Bertrand Russell

Bertrand Russell
First published Thu Dec 7, 1995; substantive revision Mon Mar 29, 2010
Bertrand Arthur William Russell (b.1872 – d.1970) was a British philosopher, logician, essayist
and social critic best known for his work in mathematical logic and analytic philosophy. His most
influential contributions include his defense of logicism (the view that mathematics is in some
important sense reducible to logic), his refining of the predicate calculus introduced by Gottlob
Frege (which still forms the basis of most contemporary logic), his defense of neutral monism
(the view that the world consists of just one type of substance that is neither exclusively mental
nor exclusively physical), and his theories of definite descriptions and logical atomism. Along
with G.E. Moore, Russell is generally recognized as one of the founders of modern analytic
philosophy. Along with Kurt Gödel, he is regularly credited with being one of the most important
logicians of the twentieth century.
Over the course of his long career, Russell made significant contributions, not just to logic and
philosophy, but to a broad range of subjects including education, history, political theory and
religious studies. In addition, many of his writings on a variety of topics in both the sciences and
the humanities have influenced generations of general readers.
After a life marked by controversy—including dismissals from both Trinity College, Cambridge,
and City College, New York—Russell was awarded the Order of Merit in 1949 and the Nobel
Prize for Literature in 1950. Noted for his many spirited anti-war and anti-nuclear protests,
Russell remained a prominent public figure until his death at the age of 97.
• 1. A Chronology of Russell's Life

• 2. Russell's Work in Logic
• 3. Russell's Work in Analytic Philosophy
• 4. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions
• 5. Russell's Neutral Monism
• 6. Russell's Social and Political Philosophy
• Bibliography
o Primary Literature: Russell's Writings
o Secondary Literature
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries
Interested readers may also wish to listen to two sound clips of Russell speaking.
1. A Chronology of Russell's Life
A short chronology of the major events in Russell's life is as follows:
• (1872) Born May 18 at Ravenscroft, Wales.

