Abstract
In order to understand precisely what is involved in the notion of “logical form” as that concept functions in Russell’s philosophy, it will be necessary, first of all, to see the close connection between this concept and the “reference theory” of meaning. This theory played a fundamental role in his conception of linguistic analysis as a philosophical method, and it must be understood if we are to see the intimate relationship he saw between the logical forms of propositions and the onto-logical forms of facts.
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References
Cf. Gilbert Ryle, “The Theory of Meaning,” included in C. A. Mace (ed.), British Philosophy in the Mid-Century (London, 1957), p. 241: “… it is difficult to exaggerate the influence which he [Mill] exercised, for good and ill, upon British and Continental philosophers…. In particular, Mill’s theory of meaning set the questions, and, in large measure, determined the answers for thinkers as different as Brentano, … Meinong and Husserl; Bradley, Jevons, Frege, James, Peirce, Moore and Russell.”
See M.P.D., p. 28.
J. S. Mill, A System of Logic (London, 1936), p. 12. All references to Mill will be to this work.
P. 13.
p. 73.
See Vol. I, Chapter V. Second edition, (London, 1937).
Russell’s view is somewhat more complex that my presentation here would indicate. As such, neither adjectives nor verbs are said to designate terms. Whereas a proper name “when it occurs in a proposition, is always … the subject that the proposition … is about,” adjectives and verbs “are capable of occurring in propositions in which they cannot be regarded as subject, but only as parts of the assertion.” (Ibid.) As “parts of the assertion” adjectives and verbs designate concepts, but not concepts used as terms. Precisely the same concepts, however, can be used as terms if the sentences in which they occur are properly formulated. (Cf. pp. 46, 48) For example, the sentence “Socrates is human” can be re-stated as “humanity belongs to Socrates” (p. 45) and the verb “kills,” which in the sentence “Felton killed Buckingham” functions simply as part of the assertion, functions as the subject of the sentence “kills does not mean the same as to kill.” (p. 48) The difference between a “concept as such” and a “concept used as a term” corresponds, then, for Russell, to the syntactical difference between adjectives and verbs functioning as such and (transmuted into nouns) functioning as logical subjects of sentences. In both cases, however, they are said to function referentially and to mean the concepts to which they refer.
P. 44.
p. 196.
Our Knowledge of the External World (New York, 1960), p. 40. This work is comprised of a series of lectures originally delivered in Boston in 1914.
Ibid., p. 41.
p. 61.
“Logical Atomism,” L.K., p. 324.
Ibid.
O.K.E.W., p. 42. This is a later, very summary statement of his critique of the subject-predicate logic, formulated originally and much more extensively in P. of M. The objections Russell provides in the earlier work are too elaborate to permit intelligible paraphrase or succinct quotation. In that work (see pp. 221-226) he analyzes both the “monadistic” and “monistic” versions of the view that “no relations can possess absolute and metaphysical validity,” (p. 221) and shows that neither version can adequately deal with asymmetrical relations. The embarrassment asymmetrical relations occasion for the subject-predicate logic is also treated, briefly, in O.K.E.W., pp. 44ff.
L.K., pp. 330-1.
Ibid., p. 331.
O.K.E.W., p. 40.
Cf. L. K. j p. 331: “… language misleads us both by its vocabularly and its syntax.… Syntax and vocabulary have different kinds of effects on philosophy. Vocabulary has most influence on common sense…. common sense is influenced by the existence of [a] word, and tends to suppose that one word must stand for one object….”
“On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Sup. v. II (1919). This essay has been reprinted in L.K., pp. 283-320. The above passage is found on page 286 of the latter.
Cf. P.L.A., p. 197: “… there is an objective complexity in the world and … it is mirrored by the complexity of propositions.”
p. 191.
p. 42.
Ibid.
P.B.R., p. 694.
“My Mental Development,” Ibid., p. 14.
Ibid.
The instances of reconstructionism discussed briefly in the following sections will be treated in considerably more detail in Chapter II.
Throughout this discussion and the discussion in the following chapter, what I have to say concerning descriptions should be understood as applying only to definite descriptions.
P.L.A., p. 253.
With A. N. Whitehead (Cambridge, England, 1910), Vol. I, pp. 71-81.
In O.K.E.W., chapters III and IV and in two essays: “The Ultimate Constituents of Matter,” Monist, XXV (July, 1915), pp. 399-417; and “The Relation of Sense-data to Physics,” Scientia, No. 4, 1914. The two essays were subsequently included as chapters VII and VIII of Mysticism and Logic (1918). When I shall have occasion to refer to the two essays, I shall employ the pagination of a later edition (New York, 1957) of M.L.
P.L.A., p. 197.
Ibid., pp. 197-198.
Ibid., p. 198.
Ibid.
