Passmore - Moore and Russell

8/3/2019 Passmore - Moore and Russell

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A HUNDRED YEARSOF PHILOSOPHY

John Passmore

PENGUTN Oors


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Penguin Books Ltd, Harmondsworth, Middlsex, EnglandPenguin Books, 625 Madison Avenu, New york, New york 10022,U.S,A.Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, AustraliaPenguin Books Canada Ltd, 28Ol John Street, Markham, Ontario, Canada L3R lB4Penguin Books (N.2.) Ltd, t82-l9O Waimu Road, Auckland 10, New Zealmd

First published by Duckworth 1957Second Edition 1966Published in Penguin Books 1968Reprinted 1970, 1972, 1978

Copyright @ John Pusmore, I9S7,1966All rights reserved

Made and printd in Grcat Britainby C. Nicholls & Company LtdSet in Mouotype Time

Except in the Unitd Statcs ofAmerica.tbis book is sold subjat to the conditionthat it shall not, by way of trade or otbcruisc.be lent, re{old, hired out, or otherwisc circulatcdwithout the pubtishr,s prior consent in atry form ofbinding or covr other than that in which il ispublished and without a similar conditionincluding this condition being imposedon th subscquent purchascr

ContentshefaceAbbreviations1. Jobn Stuart Mill and British Empiricism

2. Materialism, Naturalism and Agnosticism3, Towards the Absolute4. Personalityand the Absolute5. Pragmatism and its European Analogues6. New Developments n Logic7. SomeCritics of Formal Logic8. The Movement towards Objectivity9. Moore and Russell

10. Cook Wilson and Oxford Philosophyll. The New Realists12. Critical Realism and American Naturalism13. RecalcitrantMetaphysicians14. Natural Scientists turn Philosophers15. SomeCambridgePhilogophers;and Wittgen-16.17.18.19.20.

stein's Tractatus 343Logical Positivism 367Logic, Semantics nd Methodology 394Wittgenstein and Ordinary Language Philosophy 4UExistentialismand Phenomenology 466Description, Explanation or Revisioo? 504Notes 531Funher Reading 616Index of Names 619IndexofC,oncepts 632

7l ll335487295

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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHILOSOPHYattitudes o preciselyhis sameobject,cansupposet, deny t nrrdso on.Stout doesnot mean hat there s a .world of possibilitior,which squitedistinct rom theworldof particular xistences:llthe contrary, he insists on thet close interconnexion.Evcrypossibilityspossible nly elativelyo certain onditions:t nr'y,for example,ea mathematicalossibility utyetbemechaniclllyimpossible.ut f thepossiblehusdepends n theactual, oaho.Stoutargues,heactual ependsn thepossible:o beactual s nbe possiblen al l ways'.Theactual s a realized ossibifity.A fuller exposition f this view mustconnect t with Stoul,rtheory of universals, nd that we shalldiscussn a later chaptcr.The mportantpoint, or themoment,s that Stout'swork, frontthe beginning, s closelyconcernedwith the kind of quesliorrwhich Brentanoand Meinonghad brought o the attentionofphilosophers.Like them, he was concerned o defendand toexamine he conceptof objectivity.And Stout,we must rfiffi.ber, taughtboth Moore and Russelln the dayswhenhe wnlworking on his Analyticpsychology.In a variety of ways, tholrphilosophys continuouswith Stout's.

CHAPTER 9Moore and Russell

'Moonn andRussell' theconjunctions nevitable. or is thisnrerelyan historian's stereotype.Russell, hen completinghisundergraduate tudiesat Cambridge,divertedhis youngercon-tcmporary,Moore, rom classicso philosophy;Moore ed thatattackupon Idealism,particularly he Idealismof Bradley,whichlirstwon for Moore andRussellheir reputationasphilosophers.'l do not know that Russellhaseverowed anything o me exceptnistakes,'Moore writessomewhatuefully, whereas haveowedto his publishedworks ideaswhich were certainlynot mistakes,:rndwhich I think very important.' Russellgivesa different,andrnore ccurate, ccount f their elationship He took the ead nrobellion,and I followed, with a sense f emancipation.'lYet the two men were very different. In his AutobiographyMooremakesa confession hichgivesus an importantclue olhe understanding f his teaching nd his influence:I do notthink,'he writes, that the world or the sciencesouldeverhavesuggestedo meany philosophical roblems.What hassuggestedproblemso me s hingswhichotherphilosophers avesaidabouttheworld or about natural science.' ocke,Berkeleyand Hume,in their various ways, begin from Newton; Green, Bradley,Ilosanquet nd Spencer aveDarwin at the back of their minds;Moore'sphilosophy,on the otherhand, s curiously emote romlhe'greatcontroversies'ofur ime.NeitherFreud,norMarx,norl:instein, o ar as onecanjudge,hasaffected is hinking n thelcast.He is a'philosopher'sphilosopher'f ever herewas one.2Russell'shilosophy, n the otherhand,movesn an atmos-lrlrere hick with science.His first book was on GermanSociall)antocracy 1896);his secondbore the title An Essayon thelitanf,alisw of Geometry 1897).Philosophy or him is continu-,rrrs with social, psychological,physical, and mathematicalrnvestigation.When he is technical,as n, say,ThePrinciplesofAluthematics1903),his free useof mathematical ymbolspro-tlrrcesn the ordinary reader he feeling hat if this is incompre-I'r:rrsible,t is or only-too-familiar easons.Moore s almostnever200 201


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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHILOSOPHYtechnical, n this sense;no writer haseversoughtsoto achieve tter clarity and utter simplicity,unless t beStein. And yet, sturdy defenderof commonsensehough lto lJthe point and the method of Moore's philosophyare scttrtp|intelligible o the ordinaryeducated eader.W. B. yeats wrott trT. S. Moore r 'I find your brother extraordinarilyobscuro' th*is the reactionof a literary man, who expectsa philosophorIdiscussargequestionsn a largeway. As John Wisdomout, thescientists ikely to be no essdisconcerted.Mooro of,lf]a gameof Logic,and a peculiarone at that for it lacksmuch ll|fgivessatisfaction n ordinary logic and mathematics. n lt nOarchitectureof proof is possible,and with that goes too thlQ.E.D. with its note of agreement chieved nd triumphantd||1covery'.4Yet Moore hasa greatdeal to offer to thosewhofelt the fascinationof his drastichonesty difficult though t lfconvey hat fascination,or that honesty,by meansofWhenhe broughttogether, nhis Philosophical tudiesthoseof hiscontributions o philosophywhichhe houghtof preservation, e ncludedneitherhis earlyarticlesn Mindthe Proceedingsof the Aristotelian Society nor histo Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,indeed, he condemnsn his Autobiography as 'excrude'.But he also ellsus that he'took greatpains'overearly writings;and f the theorythey expoundwasoneheabandoned,t hasnevertheless ade ts mark on Englishophy, partly through Russell'sadherence o it. In irespects,urthermore, t set he problemswhichmanycenturyphilosopherswereparticularly o explore.Of thoseearly articles he most important is 'The NeturGJudgment' Mind, 1899).Bradley'sPrinciplesof Logic s itsof origin. Bradley, Moore thought, had not beenruthless n his dealingswith Locke'sdoctrine hat udgementrabout ideas'.Althouefi he had at timeswritten as lare about what deasmean,at other timesone would gathcrthe dea tself asa psychicphenomenon is an ngredient njudgement. The former, Moore argues, is the only tenable vijudgementsrenot about'our ideas'butaboutwhat hosepoint to - what Bradleycalleda 'universalmeaning'anda'concept' .

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MOOREAND RUSSELLThe'concept', Moore maintains, s 'neither a mental act nornnypartof a mental act'. No doubt t is what, n our thinking,wetuke as our object: but if it did not exist independentlyof ourthinking, here would be nothing for us to think about. Like aItlatonic orm, which it closely esembles,he concept s eternalund immutable; that is why, Moore says, t can appeaf, as anidentical ngredient in a number of different judgements, inkingtlrem n chainsof reasoning.Moore's pu{pose, n this essay,s much like Brentano'sandMeinong's: o maintain the objectivityand the independence fobjectsof thought. His starting-point,one must again insist, sllradley, not the British empirical tradition; there was in Brad-lcy's Principles of Logic, as we have already noted, an anti-psychologicalendency o which Moore fell heir. The breakwithItritish empiricism in Moore's early work could, indeed, scarcelybe a cleanerone.According to the empirical tradition a conceptis an 'abstraction', which the mind manufacturesout of the rawmaterial supplied by perception. Moore axgued' n completecontrast, hat 'conceptionscannot be regarded undamentallyas-rbstractions ither rom thingsor from ideas, ince othalikecan'il' anything s to be true of them,be composedof nothing butconcepts'.A'thing', on this view, s a colligationof concepts;apiece f paper, or example,s whiteness nd smoothness nd . . .Yet a relation betweenconcepts,Moore also says, s 'a pro-position'; he sprepared o accept he inevitableconsequencehatu 'thing', a 'complex conception',a'proposition', are differentnamesor the sameentity. On this foirndation,he constructs istheoryof truth. Accorping to the conventionalview a propositionis true when it corresponds o reality. There is here involved acontrastbetween he true proposition commonly hought of asI setof words or a set of ideas and the 'reality' it represents.Moore, on the otherh'and,dentifiestruepropositionand reality.'Once it is definitely recognized,'he wrote in his article on'Truth' in Baldwin's Dictionary., that the proposition is totlcnote not a belief (in the psychological sense),nor a form ofwords, but the object of belief, it seemsplain that it di-ffersn norcspect rom the reality to which it is supposedmerely to cor-rcspond,.e. thetruth that "I exist" differs n no respectrom thecorrespondingeality "my existence".'