• (1874) Death of mother and sister.
• (1876) Death of father; Russell's grandfather, Lord John Russell (the former Prime
Minister), and grandmother succeed in overturning Russell's father's will to win custody
of Russell and his brother.
• (1878) Death of grandfather; Russell's grandmother, Lady Russell, supervises Russell's
upbringing.
• (1890) Enters Trinity College, Cambridge.
• (1893) Awarded first-class B.A. in Mathematics.
• (1894) Completes the Moral Sciences Tripos (Part II).
• (1894) Marries Alys Pearsall Smith.
• (1896) Appointed lecturer at the London School of Economics.
• (1899) Appointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge.
• (1900) Meets Peano at International Congress in Paris.
• (1901) Discovers Russell's paradox.
• (1902) Corresponds with Frege.
• (1905) Develops his theory of descriptions.
• (1906) Elected to the London Mathematical Society.
• (1907) Runs for parliament and is defeated.
• (1908) Elected Fellow of the Royal Society.
• (1911) Meets Wittgenstein and is elected President of the Aristotelian Society.
• (1916) Fined 110 pounds and dismissed from Trinity College as a result of anti-war
protests.
• (1918) Imprisoned for five months as a result of anti-war protests.
• (1921) Divorce from Alys and marriage to Dora Black.
• (1927) Opens experimental school with Dora.
• (1931) Becomes the third Earl Russell upon the death of his brother.
• (1935) Divorce from Dora.
• (1936) Marriage to Patricia (Peter) Helen Spence.
• (1939) Appointed professor of philosophy at the University of California at Los Angeles.
• (1940) Appointment at City College New York revoked prior to Russell's arrival as a
result of public protests and a legal judgment in which Russell was found morally unfit to
teach at the college.
• (1943) Dismissed from Barnes Foundation in Pennsylvania, but wins a suit against the
Foundation for wrongful dismissal.
• (1949) Awarded the Order of Merit.
• (1950) Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
• (1952) Divorce from Patrica (Peter) and marriage to Edith Finch.
• (1955) Releases Russell-Einstein Manifesto.
• (1957) Elected President of the first Pugwash Conference.
• (1958) Becomes founding President of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.
• (1961) Imprisoned for one week in connection with anti-nuclear protests.
• (1963) Establishes the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.
• (1970) Dies February 02 at Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.
As A.J. Ayer writes (1972, 127), “The popular conception of a philosopher as one who combines
universal learning with the direction of human conduct was more nearly satisfied by Bertrand
Russell than by any other philosopher of our time,” and as W.V. Quine tells us (1966c, 657), “I
think many of us were drawn to our profession by Russell's books. He wrote a spectrum of books
for a graduated public, layman to specialist. We were beguiled by the wit and a sense of new-
found clarity with respect to central traits of reality.” Even so, perhaps the most memorable
summing up of Russell's life comes from Russell himself:
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love,
the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like
great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a deep ocean of
anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair. … This has been my life. I have found it worth
living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me. (1967, I, 3–4)
For further information about Russell's life, readers are encouraged to consult Russell's four
autobiographical volumes, My Philosophical Development (London: George Allen and Unwin,
1959) and The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, London: George Allen and Unwin,
1967, 1968, 1969). In addition, John Slater's accessible and informative Bertrand Russell (Bristol:
Thoemmes, 1994) gives a helpful and accessible short introduction to Russell's life, work and
influence. Other sources of biographical information include Ronald Clark's The Life of Bertrand
Russell (London: Jonathan Cape, 1975), Ray Monk's Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude
(London: Jonathan Cape, 1996) and Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness (London: Jonathan
Cape, 2000), as well as the first volume of A.D. Irvine's Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments
(London: Routledge, 1999).
Over the years, Russell has also been the subject of numerous other works, including Bruce
Duffy's novel The World as I Found It (New York: Ticknor & Fields, 1987) and the graphic
novel by Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth
(New York: St Martin's Press, 2009).
For a chronology of Russell's major publications, readers are encouraged to consult the Primary
Literature: Russell's Writings section of the Bibliography below. For a more complete list, see A
Bibliography of Bertrand Russell (3 vols, London: Routledge, 1994), by Kenneth Blackwell and
Harry Ruja. A less detailed, but still comprehensive, list appears in Paul Arthur Schilpp, The
Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, 3rd edn (New York: Harper and Row, 1963), pp. 746–803. For a
bibliography of the secondary literature surrounding Russell up to the close of the twentieth
century, see A.D. Irvine, Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge,
1999), pp. 247–312.
2. Russell's Work in Logic
Russell's main contributions to logic and the foundations of mathematics include his discovery of
Russell's paradox, his defense of logicism (the view that mathematics is, in some significant
sense, reducible to formal logic), his development of the theory of types, his impressively general
theory of logical relations, his formalization of the reals, and his refining of the first-order
predicate calculus.
Russell discovered the paradox that bears his name in 1901, while working on his Principles of
Mathematics (1903). The paradox arises in connection with the set of all sets that are not
members of themselves. Such a set, if it exists, will be a member of itself if and only if it is not a
member of itself. The paradox is significant since, using classical logic, all sentences are entailed
by a contradiction. Russell's discovery thus prompted a large amount of work in logic, set theory,
and the philosophy and foundations of mathematics.
Russell's response to the paradox came with the development of his theory of types between 1903
and 1908. It was clear to Russell that some form of restriction needed to be placed on the original
comprehension (or abstraction) axiom of naive set theory, the axiom that formalizes the intuition
that any coherent condition or property may be used to determine a set (or class). Russell's basic
idea was that reference to sets such as the set of all sets that are not members of themselves could
be avoided by arranging all sentences into a hierarchy, beginning with sentences about
individuals at the lowest level, sentences about sets of individuals at the next lowest level,
sentences about sets of sets of individuals at the next lowest level, and so on. Using a vicious
circle principle similar to that adopted by the mathematician Henri Poincaré, together with his
own so-called “no class” theory of classes, Russell was able to explain why the unrestricted
comprehension axiom fails: propositional functions, such as the function “x is a set,” may not be
applied to themselves since self-application would involve a vicious circle. On Russell's view, all
objects for which a given condition (or predicate) holds must be at the same level or of the same
“type.” Sentences about these objects will then always be higher in the hierarchy than the objects
themselves.
Although first introduced in 1903, the theory of types was further developed by Russell in his
1908 article “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types” and in the three-volume
work he co-authored with Alfred North Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913).
Thus the theory admits of two versions, the “simple theory” of 1903 and the “ramified theory” of
1908. Both versions of the theory came under attack: the simple theory for being too weak, and
the ramified theory for being too strong. For some, it was important that any proposed solution be
comprehensive enough to resolve all known paradoxes at once.[1] For others, it was important that
any proposed solution not disallow those parts of classical mathematics that remained consistent,
even though they appeared to violate the vicious circle principle.
Russell himself had recognized many of these weaknesses, noting as early as 1903 that it was
unlikely that any single solution would resolve all of the known paradoxes. Together with
Whitehead, he was also able to introduce a new axiom, the axiom of reducibility, which lessened
the vicious circle principle's scope of application and so resolved many of the most worrisome
aspects of type theory. Even so, some critics claimed that the axiom was too ad hoc to be justified
philosophically.
Of equal significance during this period was Russell's defense of logicism, the theory that
mathematics is in some important sense reducible to logic. First defended in his 1901 article
“Recent Work on the Principles of Mathematics,” and then later in greater detail in his Principles
of Mathematics and in Principia Mathematica, Russell's logicism consisted of two main theses.
The first was that all mathematical truths can be translated into logical truths or, in other words,
that the vocabulary of mathematics constitutes a proper subset of the vocabulary of logic. The
second was that all mathematical proofs can be recast as logical proofs or, in other words, that the
theorems of mathematics constitute a proper subset of the theorems of logic.
Like Gottlob Frege, Russell's basic idea for defending logicism was that numbers may be
identified with classes of classes and that number-theoretic statements may be explained in terms
of quantifiers and identity. Thus the number 1 would be identified with the class of all unit
classes, the number 2 with the class of all two-membered classes, and so on. Statements such as
“There are at least two books” would be recast as statements such as “There is a book, x, and
there is a book, y, and x is not identical to y.” Statements such as “There are exactly two books”
would be recast as “There is a book, x, and there is a book, y, and x is not identical to y, and if
there is a book, z, then z is identical to either x or y.” It followed that number-theoretic operations
could be explained in terms of set-theoretic operations such as intersection, union, and difference.
In Principia Mathematica, Whitehead and Russell were able to provide many detailed derivations
of major theorems in set theory, finite and transfinite arithmetic, and elementary measure theory.
A fourth volume on geometry was planned but never completed.
Russell's most important writings relating to these topics include not only Principles of
Mathematics (1903), “Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types” (1908), and
Principia Mathematica (1910, 1912, 1913), but also his earlier An Essay on the Foundations of
Geometry (1897), and his Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy (1919a), the last of which
was largely written while Russell was serving time in Brixton Prison as a result of his anti-war
activities. Coincidentally, it was at roughly this same time (1918–19) that Wittgenstein was
completing his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus while being detained as a prisoner of war at
Monte Cassino during World War I.
3. Russell's Work in Analytic Philosophy
In much the same way that Russell used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in the foundations of
mathematics, he also used logic in an attempt to clarify issues in philosophy. As one of the
founders of analytic philosophy, Russell made significant contributions to a wide variety of areas,
including metaphysics, epistemology, ethics and political theory. According to Russell, it is the
philosopher's job to discover a logically ideal language — a language that will exhibit the true
nature of the world in such a way that we will not be misled by the accidental surface structure of
natural language. Just as atomic facts (the association of universals with an appropriate number of
individuals) may be combined into molecular facts in the world itself, such a language would
allow for the description of such combinations using logical connectives such as “and” and “or.”
In addition to atomic and molecular facts, Russell also held that general facts (facts about “all” of
something) were needed to complete the picture of the world. Famously, he vacillated on whether
negative facts were also required.
The reason Russell believes that many ordinarily accepted statements may be open to doubt is
that they appear to refer to entities that are known only inferentially. Thus, underlying Russell's
various projects was not only Russell's use of logical analysis, but also his long-standing aim of
discovering whether, and to what extent, knowledge is possible. “There is one great question,” he
writes in 1911. “Can human beings know anything, and if so, what and how? This question is
really the most essentially philosophical of all questions” (quoted in Slater 1994, 67).
Motivating this question was the traditional problem of the external world. If our knowledge of
the external world comes through inference to the best explanation, and if such inferences are
always fallible, what guarantee do we have that our beliefs are reliable? Russell's response was
partly metaphysical and partly epistemological. On the metaphysical side, Russell developed his
famous theory of logical atomism, in which the world is said to consist of a complex of logical
atoms (such as “little patches of colour”) and their properties. Together these atoms and their
properties form the atomic facts which, in turn, are combined to form logically complex objects.
What we normally take to be inferred entities (for example, enduring physical objects) are then
understood to be logical constructions formed from the immediately given entities of sensation,
viz., “sensibilia.”
On the epistemological side, Russell argued that it was also important to show that each
questionable entity may be reduced to, or defined in terms of, another entity (or class of entities)
whose existence is more certain. For example, on this view, an ordinary physical object that
normally might be believed to be known only through inference may be defined instead as a
certain series of appearances, connected with each other by continuity and by certain causal
laws. ... More generally, a ‘thing’ will be defined as a certain series of aspects, namely those
which would commonly be said to be of the thing. To say that a certain aspect is an aspect of a
certain thing will merely mean that it is one of those which, taken serially, are the thing. (1914a,
106–107)
The reason we are able to do this is that our world is not wholly a matter of inference. There are
things that we know without asking the opinion of men of science. If you are too hot or too cold,
you can be perfectly aware of this fact without asking the physicist what heat and cold consist of.
… We may give the name ‘data’ to all the things of which we are aware without inference (1959,
23).
We can then use these data (or sensibilia or sense data) with which we are directly acquainted to
construct the relevant objects of knowledge. Similarly, numbers may be reduced to collections of
classes, points and instants may be reduced to ordered classes of volumes and events, and classes
themselves may be reduced to propositional functions.
It is with these kinds of examples in mind that Russell suggests that we adopt what he calls “the
supreme maxim in scientific philosophizing”, namely the principle that “Whenever possible,
logical constructions”, or as he also sometimes puts it, logical fictions, “are to be substituted for
inferred entities” (1914c, 155; cf. 1914a, 107, and 1924, 326). Anything that resists construction
in this sense may be said to be an ontological atom. Such objects are atomic, both in the sense
that they fail to be composed of individual, substantial parts, and in the sense that they exist
independently of one another. Their corresponding propositions are also atomic, both in the sense
that they contain no other propositions as parts, and in the sense that the members of any pair of
true atomic propositions will be logically independent of one another. It turns out that formal
logic, if carefully developed, will mirror precisely, not only the various relations between all such
propositions, but their various internal structures as well.
It is in this context that Russell also introduces his famous distinction between two kinds of
knowledge of truths: that which is direct, intuitive, certain and infallible, and that which is
indirect, derivative, uncertain and open to error (see 1905, 41f; 1911, 1912, and 1914b). To be
justified, every indirect knowledge claim must be capable of being derived from more
fundamental, direct or intuitive knowledge claims. The kinds of truths that are capable of being
known directly include both truths about immediate facts of sensation and truths of logic.[2]
Eventually, Russell supplemented this distinction between direct and indirect knowledge with his
famous distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. As
Russell explains, “I say that I am acquainted with an object when I have a direct cognitive
relation to that object, i.e. when I am directly aware of the object itself. When I speak of a
cognitive relation here, I do not mean the sort of relation which constitutes judgment, but the sort
which constitutes presentation” (1911, 209). Later, he clarifies this point by adding that
acquaintance involves, not knowledge of truths, but knowledge of things (1912a, 44). Thus, while
intuitive knowledge and derivative knowledge both involve knowledge of propositions (or
truths), knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description both involve knowledge of
objects (or things).[3] Since it is those objects with which we have direct acquaintance that are the
least questionable members of our ontology, it is these objects upon which Russell ultimately
bases his epistemology.
Russell's contributions to metaphysics and epistemology were also unified by his views
concerning the centrality of both scientific knowledge in general and the importance of there
being an underlying scientific methodology that in large part is common to both philosophy and
the scientific disciplines. In the case of philosophy, this methodology expressed itself through
Russell's use of logical analysis. In fact, Russell often claimed that he had more confidence in his
methodology than in any particular philosophical conclusion.
This broad conception of philosophy arose in part from Russell's idealist origins (see, e.g., Griffin
1991 and Hylton 1990a). This is so, even though Russell tells us that his one, true revolution in
philosophy came about as a result of his break from idealism. Russell saw that the idealist
doctrine of internal relations led to a series of contradictions regarding asymmetrical (and other)
relations necessary for mathematics. Thus, in 1898, he abandoned the idealism that he had
encountered as a student at Cambridge, together with his Kantian methodology, in favour of a
pluralistic realism. As a result, he soon became famous as an advocate of the “new realism” and
for his “new philosophy of logic,” emphasizing as he did the importance of modern logic for
philosophical analysis. The underlying themes of this “revolution” included his belief in
pluralism, his emphasis upon anti-psychologism, and his belief in the importance of science. Each
of these themes remained central to Russell's philosophy for the remainder of his life (see, e.g.,
Hager 1994 and Weitz 1944).
4. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions
Russell's philosophical methodology required the making and testing of hypotheses through the
weighing of evidence. Hence Russell's comment that he wished to emphasize the “scientific
method” in philosophy (see, e.g., Irvine 1989). It also required the rigorous analysis of
problematic propositions using the machinery of first-order logic. It was Russell's belief that by
using the new logic of his day, philosophers would be able to exhibit the underlying “logical
form” of natural-language statements. A statement's logical form, in turn, would help
philosophers resolve problems of reference associated with the ambiguity and vagueness of
natural language.
Thus, just as we distinguish three separate sense of “is” (the is of predication, the is of identity,
and the is of existence) and exhibit these three senses using three separate logical notations (Px,
x=y, and ∃x respectively) we will also discover other ontologically significant distinctions by
being made aware of a sentence's correct logical form. On Russell's view, the subject matter of
philosophy is then distinguished from that of the sciences only by the generality and the a
prioricity of philosophical statements, not by the underlying methodology of the discipline. In
philosophy, just as in mathematics, Russell believed that it was by applying logical machinery
and insights that advances in analysis would be made.
Russell's most famous example of his “analytic method” concerns denoting phrases such as
descriptions and proper names. In his Principles of Mathematics, Russell had adopted the view
that every denoting phrase (for example, “Scott,” “the author of Waverley,” “the number two,”
“the golden mountain”) denoted, or referred to, an existing entity. By the time his landmark
article, “On Denoting,” appeared two years later in 1905, Russell had modified this extreme
realism and had instead become convinced that denoting phrases need not possess a theoretical
unity.
While logically proper names (words such as “this” or “that” which refer to sensations of which
an agent is immediately aware) do have referents associated with them, descriptive phrases (such
as “the smallest number less than pi”) should be viewed as a collection of quantifiers (such as
“all” and “some”) and propositional functions (such as “x is a number”). As such, they are not to
be viewed as referring terms but, rather, as “incomplete symbols.” In other words, they should be
viewed as symbols that take on meaning within appropriate contexts, but that are meaningless in
isolation.
If Russell is correct, it follows that in the sentence
(1) The present King of France is bald,
the definite description “The present King of France” plays a role quite different from that of a
proper name such as “Scott” in the sentence
(2) Scott is bald.
Letting K abbreviate the predicate “is a present King of France” and B abbreviate the predicate
“is bald,” Russell assigns sentence (1) the logical form
(1′) There is an x such that
i. Kx,
ii. for any y, if Ky then y=x, and
iii. Bx.
Alternatively, in the notation of the predicate calculus, we have
(1″) ∃x[(Kx & ∀y(Ky → y=x)) & Bx].
In contrast, by allowing s to abbreviate the name “Scott,” Russell assigns sentence (2) the very
different logical form
(2′) Bs.
This distinction between logical forms allows Russell to explain three important puzzles. The first
concerns the operation of the Law of Excluded Middle and how this law relates to denoting
terms. According to one reading of the Law of Excluded Middle, it must be the case that either
“The present King of France is bald” is true or “The present King of France is not bald” is true.
But if so, both sentences appear to entail the existence of a present King of France, clearly an
undesirable result. Russell's analysis shows how this conclusion can be avoided. By appealing to
analysis (1′), it follows that there is a way to deny (1) without being committed to the existence of
a present King of France, namely by accepting that “It is not the case that there exists a present
King of France who is bald” is true.
The second puzzle concerns the Law of Identity as it operates in (so-called) opaque contexts.
Even though “Scott is the author of Waverley” is true, it does not follow that the two referring
terms “Scott” and “the author of Waverley” need be interchangeable in every situation. Thus,
although “George IV wanted to know whether Scott was the the author of Waverley” is true,
“George IV wanted to know whether Scott was Scott” is, presumably, false. Russell's distinction
between the logical forms associated with the use of proper names and definite descriptions
shows why this is so.
To see this we once again let s abbreviate the name “Scott.” We also let w abbreviate “Waverley”
and A abbreviate the two-place predicate “is the author of.” It then follows that the sentence
(3) s=s
is not at all equivalent to the sentence
(4) ∃x[Axw & ∀y(Ayw → y=x) & x=s].
Sentence (3), for example, is clearly a necessary truth, while sentence (4) is not.
The third puzzle relates to true negative existential claims, such as the claim “The golden
mountain does not exist.” Here, once again, by treating definite descriptions as having a logical
form distinct from that of proper names, Russell is able to give an account of how a speaker may
be committed to the truth of a negative existential without also being committed to the belief that
the subject term has reference. That is, the claim that Scott does not exist is false since
(5) ~∃x(x=s)
is self-contradictory. (After all, there must exist at least one thing that is identical to s since it is a
logical truth that s is identical to itself!) In contrast, the claim that a golden mountain does not
exist may be true since, assuming that G abbreviates the predicate “is golden” and M abbreviates
the predicate “is a mountain,” there is nothing contradictory about
(6) ~∃x(Gx & Mx).
5. Russell's Neutral Monism
One final major contribution to philosophy was Russell's defence of neutral monism, the view
that the world consists of just one type of substance that is neither exclusively mental nor
exclusively physical. Like idealism (the view that there exists nothing but the mental) and
physicalism (the view that there exists nothing but the physical), neutral monism rejects dualism
(the view that there exist distinct mental and physical substances). However, unlike both idealism
and physicalism, neutral monism holds that this single existing substance may be viewed in some
contexts as being mental and in others as being physical. As Russell puts it,
“Neutral monism”—as opposed to idealistic monism and materialistic monism—is the theory that
the things commonly regarded as mental and the things commonly regarded as physical do not
differ in respect of any intrinsic property possessed by the one set and not by the other, but differ
only in respect of arrangement and context. (CP, Vol. 7, 15)
To help understand this general suggestion, Russell introduces the analogy of a postal directory:
The theory may be illustrated by comparison with a postal directory, in which the same names
comes twice over, once in alphabetical and once in geographical order; we may compare the
alphabetical order to the mental, and the geographical order to the physical. The affinities of a
given thing are quite different in the two orders, and its causes and effects obey different laws.
Two objects may be connected in the mental world by the association of ideas, and in the
physical world by the law of gravitation. … Just as every man in the directory has two kinds of
neighbours, namely alphabetical neighbours and geographical neighbours, so every object will lie
at the intersection of two causal series with different laws, namely the mental series and the
physical series. ‘Thoughts’ are not different in substance from ‘things’; the stream of my thoughts
is a stream of things, namely of the things which I should commonly be said to be thinking of;
what leads to its being called a stream of thoughts is merely that the laws of succession are
different from the physical laws. (CP, Vol. 7, 15)
In other words, when viewed as being mental, a thought or idea may have associated with it other
thoughts or ideas that seem related even though, when viewed as being physical, they have very
little in common. As Russell explains, “In my mind, Caesar may call up Charlemagne, whereas in
the physical world the two were widely sundered” (CP, Vol. 7, 15). Even so, it is a mistake, on
this view, to postulate two distinct types of thing (the idea of Caesar, and the man Caesar) that are
composed to two distinct substances (the mental and the physical). Instead, “The whole duality of
mind and matter, according to this theory, is a mistake; there is only one kind of stuff out of
which the world is made, and this stuff is called mental in one arrangement, physical in the other”
(CP, Vol. 7, 15).
Russell appears to have developed this theory around 1913, while he was working on his Theory
of Knowledge manuscript, and on his 1914 Monist article, “On the Nature of Acquaintance.”
Decades later, in 1964, he remarked that “I am not conscious of any serious change in my
philosophy since I adopted neutral monism” (Eames 1967, 511).
Russell's most important writings relating to these topics include “On Denoting” (1905),
“Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description” (1910a), “The Philosophy of
Logical Atomism” (1918, 1919), “Logical Atomism” (1924), The Analysis of Mind (1921), The
Analysis of Matter (1927a), and Theory of Knowledge (CP, Vol. 7).
6. Russell's Social and Political Philosophy
Russell's social influence stems from three main sources: his long-standing social activism, his
many writings on the social and political issues of his day, and his popularizations of numerous
technical writings in philosophy and the natural sciences.
Among Russell's many popularizations are his two best-selling works, The Problems of
Philosophy (1912) and A History of Western Philosophy (1945). Both of these books, as well as
his numerous books popularizing science, have done much to educate and inform generations of
general readers. Naturally enough, Russell saw a link between education, in this broad sense, and
social progress. As he put it, “Education is the key to the new world” (1926, 83). Partly this is due
to our need to understand nature, but equally important is our need to understand each other:
The thing, above all, that a teacher should endeavor to produce in his pupils, if democracy is to
survive, is the kind of tolerance that springs from an endeavor to understand those who are
different from ourselves. It is perhaps a natural human impulse to view with horror and disgust all
manners and customs different from those to which we are used. Ants and savages put strangers
to death. And those who have never traveled either physically or mentally find it difficult to
tolerate the queer ways and outlandish beliefs of other nations and other times, other sects and
other political parties. This kind of ignorant intolerance is the antithesis of a civilized outlook,
and is one of the gravest dangers to which our overcrowded world is exposed. (1950, 121)
At the same time, Russell is also famous for suggesting that a widespread reliance upon evidence,
rather than upon superstition, would have enormous social consequences: “I wish to propose for
the reader's favourable consideration,” says Russell, “a doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly
paradoxical and subversive. The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a
proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it true” (A1928, 11).
Still, Russell is best known in many circles as a result of his campaigns against the proliferation
of nuclear weapons and against western involvement in the Vietnam War during the 1960s.
However, Russell's social activism stretches back at least as far as 1910, when he published his
Anti-Suffragist Anxieties, and to 1916, when he was convicted and fined in connection with anti-
war protests during World War I. Because of his conviction, he was dismissed from his post at
Trinity College, Cambridge. Two years later, he was convicted a second time. The result was six
months in prison (see, e.g., Hardy 1942). Russell also ran unsuccessfully for Parliament (in 1907,
1922, and 1923) and, together with his second wife, founded and operated an experimental school
during the late 1920s and early 1930s (see, e.g., Russell 1926).
Although he became the third Earl Russell upon the death of his brother in 1931, Russell's
radicalism continued to make him a controversial figure well through middle-age. While teaching
in the United States in the late 1930s, he was offered a teaching appointment at City College,
New York. The appointment was revoked following a large number of public protests and a 1940
judicial decision which found him morally unfit to teach at the College (see, e.g., Dewey and
Kallen 1941).
In 1954 he delivered his famous “Man's Peril” broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-
bomb tests. A year later, together with Albert Einstein, he released the Russell-Einstein Manifesto
calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. In 1957 he was a prime organizer of the first
Pugwash Conference, which brought together a large number of scientists concerned about the
nuclear issue. He became the founding president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament in
1958 and was once again imprisoned, this time in connection with anti-nuclear protests in 1961.
The media coverage surrounding his conviction only served to enhance Russell's reputation and
to further inspire the many idealistic youths who were sympathetic to his anti-war and anti-
nuclear protests.
During these controversial years Russell also wrote many of the books that brought him to the
attention of popular audiences. These include his Principles of Social Reconstruction (1916), A
Free Man's Worship (1923), On Education (1926), Why I Am Not a Christian (1927c), Marriage
and Morals (1929), The Conquest of Happiness (1930), The Scientific Outlook (1931), and
Power: A New Social Analysis (1938).
Upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1950, Russell used his acceptance speech to
emphasize, once again, themes related to his social activism.
Analytic Philosophy
The school of analytic philosophy has dominated academic philosophy in various regions, most
notably Great Britain and the United States, since the early twentieth century. It originated around
the turn of the twentieth century as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell broke away from what was
