Bertrand Russell was born in 1872 into an old British aristocratic family. The grandson of British Prime Minister John Russell, Mill’s godson, he graduated from Cambridge with honors, had the title of Lord, and lived for almost a hundred years – he died in 1970 – taking part in the most acute philosophical battles of the 20th century: on the problems of mathematics and logic, on the questions of the methodology of scientific knowledge and the language of science, on the problems of atheism and modern freethinking, on the engagement of intellectuals in political life (he was last imprisoned at the age of 89 for participating in a rally for nuclear disarmament), and finally, on the modern interpretation of the history of philosophy.
In 1949 he received the Order of Merit of the United Kingdom, and in 1950 the Nobel Prize in Literature. He acted as a bright popularizer of philosophy and secular philosophical thinking, whose ideas are relevant to this day. His name is associated primarily with the ideas of logical positivism, which arose after the First World War and denoted an orientation toward logical methods of substantiating science. Initially, this term denoted the activities of the Vienna Circle (M. Schlick, O. Neurath, R. Carnap, etc.), then A.D. Ayer and Russell himself were attributed to this movement as the founder of its variety – logical atomism.
British philosophical thought was characterized by a critical attitude toward traditional philosophy, which was based on the analysis of everyday language and the problematization of the process of cognition itself. B. Russell and A. Whitehead systematized formal logical methods in their fundamental work on mathematical logic, Principia Mathematica (1910-1913). Logicism, proposed by Russell and Whitehead in this work, not only determined the further development of mathematical logic, but also answered the unanswered questions raised by the crisis in 19th-century mathematics related to the experimental nature of Euclidean geometry and the arithmetic of number. The most pressing problems were removed by the creation of set theory by G. Cantor (1845-1918) and the introduction of the principles of axiomatization of arithmetic by G. Peano in 1889. However, problems remained, including those related to paradoxes in mathematics. Logicism assumed a strict axiomatic dependence of arithmetic on formal logic, primarily on propositional calculus, and in this work Russell proposed a theory of types — a specific hierarchy of logical concepts — that eliminated a number of paradoxes, including the so-called Russell paradox. Its humorous formulation sounds like the “Barbers” paradox and partly resembles the liar’s paradox, known in Antiquity (the Cretan Epimenides says that all Cretans are liars): the barber shaves everyone and only those in a mountain (i.e. isolated) village who do not shave themselves — accordingly, he should and should not shave himself. A set, if we follow the formulated definition, should and should not include itself as an element of this set — logical antinomies arise due to carelessness in word usage — their resolution should be compliance with the principles of the theory of types. When making a statement about all cases of a certain type, the possible values of the argument should be limited (by type: arguments of an individual order, arguments denoting properties of individuals, arguments denoting properties of properties of individuals, and so on). Then the conclusion about a new case—whether it belongs or does not belong to the designated set—will not be contradictory.
These specific solutions proposed by Russell have been repeatedly criticized: for example, Gödel formulated the idea of the essential incompleteness of axiomatic systems of arithmetic and set theory – this means that these systems do not have the means to prove the statements that this system formulates. D. Hilbert’s formalism, based on the fact that a number of concepts in arithmetic are necessary for the exposition of the logical laws themselves, refuted the possibility of axiomatization of arithmetic on the basis of a single logic and introduced the criteria of axiomatic formal systems of inference – consistency, completeness and independence. Russell himself asked questions related to the axioms of existence, for example, the axiom of the infinity of the subject area of logic. It is no coincidence that we can encounter contradictory interpretations of Russell’s final judgments on the existence of mathematical objects, etc.
Russell believed that philosophy, armed with the tools of mathematical logic, can analyze the possibilities of logically constructing the world from sensory data. The logical form of language is of fundamental importance for this. The theory of descriptions proposed by Russell in Principia Mathematica distinguished between the direct designation of an object or person (proper names) and a description characterizing an object by its properties, i.e., in isolation from the object (descriptions, which are in this sense incomplete symbols). Thus, sentences containing only descriptions do not presuppose the existence of an object.
