The author attacks the view that identity, Like largeness, Is a relative relation. The primary advocate of the view that identity is relative is p.T. Geach. It is argued that geach has not shown that the failure of the identity of indiscernibles principle, As a truth of logic, Forces us to stop taking indiscernibility within particular formal theories or languages as a sufficient condition for identity. The author also argues that the whole notion of relative identity, As explicated by geach, (...) Is very probably incoherent. (shrink)

Based mainly on unpublished papers this is the first detailed study of the early, neo-Hegelian period of Bertrand Russell's career. It covers his philosophical education at Cambridge, his conversion to neo-Hegelianism, his ambitious plans for a neo-Hegelian dialectic of the sciences and the problems which ultimately led him to reject it.

The paper describes the evolution of russell's theory of judgment between 1910 and 1913, With especial reference to his recently published "theory of knowledge" (1913). Russell abandoned the book and with it the theory of judgment as a result of wittgenstein's criticisms. These criticisms are examined in detail and found to constitute a refutation of russell's theory. Underlying differences between wittgenstein's and russell's views on logic are broached more sketchily.

Brieven van de Engelse wijsgeer (1872-1970) uit de periode 1884-1914.

Bertrand Russell ranks as one of the giants of 20th century philosophy. This Companion focuses on Russell's contributions to modern philosophy and, therefore, concentrates on the early part of his career. Through his books, journalism, correspondence and political activity he exerted a profound influence on modern thought. New readers will find this the most convenient and accessible guide to Russell available. Advanced students and specialists will find a conspectus of recent developments in the interpretation of Russell.

Russell’s rejection in 1898 of the doctrine of internal relations — the view that all relations are grounded in the intrinsic properties of the terms related — was a decisive part of his break with Hegelianism and opened the way for his turn to analytic philosophy. Before rejecting it, Russell had given the doctrine little thought, though it played an essential role in the most intractable of the problems facing his attempt to construct a Hegelian dialectic of the sciences. I (...) argue that it was Russell’s early reading of Leibniz, in preparation for his lectures on Leibniz given at Cambridge in 1899, that most probably alerted him to the role the doctrine was playing in his own philosophy. Leibniz defended a similar doctrine and extricated it from difficulties like those faced by Russell by means of devices that were not open to Russell. Russell would have come across these views of Leibniz in writings by Leibniz that he read in the summer of 1898, just before he rejected the doctrine of internal relations. (shrink)

Wittgenstein expounds his notion of a family resemblance in two important passages. The first is from The Blue Book:This craving for generality is the resultant of a number of tendencies connected with particular philosophical confusions. There is— The tendency to look for something common to entities which we commonly subsume under a general term. We are inclined to think that there must be something common to all games, say, and that this common property is the justification for applying the general (...) term “game” to the various games; whereas the games form a family the members of which have family likenesses …. There is a tendency rooted in our usual forms of expression, to think that a man who has learnt to understand a general term, say, the term “leaf,” has thereby come to possess a kind of general picture of a leaf, as opposed to pictures of particular leaves …. This again is connected with the idea that the meaning of a word is an image, or a thing correlated with the word. (shrink)

This article examines the development of Russell's treatment of propositions, in relation to the topic of psychologism. In the first section, we outline the concept of psychologism, and show how it can arise in relation to theories of the nature of propositions. Following this, we note the anti-psychologistic elements of Russell's thought dating back to his idealist roots. From there, we sketch the development of Russell's theory of the proposition through a number of its key transitions. We show that Russell, (...) in responding to a variety of different problems relating to the proposition, chose to resolve these problems in ways that continually made concessions to psychologism. (shrink)

Russell brought three arguments forward against Meinong's theory of objects. None of them depend upon a misinterpretation of the theory as is often claimed. In particular, only one is based upon a clash between Meinong's theory and Russell's theory of descriptions, and that did not involve Russell's attributing to Meinong his own ontological assumption. The other two arguments were attempts to find internal inconsistencies in Meinong's theory. But neither was sufficient to refute the theory, though they do require some revisions, (...) viz. a trade-off between freedom of assumption and unhmited characterization. Meinong himself worked out the essentials of the required revisions. (shrink)

To mark the centenary of the 1910 to 1913 publication of the monumental Principia Mathematica by Alfred N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, this collection of fifteen new essays by distinguished scholars considers the influence and history of PM over the last hundred years.

