neutrality of description42.
If describing means predicating then what on the part of language de
scribes? Can all elements of language play the descriptive function?43
41 Some thinkers (K. Biihler) distinguish betw een the descriptive function (truth-stating) and all other instrumental functions o f language.
42 According to A. Grzegorczyk “propositions o f the language o f description can be fitted into the schem ata of logic” (1948, p. 363).
43 A ccording to J. Pelc what decides that a certain expression becom es descriptive (narra
ting) is its use as an answ er to the question: “how is it"? “The same expression may acquire and lose its descriptive (narrative) character, depending on the kind o f use. These are not gram m ar or style features o f a given story that decide whether in a particular case that story is a description (narrative). Its function is determ ined by this or other use” (1971, p. 237).
Depending on the view o f the world implicitly presupposed - substantialism or eventism - the function of describing of that what is directly given was historically ascribed either to predicates in propositions or to propositions themselves , nowadays also to laws, scientific theories, and mathematical formulas. This leads - paradoxically - to a non-specific concept of indirect description. In the substantialistic tradition the descriptive function is ascribed to a predicate that describes a thing denoted by the subject of a sentence. It is said that predicates are predicated o f subjects; description consists in
“ascribing” concrete properties to the sentence subject. In the eventistic tradi
tion it is the proposition that describes. A whole proposition describes a certain state of affairs (“facts”, phenomena, events). The question of whether also extra-linguistic description is possible, for example be means of a pho
tography or a microscope, does not seem to be trivial, for it concerns objects considered by humanities, for example objects of art45.
The philosophy of science associates the function of describing with gene
ral propositions (the classic tradition ) or with singular perceptual proposi
tions put together by conjunction or without connectives, or with “registe
ring” generalizations of the latter (the positivistic tradition). However, in many extended descriptions there de fa cto occur statements other than indica
tive ones, put sometimes in order to make a description more dynamic. Con
temporarily, by extrapolating a narrow concept of description, one ascribes - as it was mentioned - the descriptive function of a higher order also to definitions, hypotheses, scientific laws and empirical theories47. Traditional
ly (H. Rickert) it was accepted that the description of that what is given is made by means of everyday language. Yet, many critics point out that in science everyday language is not sufficient to reflect all subtle aspects of investigated objects; this needs a separate scientific language, for example
44 “The proposition 'in a year from today I will be in W arsaw ’ is to d a y true if and only if today there exist facts w hich will cause the existence o f the state of affairs described by this proposition” (L. Borkow ski, 1990, p. 474). “One may accept that the state o f affairs described by a true proposition is a proper relation restricted to a chain o f objects, and the state of affairs described by a false proposition - a determ inant o f that relation” (L. Borkow ski, 1993, p. 24).
45 “Is, for exam ple a description o f art objects a ‘direct presentation’ o f those objects, as on a photograph?” (A. D iem er 1971, p. 14). See also: W. Ław niczak, 1972.
“D escription in classical physics consists in determ ining the state o f a m aterial system at any tim e on the basis o f the laws o f physics and initial conditions” (A. M otycka, 1990, p.
233).
47 C onsidering the cognitive status o f scientific theories T. Nagel (1970, pp. 112 f.) distin guishes three conceptions thereof: descriptive (radical and m oderate), instrum ental, and realist.
196 Andrzej Bronk, Stanisław Majdański
mathematical one. The objection formulated against this view states, that it presupposes a determined pre-understanding of the world and description becomes then one of the form of classifying. Answering such criticism A.
Diemer (1971, p. 14) observes, that this objection can be extended to every
day language as well, for the latter also starts from a specific pre-understan
ding of the world. One of the problems here is whether the pure observatio
nal language is possible, as for example Carnap desired.
V II. C O N C L U D IN G R E M A R K S
In the closing section of the paper we shall highlight a few provisional conclusions which follow from our attempt to describe and to explain, and partially also to analyze, the category of description.
(1) Difficulties of any categorial philosophico-methodological analysis of the category of description stem from the fact that this category is primal. In the case of description - as in the case of any theoretically advanced concept - we deal with a non-criterial notion which cannot be sharply distinguished from other cognitive operations. When “description” is treated functionally as a primitive concept - as it is often the case - and therefore not analyzable in terms of the genus proximum, we may attempt to characterize it initially by means of contexts (thus, by means of a description). The best way is to contrast this concept with its usual opposita or to indicate typical contexts in which it is used. That is to indicate concepts commonly (conventionally) related to the category of description, such as factuality, empiricity, truth, realness.
(2) Sometimes whether one calls something “description” or, for example, explanation, is a matter of terminological convention. The use of the category of description depends on a certain terminological game which consists in repositioning meanings: extending or narrowing their scope and in modifying the concept of description up to the point where the meanings are reversed.
What one philosopher sees as description, another philosopher may call ex
planation, even if de facto - as we showed - functionally very similar proce
dures are considered. This fact brings another and difficult problem of trans
lating various philosophical languages by finding proper correlatives. The fact that in one school there are different terminological practices than in another one does not yet create relativism. At best, it is the relational reference of a language to a certain domain.
For Aristotle that what in cognition is descriptive provides cognition in the lowest degree, and for the phenomenologists - is the highest. What is extra- descriptive for Mach is descriptive for Husserl; and for the latter what Mach produced is a parody of “proper” description. Yet, for both of these thinkers
“description” was to secure empiricism (although differently understood).
Husserl claims that in philosophy and science we deal not only with surface description, as Mach insisted, but also with deep description, for the surface of phenomena calls for deeper description. From the positivists’ point of view the ideal of phenomenological description would become crypto-explanatory operation, somehow indirect. The evaluative ambivalence of the category of description consists also in the fact that some thinkers use it against meta
physics and others - for metaphysics. For the positivists what is extra-de
scriptive is metaphysical, hypothetical, "theoretical”, essential; for the pheno
menologists - it is the ontological essence of things. This may be an argu
ment for the thesis that in itself the category of description is neither pro
nor anti-metaphysical.
If we do not want to be satisfied with a rather uninteresting statement that the term “description” is ambiguous, we may accept the view that it is used analogically in various research traditions and contexts. In another conception one may see “description” as a politypic concept. The question then arises:
can we - seeing the meaning fluctuation - still ask about the essence of description, about something that is common to many of its forms? or does anything such as the essence of description (a description of the essence of description) exist, the essence which would be common to all contexts in which the term “description” is used and which would allow us to build a unified theory? We surmise that the dialectics of the various ways of using the term “description” cannot be finally made comprehensive otherwise than by accepting the non-simplified - genetic, politypic or analogical - unity of those ways.
(3) What has been said so far shows that the concept of description occur
ring throughout history is ambivalent, dialectically “perfidious” and fluctuant, allowing for various conceptual manipulations. What does this categorial game serve for? If we accept the contextual theory of the meaning of con
cepts (as W.V.O. Quine, as well as E. Cassirer, and H.-G. Gadamer did), then no meaning is ever stable but it changes along with changing contexts of the term ’ use. If we accept that what T. Kuhn claimed about science is also true of philosophy, namely that paradigms determine questions seen in a given time as interesting as well as ways of searching for answers, then the catego
ry of description acquires its meaning within the framework of a given para-