David Hume’s views on the subject of free will are among the most influential contributions to this long-disputed topic. Throughout the twentieth century, and into this century, Hume has been widely regarded as having presented the classic defense of the compatibilist position, the view that freedom and responsibility are consistent with determinism. Most of Hume’s core arguments on this issue are found in the sections entitled “Of liberty and necessity,” first presented in Book 2 of A Treatise of Human Nature (...) (1739) and then in his An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (1748). Although the general position in both these works is much the same, there are some significant points of difference relating to the way in which the core position is presented and also in the specific range of arguments covered. The focus of my concerns in this essay will not, however, lie with the relationship between the Treatise and the first Enquiry versions of “Of liberty and necessity.” My discussion will center on the contrast between two alternative interpretations of Hume’s views on this subject, with particular reference to the version presented in the Treatise. It will be my particular concern to explain and defend the naturalistic as against the classical compatibilist account and to explain the general significance of the naturalistic account for the contemporary debate. (shrink)

In the course of remarking on the “parodic” nature of Nietzsche’s “doctrine” of Eternal Return, Klossowski writes of “laughter, this infallible assassin.” (Amir 2021, 272) The laughter of homo risibilis does not err in its elimination of human despair, nor does it errantly dispose of any other portion of human existence. A question that I will develop over the course of these remarks is the question of this assassination by laughter: what, precisely, is assassinated? and, what might be lost in (...) such an assassination? In pursuing this question, I want to explore the temporal overlap between the academic acceptance of Nietzsche in France in the early 1960s and the discussion of Spinoza in France at the same time—a discussion that was closely linked to the Holocaust—in order to raise the question of the relation of humor and history. -/- My question to Prof. Amir is: do laughter and humor have a role to play even in the face of world-shattering wrongs? In her account of homo risibilis and in her account of Nietzsche’s philosophy of laughter and its French inheritors, the focus seems squarely on the present and the future. Deleuze’s laughter is that of the human being who has embraced fate but also of the individual who, with their laughter, would overturn norms and conventions. Prof. Amir writes that “Deleuze … focuses on the iconoclastic force of humor, its capacity to break any boundary or law.” (Amir 2021, 282) But is such a focus recalcitrant to ethical efforts to reckon with past evils and injustices? In the overcoming of the tragic by the comic, is there room for remembrance? Is there room for honor to be paid to history? Or, are laughter and humor a-historical forces—is laughter, after all, in Klossowski’s words, an infallible assassin? Is no historical event secure from its transformative and iconoclastic work? -/- . (shrink)

Are the arguments of the Frankfurt School still relevant? Modern Culture and Critical Theory investigates this question in the context of important issues in contemporary cultural politics: neoconservatism and new social movements, discontents with modernity and debates on postmodernism, the political hegemony of Ronald Reagan, and the cultural hegemony of structuralism and poststructuralism. Russell Berman thoughtfully explores the theories of Horkheimer, Adorno, Benjamin, Lyotard, and Foucault and their relevance to both historical and contemporary issues in literature, politics, and the (...) arts. (shrink)

“Responsibility After ‘Morality’: Strawson’s Naturalism and Williams’ Genealogy” -/- Although P.F. Strawson and Bernard Williams have both made highly significant and influential contributions on the subject of moral responsibility they never directly engaged with the views of each other. On one natural reading their views are directly opposed. Strawson seeks to discredit scepticism about moral responsibility by means of naturalistic observations and arguments. Williams, by contrast, employs genealogical methods to support sceptical conclusions about moral responsibility (and blame). This way of (...) reading their views depends, however, on the assumption that the concept of responsibility that Strawson aims to defend is the same as Williams aims to discredit. The conception of responsibility that Williams aims to discredit is one that is based around the assumptions and aspirations of “the morality system”. This paper argues that while there is a plausible way of interpreting Strawson’s naturalism that uncouples it from the assumptions of “the morality system”, there remain significant differences between Strawson and Williams. More specifically, even if Strawson’s understanding of moral responsibility abandons the (narrow) assumptions of “morality”, Strawson is still committed to “conservative” and “optimistic” conclusions about moral responsibility that cannot be sustained. [March 2022] -/- . (shrink)

