We’ve been discussing this paper in class. We are interpreting the paper in this way: That Russell looks at propositions as only being true or false. He is not concerned with the words in the propositions, in a linguistic sense, but refers to all of the consituent parts of a proposition as terms. These terms represent reality; that is, they refer to entities located outside of the realm of space and time.
In the proposition ‘The cat is black’, Russell is concerned with the cat entity, as well as the blackness entity, and the ‘is’ simply relates the two. These entities are the truths about reality, and are independent of our thinking. Our ability to grasp these things does not make them real, but they were real, and always will be real, before and after there are any minds to grasp them.
With this in mind, my prof made a comment about Santa Claus. Although he may not physically exist in the realm of space and time, the fact that somebody has grasped the essence of ‘Santa Claus’ and put together the words that describe him, so it seems he’s been created, Santa Claus then is real…and to say that ‘Santa Claus does not exist’ is a contradiction. Of course this is not my professors thinking, or it may very well be, but that of Russell’s.
Has anybody else read this paper, and what do you think of it?
I’m not sure this is necessarily true! Suppose reality were a completely undifferentiated monism, an infinite supply of pure energy, and that it is only conscious thought which divides, categorizes and otherwise slices up this absolute wholeness into pieces which can be described linguistically. The problem here is the one Wittgenstein pointed out, which is that we can’t use language to get outside of a reality which we describe with language. We end up discussing nonentities, like Santa Claus.
This problem curls up neatly next to the mind-body problem. The image of a cat in my mind–the neurochemical reactions which indicate furry texture, meowing sound, black and grey fur–are they the same as the real cat? What is the real cat beneath these bundles of qualities–the thing itself, the core which possesses these properties? Does the language point to the real cat, or the cat in my mind or does it just indicate a collection of properties?
From my understanding thus far, I think Russell claims to have defeated monism in this paper. It was something to do with numerical identity, and numerical diversity…I think it is like this:
‘The cat is black’
The dog is brown’
The cat entity is referred to by a term. So is the dog entity. Both are entities, thus every term describes an entity, but they differ…that is although entities are everything, no two are the same…this leads him to his pluralistic conclusion.
I think that the initial post addresses the power of belief and acting “as if” something is real. So, a child that believes in Santa will act “as if” Santa is real and that affects the child’s whole reality. So, it’s the case that Santa might as well exist.
If fact, it would be illogical to factor out the importance of Santa in the kid’s life just because all the rest of us no longer believe in Santa. This approach could be very helpful when trying to understand odd political, religious, or economic movements and predict the behavior of those that believe them.
I think that the initial post addresses the power of belief and acting “as if” something is real. So, a child that believes in utpoia will act “as if” utopia is real and that affects the child’s whole reality. So, it’s the case that utopia might as well exist.
If fact, it would be illogical to factor out the importance of utopia in the kid’s life just because all the rest of us no longer believe in utopia. This approach could be very helpful when trying to understand odd political, religious, or economic movements and predict the behavior of those that believe them.
but stalin understood this facet of humanity all too well…
What do you mean there Imp? Are you saying that the dream of communism was used by a power mad nut?
If so, I know that Russell was very affected by the Nazi movement and sought to develop a philosophy that was “scientific” in nature and not open to fantastic thought, thus he was attempting to avoid fantasy by counting it as a factor.
I havn’t read the paper… but I’ll try to save Russell’s ass anyway… it would go something like this:
Santa Claus DOES in fact exist… or at least all the elements contained within “Santa Claus” exist… as seperate entities… “Santa Clause” is mearly the sum of all his/its parts… like all other things… and although the parts might not exist in a unified state… the parts exist never-the-less… that we choose to refer to them as “Santa Clause” and anthropomorphize the collective… does not nessesitate a unified existence of said parts…
This would follow from Russell’s defeat of monism…
Actually, if you read Russell you will find that he blamed philosophy for Nazism. I believe that his book The History of Western Philosophy is actually a means to invalidate all of philosophy in favor of his new idea. He wanted to turn all ideas into mathematical propositions to avoid fantastic flights of fantasy.
What Russell is looking for in this paper is reality…he is analyzing propositions in order to discover the pure truth about reality…that is, metaphysics. It is not about how we come to learn knowledge, so it is not epistemological…Russell is primarily concerned with logic…and this is what he focuses on in this paper. He even goes so far as to make a clear distinction between the psychological and the logical…mostly due to the fact that he is arguing against Bradley’s analysis of language and symbols or whatever…
what!!! NOT AT ALL!!! If you were speaking about a reality independent of language do you possible think that this has no relation to metaphysics. lol…are you kidding me? Metaphysics is EXACTLY what Russell is talking about when he speaks of the reality outside of the realm of space and time…hahahahaha I can’t believe you wrote that.
Go to your link and read up on Russell’s “analytic philosophy” section…you’ll notice that it says right in the last paragraph not that Russell was trying to destroy metaphysics, but eliminate the excesses of it through clarification.
Yes, I agree that Russell wasn’t trying to totally get rid of metaphysics, but he was trying to turn it into a type of math. This was for the reasons that I mentioned before about his blaming philosophy for world chaos. It’s as if he was trying to apply the scientific method to ideas. As a person that is not too sporty with the scientific method, for not physical exploration, I’m not sure I like the idea.