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LOGICAL_ATOM
May 18, 2020
/home/doom/Dust/Texts/BertrandRussell/bertrand_russell-the_philosophy_of_logical_atomism-djvu.txt
Bertrand Russell's "Philsophy of Logical Atomism",
from pieces published in "The Monist" in 1918.
I'm starting with a text file One wonders if in 1918
version from the internet "The Monist" was still a
archive, which these days are I also continue hotbed of "monism",
unfortunately rather trashy-- my practice of which I would take to be
they seem like uncorrected page introducing the opposite of
scans, so I've got to do my own paragraph "atomism"-- the "monist"
spelling checks and comparisons breaks at will. starts with the feeling
to the pdfs. I may very well that everything is
have introduced errors. One thing connected and can't be
I know I've understood in isolation.
I've also fallen asleep listening done is
to librivox readings of these introduce
pieces many times, which has no American
doubt re-programmed my brain in spellings. I was willing to go
weird ways, though I doubt that with "colour", but
the reader will notice much I can't give "premiss"
change in the weirdness quotient. a miss.
Russell and Whitehead famously tried to ground
all of Mathematics in logic, but here he's being
more informal:
"... I shall try to set forth in a sort
of outline, rather briefly and rather
unsatisfactorily, a kind of logical
doctrine which seems to me to result from
the philosophy of mathematics-- not
exactly logically, but as what emerges as
one reflects: a certain kind of logical
doctrine, and on the basis of this a
certain kind of metaphysic."
"The logic which I shall advocate is I would've thought
atomistic, as opposed to the monistic that "monism"
logic of the people who more or less preceded Hegel,
follow Hegel." but I gather that
Russell originally
came to it that way.
"When I say that my logic
is atomistic, I mean that
I share the common-sense
belief that there are many Not a shocking conclusion, but it
separate things; I do not strikes me as a mild surprise
regard the apparent coming from Mister Principia...
multiplicity of the world All math is a reflection of basic logic,
as consisting merely in but the world in general is not?
phases and unreal
divisions of a single (Russell is often willing to work
indivisible Reality." with commonsense notions and
colloquial language, but sometimes
rejects them completely...)
Russell connects this to
"justifying the process of
analysis", which would seem
to require *some* way of
breaking-down the world I might wonder whether it's
into components. strictly necessary for these
components to be "atomic".
"One is often told that
the process of analysis is You might identify components
falsification, that when that can be studied and described
you analyse any given without claiming they could not
concrete whole you falsify be subdivided still further and
it and that the results of understood more deeply (or at
analysis are not true." least differently).
Myself, I think you'd have Also, I don't think it would be
to conceed that there's earth-shaking these days to
always a risk that any regard schemes of sub-division
analysis might conceal some as provisional ("models")--
aspects of a subject, even they're potentially useful,
if it enables understanding though not necessarily the one
in other ways. true way.
"I do not mean to say, of
course, and nobody would
maintain, that when you have
analysed you keep everything
that you had before you
analysed. If you did, you Which is to say that an analysis is a
would never attain anything simplfication, which immediately
in analysing." suggests that any analysis might be an
over-simplification, and we should allow
for the possibility of alternatives.
"I do not propose to meet the views
that I disagree with by controversy, I would guess Russell is here
by arguing against those views, but taking issue with Hegel's
rather by positively setting forth thesis/antithesis/synthesis cycle,
what I believe to be the truth about but it's interesting that it might
the matter ..." be taken as a rebuke of Popper's
"falsification"...
"... and endeavouring all the way
through to make the views that I
advocate result inevitably from
absolutely undeniable data. When I This is the sort of thing I *like*
talk of 'undeniable data' that is not about Bertrand Russell: he's aware of
to be regarded as synonymous with how hard it is to find solid ground
'true data', because 'undeniable' is in these waters, and unlike many he
a psychological term and 'true' is isn't going to just pretend he's got
not. When I say that something is it all figured.
'undeniable', I mean that it is not
the sort of thing that anybody is But even these "undeniable"
going to deny; it does not follow starting points of Russell's
from that that it is true, though it might have problems: It's
does follow that we shall all think not hard to find examples of
it true-- and that is as near to the "undeniable" that have
truth as we seem able to get." turned out to be wrong.
"When you are considering any Even a point that the audience
sort of theory of knowledge, you isn't inclined to argue about
are more or less tied to a might turn out to be the fatal
certain unavoidable subjectivity, flaw of a theory.
because you are not concerned
simply with the question what is
true of the world, but 'What can
I know of the world?' You always
have to start any kind of
argument from something which
appears to you to be true; ..."