This essay excavates the pre-capitalist influences of the thought of Guy Debord, French postwar critical theorist and founding member of the Situationist International. Tracing a lineage of what can be described as Debord’s aristocratic sensibility, we discover not simply an aesthetic approach to navigating social life, or guidelines for outmanoeuvring an adversary, but also contempt for honest labour, monetary transactions in cultural affairs, and conventional political gestures. Together these themes remain part of a legacy of an aristocratic past, one (...) that, as will be examined here, informed Debord’s acrimony towards his own mid-20th-century moment. The following discussion will advance a genealogy of Debord’s thinking with these themes from late antiquity to the Italian Renaissance, and finally with an extended examination of the baroque, a concept that helps advance Debord’s diagnostic concept of the society of the spectacle. (shrink)

The medical specialty of psychiatry should possess a basic science in which pathologies are considered deviations from normal brain physiology. Historically, psychoanalytic pathogenesis was considered separately from brain physiology. It was not scientific because observations could not be refuted. Countering this, Eli Robins's legacy stemmed partly from his having been damaged by a psychoanalyst. It eschewed pathogenesis. Attempting to integrate psychiatry with medicine more generally, Robins and colleagues refocused on empiricism, although they acknowledged the brain's centrality. Here I hold (...) that the term biology used in the context of psychiatry should broadly encompass social facets of organismal function. The term sociophysiology may best describe the central basic science of psychiatry because it alludes to brain functions used for the person's social realm. Disruptions of such functions result in deviant behaviors and unpleasant feelings which psychiatrists diagnose and treat. Future study encompassing top-down and bottom-up research should include genome-neural-behavioral analyses. (shrink)

James Levine has recently argued that there is a tension between Russell’s Moorean semantical framework and Russell’s Peano-inspired analytical practice. According to Levine, this discrepancy runs deep in Russell’s thought from 1900 to 1918, and underlies many of the doctrinal changes occurring during this period. In this paper, I suggest that, contrary to what Levine claims, there is no incompatibility between Moore’s theory of meaning and the idea of informative conceptual analysis. I show this by relating Moore’s (...) view of meaning to his Sidgwick-inspired criticism of the so-called naturalistic fallacy. I maintain that Moore’s semantical framework has a methodological intent: following Sidgwick, Moore wants to block any attempt to justify ethical principles through setting ad hoc conditions on the meaning of the terms involved. Thus, far from grounding philosophical knowledge on subjective intuitions, as Levine suggests, Moore’s framework would provide us with the means to make room for a discursive and dialectic conception of philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

Russell Hanson discovers in the history of democratic rhetoric in the United States a series of essential contests" over the meaning of democracy that have occurred in periods of political and socio-economic change. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. (...) The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

The medical specialty of psychiatry should possess a basic science in which pathologies are considered deviations from normal brain physiology. Historically, psychoanalytic pathogenesis was considered separately from brain physiology. It was not scientific because observations could not be refuted. Countering this, Eli Robins's legacy stemmed partly from his having been damaged by a psychoanalyst. It eschewed pathogenesis. Attempting to integrate psychiatry with medicine more generally, Robins and colleagues refocused on empiricism, although they acknowledged the brain's centrality. Here I hold (...) that the term biology used in the context of psychiatry should broadly encompass social facets of organismal function. The term “sociophysiology” may best describe the central basic science of psychiatry because it alludes to brain functions used for the person's social realm. Disruptions of such functions result in deviant behaviors and unpleasant feelings which psychiatrists diagnose and treat. Future study encompassing top-down and bottom-up research should include genome-neural-behavioral analyses. (shrink)

“Community” has long been a companion of Critical Theory, but it has always pointed in two diametrically opposed directions. One path leads us to communitarian dreams of a genuine sociability and a full life. Romantic sensibility, anxious about the modern experience of cold rationality and mechanical organization, elaborates counter-models of authentic living, embedded in organic communities deemed genuine. While the Enlightenment legacy appears to abandon us to alienated isolation—no matter how much it proclaims the importance of public discourse—the romantic (...) community provides an existential alternative, an opportunity to reclaim a human authenticity. Ferdinand Tönnies's famous conceptual binary named this drama:.. (shrink)