then the dominant school in the British universities, Absolute Idealism. Many would also include
Gottlob Frege as a founder of analytic philosophy in the late 19th century, and this controversial
issue is discussed in section 2c. When Moore and Russell articulated their alternative to Idealism,
they used a linguistic idiom, frequently basing their arguments on the “meanings” of terms and
propositions. Additionally, Russell believed that the grammar of natural language often is
philosophically misleading, and that the way to dispel the illusion is to re-express propositions in
the ideal formal language of symbolic logic, thereby revealing their true logical form. Because of
this emphasis on language, analytic philosophy was widely, though perhaps mistakenly, taken to
involve a turn toward language as the subject matter of philosophy, and it was taken to involve an
accompanying methodological turn toward linguistic analysis. Thus, on the traditional view,
analytic philosophy was born in this linguistic turn. The linguistic conception of philosophy was
rightly seen as novel in the history of philosophy. For this reason analytic philosophy is reputed
to have originated in a philosophical revolution on the grand scale—not merely in a revolt against
British Idealism, but against traditional philosophy on the whole.
Analytic philosophy underwent several internal micro-revolutions that divide its history into five
phases. The first phase runs approximately from 1900 to1910. It is characterized by the quasi-
Platonic form of realism initially endorsed by Moore and Russell as an alternative to Idealism.
Their realism was expressed and defended in the idiom of “propositions” and “meanings,” so it
was taken to involve a turn toward language. But its other significant feature is its turn away from
the method of doing philosophy by proposing grand systems or broad syntheses and its turn
toward the method of offering narrowly focused discussions that probe a specific, isolated issue
with precision and attention to detail. By 1910, both Moore and Russell had abandoned their
propositional realism—Moore in favor of a realistic philosophy of common sense, Russell in
favor of a view he developed with Ludwig Wittgenstein called logical atomism. The turn to
logical atomism and to ideal-language analysis characterizes the second phase of analytic
philosophy, approximately 1910-1930. The third phase, approximately 1930-1945, is
characterized by the rise of logical positivism, a view developed by the members of the Vienna
Circle and popularized by the British philosopher A. J. Ayer. The fourth phase, approximately
1945-1965, is characterized by the turn to ordinary-language analysis, developed in various ways
by the Cambridge philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Wisdom, and the Oxford
philosophers Gilbert Ryle, John Austin, Peter Strawson, and Paul Grice.
During the 1960s, criticism from within and without caused the analytic movement to abandon its
linguistic form. Linguistic philosophy gave way to the philosophy of language, the philosophy of
language gave way to metaphysics, and this gave way to a variety of philosophical sub-
disciplines. Thus the fifth phase, beginning in the mid 1960s and continuing beyond the end of
the twentieth century, is characterized by eclecticism or pluralism. This post-linguistic analytic
philosophy cannot be defined in terms of a common set of philosophical views or interests, but it
can be loosely characterized in terms of its style, which tends to emphasize precision and
thoroughness about a narrow topic and to deemphasize the imprecise or cavalier discussion of
broad topics.
Even in its earlier phases, analytic philosophy was difficult to define in terms of its intrinsic
features or fundamental philosophical commitments. Consequently, it has always relied on
contrasts with other approaches to philosophy—especially approaches to which it found itself
fundamentally opposed—to help clarify its own nature. Initially, it was opposed to British
Idealism, and then to “traditional philosophy” at large. Later, it found itself opposed both to
classical Phenomenology (for example, Husserl) and its offspring, such as Existentialism (Sartre,
Camus, and so forth) and also “Continental”’ or “Postmodern” philosophy (Heidegger, Foucault
and Derrida). Though classical Pragmatism bears some similarity to early analytic philosophy,
especially in the work of C. S. Peirce and C. I. Lewis, the pragmatists are usually understood as
constituting a separate tradition or school.
Table of Contents
1. The Revolution of Moore and Russell: Cambridge Realism and The Linguistic Turn
2. Russell and the Early Wittgenstein: Ideal Language and Logical Atomism
1. The Theory of Descriptions
2. Ideal-Language Philosophy vs. Ordinary-Language Philosophy
3. Frege: Influence or Instigator?
4. Logical Atomism and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
3. Logical Positivism, the Vienna Circle, and Quine
1. Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle
2. W. V. Quine
4. The Later Wittgenstein and Ordinary-Language Philosophy
1. Ordinary-Language Philosophy
2. The Later Wittgenstein
5. The 1960s and After: The Era of Eclecticism
1. The Demise of Linguistic Philosophy
2. The Renaissance in Metaphysics
3. The Renaissance in History
6. References and Further Reading
1. The Revolution of Moore and Russell: Cambridge Realism and The Linguistic
Turn
4. The Later Wittgenstein, et al.: Ordinary-Language Philosophy
6. Critical and Historical Accounts of Analytic Philosophy
7. Anthologies and General Introductions
1. The Revolution of Moore and Russell: Cambridge Realism and The Linguistic Turn
“It was towards the end of 1898,” wrote Bertrand Russell, that Moore and I rebelled against both
Kant and Hegel. Moore led the way, but I followed closely in his footsteps. … I felt…a great
liberation, as if I had escaped from a hot house onto a windswept headland. In the first
exuberance of liberation, I became a naïve realist and rejoiced in the thought that grass really is
green. (Russell 1959, 22)
This important event in Russell’s own intellectual history turned out to be decisive for the history
of twentieth-century philosophy as a whole; for it was this revolutionary break with British
Idealism—then the most influential school of philosophical thought in the British universities—
that birthed analytic philosophy and set it on the path to supplanting both Idealism and
philosophy as traditionally conceived and practiced.
To understand Russell’s elation at the rebellion, one needs to know something about him and also
something about British Idealism. Let’s begin with the latter.
At the end of the 19th century, F.H. Bradley, Bernard Bosanquet, and J.M.E. McTaggart were the
leading British Idealists. They claimed that the world, although it naively appears to us to be a
collection of discrete objects (this bird, that table, the earth and the sun, and so forth), is really a
single indivisible whole whose nature is mental, or spiritual, or Ideal rather than material. Thus,
Idealism was a brand of metaphysical monism, but not a form of materialism, the other leading
form of metaphysical monism. It was also a form of what we would now call anti-realism, since it
claimed that the world of naïve or ordinary experience is something of an illusion. Their claim
was not that the objects of ordinary experience do not exist, but that they are not, as we normally
take them to be, discrete. Instead, every object exists and is what it is at least partly in virtue of
the relations it bears to other things—more precisely, to all other things. This was called the
doctrine of internal relations. Since, on this view, everything that exists does so only in virtue of
its relations to everything else, it is misleading to say of any one thing that it exists simpliciter.
The only thing that exists simpliciter is the whole—the entire network of necessarily related
objects. Correspondingly, the Idealists believed that no statement about some isolated object
could be true simpliciter, since, on their view, to speak of an object in isolation would be to
ignore the greater part of the truth about it, namely, its relations to everything else.
Analytic philosophy began when Moore and then Russell started to defend a thoroughgoing
realism about what Moore called the “common sense” or “ordinary” view of the world. This
involved a lush metaphysical pluralism, the belief that there are many things that exist simpliciter.
It was not this pluralism, however, nor the content of any of his philosophical views, that inspired
the analytic movement. Instead, it was the manner and idiom of Moore’s philosophizing. First,
Moore rejected system-building or making grand syntheses of his views, preferring to focus on
narrowly defined philosophical problems held in isolation. Second, when Moore articulated his
realism, he did so in the idiom of “propositions” and “meanings.” There is a noteworthy
ambiguity as to whether these are linguistic items or mental ones.
This terminology is further ambiguous in Moore’s case, for two reasons. First, his views about
propositions are highly similar to a view standard in Austro-German philosophy from Bolzano
and Lotze to Husserl according to which “propositions” and “meanings” have an Ideal existence
—the kind of existence traditionally attributed to Platonic Forms. It is likely that Moore got the
idea from reading in that tradition (cf. Bell 1999, Willard 1984). Second, despite strong
similarities with the Austro-German view, it is clear that, in Moore’s early thought,
“propositions” and “meanings” are primarily neither Ideal nor mental nor linguistic, but real in
the sense of “thing-like.” For Moore and the early Russell, propositions or meanings were
“identical” to ordinary objects—tables, cats, people. For more on this peculiar view, see the
article on Moore, section 2b.
The deep metaphysical complexity attaching to Moore’s view was largely overlooked or ignored
by his younger contemporaries, who were attracted to the form of his philosophizing rather than
to its content. Taking the linguistic aspect of “propositions” and “meanings” to be paramount,
they saw Moore as endorsing a linguistic approach to philosophy. This along with his penchant
for attending to isolated philosophical problems rather than constructing a grand system, gave rise
to the notion that he had rebelled not merely against British Idealism but against traditional
philosophy on the grand scale.
Though Moore was later to object that there was nothing especially linguistic about it (see Moore
1942b), the linguistic conception of Moore’s method was far from baseless. For instance, in a
famous paper called “A Defense of Common Sense” (Moore 1925), Moore seems to argue that
the common sense view of the world is built into the terms of our ordinary language, so that if
some philosopher wants to say that some common sense belief is false, he thereby disqualifies the
very medium in which he expresses himself, and so speaks either equivocally or nonsensically.
His case begins with the observation that we know many things despite the fact that we do not
know how we know them. Among these “beliefs of common sense,” as he calls them, are such
propositions as “There exists at present a living human body, which is my body,” “Ever since it
[this body] was born, it has been either in contact with or not far from the surface of the earth,”
and “I have often perceived both body and other things which formed part of its environment,
including other human bodies” (Moore 1925; in Moore 1959: 33). We can call these common
sense propositions.
Moore argues that each common sense proposition has an “ordinary meaning” that specifies
exactly what it is that one knows when one knows that proposition to be true. This “ordinary
meaning” is perfectly clear to most everyone, except for some skeptical philosophers whoseem to
think that [for example] the question “Do you believe that the earth has existed for many years
past?” is not a plain question, such as should be met either by a plain “Yes” or “No,” or by a plain
“I can’t make up my mind,” but is the sort of question which can be properly met by: “It all
depends on what you mean by ‘the earth’ and ‘exists’ and ‘years’….” (Moore 1925; in 1959: 36)
Moore thought that to call common sense into question this way is perverse because the ordinary
meaning of a common sense proposition is plain to all competent language-users. So, to question
its meaning, and to suggest it has a different meaning, is disingenuous. Moreover, since the
bounds of intelligibility seem to be fixed by the ordinary meanings of common sense proposition,
the philosopher must accept them as starting points for philosophical reflection. Thus, the task of
the philosopher is not to question the truth of common sense propositions, but to provide their
correct analyses or explanations.
Moore’s use of the term “analysis” in this way is the source of the name “analytic philosophy.”
Early on in analytic history, Moorean analysis was taken to be a matter of rephrasing some
common sense proposition so as to yield greater insight into its already-clear and unquestionable
meaning. For example, just as one elucidates the meaning of “brother” by saying a brother is a
male sibling or by saying it means “male sibling,” so one might say that seeing a hand means
experiencing a certain external object—which is exactly what Moore claims in his paper “Proof
of an External World” (Moore 1939).
The argument of that essay runs as follows. “Here is one hand” is a common sense proposition
with an ordinary meaning. Using it in accordance with that meaning, presenting the hand for
inspection is sufficient proof that the proposition is true—that there is indeed a hand there. But a
hand, according to the ordinary meaning of “hand,” is a material object, and a material object,
according to the ordinary meaning of “material object,” is an external object, an object that isn’t
just in our mind. Thus, since we can prove that there is a hand there, and since a hand is an
external object, there is an external world, according to the ordinary meaning of “external world.”
These examples are from papers written in the second half of Moore’s career, but his “linguistic
method” can be discerned much earlier, in works dating all the way back to the late 1800s—the
period of his rebellion against Idealism. Even in Moore’s first influential paper, “The Nature of
Judgment” (Moore 1899), he can be found paying very close attention to propositions and their
meanings. In his celebrated paper, “The Refutation of Idealism” (Moore 1903b), Moore uses
linguistic analysis to argue against the Idealist’s slogan Esse est percipi (to be is to be perceived).
Moore reads the slogan as a definition or, as he would later call it, an analysis: just as we say
“bachelor” means “unmarried man,” so the Idealist says “to exist” means “to be cognized.”
However, if these bits of language had the same meaning, Moore argues, it would be superfluous
to assert that they were identical, just as it is superfluous to say “a bachelor is a bachelor.” The
fact that the Idealist sees some need to assert the formula reveals that there is a difference in
meanings of “to be” and “to be perceived,” and hence a difference in the corresponding
phenomena as well.
Moore’s most famous meaning-centered argument is perhaps the “open question argument” of his
Principia Ethica (Moore 1903a). The open question argument purports to show that it is a
mistake to define “good” in terms of anything other than itself. For any definition of good
—“goodness is pleasure,” say—it makes sense to ask whether goodness really is pleasure (or
whatever it has been identified with); thus, every attempt at definition leaves it an open question
as to what good really is. This is so because every purported definition fails to capture the
meaning of “good.”
All of these cases exhibit what proved to be the most influential aspect of Moore’s philosophical
work, namely his method of analysis, which many of his contemporaries took to be linguistic
analysis. For instance, Norman Malcolm represents the standard view of Moore for much of the
twentieth century when he says that “the essence of Moore’s technique of refuting philosophical
statements consists in pointing out that these statements go against ordinary language” (Malcolm
1942, 349). In the same essay, he goes on to tie Moore’s entire philosophical legacy to his
“linguistic method:”
Moore’s great historical role consists in the fact that he has been perhaps the first philosopher to
sense that any philosophical statement that violates ordinary language is false, and consistently to
defend ordinary language against its philosophical violators. (Malcolm 1942, 368)
Malcolm is right to note the novelty of Moore’s approach. Although previous philosophers
occasionally had philosophized about language, and had, in their philosophizing, paid close
attention to the way language was used, none had ever claimed that philosophizing itself was
merely a matter of analyzing language. Of course, Moore did not make this claim either, but what
Moore actually did as a philosopher seemed to make saying it superfluous—in practice, he
seemed to be doing exactly what Malcolm said he was doing. Thus, though it took some time for
the philosophical community to realize it, it eventually became clear that this new “linguistic
method,” pioneered by Moore, constituted a radical break not only with the British Idealists but
with the larger philosophical tradition itself. To put it generally, philosophy was traditionally
understood as the practice of reasoning about the world. Its goal was to give a logos—a rationally
coherent account—of the world and its parts at various levels of granularity, but ultimately as a
whole and at the most general level. There were other aspects of the project, too, of course, but
this was the heart of it. With Moore, however, philosophy seemed to be recast as the practice of
linguistic analysis applied to isolated issues. Thus, the rise of analytic philosophy, understood as
the relatively continuous growth of a new philosophical school originating in Moore’s “linguistic
turn,” was eventually recognized as being not just the emergence of another philosophical school,
but as constituting a “revolution in philosophy” at large. (See Ayer et al. 1963 and Tugendhat
1982.)
The second phase of analytic philosophy is charaterized by the turn to ideal language analysis
and, along with it, logical atomism—a metaphysical system developed by Bertrand Russell and
Ludwig Wittgenstein. Russell laid the essential groundwork for both in his pioneering work in
formal logic, which is covered in Sections 2a and 2b. Though this work was done during the first
phase of analytic philosophy (1900-1910), it colaesced into a system only toward the end of that
period, as Russell and Whitehead completed their work on the monumental Principia
Mathematica (Russell and Whitehead 1910-13), and as Russell began to work closely with
Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Wittgenstein seems to have been the sine qua non of the system. Russell was the first to use the
term “logical atomism,” in a 1911 lecture to the French Philosophical Society. He was also the
first to publicly provide a full-length, systematic treatment of it, in his 1918 lectures on “The
Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (Russell 1918-19). However, despite the centrality of Russell’s
logical work for the system, in the opening paragraph of these lectures Russell acknowedges that
they “are very largely concerned with explaining certain ideas which I learnt from my friend and
former pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein” (Russell 1918, 35). Wittgenstein’s own views are recorded in
his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. First published in 1921, the Tractatus proved to be the most
influential piece written on logical atomism. Because of its influence, we shall pay special
attention to the Tractatus when it comes to presenting logical atomism as a complete system in
Section 2d.
Though Russell and Wittgenstein differed over some of the details of logical atomism, these
disagreements can be ignored for present purposes. What mattered for the development of
analytic philosophy on the whole was the emergence in the second decade of the twentieth
century of a new view of reality tailored to fit recent developments in formal logic and the
philosophical methodology connected to it, as discussed in Section 2b. This was the common
core of the Russellian and Wittegensteinian versions of logical atomism; thus, blurring the lines
between Russell and Wittgenstein actually enables us to maintain better focus on the emerging
analytic tradition. It will also make convenient a brief word on Frege, to see why some have
wanted to include him as a founder of analytic philosophy (Section 2c).
a. The Theory of Descriptions
Much of Russell’s exuberance over Moore’s realism had to do with its consequences for logic
and mathematics. Like so many philosophers before him, Russell was attracted to the objective
certainty of mathematical and logical truths. However, because Idealism taught that no
proposition about a bit of reality in isolation could be true simpliciter, an apparently
straightforward truth such as 2+2=4, or If a=b and b=c then a=c, was not so straightforward
after all. Even worse, Idealism made such truths dependent upon their being thought or
conceived. This follows from the doctrine of internal relations; for, on the natural assumption that
knowledge is or involves a relation between a knower (subject) and something known (object),
the doctrine implies that objects of knowledge are not independent of the subjects that know
them. This left Idealism open to the charge of endorsing psychologism—the view that apparently
objective truths are to be accounted for in terms of the operations of subjective cognitive or
“psychological” faculties. Psychologism was common to nearly all versions of Kantian and post-
Kantian Idealism (including British Idealism). It was also a common feature of thought in the
British empirical tradition, from Hume to Mill (albeit with a naturalistic twist). Moore’s early
realism allowed Russell to avoid psychologism and other aspects of Idealism that prevented
treating logical and mathematical truths as absolutely true in themselves.
A crucial part of this early realism, however, was the object theory of meaning; and this had
implications that Russell found unacceptable. On the object theory, the meaning of a sentence is
the object or state of affairs to which it refers (this is one reason why Moore could identify
ordinary objects as propositions or meanings; see Section 1). For instance, the sentence “that leaf
is green” is meaningful in virtue of bearing a special relationship to the state of affairs it is about,
namely, a certain leaf’s being green.
This may seem plausible at first glance; problems emerge, however, when one recognizes that the
class of meaningful sentences includes many that, from an empirical point of view, lack objects.
Any statement referring to something that does not exist, such as a fictional character in a novel,
will have this problem. A particularly interesting species of this genus is the negative existential
statement—statements that express the denial of their subjects’ existence. For example, when we
say “The golden mountain does not exist,” we seem to refer to a golden mountain—a nonexistent
object—in the very act of denying its existence. But, on the object theory, if this sentence is to be
meaningful, it must have an object to serve as its meaning. Thus it seems that the object theorist
is faced with a dilemma: either give-up the object theory of meaning or postulate a realm of non-
empirical objects that stand as the meanings of these apparently objectless sentences.
The Austrian philosopher Alexius Meinong took the latter horn of the dilemma, notoriously
postulating a realm of non-existent objects. This alternative was too much for Russell. Instead, he
found a way of going between the horns of the dilemma. His escape route was called the “theory
of descriptions,” a bit of creative reasoning that the logician F. P. Ramsey called a “paradigm of
philosophy,” and one which helped to stimulate extraordinary social momentum for the budding
analytic movement. The theory of descriptions appears in Russell’s 1905 essay, “On Denoting,”
which has become a central text in the analytic canon. There, Russell argues that “denoting
phrases”—phrases that involve a noun preceded by “a,” “an,” “some,” “any,” “every,” “all,” or
“the”—are incomplete symbols; that is, they have no meaning on their own, but only in the
context of a complete sentence that expresses a proposition. Such sentences can be rephrased—
analyzed in Moore’s sense of “analyzed”—into sentences that are meaningful and yet do not refer
to anything nonexistent.
For instance, according to Russell, saying “The golden mountain does not exist” is really just a
misleading way of saying “It is not the case that there is exactly one thing that is a mountain and
is golden.” Thus analyzed, it becomes clear that the proposition does not refer to anything, but
simply denies an existential claim. Since it does not refer to any “golden mountain,” it does not
need a Meinongian object to provide it with meaning. In fact, taking the latter formulation to be
the true logical form of the statement, Russell construes the original’s reference to a non-existent
golden mountain as a matter of grammatical illusion. One dispels the illusion by making the
grammatical form match the true logical form, and this is done through logical analysis. The idea
that language could cast illusions that needed to be dispelled, some form of linguistic analysis
was to be a prominent theme in analytic philosophy, both in its ideal language and ordinary
language camps, through roughly 1960.
b. Ideal-Language Philosophy vs. Ordinary-Language Philosophy
Russellian analysis has just been just identified as logical rather than linguistic analysis, and yet it
was said in a previous paragraph that this was analysis in the sense made familiar by Moore. In
truth, there were both significant similarities and significant differences between Moorean and
Russellian analysis. On the one hand, Russellian analysis was like Moore’s in that it involved the
rephrasing of a sentence into another sentence semantically equivalent but grammatically
different. On the other hand, Russell’s analyses were not given in ordinary language, as Moore’s
were. Instead, they were given in symbolic logic, that is, in a quasi-mathematical, symbolic
notation that made the structure of Russell’s analyzed propositions exceedingly clear. For
instance, with the definitions of Mx as “x is a mountain” and Gx as “x is golden,” the proposition
that the golden mountain does not exist becomes
~((∃x)(Mx & Gx) & ∀y((My & Gy) → y=x))
Equivalently, in English, it is not the case that there is some object such that (1) it is a mountain,
(2) it is golden, and (3) all objects that are mountains and golden are identical to it. (For more on
what this sort of notation looks like and how it works, see the article on Propositional Logic,
especially Section 3.)
By 1910, Russell, along with Alfred North Whitehead, had so developed this symbolic notation
and the rules governing its use that it constituted a fairly complete system of formal logic. This
they published in the three volumes of their monumental Principia Mathematica (Russell and
Whitehead 1910-1913).
Within the analytic movement, the Principia was received as providing an ideal language,
capable of elucidating all sorts of ordinary-language confusions. Consequently, Russellian logical
analysis was seen as a new species of the genus linguistic analysis, which had already been
established by Moore. Furthermore, many took logical analysis to be superior to Moore’s
ordinary-language analysis insofar as its results (its analyses) were more exact and not themselves
prone to further misunderstandings or illusions.
The distinction between ordinary-language philosophy and ideal-language philosophy formed the
basis for a fundamental division within the analytic movement through the early 1960s. The
introduction of logical analysis also laid the groundwork for logical atomism, a new metaphysical
system developed by Russell and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Before we discuss this directly, however,
we must say a word about Gottlob Frege.
c. Frege: Influence or Instigator?
In developing the formal system of Principia Mathematica, Russell relied heavily on the work of
several forebears including the German mathematician and philosopher Gottlob Frege. A
generation before Russell and the Principia, Frege had provided his own system of formal logic,
with its own system of symbolic notation. Frege’s goal in doing so was to prove logicism, the
view that mathematics is reducible to logic. This was also Russell’s goal in the Principia. (For
more on the development of logic in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, see the article
on Propositional Logic, especially Section 2). Frege also anticipated Russell’s notion of
incomplete symbols by invoking what has come to be called “the context principle:” words have
meaning only in the context of complete sentences.
Frege’s focus on the formalization and symbolization of logic naturally led him into terrain that
we would now classify as falling under the philosophy of language, and to approach certain
philosophical problems as if they were problems about language, or at least as if they could be
resolved by linguistic means. This has led some to see in Frege a linguistic turn similar to that
perceivable in the early work of Moore and Russell (on this point, see the article on Frege and
Language).
Because of these similarities and anticipations, and because Russell explicitly relied on Frege’s
work, many have seen Frege as a founder of analytic philosophy more or less on a par with
Moore and Russell (See Dummett 1993 and Kenny 2000). Others see this as an exaggeration both
of Frege’s role and of the similarities between him and other canonical analysts. For instance,
Peter Hacker notes that Frege was not interested in reforming philosophy the way all the early
analysts were:
Frege’s professional life was a single-minded pursuit of a demonstration that arithmetic had its
foundations in pure logic alone … One will search Frege’s works in vain for a systematic
discussion of the nature of philosophy. (Hacker 1986: 5, 7)
There is no doubt that Frege’s views proved crucially useful and inspiring to key players on the
ideal-language side of analytic philosophy. Whether or not this qualifies him as a founder of
analytic philosophy depends on the extent to which we see the analytic movement as born of a
desire for metaphilosophical revolution on the grand scale. To the extent that this is essential to
our understanding of analytic philosophy, Frege’s role will be that of an influence rather than a
founder.
d. Logical Atomism and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus
Ludwig Wittgenstein came to Cambridge to study mathematical logic under Russell, but he
quickly established himself as his teacher’s intellectual peer. Together, they devised a
metaphysical system called “logical atomism.” As discussed at the beginning of Section 2, qua
total system, logical atomism seems to have been Wittgenstein’s brainchild. Still, this should not
be seen as in any way marginalizing Russell’s significance for the system, which can be
described as a metaphysics based on the assumption that an ideal language the likes of which was
provided in Principia Mathematica is the key to reality.
According to logical atomism, propositions are built out of elements corresponding to the basic
constituents of the world, just as sentences are built out of words. The combination of words in a
meaningful sentence mirrors the combination of constituents in the corresponding proposition and
also in the corresponding possible or actual state of affairs. That is, the structure of every possible
or actual state of affairs is isomorphic with both the structure of the proposition that refers to it
and the structure of the sentence that expresses that proposition–so long as the sentence is
properly formulated in the notation of symbolic logic. The simplest sort of combination is called
an atomic fact because this fact has no sub-facts as part of its structure. An atomic fact for some
logical atomists might be something like an individual having a property—a certain leaf’s being
green, for instance. Linguistically, this fact is represented by anatomic proposition: for example,
“this leaf is green,” or, in logical symbolism “F(a).” Both the fact F(a) and the proposition “F(a)”
are called “atomic” not because they themselves are atomic [that is, without structure], but
because all their constituents are. Atomic facts are the basic constituents of the world, and atomic
propositions are the basic constituents of language.
More complex propositions representing more complex facts are called molecular propositions
andmolecular facts. The propositions are made by linking atomic propositions together with
truth-functional connectives, such as “and,” “or” and “not.” A truth-functional connective is one
that combines constituent propositions in such a way that their truth-values (that is, their
respective statuses as true or false) completely determine the truth value of the resulting
molecular proposition. For instance, the truth value of a proposition of the form “not-p” can be
characterized in terms of, and hence treated as determined by, the truth value of “p” because if
“p” is true, then “not-p” is false, and if it is false, “not-p” is true. Similarly, a proposition of the
form “p and q” will be true if and only if its constituent propositions “p” and “q” are true on their
own.
The logic of Principia Mathematica is entirely truth-functional; that is, it only allows for
molecular propositions whose truth-values are determined by their atomic constituents. Thus, as
Russell observed in the introduction to the second edition of the Principia, “given all true atomic
propositions, together with the fact that they are all, every other true proposition can theoretically
be deduced by logical methods” (Russell 1925, xv). The same assumption—called the thesis of
truth-functionality or the thesis of extensionality—lies behind Wittgenstien’s Tractatus Logico-
Philosophicus.
As mentioned previously, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus proved to be the most influential expression

