Abstract
Russell’s discussion of belief in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism is brief, tentative, and mostly negative. The standard view has been that in the lectures, Russell no longer believed in the multiple-relation theory of judgment but was not yet in a position to articulate an alternative conception of belief; that came only a little later, with the psychological account of belief that is found in such works as On Propositions (1919) and The Analysis of Mind (1921). In this paper, I challenge the standard view. First, I present evidence to support the claim that the views that Russell held in 1918 at least leave room for a version of the multiple-relation theory, albeit one that would be rather different from the view he held before. Second, I consider some key developments in Russell’s thinking about judgment during 1913–1918. These developments indicate the direction in which he may have been moving. Third, I present some speculation—partly relying on a recent work by Fraser MacBride—regarding a positive account of judgment in Russell’s lectures; an important connection that emerges from this speculation is one between the multiple-relation theory of judgment and the distinction between positive and negative facts.
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Notes
- 1.
Russell says they might also be called “attitudes”, but he explains that he does not like the term, because there is at least the possibility that not all such verbs are really psychological (PLA: 199).
- 2.
Russell uses “verb” ambiguously to mean either a linguistic expression, a member in a word class, or (more often) what is expressed by a word in this class; cf. the discussion of atomic facts and particulars in (PLA: 177–8).
- 3.
Russell (MsN: 265, 268).
- 4.
Neutral monism—mostly that of William James—is discussed at length in the Theory of Knowledge manuscript; see Russell (TK: Part I, Chaps. II and III), which were separately published in Russell OKEW (1914).
- 5.
One of his prison-letters to his brother Frank shows Russell in the middle of this change: “there seems to me a lot of interesting work to be done on Facts, Judgments, and propositions. I had given up Logic years ago in despair of finding out anything more about it but now begin to see new hope. Approaching the old questions from a radically new point of view, as I have been doing lately, makes new ideas possible” (letter to Frank Russell, dated July 1, 1918; quoted in CPBR 8: 248–9).
- 6.
Russell makes the same point in Lecture IV in his brief criticism of the neutral monist theory of belief, which dispenses with belief as an isolated phenomenon and substitutes for it a behavioristic account of propositional attitudes on which the “logical essence” of an attitudinal fact does not involve propositional reference but a causal chain linking a bodily behavior to a suitable external object (PLA: 195–6). To resolve the dispute, Russell argues, one would have to plunge deep into psychology, which he is not willing to do.
- 7.
A very clear formulation of the standard story is found, for example, in Candlish (2007: Chap. 3).
- 8.
- 9.
See Wittgenstein (1922: 5.541–5.5422).
- 10.
The manuscript notes that Russell composed in 1918 after the logical atomism lectures strongly suggest that the imperative of discarding the “pin-point subject” came upon him through a continued reflection on neutral monism, as in the following passage: “It must not be assumed that believing, wishing, etc. are irreducible phenomena. If this is assumed, it is very hard to avoid the pin-point Subject, which ought to be avoided if possible. This problem, of getting rid of the pin-point Subject, is a vital one in this topic” (MsN: 268). The topic is “Propositions”.
- 11.
“Understatement” is Landini’s (2011: 270) characterization of Russell’s comment on his mrtj in the logical atomism lectures.
- 12.
This label and my description of Wittgenstein’s objection show that I take for granted a simple and straightforward reading of Wittgenstein’s criticism of Russell’s theory of judgment. Wittgenstein’s criticism is formulated in his characteristically brusque and sweeping manner, which gives the conclusion but omits the underlying reasoning (Wrinch 1919: 324–5 gives an equally uncompromising reply to the Wittgenstein-type objection to mrtj, chalking it up to a “lingering belief in the unity of a proposition”). What matters here, however, are not the details of Wittgenstein’s objection but Russell’s use of that objection in the spring of 1914 and thereafter and here the straightforward formulation is the gist of the matter; see Sect. 5.
- 13.
Recall that in late May 1913, Russell and Wittgenstein were engaged in a rather heated exchange over the theory of judgment. In a well-known letter to Lady Ottoline, written on May 27, 1913, Russell told about a meeting with Wittgenstein on the previous day: “Wittgenstein came to see me—we were both cross from the heat—I showed him a crucial part of what I have been writing. He said it was all wrong, not realizing the difficulties, that he had tried my view and knew it wouldn’t work” (Griffin 1992: 459). There are reasons to think that the “crucial parts” contained Russell’s discussion of the notion of logical form, since Russell had composed that part of the manuscript immediately before their meeting (for a discussion, see Connelly 2014). It is not implausible, then, that Russell’s working notes were a reaction to this incident. On the other hand, they contain ideas that are clearly reminiscent of Wittgenstein’s Notes on Logic. (See Carey 2003b.) This observation in itself fixes nothing, but it might be taken to suggest that Russell’s notes were composed at some later date. The matter deserves further investigation.