It has been almost half a century since Horkheimer and Adorno formulated their analysis of mass culture in the “Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” chapter of Dialectic of Enlightenment. This special issue on “Debates in Contemporary Culture” is an attempt to evaluate the relevance of this legacy in the mid-eighties. It has become part of the left conventional wisdom that the critical theory analysis of late capitalism, focusing on concepts such as the “totally administered world” (Adorno) or “one-dimensional (...) society” (Marcuse), was overly resigned and it remained unable to identify inchoate oppositional tendencies within the ‘iron cage’ of capitalist totalization. (shrink)

Fifty years after his death in 1965 the essays in this collection return to Paul Tillich to investigate his theology and its legacy, with a focus on contemporary British scholarship. Originating in a conference held in Oxford in 2014, the book contains 16 original contributions from a mixture of junior and more established scholars, most of whom have a connection to Britain. The contributions are diverse, but four themes emerge throughout the volume. Several essays are concerning with a characterisation (...) of Tillich's theology. In dialogue with recent emphases on the radical Tillich, some essays suggest a more conservative estimation of Tillich's theology, rooted in the Idealist and classical Christian platonic traditions, whilst in constant engagement with changing existential situations. Secondly, and perhaps reflecting the context of religious diversity and theories of religious pluralism in Britain, many essays engage Tillich's approach to non-Christian religions. Thirdly, some essays address the importance of existentialist philosophy for Tillich, notably via an engagement with Sartre. Finally, a number of essays take up the diagnostic potential of Tillich's theology as a resource for engaging contemporary challenges. (shrink)

A century after ‘On Denoting’ was published, the debate it initiated continues to rage. On the one hand, there is a mass of new historical scholarship, about both Russell and Meinong, which has not circulated very far beyond specialist scholars. On the other hand, there are continuing problems and controversies concerning contemporary Russellian and Meinongian theories, many of them involving issues that simply did not occur to the original protagonists. This work provides an overview of the latest historical scholarship (...) on the two philosophers as well as detailed accounts of some of the problems facing the current incarnations of their theories. (shrink)

Almost five decades after his death, there is still ample reason to pay attention to the life and legacy of Bertrand Russell. This is true not only because of his role as one of the founders of analytic philosophy, but also because of his important place in twentieth-century history as an educator, public intellectual, critic of organized religion, humanist, and peace activist. The papers in this anthology explore Russell’s life and legacy from a wide variety of (...) perspectives. This is altogether fitting, given the many-sided nature of Russell, his life, and his work. The first section of the book considers Russell the man, and draws lessons from Russell’s complicated personal life. The second examines Russell the philosopher, and the philosophical world within which his work was embedded. The third scrutinizes Russell the atheist and critic of organized religion, inquiring which parts of his critical stance are worth emulating today. The final section revisits Russell the political activist; it directs an eye both at Russell’s own long career of peace activism, but also at his place in a highly political family tradition of which he was justifiably proud. This book thus constitutes an invitation, if one were needed, to the world of Bertrand Russell. Those new to Russell, but with an interest in biography, philosophy, religion, or politics, will hopefully find something to learn here. This may spark an interest in learning more about Russell. But this book is not just intended for the Russell neophyte. The book sheds fresh light on a number of topics central to Russell studies—his connections to other philosophers, for example. Scholars well-versed in Russell studies will enjoy grappling with the treatment given to these topics here. (shrink)

A century after ‘On Denoting’ was published, the debate it initiated continues to rage. On the one hand, there is a mass of new historical scholarship, about both Russell and Meinong, which has not circulated very far beyond specialist scholars. On the other hand, there are continuing problems and controversies concerning contemporary Russellian and Meinongian theories, many of them involving issues that simply did not occur to the original protagonists. This work provides an overview of the latest historical scholarship (...) on the two philosophers as well as detailed accounts of some of the problems facing the current incarnations of their theories. (shrink)