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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHILOSOPHYWhatthen, f not .correspondenceto reality,, s thedistinguish.ing characteristic f a true as distinct from a i.atr" propo.itioniMoore answers hat truth is a simple,unanalysable,ntuitablc' property,belonging o certain propositionsand not to others,thesiswhich Russellalso defended n his articles on tvteinoni(Mind, l9M)..Some propositions,,he therewrote, .are true andsome alse,ust as some osesarered and somewhite.,Any otherview,Moore argues, resumeshat wecansomehowget beyond elationsbetween onceptso a reality whichsustaincthem - and this is impossible n principle.To .know, is to boawareof a proposition, .e. a relationbetween oncepts; hus wocannot possiblyknow anything which .lies beyond, concepts.This is true, he maintains,even in the caseof knowledge'bJperception.Perceptions simply the cognitionof an existintialproposition - for example, the proposition that .this paporexists'. Such a proposition, on Moore,s analysisof it, relaiocconcepts; t assertshat the conceptswhich make up tiis papeiare related to the concept of existence.WhereasBrentano hadargued that all propositionsare existential in form, Moorcregardshem all as assertingelationsbetween oncepts.This, then, s the theoryof realityand the theoryof truth fromwhich Moore and Russellset out, and againstwhich, in certaiurespects lthoughnot in others, hey werestrongly o react.Thoworld is cornposed f eternaland immutableconcepts;proposi.tionsrelateconcepts ne o another;a true proposition redicator' truth' of sucharelationof concepts, nd s .a act' or a reality,.one other strikingfeatureof rhe Natureof Judgment eservegattention thestressMoore places n .logic,_ andwhatgoeswithit, his willingiresso follow his dialectic h"r"u". it leadshim. .Iam fully aware,' he wrote of his theory of existence, howparadoxicalhis theorymustappear.But it seemso me to followfrom premises enerarly dmitted,and to havebeenavoidedonlyby lack oflogical consistency.. . I haveappealedhrouefiouttothe rules of logic; nor if anyonerejects hese,should I have

,cnuch to fear from his arguments.An appeal to the facts isuseless.'Moore was o movea very ong way rom the sentimentsexpressedn this passage.Russell, nhis Autobiography,hasmad.et clearwhat Moore,searlier theory meant or Moore and for himself. It wasaboveall a204

MOORE ND RUSSELLliberation from Bradley's Absolute' and Bradley's relegation,from thestandpointof the Absolute,of the world of everyday ifeto the realm of appearances.With a senseof escapingfromprison,'Russellwrote, we allowed ourselveso think that grassisgreen,hat the sun and hestarswould exist f no onewasawueof them, and also that there is a pluralistic timelessworld ofPlatonic ideas. The world, which had been thin and logical,suddenlybecame ich and varied and solid.'Russell's own world, as we shall see' was to becomeproges-sivelymore thin and ogical'. But Moore never ost his sense fwonder and relief at being able to believe in the reality of theeverydayworld; and he was determinednot to be driven out ofhis hardly-wonParadise.Thosewho, like most of his youngercritics, have never felt the attraction of Idealism, thosefor whomit has neverbeen a 'living option', fnd it difficult to understandMoore'sphilosophy;they converthim into a defender, n theirown and Wittgenstein'smanner,of 'ordinary usage'. But it isordinary beliefs, not usageas such, that he wants to defend.Unlike his critics, he thinks they need defence.Moore had him-self argued n his earliestwritings (Mind,"l897-8) that 'time isunreal'. He had heard McTaggadsay hat 'Matter is in the sameposition as the gorgonsand the harpies'. He was not to bepersuaded hat he and McTaggart were merely 'recommendinga change n our ordinary inguistichabits'.s

At the same ime, there were serpents n this Paradise,and theysoonmade heirpresencebvious. n a series flectures,delivered(and studied, n part, by Russell) n l9l0-11 although not pub-lisheduntil 1953,0 4oot" explainswhy he abandoned, or all itsadvantages,his identification of true propositions and facts.When we assert, or example, hat 'lions do really exist', we aresayingmore, he came o think, than that aproposition we happento believe has the unanalysable property of being true; the'substance'of a fact, as we might looselyexpress he matter,does not consist in a proposition together with its truth. Asecond, and more fundamental, objection is that there & notseem o bepropositionsat all, in the sense n which the theorydemands hem.7The caseof the falsebelief led Moore to this conclusion.On thepropositional theory, there must Dea proposition for usfalselyto205


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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYbelieve n, evenalthough this proposition hasthe peculiar prop.erty of being false. In fact, however, so Moore argues, t is thOveryessencef a falsebelief hat we believewhat szot. As Ru&sell put the samepoint in The problems of philosophy ff Sf2i,when othello falsely believes that Desdemonaoves cassio hllbelief is false ust becausehere is no suchobject as DesdemoruIovesCassio; f thereweresuchan object,ason the propositionfltheory therehas to be, Othello'sbeliefwould be true, not falso.Once we come to reahzethat a false belief is not a belief in rproposition, t seems atural to deny, also_ or so both Mooroand Russell thought - that a rze belief has a proposition as lttobject. Belief,' so Moore sums he matter up, ,never congiltlin a relation betweenourselvesand somethingelse(the proporl.tion) which is believed., n fact, .there areno propositions,.Moore admits that although he is now quite convincedthat .tbelievep' doesnot asserta relation betweenan act ofbeliefand lproposition, he cannot discoverany alternativeanalysiswhicb bnot open to seriousobjections.yet he doesknow, he thinks, llwhat range of possibilities a solution must be found. It is intdisputable,he argues, hat the truth ofp consists n its .corrotpondence'to a fact, and that to believep is to believe hat it thulcorresponds; he philosophicalproblem is to givea clearof this correspondence.We must not, he exhorts us, letphilosophical argument, however difficult it may be to answdconvinceus that 'there isreally no such hing' as conespondenco;weknowthereis, althoughwedo not know - this is our probleqt-how to describe ts nature.Thus the generalmovementof Moore's thouglrt is away fromgiving answersowardssettingproblems.Metz describedhim asgood questionerbut a bad answerer,and Moore pleadsguilty tothe charge.But he is convinced,at least,that he hascome o gocwhat the problem is, and that this is a point of the first import,

P*: jJt appearso me,'he wrote n PrincipiaEthica (1903), thgtin Ethics,as n all other philosophical studies, he difficultiesanddisagreements,of which its history is full, are mainly due to Ivery simple cause, namely the attempt to answer questionflwithout first discoveringwhat question it is which you desirotoanswer.' If Moore wasto be a questioner,he wasdeterminodtobe a good questioner,no easymatter.

MOOREAND RUSSELLMoore's attitude to the classical 'problem of the externalworld' underwent a transformation parallel to his theory oftruth. In this case, oo, he began rom a point of logic. 'To saythata thing s relative,'heroundlyassertsin isarticleon'Relativeand Absolute' in Baldwin'sDictionary,'is always o contradictyounelf.' By this he did not mean that relations in themselves,asBradley had thought, are self-contradictory. On the contrary,it is the Bradleyianconception of 'relative existence'whichMoore s attacking.To asserthat a thing'has no meaningapartfrom its relations' or 'would not be what it is apart from itsrelations' s, Moore argues, o distinguish he thing itself (as #)from its relations, n the very actofdenying that sucha distinctionis intelligible. Moore is here defending 'external' relations, asagainst he theory of intemal'relations which he ascribes o theBritish Idealists.E The writers influenced by Hegel,' he says,

'(hold) that no relation is purely "external", i.e. fails to affecttheessence f the thingsrelated, and the more nearly t is external,the less real are the things it reliates.' Moote, in contrast, isarCuingthat the essence f a thing is always distinct from itsrelations.Nothing, therefore,can be 'constituted by the nature ofthe system o which it belongs'- this is the main point whichMoore and RussellurgeagainstBradley's monism. To be at all isto be independent. Moore chose as the epigraph to PrincipiaEthicaa quotation from Butler:'a thing is what it is and notanother thing' a quotation which summarizes he character ofhis opposition o monism.This is the backgroundto Moore's classicalThe Refutation ofIdealism' (Mind, 1903, eprinted h Studies).cThe importance ofthat essayo the Realist movementcan scarcely be overestimat-ed, even f Moore, everhis severest ritic, was o write (1922) hat'it now appears o me very confused,as well as to embody agreatmany downright mistakes'. And it is historically importantin another espect: t is the first exampleof that minute philos-ophical procedure, with its careful distinction of issues, itsinsistencehat this,not that, s the real question where his andthat had ordinarily beenregarded as alternative formulations ofthe sameproblem - which was to be Moore's distinctive philos-ophical s$e, exercising, as such, a notable influence on hissuccessors,articularly at Cambridge.

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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYThus he beginsby explaining preciselywhat in TheRefutatlonof ldealismhe hopedto accomplish.He is not, he says,dirocttycriticizing the central dealist thesis that 'Reality is SpiritualiHis objectives a more imited one.There s, he thinks,a certalnpropositionwhich is essentialo all Idealistreasoning,althoughit is not sufficient o estabrishhe Idealist conclusion. t is thh

proposition- that to be is to beperceived whichhe setsout tocriticize. f he can show hat it is false hen,he says, he Idealirtthesismay still be true, but certainly caDnever be provedto botrue.TheRefutationof ldealism, hen, s an attempt o demonstratothe falsity of to be is to beperceived. ut thereare further dir.tinctions o be made: he Idealist ormula, Moore says,s highlyambiguous.He concentrates pon what he takes o te its pnilosophically mportant interpretation.The formula asserts,onthis nterpretation, hat if anythingx is known to exist, he conro.qunce mmediatelyfollows that it isperceived.Thusunderstood,to be is to beperceivedisnot a mere dentity: if beingpercelvetlfollows from being, these two cennot be identical. lO""tistl,Moore argues,have not generallyrecopized that this is ro,Although they profess to be giving information wheu thoyiurnounce hat to be is to beperceived,theyhaveat the same imaproceededas f beingandbeingperceivedare dentical, so that thfbasic dealist formula needsno proof. And this means,he sayt,that they havenot clearly seen he differencebetween, or or.ample; beingyellow and,beinga sensationof yellow,Some dealists,Moore will admit, haveexplicitly maintainodtlrat there is sucha difference.But they haveat the same imotried to suggesthat it is .not a real difference,,yellow and thoexperienceof it being so connected n an .organic unity' -Moore'sbtenoire that it wouldbe .an illegitimateabstraction,to distinguish hem at any but the levelof phenomenalappear.ance.Moore will havenoneof such acing-two-ways.The prin.ciple of organicunities,,he writes, is mainly used o defend hcpractice of holding both of two contradictory propositionr,wheneverhis may seemconvenient.n this, as n other mattcru,Hegel's main service o philosophy has consisted n giving rname o, and erecting nto a principle,a typeof fallacy o whichexperienceiad shownphilpsophers, longwith the rest of man.