Brandom’s inferentialism offers, in many ways, a radically new approach to old issues in semantics and the theory of intentionality. But, in one respect at least, it clings tenaciously to the mainstream philosophical tradition of the middle years of the twentieth century. Against the theory’s natural tendencies, Brandom aligns it with the ’linguistic turn’ that philosophy took in the middle of the last century by insisting, in the face of considerable opposing evidence, that intentionality is the preserve of those who (...) can offer and ask for reasons and thus of language users alone. In this paper, I argue that there is no good reason for giving inferentialism a linguistic twist, and that, in doing so, Brandom is forced to make claims which are implausible in themselves and lead him, in the attempt to mitigate them, to a number of doubtful expedients. (shrink)

In his critical notice of Russell's Theory of Knowledge, R. E. Tully takes issue with my interpretation of Wittgenstein's criticism of Russell's theory of judgment. Against it he raises two objections and also sketches an alternative interpretation. On Tully's characterization, I believe that Russell was shot out of the tree by a subtle but devastating argument, while Tully believes that he was shaken out of the tree by a much broader but non-lethal attack on his conception of a proposition. The (...) metaphor is not inappropriate. I certainly believe that Wittgenstein's attack was lethal to Russell's theory of judgment and shows extraordinary marksmanship. But I do not want to deny that there was a lot of tree shaking going on at the same time—concerning, in particular, the logical constants and the concept of a proposition, both of which were topics closely related to the theory of judgment. Thus, while I maintain that Russell was shot, I do not subscribe to a single-bullet theory. (shrink)

A century after ‘On Denoting’ was published, the debate it initiated continues to rage. On the one hand, there is a mass of new historical scholarship, about both Russell and Meinong, which has not circulated very far beyond specialist scholars. On the other hand, there are continuing problems and controversies concerning contemporary Russellian and Meinongian theories, many of them involving issues that simply did not occur to the original protagonists. This work provides an overview of the latest historical scholarship on (...) the two philosophers as well as detailed accounts of some of the problems facing the current incarnations of their theories. (shrink)

It is widely accepted by formal and informal logicians alike that a formal logic which, by the lights of English, gets the connectives wrong, nevertheless conspires to get entailment right—right that is, modulo English. There is a vexing problem occasioned by this semantic alienation of formal logic. It is next to impossible for formal logic to meet the expectations of realism. What, then, of informal logic?

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Moore’s BeginningsNicholas GriffinConsuelo Preti. The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics: G. E. Moore and the Origins of Analytic Philosophy. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xx, 268. isbn: 978-0-230-27762-5, us$57.50 (hb); 978-1-137-31907-4, us$44.99 (ebook).For many years now Consuelo Preti has been studying the life and work of G. E. Moore, especially in the period before the First World War when he and Russell were closest. In a series of important (...) publications, she has transformed our knowledge of the early Moore, making full use of his papers, now in the Cambridge University Library after many years in private hands. Of these, the most important, at least for Russell scholars, was the publication of Moore’s two Fellowship dissertations, which she edited with Thomas Baldwin,1 for it was with the second of these that Moore broke free from neo-Hegelianism and took Russell with him. Preti now follows this up with an extensive and detailed account of the dissertations’ intellectual background.Moore submitted two dissertations—both called “The Metaphysical Basis of Ethics”—in an attempt to win a six-year Trinity College Prize Fellowship. The first, in 1897, like most first attempts at a Trinity Prize Fellowship, failed; but the second, the following year, was successful. In his autobiography Moore famously said that he didn’t think “the world or the sciences would ever have suggested to me any philosophical problems. What has suggested philosophical problems to me is things which other philosophers have said about the world [End Page 86] and the sciences.”2 Accordingly, his first dissertation was “an attempt to make sense” of Kant’s “extremely mysterious assertions” about freedom and the second an attempt “to see clearly what Kant meant” by the “very mystifying manner” in which he used the word “reason”.3 This may seem a long way from the metaphysical basis of ethics, but the concept of will was central to Kant’s ethics, so it was natural to inquire in what sense, if any, an action could be said to be freely willed and this in turn to the distinction between actions which were caused and those which were undertaken for a reason.As Moore admits in the preface to the first dissertation, he had not had time to complete it as he intended. As it stands, it consists of a longish introduction, a single very long chapter on “Freedom, with special reference to Kant”,4 and an appendix on Sidgwick’s hedonism. Almost all this material reappears in the second dissertation, but the long chapter was there divided into two, separating Moore’s treatment of Kant from his own views on freedom. (Both Sidgwick and Edward Caird, his examiners in 1897, had complained that it was not easy to tell when he was interpreting Kant and when he was giving his own views.)5 The appendix on Sidgwick’s hedonism is joined by a new one on the dating of Kant’s ethical writings. (Caird had complained that he had not paid enough attention to this in the 1897 dissertation.) There is a new introduction and a brief concluding chapter directly on Kant’s ethics. But, most importantly, Moore opened the 1898 dissertation with two wholly new chapters: “On the meaning of ‘Reason’ in Kant” and “Reason”. It was the second of these, the bulk of which Moore published in Mind in 1899 under the title “The Nature of Judgment”, that inaugurated the revolution in philosophy associated with his name and Russell’s.Preti doesn’t get to this part of the story until her fourth and final chapter. Most of her book is taken up with a wide-ranging and detailed back-story to the dissertations and she begins, reasonably enough, with what has become known (even in English) as the Psychologismusstreit: the quarrel about psychologism. Psychologism was a doctrine defined to be false: an inappropriate appeal to psychological elements in constructing a philosophical position. Of course, the keyword here is “inappropriate”, and substantive debates raged as to which psychological elements were inappropriate to which philosophical projects.6 By the late nineteenth century, most Anglophone... (shrink)

This department publishes articles on large-scale projects in which logic plays a significant role, especially editions of collected or selected works. In addition to factual and historical details, articles describe points of historiography and scholarship which are of more general interest. Articles should be submitted to the Editor.