of logical atomism. The Tractatus is organized around seven propositions, here taken from the
1922 translation by C. K. Ogden:
1. The world is everything that is the case.

2. What is the case, the fact, is the existence of atomic facts.
3. The logical picture of the facts is the thought.
4. The thought is the significant proposition.
5. Propositions are truth-functions of elementary propositions. (An elementary proposition
is a truth function of itself.)
6. The general form of a truth-function is…. This is the general form of a proposition.
7. Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.
The body of the Tractatus consists in cascading levels of numbered elaborations of these
propositions (1 is elaborated by 1.1 which is elaborated by 1.11, 1.12 and 1.13, and so forth)—
except for 7, which stands on its own. Propositions 1 and 2 establish the metaphysical side of
logical atomism: the world is nothing but a complex of atomic facts. Propositions 3 and 4
establish the isomorphism between language and reality: a significant (meaningful) proposition is
a “logical picture” of the facts that constitute some possible or actual state of affairs. It is a picture
in the sense that the structure of the proposition is identical to the structure of the corresponding
atomic facts. It is here, incidentally, that we get the first explicit statement of the
metaphilosophical view characteristic of early analytic philosophy: “All philosophy is a ‘critique
of language’ …” (4.0031).
Proposition 5 asserts the thesis of truth-functionality, the view that all complex propositions are
built out of atomic propositions joined by truth-functional connectives, and that atomic
propositions are truth-functional in themselves. Even existentially quantified propositions are
considered to be long disjunctions of atomic propositions. It has since been recognized that a
truth-functional logic is not adequate to capture all the phenomena of the world; or at least that, if
there is an adequate truth-functional system, we haven’t found it yet. Certain phenomena seem to
defy truth-functional characterization; for instance, moral facts are problematic. Knowing
whether the constituent proposition “p” is true, doesn’t seem to tell us whether “It ought to be the
case that p” is true. Similarly problematical are facts about thoughts, beliefs, and other mental
states (captured in statements such as “John believes that…”), and modal facts (captured in
statements about the necessity or possibility of certain states of affairs). And treating existential
quantifiers as long disjunctions doesn’t seem to be adequate for the infinite number of facts about
numbers since there surely are more real numbers than there are available names to name them
even if we were willing to accept infinitely long disjunctions. The hope that truth-functional logic
will prove adequate for resolving all these problems has inspired a good bit of thinking in the
analytic tradition, especially during the first half of the twentieth century. This hope lies at the
heart of logical atomism.
In its full form, Proposition 6 includes some unusual symbolism that is not reproduced here. All
it does, however, is to give a general “recipe” for the creation of molecular propositions by giving
the general form of a truth-function. Basically, Wittgenstein is saying that all propositions are
truth-functional, and that, ultimately, there is only one kind of truth-function. Principia
Mathematica had employed a number of truth-functional connectives: “and,” “or,” “not,” and so
forth. However, in 1913 a logician named Henry Sheffer showed that propositions involving
these connectives could be rephrased (analyzed) as propositions involving a single connective
consisting in the negation of a conjunction. This was called the “not and” or “nand” connective,
and was supposed to be equivalent to the ordinary language formulation “not both x and y.” It is
usually symbolized by a short vertical line ( | ) called the Sheffer stroke. Though Wittgenstein
uses his own idiosyncratic symbolism, this is the operation identified in proposition 6 and some
of its elaborations as showing the general form of a truth-function. Replacing
the Principia’splurality of connectives with the “nand” connective made for an extremely
minimalistic system—all one needed to construct a complete picture/description of the world was
a single truth-functional connective applied repeatedly to the set of all atomic propositions.
Proposition 7, which stands on its own, is the culmination of a series of observations made
throughout theTractatus, and especially in the elaborations of proposition 6. Throughout
the Tractatus there runs a distinction between showing and saying. Saying is a matter of
expressing a meaningful proposition. Showing is a matter of presenting something’s form or
structure. Thus, as Wittgenstein observes at 4.022, “A proposition shows its sense. A
proposition shows how things stand if it is true. And it says that they do so stand.”
In the introduction to the Tractatus, Wittgenstein indicates that his overarching purpose is to set
the criteria and limits of meaningful saying. The structural aspects of language and the world—
those aspects that are shown—fall beyond the limits of meaningful saying. According to
Wittgenstein, the propositions of logic and mathematics are purely structural and therefore
meaningless—they show the form of all possible propositions/states of affairs, but they do not
themselves picture any particular state of affairs, thus they do not say anything. This has the odd
consequence that the propositions of the Tractatusthemselves, which are supposed to be about
logic, are meaningless. Hence the famous dictum at 6.54:
My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as
senseless, when he has climbed out through them, on them, over them. (He must so to speak
throw away the ladder, after he has climbed up on it.) He must transcend these propositions, and
then he will see the world aright.
Though meaningless, the propositions of logic and mathematics are not nonsense. They at least
have the virtue of showing the essential structure of all possible facts. On the other hand, there are
concatenations of words, purported propositions, that neither show nor say anything and thus are
not connected to reality in any way. Such propositions are not merely senseless, they are
nonsense. Among nonsense propositions are included the bulk of traditional philosophical
statements articulating traditional philosophical problems and solutions, especially in
metaphysics and ethics. This is the consequence of Wittgenstein’s presumption that
meaningfulness is somehow linked to the realm of phenomena studied by the natural sciences (cf.
4.11 ff). Thus, as he claims in 6.53:
The correct method in philosophy would really be the following: to say nothing except what can
be said, that is propositions of natural science—that is something that has nothing to do with
philosophy—and then, whenever someone else wanted to say something metaphysical, to
demonstrate to him that he had failed to give a meaning to certain signs in his propositions.
In the eyes of its author (as he avers in its Introduction), the real accomplishment of the Tractatus
was to have solved, or rather dissolved, all the traditional problems of philosophy by showing that
they were meaningless conundrums generated by a failure to understand the limits of meaningful
discourse.
a. Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle
Logical positivism is the result of combining the central aspects of the positivisms of Auguste
Comte and Ernst Mach with the meta-philosophical and methodological views of the analytic
movement, especially as understood by the ideal-language camp. In all its forms, positivism was
animated by the idealization of scientific knowledge as it was commonly understood from at least
the time of Newton through the early twentieth century. Consequently, at its core is a view
called scientism: the view that all knowledge is scientific knowledge.
As twentieth-century philosophy of science has shown, the definition and demarcation of science
is a very difficult task. Still, for several centuries it has been common to presume that
metaphysics and other branches of philosophy-as-traditionally-practiced, not to mention religious
and “common sense” beliefs, do not qualify as scientific. From the standpoint of scientism, these
are not fields of knowledge, and their claims should not be regarded as carrying any serious
weight.
At the heart of logical positivism was a novel way of dismissing certain non-scientific views by
declaring them not merely wrong or false, but meaningless. According to the verification theory
of meaning, sometimes also called the empiricist theory of meaning, any non-tautological
statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified. This “verification principle”
of meaning is similar to the principle maintained in Wittgenstein’s Tractatus that the realm of
meaning is coextensive with the realm of the natural (empirical) sciences. In fact the logical
positivists drew many of their views straight from the pages of the Tractatus (though their
reading of it has since been criticized as being too inclined to emphasize the parts friendly to
scientific naturalism at the expense of those less-friendly). With Wittgenstein, the logical
positivists concluded that the bulk of traditional philosophy consisted in meaningless pseudo-
problems generated by the misuse of language, and that the true role of philosophy was to
establish and enforce the limits of meaningful language through linguistic analysis.
Logical positivism was created and promoted mainly by a number of Austro-German thinkers
associated with the Vienna Circle and, to a lesser extent, the Berlin Circle. The Vienna Circle
began as a discussion group of scientifically-minded philosophers—or perhaps philosophically
minded-scientists—organized by Moritz Schlick in 1922. Its exact membership is difficult to
determine, since there were a number of peripheral figures who attended its meetings or at least
had substantial connections to core members, but who are frequently characterized as visitors or
associates rather than full-fledged members. Among its most prominent members were Schlick
himself, Otto Neurath, Herbert Feigl, Freidrich Waismann and, perhaps most prominent of
all, Rudolph Carnap. The members of both Circles made contributions to a number of different
philosophical and scientific discussions, including logic and the philosophy of mind (see for
example this Encyclopedia’s articles on Behaviorism and Identity Theory); however, their most
important contributions vis-à-vis the development of analytic philosophy were in the areas of the
philosophy of language, philosophical methodology and metaphilosophy. It was their views in
these areas that combined to form logical positivism.
Logical positivism was popularized in Britain by A.J. Ayer, who visited with the Vienna Circle in
1933. His book Language, Truth and Logic (Ayer 1936) was extremely influential, and remains
the best introduction to logical positivism as understood in its heyday. To escape the turmoil of
World War II, several members of the Vienna Circle emigrated to the United States where they
secured teaching posts and exercised an immense influence on academic philosophy. By this
time, however, logical positivism was largely past its prime; consequently, it was not so much
logical positivism proper that was promulgated, but something more in the direction of
philosophizing focused on language, logic, and science. (For more on this point, see the article
on American Philosophy, especially Section 4).
Ironically, the demise of logical positivism was caused mainly by a fatal flaw in its central view,
the verification theory of meaning. According to the verification principle, a non-tautological
statement has meaning if and only if it can be empirically verified. However, the verification
principle itself is non-tautological but cannot be empirically verified. Consequently, it renders
itself meaningless. Even apart from this devastating problem, there were difficulties in setting the
scope of the principle so as to properly subserve the positivists’ scientistic aims. In its strong form
(given above), the principle undermined not only itself, but also statements about theoretical
entities, so necessary for science to do its work. On the other hand, weaker versions of the
principle, such as that given in the second edition of Ayer’sLanguage, Truth, and Logic (1946),
were incapable of eliminating the full range of metaphysical and other non-scientific statements
that the positivists wanted to disqualify.
b. W. V. Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was the first American philosopher of any great significance in the
analytic tradition. Though his views had their greatest impact only as the era of linguistic
philosophy came to an end, it is convenient to take them up in contrast with logical positivism.
An important part of the logical positivist program was the attempt to analyze or reduce scientific
statements into so-called protocol statements having to do with empirical observations. This
reductionist project was taken up by several members of the Vienna Circle, but none took it so far
as did Rudolph Carnap, in his The Logical Structure of the World (1928) and in subsequent work.
The basic problem for the reductionist project is that many important scientific claims and
concepts seem to go beyond what can be verified empirically. Claiming that the sun will come up
tomorrow is a claim the goes beyond today’s observations. Claims about theoretical entities such
as atoms also provide obvious cases of going beyond what can be verified by specific
observations, but statements of scientific law run into essentially the same problem. Assuming
empiricism, what is required to place scientific claims on a secure, epistemic foundation is to
eliminate the gap between observation and theory without introducing further unverifiable entities
or views. This was the goal of the reductionist project. By showing that every apparently
unverifiable claim in science could be analyzed into a small set of observation-sentences, the
logical positivists hoped to show that the gap between observation and theory does not really
exist.
Despite being on very friendly terms with Carnap and other members of the Vienna Circle (with
whom he visited in the early 1930s), and despite being dedicated, as they were, to scientism and
empiricism, Quine argued that the reductionist project was hopeless. “Modern Empiricism,” he
claimed,
has been conditioned in large part by two dogmas. One is a belief in some fundamental cleavage
between truths which are analytic, or grounded in meanings independently of matters of fact, and
truths which are synthetic, or grounded in fact. The other dogma isreductionism: the belief that
each meaningful statement is equivalent to some logical construct upon terms which refer to
immediate experience. (Quine 1951, 20)
“Both dogmas,” says Quine, “are ill-founded.”
The first dogma with which Quine is concerned is that there is an important distinction to be
made between analytic and synthetic claims. Traditionally, the notions of analytic truth, a priori
truth, andnecessary truth have been closely linked to one another, forming a conceptual network
that stands over against the supposedly contradictory network of a posteriori, contingent,
and synthetic truths. Each of these categories will be explained briefly prior to addressing Quine’s
critique of this “dogma” (for a more extensive treatment see the article on A Priori and A
Posteriori).
An a priori truth is a proposition that can be known to be true by intuition or pure reason, without
making empirical observations. For instance, neither mathematical truths such as 2+2=4, nor
logical truths such as If ((a=b) &(b=c)) then (a=c), nor semantic truths such as All bachelors are
unmarried men, depend upon the realization of any corresponding, worldly state of affairs, either
in order to be true or to be known. A posteriori truths, on the other hand, are truths grounded in or
at least known only by experience, including both mundane truths such as The cat is on the mat
and scientific truths such asBodies in free-fall accelerate at 9.8 m/s2.
Many (if not all) a priori truths seem to be necessary—that is, they could not have been
otherwise. On the other hand, many (if not all) a posteriori truths seem to be contingent—that is,
that they could have been otherwise: the cat might not have been on the mat, and, for all we
know, the rate of acceleration for bodies in freefall might have been different than what it is.
Finally, the necessity and a prioricity of such truths seem to be linked to their analyticity. A
proposition is analytically true if the meanings of its terms require it to be true. For example, the
proposition “All bachelors are men” is analytically true, because “man” is connected to
“bachelor” in virtue of its meaning—a fact recognized by analyzing “bachelor” so as to see that it
means “unmarried man”. On the other hand, “All bachelors have left the room” is not analytically
true. It is called a synthetic proposition or truth, because it involves terms or concepts that are not
connected analytically by their individual meanings, but only insofar as they are synthesized
(brought together) in the proposition itself. Such truths are usually, and perhaps always, a
posteriori and contingent.
Historically, philosophers have tended to try to explain necessity, a prioricity and analyticity by
appealing to abstract objects such as Plato’s Forms or Aristotle’s essences. Such entities
purportedly transcend the realm of time, space, and/or the senses, and hence the realm of “nature”
as defined by science—at least as this was understood by the scientific naturalism of the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Consequently, devotees of scientific naturalism required
an alternative account of necessity, a priority, and analyticity; and here analytic philosophy’s
linguistic turn seemed to offer a way forward.
For obvious reasons, and as the above quotation from Quine hints, analytic truths traditionally
have been characterized as “true in virtue of meaning.” However, historically, “meaning” has
been cashed out in different ways: in terms of abstract, Ideal entities (Plato, Aristotle, Husserl),
and in terms of concepts (Locke, Hume), and in terms of language (construed as a system of
concrete, sensible symbols with conventionally approved uses). In the context of analytic
philosophy’s “linguistic turn,” it was all too easy to take the latter approach, and hence to treat
analyticity as deriving from some linguistic phenomenon such as synonymy or the
interchangeability of terms.
Such a view was highly amenable to the scientistic, naturalistic, and empiricistic leanings of
many early analysts, and especially to the logical positivists. On the assumptions that meaning is
fundamentally linguistic and that language is a conventional symbol-system in which the symbols
are assigned meanings by fiat, one can explain synonymy without referring to anything beyond
the realm of time, space and the senses. If one can then explain analyticity in terms of synonymy,
and explain both necessity and a prioricity in terms of analyticity, then one will have theories of
analytic, necessary, and a priori truths consistent with scientific naturalism.
Given Quine’s own commitment to scientific naturalism, one might have expected him to join the
logical positivists and others in embracing this model and then striving for a workable version of
it. However, Quine proposed a more radical solution to the scientific naturalist’s problem with
necessity, a prioricity, and analyticity: namely, he proposed to reject the distinctions between
analytic and synthetic, a priori anda posteriori, necessary and contingent.
He begins undermining the notion that synonymy-relations are established by fiat or “stipulative
definition.” On the naturalistic view of language and meaning, all meanings and synonymy
relations would have to have been established by some person or people making stipulative
definitions at some particular place and time. For instance, someone would have had to have said,
at some point in history, “henceforth, the symbol ‘bachelor’ shall be interchangeable with the
symbol ‘unmarried man’.” However, Quine asks rhetorically, “who defined it thus, or when?”
(Quine 1951, 24). The point is that we have no evidence of this ever having happened. Thus, at
the very least, the naturalistic account of meaning/synonymy is an unverifiable theory of the sort
the positivists wanted to avoid. Moreover, what empirical evidence we do have suggests that it is
likely false, for, as Quine sees it, “definition—except in the extreme case of the explicitly
conventional introduction of new notation—hinges on prior relationships of synonymy” (Quine
1951, 27). In cases where it appears that someone is making a stipulative definition—as in a
dictionary, for example—Quine explains that, far from establishing synonymy, the stipulator is
either describing or making use of synonymy relations already present in the language. After
exploring several kinds of cases in which stipulative definitions seem to establish synonymy
relations, he concludes that all but one—the banal act of coining an abbreviation—rely on pre-
existing synonymy relations. The upshot is that stipulative definition cannot account for the
breadth of cases in which synonymy is exemplified, and thus that it cannot be the general ground
of either synonymy or analyticity.
With its foundation thus undermined, the naturalistic theory of analyticity, necessity and a
prioricitycollapses. However, rather than rejecting naturalism on account of its inability to
explain these phenomena, Quine rejects the notion that naturalism needs to explain them on the
ground that they are spurious categories. Prima facie, of course, there seems to be a distinction
between the analytic and the synthetic, the a priori and the a posteriori, the necessary and the
contingent. However, when we attempt to get a deeper understanding of these phenomena by
defining them, we cannot do it. Quine explores several other ways of defining analyticity in
addition to synonymy and stipulative definition, ultimately concluding that none work. To the
contrary, analyticity, synonymy, necessity and related concepts seem to contribute to each other’s
meaning/definition in a way that “is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form,
figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space” (Quine 1951, 29). Because none of them can be
defined without invoking one of the others, no one of them can be eliminated by reducing it to
one of the others. Rather than concluding that analyticity, a prioricity, necessity, and so forth are
primitive phenomena, Quine takes their indefinability to indicate that there is no genuine
distinction to be drawn between them and their traditional opposites.
This brings us to the second dogma. When Quine criticizes “reductionism,” he has principally in
mind the logical positivists’ tendency to pursue the reductionist project as if every and any
scientific statement, considered in isolation, could be reduced to/analyzed into a small set of
observational statements related to it in such a way that they counted uniquely as that claim’s
verification and meaning. Over against this “atomistic” or “isolationist” or “local” conception of
verification/reductive analysis, Quine argued that scientific claims have predictive power, and
hence verifiability or falsifiability, and hence also meaning, only as parts of large networks of
claims that together form far-reaching theories that might be called “worldviews.” For this
reason, one can never verify or falsify an isolated scientific claim; rather, verification and
falsification—and hence also meaning—are holistic. Observations (and observation sentences)
that may seem to verify a lone claim actually make a partial contribution to the verification of the
total theoretical network to which it belongs.
As the language here suggests, viewed holistically, verification is never absolute. There is no
manageable set of observations that will verify a total theory or any of its constitutive claims once
and for all. By the same token, observations (and observation sentences) that may seem to falsify
a lone claim do not decisively falsify either it or the theory to which it belongs. Rather, such
observations require only that some adjustment be made to the theory. Perhaps one of its
constitutive claims must be rejected, but not necessarily the one that initially seemed to be
falsified. On Quine’s view, any constitutive claim can be saved by making adjustments elsewhere
in the theory-network.
This holistic view of meaning and verification reinforces Quine’s rejection of the
analytic/synthetic distinction and its fellows. Holism in these areas implies that no claim in one’s
total theory is immune from revision or rejection in light of observational evidence. This means
that even claims traditionally thought to be necessary and/or analytic, such as those of
mathematics and logic, can be revised or rejected in order to preserve other claims to which one
is more deeply committed.
Quine’s assault on the analytic/synthetic distinction undermines not merely the positivists’
reductionist project, but also the general practice of analysis which, from the beginning, had been
understood to involve the transformation of a sentence into another sentence semantically
equivalent (synonymous) but grammatically different. At the same time, Quine’s holism about
the meaning of scientific claims and their verification generalizes to become a theory of meaning
holism that applies to all meaningful claims whatsoever. However, following Moore’s practice,
the analytic method was usually applied to claims in isolation, apart from considerations of their
connection to other claims that together might constitute a philosophical “worldview.” Quinean
meaning holism undermines this aspect of analysis just as much as it does the logical positivists
“isolationist” view of verification.
4. The Later Wittgenstein and Ordinary-Language Philosophy
a. Ordinary-Language Philosophy
Thanks to G.E. Moore, ordinary-language analysis had had a place in the analytic movement
from the very beginning. Because of the perceived superiority of ideal-language analysis,
however, it dropped almost completely out of sight for several decades. In the 1930s, ordinary-
language analysis began to make a comeback thanks mainly to Wittgenstein—whose views had
undergone radical changes during the 1920s—but also to a number of other talented philosophers
including John Wisdom, John Austin (not to be confused with the nineteenth-century John Austin
who invented legal positivism), Gilbert Ryle, Peter Strawson and Paul Grice. Despite differences
in their reasons for adopting the ordinary-language approach as well as their respective manners
of employing it, these figures’ common focus on ordinary language was a substantial point of
unity over against the initially dominant ideal-language approach.
Ordinary-language philosophy became dominant in analytic philosophy only after World War II
—hence the dates for the ordinary-language era given in the Introduction are 1945-1965. Indeed,
with the exception of several articles by Ryle, the most important texts of the ordinary-language
camp were published in 1949 and later—in some cases not until much later, when the linguistic
approach to philosophy in all its forms was already on its way out.
Ordinary-language philosophy is sometimes called “Oxford philosophy.” This is because Ryle,

Austin, Strawson and Grice were all Oxford dons. They were the most important representatives
of the ordinary-language camp after Wittgenstein (who was at Cambridge). After Wittgenstein
died in the early years of the ordinary-language era, they lived to promote it through its heyday.
Despite the strong connection to Oxford, Wittgenstein is usually taken to be the most important
of the ordinary-language philosophers. For this reason, we will focus only on his later views in
giving a more detailed example of ordinary language philosophy.
b. The Later Wittgenstein
While logical positivism was busy crumbling under the weight of self-referential incoherence, a
larger problem was brewing for ideal-language philosophy in general. After publishing
the Tractatus, Wittgenstein retired from philosophy and went to teach grade-school in the
Austrian countryside. Why wouldn’t he leave academia—after all, he believed he had already lain
to rest all the traditional problems of philosophy!
During his time away from the academy, Wittgenstein had occasion to rethink his views about
language. He concluded that, far from being a truth-functional calculus, language has no
universally correct structure—that is, there is no such thing as an ideal language. Instead, each
language-system—be it a full-fledged language, a dialect, or a specialized technical language
used by some body of experts—is like a game that functions according to its own rules.
These rules are not of the sort found in grammar books—those are just attempts to describe rules
already found in the practices of some linguistic community. Real linguistic rules, according to
the later Wittgenstein, cannot be stated, but are rather shown in the complex intertwining of
linguistic and non-linguistic practices that make up the “form of life” of any linguistic
community. Language is, for the later Wittgenstein, an intrinsically social phenomenon, and its
correct modes are as diverse as the many successful modes of corporate human life.
Consequently, it cannot be studied in the abstract, apart from its many particular embodiments in
human communities.
In contrast with his views in the Tractatus, the later Wittgenstein no longer believed that meaning
is a picturing-relation grounded in the correspondence relationships between linguistic atoms and
metaphysical atoms. Instead, language systems, or language games, are unanalyzable wholes
whose parts (utterances sanctioned by the rules of the language) have meaning in virtue of having
a role to play—a use—within the total form of life of a linguistic community. Thus it is often said
that for the latter Wittgenstein meaning is use. On this view, the parts of a language need not refer
or correspond to anything at all—they only have to play a role in a form of life.
It is important to note that even in his later thought, Wittgenstein retained the view that traditional
philosophical problems arise from linguistic error, and that true philosophy is about analyzing
language so as to grasp the limits of meaning and see that error for what it is—a headlong tumble
into confusion or meaninglessness. However, his new understanding of language required a new
understanding of analysis. No longer could it be the transformation of some ordinary language
statement into the symbolic notation of formal logic purportedly showing its true form. Instead, it
is a matter of looking at how language is ordinarily used and seeing that traditional philosophical
problems arise only as we depart from that use.
“A philosophical problem,” says Wittgenstein, “has the form: ‘I don’t know my way about’”
(Wittgenstein 1953, ¶123), that is, I don’t know how to speak properly about this, to ask a
question about this, to give an answer to that question. If I were to transcend the rules of my
language and say something anyhow, what I say would be meaningless nonsense. Such are the
utterances of traditional, metaphysical philosophy. Consequently, philosophical problems are to
be solved, or rather dissolved,
by looking into the workings of our language, and that in such a way as to make us recognize its
workings: … The problems are solved, not by giving new information, but by arranging what we
have always known. (Wittgenstein 1953, ¶ 109)
And “what we have always known” is the rules of our language. “The work of the philosopher,”
he says, “consists in assembling reminders for a particular purpose” (Wittgenstein 1953, ¶ 127).
These reminders take the form of examples of how the parts of language are ordinarily used in the
language game out of which the philosoher has tried to step. Their purpose is to coax the
philosopher away from the misuse of language essential to the pursuit of traditional philosophical
questions. Thus the true philosophy becomes a kind of therapy aimed at curing a lingusitic
disease that cripples one’s ability to fully engage in the form of life of one’s linguistic
community. True philsophy, Wittgenstein says, “is a battle against the bewitchment of our
intelligence by means of language” (Wittgenstein 1953, ¶ 109). The true philosopher’s weapon in
this battle is “to bring words back from their metaphysical to their everyday use” (Wittgenstein
1953, ¶ 116), so that “the results of philosophy are the uncovering of one or another piece of plain
nonsense and of bumps that the understanding has gotten by running its head up against the limits
of language” (Wittgenstein 1953, ¶ 119).
Though Wittgenstein developed these new views much earlier (mainly in the 1920s and 30s),
they were not officially published until 1953, in the posthumous Philosophical Investigations.
Prior to this, Wittgenstein’s new views were spread largely by word of mouth among his students
and other interested persons.
a. The Demise of Linguistic Philosophy
By the mid-1960s the era of linguistic philosophy was coming to a close. The causes of its demise
are variegated. For one thing, it was by this time apparent that there were deep divisions within
the analytic movement, especially between the ordinary-language and ideal-language camps, over
the nature of language and meaning on the one hand, and over how to do philosophy on the other.
Up to this point, the core of analytic philosophy had been the view that philosophical problems
are linguistic illusions generated by violating the boundaries of meaning, and that they were to be
solved by clearly marking those boundaries and then staying within them. It was now becoming
clear, however, that this was no easy task. Far from being the transparent phenomenon that the
early analysts had taken it to be, linguistic meaning was turning out to be a very puzzling
phenomenon, itself in need of deep, philosophical treatment.
Indeed, it was becoming clear that many who had held the core analytic view about the nature of
philosophy had relied upon different theories of meaning sometimes implicit, never sufficiently
clear, and frequently implausible. The internal failure of logical positivism combined with the
external criticisms of Wittgenstein and Quine contributed to the demise of the ideal-language
approach. On the other hand, many, including Bertrand Russell, saw the ordinary-language
approach as falling far short of serious, philosophical work. For this and other reasons, the
ordinary-language approach also drew fire from outside the analytic movement, in the form of
Ernest Gellner’s Words and Things (1959) and W.C.K. Mundle’s Critique of Linguistic
Philosophy (1970). The former especially had a large, international impact, thereby contributing
to what T. P. Uschanov has called “the strange death of ordinary language philosophy.”
The waning of linguistic philosophy signaled also the waning of attempts to specify the proper
philosophical method, or even just the method distinctive of analytic philosophy. Quine’s take on
the matter—that philosophy is continuous with science in its aims and methods, differing only in
the generality of its questions—proved influential and achieved a certain level of dominance for a
time, but not to the extent that the linguistic conception of philosophy had during its sixty-year
run. Alternatives tied less tightly to the empirical sciences soon emerged, with the result that
philosophical practice in contemporary analytic philosophy is now quite eclectic. In some circles,
the application of formal techniques is still regarded as central to philosophical practice, though
this is now more likely to be regarded as a means of achieving clarity about our concepts than as
a way of analyzing language. In other circles meticulous expression in ordinary language is seen
to provide a sufficient level of clarity.
Partly because of Quine’s view of philosophy as continuous with science (which, of course, is
divided into specializations), and partly because analytic philosophy had always been given to
dealing with narrowly-defined questions in isolation from others, post-linguistic analytic
philosophy partitioned itself into an ever-increasing number of specialized sub-fields. What had
been linguistic philosophy metamorphosed into what we now know as the philosophy of
language. Epistemology, the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of science, ethics and meta-
ethics, and even metaphysics emerged or re-emerged as areas of inquiry not indifferent to
linguistic concerns, but not themselves intrinsically linguistic. Over time, the list has expanded to
include aesthetics, social and political philosophy, feminist philosophy, the philosophy of
religion, philosophy of law, cognitive science, and the history of philosophy.
On account of its eclecticism, contemporary analytic philosophy defies summary or general

description. By the same token, it encompasses far too much to discuss in any detail here.
However, two developments in post-linguistic analytic philosophy require special mention.
b. The Renaissance in Metaphysics
Metaphysics has undergone a certain sort of renaissance in post-linguistic analytic philosophy.