An atomic proposition Russell defines as “A proposition … which, when asserted, asserts that a certain thing has a certain quality, or that certain things have a certain relation.…” (O.K.E.W., p. 48) Such propositions are of special significance in that they are also the basic propositions, in the sense that facts corresponding to them have as constituents the ultimate elements which make up the world.
Ibid., p. 199.
Ibid.
L. Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophions (London, 1922), p. 12. Here Russell is, of course, discussing Wittgenstein’s theory of “simples,” not, directly at any rate, his own theory. It seems clear, however, that, under the influence of Wittgenstein, Russell accepted a quite similar view of atomic facts and of “simples.” He did believe it possible to “isolate the simple” and to “have empirical knowledge of it,” for he identified particulars with sense-data. This, however, is a further question; it is, following his own distinction, a “purely empirical question,” not a “logical” one. The question we are considering now is the logical status of particulars, and on this point Russell seems to have agreed with Wittgenstein that a particular is a “logical necessity.”
In the last of the lectures included in P.L.A., entitled “Excursus into Metaphysics: What There Is,” we find the following statement: “One purpose that has run through all that I have said has been the justification of analysis, i.e., the justification of logical atomism, of the view that you can get down in theory, if not in practice, to ultimate simples, out of which the world is built, and that these simples have a kind of reality not belonging to anything else.” (p. 270).
Tractatus, “Introduction,” p. 8.
P.L.A., p. 201.
“On Denoting” originally appeared in Mind, XIV, pp. 479-493. It has been reprinted in L.K., pp. 39-56. All page references to this essay will refer to the pagination of L.K. The present passage is found on p. 41.
L.K., pp. 55-56.
This essay first appeared in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, XI (1910–1911), pp. 108-128. The discussion of this topic in The Problems of Philosophy (1912) is essentially the same as the first half of the earlier version. In the earlier version of the essay there is included a discussion of knowledge by description as it is related to the theory of descriptions. This essay has been reprinted in M.L., and page references will be to this source. When referring to The Problems of Philosophy, I shall employ the pagination of a recent edition (New York and Oxford, 1959).
Both knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description are characterized as knowledge of things and are contrasted with knowledge of truths. (Cf. P.P., p. 46.) As we shall see, knowledge by description involves knowledge of truths, but this is only an indication of its indirectness. It is knowledge about things.
P.P., p. 46.
M.L., p. 202.
P.P., p. 45.
lbid., p. 7.
Ibid.
In P.P., however, the objective reality of physical objects is affirmed on the basis of a causal theory of perception.
Ibid., p. 47.
Ibid., pp. 46-47.
Ibid., p. 46.
M.L., p. 207.
p. 47. Cf. M.L., p. 223.
P.L.A., p. 201.
Indeed, he says this in some of those very contexts in which he is attempting to make a clear distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. At one point in P.P., for instance, he implies that it would be possible for him to be acquainted with the Emperor of China, but, as a matter of fact, he is not. (pp. 44-45.) He also says, a few pages later, in a discussion of knowledge by description: “… when we are acquainted with an object which is the so-and-so, we know that the so-and-so exists, but we may know that the so-and-so exists when we are not acquainted with any object which we know to be the so-and-so, and even when we are not acquainted with any object which, in fact, is the so-and-so.” (p. 54.) One can only conclude that when he makes statements of this sort he is speaking somewhat loosely and is not thinking of acquaintance in the strict sense discussed above.
P.P., p. 54.
Ibid., p. 55.
P.L.A., p. 200.
M.P.D., p. 169.
Cf. P.L.A., p. 191.
p. 170.
Ibid., p. 277.
Ibid., p. 201.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 198. Russell does not explain why he qualifies his statement as he does, using the words “very largely.” Perhaps he has in mind that words for relations would not be “private” (i.e., their “meanings” would not be private).
J. O. Urmson, Philosophical Analysis (Oxford, 1956), p. 6.
pp. 270-271.
He does, however, proceed immediately to describe what is clearly one important instance of it, the logical construction of physical objects, or, as he refers to it here, the construction of “logical fictions” which are to replace physical objects qua metaphysical entities.
p. 169.
p. 170; Cf. P.B.R., pp. 14ff, 687ff. It should be noted, in passing, that in M.P.D. Russell no longer holds the view that “particulars” constitute the basic furniture of the world, stating in a sentence I have omitted, that “I do not believe that … there are any [words] having the kind of uniqueness supposed to belong to [words for] particulars.” (p. 170). For my purposes, however, this fact is irrelevant, since the characterization of his method just cited applied to the method he employed in his logical atomist period no less than to the later stages of his philosophy. The method, indeed, is precisely the same; only his conclusions are different.
pp. 235-236.
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Clack, R.J. (1969). The Quest for Logical Form. In: Bertrand Russell’s Philosophy of Language. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-8874-6_2
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