Abstract

This dissertation is a study of Bertrand Russell's views on propositions, propositional functions and facts from 1900 to 1920. Russell's views on the ontological status of propositions are shown to be connected with his changing views on the status of propositional functions and his difficulties with denoting complexes. His difficulties concerning both propositions and denoting complexes are put in the perspective of his overall ontological and semantical views. I argue that these difficulties are not isolated from these overall views, and that despite radical shifts in his positions concerning propositions and denoting complexes during the period of this study, Russell's later positions can be seen as an outgrowth of some basic thesis he held in The Principles of Mathematics and some papers written in 1904. ;Russell's early propositional views of meaning and belief are distinguished from other propositional views, and his arguments against his first theory of denoting and his early position concerning propositions are examined with these distinctions in mind. His argument in "On Denoting" is examined in the light of new papers now available from the Russell archives. I argue that while Russell did not succeed in his argument against any meaning/denotation distinction, he did succeed in showing that his own earlier views concerning denoting complexes and propositions were inadequate. His later position that there are no propositions but only facts is defended against charges of incoherence and shown to be a viable position within Russell's overall philosophy. ;This study made extensive use of unpublished manuscripts in the Bertrand Russell Archives. These manuscripts contain new information not only concerning Russell's views on propositions, but also on his attitude toward ontological commitment especially with regard to propositional functions. They also shed new light on Russell's first theory of denotation and his famous rejection of this theory in "On Denoting"