Although contemporary analytic philosophy does not readily countenance traditional system-
building metaphysics (at least as a respected professional activity), it has embraced the piecemeal
pursuit of metaphysical questions so wholeheartedly that metaphysics is now seen as one of its
three most important sub-disciplines. (The other two are epistemology and the philosophy of
language; all three are frequently referred to as “core” analytic areas or sub-disciplines.) This is
noteworthy given analytic philosophy’s traditional anti-metaphysical orientation.
The return of metaphysics is due mainly to the collapse of those theories of meaning which
originally had banned it as meaningless, but later developments in the philosophy of language
also played a role. In the 1960s, the ordinary-language philosopher Peter Strawson began
advocating for what he called “descriptive metaphysics,” a matter of looking to the structure and
content of natural languages to illuminate the contours of different metaphysical worldviews or
“conceptual schemes.” At the same time, and despite his naturalism and scientism which pitted
him against speculative metaphysics, Quine’s holistic views about meaning and verification
opened the door to speculative metaphysics by showing that theory cannot be reduced to
observation even in the sciences. In the 1960s and 70s, the attempts of Donald Davidson and
others to construct a formal theory of meaning based on Alfred Tarski’s formal definition of truth
eventually led to the development of possible worlds semantics by David Lewis. Consistent with
the Quinean insight that meaning is connected to holistic worldviews or, in more metaphysical
terms, world-states, possible worlds semantics defines important logical concepts such as
validity, soundness and completeness, as well as concepts that earlier logics were incapable of
handling—such as possibility and necessity—in terms of total descriptions of a way that some
worlds or all worlds might be/have been. For example, proposition p is necessary, if p is true in
all possible worlds. Thus, despite its formalism, possible world semantics approximates some
aspects of traditional metaphysics that earlier analytic philosophy eschewed.
With the advent of possible worlds semantics, attention shifted from the notion of meaning to that
ofreference. The latter has to do explicitly with the language-world connection, and so has an
overtly metaphysical aspect. In the 1970s, direct reference theories came to dominate the
philosophy of language. Developed independently by Saul Kripke and Ruth Barcan Marcus, a
direct reference theory claims that some words—particularly proper names—have no meaning,
but simply serve as “tags” (Marcus’ term) or “rigid designators” (Kripke’s term) for the things
they name. Tagging or rigid designation is usually spelled-out in terms of possible worlds: it is a
relation between name and thing such that it holds in all possible worlds. This then provides a
linguistic analog of a metaphysical theory of identity the likes of which one finds in traditional
“substance” metaphysics such as that of Aristotle. With the restrictions characteristic of earlier
analytic philosophy removed, these positions in the philosophy of language made for an easy
transition into metaphysics proper.
c. The Renaissance in History
Because analytic philosophy initially saw itself as superseding traditional philosophy, its
tendency throughout much of the twentieth century was to disregard the history of philosophy. It
is even reported that a sign reading “just say no to the history of ideas” once hung on a door in the
Philosophy building at Princeton University (Grafton 2004, 2). Though earlier analytic
philosophers would sometimes address the views of a philosopher from previous centuries, they
frequently failed to combine philosophical acumen with historical care, thereby falling into
faulty, anachronistic interpretations of earlier philosophers.
Beginning in the 1970s, some in the analytic context began to rebel against this anti-historical
attitude. The following remembrance by Daniel Garber describes well the emerging historical
consciousness in the analytic context (though this was not then and is not now so widespread as
to count as characteristic of analytic philosophy itself):
What my generation of historians of philosophy was reacting against was a bundle of practices
that characterized the writing of the history of philosophy in the period: the tendency to substitute
rational reconstructions of a philosopher’s views for the views themselves; the tendency to focus
on an extremely narrow group of figures (Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley and
Hume in my period); within that very narrow canon the tendency to focus on just a few works at
the exclusion of others, those that best fit with our current conception of the subject of
philosophy; the tendency to work exclusively from translations and to ignore secondary work that
was not originally written in English; the tendency to treat the philosophical positions as if they
were those presented by contemporaries, and on and on and on. (Garber 2004, 2)
Over against this “bundle of practices,” the historical movement began to interpret the more well-
known problems and views of historical figures in the context of, first, the wholes of their
respective bodies of work, second, their respective intellectual contexts, noting how their work
related to that of the preceding generation of thinkers, and, third, the broader social environment
in which they lived and thought and wrote.
Eventually, this new historical approach was adopted by philosopher-scholars interested in the
history of analytic philosophy itself. As a result, the last two decades have seen the emergence of
the history (or historiography) of analytic philosophy as an increasingly important sub-discipline
within analytic philosophy itself. Major figures in this field include Tom Baldwin, Hans Sluga,
Nicholas Griffin, Peter Hacker, Ray Monk, Peter Hylton, Hans-Johann Glock and Michael
Beaney, among a good many others. The surge of interest in the history of analytic philosophy
has even drawn efforts from philosophers better known for work in “core” areas of analytic
philosophy, such as Michael Dummett and Scott Soames.
Some of these authors are responsible for discovering or re-discovering the fact that neither
Moore nor Russell conceived of themselves as linguistic philosophers. Others have been involved
in the debate over Frege mentioned in Section 2c. All this has served to undermine received
views and to open a debate concerning the true nature of analytic philosophy and the full scope of
its history. (For more on this, see Preston 2004, 2005a-b).
Principia Mathematica
First published Tue May 21, 1996; substantive revision Tue Mar 30, 2010
Principia Mathematica, the landmark work in formal logic written by Alfred North Whitehead
and Bertrand Russell, was first published in three volumes in 1910, 1912 and 1913. Written as a
defense of logicism (the view that mathematics is in some significant sense reducible to logic) the
book was instrumental in developing and popularizing modern mathematical logic. It also served
as a major impetus for research in the foundations of mathematics throughout the twentieth
century. Along with the Organon written by Aristotle and the Grundgesetze der Arithmetik
written by Gottlob Frege, it remains one of the most influential books on logic ever written.
• 1. History of Principia Mathematica

• 2. Significance of Principia Mathematica
• 3. Contents of Principia Mathematica
• Bibliography
• Related Entries
Interested readers may wish to view the
• Title page of the first edition of Principia Mathematica, Volume 1 (1910)

• Cover of the first edition of Principia Mathematica to *56 (1962).
1. History of Principia Mathematica
Logicism is the view that (some or all of) mathematics can be reduced to (formal) logic. It is
often explained as a two-part thesis. First, it consists of the claim that all mathematical truths can
be translated into logical truths or, in other words, that the vocabulary of mathematics constitutes
a proper subset of the vocabulary of logic. Second, it consists of the claim that all mathematical
proofs can be recast as logical proofs or, in other words, that the theorems of mathematics
constitute a proper subset of the theorems of logic. In Bertrand Russell's words, it is the logicist's
goal “to show that all pure mathematics follows from purely logical premises and uses only
concepts definable in logical terms” (1959, 74).
In its essentials, logicism was first advocated in the late seventeenth century by Gottfried Leibniz.
Later, the idea was defended in greater detail by Gottlob Frege. During the critical movement
initiated in the 1820s, mathematicians such as Bernard Bolzano, Niels Abel, Louis Cauchy and
Karl Weierstrass succeeded in eliminating much of the vagueness and many of the contradictions
present in the mathematical theories of their day. By the late 1800s, William Hamilton had also
introduced ordered couples of reals as the first step in supplying a logical basis for the complex
numbers. In much the same spirit, Karl Weierstrass, Richard Dedekind and Georg Cantor had
also all developed methods for founding the irrationals in terms of the rationals. Using work by
H.G. Grassmann and Richard Dedekind, Guiseppe Peano had then gone on to develop a theory of
the rationals based on his now famous axioms for the natural numbers. Thus, by Frege's day, it
was generally recognized that a large portion of mathematics could be derived from a relatively
small set of primitive notions.
Even so, it was not until 1879, when Frege developed the necessary logical apparatus, that the
project of logicism could be said to have become technically plausible. Following another five
years' work, Frege arrived at the definitions necessary for logicising arithmetic and, during the
1890s, he worked on many of the essential derivations. However, with the discovery of paradoxes
such as Russell's paradox at the turn of the century, it appeared that additional resources would
need to be postulated if logicism were to succeed.
By 1903, both Whitehead and Russell had reached this same conclusion. By this time, both men
were in the initial stages of preparing second volumes to their earlier books on related topics:
Whitehead's 1898 A Treatise on Universal Algebra and Russell's 1903 The Principles of
Mathematics. Since their research overlapped considerably, they began collaborating on what
would eventually become Principia Mathematica. By agreement, Russell worked primarily on
the philosophical parts of the project (including the book's philosophically rich Introduction, the
theory of descriptions, and the no-class theory), while the two men collaborated on the technical
derivations. As Russell tells us,
As for the mathematical problems, Whitehead invented most of the notation, except in so far as it
was taken over from Peano; I did most of the work concerned with series and Whitehead did most
of the rest. But this only applies to first drafts. Every part was done three times over. When one of
us had produced a first draft, he would send it to the other, who would usually modify it
considerably. After which, the one who had made the first draft would put it into final form.
There is hardly a line in all the three volumes which is not a joint product. (1959, 74)
Initially, it was thought that the project might take a year to complete. Unfortunately, after almost
a decade of difficult work on the part of both men, Cambridge University Press concluded that
publishing Principia would result in an estimated loss of approximately 600 pounds. Although
the press agreed to assume half this amount and the Royal Society agreed to donate another 200
pounds, that still left a 100-pound deficit. Only by each contributing 50 pounds were the authors
able to see their work through to publication. Today there is not a major academic library
anywhere in the world that does not possess a copy of this landmark publication.
2. Significance of Principia Mathematica
Achieving Principia's main goal proved to be controversial. Primarily at issue were the kinds of
assumptions that Whitehead and Russell needed to complete their project. Although Principia
succeeded in providing detailed derivations of many major theorems in set theory, finite and
transfinite arithmetic, and elementary measure theory, two axioms in particular were arguably
non-logical in character: the axiom of infinity and the axiom of reducibility. The axiom of infinity
in effect stated that there exists an infinite number of objects. Thus, it made the kind of
assumption that is generally thought to be empirical rather than logical in nature. The axiom of
reducibility was introduced as a means of overcoming the not completely satisfactory effects of
the theory of types, the theory that Russell and Whitehead used to restrict the notion of a well-
formed expression, thereby avoiding paradoxes such as Russell's paradox. Although technically
feasible, many critics concluded that the axiom of reducibility was simply too ad hoc to be
justified philosophically. As a result, the question of whether mathematics could be reduced to
logic, or whether it could be reduced only to set theory, remained open.
Despite these criticisms, Principia Mathematica proved to be remarkably influential in at least

three other ways. First, it popularized modern mathematical logic to an extent undreamt of by its
authors. By using a notation superior in many ways to that of Frege, Whitehead and Russell
managed to convey the remarkable expressive power of modern predicate logic in a way that
previous writers had been unable to achieve. Second, by exhibiting so clearly the deductive power
of the new logic, Whitehead and Russell were able to show how powerful the modern idea of a
formal system could be, thus opening up new work in what was soon to be called metalogic.
Third, Principia Mathematica reaffirmed clear and interesting connections between logicism and
two of the main branches of traditional philosophy, namely metaphysics and epistemology, thus
initiating new and interesting work in both of these areas.
Thus, not only did Principia introduce a wide range of philosophically rich notions (such as
propositional function, logical construction, and type theory), it also set the stage for the
discovery of classical metatheoretic results (such as those of Kurt Gödel, Alonzo Church, Alan
Turing and others) and initiated a tradition of common technical work in fields as diverse as
philosophy, mathematics, linguistics, economics and computer science.
Today there remains controversy over the ultimate substantive contribution of Principia, with
some authors holding that, with the appropriate modifications, logicism remains a feasible
project. Others hold that the philosophical and technical underpinnings of the Whitehead/Russell
project simply remain too weak or confused to be of great use to the logicist. Interested readers
are encouraged to consult Quine (1966a), Quine (1966b), Landini (1998), Linsky (1999), Hale
and Wright (2001), and Hintikka (2009).
3. Contents of Principia Mathematica
Principia Mathematica originally appeared in three volumes. Together these three volumes are
divided into six parts. Volume 1 begins with a lengthy Introduction containing sections entitled
“Preliminary Explanations of Ideas and Notations,” “The Theory of Logical Types,” and
“Incomplete Symbols.” It also contains Part I, entitled “Mathematical Logic,” which contains
sections on “The Theory of Deduction,” “Theory of Apparent Variables,” “Classes and
Relations,” “Logic of Relations,” and “Products and Sums of Classes”; and Part II, entitled
“Prolegomena to Cardinal Arithmetic,” which contains sections on “Unit Classes and Couples,”
“Sub-Classes, Sub-Relations, and Relative Types,” “One-Many, Many-One and One-One
Relations,” “Selections,” and “Inductive Relations.”Volume 2 begins with a “Prefatory Statement
of Symbolic Conventions.” It then continues with Part III, entitled “Cardinal Arithmetic,” which
itself contains sections on “Definition and Logical Properties of Cardinal Numbers,” “Addition,
Multiplication and Exponentiation,” and “Finite and Infinite”; Part IV, entitled “Relation-
Arithmetic,” which contains sections on “Ordinal Similarity and Relation-Numbers,” “Addition
of Relations, and the Product of Two Relations,” “The Principle of First Differences, and the
Multiplication and Exponentiation of Relations,” and “Arithmetic of Relation-Numbers”; and the
first half of Part V, entitled “Series,” which contains sections on “General Theory of Series,” “On
Sections, Segments, Stretches, and Derivatives,” and “On Convergence, and the Limits of
Functions.”Volume 3 continues Part V with sections on “Well-Ordered Series,” “Finite and
Infinite Series and Ordinals,” and “Compact Series, Rational Series, and Continuous Series.” It
also contains Part VI, entitled “Quantity,” which itself contains sections on “Generalization of
Number,” “Vector-Families,” “Measurement,” and “Cyclic Families.”
A fourth volume on geometry was planned but never completed (1959, 99).
Contemporary readers (i.e., those who have learned logic in the last few decades of the twentieth
century or later) will find the book's notation somewhat antiquated. Even so, the book remains
one of the great scientific documents of the twentieth century.
Russell's Logical Atomism
First published Mon Oct 24, 2005; substantive revision Fri Oct 30, 2009
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) described his philosophy as a kind of “logical atomism”, by which
he meant to endorse both a metaphysical view and a certain methodology for doing philosophy.
The metaphysical view amounts to the claim that the world consists of a plurality of
independently existing things exhibiting qualities and standing in relations. According to logical
atomism, all truths are ultimately dependent upon a layer of atomic facts, which consist either of
a simple particular exhibiting a quality, or multiple simple particulars standing in a relation. The
methodological view recommends a process of analysis, whereby one attempts to define or
reconstruct more complex notions or vocabularies in terms of simpler ones. According to Russell,
at least early on during his logical atomist phase, such an analysis could eventually result in a
language containing only words representing simple particulars, the simple properties and
relations thereof, and logical constants, which, despite this limited vocabulary, could adequately
capture all truths.
Russell's logical atomism had a profound influence on analytic philosophy in the first half of the
20th century; indeed, it is arguable that the very name “analytic philosophy” derives from
Russell's defense of the method of analysis.
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Origins and Development of Russell's Logical Atomism
o 2.1 The Break with Idealism and the Nature of Relations
o 2.2 Propositions in The Principles of Mathematics
o 2.3 The Theory of Descriptions
o 2.4 Classes, Propositions and Truth in Principia Mathematica
• 3. Russell's Philosophical Methodology and the Notion of Analysis
• 4. Ontological Aspects of Russell's Logical Atomism
o 4.1 Russellian Facts: Atomic, Negative and General
o 4.2 Logical Atoms and Simplicity
o 4.3 Atomic Propositions and Logical Independence
• 5. Influence and Reception
• Bibliography
• Related Entries
1. Introduction
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) introduced the phrase “logical atomism” to describe his philosophy
in 1911 (RA, 94), and used the phrase consistently throughout the 1910s and 1920s (OKEW, 12;
SMP, 84; PLA, 178; LA, 323; OOP, 259). Russell's logical atomism is perhaps best described as
partly a methodological viewpoint, and partly a metaphysical theory.
Methodologically, logical atomism can be seen as endorsement of analysis, understood as a two-

step process in which one attempts to identify, for a given domain of inquiry, set of beliefs or
scientific theory, the minimum and most basic concepts and vocabulary in which the other
concepts and vocabulary of that domain can be defined or recast, and the most general and basic
principles from which the remainder of the truths of the domain can be derived or reconstructed.
Metaphysically, logical atomism is the view that the world consists in a plurality of independent
and discrete entities, which by coming together form facts. According to Russell, a fact is a kind
of complex, and depends for its existence on the simpler entities making it up. The simplest sort
of complex, an atomic fact, was thought to consist either of a single individual exhibiting a
simple quality, or of multiple individuals standing in a simple relation.
The methodological and metaphysical elements of logical atomism come together in postulating
the theoretical, if not the practical, realizability of a fully analyzed language, in which all truths
could in principle be expressed in a perspicuous manner. Such a “logically ideal language”, as
Russell at times called it, would, besides logical constants, consist only of words representing the
constituents of atomic facts. In such a language, the simplest sort of complete sentence would be
what Russell called an “atomic proposition”, containing a single predicate or verb representing a
quality or relation along with the appropriate number of proper names, each representing an
individual. The truth or falsity of an atomic proposition would depend entirely on a corresponding
atomic fact. The other sentences of such a language would be derived either by combining atomic
propositions using truth-functional connectives, yielding molecular propositions, or by replacing
constituents of a simpler proposition by variables, and prefixing a universal or existential
quantifier, resulting in general and existential propositions. According to the stronger form of
logical atomism Russell at times adopted, he held that in such a language, “[g]iven all true atomic
propositions, together with the fact that they are all, every other true proposition can theoretically
be deduced by logical methods” (PM2, xv; cf. OKEW, 50). This puts the truth or falsity of atomic
propositions at the core of Russell's theory of truth, and hence, puts atomic facts at the center of
Russell's metaphysics.
In what follows, various aspects of Russell's logical atomism are discussed in greater detail. The
next section discusses the origins of logical atomism in the break made by Russell and G.E.
Moore from the tradition of British Idealism, and its development during the years in which
Russell worked on Principia Mathematica. In section 3, we examine Russell's notion of analysis
as a philosophical method, and give various examples of analysis as Russell understood it. In
section 4, we turn to a more detailed look at certain metaphysical aspects of Russell's atomism,
and in particular, the nature and classification of facts, as well certain points of controversy
regarding his views. In particular, we'll examine whether or not Russell's logical atomism
necessarily presupposes a fundamental realm of ultimate simples, and whether or not the atomic
propositions of Russell's atomism were understood as logically independent. The final section is
dedicated to a discussion of the influence and reception of Russell's logical atomism within the
subsequent philosophical tradition.
2. Origins and Development of Russell's Logical Atomism