"... if it appears to you to be
true, there is no more to be
done. You cannot go outside yourself Here it seems like Russell my be
and consider abstractly whether the overreaching-- It may very well
things that appear to you to be true be *difficult* to "go outside
are true; ..." yourself" but isn't it possible?
"... you may do this in a particular And at first, it looked to
case, where one of your beliefs is me like Russell was
changed in consequence of others whaffling here, but I think
among your beliefs." I see the point: yes, you
can revise beliefs, say, in
the light of new evidence,
but that's always going to
be done using *other*
beliefs, if only the belief
that you should pay
attention to new evidence.
"The reason that I call my doctrine
logical atomism is because the atoms Well... duh? Am I missing
that I wish to arrive at as the sort something here?
of last residue in analysis are
logical atoms and not physical atoms." I would've just said he's
making an analogy.
There's a scientific
understanding of matter based
on simpler sub-componets:
chemists see the world as
composed of around 100
different kinds of "atoms"
and their properties.
Similarly, you might hope to
root a philosophy of everything
in simpler intellectual
sub-components. Calling them
"logical atoms" would seem to be
clear enough, though I suppose
that might be begging a question
or two (like, is "logic" really
the key to understanding
everything?).
"Some of them will be what I call
'particulars'-- such things as
little patches of colour or sounds,
momentary things-- and some of them
will be predicates or relations and
so on. The point is that the atom I
wish to arrive at is the atom of
logical analysis, not the atom of
physical analysis."
"It is a rather curious fact in
philosophy that the data which are
undeniable to start with are always
rather vague and ambiguous." And that's one for the
quotable quotes file.
"You can, for instance, say: 'There are a
number of people in this room at this
moment.' That is obviously in some sense
undeniable. But when you come to try and
define what this room is, and what it is for
a person to be in a room, and how you are
going to distinguish one person from another,
and so forth, you find that what you have
said is most fearfully vague and that you
really do not know what you meant."
This may be one of the worst examples
in the history of philosophy, which If you want to start with
is really saying something. "undeniables", the idea that we
some severe trouble taking a
headcount of a classroom would
not seem to be a good place to
begin.
"That is a rather singular fact, that
everything you are really sure of,
right off is something that you do not And that could be another
know the meaning of, and the moment you for the quotable quotes.
get a precise statement you will not be
sure whether it is true or false, at
least right off."
"The process of sound philosophizing, to
my mind, consists mainly in passing from
those obvious, vague, ambiguous things,
that we feel quite sure of, to something
precise, clear, definite, which by
reflection and analysis we find is
involved in the vague thing that we start
from, and is, so to speak, the real truth There it is, the return of
of which that vague thing is a sort of the shadow.
shadow."
And who know what evil
lurks in these shadows?
*This* is it, the rub, the nub,
the central tenet of what we
might call Russellism, the
attitude underlying people's They start with propositions--
approaches to the fundamentals by definition, unsupported--
of mathematics. work through consequences of
the propositions, and then
*judge* the propositions by
whether they like the
consequences, then go back and
tweak the propositions to try
to get a better set of
"fundamentals" that better
cover the ground--
Isn't it clear that these
fundamentals aren't?
There's something else, some
other prior beliefs, or they
wouldn't be able to judge how
well a given set of propositions
works.
And often they work on *reducing*
the number of the propositions-- if
one can be derived from some of the
others, that in itself is regarded
as big news, a remarkable advance--
though it would not seem that they
understand anything more after
this advance. The propositions are
used to derive the same things they
always were, there's just one less
of them.
"I should like, if time were longer
and if I knew more than I do, to spend
a whole lecture on the conception of Some of us have more of
vagueness." a talent for vagueness...
"I think vagueness is very much
more important in the theory of
knowledge than you would judge it Like I was saying about
to be from the writings of most "quotable quotes".
people. Everything is vague to a
degree you do not realize till you
have tried to make it precise, and
everything precise is so remote
from everything that we normally
think, that you cannot for a moment
suppose that is what we really mean
when we say what we think."
"... you cannot very easily or simply
get from these vague undeniable things
to precise things which are going to
retain the undeniability of the
starting-point."
"The precise propositions that you
arrive at may be logically premises to
the system that you build up upon the
basis of them, but they are not
premises for the theory of knowledge."
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