A century after ‘On Denoting’ was published, the debate it initiated continues to rage. On the one hand, there is a mass of new historical scholarship, about both Russell and Meinong, which has not circulated very far beyond specialist scholars. On the other hand, there are continuing problems and controversies concerning contemporary Russellian and Meinongian theories, many of them involving issues that simply did not occur to the original protagonists. This work provides an overview of the latest historical scholarship (...) on the two philosophers as well as detailed accounts of some of the problems facing the current incarnations of their theories. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 25, 2010 (2:45 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd russell: the Journal of Bertrand Russell Studies n.s. 30 (summer 2010): 69–94 The Bertrand Russell Research Centre, McMaster U. issn 0036-01631; online 1913-8032 eviews RUSSELL VS.z MEINONG, 100 YEARS LATER Michael Scanlan South StraTord, vt 05070, usa [email protected] Nicholas GriUn and Dale Jacquette, eds. Russell vs. Meinong: the (...) class='Hi'>Legacy of “On Denoting”. London and New York: Routledge, 2009. Pp. xiii, 384. isbn: 978-0-415-96364-0 (hb); 978-0-203-88802-5 (e-bk). £70.00; us$103.00. The background for the conference in 2005 at McMaster University from which these papers come is a 50-year period in anglophone philosophy during which Russell was portrayed as having put to rest the urge, exempliWed by Meinong, to have an intentional object for every thought. Beginning roughly in the 1970s, analytic philosophers began publishing work more sympathetic to both the speciWcs of Meinong and his general concerns. Some landmark publications in this vein are Terence Parsons, Nonexistent Objects (1980), and Richard Routley, Exploring Meinong’s Jungle and Beyond (1980). The development of more sophisticated accounts of Meinong, along with developments in Russell studies, has resulted in a more nuanced presentation of Meinong’s thought in recent literature, including this volume. There is one article in this collection which is explicitly devoted to comparing the views of the historical Russell and Meinong. This is “Psychological Content and Indeterminacy with Respect to Being” by J. C. Marek. The title indicates the two topics examined. Meinong was in the tradition of Brentano in seeing a mental state of presentation (Vorstellungz) as combining a mental act and a mental content. A presentation may or may not also have a presented object. Russell, famously, thought of the state corresponding to Meinong’s presentations as a relation called “direct acquaintance” that comes to exist, or ceases to exist, between a mind and objects. There is no place here for non-existent objects. There is very little to say about Russell’s theory of direct acquaintance and most of that is familiar to English-speaking readers, so Marek rightly devotes himself to expounding Meinong’s views on presentational content. The problem here is whether such content exists. Meinong averred he could introspect such content, and Russell averred that he could not. Beyond such fruitless personal testimony, Meinong oTered arguments for the explanatory value of presentational content. September 25, 2010 (2:45 pm) C:\Users\Milt\Desktop\backup copy of Ken's G\WPData\TYPE3001\russell 30,1 032 red corrected.wpd 70 Reviews One is as an explanation of how we could have presentations (thoughts ofy) nonexistent objects, e.g. the $1,000 in my pocket. Of course, Russell treats this with his theory of descriptions. Another such argument for mental content by Meinong is that it is needed to account for the diTerence in mental state when presented with diTerent objects. Russell says that when the mind is in relation to the distinct objects the distinctness of the objects guarantees two distinct relations of acquaintance. This leaves unclear what the mental diTerence is between seeing a red patch and seeing a blue patch. The separate discussion ofthe Meinong/Mally “indiTerence” of the “pure object ” or object itself as to whether it exists or not is a topic that is canvassed more in the anglophone literature. In Meinong’s 1904 formulation “the present king of France” doesn’t now exist, but if the French have a revolution then a “present ” king of France might exist in 2011. In either case there is an object of thought/reference, and it has (indiTerently) the character (Soseinz) of being king of France. Marek’s exposition in this area focuses on the various technical devices Meinong introduced in 1915 to mitigate the problems caused by allowing for the being of “impossible” objects such as the round square. In “Meditations on Meinong’s Golden Mountain”, Dale Jacquette oTers the traditional dramatic classroom story about Russell and OD. On this account, prior to 1905 Russell is a committed Meinongian who... (shrink)

Historians of philosophy commonly regard as antipodal Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl, the founding fathers of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. This paper, however, establishes that during a formative phase in both of their careers Russell and Husserl shared a range of seminal ideas. In particular, the essay adduces clear cases of family resemblance between Husserl’s and Russell’s philosophy during their middle period, which spanned the years 1905 through 1918. The paper thus challenges the received view of Husserl’s (...) relation to early analytic philosophy and this by pursuing two strategies of exposition. One involves comparing Husserl with Russell, and not, as has been the usual practice, with Frege. The other, which follows the first, foregrounds Husserl’s thinking vis-à-vis Russell’s from 1905 onward, a move that constitutes a break with what has become the standard approach of emphasising the relatedness of Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900/1) to analytic philosophy. Moreover, this approach discloses two chief grounds of relatedness between the middle Husserl and the middle Russell. One is their shared interest in exploring philosophical “fundamentals”. The second consists of common elements shared by their epistemologies and philosophies of mind. (shrink)