2.1 The Break with Idealism and the Nature of Relations
In 1959, Russell himself dated his first acceptance of logical atomism to the years 1899–1900,
when he and G.E. Moore rejected the main tenets of the dominant school of philosophy in Britain
at the time (to which both had previously been adherents), the tradition of neo-Hegelian Idealism
exemplified in works of F.H. Bradley and J.M.E. McTaggart, and adopted instead a fairly strong
form of realism (MPD, 9). Of their break with idealism, Russell wrote that “Moore lad the way,
but I followed closely in his footsteps” (MPD, 42).
In 1899, Moore published a paper entitled “The Nature of Judgment”, in which he outlined his
main reasons for accepting the new realism. It begins with a discussion of a distinction made by
Bradley between different notions of idea. According to Bradley, the notion of idea understood as
a mental state or mental occurrence is not the notion of “idea” relevant to logic or to truth
understood as a relationship between our ideas and reality. Instead, the relevant notion of idea is
that of a sign or symbol representing something other than itself, or an idea understood as
possessing meaning. Bradley understood meaning in terms of “a part of the content … [of an
idea] cut off, fixed by the mind, and considered apart from the existence of the sign” (Bradley
1883, 8). Moore agreed with Bradley that it is not the mental occurrence that is important to
logic. However, with regard to Bradley's second notion of “idea”, Moore accused Bradley of
conflating the symbol with the symbolized, and rejected Bradley's view that what is symbolized is
itself a part of the idea and dependent upon it. Moore introduces the term “concept” for the
meaning of a symbol; for Moore, what it is for different ideas to have a common content is for
them to represent the same concept. However, the concept itself is independent of the ideas.
When we make a judgment, typically, it is not our ideas, or parts of our ideas, which our
judgment is about. According to Moore, if I make an assertion, what I assert is nothing about my
ideas or my mental states, but a certain “connexion of concepts”.
Moore went on to introduce the term “proposition” for complexes of concepts such as that which
would be involved in a belief or judgment. While propositions represent the content of
judgments, according to Moore, they and their constituents are entirely independent from the
judging mind. Some propositions are true, some are not. For Moore, however, truth is not a
correspondence relationship between propositions and reality, as there is no difference between a
proposition—understood as a mind-independent complex—and that which would make it true
(Moore 1899, 5; Moore 1901). The facts of the world then consist of true propositions,
themselves understood as complexes of concepts. According to Moore, something “becomes
intelligible first when it is analyzed into its constituent concepts” (Moore 1899, 8). “The Nature
of Judgment” had a profound influence of Russell, who later heralded it as the first account of the
“new philosophy” to which he and Moore subscribed (MPD, 42).
For his own part, Russell often described his dissatisfaction with the dominant Idealist (and
largely Monist) tradition as primarily having to do with the nature and existence of relations. In
particular, Russell took issue with the claim found in Bradley and others, that the notion of a
fundamental relation between two distinct entities is incoherent. Russell diagnosed this belief as
stemming from a widespread logical doctrine to the effect that every proposition is logically of
subject-predicate form. Russell was an ardent opponent of a position known as the “doctrine of
internal relations”, which Russell stated as the view that “every relation is grounded in the natures
of the related terms” (MTT, 139). Perhaps most charitably interpreted (for other interpretations
considered by Russell, see BReal, 87), this amounts to the claim that a's bearing relation R to b is
always reducible to properties held by a and b individually, or to a property held by the complex
formed of a and b.
In the period leading up to his own abandonment of idealism, Russell was already pursuing a
research program involving the foundations of arithmetic (see, e.g., AMR). This work, along with
his earlier work on the foundations of geometry (see EFG), had convinced him of the importance
of relations for mathematics. However, he found that one category of relations, viz., asymmetrical
transitive relations, resisted any such reduction to the properties of the relata or the whole formed
of them. These relations are especially important in mathematics, as they are the sort that
generates series. Consider the relation of being taller than, and consider the fact that Shaquille
O'Neal is taller than Michael Jordan. It might be thought that this relation between O'Neal and
Jordan can be reduced to properties of each: O'Neal has the property of being 7'2'' tall, and Jordan
has the property of being 6'6'' tall, and the taller than relation in this case is reducible to their
possession of these properties. The problem, according to Russell, is that for this reduction to
hold, the must be a certain relation between the properties themselves. This relation would
account for the ordering of the various height properties, putting the property of being-6'8''-tall in
between that of being-7'2''-tall and that of being-6'6''-tall. This relation among the properties
would itself be an asymmetrical and transitive relation, and so the analysis has not rid us of the
need for taking relations as ultimate. Another hypothesis would be that there is such an entity as
the whole composed of O'Neal and Jordan, and that the relation between the two men is reducible
to some property of this whole. Russell's complaint was that since the whole composed of O'Neal
and Jordan is the same as the whole composed of Jordan and O'Neal, this approach has no way to
explain what the difference would be between O'Neal's being taller than Jordan and Jordan's
being taller than O'Neal, as both would seem to be reduced to the same composite entity bearing
the same quality (see POM, 221–26).
Russell's rejection of the doctrine of internal relations is very important for understanding the
development of his atomistic doctrines in more than one respect. Certain advocates of the claim
that a relation must always be grounded in the “nature” of its relata hold that in virtue of a
relating to b, a must have a complex nature that includes its relatedness to b. Since every entity
presumably bears some relation to any other, the “nature” of any entity could arguably be
described as having the same complexity as the universe as a whole (if indeed, it even makes
sense on such a picture to divide the world into distinct entities at all, as many denied). Moreover,
according to some within this tradition, when we consider a, obviously we do not consider all its
relations to every entity, and hence grasp a in a way that falsifies the whole of what a is. This led
some to the claim that “analysis is falsification”, and even to hold that when we judge that a is the
father of b, and judge that a is the son of c, the a in the first judgment is not strictly speaking the
same a as involved in the second judgment; instead, in the first we deal only with a-quâ-father-
of-b in the first, and a-quâ-son-of-c in the second (cf. BReal, 89; MTT, 140).
In contradistinction to these views, Russell adopted what he called “the doctrine of external
relations”, which he claimed “may be expressed by saying that (1) relatedness does not imply any
corresponding complexity in the relata; (2) any given entity is a constituent of many different
complexes” (BReal, 87). This position on relations allowed Russell to adopt a pluralist
philosophy in which the world is conceived as composed of many distinct, independent entities,
each of which can be considered in isolation from its relations to other things, or its relation to the
mind. In 1911 Russell claimed that this doctrine was the “fundamental doctrine” of his realistic
position (BReal, 87; cf. RA, 92; POM, 226), and it represents perhaps the most important turning
point in the development of his logical atomism.
2.2 Propositions in The Principles of Mathematics
Russell's first published account of his newfound realism came in the 1903 classic The Principles
of Mathematics (POM). Part I of POM is dedicated largely to a philosophical inquiry into the
nature of propositions. Russell took over from Moore the conception of propositions as mind-
independent complexes; a true proposition was then simply identified by Russell with a fact (cf.
MTCA, 75–76). However, Moore's characterization of a proposition as a complex of concepts was
largely in keeping with traditional Aristotelian logic in which all judgments were thought to
involve a subject concept, copula and predicate concept. Russell, owing in part to his own views
on relations, and in part from his adopting certain doctrines stemming from Peano's symbolic
logic, sought to refine and improve upon this characterization.
In the terminology introduced in POM, constituents of a proposition occur either “as term” or “as
concept”. An entity occurs “as term” when it can replaced by any other entity and the result
would still be a proposition, and when it is one of the subjects of the proposition, i.e., something
the proposition is “about”. An entity occurs as concept when it occurs predicatively, i.e., only as
part of the assertion made about the things occurring as term. In the proposition Socrates is
human, the person Socrates (the man himself) occurs as term, but humanity occurs as concept. In
the proposition Callisto orbits Jupiter, Callisto (the moon itself) and Jupiter (the planet) occur as
term, and the relation of orbiting occurs as concept. Russell used the word “concept” for all those
entities capable of occurring as concept—chiefly relations and other universals—and the word
“thing” for those entities such as Socrates, Callisto and Jupiter, that can only occur as term. While
Russell thought that only certain entities were capable of occurring as concept, at the time, he
believed that every entity was capable of occurring as term in a proposition. In the proposition
Wisdom is a virtue, the concept wisdom occurs as term. His argument that this held generally was
that if there were some entity, E, that could not occur as term, there would have to be a fact, i.e., a
true proposition, to this effect. However, in the proposition E cannot occur as term in a
proposition, E occurs as term (POM, 44–45).
Russell's 1903 account of propositions as complexes of entities was in many ways in keeping
with his views as the nature of complexes and facts during the core logical atomist period of
1911–1925. In particular, at both stages he would regard the simple truth that an individual a
stands in the simple relation R to an individual b as a complex consisting of the individuals a and
b and the relation R. However, there are a number of positions Russell held in 1903 that were
abandoned in this later period; some of the more important were these: (1) in 1903, Russell was
committed to a special kind of propositional constituent called a “denoting concept”, involved in
descriptive and quantified propositions; (2) in 1903, Russell believed that there was such a
complex, i.e., a proposition, consisting of a, b and R even when it is not true that a bears relation
R to b, and (3) in 1903, Russell believed in the reality of classes, understood as aggregate objects,
which could be constituents of propositions. In each case, it is worth, at least briefly, discussing
Russell's change of heart.
2.3 The Theory of Descriptions
In POM, Russell expressed the view that grammar is a useful guide in understanding the make-up
of a proposition, and even that in many cases, the make-up of a proposition corresponding to a
sentence can be understood by determining, for each word of the sentence, what entity in the
proposition is meant by the word (POM, 46). Perhaps in part because such phrases as “all dogs”,
“some numbers” and “the queen” appear as a grammatical unit, Russell came to the conclusion
that they made a unified contribution to the corresponding proposition. Because Russell believed
it impossible for a finite mind to grasp a proposition of infinite complexity, however, Russell
rejected a view according to which the (false) proposition designated by
1. All numbers are odd.
actually contains all numbers (POM, 145). Similarly, although Russell admitted that such a
proposition as (1) is equivalent to a formal implication, i.e., a quantified conditional of the form:
2. (x)(x is a number ⊃ x is odd)
Russell held that they are nevertheless distinct propositions (POM, 74). This was perhaps in part
due to the difference in grammatical structure, and perhaps also because the former appears only
to be about numbers, whereas the latter is about all things, whether numbers or not. Instead,
Russell thought that the proposition corresponding to (1) contains as a constituent the denoting
concept all numbers. Russell explained denoting concepts as entities which, whenever they occur
in a proposition, the proposition is not about them but about other entities to which they bear a
special relation. So when the denoting concept all numbers occurs in a proposition, the
proposition is not about the denoting concept, but instead about 1 and 2 and 3, etc.
In 1905, Russell abandoned this theory in favor of his celebrated theory of definite and indefinite
descriptions outlined in the paper “On Denoting”. What precisely lead Russell to become
dissatisfied with his earlier theory, and the precise nature of the argument he gave against
denoting concepts (and similar entities such as Frege's senses), are a matter of great controversy,
and have given rise to large body of secondary literature. For present purposes, it can merely be
noted that Russell professed an inability to understand the logical form of propositions about
denoting concepts themselves, as in the claim that “The present King of France is a denoting
concept” (cf. OD, 48–50). According to the new theory adopted, the proposition expressed by (1)
was now identified with that expressed by a quantified conditional such as (2). Similarly, the
proposition expressed by
3. Some number is odd.
was identified with the existentially quantified conjunction represented by
4. (∃x)(x is a number & x is odd)
Perhaps most notoriously, Russell argued that a proposition involving a definite description, e.g.,
5. The King of France is bald.
was to be understood as having the structure of a certain kind of existential statement, in this
case:
6. (∃x)(x is King of France & (y)(y is King of France ⊃ x = y) & x is bald)
Russell cited in favor of these theories that they provided an elegant solution to certain
philosophical puzzles. One involves how it is that a proposition can be meaningful even if it
involves a description or other denoting phrase that does not denote anything. Given the above
account of the structure of the proposition expressed by “the King of France is bald”, while
France and the relation of being King of are constituents, there is no constituent directly
corresponding to whole phrase “the King of France”. The proposition in question is false, since
there is no value of x which would make it true. One is not committed to a nonexistent entity such
as the King of France simply in order to understand the make-up of the proposition. Secondly,
this theory provides an answer to how it is that certain identity statements can be both true and
informative. On the above theory, the proposition corresponding to:
7. The author of Waverly = Scott
would be understood as having the following structure:
8. (∃x)(x authored Waverly & (y)(y authored Waverly ⊃ x = y) & x = Scott)
If instead, the proposition corresponding to (7) was simply a complex consisting of the relation of
identity, Scott, and the author of Waverly himself, since the author of Waverly simply is Scott,
the proposition would be the same as the uninformative proposition Scott = Scott. By showing
that the actual structure of the proposition is quite a bit different from what it appears from the
grammar of the sentence “The author of Waverly = Scott”, Russell believed he had shown how it
might be more informative than a trivial instance of the law of identity (OD, 51–54).
The theory of “On Denoting” did away with Russell's temptation to regard grammar as a very
reliable guide towards understanding the structure or make-up of a proposition. Especially
important in this regard is the notion of an “incomplete symbol”, by which Russell understood an
expression that can be meaningful in the context of its use within a sentence, but does not by
itself correspond to a constituent or unified part of the corresponding proposition. According to
the theory of “On Denoting”, phrases such as “the King of France”, or “the author of Waverly”
were to be understood as “incomplete symbols” in this sense. The general notion of an
“incomplete symbol” was applied by Russell in ways beyond the theory of descriptions, and
perhaps most importantly, to his understanding of classes.
2.4 Classes, Propositions and Truth in Principia Mathematica
In POM, Russell had postulated two types of composite entities: unities and aggregates (POM,
140f). By a “unity” he meant a complex entity in which the constituent parts are arranged with a
definite structure. A proposition was understood to be a unity in this sense. By an “aggregate”, he
meant an entity such as a class whose identity conditions are governed entirely by what members
or “parts” it has, and not by any relationships between the parts. By the time of the publication of
the first edition of Principia Mathematica in 1910, Russell's views about both types of composite
entities had changed drastically.
Russell fundamentally conceived of a class as the extension of a concept, or as the extension of a

propositional function; indeed, in POM he claims that “a class may be defined as all the terms
satisfying some propositional function” (POM, 20). However, Russell was aware already at the
time of POM that the supposition there is always a class, understood as an individual entity, as
the extension of every propositional function, leads to certain logical paradoxes. Perhaps the most
famous, now called “Russell's paradox”, derived from consideration of the class, w, of all classes
not members of themselves. The class w would be a member of itself if it satisfied its defining
condition, i.e., if it were not a member of itself. Similarly, w would not be a member of itself if it
did not satisfy its defining condition, i.e., if it were a member of itself. Hence, both the
assumption that it is a member of itself, and the assumption that it is not, are impossible. Another
related paradox Russell often discussed in this regard has since come to be called “Cantor's
paradox”. Cantor had proven that if a class had n members, that the number of sub-classes that
can be taken from that class is 2n, and also that 2n > n, even when n is infinite. It follows from this
that the number of subclasses of the class of all individuals, (i.e., the number of different classes
of individuals) is greater than the number of individuals. Russell took this as strong evidence that
a class of individuals could not itself be considered an individual. Likewise, the number of
subclasses of the class of all classes is greater than the number of members in the class of all
classes. This Russell took to be evidence that there is some ambiguity in the notion of a “class” so
that the subclasses of the class of “all classes” would not themselves be among its members, as it
would seem.
Russell spent the years between 1902 and 1910 searching for a philosophically motivated solution
to such paradoxes. He tried solutions of various sorts. However, in late 1905, after the discovery
of the theory of descriptions, he became convinced that an expression for a class is an
“incomplete symbol”, i.e., that while such an expression can occur as part of a meaningful
sentence, it should not be regarded as representing a single entity in the corresponding
proposition. Russell dubbed this approach the “no classes” theory of classes (see e.g., TNOT,
145), because, while it allows discourse about classes to be meaningful, it does not posit classes
as among the fundamental ontological furniture of the world. The precise nature of Russell's “no
classes” theory underwent significant changes between 1905 and 1910. However, in the version
adopted in the first edition of Principia Mathematica, Russell believed that a statement
apparently about a class could always be reconstructed, using higher-order quantification, in
terms of a statement involving its defining propositional function. Russell believed that whenever
a class term of the form “{z|ψz}” appeared in some sentence, the sentence as a whole could be
regarded as defined as follows (cf. PM, 188):
f({z|ψz}) =df (∃φ)((x)(φ!x ≡ ψx) & f(φ))
The above view can be paraphrased, somewhat crudely, as the claim that any truth seemingly
about a class can be reduced to a claim about some or all of its members. For example, it follows
from this contextual definition of class terms that the statement to the effect that one class A is a
subset of another class B is equivalent to the claim that whatever satisfies the defining
propositional function of A also satisfies the defining propositional function of B. Russell also
sometimes described this as the view that classes are “logical constructions”, not part of the “real
world”, but only the world of logic. Another way Russell expressed himself is by saying that a
class is a “logical fiction”. While it may seem that a class term is representative of an entity,
according to Russell, class terms are meaningful in a different way. Classes are not among the
basic stuff of the world; yet it is possible to make use of class terms in significant speech, as if
there were such things as classes. A class is thus portrayed by Russell as a mere façon de parler,
or convenient way of speaking about all or some of the entities satisfying some propositional
function.
During the period in which Russell was working on Principia Mathematica, most likely in 1907,
Russell also radically revised his former realism about propositions understood as mind
independent complexes. The motivations for the change are a matter of some controversy, but
there are at least two possible sources. The first is that in addition to the logical paradoxes
concerning the existence of classes, Russell was aware of certain paradoxes stemming from the
assumption that propositions could be understood as individual entities. One such paradox was
discussed already in Appendix B of POM (527–28). By Cantor's theorem, there must be more
classes of propositions than propositions. However, for every class of propositions, m, it is
possible to generate a distinct proposition, such as the proposition that every proposition in m is
true, in violation of Cantor's theorem. Unlike the other paradoxes mentioned above, a version of
this paradox can be reformulated even if talk of classes is replaced by talk of their defining
propositional functions. Russell was also aware of certain contingent paradoxes involving
propositions, such as the Liar paradox formulated involving a person S, whose only assertion at
time t is the proposition All propositions asserted by S at time t are false. Given the success of the
rejection of classes as ultimate entities in resolving the paradoxes of classes, Russell was
motivated to see if a similar solution to these paradoxes could be had by rejecting propositions as
singular entities.
Another set of considerations pushing Russell towards the rejection of his former view of
propositions is more straightforwardly metaphysical. According to his earlier view, and that of
Moore, a proposition was understood as a mind independent complex. The constituents of the
complex are the actual entities involved, and hence, as we have seen, when a proposition is true,
it is the same entity as a fact or state of affairs. However, because some propositions are false,
this view of propositions posits objective falsehoods. The false proposition that Venus orbits
Neptune is thought to be a complex containing Venus and the Neptune the planets, as well as the
relation or orbiting, with the relation occurring as a relation, i.e., as relating Venus to Neptune.
However, it seems natural to suppose that the relation of orbiting could only unite Venus and
Neptune into a complex, if in fact, Venus orbits Neptune. Hence, the presence of such objective
falsehoods is itself out of sorts with common sense. Worse, as Russell explained, positing the
existence of objective falsehoods in addition to objective truths makes the difference between
“truth” and “falsehood” inexplicable, as both become irreducible properties of propositions, and
we are left without an explanation for the privileged metaphysical status of truth over falsehood
(see, e.g., NTF, 152).
Whatever his primary motivation, Russell abandoned any commitment to objective falsehoods,
and restructured his ontology of facts, and adopted a new correspondence theory of truth. In the
terminology of the new theory, the word “proposition” was used not for an objective
metaphysical complex, but simply for an interpreted declarative sentence, an item of language.
Propositions are thought to be true or false depending on their correspondence, or lack thereof,
with facts.
In the Introduction to Principia Mathematica, as part of his explanation of ramified type-theory,