MOORE ND RUSSELLkind, to be addicted.No wonder that he has followers andadmirers.'Contempt or Hegel, and for Hegelian subterfuges',was ndeed o be a regular eature of the movementof thoughtwhich Moore led at Cambridge for all that, or perhapspartlybecause,t was McTaggart's University. As against the Hegelian'it is, and it isn't', Moore demandsa plain answer o a plainquestion isit, or is it not?'Moore admits,however, hat thereare specialeasonswhy onemay be persuaded hat yellow is identical with the sensation fyellow.Whenwe examineour cognitiveacts,he says,that whichmakes he sensation f blue a mental act seems o escape s; itseems, f I may use a metaphor,to be transparent we lookthroughand seenothing but the blue'. For all this transpaxency,Moore is confidentthat the differencebetweenact and objectnonetheless xists a sezsaion of blueanda sensation f red havesomething n common, consciousness,nd this must not beconfused,as both Idealistsand agnostics onfuse t, with whatdifferentiateshem - their object,blueor red.The 'true analysis',he argues,of a sensation r an idea isthat it is a caseof'knowing' or 'being awareof' or 'experienc-ing' something.To say hat we are 'having a sensationof red',on this view, is not to dessribeour consciousnesss red, nor isit to assert he existence f somekind of 'mental image' - tohavea sensation f red s just to be awareof somethinged. Thetraditionalproblemof epistemology:how do we get outside hecircle of our ideas or sensations?' s, Moore concludes,noproblemat all. To have a sensations already o be outside hecircle: it is really to know somethingwhich s as eally andtrulynot a part of my expeience, tsanythingwhichI ciln ever know.'If this were not so, il being awarewere not an awareness /something,we could nevercome o be awareevenof our aware-ness; herewould only bea certainkind ofawareness, ithout ourevenbeing awareofthat fact.Thequestion till remains:what s this'something'ofwhicham aware? In The Refutationof ldealism it caabe, although it isnot always,a physicalobject.But in 'The Nature and Reality ofObjectsof Perception' PAS, 1905, eprinted n Studies),Mooredistinguishes harply betweenwhat we 'actually see' and thatphysical object which we ordinarily believe that we directly

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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYperceive.When we assert hat we 'see two books on a shelf,, allwe 'actually see', a@ording to Moore, are coloured patcholexistingsideby side- thesebeing examplesof what he ater camcto call 'sense-data'. He explains in Some Main problems olPhilosophywhy he prefers this expression .sense-data,to thomore usual sensations'. Sensation',he says, s misleadingbe.caqse t may be usedeither to mean my experiencingof, say,patch of colour or to mean the patch of colour itself; Moore irmost anxious to distinguish the experiencing from the expenienced.For he hasnot abandonedhe principal doctrineof ?%aRefutationof ldealism: it is not the essence f a sense-datumo boperceived. t is at leastconceivablehat thepatch ofcolour whichI perceiveshould continue to exist after I cease o perceive it,whereas t is a mere identity that my experiencingof the patchceaseswhen I cease o experience he patch.

In this resp@t, hen, Moore's 'sense-datum' s quite unlikl ,Locke's'idea'.lo It is not 'in the mind'. Moore has still to meolall the same,he objectionswhichBerkeleybroughtagainstLocko,If all that we see s a coloured patch, what evidencecanwe havc ,that there are three-dimensionalphysical objects?Moore's answer s that we do not need evidencethat thcfb rare physical objects, since this is something we already know;In 'The Nature and Reality of the Objectsof perception' ho Ialready writing with approvalof ThomasReid; in his later articlothe hasmore obviously thrown Reid's mantle over his shoulden,particular"lyn 'A Defenceof Common-Sense'1925)and ,ThCProof of an ExternalWorld' (PBA, 1939).rrHe knowswith certainty, he writes in .A Defenceof Commoa.Sense', hat the common-sense iew of the world - which he scttout in somedetail - is true; he knows,for example, hat there a$living human beingswith whom he can communicate.Any phll.osopher who tries to deny that anyone exists except himsolfpresumes hat there is sucha person n the very act of trying tOcommunicatehis denial. Indeed, even to speak,however slighhingly, of the 'common-sense iew' is already o admit its truth:this phrasehasno senseunless here arepeoplewhohold viewsncommon,.e. unless he common-senseiew is true.ln his Proof of an External l4/orld Moore's argument is mortdirect - so direct, indeed,that it created somethingof a scandal.2lo

MOORE ND RUSSELLIt 'appeals o fact', in the mannerhe had, n his earlierwritings'condemnedasquite inappropriate in philosophy. But the form ofhis argumenthad been foreshadowed s early as the 19lO-11lectures.Then, in criticizing Hume, he had reasoned hus: 'ifHume'sprinciples were true, I could neverknow that this pencilexists, but I do know this pencil exists, and therefore Hume'sargumentscannot be true.' This, he admits, looks like a mereevasion,a beggingof the question;but in fact, he says' t is aperfectly good and conclusive argument. We are much moreconfident that what confronts us existsthan we a^rehat Hume'sprinciples arecorrect; and we are entitled to use he facts we areconfident about asa refutation of his argument. Similarly in hisProofof anExternal VorldMooredescribes sa'good argument'for the existenceof things external to us the fact that we canindicate such objects. 'I can prove now,' he wrote, 'that twohuman handsexist. How? By holding up the two hanG, andsaYing,as I make a certain gesturewith the rigbt hand "Here isonehand", and adding,as makea certaingesturewith the efthand"and here s the other".'But even f it be possible,n this fashion, o demonstratehatphysical objects exist, the question still remains how they arerelated o what we'actually see'(or tast,or feel,or smell)'Twothings seemto him, as to Stout, to be perfectly clear: that theimmediateobjectsof our perception are sense'dataand that weknow there are physical objects.What puzzleshim is how whatwe mmediatelyperceive s relatedto what we immediatelyknow'Take sucha statementas 'this (what I am directly perceiving) spart of the surfacebf my hand'. There is, Moore feels confident,somethingwhich we are immediately perceiving; and he is con-findent also that there is a hand, and that the handhasa surface'But he seesdifficulties in sayingeither that what we immediatelyperceive s itselfpatt of the surfaceof the hand, or that it is an:appearance'of such a part, or' in Mill's manner'that the 'sur-face of the hand' is no more than a compendiousnarne for aseriesof actual and possible sense'data'Different people con'frontingthesamesurfaceatthesametimeexperiencesense-dawhich Lnnot, Moore thinks,all be a part of the surfaceof thehand - somesee a smooth patch, somea rough patch, and thesurface annotbe both roughandsmooth.And thereseemso be

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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYnogoodreason or giving preferenceo one suchsense-datum ndcalling it 'the surface itself'. yet to regard the sense-dataal'appearances' f the surface s to raiseall the familiar problemtof 'rept'esentativeerception'.Mill's solutionnMoore considere,is qo better; impossibly complicated in detail, it has the addi:tional disadvantageof conflicting with our .strong propensity' tobelieve hat theexistenceofthe hand is independentofany actualor possible perception of it. .The truth is,' Moore wrote lo'Some Judgmentsof Perception' (pl^t, 1918, reprinted inStudies),'I am comple(elypuzzledas to what the true answercan be.'Nor hashe eversubduedhat sense fp'rz"ls1pao1.Yet, as in the caseof truth and belief, he is not going to bcbrowbeatenby philosophers into denying what he does kaowr,that there are sense-dataand that there are physical objectc,Once more, he would expresshis uncertainties by saying thatatthoughhe knowsquite well that propositions ike .this is thcsurfaceof a hand' can be true, he does not know in what their'correct analysis' consists- In this distinction between truopropositions and their aaalysis, many of Moore's followenthought they could detect a theory about the nature of philos.ophy. Thus John Wisdom wrote of Moore, to his indignation,that according o him 'philosophy s analysis,.And it is easy osebwhy Wisdom should cometo this conclusion.Not only doesMoore constantly employ an analytic metho4not only does he suggest hat the real problem, in a variety ofcases,s that of 'discoveringan analysis', but in 'The Nature andReality of the Objects of Perception' he explicitly arguesthatdifferences in their mode of analysis are what distinguishorphilosophersone from another. All philosophersagree,he theromaintains, hat'hens lay eggs';oneaffrms, however,and anotherdenies that such propositions can be analysed nto statementgabout relations between sets of spirits. Nevertheless,Moorohotly denies that he identifies philosophy with analysis. Andclearlythe defenceof common-sense,o take only one nstance, tnot in.itself analysis.The fact remains hat Moore's use of thoanalytic method did much to fx the philosophicalstyleof a gen.eration of Cambridgephilosophers.What does Moore mean by 'analysis'? That is not an easyquestionto answer;perhaps he best explanation s contained n

?r2

MOOREAND RUSSELLMoore's reply to a critical article by C. H. Langford - 'Moore'sNotion of Analysis' - n ThePhilosophyof G. E. Moore. To givean analysisof a concept,Moore there suggests,s to discoversomeconceptwhich is the sameas the concept beinganalysed,but which can be expressed n a different way, by referring toconceptswhidt were not explicitly mentioned in the expressionsused o refer to the original concept.l2An examplemaymakethisexplanation clearer: male sibling is a correct analysisof brother;the two conceptsare identical, and yet the conceptsmentionedin the expressionmale sibling' axenot mentioned n 'brother'.Moore doesnot agreewith those of his successorsor whom to'givean analysis' s to describehow to usea certainexpression'.It is concepts, not expressions,which are analysed,he thinks,andthey are analysedby concepts,evenalthough analysiswouldbe impossible were it not that different verbal expressionsareused o refer to the sameconcept.He frankly admits,however,that he cannot explain at all clearly how it happens that bypointing to the identity of two conceptswe can provide informa'tion about one of them. Nor can he sharply distinguish what heasserts,and what he denies, o be 'an analysis', so as to explainwhy, for example,having welveedgess not 'a correct analysis'of being a cube,Dissatisfaction with Moore's uncertainties onthesepoints, t would appear,did something o drive his succes.sors n a more 'linguistic' direction.

