Abstract
Susan Stebbing held that Russell’s Doctrine of External Relations was incorrect. Interestingly, she also held that Bradley’s Doctrine of Internal Relations was problematic. In this paper, I’ll explain why she held this position, and develop what I will call the Doctrine of I/E relations, which will explain her middle ground. I start with a brief explanation of Russell’s Logical Atomism and his commitment to the Doctrine of External Relations. Then, to explain the Doctrine of I/E Relations, I take a brief detour through Stebbing’s theory of directional analysis. This will allow us to conclude by presenting the new Doctrine.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
- 2.
This section is largely based off of the work in Klement (2020). Here, I focus on Russell’s earlier, 1918, views of logical atomism, as Stebbing must have, given that her paper was published in 1917.
- 3.
Stebbing criticizes this notion of “construction” in her in appendix B of Stebbing (1930). She holds that thinking of everything at the macro level as a logical construction is misleading. Per Stebbing, no things are constructed. It is rather the terms we use to refer to them which are the constructions. This additionally means, to Stebbing, that the term “logical fiction” is inappropriate, since the things themselves are not fictitious, and it is not clear what it means to call terms fictions. Interestingly, since such a large part of Stebbing’s career was devoted to critical thinking, and to providing tools for thinking clearly, this type of criticism (that a particular term is unclear and hence should not be used) is not at all strange for her. See, for example, Chap. 5 of Stebbing (1939).
- 4.
For Russell, there existed such things as atomic facts, which were roughly the most basic and simple facts possible. Stebbing, at one point in her career, also held that such facts existed. However, she somewhat retracted this commitment later, in, for example, Stebbing (1934), where she replies to a criticism from Bronstein (1933).
- 5.
Stebbing does not cite Costelloe-Stephen, and I cannot find evidence as to whether they met. It seems they must certainly have known of each other, given their mutual interests.
- 6.
For Stebbing, “What is essential to a term is what is involved in the meaning of the term, so that alteration in essence is ipso facto alteration in the term itself” (Stebbing 1917, p. 466).
- 7.
Thanks to Graham Leach-Krouse for this example.
- 8.
There is room in Stebbing’s view for there to be a third type of relation, so that we might have something of a spectrum, with external relations on one end, internal relations on the other, and interpenetrating relations in between. External relations cause no change in the entities they relate, interpenetrating relations change an essential feature of the entity, and internal relations do not change the entity but do change some major features. In the above example, this would be akin to moving the ball. If we move the ball, something about the ball does change. The change, though, is not essential to the nature of the ball itself, and so does not change the nature of the ball. Thus, the location of the ball with respect to everything else is an interpenetrating relation.
- 9.
It may be a slight error on Stebbing’s part to assume that DER makes it the case that relations are necessarily external. It seems to be a live option that DER is meant only to require that at least some relations are external. Nevertheless, since what we are after here is what Stebbing’s criticism amounts to, we will assume that she was right about DER. Either way, directional analysis can help us figure out which relations are external and which are internal.
- 10.
We can certainly have the opposite as well, that a change in relation follows from a change in quality. For example, we might see a change in “being taller than” following from a change in “being such-and-such a height”.
- 11.
Much like her relationship with basic facts, it is not clear how she actually felt about directional analysis. In Stebbing (1932), she seems to be supporting it as a viable philosophical position, but later (in, for example, Stebbing 1934), she claims she never issued such support. For more details on her actual position, see Chapman (2013) and Coliva (2021).
- 12.
Interestingly, Stebbing thought that Russell was doing directional analysis in Principia Mathematica. In Stebbing (1932), she states:
The fundamental difference between metaphysical analysis and symbolic analysis may be brought out more clearly by a brief consideration of the system contained in Principia Mathematica. I wish to maintain that the method of analysis there used is metaphysical [directional] analysis, not—as is sometimes supposed—symbolic analysis That is to say that the system of Principia Mathematica is not a postulational system. (p. 90)
Thanks to Karl Egerton for pointing me to this passage.
- 13.
We see this, for example, at the beginning of Lecture II on Logical Atomism, where Russell claims that
I propose to begin to-day the analysis of facts and propositions, for in a way the chief thesis that I have to maintain is the legitimacy of analysis, because if one goes into what I call Logical Atomism that means that one does believe the world can be analyzed into a number of separate things with relations and so forth, and that the sort of arguments that many philosophers use against analysis are not justifiable. (Russell 1918, p. 510)
- 14.
See Egerton (n.d.) for why Stebbing can be thought of as a progenitor of the contemporary work on truthmakers.
- 15.
Taking into account note viii, if it does turn out that Stebbing holds that “interpenetrating” is a third type of relation, then we could use her example of Descartes’ wax to see how a directional analysis might point to that. We might analyze “the wax is in front of the fire” as
The mushy glob is in a place where the temperature is high.
and “the wax is in front of the freezer” as
The solid chunk is in a place where the temperature is low.