Russell described various notions of truth applicable to different types of propositions of different
complexity. The simplest propositions in the language of Principia Mathematica are what Russell
there called “elementary propositions”, which take forms such as “a has quality q”, “a has
relation [in intension] R to b”, or “a and b and c stand in relation S” (PM, 43–44). Such
propositions consist of a simple predicate, representing either a quality or a relation, and a
number of proper names. According to Russell, such a proposition is true when there is a
corresponding fact or complex, composed of the entities named by the predicate and proper
names related to each other in the appropriate way. E.g., the proposition “a has relation R to b” is
true if there exists a corresponding complex in which the entity a is related by the relation R to
the entity b. If there is no corresponding complex, then the proposition is false.
Russell dubbed the notion of truth applicable to elementary propositions “first truth”. This notion
of truth serves as the ground for a hierarchy of different notions of truth applicable to different
types of propositions depending on their complexity. A proposition such as “(x)(x has quality q)”
which involves a first-order quantifier, has (or lacks) “second truth” depending on whether its
instances have “first truth”. In this case, “(x)(x has quality q)” would be true if every proposition
got by replacing the “x” in “x has quality q” with the proper name of an individual has “first
truth” (PM, 42). A proposition involving the simplest kind of second-order quantifier, i.e., a
quantifier using a variable for “predicative” propositional functions of the lowest type, would
have or lack “third truth” depending on whether its allowable substitution instances have second
(or lower) truth. Because any statement apparently about a class of individuals involves this sort
of higher-order quantification, the truth or falsity of such a proposition will ultimately depend on
the truth or falsity of various elementary propositions about its members.
Although Russell did not use the phrase “logical atomism” in the Introduction to Principia
Mathematica, in many ways it represents the first work of Russell's atomist period. Russell there
explicitly endorsed the view that the “universe consists of objects having various qualities and
standing in various relations” (PM, 43). Propositions that assert that an object has a quality, or
that multiple objects stand in a certain relation, were given a privileged place in the theory, and
explanation was given as to how more complicated truths, including truths about classes, depend
on the truth of such simple propositions. Russell's work over the next two decades consisted
largely in refining and expanding upon this picture of the world.
3. Russell's Philosophical Method and the Notion of Analysis
Although Russell changed his mind on a great number of philosophical issues throughout his
career, one of the most stable elements in his views is the endorsement of a certain methodology
for approaching philosophy. Indeed, it could be argued to be the most continuous and unifying
feature of Russell's philosophical work (e.g., see Hager 1994). Russell employed the
methodology self-consciously, and gave only slightly differing descriptions of this methodology
in works throughout his career (see, esp., EFG, 14–15; POM, 1–2, 129–30; RMDP, 272–74; PM,
59; IPL, 284–85; TK, 33, 158–59; OKEW, 144–45; PLA, 178–82, 270–71; IMP, 1–2; LA, 324–36,
341; RTC, 687; HWP, 788–89; HK, 257–59; MPD, 98–99, 162–163). Understanding this
methodology is particularly important for understanding his logical atomism, as well as what he
meant by “analysis”.
The methodology consists of a two phase process. The first phase is dubbed the “analytic” phase
(although it should be noted that sometimes Russell used the word “analysis” for the whole
procedure). One begins with a certain theory, doctrine or collection of beliefs which is taken to be
more or less correct, but is taken to be in certain regards vague, imprecise, disunified, overly
complex or in some other way confused or puzzling. The aim in the first phase is to work
backwards from these beliefs, taken as a kind of “data”, to a certain minimal stock of undefined
concepts and general principles which might be thought to underlie the original body of
knowledge. The second phase, which Russell described as the “constructive” or “synthetic”
phrase, consists in rebuilding or reconstructing the original body of knowledge in terms of the
results of the first phase. More specifically, in the synthetic phase, one defines those elements of
the original conceptual framework and vocabulary of the discipline in terms of the “minimum
vocabulary” identified in the first phrase, and derives or deduces the main tenets of the original
theory from the basic principles or general truths one arrives at after analysis.
As a result of such a process, the system of beliefs with which one began takes on a new form in
which connections between various concepts it uses are made clear, the logical interrelations
between various theses of the theory are clarified, and vague or unclear aspects of the original
terminology are eliminated. Moreover, the procedure also provides opportunities for the
application of Occam's razor, as it calls for the elimination of unnecessary or redundant aspects of
a theory. Concepts or assumptions giving rise to paradoxes or conundrums or other problems
within a theory are often found to be wholly unnecessary or capable of being supplanted by
something less problematic. Another advantage is that the procedure arranges its results as a
deductive system, and hence invites and facilitates the discovery of new results.
Examples of this general procedure can be found throughout Russell's writings, and Russell also
credits others with having achieved similar successes. Russell's work in mathematical logic
provides perhaps the most obvious example of his utilization of such a procedure. It is also an
excellent example of Russell's contention that analysis proceeds in stages. Russell saw his own
work as the next step is a series of successes beginning with the work of Cantor, Dedekind and
Weierstrass. Prior to the work of these figures, mathematics employed a number of concepts,
number, magnitude, series, limit, infinity, function, continuity, etc., without a full understanding
of the precise definition of each concept, nor how they related to one another. By introducing
precise definitions of such notions, these thinkers exposed ambiguities (e.g., such as with the
word “infinite”), revealed interrelations between certain of them, and eliminated dubious notions
that had previously caused confusion and paradoxes (such as those involved with the notion of an
“infinitesimal”). Russell saw the next step forward in the analysis of mathematics in the work of
Peano and his associates, who not only attempted to explain how many mathematical notions
could be “arithmetized”, i.e., defined and proven in terms of arithmetic, but had also identified, in
the case of arithmetic, three basic concepts (zero, successor, and natural number) and five basic
principles (the so-called “Peano axioms”), from which the rest of arithmetic was thought to be
derivable.
Russell described the next advance as taking place in the work of Frege. According to the
conception of number found in Frege's Grundgesetze der Arithmetik, a number can be regarded as
an equivalence class consisting of those classes whose members can be put in 1-1 correspondence
with any other member of the class. According to Russell, this conception allowed the primitives
of Peano's analysis to be defined fully in terms of the notion of a class, along with other logical
notions such as identity, quantification, negation and the conditional. Similarly, Frege's work
showed how the basic principles of Peano's analysis could be derived from logical axioms alone.
However, Frege's analysis was not in all ways successful, as the notion of a class or the extension
of a concept which Frege included as a logically primitive notion lead to certain contradictions. In
this regard, Russell saw his own analysis of mathematics (largely developed independently from
Frege) as an improvement, with its more austere analysis that eliminates even the notion of a
class as a primitive idea (see the discussion of classes in Section 2.4 above), and thereby
eliminates the contradictions (see, e.g., RMDP, 276–81; LA, 325–27).
It was clearly a part of Russell's view in that in conducting an analysis of a domain such a
mathematics, and reducing its primitive conceptual apparatus and unproven premises to a
minimum, one is not merely reducing the vocabulary of a certain theory, but also showing a way
of reducing the metaphysical commitments of the theory. In first showing that numbers such as 1,
2, etc., could be defined in terms of classes of like cardinality, and then showing how apparent
discourse about “classes” could be replaced by higher-order quantification, Russell made it
possible to see how it is that there could be truths of arithmetic without presupposing that the
numbers constitute a special category of abstract entity. Numbers are placed in the category of
“logical fictions” or “logical constructions” along with all other classes.
Russell's work from the period after the publication of Principia Mathematica of 1910 show
applications of this general philosophical approach to non-mathematical domains. In particular,
his work over the next two decades shows concern with the attempt provide analyses of the
notions of knowledge, space, time, experience, matter and causation. When Russell applied his
analytic methodology to sciences such as physics, again the goal was to arrive at a “minimum
vocabulary” required for the science in question, as well as a set of basic premises and general
truths from which the rest of the science can be derived. We cannot delve into all the details of
Russell's evolving analyses here. However, according to the views developed by Russell in the
mid-1910s, many of the fundamental notions in physics were thought to be analyzable in terms of
particular sensations: i.e., bits of color, auditory notes, or other simple parts of sensation, and
their qualities and relations. Russell called such sensations, when actually experienced, “sense”.
In particular, Russell believed that the notion of a “physical thing” could be replaced, or analyzed
in terms of, the notion of a series of classes of sensible particulars each bearing to one another
certain relations of continuity, resemblance, and perhaps certain other relations relevant to the
formulation of the laws of physics (OKEW, 86ff; RSDP, 114–15; UCM, 105). Other physical
notions such as that of a point of space, or an instance of time, could be conceived in terms of
classes of sensible particulars and their spatial and temporal relations (see TK, 77; OKEW, 91–
99). Later, after abandoning the view that perception is fundamentally relational, and accepting a
form of William James's neutral monism, Russell similarly came to believe that the notion of a
conscious mind could be analyzed in terms of various percepts, experiences and sensations
related to each other by psychological laws (AMi chaps. 1, 5; OOP chap. 26; cf. PLA, 277ff).
Hence, Russell came to the view that words as “point”, “matter”,“instant”, “mind”, and the like
could be discarded from the minimum vocabulary needed for physics or psychology. Instead,
such words could be systematically translated into a language only containing words representing
certain qualities and relations between sensible particulars.
Throughout these analyses, Russell put into practice a slogan he stated as follows: “Wherever
possible, logical constructions are to be substituted for inferred entities” (RSDP, 115; cf. LA,
326). Rival philosophies that postulate an ego or mind as an entity distinct from its mental states
involve inferring the existence of an entity that cannot directly be found in experience. Something
similar can be said about philosophies that take matter to be an entity distinct from sensible
appearances, lying behind them and inferred from them. Combining Russell's suggestions that
talk of “minds” or “physical objects” is to be analyzed in terms of classes of sensible particulars
with his general view that classes are “logical fictions”, results in the view that minds and
physical objects too are “logical fictions”, or not parts of the basic building blocks of reality.
Instead, all truths about such purported entities turn out instead to be analyzable as truths about
sensible particulars and their relations to one another. This is in keeping with the general
metaphysical outlook of logical atomism. We also have here a fairly severe application of
Occam's razor. The slogan was applied within his analyses in mathematics as well. Noting that
sometimes a series of rational numbers converges towards a limit which is not itself specifiable as
a rational, some philosophers of mathematics thought that one should postulate an irrational
number as a limit. Russell claimed that rather than postulating entities in such a case, an irrational
number should simply be defined as a class of rational numbers without a rational upper bound.
Russell preferred to reconstruct talk of irrationals this way rather than infer or postulate the
existence of a new species of mathematical entity not already known to exist; complaining that
the method of “postulating” what we want has “the advantages of theft over honest toil” (IMP,
71).
In conducting an analysis of mathematics, or indeed, of any other domain of thought, Russell was
clear that although the results of analysis can be regarded as logical premises from which the
original body of knowledge can in principle be derived, epistemologically speaking, the pre-
analyzed beliefs are more fundamental. For example, in mathematics, a belief such as “2 + 2 = 4”
is epistemologically more certain, and psychologically easier to understand and accept, than
many of the logical premises from which it is derived. Indeed, Russell believed that the results
obtained through the process of analysis obtain their epistemic warrant inductively from the
evident truth of their logical consequences (see, e.g., TK, 158–59). As Russell put it, “[t]he reason
for accepting an axiom, as for accepting any other proposition, is always largely inductive,
namely that many propositions which are nearly indubitable can be deduced from it, and that no
equally plausible way is known by which these propositions could be true if the axiom were false,
and nothing which is plausibly false can be deduced from it” (PM, 59; cf. RMDP, 282). It is
perhaps for these reasons that Russell believed that the process of philosophical analysis should
always begin with beliefs the truth of which are not in question, i.e., which are “nearly
indubitable”.
When Russell spoke about the general philosophical methodology described here, he usually had
in mind applying the process of analysis to an entire body of knowledge or set of data. In fact,
Russell advocated usually to begin with the uncontroversial doctrine of a certain science, such as
mathematics or physics, largely because he held that these theories are the most likely to be true,
or at least nearly true, and hence make the most appropriate place to begin the process of analysis.
Russell did on occasion also speak of analyzing a particular proposition of ordinary life. One
example he gave is “There are a number of people in this room at this moment” (PLA, 179). In
this case, the truth or falsity of this statement may seem obvious, but exactly what its truth would
involve is rather obscure. The process of analysis in this case would consist in attempting to make
the proposition clear by defining what it is for something to be a room, for something to be a
person, for a person to be in a room, what a moment is, etc. In this case, it might seem that the
ordinary language statement is sufficiently vague that there is likely no one precise or
unambiguous proposition that represents the “correct analysis” of the proposition. In a sense this
is right; however, this does not mean that analysis would be worthless. Russell was explicit that
the goal of analysis is not to unpack what is psychologically intended by an ordinary statement
such as the previous example, nor what a person would be thinking when he or she utters it. The
point rather is simply to begin with a certain obvious, but rough and vague statement, and find a
replacement for it in a more precise, unified, and minimal idiom (see, e.g., PLA, 180, 189).
On Russell's view, vagueness is a feature of language, not of the world. In vague language, there
is no one-one relation between propositions and facts, so that a vague statement could be
considered verified by any one of a range of different facts (Vag, 217). However, in a properly
analyzed proposition, there is a clear isomorphism between the structure of the proposition and
the structure of the fact that would make it true (PLA, 197); hence a precise and analyzed
proposition is capable of being true in one and only one way (Vag, 219). In analyzing a
proposition such as “there are a number of people in this room at this moment”, one might obtain
a precise statement which would require for its truth that there is a certain class of sensible
particulars related to each other in a very definite way constituting the presence of a room, and
certain other classes of sensible particulars related to each other in ways constituting people, and
that the sensible particulars in the latter classes bear certain definite relations to those in the first
class of particulars. Obviously, nothing like this is clearly in the mind of a person who would
ordinarily use the original English expression. It is clear to see in this case that a very specific
state of things is required for the truth of the analyzed proposition, and hence the truth of it will
be far more doubtful than the truth of the vague assertion with which one began the process (PLA,
179–80). As Russell put the point, “the point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as
not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it”
(PLA, 193).
4. Ontological Aspects of Russell's Logical Atomism