- 14.
The latter suggestion is made by Bonino (2008: 88).
- 15.
Some of the ideas that Russell sketches in the notes are significantly similar to the psychological theory of judgment that he worked out after PLA. With that theory, neutral facts make a kind of return. In the psychological theory, propositions in the fundamental sense are image propositions standing in the relation of objective reference to ±-facts, which are truth- and falsehood-makers; see Russell (OP: Sects. 3 and 4) and Russell (AMi: Lecture 13). Russell (AMi: 272) attributes this basic idea to Wittgenstein, and in working it out, he makes further use of Wittgenstein’s ideas, including the twin-notions of propositions as facts and as pictures. It is clear, however, that the picture theory was tailor-made to suit Wittgenstein’s notion of an atomic proposition, which is quite different from Russell’s. Hence, in fact, Russell had difficulties weaving the different ideas together into a coherent whole. Arguably, it is here that “neutral fact” finds room as the neutral element shared by a proposition and a ±-fact. This development, though, lies outside the scope of the present chapter.
- 16.
Philosophy 21: Advanced Logic, Harvard University, 1914; Notes by T. S. Eliot. The material is kept in Harvard University Library. I am grateful to Professor Bernard Linsky for access to transcribed material.
- 17.
See Linsky’s chapter in this volume.
- 18.
In the version of Notes on Logic that Russell took to Harvard, there is the following remark: “A proper theory of judgment must make it impossible to judge nonsense” (Wittgenstein 1913: 97). This claim is immediately preceded by an explanation that on Wittgenstein’s theory of the proposition, “p has the same meaning as not-p but opposite sense”. This latter point is found in Eliot’s notes on April 11, although there Russell uses a slightly different terminology, “denotation” instead of “meaning”.
- 19.
Theory of Knowledge: Philosophy 9c, Harvard 1914; Notes by Victor F. Lenzen, edited by Bernard Linsky. Lenzen’s notes are kept in the Bertrand Russell Archives, and can be accessed through Digital Archive at McMaster University Library. Thanks to the Bertrand Russell Archives in the William Ready Division of Research Collections, McMaster University Library, for permission to use unpublished materials.
- 20.
One particularly appealing feature of Russell’s new doctrine of universals, also noted by MacBride (2013: 233), was that it promised a way out of the puzzle that F. H. Bradley had formulated for relational thought. Bradley’s case against the metaphysical validity of relational thought depends on what looks like an annoyingly simple dilemma: either a relation is something to its terms or else it is nothing to its terms; if it is nothing to its terms, then the terms are not related; but if it is something to them, then that requires a new connecting relation, and we have made no progress in explaining the fact of relatedness (Bradley 1893: 21). Thanks to his “Wittgensteinian turn”, Russell is now in a position to argue that Bradley was misled by grammar: “Bradley conceives a relation as something as substantial as its terms, and not radically different in kind”, and in so doing he has been misled by “the fact that the word for a relation is as substantial as the words for its terms” (OoP: 252); see also Russell (LA: 332–8).
- 21.
See Russell (PLA: 187–90).
- 22.
Wittgenstein (1913: 93–4); cf. Russell (AMi: 271–3).
- 23.
See Russell’s discussion of Demos and negative propositions: Russell (PLA: 187–8).
- 24.
For the criticism, see Prior (1971: Chap. 1.4).
- 25.
Prior (1971: 9) notes Russell’s change of mind in the logical atomism lectures from mrtj to the two verbs view, but doesn’t elaborate on its implications for Russell.
- 26.
Since predicates live in sentences, the view that understanding a name is fundamentally different from understanding a predicate is just one facet of the deep contrast between names and sentences, a doctrine that Russell got from Wittgenstein; see (PLA: 167–8).
- 27.
Russell (CPBR 9: 8) explains that we cannot say that a false proposition “means the fact which would make it true if it were true, since there is no such fact”.
- 28.
See (OP: 279–80).
- 29.
I am grateful to participants in the Centenary Celebration of Russell’s Lectures for comments and lively discussions. Research for this chapter was supported by a grant from the Alfred Kordelin Foundation.
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Korhonen, A. (2018). Russell’s Discussion of Judgment in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism: Did Russell Have a Theory of Judgment in 1918?. In: Elkind, L., Landini, G. (eds) The Philosophy of Logical Atomism. History of Analytic Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94364-0_10
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