Category: Russell
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Russell’s Leaky Teapot Revisited
Gary Gutting recently interviewed Alvin Plantinga in the pages of The New York Times and brought up the business about Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot. The following response of Gutting to Plantinga comes early on in the interview: G.G.: You say atheism requires evidence to support it. Many atheists deny this, saying that all they need…
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More on Translating ‘Something Exists’ and a Response to Brightly
I issued the following challenge: translate 'Something exists' into standard first-order predicate logic with identity. This is the logic whose sources are Frege and Russell. So I call it Frege-Russell logic, or, to be cute, 'Fressellian' logic. My esteemed commenters don''t see much of a problem here. So let me first try to explain why…
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On Translating ‘Some Individual Exists’ Fressellianly
An astute reader comments: You write: 2. But can this presupposition be expressed (said) in this logic? Here is a little challenge for you Fressellians: translate 'Something exists' into standard logical notion. You will discover that it cannot be done. Briefly, if existence is instantiation, which property is it whose instantiation is the existence of…
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The Philosophical Foundations of Slackerdom
Ludwig Wittgenstein took a dim view of Bertrand Russell's nontechnical writings. They would include such provocative pieces as In Praise of Idleness.
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Why Wittgenstein was a Better Man than Russell
Russell worried about logic. Wittgenstein worried about logic and his sins.
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The Wit and Wisdom of Bertrand Russell
Ludwig Wittgenstein sometimes shot his mouth off in summary judgment of men of very high caliber. He once remarked to M. O'C. Drury, "Russell's books should be bound in two colours: those dealing with mathematical logic in red — and all students of philosophy should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue…
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An Argument of Russell Against Mental Acts
Bertrand Russell's (1872-1970) The Analysis of Mind first appeared in 1921. Lecture I contains a discussion of Brentano, Meinong, and mental acts. He quotes the famous Brentano passage from the 1874 Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, and then confesses that until very lately he believed "that mental phenomena have essential reference to objects . . .'" but…
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Bertrand Russell on Arabic Philosophy
The following passage is from Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Simon & Shuster, 1945), p. 427. I found it here, but without a link and without a reference. So, exploiting the resources of my well-stocked library, I located the passage, and verified that it had been properly transcribed. Whether Russell is…
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Russell’s Teapot: Does it Hold Water?
Here is a famous passage from Bertrand Russell's Is There a God? Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a…