Here, we can see a marked difference between the term we use to analyze “the wax”. One becomes, upon analysis, a “mushy glob”, and the other a “solid chunk”. We could further analyze these statements into information about the atomic structure of the wax in each location, and again we would see a difference, since the atoms would be closer together in the freezer case. This suggests that the location of a particular is an interpenetrating or internal relation. How much the term “wax” changes upon analysis will indicate to us whether its location is an internal or interpenetrating relation. As mentioned, we could take this analysis one step further, to atomic structure. In each case, the atomic structure will be similar, but the atoms themselves will be spaced differently. This suggests the relation is interpenetrating, since there is still some similarity. Though, if interpenetrating relations just subsume internal relations, then this is not an issue.
- 16.
Though it is not totally clear in this particular case what caused Russell and Bradley to overlook Stebbing, other contributions in this volume have succeeded in showing the cause for other cases. For example, Elkind (2023, this volume) argues that Russell does not engage with Wrinch because he had already abandoned the topic, and Janssen-Lauret (2023, this volume) shows that it was likely some form of sexism and ageism which caused Russell to ignore Jones’s work. Thanks to Landon Elkind for showing me this letter.
References
Beaney, Michael, and Siobhan Chapman. 2017. Susan Stebbing. In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Summer 2017. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/stebbing/; Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University.
Bradley, F.H. 1911. Reply to Mr. Russell’s Explanations. Mind 20 (77): 74–76. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/XX.77.74.
Bronstein, Eugene D. 1933. Miss Stebbing’s Directional Analysis and Basic Facts. Analysis 2 (1–2): 10–14.
Chapman, Siobhan. 2013. Susan Stebbing and the Language of Common Sense. Palgrave Macmillan.
Coliva, Annalisa. 2021. Stebbing, Moore (and Wittgenstein) on Common Sense and Metaphysical Analysis. British Journal for the History of Philosophy 29 (1932): 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2021.1936447.
Costelloe-Stephen, Karin. 1912. What Bergson Means by ‘Interpenetration’. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 13: 131–155. http://www.jstor.org/stable/4543838.
Egerton, Karl. n.d. Susan Stebbing on the Truthmaker Approach to Metaphysics. Logique et Analyse.
Elkind, Landon. 2023. “I like her very much—she has very good brains”: Dorothy Wrinch’s Influence on Bertrand Russell. (This volume). Palgrave.
Janssen-Lauret, Frederique. 2023. Grandmothers and Founding Mothers of Analytic Philosophy: Constance Jones, Bertrand Russell, and Susan Stebbing on Complete and Incomplete Symbols. (This volume). Palgrave
Klement, Kevin. 2020. Russell’s Logical Atomism. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2015/entries/logical-atomism/
Russell, B. 1903. The Principles of Mathematics. The Principles of Mathematics, v. 1. University Press. https://books.google.com/books?id=yN9LAAAAMAAJ.
———. 1910. Some Explanations in Reply to Mr. Bradley. Mind 19 (75): 373–378. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/XIX.1.373.
———. 1911. The Basis of Realism. Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods 8 (6): 158–161. https://doi.org/10.2307/2013237.
Russell, Bertrand. 1918. The Philosophy of Logical Atomism, Lectures 1–2. The Monist 28 (4): 495–527. https://doi.org/monist19182843.
———. 1921. The Analysis of Mind. Duke University Press.
Stebbing, L. Susan. 1914. Pragmatism and French Voluntarism: With Especial Reference to the Notion of Truth in the Development of French Philosophy from Maine de Biran to Professor Bergson. Vol. 6. Girton College Studies.
———. 1917. Relation and Coherence. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 17: 459–480.
———. 1930. A Modern Introduction to Logic. London: Methuen.
———. 1932. The Method of Analysis in Metaphysics. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 33: 65–94.
———. 1933. Logical Positivism and Analysis. Annual Philosophical Lecture Henriette Hertz Trust.
———. 1934. Directional Analysis and Basic Facts. Analysis 2 (3): 33–36.
———. 1939. Thinking to Some Purpose. London: Penguin Books.
Vrahimis, Andreas. 2022. Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan.
Willow, Morgan Grace. 1995. L. Susan Stebbing. In A History of Women Philosophers, ed. Mary Ellen Waithe, vol. 4, 125–155. Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107415324.004.
Acknowledgements
I am very thankful to the editors of this volume for thoughtful comments on the original draft, as well as Karl Egerton, Graham Leach-Krouse, Shay Allen Logan, Eileen Nutting, Andrew Tedder and Andreas Vrahimis for reading earlier versions of the paper. Thanks also to thoughtful audiences at the Society for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy 2021 conference and the Russell and Women conference, which formed the basis of this volume. This research was supported by an Old Dominion University College of Arts and Letters Summer Grant
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Kouri Kissel, T. (2024). Susan Stebbing and Russell’s Logical Atomism. In: Elkind, L.D.C., Klein, A.M. (eds) Bertrand Russell, Feminism, and Women Philosophers in his Circle. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33026-1_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-33026-1_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-33025-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-33026-1
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)