In his The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell presents us with his famous argument for representative realism. After a clear and accessible analysis of sensations, qualities and the multiplicity of perceptions of the qualities of physical objects, Russell concludes with a bold statement: -/- "The real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known". -/- My argument and analysis strongly suggests that the conclusion (...) that Russell reaches in his argument is counterintuitive and incoherent. The philosophical statement that he presents on the table, in the opening pages of his famous Problems argument is fundamentally misconstrued, and as it stands, it is logically unacceptable. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy commonly regard as antipodal Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl, the founding fathers of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. This paper, however, establishes that during a formative phase in both of their careers Russell and Husserl shared a range of seminal ideas. In particular, the essay adduces clear cases of family resemblance between Husserl’s and Russell’s philosophy during their middle period, which spanned the years 1905 through 1918. The paper thus challenges the received view of Husserl’s (...) relation to early analytic philosophy and this by pursuing two strategies of exposition. One involves comparing Husserl with Russell, and not, as has been the usual practice, with Frege. The other, which follows the first, foregrounds Husserl’s thinking vis-à-vis Russell’s from 1905 onward, a move that constitutes a break with what has become the standard approach of emphasising the relatedness of Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900/1) to analytic philosophy. Moreover, this approach discloses two chief grounds of relatedness between the middle Husserl and the middle Russell. One is their shared interest in exploring philosophical “fundamentals”. The second consists of common elements shared by their epistemologies and philosophies of mind. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell's literary legacy encompasses an enormous quantity of correspondence and manuscripts. He first disposed of his papers to McMaster University in 1968, but withheld confidential files. The First Russell Archives as it is known at McMaster, was the subject of A detailed catalogue of the Archives of Bertrand Russell prior to the sale and was edited by Barry Feinberg. At the same time Russell and the staff at the Russell Peace Foundation continued to (...) create new documents which arrived at McMaster some years after Lord Russell's death in 1970. They are now the subject of a separate book catalogue, prepared by Russell Archivist Kenneth Blackwell, Carl Spadoni and other staff in the University Library. (shrink)

Historians of philosophy commonly regard as antipodal Bertrand Russell and Edmund Husserl, the founding fathers of analytic philosophy and phenomenology. This paper, however, establishes that during a formative phase in both of their careers Russell and Husserl shared a range of seminal ideas. In particular, the essay adduces clear cases of family resemblance between Husserl’s and Russell’s philosophy during their middle period, which spanned the years 1905 through 1918. The paper thus challenges the received view of Husserl’s (...) relation to early analytic philosophy and this by pursuing two strategies of exposition. One involves comparing Husserl with Russell, and not, as has been the usual practice, with Frege. The other, which follows the first, foregrounds Husserl’s thinking vis-à-vis Russell’s from 1905 onward, a move that constitutes a break with what has become the standard approach of emphasising the relatedness of Husserl of the Logical Investigations (1900/1) to analytic philosophy. Moreover, this approach discloses two chief grounds of relatedness between the middle Husserl and the middle Russell. One is their shared interest in exploring philosophical “fundamentals”. The second consists of common elements shared by their epistemologies and philosophies of mind. (shrink)