4.1 Russellian Facts: Atomic, Negative and General
As we have seen, the primary metaphysical thesis of Russell's atomism is the view that the world
consists of many independent entities that exhibit qualities and stand in relations to one another.
On this picture, the simplest sort of fact or complex consists either of a single individual or
particular bearing a quality, or a number of individuals bearing a relation to one another.
Relations can be divided into various categories depending on how many relata they involve: a
binary or dyadic relation involves two relata (e.g., a is to the left of b); a triadic relation (e.g., a is
between b and c) involves three relata and so on. Russell at times used the word “relation” in a
broad sense so as to include qualities, which could be considered as “monadic” relations, i.e.,
relations that only involve one relatum. The quality of being white, involved, e.g., in the fact that
a is white, could then, in this broader sense, also be considered a relation.
At the time of Principia Mathematica, complexes in Russell's ontology were all described as
taking the form of n individuals entering into an n-adic relation. There he writes:
We will give the name of “a complex” to any such object as “a in the relation R to b” or “a
having the quality q,” or “a and b and c standing in relation S.” Broadly speaking, a complex is
anything which occurs in the universe and is not simple. (PM, 44)
As we have seen, at the time of writing Principia Mathematica, Russell believed that an
elementary proposition consisting of a single predicate representing an n-place relation along
with n names of individuals is true if it corresponds to a complex. An elementary proposition is
false if there is no corresponding complex. Russell there gave no indication that he believed in
any other sorts of complexes or truth-makers for any other sorts of propositions. Indeed, he held
that a quantified proposition is made true not by a single complex, but by many, writing, “[i]f φx
is an elementary judgment it is true when it points to a corresponding complex. But (x).φx does
not point to a single corresponding complex: the corresponding complexes are as numerous as the
possible values of x” (PM, 46).
Soon after Principia Mathematica, Russell became convinced that this picture was too simplistic.
In the “Philosophy of Logical Atomism” lectures he described a more complicated framework. In
the new terminology, the phrase “atomic fact” was introduced for the simplest kind of fact, i.e.,
one in which n particulars enter into an n-adic relation. He used the phrase “atomic proposition”
for a proposition consisting only of a predicate for an n-place relation, along with n proper names
for particulars. Hence, such propositions could take such forms as “F(a)”, “R(a, b)”, “S(a, b, c)”
(cf. PM2, xv). An atomic propositions is true when it corresponds to a positive atomic fact.
However, Russell no longer conceived of falsity as simply lacking a corresponding fact. Russell
now believed that some facts are negative, i.e., that if “R(a, b)” is false, there is such a fact as a's
not bearing relation R to b. Since the proposition “R(a, b)” is affirmative, and the corresponding
fact is negative, “R(a, b)” is false, and, equivalently, its negation “not-R(a, b)” is true. Russell's
rationale for endorsing negative facts was somewhat complicated (see, e.g., PLA, 211–15);
however, one might object that on his earlier view, according to which “R(a, b)” is false because
it lacks a corresponding complex, is only plausible if you suppose that it must be a fact that there
is not such a complex, and such a fact would itself seem to be a negative fact.
By 1918, Russell had also abandoned the view, held at least as late as 1911 (see RA, 94) that
qualities and relations can occur in a complex as themselves the relata to another relation, as in
“priority implies diversity”. Partly influenced by Wittgenstein, Russell now held the view that
whenever a proposition apparently involves a relation or quality occurring as logical subject, it is
capable of being analyzed into a form in which the relation or quality occurs predicatively. For
example, “priority implies diversity” might be analyzed as “(x)(y)(x is prior to y ⊃ x is not y)”
(PLA, 205–06; for further discussion see Klement 2004).
Russell used the phrase “molecular proposition” for those propositions that are compounded
using truth-function operators. Examples would include, “F(a) & R(a, b)” and “R(a, b) ∨ R(b,
a)”. According to Russell, it is unnecessary to suppose that there exists any special sort of fact
corresponding to molecular propositions; the truth-value of a molecular proposition could be
entirely derivative on the truth-values of its constituents (PLA, 209). Hence, if “F(a) & R(a,b)” is
true, ultimately it is made true by two atomic facts, the fact that a has property F and the fact that
a bears R to b, and not by a single conjunctive fact.
However, by 1918, Russell's attitude with regard to quantified propositions had changed. He no
longer believed that the truth of a general proposition could be reduced simply to the facts or
complexes making its instances true. Russell argued that the truth of the general proposition
“(x).R(x, b)” could not consist entirely of the various atomic facts that a bears R to b, b bears R to
b, c bears R to b, …. It also requires the truth that there are no other individuals besides a, b, c,
etc., i.e., no other atomic facts of the relevant form. Hence, Russell concluded that there is a
special category of facts he calls general facts that account for the truth of quantified
propositions, although he admitted a certain amount of uncertainty as to their precise nature
(PLA, 234–37). Likewise, Russell also posited existence facts, those facts corresponding to the
truth of existentially quantified propositions, such as “(∃x)R(x, b)”. In the case of general and
existence facts, Russell did not think it coherent to make distinctions between positive and
negative facts. Indeed, a negative general fact could simply be described as an existence fact, and
a negative existence fact could be described as a general fact. For example, the falsity of the
general proposition “all birds fly” amounts to the fact that there exist birds that do not fly, and the
falsity of the existential proposition “there are unicorns” amounts to the general fact that
everything is not a unicorn. Obviously, however, the truth or falsity of general and existence
propositions is not wholly independent of its instances.
In addition to the sorts of facts discussed above, Russell raised the question as to whether a
special sort of fact is required corresponding to propositions that report a belief, desire or other
“propositional attitude”. Russell's views on this matter changed over different periods, as his own
views regarding the nature of judgment, belief and representation matured. Moreover, in some
works he left it as a open question as to whether one need presuppose a distinct kind of logical
form in these cases (e.g., PLA, 224–28; IMT, 256–57). At times, however, Russell believed that
the fact that S believes that a bears R to b amounts to the holding of a multiple relation in which
S, a, R and b are all relata (e.g. NTF, 155–56; TK, 144ff). At other points, he considered more
complicated analyses in which beliefs amount to the possession of certain psychological states
bearing causal or other relationships to the objects they are about, or the tendencies of believers to
behave in certain ways (see, e.g., IMT, 182–83; HK, 144–48). Depending on how such
phenomena are analyzed, it is certainly not clear that they require any new species of fact.
4.2 Logical Atoms and Simplicity
Russell's use of the phrase “atomic fact”, and indeed the very title of “logical atomism” suggest
that the constituents of atomic facts, the “logical atoms”, Russell spoke of, must be regarded as
utterly simple and devoid of complexity. In that case, the particulars, qualities and relations
making up atomic facts constitute the fundamental level of reality to which all other aspects of
reality are ultimately reducible. This attitude is confirmed especially in Russell's early logical
atomist writings. For example, in “Analytic Realism”, Russell wrote:
… the philosophy I espouse is analytic, because it claims that one must discover the simple
elements of which complexes are composed, and that complexes presuppose simples, whereas
simples do not presuppose complexes …
I believe there are simple beings in the universe, and that these beings have relations in virtue of
which complex beings are composed. Any time a bears the relation R to b there is a complex “a
in relation R to b” …
You will note that this philosophy is the philosophy of logical atomism. Every simple entity is an
atom. (RA, 94)
Elsewhere he spoke of “logical atomism” as involving the view that “you can get down in theory,
if not in practice, to ultimate simples, out of which the world is built, and that those simples have
a kind of reality not belonging to anything else” (PLA, 270). However, it has been questioned
whether Russell had sufficient argumentation for thinking that there are such simple beings.
In the abstract, there are two sorts of arguments Russell could have given for the existence of
simples, a priori arguments, or empirical arguments (cf. Pears 1985, 4ff). An a priori argument
might proceed from the very understanding of complexity: what is complex presupposes parts. In
1924, Russell wrote, “I confess it seems obvious to me (as it did Leibniz) that what is complex
must be composed of simples, though the number of constituents may be infinite” (LA, 337).
However, if construed as an argument, this does not seem very convincing. It seems at least
logically possible that while a complex may have parts, its parts might themselves be complex,
and their parts might also be also complex, and so on, ad infinitum. Indeed, Russell himself later
came to admit that one could not know simply on the basis of something being complex that it
must be composed of simples (MPD, 123).
Another sort of a priori argument might stem from conceptions regarding the nature of analysis.
As analysis proceeds, one reaches more primitive notions, and it might be thought that the
process must terminate at a stage in which the remaining vocabulary is indefinable because the
entities involved are absolutely simple, and hence, cannot be construed as logical constructions
built out of anything more primitive. Russell did at some points describe his logical atoms as
reached at “the limit of analysis” (LA, 337) or “the final residue in analysis” (MPD, 164).
However, even during the height of his logical atomist period, Russell admitted that it is possible
that “analysis could go on forever”, and that complex things might be capable of analysis “ad
infinitum” (PLA, 202).
Lastly, one might argue for simples the basis of an empirical argument; i.e., one might claim to
have completed the process of analysis and to have reduced all sorts of truths down to certain
entities that can be known in some way or another to be simple. Russell is sometimes interpreted
as having reasoned in this way. According to Russell's well known “principle of acquaintance” in
epistemology, in order to understand a proposition, one must be acquainted with the meaning of
every simple symbol making it up (see, e.g., KAKD, 159). Russell at times suggested that we are
only directly acquainted with sense data, and their properties and relations, and perhaps with our
own selves (KAKD, 154ff). It might be thought that these entities are simple, and must constitute
the terminus of analysis. However, Russell was explicit that sense data can themselves be
complex, and that he knew of no reason to suppose that we cannot be acquainted with a complex
without being aware that it is complex and without being acquainted with its constituents (KAKD,
153; cf. TK, 120). Indeed, Russell eventually came to the conclusion that nothing can ever be
known to be simple (MPD, 123).
While there is significant evidence that Russell did believe in the existence of simple entities in
the early phases of his logical atomist period, it is possible that, uncharacteristically, he held this
belief without argumentation. In admitting that it is possible that analysis could go on ad
infinitum, Russell claimed that “I do not think it is true, but it is a thing that one might argue,
certainly” (PLA, 202). In his 1924 piece “Logical Atomism”, Russell admitted that “by greater
logical skill, the need for assuming them [i.e. simples] could be avoided”. This attitude may
explain in part why it is that at the outset of 1918 lectures on logical atomism, he claimed that
“[t]he things I am going to say in these lectures are mainly my own personal opinions and I do
not claim that they are more than that” (PLA, 178). It may have been that Russell was interested
not so much in establishing definitively that there any absolutely simple entities, but rather in
combating the widespread arguments of others that the notion of a simple, independent entity is
incoherent, and only the whole of the universe is fundamentally real. According to Russell, such
attitudes are customarily traced to a wrong view about relations; in arguing for the doctrine of
“external relations”, Russell was attempting simply to render a world of simple entities coherent
again.
As his career progressed, Russell became more and more prone to emphasize that what is
important for his for his philosophical outlook is not absolute simplicity, but only relative
simplicity. As early as 1922, in response to criticism about his notion of simplicity, Russell
wrote:
As for “abstract analysis in search of the ‘simple’ and elemental”, that is a more important matter.
To begin with, “simple” must not be taken in an absolute sense; “simpler” would be a better
word. Of course, I should be glad to reach the absolutely simple, but I do not believe that that is
within human capacity. What I do maintain is that, whenever anything is complex, out knowledge
is advanced by discovering constituents of it, even if these constituents themselves are still
complex. (SA, 40)
According to Russell, analysis proceeds in stages. When analysis shows the terminology and
presuppositions of one stage of analysis to be definable, or logically constructible, in terms of
simpler and more basic notions, this is a philosophical advance, even if these notions are
themselves further analyzable. As Russell says, the only drawback to a language which is not yet
fully analyzed is that in it, one cannot speak of anything more fundamental than those objects,
properties or relations that are named at that level (e.g., LA, 337).
In a later work, Russell summarized his position as follows:
If the world is composed of simples—i.e., of things, qualities and relations that are devoid of
structure—then not only all our knowledge but all that of Omniscience could be expressed by
means of words denoting these simples. We could distinguish in the world a stuff (to use William
James's word) and a structure. The stuff would consist of all the simples denoted by names, while
the structure would depend on relations and qualities for which our minimum vocabulary would
have words.
This conception can be applied without assuming that there is anything absolutely simple. We can
define as “relatively simple” whatever we do not know to be complex. Results obtained using the
concept of “relative simplicity” will still be true if complexity is afterward found, provided we
have abstained from asserting absolute simplicity (HK, 259)
Russell concluded that even if there are no ultimate simples, no fundamental layer of reality that
analysis can in principle reach, this does not invalidate analysis as a philosophical procedure.
Moreover, at a given stage of analysis, a certain class of sentences may still be labeled as
“atomic”, even if the facts corresponding to them cannot be regarded as built of fundamental
ontological atoms (MPD, 165). Russell concluded that “the whole question whether there are
simples to be reached by analysis is unnecessary” (MPD, 123). From this vantage point, it might
be argued that Russell's “logical atomism” can be understood as first and foremost a commitment
to analysis as a method coupled with a rejection of idealistic monism, rather than a pretense to
have discovered the genuine metaphysical “atoms” making up the world of facts, or even the
belief that such a discovery is possible (cf. Linsky 2003). Indeed, Russell continued to use the
phrase “logical atomism” to describe his philosophy in later years of his career, during the period
in which he stressed relative, not absolute simplicity (RTC, 717; MPD, 9).
4.3 Atomic Propositions and Logical Independence
Another important issue often discussed in connection with logical atomism worth discussing in
greater detail is the supposition that atomic propositions are logically independent of each other,
or that the truth or falsity of any one atomic proposition does not logically imply or necessitate
the truth or falsity of any other atomic proposition. This supposition is often taken to be a central
aspect of the very notion of “logical atomism”, perhaps largely because it is found explicitly in
Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, almost certainly the most important account of a
logical atomist philosophy found outside of Russell's work. Wittgenstein claimed:
4.211 It is a sign of a proposition's being elementary that there can be no elementary proposition
contradicting it. (Wittgenstein 1922, 89)
5.134 From an elementary proposition no other can be inferred. (Wittgenstein 1922, 109)
The lack of any logical relations between atomic propositions goes hand in hand with a similar
view about atomic facts; each atomic fact is metaphysically independent of every other, and any
one could obtain or fail to obtain regardless of the obtaining (or not) of any other.
Russell's own position on the matter is unclear, and unfortunately, nowhere does he treat the issue
at any length. The few pertinent remarks he does make are either somewhat ambivalent or
difficult to interpret. For example, in 1914, in arguing that atomic facts are typically known by
direct empirical means rather than by inference, he wrote that “[p]erhaps one atomic fact may
sometimes be capable of being inferred from another, though I do not believe this to be the case;
but in any case it cannot be inferred from premises no one of which is an atomic fact” (OKEW,
48). Here, Russell expressed doubt about the existence of any relations of logical dependence
between atomic propositions, but the fact that he left it as a open possibility makes it seem that he
would not consider it a defining feature of an atomic proposition that it must be independent from
all others, or a central tenet of logical atomism generally that atomic facts are independent from
one another.
Nevertheless, there a number of aspects of Russell's philosophical positions that lead to the
conclusion that they cohere best with some doctrine about the independence of atomic facts or
propositions. Russell did often speak about the constituents of atomic facts as independently
existing entities. He writes for example that “each particular has its being independently of any
other and does not depend upon anything else for the logical possibility of its existence” (PLA,
203). It is not altogether clear what Russell meant by speaking of particulars or entities as being
logically independent. In contemporary parlance, typically, “logical independence” is used solely
to speak of a relation between sentences, propositions, or perhaps facts or states of affairs. One
possible interpretation would be to take Russell as holding that any atomic fact involving a
certain group of particulars is logically independent of an atomic fact involving a distinct group
of particulars, even if the two facts involve the same quality or relation (see, e.g., Bell and
Demopoulos 1996, 118–19). This weakened version of the independence thesis even has certain
attractions over the stronger principle endorsed by Wittgenstein. Most of the usual
counterexamples given against the thesis that atomic facts or propositions are always independent
involve simple properties that are thought to be exclusive. Consider, for example, what has come
to be called the “color exclusion problem”. The propositions “a is red” and “a is blue” do not
seem to be independent from one another: from the truth of one the falsity of the other can
seemingly be inferred. However, the weakened version of the independence principle, on which
only atomic facts involving different particulars are independent, does not entail that it is possible
that “a is red” and “a is blue” may both be true.
It is likely that Russell's contention that particulars are independent from one another was
connected in his mind with his views on relations. In holding the view that relations among
simple particulars are external, Russell saw himself as denying the view that when a bears R to b,
there is some part of a's “nature” as an entity that involves its relatedness to b. It might be thought
that Russell's doctrine of external relations committed him at least to certain principles regarding
the modal status of atomic facts (if not the independence principle). According to certain ways of
defining the phrase, what it means for a relation to be internal is that it is a relation that its relata
could not fail to have; an external relation is one its relata could possibly not have. Russell then
might be seen as committed to the view that atomic facts (all of which involve particulars
standing in relations, in the broad sense above) are always contingent. While this does not
directly bear on the question of their independence, it would nevertheless commit Russell to
certain tenets regarding the modal features of atomic facts.
However, Russell himself warned against interpreting his position on relations this way, writing,
“the doctrine that relations are ‘external’ … is not correctly expressed by saying that two terms
which have a certain relation might not have had that relation. Such a statement introduces the
notion of possibility and thus raises irrelevant difficulties” (BReal, 87). Complicating matters
here are Russell's own rather idiosyncratic and skeptical views about modal notions. Russell was
dissatisfied with the prevailing conceptions of necessity and possibility among philosophers of
his day, and argued instead against necessity (or possibility) as a fundamental or irreducible
concept (see NP passim).
Despite Russell's misgivings about modal notions, it is clear enough from Russell's conception of
logic that logical relations between propositions would always obtain in virtue of their form
(IMP, 197–98; PLA, 237–39). Atomic propositions are of the simplest possible forms, and there
is certainly nothing in their forms that would suggest any logical connection to, or incompatibility
with, other atomic propositions.
Perhaps the most illuminating remarks to be found in Russell's work that would lead one to
expect complete logical independence among atomic propositions involve the claims he made
about how it is that one recognizes a certain class of purported entities as “logical constructions”,
and the recommendations he gives about analyzing propositions involving them. Russell writes:
When some set of supposed entities has neat logical properties, it turns out, in a great many
instances, that the supposed entities can be replaced by purely logical constructions composed of
entities which have not such neat properties. In that case, in interpreting a body of propositions
hitherto believed to be about the supposed entities, we can substitute the logical structures
without altering any detail of the body of propositions in question (LA, 326).
Russell did not define here what he means by “neat logical properties”, but it is possible to
understand what he had in mind by way of the examples he gave. He cited as “neat properties” of
material objects that it is impossible for two material objects to occupy the same place at the same
time, and that it is impossible for one material object to occupy distinct places in space at the
same time (LA, 329; cf. AMi, 264–65; AMa, 385). Consider then the propositions “O1 is located at
p1 at t1”, and “O1 is located at p2 at t1” where “O1” is the name of a physical object, “p1” and “p2”
represent distinct locations in space, and “t1” the name of a certain instant in time. Prior to
analysis, such propositions appear to be logically incompatible atomic propositions. However,
Russell explains that the logical necessities involved in cases such as these are due to the nature
of material objects, points and instants as logical constructions. At a certain point in time, a
physical object might be regarded as a class of sensible particulars bearing certain resemblance
relations to one another occupying a continuous region of space. It is therefore impossible by
definition for the same physical object to occupy wholly distinct locations at the same time. When
analyzed, such propositions as “O1 is located at p1 at t1” are revealed as having a much more
complicated logical form, and hence may have logical consequences not evident before analysis.
We do not have here any reason to think that truly atomic propositions, those containing names of
genuine particulars and their relations, are not always independent.
Russell strongly intimated that it is a part of the very nature of logical analysis that if our pre-
analyzed understanding of a certain phenomenon involves the postulation of entities with certain
structural or modal properties, one should seek to replace talk of such entities with logical
constructions specifically constituted so as to have these features by definition (PLA, 272–79; LA,
326–29). A logical construction would typically be understood as a sort of class; since discourse
about classes was regarded by Russell as a convenience, which would be eliminated in a fully
analyzed language in favor of speaking of their defining properties and relations, by such a
process Russell believed it is possible to replace commitment to entities having “neat logical
properties” with commitment to those do not possess such features. Assuming that there is a final
terminus of analysis in absolutely simple entities and fully atomic facts, one might suppose that
here that the logical necessities and relationships between them would have completely
disappeared. Russell later summarized the attitude of his logical atomist period by writing that “it
seemed to result that none of the raw material of the world has smooth logical properties, but that
whatever appears to have such properties is constructed artificially in order to have them” (IPOM,
xi). While this is not exactly an endorsement of the claim that atomic facts are logically
independent of one another, it is perhaps the closest sentiment one can find in his philosophy.
5. Influence and Reception
Russell's logical atomism had significant influence on the development of philosophy, especially
in the first half of the 20th century. Nowhere is Russell's influence more clearly seen than in the
work of his pupil Ludwig Wittgenstein. Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus appeared
in 1921; in it, Wittgenstein presented in some detail a logical atomist metaphysics. (It should be
noted, however, that there is significant controversy over whether, in the end, Wittgenstein
himself meant to endorse this metaphysics.) In the Tractatus, the world is described as consisting
of facts. The simplest facts, which Wittgenstein called “Sachverhalte”, translated either as “states
of affairs” or “atomic facts”, are thought of as conglomerations of objects combined with a
definite structure. The objects making up these atomic basics were described as absolutely
simple. Elementary propositions are propositions whose truth depends entirely on the presence of
an atomic fact, and other propositions have a determinate and unique analysis in which they can
construed as built up from elementary propositions in truth-functional ways.
Partly owing to Wittgenstein's influence, partly directly, Russell's logical atomism had significant
influence on the works of the logical positivist tradition, as exemplified in the works of Carnap,
Waismann, Hempel and Ayer. This tradition usually disavowed metaphysical principles, but
methodologically their philosophies owed much to Russell's approach. Carnap, for example,
described philosophy as taking the form of providing “the logical analysis of the language of
science” (Carnap 1934, 61). This originally took on the form of attempting to show that all
meaningful scientific discourse could be analyzed in terms of logical combinations beginning
with “protocol sentences”, or sentences directly confirmable or disconfirmable by experience.
This notion of a “protocol sentence” in this tradition was originally modeled after Russellian and
Wittgensteinian atomic propositions. The notion of a “logical construction” was also important
for how such thinkers conceived of the nature of ordinary objects (see, e.g., Ayer 1952, chap. 3).
The view that scientific language could readily and easily be analyzed directly in terms of
observables gradually gave way to more holistic views, such as Quine's (see, e.g. Quine 1951), in
which it is claimed that it is only a body of scientific theories that can be compared to experience,
and not isolated sentences. However, even in later works growing out of this tradition, the
influence of Russell can be felt.
Besides positive influence, many trends in 20th century philosophy can be best understood
largely as a reaction to Russell's atomistic philosophy. Ironically, nowhere is this more true than
in the later writings of Wittgenstein, especially his Philosophical Investigations (1953). Among
other things, Wittgenstein there called into question whether a single, unequivocal notion of
simplicity or a final state of analysis can be found (e.g., secs. 46–49, 91), and questioned the
utility of an ideal language (sec. 81). Wittgenstein also called into question whether, in those
cases in which analysis is possible, the results really give us what was meant at the start: “does
someone who says that the broom is in the corner really mean: the broomstick is there, and so is
the brush, and the broomstick is fixed in the brush?” (sec. 60). Much of the work of the so-called
“ordinary language” school of philosophy centered in Oxford in the 1940s and 1950s can also
been seen largely as a critical response to views of Russell (see, e.g., Austin 1962, Warnock
1951, Urmson 1956).
Nevertheless, despite the criticisms, many so-called “analytic” philosophers still believe that the
notion of analysis has some role to play in philosophical methodology, though there seems to be
no consensus regarding precisely what analysis consists in, and to what extent it leads reliably to
metaphysically significant results. Debates regarding the nature of simple entities, their
interrelations or dependencies between one another, and whether there are any such entities, are
still alive and well. Russell's rejection of idealistic monism, and his arguments in favor of a
pluralistic universe, have gained almost universal acceptance, with a few exceptions. Abstracting
away from Russell's particular examples of proposed analyses in terms of sensible particulars, the
general framework of Russell's atomistic picture of the world, which consists of a plurality of
entities that have qualities and enter into relations, remains one to which many contemporary
philosophers are attracted.

Bertrand Russell

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Bertrand Russell

• 1. A Chronology of Russell's Life

1. A Chronology of Russell's Life

A short chronology of the major events in Russell's life is as follows:

• (1872) Born May 18 at Ravenscroft, Wales.

2. Russell's Work in Logic

3. Russell's Work in Analytic Philosophy

4. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions

If Russell is correct, it follows that in the sentence

(1) The present King of France is bald,

(2) Scott is bald.

(1′) There is an x such that

Alternatively, in the notation of the predicate calculus, we have

(1″) ∃x[(Kx & ∀y(Ky → y=x)) & Bx].

is not at all equivalent to the sentence

(4) ∃x[Axw & ∀y(Ayw → y=x) & x=s].

(6) ~∃x(Gx & Mx).

5. Russell's Neutral Monism

6. Russell's Social and Political Philosophy

a. The Theory of Descriptions

~((∃x)(Mx & Gx) & ∀y((My & Gy) → y=x))

c. Frege: Influence or Instigator?

d. Logical Atomism and Wittgenstein’s Tractatus

As mentioned previously, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus proved to be the most influential expression

1. The world is everything that is the case.

3. Logical Positivism, the Vienna Circle, and Quine

a. Logical Positivism and the Vienna Circle

“Both dogmas,” says Quine, “are ill-founded.”

4. The Later Wittgenstein and Ordinary-Language Philosophy

Ordinary-language philosophy is sometimes called “Oxford philosophy.” This is because Ryle,

b. The Later Wittgenstein

5. The 1960s and After: The Era of Eclecticism

a. The Demise of Linguistic Philosophy

On account of its eclecticism, contemporary analytic philosophy defies summary or general

b. The Renaissance in Metaphysics

Metaphysics has undergone a certain sort of renaissance in post-linguistic analytic philosophy.

c. The Renaissance in History

• 1. History of Principia Mathematica

Interested readers may wish to view the

• Title page of the first edition of Principia Mathematica, Volume 1 (1910)

1. History of Principia Mathematica

2. Significance of Principia Mathematica

Despite these criticisms, Principia Mathematica proved to be remarkably influential in at least

3. Contents of Principia Mathematica

Russell's Logical Atomism

Methodologically, logical atomism can be seen as endorsement of analysis, understood as a two-

2. Origins and Development of Russell's Logical Atomism

2.3 The Theory of Descriptions

1. All numbers are odd.

2. (x)(x is a number ⊃ x is odd)

3. Some number is odd.

was identified with the existentially quantified conjunction represented by

4. (∃x)(x is a number & x is odd)

5. The King of France is bald.

6. (∃x)(x is King of France & (y)(y is King of France ⊃ x = y) & x is bald)

7. The author of Waverly = Scott

would be understood as having the following structure:

8. (∃x)(x authored Waverly & (y)(y authored Waverly ⊃ x = y) & x = Scott)

2.4 Classes, Propositions and Truth in Principia Mathematica

Russell fundamentally conceived of a class as the extension of a concept, or as the extension of a

f({z|ψz}) =df (∃φ)((x)(φ!x ≡ ψx) & f(φ))

In the Introduction to Principia Mathematica, as part of his explanation of ramified type-theory,

3. Russell's Philosophical Method and the Notion of Analysis