Dissatisfaction with Russelltshad the same effect; but arosefrom somewhatdifferent sowces.Russelland Moore grew everfurther apart as hey.developedphilosophically: thevast murals ofRussell'sHistory of lYe tern Philosophyor of HumanKnow edgeIts Scope ndLimits (1948)are as emoteascan be from Moore'scarefully wrought miniatures. In this matter the sympathy ofvery many of the younger philosophers s with Moore. Russell-for all his criticism of over-bold generalizations* - belongs in*Most notably in Oar Knowledge of the Exterwl llorld as a Field for

Scientif.cMethod in Phtlosophy 1914).The new spirit in philosophy' he says'consists n'the substitution ofpiecemeal, detailed and verifiable results forl0rge untested generalities recommended only by a certain appeal to theimagination'. This is an admirable statementof the point of view of a greatmany of his contemporaries, but Russell's own philosophy certainly doesnot consist of'piecemeal results', whether or not it is composed of'largeuntested generalities'.2t3


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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHILOSOPHYspirit to that tradition of philosophy which conceives t as .trascienceof sciences,.To the austereminds of his younger con.temporaries there is something almost indecent in so bold fdisplay of speculativeambition. They will admit th importanotof 'th9 earlier Russell', the Russellof the early yearsof the contury, but passby his later books with avertedey;s.

Yet there has been no great change n Russell,smanner ola_pproacho philosophy; from the very beginning, in his /Critical Expositionof thephilosophyof Letbntz tW), hedisplayfthosecharacteristicswhich now provoke shock and Aismay,titsees n Leibniz's physics, for example, something continuoulwith, not cut off from, philosophy. It is at once obvious thatRussell s trying to link together apparently diversephenomcnlas instancesof a general law, in the manner of that scientiflotradition which frst came into vigorous growth, in modeEEurope, in the seventeeth entury, and in striking contrast to thOditrerentiatinghabitsof the scholasticismagainstwhich it forciblyreacted and into which, in philosophy at least, it shows somisignsofreturning. It would not beabsurdto proclaim Russell.lmodernDescartes'or .amodern Leibniz', a descriptionwhichnOone, for better or worse,coulil possiblyapply to Moore. tA qecond, mmediately apparent, feature of Russell,sLeibnttis his unusualappreciation of Cootinental scholarshipand Conrtinental speculation.There is no trace of insularity in Russellg3nd he is alwaysready to admit, evenat times to exaggerate,hhindebtednesso his predecessors.His work displays, indeei, Iquite unusualcapacity for learning rom his fellow-philosophen,evenwhen they are foreigners, a capacity which has Urought icertain amount of opprobrium about his head and certainlycomplicates he task of a historian.Thirdly, Russellhad from the beginning specialviews aboutphilosophy, which closely associate it with logic and withmathematics. That all sound philosophy should begin with an

analysisof propositionss,, he writes,.a truth too obvious,per.haps,to dernanda proof.' Thus whereas or most previouscom.mentators kibniz had been pre-eminently the creator of animaginative world-view which ,reconciled scienceand religion',for Russell he clue to the understandingof Leibniz's philosophi- asdistinct from the fairy-tales he concocted or the aelectation214

MOORE AND RUSSELLof his royal correspondents lies n hisbelief hat all propositionscan be reduced o the subject-predicateorm, i.e. that relationsare reducible to properties of the terms between which theyhold*. Once his step s taken, Russell hought, Leibniz'smeta-physical conclusions inevitably follow - or, at least, the onlyalternative is Absolute Idealism. If, in the proposition x irrelated o y, r's relation to y is an attribute - what Russellcalls a'predicate'- of x, thenthe consequencemmediately ollows thatx andy are not really distinct; x's environment, n other words,is an aspectof x itself,as Leibniz had argued.And the AbsoluteIdealistcarried this doctrine urther by maintaining hat x, too,is an attribute - of Reality as a whole. Leibniz's importance, asRussellsees t, consistsn his having thought out in detail themetaphysical mplications of the substance-attributeanalysisoftheproposition.Thus he drew he attentionofother philosophersto consequencs hich might haveescaped heir notice: he gotthem o seehow important t is to insist,asRusselldoes follow-ing Moore's The Nature of Judgrnent' upon the 'externality'of relations,or in other words upon the ineducibility of relationalpropositions.Russell'semphasison the primacy of logical questions s con-verted nto a theory about he natureofphilosophy n the chapterentitled 'Logic as the Essenceof Philosophy' in Our Knowledgeof the External lVorld.'Every philosophicalproblem,' Russellthere wrote, 'when it ls subjected o the necessaryanalysisandpurification, s found to be not really philosophicalat all, or elseto be, in the sense n which we are using he word, logical.' By'logical' he means arising out of the analysisof propositions',or, as he alsoputs the matter, out of the attempt to determinewhat kinds of fact there are, and how they are related one toanother.Russell,then, deserts he British empiricist tradition that theessenc f philosophy s psychological althouglt t is interestingto observe hat in his later work he manifestsa certain tendencyto reinstate sychology, nd to return n more ways han one o aphilosophyvery like Hume's. As well, he is contesting he notuncommon view that philosophy consistsof the defence of a

rBy the'subject-predicate form'Russell and most ofhis successorsmeanwhat could be less misleadingly describedas the substance-attribute' form.215


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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYpartl pris - an ethical, religious, or social outlook which philosophy exists o justify and must not question.The philosopher,he maintains in his .Scientific Method in philosophy, (tgU,reprinted tn Mysticism and Logic, lgl1), must Ue :ettricattyneutral', scientific, impartial. Any other sort of philosophy hodcscribesas 'pre-Copernican, on the ground that it procieds asif the humanbeing,with his speciaethicat nterests,werethe clueto the understandingof the Universe.Thus Russellstands rmlyfor that 'submission to fact, which Clifford had extolled andJameshad condemnedas neither possiblenor desirable.Although there was much in The philosophy of Leibniz toattract the eye of an attentive reader, Tlte principles of Marhe-matics (19o3) rst made it perfectly crear that a new force hadBritish philosophy. The rigorous philosophical examina-tion of logico-mathematical ideas was a genuine novelty, andth;r9 yas an atmosphere of intellectual adventure about thowhole book which stamped it as an achievementof the ftstorder.Oncemore, Russell's ndebtednesss primarily to Continentalideas.He tells us that ou his first introdu&ion to ieometry he hadbeendistressedo find that Euclid began rom axiomswhich hadto be assumedwithout proof: the idea of a mathematicswhichwas absolutely certain, which contained no loophole throughwh]9h error could wriggle in, obviously attracted him from his

earliestdays.Mathematiciansrike weierstrassshowedhim whatmathematicalrigour could be like; peanoopenedhis eyes o thopossibility of constructing a single deductive systemof mathe-matics, resting on a bareminimum of definitions and elementarypropositions. But fike Frege before him _ although at fust lnignoranceof Frege'swork - Russellcould be contentwith nothingless than the defnition of peano,sprimitive mathematical con-ceptions in wholly logicAl terms. Theprinciples of Mathematicssetsout to showhow thiscanbedonb; n particular,Russellheretries o formulate he logicalprinciplesand methodswhich,sohothinks,mustbe nvolved n any constructionof mathematics.Nowork sinceAristotle,s time hashad sostriking * "fot upon thelogrcordinarily taugfit at'niversities. Then Russel went on, nowin conjunction with his former mathematics eacherA. N. White-head, o undertake n detail the construction of mathematicsout216

MOORE AND RUSSELLof logic n the threevolumesof PrincipiaMat hematica1910-13;tt- a classicalcontribution to symbolic logic which, however, byits very intricacy persuadedmost philosophers that this sort oflogicwas not for them.*Like Husserl, Russell distinguishessharply between ogic andpsychology. It is plain,' he writes, 'that when we validly inferone proposition from another, we do so in virtue of a relationwhich holds between the two propositions whether we perceiveit or not'; this relation - 'implication' - not the humanactivityof inferring, ls the principal subject-matter f logic. That is thecrucialpoint of oppositionbetweenRussell'sogic and he dealist'morphology of knowledge' or Dewey's 'logic of inquiry'. Ininferring, according to Russell, the human being is 'purelyreceptive'; he simply 'registers' the fact that an implication ispresent.For Bradley and for Dewey,on the contrary, inference sa'construction'which arisesout of, and s only discussable ith-in the contextof, the attempt o undertakean inquiry. But Brad-ley's own developmgnt had been n the direction of emphasizingthe 'objectivity' of inference, and Russell was simply pushingthat objectivity harder.TlaePrinciples of Mathematicsbegins with an extraordinarilyaudacious entence:Pure Mathematics s the classof all propo-sitionsof the form "p implies4", wherep and4 arepropositionscontaining one or more variables, the same n the two proposi-tions, and neitherp nor 4 contains any constantsexcept ogicalconstants.'A 'constant' is defined as 'something absolutelydefinite, oncerningwhich there s no ambiguity whatever.'ThusSocratesn 'Socrates s a man' is a 'constant', as contrastedwith the r of if x is a man, x is mortal', which doesnot refer oanyspecffic ersonand is thereforea 'vadable'.Russelladmits that it is diffcult to makeprecisewhat is meantby a 'variable'. The same s true, he also grants,of a 'logicalconstant' that special ype of constantwhich, on his view, s theonly sort to be found in the propositionsof pure mathematics.lsrRussell agrees with them. 'Logic,' he says in the Preface to HumanKmwledge (1948), is not part of philosophy.' This does not mean that henow rejects the view that'logic is the essenceof philosophy'. 'Logic' inIluman Knowledge means the construction of deductive systems; the'logic'which is the essence fphilosophy, as we saw, s an attempt to describe whatkinds of facts there are.