The paper defends Meinong's theory of objects against criticism by Reinhardt Grossmann. In particular, it is argued that Grossmann fails to show that non-existent objects may not be constituents of states of affairs and fails to provide an adequate alternative analysis of states of affairs which putatively contain nonexistent items. Grossmann, in fact, is guilty of a pervasive psychologistic misinterpretation of Meinong according to which Meinong believed that objects have all the properties with which they appear before the mind. Once (...) this error is avoided, Meinong's theory not only escapes Grossmann's criticisms but has a highdegree of plausibility. (shrink)

The extant manuscript is described in relation to Russell’s Trinity College lecture course in 1899 and its subsequent preparation for the book of 1900. Alterations within the MS are reported. So are revisions that must have followed on a missing typescript, as derived from comparing G. E. Moore’s copy of the page proofs with the MS. His suggested changes are compared with the text of the first edition along with emendations Russell must have made on his own copy of the (...) proofs. (shrink)

When Russell was fifteen, he was given a copy of W. K. Clifford’s _The Common Sense of the Exact Sciences_ (1886). Russell later recalled reading it immediately “with passionate interest and with an intoxicating delight in intellectual clarification”. Why then, when Russell wrote _An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry_ (1897), did he choose to defend spaces of homogeneous curvature as a priori? Why was he almost completely silent thereafter on the subject of Clifford, and his writings on geometry and (...) space? We suggest that Russell may have avoided Clifford’s hypothesis that space had heterogeneous curvature because it seemed impossible to reconcile a coherent theory of measurement with a space of variable curvature. Whitehead objected to Einstein’s general theory of relativity on this basis, formulating an alternate theory that preserved the constant curvature of space and, therefore, a familiar sense of measurement. After Einstein’s general theory, Russell chose to distance himself from the position he argued in the _Essay_. (shrink)

Russell is often accused of having a naive ‘Fido’–Fido theory of meaning of the sort Wittgenstein attacked at the beginning of the Philosophical Investigations. In this paper I argue that he never held such a theory though I concede that, prior to 1918, he said various things that might lead a very careless reader to suppose that he had. However, in The Analysis of Mind, a book which we know Wittgenstein studied closely, Russell put forward an account of understanding an (...) utterance which clearly anticipates the use theory of meaning usually attributed to Wittgenstein. The paper concludes with some problems for understanding the use theory of meaning as presented by both Russell and, derivatively, Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Russell’s theory of desire in _The Analysis of_ Mind is subject to a seemingly overwhelming objection, apparently stated first by Wittgenstein and subsequently elaborated even more compellingly by Anthony Kenny. The puzzle is that, before he became a neutral monist, Russell had used essentially the same argument as part of a critique of William James’s theory of knowledge. Since Russell had already formulated the argument as part of his case against generally naturalistic, and specifically neutral monist, theories of propositional attitudes, (...) why did he think his own neutral monist theory of desire was exempt? I canvass various suggestions, but argue that none of them are effective. (shrink)

This long-awaited second volume of Russell's best letters reveals the inner workings of a philosophical genius and an impassioned campaigner for peace and social reform. The letters, only three of which have been published before, cover most of Russell's adult life, a period in which he wrote over thirty books, including his famous History of Western Philosophy . Richly illustrated with photographs from Russell's life, the collection includes letters to Ho Chi Minh, Tito, Jawaharlal Nehru and Albert Einstein.

The paper traces the development of Russell’s thinking about relations in 1898. Central to the story is what Russell called “the contradiction of relativity” which he thought to be endemic in the mathematical sciences. Through most of the year he tried to deal with it within the constraints of the neo-Hegelian doctrine of internal relations until, towards the end of the year, he abandoned the doctrine and with it neo-Hegelianism. Most importantly, he came to see that the contradiction of relativity (...) showed that it was impossible to treat transitive, asymmetrical relations as internal. The paper also throws new light on Russell’s earliest debts to G. E. Moore. (shrink)

G. E. Moore attended Russell’s lectures on Leibniz in 1899 and kept detailed notes which have been preserved among his papers. The present article prints his notes in their entirety with annotations.

First published in 1983. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.