A critical account of Russell's understanding of the relationship between science and religion.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviews 85 RUSSELL’S CONTRIBUTION TO PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE James Connelly Philosophy, Trent U. Peterborough, on k9l 1z6, Canada [email protected] Graham Stevens. The Theory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language. Basingstoke, uk: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. Pp. xiii, 197. isbn: 978-0230 -20116-3. £50; us$85. ver the past decade, Graham Stevens has built his reputation as a lucid, durable, and oftentimes ground-breaking historian of analytic philosophy. His latest (...) book, entitled TheTheory of Descriptions: Russell and the Philosophy of Language, will only add to that burgeoning scholarly legacy. If it has not been established already, this book will doubtless cement Stevens’ place amongst the leading Russell scholars in the world today. It may very well herald Stevens ’ arrival on the scene as a noteworthy contributor to contemporary philosophy of language as well. The central goal of the book is “to bring the historical and purely philosophical analyses of [Russell’s] work into closer alignment” (p. 3). Stevens hopes to overcome a “striking disparity” (p. 2) in the ways that Russell’s contributions to the philosophy of language have been conceived by expositors of his philosophy, on the one hand, versus philosophers of language, on the other. In particular, though contemporary philosophers of language would tend to view Russell’s enormous contribution to that subject as being “undeniable” (p. 1), and to be “bewildered” (p. 94) by any suggestion to the contrary, expositors of Russell’s philosophy have nevertheless been at pains to emphasize that Russell “was not engaged in the philosophical study of language” (p. 2). As Stevens notes, this situation is especially puzzling since “these two groups [of scholars] overlap to a considerable extent” (p. 2). Stevens’ strategy for overcoming this disparity is two-pronged. First he aims to tackle, head on, the fallacious arguments of Monk,1 Dummett,2 and others, to the effect that Russell was not engaged in the philosophy of language. According to Stevens, such arguments have principally appealed to either (1) ______ 1 Ray Monk, “What Is Analytical Philosophy?”. 2 Michael Dummett, Frege: Philosophy of Language. l= 86 Reviews Russell’s dismissal of ordinary language philosophy, (2) his early, non-linguistic, conception of the nature of propositions, or (3) his view that natural language was inherently defective for philosophical purposes, and so called for replacement by a “logically perfect language”. In regards to (1), Stevens argues in a word that “[o]rdinary language philosophy has had its day” (p. 176). Over the past several decades, in other words, leading philosophers of language have come to agree with Russell in viewing ordinary language philosophy as “an outdated, and rather eccentric, relic of mid-twentieth century British philosophy” (ibid.).The classic Russell– Strawson debate over the question whether ordinary language lacks an exact logic3 has been settled decisively in Russell’s favour, as philosophers of language have transformed “the attempt to systematically specify the semantics of large regions of natural language” (ibid.) into a “central project” (ibid.). In regards to (2), moreover, Stevens notes that by this line of reasoning, absurdly, David Kaplan would not qualify as a philosopher of language since he “explicitly invokes the Russellian non-linguistic conception of a proposition as the conception appropriate for providing the content of properly context-situated indexical sentences” (p. 170). And, of course, Kaplan is not at all unique amongst contemporary philosophers of language in appealing to a Russellian conception of propositional content, as the examples of Nathan Salmon,4 Scott Soames,5 and many others show. In regards to (3), finally, Stevens argues that Russell’s dim view of natural language was grounded in his conception of logical form as non-linguistic, and that that conception, in turn, derives simply from the poverty of syntactic theory available to Russell, prior to the Chomskyian revolution in linguistics during the second half of the twentieth century. In light of the conceptual and analytic resources made available by this revolution, however, there exists “no insurmountable obstacle to assimilating Russell ’s notion of logical form to something akin to the modern notion of lf” (p. 172), where lf is conceived as one of four levels of syntactic representation within Chomsky’s Government and Binding Theory... (shrink)

In ‘On Denoting’ and to some extent in ‘Review of Meinong and Others, Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie’, published in the same issue of Mind (Russell, 1905a,b), Russell presents not only his famous elimination (or contextual defi nition) of defi nite descriptions, but also a series of considerations against understanding defi nite descriptions as singular terms. At the end of ‘On Denoting’, Russell believes he has shown that all the theories that do treat defi nite descriptions as (...) singular terms fall logically short: Meinong’s, Mally’s, his own earlier (1903) theory, and Frege’s. (He also believes that at least some of them fall short on other grounds—epistemological and metaphysical—but we do not discuss these criticisms except in passing). Our aim in the present paper is to discuss whether his criticisms actually refute Frege’s theory. We fi rst attempt to specify just what Frege’s theory is and present the evidence that has moved scholars to attribute one of three different theories to Frege in this area. We think that each of these theories has some claim to be Fregean, even though they are logically quite different from each other. This raises the issue of determining Frege’s attitude towards these three theories. We consider whether he changed his mind and came to replace one theory with another, or whether he perhaps thought that the different theories applied to different realms, for example, to natural language versus a language for formal logic and arithmetic. We do not come to any hard and fast conclusion here, but instead just note that all these theories treat defi nite descriptions as singular terms, and that Russell proceeds as if he has refuted them all. After taking a brief look at the formal properties of the Fregean theories (particularly the logical status of various sentences containing nonproper defi - nite descriptions) and comparing them to Russell’s theory in this regard, we turn to Russell’s actual criticisms in the above-mentioned articles to examine the extent to which the criticisms hold.. (shrink)