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A HUNDRBD YEARS OF PHILOSOPHY(Wc could put his point roughly by saying that mathematicalpropositions assert that whateverhasa certain generalstructuremust alsohavea certain other structure; they makeno referenceto this or that particular entity. As he says ater, .proper namesplay no pafi in mathematics'.This is Russell'sversionof thePlatonic-Cartesianoctrine hat mathematicss about .essences',not about' existences'.)If'logical constants'are too fundamental o be defined, heycan, Russell hinks, at least be enumerated.Russell's irst listreadsas ollows: Implication, therelationof a term o theclass fwhich it is a member,the notion of such hat, thenotion of rela-tion, and suchfurther nbtions asmay be involved in the generalnotion of propositionsof the same orm.' These urther notionsare 'propositional function, class,denoting, and any or everyterm'. Of theseconstants,we shall be able to cofirnent only onfive of the most important - propositional function, implication,relation,classand denotation.By a'propositional function'Russellmeansan expressioniko'xis aman', which n itself s neither ruenor false; t is convertedinto a proposition by substituting, say,Socrates or x. His theoryof implication restson this distinction betweenproposition andpropositional function. There are, he says, wo typesof implice.tion - 'material' and formal'. A propositionpmaterially mpliera proposition4, if it is not the case hat p is true and 4 is falso;thus material mplication is a relation betweenpropositions.Aformal implication, on the other hand, relates propositionalfunctions; hus x is a man' formally implies,x is mortal'. Andjust as a propositional function can be regarded as a classofpropositions all thosepropositionswith.is a man'for theirpredicate so also a formal implication is a classof inaterialimplications.Thus 'x is a man formally implies x is mortal'assertshe classof material mplications, Jonesis a man materi.ally implies Jones s mortal, Smith is a man materially impliccSmith s mortal. .. 'Russe[ recognizesno other variety of implication. He arguerthat'q can be deduced rom p' meansexactly the same hip3as "p materially mplies4' - evenalthough t then follows,as wohavealreadyseen,* hat any propositioncan.bededuced rom IrSeo p. 140 abovo.

2t8

MOOREAND RUSSELLfalseproposition - and that a true proposition is deducible romany proposition whatsoever. Moore, however, in his essayon'External and Internal Relations' characterizedRussell's denti-fication of is materially implied Dy with is deducible rom as'simply an enormoushowler'. He introducd he word'entails',now in common use amongstphilosophers,to refer to that rela-tion betweenp and4 which entitles us to say of q that it must betrue if p is true.Russellhimself, in the first of his Meinong articles, showssomesignsofuneasiness, articularlyover the consequencehat 'thereis a mutual implication of any true propositions'. 'It must beadmitted,' he writes, 'that one-sided nferences can practicallybe made n many cases, nd that consequentlysome elation otherthan that consideredby symbolic ogic must be involved whenwe nfer.' But he seemso think that the llegitimateconsequencesof his dealings with imptcation can be laid on the doorstep ofepistemologl, so that symbolic logic can be left free to live itsgayand unfettered life.On relations, Russell adds little to Peirce except clarity ofexposition.l6But it is certainly as a result of Russell'semphasison relational propositionsthat they came nto their own amongstphilosophers. His theory of classesand of class-membership,likewise,at first follows closely n the footsteps of his immEdiatepredecessors.t is in terms of classes hat he proposes o definenatural numbers, and through that definition all the fundamentalnotions of arithmetic. Arithmeticians like Peano had alreadymaintained hat all other numberscould be defined n termsof thenatural numbers; if Russell can define the natural numbers interms of classes,he has prove.4 he thinks, that mathematicshasno need of numerical, as distinct from merely logical, oon'stants,Russell defines a cardinal number - which is always,he says,the number of a class as 'the classof all classes imilar to thegiven class'; a classha^s ix members, on this definition, if itbelongs o the classo whichall classesimilar o it belong. Sim-ilar' has a special echnicalsense it means having the samenumberas'. Russellhad therefore o meet he objection hat hisdcfinition is circular, that he is defining the number of a class asthat class o which all classeswith the samenu4ber belong. His

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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYreply is that he can define similarity' or 'having the samenum.ber' in non-numerical terms, two classeshaving the samnumber when they canbe conelated one-to-one.Nor do we neodthe numberone,he further maintains, o establish ,one-to-onorcorrelation; a relation is one-to-one when if x stands in thirrelationto y and so doesxr, thenx andxr are dentical,and f.rhas this relation to y and to y1, then y andyr are identical. Forexample, to say that there is a one-to-one correlation betweenlegal wives and legal husbands n a christian community is toassert hat ifx is the legnlhusbandofy andrt is the legalhusbandof y, thenx and xl are dentical;and f x is the legalhusbandofy andyr, theny andyt are identical. Thus, Russellmaintains,hildefinition of numbers in terms of similar classes nvolves nocircularity.In this definition of number is illustrated one of the centraltechniques f Russell's hilosophicalmethod what he calls thoprinciple of abstraction' andmight have essmisleadinglynamed'the principle of dispensingwith abstraptions'. On the normalview, a 'number' is picked out, by abstraction, rom a set ofgroupswhich possess common numericalproperty. But Russellobjects hat there s no way ofshowing that there s only one suohproperty - the one we have picked out: abstraction leavesut,indeed, with a classof properties, when we were in search of Isingle property. The 'principle of abstraction' - which can boemployed whenevgr certain formal conditions are satisfiedll?-avoids his difficulty: it defnes by reference o a classconsistingofall the classeswhich havea unique relation (for example,one-td-one correspondence) o each other. Such a definition does notrule out the possibility, Russellwill freely grant, that there is aproperty cornmon to all the membersof these classes, at it doegnot need o make thatpreumption, Here, for the first time, theroclearly emergeswhat was to become a principal driving-forco

fehind Russell'sphilosophy - the desire o reduce he number ofentities and propertieswhich mwt be presumed o exist in ordorto givea'complte accountof the world'.Even f the definition of numbers n termsof classess not para.doxical initself, it threatened,Russellsoondiscovered, o producoparadoxes therewere difficults, in particular, in the notion of 'Eclass of all classes'.This, it seemedobvious, is itself a class; it220 221

MOOREAND RUSSELLfollows that it is itself a member of the classof all classes,:e. thatit includes tself as a member.And it is not unique in this respet:the classof things which are not men, to mention another case, sitself something which is not a man. On the other hand, there areclasseswhich do not includethemselves. he classof thingswhichare merr, or example, s not tself a man.It appears, hen, that classes an beofeither of two types: thosewhich aremembersof themselves, nd those which are not mem-bers of themselves.Now suppose we consider the class whichconsistsof all the classeswhich are not membersof themselves.Is this classa member of itself or not ? If it is a member of itself,then it is not one of the classeswhich are not membersof them-selves;and yet to be a member of itself, it mustbe one of thoseclasses.Here, then, there is a manifest contradiction. But equallyif it is not a member of itself, then it is not one of those classeswhich are not members of themselves again a contradiction.Thus we are led to an antinomy; either altemative implies acontradiction.Paradoxes,of course, were no novelty. One of them, the para-dox of the liar, is alnost as old asphilosophy. Russell restates tas ollows: Suppose man saysI am lying', then f what he saysis true he is lying, i.e. what he says snot true, and if what he saysis not true, then also he is lying, i.e. what he says s true. Suchfamiliar paradoxes had usually been passed by as mere in-genuities;but the paradox of'the class of all classes'could notbe so lightly regarded, and the samewas true of other paxadoxeswhich had raised heir head n mathematicsand in logic.Russell, y now awareof Frege'swork, senthim hisparadox.r8Fregewasgeatly perturbed. 'Hardly anything more unfortunatecan afect a scientific writer,' he wrote in an Appendix to hisFundamentalawsof Arithmetic,'than to haveoneof thefounda-tions of his edifice shaken after the work is finished' - andRussell'sparadox, he thought, did shake the foundations. Thedifficultj, as Frege saw it, is that if the logistic construction ofarithmetic s to be carried through, we must be ableto pass rom aproperlyconstituted oncept o its extension, o hat n the presentcasewe ought to be able to talk without contradiction about themembersof the properly constiluted class of classeswhich arenot membersof themselves.Yet this is ust what Russell'sparadox


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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHILOSOPHYseemedo rule out. Fregeattempteda solution of the difficulty:he so modified his previousaccountof'equal extensions'as toexclude heextensionof a concept rom theclassof objectswhichfall under t. It will thenbe no longerpermissibleo say hat thoclassof things which are not men- the extensionof the concopt'not-men'- is itself not a man,or that the classof classes hichaxenot members f themselvess a memberof itself. In general,he believed, he addition of limiting conditions to his proofswould enable im to avoid Russell's aradoxes.Russell'sown solution s more radical- the introduction of atheory of types.tcNot that he was everwholly satisfiedwith it.He describest, indeed,as chaoticand unfinished.But it hashadimportant effectsonthedevelopmentof contemporaryphilosophy.The paradoxesall arise, he argues,out of a certain kind ofviciouscircle.2o ucha vicious circle s generatedwhenevert issupposed hat 'a collection of objects may contain memberswhichcan only be definedby means f thecollectionasa whole.'To takea case: uppose e say all propositions ave hepropertyX.' On the face of it, this is itselfa proposition,so that the classof propositionshasamong ts members ne whichpresumeshatthe classhas been completed becauset talks of 'all proposi-tions.' before t has tselfbeenmentioned.This contradictionthat the class must at once have beencompleted and not beencompleted bringsout the fact that there s no suchc/as,r.Woshall thereforehave o say,' Russellconcludes,that statementsabout "all propositions"are meaningless.'Then ow are we todevelop a theory of propositions? The pseudo-totality 'allpropositions',Russell replies,must be broken up into sets ofpropositions, ach apable f beinga genuineotality, after whicha separate @ountcanbe givenofeach suchset.This'breakingup is the objectof the theory of types; t is, however,applied opropositional functions rather than to propositions,becausethey, Russellhinks,aremore mportant or mathematics.Properlyspeaking,here are two heoriesof types the simpleand he rainified.Thesimple heory depends pon he conceptionof a 'range of significance'. n the propositional function 'xis mortal', Russellargues, canbe replacedby certain constantgin sucha way as to form a true proposition,by others so as toforsr a false proposition, but in certain cases the resulting

MOORE AND RUSSELLpropositionwill be neither rue nor false,but meaninglsss.*hsconstantswhich, when substituted or x, form a meaningfulpropositionare said to constitute he 'range of significance'or'type' of the function. In the caseof 'r is mortal' the range ofsignificances restricted o particularentities. t is always ensible,even l false, o assertof anyparticular thing that it is mortal, butit is without meaning,Russellnow says, o describe,say, 'theclass f men' or'humanity'as beingmortal. Thegeneral rincipleis that a function must alwaysbe of a higfiertypethan its 'argu-ment', That is why'mortal' can ake 'Socrates'as ts argument,but cannot be meaningfullypredicatedof 'the classmen', andthat is why, also, a thing can be a memberof a classbut a classcannot be and cannot fail to be- the denial would be as meaning-lessas the affirmation- a member of annhing less han a classof classes.Justasan ndividual can be a memberof a club, but aclub cannotbe a memberof anything ess han an association fclubs.) n the paradoxof the classwhich is a member of itself,this rule, Russellsays,had been gnored. t had beenpresumedthat all classes re ofa single ype, and that any class ould beamember of another class. But this suppositiongives rise, heargues,o avicious circle ' theclassof all classes'would then be ac/assadditionat o the 'all classes' f which it is the class.Oncethe distinction between types is firmly maintained, it will beobviousnonsenseo sayofa class ither hat it is or that it is not amemberof itself.Thusthe dreaded ntinomyvanishes.

