eBook Essays on Bertrand Russell epub

Book arrived in timely fashion, and was as advertised.

[NOTE: page numbers below refer to the 458-page paperback edition.]

Editor E.D. Klemke said in the Preface to this 1971 book, “I have arranged the essays under three main headings: (1) Russell’s ontology, (2) his theories of reference and of description, and (3) his philosophy of logic and mathematics… Since some of the essays deal not with Russell’s thought but with various criticisms of Russell, perhaps a more accurate title could have been ‘Essays on Bertrand Russell and His Critics.’ However, for convenience, I have chosen the shorter title.” Included are essays by persons such as W.V. Quine, P.F. Strawson, Wilfrid Sellars, P.T. Geach, Rudolf Carnap, etc.

One essayist said, “Price in a charming essay once proposed a witty formula. Logical Positivism is Hume plus mathematical logic. Let me say it differently. Classical analysis is Hume’s data, an incomplete ‘ideal’ language and, perhaps most important, the vision of the method. As I see it, the formula for the next step in the empiricist tradition is: all the data, a complete ideal language, and a firm grasp of the method. The men of Oxford did not see this step. That is why they rebelled against the tradition.” (Pg. 42-43)

Another essayist stated, “The thesis that relations cannot be reduced to properties is one of Russell’s most famous insights. Yet sometimes instead of arguing for this claim, Russell merely characterized relations with the following words: ‘independent,’ ‘absolute,’ ‘ultimate,’ and ‘irreducible.’ At other times he said that relations are indefinable and implied that their irreducibility was self-evident. Contrary to Leibniz, Russell asserted that relations are ‘distinct from and independent of subject and accident.’ Considerations such as these suggest that Russell thought not only that relations cannot be reduced to properties, but also that relations cannot be reduced to any other entity set of entities.” (Pg. 84-85)

Another essayist begins with the statement, “Russell’s Theory of Descriptions is properly regarded as one of the major achievements in philosophy in the twentieth century. The theory underwent one rather major change as Russell’s thought developed. He gave up the notion of the ‘denoting concept,’ which he defended in ‘Principles of Mathematics,’ in favor of the interpretation of descriptions as incomplete symbols which characterizes all subsequent statements of the theory.” (Pg. 285) He adds, “I am holding that Russell’s charge that the syntax of ordinary language needs to be modified is a mistake. The mistake lies in thinking that there is somehow a second, less problematical, syntax of ordinary language which the grammatical syntax obscures. The substitution of a formal language, such as the language of the Principia [Mathematica], for English is not to modify the syntax of English.” (Pg. 294)

Another essay argues, “since a proper name for Russell must be coordinated with an object, names will not suffice to enable us to speak ‘about’ what is not. To do so we require a way of indicating, where ‘indicating’ unlike ‘referring’ is not a relational notion. Description, for Russell, took on this function. Because of this we may say that a description if not a referring sign in the sense that a name is.” (Pg. 325-326)

Another observes, “In attempting to establish the truth of logicism, Russell only considered classical mathematics. But this misses the point that logicism is a theory about the general concept of mathematical truth, not just about some restricted subclass of mathematical truths. To be philosophically interesting, logicism must talk about ALL truths of mathematics, and so interpreted, logicism is false.” (Pg. 395)

A later essayist pointed out, “I now turn at last to… What is the nature of logical truth, and what entities if any are referred to by the truth of logic? Surprisingly, little is said on these topics in ‘The Principles of Mathematics.’ Of course, a good deal is said about MATHEMATICAL propositions, namely that they are all deducible from a small number of fundamental logical principles. But our question has to do with these fundamental (and indeed all) LOGICAL propositions. If we were given an adequate characterization of mathematical truths, then we could assume that the laws of logic have the same characteristics.” (Pg. 434) Later, he adds, “Russell puts forth a criterion for logical propositions. In addition to their being known a priori, they can be expressed wholly in terms of variables and logical constraints, and they are all tautologous. But again he claims that he does not know how to define ‘tautology,’ and he mentions in a footnote that his former pupil, Wittgeinstein, was ‘working on the problem’ but that he does not know whether Wittgenstein solved it.” (Pg. 443)

This excellent volume deals almost exclusively with Russell’s TECHNICAL philosophy---about logic, mathematics, epistemology, etc.; so readers mostly interested in his “social” and “political” ideas will find little here for them. But for anyone wanting to studying Russell’s philosophical ideas in depth, this book will be “must reading.”

