Early Russell on Types and Plurals

Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 2 (6):1-21 (2014)
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Abstract

In 1903, in _The Principles of Mathematics_ (_PoM_), Russell endorsed an account of classes whereupon a class fundamentally is to be considered many things, and not one, and used this thesis to explicate his first version of a theory of types, adding that it formed the logical justification for the grammatical distinction between singular and plural. The view, however, was short-lived; rejected before _PoM_ even appeared in print. However, aside from mentions of a few misgivings, there is little evidence about why he abandoned this view. In this paper, I speculate as to what those reasons were, and evaluate them in light of recent work and interest in plural logic.

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Kevin Klement
University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Citations of this work

Plural quantification.Ø Linnebo - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Denoting Concepts and Ontology in Russell's Principles of Mathematics.Wouter Adriaan Cohen - 2022 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 10 (7).
The Origin of the Theory of Types.Ryo Ito - 2018 - Annals of the Japan Association for Philosophy of Science 27:27-44.

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References found in this work

Introduction to mathematical philosophy.Bertrand Russell - 1919 - New York: Dover Publications.
Parts of Classes.David K. Lewis - 1991 - Mind 100 (3):394-397.
The Principles of Mathematics.Bertrand Russell - 1903 - Revue de Métaphysique et de Morale 11 (4):11-12.
Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy.Bertrand Russell - 1919 - Revue Philosophique de la France Et de l'Etranger 89:465-466.

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