And if Atheism should be supposed to become universal in this nation… farewell all ties of friendship and principles of honor; all love for our country and loyalty to our prince; nay, farewell all government and society itself, all professions and arts, and conveniences of life, all that is laudable or valuable in the world.

My purpose here is purely historical. It is not an attempt to resolve the question as to whether Russell did or did not countenance nonclassical logics, and if so, which nonclassical logics, and still less to demonstrate whether he himself contributed, in any manner, to the development of nonclassical logic. Rather, I want merely to explore and insofar as possible document, whether, and to what extent, if any, Russell interacted with the various, either the various candidates or their, ideas that (...) Dejnožka and others have proposed as potentially influential in Russell’s intellectual reactions to nonclassical logic or to the philosophical concepts that might contribute to his reactions to nonclassical logics. (shrink)

Frege's and Russell's views are obviously different, but because of certain superficial similarities in how they handle certain famous puzzles about proper names, they are often assimilated. Where proper names are concerned, both Frege and Russell are often described together as "descriptivists." But their views are fundamentally different. To see that, let's look at the puzzle of names without bearers, as it arises in the context of Mill's purely referential theory of proper names, aka the 'Fido'-Fido theory.

A 2009 conference paper about Russell's enhanced physicalism: physical structural relations of matter instantiated by qualities with "intrinsic character." Russell's hypothesis leads many to panpsychism or protophenomenalism via a line-of-descent argument, but there is a way to break the line of descent, making sensation qualities separate higher order structural dispositions, if they are instantiated by the right kind of ground-level dispositional qualities.

In his 1911 paper, “On the Relations of Universals and Particulars,” Bertrand Russell supposes the question whether universals are spatial or non spatial turns on the question of the existence of particulars. If particulars could be shown to exist, then since, according to Russell, they obviously are spatial, the non-spatiality of universals would be established. On the other hand, the denial of the existence of particulars would entail the spatiality of universals.In this paper, I argue that Russell’s claim is plausible (...) only if particulars are construed either as quality instances or as ordinary objects. If, however, particulars are either substrata or collections of qualities, nothing follows in regard to the spatiality or the non-spatiality of universals. Since the alternative interpretations of particularity are, I contend, at least as attractive as Russell’s, his failure to consider them makes his position less interesting than it might otherwise have been. (shrink)

v. 1. Separate publications, 1896-1990 -- v. 2. Serial publications, 1890-1990 -- v. 3. Indexes.

This case study focuses on Roger Boisjoly's attempt to prevent the launch of the Challenger and subsequent quest to set the record straight despite negative consequences. Boisjoly's experiences before and after the Challenger disaster raise numerous ethical issues that are integral to any explanation of the disaster and applicable to other management situations. Underlying all these issues, however, is the problematic relationship between individual and organizational responsibility. In analyzing this fundamental issue, this paper has two objectives: first, to demonstrate the (...) extent to which the ethical ambiguity that permeates the relationship between individual and organizational responsibility contributed to the Challenger disaster; second, to reclaim the meaning and importance of individual responsibility within the diluting context of large organizations. (shrink)

This paper considers the attempts put forward by A.N. Whitehead and by Bertrand Russell to ‘construct’ points (and temporal instants) from what they regard as the more basic concept of extended ‘regions’. It is shown how what they each say themselves will not do, and how it should be filled out and amended so that the ‘construction’ may be regarded as successful. Finally there is a brief discussion of whether this ‘construction’ is worth pursuing, or whether it is better—as in (...) today’s mathematics—to prefer a ‘construction’ that goes the other way round, i.e. , to view a region as a set of points. (shrink)

Although John Dewey is celebrated for his work in the philosophy of education and acknowledged as a leading proponent of American pragmatism, he might also have enjoyed more of a reputation for his philosophy of logic had Bertrand Russell not attacked him so fervently on the subject. In Dewey's New Logic , Tom Burke analyzes the debate between Russell and Dewey that followed the 1938 publication of Dewey's Logic: The Theory of Inquiry . Here, he argues that Russell failed to (...) understand Dewey's logic as Dewey intended, and despite Russell's resistance, Dewey's logic is surprisingly relevant to recent developments in philosophy and cognitive science. Burke demonstrates that Russell misunderstood crucial aspects of Dewey's theory and contends that logic today has progressed beyond Russell and is approaching Dewey's broader perspective. "[This] book should be of substantial interest not only to Dewey scholars and other historians of twentieth-century philosophy, but also to devotees of situation theory, formal semantics, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, and Artificial Intelligence."--Georges Dicker, Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society "No scholar, thus far, has offered such a sophisticated and detailed version of central themes and contentions in Dewey's Logic . This is a pathbreaking study."--John J. McDermott, editor of The Philosophy of John Dewey. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century an apparently obscure philosophical debate took place between F. H. Bradley and Bertrand Russell. The historical outcome was momentous: the demise of the movement known as British Idealism, and its eventual replacement by the various forms of analytic philosophy. Since then, a conception of this debate and its rights and wrongs has become entrenched in English-language philosophy. Stewart Candlish examines afresh the events of this formative period in twentieth-century thought and comes to some surprising conclusions.

The Historical Dictionary of Bertrand Russell's Philosophy is the only dictionary to date of Bertrand Russell's ideas.

Still wanting is a systematic examination of the various aspects of his analytic method which, collectively, give to his philosophy of language its ...

Russell's "new contradiction" about "the totality of propositions" has been connected with a number of modal paradoxes. M. Oksanen has recently shown how these modal paradoxes are resolved in the set theory NFU. Russell's paradox of the totality of propositions was left unexplained, however. We reconstruct Russell's argument and explain how it is resolved in two intensional logics that are equiconsistent with NFU. We also show how different notions of possible worlds are represented in these intensional logics.

Recently a fascinating debate has been rekindled over whether vagueness is metaphysical or linguistic. That is, is vagueness an objective feature of reality or is it merely an artifact of our language? Bertrand Russell’s contribution to this debate is considered by many to be decisive. Russell suggested that it is a mistake to conclude that the world is vague simply because the language we use to describe it is vague. He argued that to draw such an inference is to commit (...) “the fallacy of verbalism”. I argue that this is only a fallacy if we have no reason to believe that the world is as our language says. Since vagueness is apparently not eliminable from our language---a fact that Russell himself acknowledged---an indispensability argument can be launched for metaphysical vagueness. In this paper I outline such an argument. (shrink)

According to the received view, Russell rediscovered about 1900 the logical definition of cardinal number given by Frege in 1884. In the same way, we are told, he stated and developed independently the idea of logicism, using the principle of abstraction as the philosophical ground. Furthermore, the role commonly ascribed in this to Peano was only to invent an appropriate notation to be used as mere instrument. In this paper I hold that the study of Russell's unpublished manuscripts and Peano's (...) (and disciples) writings (as part of a larger investigation only pointed out here) shows, on the contrary, that Russell obtained the method to transform definitions by abstraction into nominal definitions and the general logicist idea from Peano (and his school). The only original insight from Russell, the principle of abstraction, partially derived from Moore's early philosophy, was finally abandoned because it was not of practical use. (shrink)