Editor E.D. Klemke said in the Preface to this 1971 book, “I have arranged the essays under three main headings: (1) Russell’s ontology, (2) his theories of reference and of description, and (3) his philosophy of logic and mathematics… Since some of the essays deal not with Russell’s thought but with various criticisms of Russell, perhaps a more accurate title could have been ‘Essays on Bertrand Russell and His Critics.’ However, for convenience, I have chosen the shorter title.” Included are essays by persons such as W.V. Quine, P.F. Strawson, Wilfrid Sellars, P.T. Geach, Rudolf Carnap, etc.

One essayist said, “Price in a charming essay once proposed a witty formula. Logical Positivism is Hume plus mathematical logic. Let me say it differently. Classical analysis is Hume’s data, an incomplete ‘ideal’ language and, perhaps most important, the vision of the method. As I see it, the formula for the next step in the empiricist tradition is: all the data, a complete ideal language, and a firm grasp of the method. The men of Oxford did not see this step. That is why they rebelled against the tradition.” (Pg. 42-43)

Another essayist stated, “The thesis that relations cannot be reduced to properties is one of Russell’s most famous insights. Yet sometimes instead of arguing for this claim, Russell merely characterized relations with the following words: ‘independent,’ ‘absolute,’ ‘ultimate,’ and ‘irreducible.’ At other times he said that relations are indefinable and implied that their irreducibility was self-evident. Contrary to Leibniz, Russell asserted that relations are ‘distinct from and independent of subject and accident.’ Considerations such as these suggest that Russell thought not only that relations cannot be reduced to properties, but also that relations cannot be reduced to any other entity set of entities.” (Pg. 84-85)

Another essayist begins with the statement, “Russell’s Theory of Descriptions is properly regarded as one of the major achievements in philosophy in the twentieth century. The theory underwent one rather major change as Russell’s thought developed. He gave up the notion of the ‘denoting concept,’ which he defended in ‘Principles of Mathematics,’ in favor of the interpretation of descriptions as incomplete symbols which characterizes all subsequent statements of the theory.” (Pg. 285) He adds, “I am holding that Russell’s charge that the syntax of ordinary language needs to be modified is a mistake. The mistake lies in thinking that there is somehow a second, less problematical, syntax of ordinary language which the grammatical syntax obscures. The substitution of a formal language, such as the language of the Principia [Mathematica], for English is not to modify the syntax of English.” (Pg. 294)

Another essay argues, “since a proper name for Russell must be coordinated with an object, names will not suffice to enable us to speak ‘about’ what is not. To do so we require a way of indicating, where ‘indicating’ unlike ‘referring’ is not a relational notion. Description, for Russell, took on this function. Because of this we may say that a description if not a referring sign in the sense that a name is.” (Pg. 325-326)

Another observes, “In attempting to establish the truth of logicism, Russell only considered classical mathematics. But this misses the point that logicism is a theory about the general concept of mathematical truth, not just about some restricted subclass of mathematical truths. To be philosophically interesting, logicism must talk about ALL truths of mathematics, and so interpreted, logicism is false.” (Pg. 395)

A later essayist pointed out, “I now turn at last to… What is the nature of logical truth, and what entities if any are referred to by the truth of logic? Surprisingly, little is said on these topics in ‘The Principles of Mathematics.’ Of course, a good deal is said about MATHEMATICAL propositions, namely that they are all deducible from a small number of fundamental logical principles. But our question has to do with these fundamental (and indeed all) LOGICAL propositions. If we were given an adequate characterization of mathematical truths, then we could assume that the laws of logic have the same characteristics.” (Pg. 434) Later, he adds, “Russell puts forth a criterion for logical propositions. In addition to their being known a priori, they can be expressed wholly in terms of variables and logical constraints, and they are all tautologous. But again he claims that he does not know how to define ‘tautology,’ and he mentions in a footnote that his former pupil, Wittgeinstein, was ‘working on the problem’ but that he does not know whether Wittgenstein solved it.” (Pg. 443)

This excellent volume deals almost exclusively with Russell’s TECHNICAL philosophy---about logic, mathematics, epistemology, etc.; so readers mostly interested in his “social” and “political” ideas will find little here for them. But for anyone wanting to studying Russell’s philosophical ideas in depth, this book will be “must reading.”