Russell thinks that distinctions betweentypes have been un-consciously espectedn everydayspeech,unconsciouslybecauseno one would want o say, or example, hat 'Humanity is not aman'. But whereas he difference n type between Humanity'and 'a man' is an obvious one, the fundamentalnotions oflogic- suchnotions as truth, falsity, function, property,classhave,he says, o fixed or definite ype.We havebeenaccustomedto talk simply about 'truths', whetherwe mean first order truths(x r's ) or second-order ruths (x lsy is true) or third-order truths*There was, it should be observed - for the contrary is sometimesasserted no novelty in the trichotomy, true, false, meaningless.As Russellhimself points out, it was to be found even in the older logics - quiteexplicitly in Mill's System oflogic - and we have already had occasion torcfer to it in talking about Frege, for example"

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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PIIILOSOPHY( x is y is true' is true). paradoxesarethen inevitable; we are edto_imaginehat propositions bout ruthsaxe, s rue,abor4them-selves,whereas hey are really second_order ruths about frst-order truths,and we are soonfloundering n a seaof nonsense.The ody way out, Russell hinks, is alwaysexplicifly to mentionwhatorderof truths,or classes, r functionswearetatkingabout.rThe simple theory of types, according to Russell, does notsuffice o removeall risk of paradox. It is necessaryo makefur-ther distinctions,he thinks, between ypes. Compare the twopropositional unctions, r is a general'and .x hasall the pro-pertiesof a great general'. They have the same ange of signifi-cance; Napoleon' could be sensiblysubstituted or x in bothcases.But the predicate .all the properties of a great general,is an illegitimate totality, since it itr"r *outa be one suchproperty. This totality can be avoided,Russellargues,only bydistinguishing ifferences f orderwithin each ype; then .hasallthe properties of a great general' wilr be of a trigt er order than'is a general',and will not itself6ea property.Srictra .ramineO,theoryoftypes sessential, econsideis,fevery varietyoflogicalantinomy is to besuccessfully voided.

_ Obviously the original hierarchyof types s greatlycomplicatedby the introduction of the ramified ttreory.-nut a much moroserioushandicap, n the eyesof Russelland his critics, was thatthe ramified theory seemed to rule out certain varieties ofmathematicalanalysiswhich madeuseof what, accordingto thoramified theory, were illegitimate totalities.zrRussell no,rglrt t ocould overcome this difficulty with the help of .the axiom ofreducibility'; this assertshat correspondinglo any assertionof*Russelllaterconfessedo some neasinessbout ype tself.Is his, oo,of different ypes But how s it possibleo "uy tnit 1trr*tes and, anrcrndareof different ypes,unlesshere s somesingiegeneral-senseof type?Arowe-notsinningagainsthe theoryof typeso "r"rLiog a singleunctionarrof drferent-typeso arguments f did'erentvp., i fo. tii sort of reasoo,Russell.welcomedhe .linguistic' interpretaiio" "id; theory of typoroffered y writers ike R. Carnap; t is a mistake,elmJto ttrint, to speakof entities s beingof thisor that type, t i" ,*p*iii"i Jhicrroifer in typo,And it canbe saidwithoutany contradiction,o a turrgr.agef the secondorder, hat the words.Socrates' nd ff"-aoity; fr"r" ?Jn"*", syntacticalfunctions.Seeon this Russell's.Reply" ni. Criti;,-lo' ine ehflosophy lBertrandRussell. ee lsoJ. J.Smait: .WhiteheaduiJ no.rfr,, TheoryofTypes' Atutysts,eso); p. Weiss;.TheTdrt;i;;J (Mi,rd, ts2u).2U

MOORB AND RUSSELLthe form 'x has all the properties of a y' there existsa formallyequivalent assertionwhich doesnot contain any reference o ,allthe properties' but which, just becauset is formally equivalent,can replace the original assertion in mathematical reasoning.But this axiom stood out awkwardly in the deductivesystemofPrincipia Mathematica; and it lacked the 'self-evidence' whichmathematicians are accustomed to demand. Not surprisingly,other ogicians ttemptedo avoid heparadoxeswithout recourseto theramffied theory of types.Thebest known of theseattempts scontained n F. P. Ramsey'sessay n 'The Foundation of Mathemdtiea',zznd in the secondedition of TfrePrinciplesof MathematicsRussellacceptsRamsey'ssolution. According to Ramsey, Russell has grouped togetherparadoxeswhich are quite different in character - those which(like the paradox about classes)arise within the attempt to con-struct a logical systemand those which (like the paradox of theliar) are linguistic' or'semantic'in their origin, i.e. which ariseonly when we try to talk aboutthat system.The simple theory oftypes, Ramsey argues - following Peano - suffices to resolveparadoxesofthe frst sort, and they are the only oneswhich r6allymatter to the logicianassuch.Paradoxes fthe second ypecanbe removed by clearing up ambiguities; they depend upon theambiguity of everydaywords like 'means', 'names', 'defines'.Thus the ramified theory of types s in neither casenecessary, ndthemuch-despisedaxiom of reducibility'can be abandoned.23The effect, hen, of Russell's heory of typesisthat, like Moore'saccount of'analysis', it encouraged he view that linguisticinquiries,of onesort or another,are of specialmportance o thephilosopher. The sameeffect, even more obviously, flowed fromRussell's heory of funoting: and the discussionof this 'logicalconstant will leadus nto the heartof Russell's hilosophy.As we have already seen,Russell'searly metaphysicsderivedfrom Moore. lOn fundamental questions of philosophy,' hewrote in ThePrinciplesof Mathematics,'my position, in all itschief features,s derived rom Mr G. E. Moore. I haveacceptedfrom him the non-existential nature ofpropositions (exceptsuchas happen to assert existence) and their independenceof anyknowingmind - also he plualism which regards heworld, boththat of existentsand that of entities, as composedof an infinite

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A HUNDREDYEARSOF PHILOSOPHYnumber of mutually independententities,with relationswhich arcultimate and not reducible to adjectivesof their terms or of thcwhole which these compose.'Theseentitiesare the 'terms' inpropositions.

With this ontology is associated theory of language. It mustb admitted,'he wrote, 'that every word occurring in a sentenccmust havesomemeaning. . . the correctness f our philosophicalanalysisof a proposition may thereforebe usefullycheckedby thcexerciseof assigning he meaning of each word in the sentenceexpressingheproposition.' Everyword a meaning,everymeaningan entity - theseare theprincipleson which Russellat first worked.Heis alreadyrecopizing, however, nhis analysisof 'denoting,,as Frege had before him, that the grammatical structure of aproposition can be misleading.A conceptmayoccur n a proposi-tion which is not, in spiteof appearances, bout that concept butabout 'a terrr connected in a certain peculiar way with thoconcept'.Thus 'I met a man', for example,does uot mean ,fmet he concept mar "' ;' a man' here'denotes'someparticula^rhumanbeing.Similarly, although lessobviously, 'Man is mortal'is not about the concept Man'. 'We should be surprisedto findim the Times,' Russell writes, 'such a uotice as the following*Djed at his residencen Camelot, GladstoneRd., Upper Tooting, on the 18thof June, F, Man, eldest on of Deathand Sin".'And yet that announcementought to provoke no surprise if'Man'ismortal,ln The Principlesof Mathematics,however, propositions liko'the King of England s bald'are not subjectedo any consider.able transformation; this proposition means, Russell says, that'the man denotedby the phrase the King of England" is bald'.It was heconsequencesfthis interpretation whichprovoked thonew theory of denoting presentedn Russell's On Denoting'(Mind,l909.zr1tr" t*.s which intervenedbetweenThePrinciplesof Mathematicsand 'On Denoting' Russell had devoted to thcstudy of Meinong, At first, he was confirmed in his allegiancoto the philosophy he had learned from Moore. But doubts creptin : Meinong's 'objects began o lookkke a reductioad absurdumof Moore's 'concepts'. t was all very well for Meinong to talkwith scornof'the prejudice n favour of the actual'; that 'pre.judice', recbristened 'a robust sense of reality', is essential,

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MOOREAND RUSSELLRussellcame o thinft, 16 any scientificphilosophy. 'The senseofreality,'as heeventuallysummed he matter up in his Introductionto Mathematical Philosophy 1919), is vital in logic, and whoeverjuggles with it by pretending that Hamlet has another kind ofreality is doing a disservice o thought.'Yet what is to be sai4 in terms of 'reality', about such asser-tionsas, n a Republicanage, the King of France s bald'? Thiscannot mean that 'the man denoted by the phrase"the King ofFrance" is bald', because here s no suchentity for the phrase odenote. Meinong had said that it refers to an object which lies'outside of being', an object to which the law of contradictiondoes not apply, since one can say of it, with equal truth, that ithas and that it has not any property we care to mention. Of anon-existentKing of France we areentitled to say that he is baldor that he s not-bal4 just asstrikesour fancy. This is the point atwhich Russell's new-found senseof reality revolted. There must,he thought, be another way out, a way which does not involveinterpreting the phrase the King of France' asreferring to anyentity whatsoever.And that is what hesought n his newtheory ofdenoting, and, in particular, in what he came o call 'the theoryofdescriptions'.By a'denoting phrase',he first of all explains and t is worthobserving hat it is ngwphrases,n'otconcepts,which denote- hemeans such phrasesas the following: 'a man, some men, anyman, every man, all men, the presentKing of England, thepresentKing of France, the centre of massof the Solar System at thefust instant of the present century, the revolution of the eartharound the sun, the revolution of the sun around the earth.' Heoffers no generalcharccteization of suchphrases,but it is clear,at least, hat they arenone ofthem'proper names',and yet thatthey can stand asa graarmaticalsubject n a sentence.The fundamental principle of Russell's theory of denoting,indeed, s that - in opposition to Mill - these denoting phrasesare not namesor entities, evenalthough their being used as thesubjectof sentencesmakes hem look as f they were.He tried toprovehispoint by so reformulating sentencesontaining denotingphrasesas to retain the meaning of the original sentencewithouternployingany denoting phrase. f this can bedone, the presump-tion is, it will no longer be necessary o suppose hat a denoting