Bertrand Russell, the great philosopher, was extremely prolific in various fields of philosophy, such as metaphysics, mathematical logic and mathematical philosophy, linguistic philosophy, ethics, epistemology, and social and political philosophy, but left little legacy in aesthetics. Some scholars regretted that “If the 20th-century had seen any polymath, Russell is the one. The only branch of philosophy he did not write on is aesthetics.” Although Russell did not write a book or article specifically on aesthetics, discussions on (...) the subject can be found in his various writings, for example, the most prominent proposal of “the beauty of mathematics.” In addition, he also talked about how agnostics explain the beauty and harmony of nature from the perspective of epistemology. Views on aesthetics are scattered in Russell's writings, and no consistent views have been formed; some fragmented ideas about aesthetics are scattered in different philosophical writings. Compared with his profound contribution to other fields of philosophy, Russell did not deal with aesthetic issues systematically, nor did he attempt to answer the basic questions of aesthetics. In addition to personal qualities, there were certain constraints of the greater social environment. One of the main reasons is that in the English world of the 20th century, the analytical philosophy of language occupied the central stage, so that the space reserved for ethics, aesthetics, and political philosophy was quite limited. Furthermore, aesthetics was indeed not a popular philosophical topic culturally acceptable at the time. (shrink)

The idea that mathematics is reducible to logic has a long history, but it was Frege who gave logicism an articulation and defense that transformed it into a distinctive philosophical thesis with a profound influence on the development of philosophy in the twentieth century. This volume of classic, revised and newly written essays by William Demopoulos examines logicism's principal legacy for philosophy: its elaboration of notions of analysis and reconstruction. The essays reflect on the deployment of these ideas by (...) the principal figures in the history of the subject - Frege, Russell, Ramsey and Carnap - and in doing so illuminate current concerns about the nature of mathematical and theoretical knowledge. Issues addressed include the nature of arithmetical knowledge in the light of Frege's theorem; the status of realism about the theoretical entities of physics; and the proper interpretation of empirical theories that postulate abstract structural constraints. (shrink)

Franz Brentano was a leading philosopher and psychologist of the nineteenth century. Indeed, the impact of his scholarship was so great that he became synonymous with a school of thought and a new approach in scientific philosophy. The Brentano School stood against the Idealistic and post-Kantian German tradition and Brentano played a crucial role in the founding of Austrian philosophy. He had an enormous impact on the work of Husserl and Heidegger, as well as on Moore’s _Ethics_ and Stout and (...) Russell’s analysis of mind. In particular, situated between the phenomenology movement and the analytic tradition, the concept of intentionality was redefined by Brentano and has been—and remains—a key concept of twentieth- and twentieth-first century philosophy of mind. But Brentano not only reshaped philosophy of mind; he was also a remarkable and innovative thinker in several other fields of philosophy, and recent debate in metaethics, metaphysics, and the history of analytic philosophy shows a strong resurgence of interest in Brentano’s thought. Published to coincide with the centenary of Brentano’s death, this four-volume collection, a new title from Routledge Major Works, provides an essential intellectual tool for the exegetical evaluation of all aspects of Brentano’s work. Bringing together early reviews and reactions from his contemporaries—many of which have never before been translated into English—as well as the best critical assessments of Brentano’s work, this ‘mini library’ provides Brentano scholars, historians of philosophy and psychology, and phenomenologists, with a rigorous historical appraisal of Brentano’s thought and influence. Brentano’s relationships with Husserl, Heidegger, and the phenomenological tradition are examined in depth, alongside investigations of key themes from his work on Aristotle, medieval and modern philosophy, philosophy of mind, logic, ontology, ethics, aesthetics, philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of history. (shrink)