Russell - Logical Atomism

[adjb]

I was looking at doing some research into Russell and his concept of logical atomism. It would be helpful if people posted there views on the topic as to give me a rounder perspective, as I fear my views are far to atheist and biased.

thanks

[Faust]

You have an atheist view of logic? What does that mean?

[adjb]

Well…
As an atheist I find logic all to conceivable, as I find it hard to believe the possibility that the world was created by a God. This compounded with my impirical nature means I can’t see the religious side to the argument (against Russell) that clearly which is held by some of my christian friends.

[Faust]

And what argument is that?

[adjb]

I don’t believe with this but…
Due to the initial creation of language as a means of communication, they believe that this has been put in place by God. I think that this goes beyond the argument and isn’t a means of contradiction. It seems to me that the breaking down of language into ultimate parts means there is no way or need to try and explain them beyond this point.

What are your views?

[Faust]

My view is that you need some smarter friends.

I think that there are several ways to usefully analyse language, and that Russell can be sensibly seen as having gone a bit too far.

I do not know what this might have to do with God, however. Maybe one of the religious types can help you with this. I cannot.

[adjb]

[quote=“faust”]
My view is that you need some smarter friends.

Lol, I was just expressing there view as asked, but we certainly don’t see eye to eye on this topic

[someoneisatthedoor]

@Wittgenstein

I would like to say: the old logic contains more convention and physics that has been realised. If a noun is the name of a body, a verb is to denote a movement, and an adjective to denote a property of a body, it is easy to see how much that logic presupposes; and it is reasonable to conjecture that those original presuppositions go still deeper into the application of the words, and the logic of propositions.

From The Wittgenstein Reader, ed. Anthony Kenny, The Rejection of Logical Atomism

[Faust]

saitd - what is the body that the noun “noun” describes? A body? What is the difference between nouns and verbs if everything is an event? Everyone, including the later Russell, rejects logical atomism as metaphysical truth. It is a useful technique, to a point. Wiitgy has once again said nothing.

[Twiffy]

Great topic!

Logical atomism is an interesting topic. For all the attention it’s received, there has never been much progress made in defining exactly what these logical parts of language would look like - or, even more importantly, what it means to be able to break down a nonatomic linguistic structure.

One possible example is the sentence “I am tall and I am skinny.” On an intuitive AND a logical level, it can be broken into the conjunction of two sentences:

1. I am tall
   and
2. I am skinny

This is one way you can break down language. There are many possible others.

There is a rather interesting paper floating around that does an excellent job systemizing truth systems and logical mechanics of truth structures. Although the main conclusion of the paper is that there is no free will, it talks a good bit about logical primes (logical atoms), how to define them, and in what circumstances they exist. It’s really very interesting.

mathmusings.com/mathsyst.pdf

The general conclusion of the paper is that logical atoms don’t always exist in the language - but when they do, the language as a whole is much more powerful and manageable. There are also some basic criteria in the paper for when they exist, and those criteria suggest that english does have logical atoms.

From what I’ve read, I take that to be the most useful account of Logical Atomism to date. My opinion, based on this paper, is that in English we probably have logical atoms, but not necessarily.