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phrase names some specific entity; then Meinong's unreal'objects' can be abandoned - on the principle of .Occam'sramr',tbatenlities ought not to be multiplied exceptof necessity.We can illustrate Russell'sgeneralproeedure rom the .mostprimitive' cases 'everything', 'nothing', 'something'. Suchapropositionas'everything s c', Russellsays, oesnot assert hatthere samysteriousentity everythingwhichcanbe truly describedas c. That there is no need to suppose he existenceof such anentity comes out in the fact that 'everything is c' can be re-formulated as for all valuesof x, ".r is c" is true', which makesno mention of 'everything' and yet which fully expresseswhatwasoriginally asserted.A more complex, and a more important, case s what Russelllater called 'the definite description' - denoting phraseswhichcontain 'the'.* On the face of it, a phrase ike 'the so-and-so'must refer to an entity: Frege, for example, had thought that'the' was the sign par excellence hat an'object' was beingreferred to. But such a proposition as 'the author of lltaverleyis Scotch', which one would ordinarily suppose o predicate aproperty of a particular entity, 'the author of Waverley', s not,Russellargues,about the author of Waverleyat all. This proposi-tion asserts, e tries to show, a conjunction of threepropositions:'(a) at least one person wrote Waverley,(b) at most one per.son wrote Waverley, c) whoever wrote Waverley s Scotch.' Or,more formally, 'there is a term c such that (l) ".tr wrotell/averley" is equivalent, or all valuesof x, to ".r is c" andQ)" c

is Scotch".'This reformulation doesnot mention 'the author of lVaverley';that means hat we could intelligibly assert that 'the author oflVaverley s Scotch'even if Waverley n fact had no author. Inthat case,our assertionwould be false, sinceproposition (a) -'at leastonepersonwrote Waverley'- would be a falseproposi-tion, but it would not be nonsensical.Now we can understand,then, how an assertion ike 'the King of France s bald'- whichis precisely parallel to 'the author of lVaverley s Scotch'- canhave a sense, venalthough there s noentity namedby'the Kingof France', no Meinongian object.

'As distinct ftom indefinite descriptions, containing'a'. SeeparticularlyRusscll's Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy on descriptions.'228

Russell was by now well embarked upon what was to be hismain philosophical occupation. Occam'srazor' dealt destructionlike a sword - rurnecessary ntities were miraculously cut downright and left. Numbers, as something distinct from classesofof classes, ad been he first to go; but the victory over Meinong's'objerts' had beena more sweeping ne.And theyweresoon obe oined in Hadesby more commonplace-lookingvictims.Definite descriptions, Russell had argued, are 'incompletesymbols' - what Frege had called 'names of a function' - asdistinct from 'complete symbols', i.e. proper names(the namesofarguments).They have a use n sentences, ut they do not nameentities. The same is true, Principia Mathematica suggests,of'classes'; classes, oo, are 'symbolic linguistic conventions',used n order to make statementsabout functions of propositionalfunctions.The assertion'theclass man" is included n the class"mortals"' looks like a statementabout the relation betweentwo entities, he class man' and the class mortals'. But in fact,Russellmaintains, it is no more than a shorthand formulation ofthe proposition ".tr is a man" formally implies "r is mortal".'There is no entity, as Russell had at first supposed, which isnamedby thephrase the classasons'.Similarly,whereas n suchearly articlesas'Is Position n Timeor SpaceAbsolutqor Relative?' Mind,190l), Russell ad opera-ted freely with spatial points' and emporal instants'- ultimateunits of space and of time - Whitehead now persuadedhimthat sentenceswhich apparently refer to such entities can,

without loss of meaning, be translated nto statementsabout therelations between events'. Points, instants,particles, shared hefate of numbers, classes,he author of. lf;averley and the presentKingof France.So far, however, the ordinary objects of everyday1ife, ables,chairs, our own and other people's minds, had been left un-touched.But theprocessby which they aregraduallydisintegratedinto classes f'sensibilia' is already under way in The Prob-lems of Philosophy(1912). n the preface to that book, Russellacknowledges is indebtednesso those ectures of Moore whichwerepublished n 1953as SomeMain Problemsof Philosophy;heagreeswith Moore, in particular, that what we are immediatelyacquaintedwith aresensedata,not physicalobjects

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A HUNDRED YEARS OF PHILOSOPHYBut there are notable differencesbetweenRussell'sepistemol-ogy and Moore's; theexistenceof physicalobjects, o Russell, sascientifichypothesis parallel, say, o an hypothesis n physicswhich we aaceptas being true because t allows us to give a'more simple' account of the behaviour of our sense-datahanany other hypothesiswhich hasoccurred o us. It is not, as t wasfor Moore,somethinghat we'immediatelyknow'. And Russell,sargument n favour of the view that we do not directly perceivephysical objects appeals to 'what sciencetells us' about thenature of perception, in contrast with Moore's appeal to .com-monsense' and to familiar sensory illusions. Furthermorgthe whole atmosphereof Theproblemsof philosophyis logico-mathematical, in the C-artesian tyle; Russellsets out in searchof the indubitable, of what it is impossibleo doubt, and criticizesour everydaybeliefs rom that standpoint. It is already clear that

Russell,althoueh he makes certain concessionso .common-sense' n the form of 'what we instinctivelybelieve,,will not bepermanently satisfied by the loose and somewhat precariousstructureof Moore's'defence of commonsense,;t is science, otcornmonsense, hichhe s anxiousto defendandit isscience,oo,which mustsit in judgementon that defence.The search or the indubitable, in Theproblemsof philosophy,is formulated asan attempt to discover hoseobjectswith whichwe are mmediately acquainted'. Russell akesover from James,who had in tum, oddly enough, earnt it from Grote - so thatthis doctrine travelled from one Cambridgeman to another viaCambridge, Mass. - his distinction between knowledge byacquaintanceand knowledgeby description; this is the point atwhich Russell'sanalysisof denoting bearsdiretly on his generalphilosophy.zs rys ave knowledgeby acquaintance'of an objectif we are 'directly aware' of it. The most obviouscase,Russellthinks, is the sense-datum: can be directly aware that I amexperiencinga certain sense-datum.And it follows, he morehesitantly concludes,that I am also directly aware of the .I'that doesthisexperiencing,and of its mentalstates.Mental states, our own self, and sense-dataare the ooly'particulars', he thinks, with which we havedirect acquaintance.But we are also acquaintedwith 'universals, - with whitenessand beforenessan_ddiversity. When we experienceone sense-

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MOORE ND RUSSELLdatum as before another one, for example, we axe acquaintedwith a universal, he relation' before'.We are not acquainted, he argues,with physical objects; weknow such an object as a table as that to which a certain des-cription applies as,say, the thingwhichcauseshese ense-data'- and it is only by inference,not by direct perception, that weknow that there s any such hing. Nor are we acquaintedwithother human beings,even with thosewhose personal acquain-tance' we are a@ustomed o claim. Such human beings, hethinks, are in the same position as physical objects: they areinferences rom our sense-data.As for peoplewith whom we arenot in the ordinarysenseacquainted' JuliusCaesar,or example- we know them, more obviously, hrough descriptions:as, tokeep he same nstance,the man whocrossedhe Rubicon'.On the faceof it, this s an odd doctrine. JuliusCaesar' s notthe sort of thing we should ordinarily call 'a description',andin such assertions s JuliusCaesar rossedhe Rubicon' JuliusCaesar eemsobewhat wearcdescribing, ot a description.But,Russell objects, we cannot possibly talk about anything whichlies beyond the reach of our acquaintance; this proposition,therefore, cannot .be about Julius Caesar, grammatical ap-pearan@so the contrary notwithstanding. Every propositionwhich wecan understand,' e says,must be composedwholly ofconstituents ith which weare acquainted.'Apropositionwhichappe:trs o be about Julius Caesarmust really be about certainsense-datasomething,in this case, hat we have been told orhave read) and certain universals. Thus just as the author ofWaverleys not the true subjectof propositionsike 'the authorof Waverley s Scotch', so, too, according to Russell.JuliusCaesars not the true subjectof propositionsike 'JuliusCaesarcrossedhe Rubicon'. Although'thedetailsare complicated, uchpropositions,he thinks, can be reducedby the methodscharac-teristic of his 'theory of descriptions'to propositionswhich,without mentioning Julius Caesar,still manage o conveyallthat he originalpropositionasserted.Theproblemnow arises what aboutour knowledgeofgeneralprinciples? s that reducible o statements bout objectswithwhich we are acquainted?There is no difficulty, on Russell'sview, about mathematicalpropositions; these, he thinks, relate

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universals, and we are acquainted with universals. But theinductive principle he finds more puzzting. Like Hume, hethinks that if this principle is unsound, we haveno reason oexpect he sun to rise tomorrow, or to expectbread o be morenourishing han a stone'; but, also ike Hume, he doesnot seehow the inductive principle can either be a relation betweenuniversalsor an inferencefrom experience.He is forced to theconclusion,highly uncomfortablealthough t is, that .all know_ledgewhich is basedupon what we haveexperienceds basedupon a beliefexperience an neitherconfirm nor refute and yetwhich seemso be as firmly rooted as any of the facts of ix-perience'.This wasone of the soreplacesn his philosophy;hisattempt$ o heal t were inally to lead, n hisHumanKnowledge:Its Scopeand Limits (1949), o a position considerablyemotefromThe ProblemsofPhilosophy.Another sore place was the status of the physical object.Physicss supposedo be an empiricalscience, et _ as Russellpointed out in his essayon .The Relation of Sense_DataoPhysics' (Scientia, 1914, reprinted tn Mysticism and Logic,l9l7) - physics tself tells us that what we perceive s somethinientirely different in character from the entities which form thisubject-matterof physics. Moleculeshavenocolour, atomsmakeno noise, electronshave no taste, and corpusclesdo not evensmell' - yet what we directly experience s always a colour, asound, a taste or a smell. How then, Russellasks,can theexistenceof physical objectsbe verified by the sense_dataeexperience? e had so far presumedhat the existence f suchentities ansomehow e nferred rom sense-data.ut hecame oagreewith Berkeley hat such an inference_ to entities quitedifferent in nature from anything we can experience_ is inprinciple impossible.Unlessphysicalobjectsare in somewayreducibleto sense-data, hysicsmust, he thinks, be a merefantasy.rr fhs difficulties in such a reduction were, on the face of it,insuperable. ense-data,s hey had ordinarilybeendefned,aresubjective nd discontinuous;physicalobjectsare objectiveandcontinuous.Different personsexperiencencompatiblesense_data; howcanapenny,say, onsistofthe roundsense_datumouexperienceand the elliptical sense-datum experience?With the

help of lessonshe had learnt from the New Realists- especiallyT. P. Nunn and S. Alexander n Englandand E. B. Holt in theUnited States26 Russell thought he could overcome theseobjections.The major points2z re, first, that a sense-datums not'sub-jective' - it is neithera mental statenor a constituent n suchastate;secondly,hat once his is recognized,here s in principleno difficulty in supposing hat there are 'sensibilia' - objects'which have he samemetaphysical nd physicalstatusassense-data but which are not actually being perceivedby anybody';and thirdly, that the supposed incompatibility' of sense-datarests on a simple-minded onception of spaceand time. Sincesense-data reobjective, he argument hen runs,physicatobjectscan be defined as series of sense-data, inked together by sen-sibilia.The supposedly' ncompatible'sense-data ill be differentmembers,n different private spaces',of such a seriesof sense-data. Thus, according o Russe[ a penny, or example, onsistsof the elliptical sense-datumwhich occurs in your private spaceand the round sense-datum hat occurs n my private space,together with various other sense-datan other private spaces.These various appearances, e says, orm 'one thing', in thesense hat they 'behavewith respect o the laws of physics,n away in which seriesnot belonging to one thing would in generalnot behave' - at least, this is true of the 'things' with whichphysicss concerned. he''things'of commonsense,ccording oRussell, are conceivedwith so little precisionthat a satisfactoryaccountof their construction s scarcelypossible.Physics,Russellconcludes,stands n no need of'physicalobjects'understoodas somethingwholly distinct n nature romsense-data. nd it is, he says, he suprememaximof all scientificphilosophizing hat' wherever ossiblb,ogicalconstructions reto be substitutedfor nferredentities'.28 hus ifphysical objectscan be constructedout of sense-data, 'scientific' philosopherought obviously to abandonthe doctrine, which Russell hadheld n TheProblems f Philosophy,hat their existence as o be'inferred' as a relativelysimpleexplanationof the sense-data eexperience.At this stage n Russell'sphilosophy, hen, the world as hescientific philosopher sees t consists of sensedata, universals,,t

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andmental facts.Russellhad by now rejected heview that wearedirectly acquaintedwith a self over and aboveparticurar mentalfacts; he still held,however, hat mental factsare quite distinctfrom sense-data. elieving, willing, wishing, experiencing,hethought,aremental acts;what sexperienced, illed,wished or,in contrast,sa series fsense-data.Belief,however,wasanembarrassmento him, as became ar-ticularly clear when, partly under Wittgenstein's nfluence,hetried to formulate what he called .the philosophy of logicalatomism.'2eThe philosophy of logical atomism, as Russellconceivest, is an attempt to describe he kind of factsthereare-just as zoology tries to describe he diflerent typesof animal. Hestill, that is, acceptsMoore'sviewthatphilosophy ries o give.ageneraldescriptionof the wholeuniverse,.Russellbeginswith adescription of the fundamentarconstituenrs f facts - the logicalatoms. These,Russellnot surprisinglymaintains,are of twokinds, sense-data nd universals.An

.atomicfactt _ a typicatexample s ,4 ir beforeB, where I and B are sense_data hasthese asicelements s ts constituents.Factscan be particular, ike .this is white', or universal, ike'all men are mortal'. It is impossible o regard the world asw-hollycomposedof particular facts, Russell says,becausehatview would itself involve thegeneralfact that at;mic factsaf,eallthe facts that there are. And once this general fact is admitted,there seems o be no good reason for not admitting others.Again, a fact may be either negativeor a.ffirmative.Somefactsare 'completely general' - referring not to particurar entitiesbutonly to the general orm (or .syntax,)of statements these,hethinks'are the factsof logic.And thenthereare actsabout a,ctsandsoon.Thereare not, however, rue factsandfalse acts_only proposi-tionscanbe rue or falseanda proposition,Russellnow sayg sasymbol,not a fact. .If you were making an inventory of theworld,'he writes, propositionswouldnot come n. Factswould,beliefs,wishes,wills,would, but propositionswouldnot.' It is in

the classification f 'propositions' that Russell's roublesaboutbeliefarise.Propositions,accordingto Russell, fall into two classes-atomic and molecular. All molecular propositions can be ep234

pressedas 'truth functions' of atomic propositions i.e. theirtruth or falsity is wholly determinedby the truth or falsity of theatomic propositions which make them up. The truth of anatomic proposition, on the other hand, can be decidedonly bypassingbeyond the proposition to the fact which it depicts. Thugto take the simplest case, he molecular proposition p and q istrue if the atomic propositions p, q are both true and is false ifeither of them is false, but the truth of p is independent of thetruth of anyother proposition.The problem for Russell is to fit propositions about mentalfacts nto this classification.s'I believe hat xisy'an atomic or amolecular proposition? It looks like a molecular propositionwith two constituents I believeand x rsy. But the difficulty withthis view is that the truth or falsity of .r ir y is quite irrelevanttothetruthof'Ibelievethatxis y' ; x is y, therefore,s not a'constituent' n' I believe hat xisy'in thesensehatp is acon-stituent n 'p and 4'. A belief,Russellhas o conclude, s 'a newspecies or the zoo'. Yet there is something unsatisfactory aboutthis conclusion; mental facts do not seem o bemarked offfromother factsby logical peouliarities.If, on the other hand, 'I believe hat x isy' can be reformulated,in the behaviourist manner, as when I encounteran x, I react insuchand sucha way'- rf, for example,I believe hat snakes redangerous' is a way of saying such things as that 'when I see asnake, pick up astick' - then therewill beno need o distinguishbeliefs, or other 'mental facts', as a peculiar logical species.Thus it is not surprising that Russellmoved in this direction inThe Arulysis of Mind; significantly, he asked the behaviouristJ. B. Watson andthe realist T. P. Nunn to read his proofs.roRussell s now in violent reaction against he wholo pattern ofideaswithin which his own and Moore's earlier theories hadbeenworkedout; in particular,he ejects utrightBrentano's efinitionof psychic phenomena.He no longer believes hat the essenceof such a phenomenonconsists n the fact that it 'points to anobject'; indeedhe can seeno reason or maintaining hat thereare either 'acts' or 'objects'. 'Instead of saying"I think", itwould be better,' he writes, in a passagewhich echoes Mach,' to say it thinks n me" or better still " there s a thought in me".'The form of the sentence I think of x' suggests mmediately

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A YEARSOF PHILOSOPSYthat there is an act of thinking and an object of that apt: but inreality, Russell s now arguing, there is only the thought, whichis'in me'in the sensehat it formspart of that series f eventsreferred to by the word 'I'. Whereashe had previously, ikeMoore, insistedon the distinctionbetweensensation nd sense-datahe now rejects ensation sapurelymythical act,.

This is as far as Russellever went in the direction of neutralmonism; in The Analysisof Matter - in which he comes o termswith Einstein'snew physics' he turns harda-port to somethingmore like, although very different from, that 'inferential' theoryof physical objectswhich he had maintainedtn TheproblemsofPhilosophy,The sense-dataofTheAnalysisof Mind,evenalthoughthey do not depend or their existenceon somethingmental, areyet 'subjective' n a wider sense;hey existonly in relation to ahuman neryous system. Indeed, Russell identffies them withstates f that humanbrainwhich sordinarily said o .experience'them. It is obvious,he says, hat the actualprocess fsensing sin the human brain; the processof seusing,he has argued, isidenticalwith the sense-datumensed;t follows that the sense-datum, too, must be 'in the brain'.31When the physiologistexaminesa brain what he is immediately considering must bestatesof his own brain, not of thebrain which he s attempting todesciibe.Russell cameto feel, however, that the physical objds them-selvescannotbe thus dependenton the existenceof our nervoussystem, .e. that physicalobjects are not, after all, sets of sense-data. He had already admitted 'sensibilia' over and abovesense-data.Why stopat that point,hebegan o ask? It is mpossibleolay down a hard-and-fast rule,' he wrote, 'that we can nevervalidly infer something radically different from what we observe. . . unless ndeedwe takeup theposition that nothing unobservedcan ever be validly inferred.This view . . . hasmuch in its f4vour,from the standpoint of a strict logic; but it puts an end tophysics.'Andphysics,Russellwasdeterminedo retain.

The prgblem,ashe seest, is the old one: how is the sun amnow seeing elated to the sun of the astronomer,which is not'now but eightminutesaway,not hot or bright,andverydifferentin its structurefrom anything I can hope to experience?We caninfer the existenceof the astronomer'ssun, Russellargues,only236

becausehere is a continuoussingle causalchainrz nking eventsin our nervous systemwith events n the sun. The inferencecannever be urnexrt one, becausehe causal chain is not completelyisolated; it is interfered with, in various ways, by other similarchains,and thesedisturbancespreventusfrom inferring preciselywhat lies at the end of any process erminating in our nervoussystem.But if it were not for the possibility of somesuch in-ference,Russell a^rgues,we could never pass beyond what hecalls'a solipsismof the moment': we would take nothing toexistexcept he transientsense-datum a position, he says,whichalthpugh it is logica[y unassailableno human being can con-sistently maintain.The twists and turns in Russell'sargument alter The Analysisof Matter we cannot follow in detail. But a few points can bepicked out for specialconsideration,becausehey bear on thosecontinual preoccupationsof Russell'sphilosophy which we haveparticularly emphasized.He is still trying to work towards asatisfactory theory of belief, still worried about the relationbetweenphysicsand perception, but he seesnew difficultieg aswell, in his earlier views. From the beginning Russell has pre-sumed that there are in our experience particulars', which arenarnedby 'logically proper' names.At frst, 'I', 'that table','Julius Caesar'wereall regardedas ogically proper names,eachreferring to some unique entity with which we are acquaintedand which we can dessribeby means of universals.But as histheory of denoting-developed, these all ceased to b

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Passmore - Moore and Russell