Meaning is thus acquired in the combination of designations. The idea of a special place for a proposition became the basis for Russell’s broader philosophical concept of logical atomism. And it was this idea that prompted L. Wittgenstein to create the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. It is based on the idea that language and reality correspond to each other one-to-one, it is only important to use the corresponding designating expressions correctly. It is the proposition that corresponds to the world. An atomic proposition is isomorphic to an atomic fact. This means that it indicates whether a certain object has a certain property. A molecular proposition contains atomic propositions as parts, and its truth is made up of the truth of its constituent parts. Truth is understood as meaning – following Frege and according to Leibniz’s principle of substitution – things are considered identical that can mutually replace (substitute) each other, and the truth will remain unchanged (a classic example: one meaning of the rising of Venus is expressed differently and has different meanings in the expressions “the Morning Star is rising” and “the Evening Star is rising”). The propositional function determines the structure of the parts of a sentence: any statement containing several indefinite components becomes a sentence as soon as the indefinite components are determined. In the article “On Designation” (1905), Russell considers three cases of designation: an expression can be a designation without designating anything, for example, “the present King of France”; an expression can designate a specific object, for example, “the present Queen of Great Britain”; an expression can designate something indefinite, for example, “a man”. The analysis of a sentence is intended to make sentences logically transparent – to reduce, if possible, to what we are directly familiar with. The analytical work that will become the fundamental method of analytic philosophy is thus the work of logically clarifying propositions.
For this, Russell’s distinction between knowledge-acquaintance and knowledge by description, which he writes about in his work “Problems of Philosophy” (1912), becomes fundamental. By “knowledge-acquaintance” Russell means immediate knowledge, i.e. sensory data, as well as universals, or general ideas about qualities and relationships. Russell distinguishes “knowledge-acquaintance” from sensations and the act of sensory perception itself. According to researchers, this is an important remark, since it suggests that consciousness should be understood as precisely this ability to be familiar with something that does not depend on it. This is precisely why his position was attributed to realism, to which Russell noted in his article “Logical Atomism” that logic is fundamental to the concept. According to this argument, the objects of science are constructed from sensory data (later Russell would introduce the special term “sensibility” to separate sensory data, as well as the object of consciousness, from the given consciousness of someone): “the supreme maxim of scientific philosophizing is, that, wherever possible, logical constructions should be substituted for the entities inferred.” Knowledge “by description” is inferential knowledge, i.e. it is based on the former. As Hume wrote, in order to test the meaning of an idea, one must ask from what impression it results, although he did not include universals in his understanding of impressions. It is knowledge “by description” that presents us with physical objects, consciousness, other people – all of which are a collection of sensory data. Knowledge is given with the help of words and expressions, therefore the question of objective existence can only be resolved within the framework of “knowledge-acquaintance.”
Referring to the common sense hypothesis, one of the instinctive beliefs important for our knowledge, Russell argues that the simplest and best explanation of our lives is the conviction that things exist objectively. D. E. Moore called this the initial level of cognitive activity, awareness. But, as Russell writes in Mysticism and Logic (1917), this does not mean the subjectivity of knowledge as such, distinguishing causal dependence from the senses, nerves and brain. Largely influenced by Wittgenstein and trying to counter English neo-Hegelian monism, Russell sets out a pluralistic view in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918). Taking up Machian reasoning about the functional distinction between the mental and the physical, Russell in The Analysis of Mind (1921) notes that “… both the mind and the material object as logical constructions… are formed from materials that are essentially indistinguishable, and sometimes actually identical.” Russell everywhere emphasized that the object of physical science differs from sensory data, although it is verified on their basis. The work The Analysis of Matter (1927) is especially devoted to this, where Russell, skeptically assessing the achievements of a single methodological position, suggests interpreting physics “in a way that tends toward idealism,” and perception “in a way that tends toward materialism.” This sceptical position was finally formulated by Russell in a kind of summary – “My Philosophical Biography” (1959): “What I maintain is that we can see or observe what goes on in our heads, and that we cannot see or observe anything else at all…” At the same time, he put forward several postulates of scientific inference, extra-empirical and illogical, built on the basis of common sense, which “are intended to create the preliminary probability necessary to justify inductive generalizations.” As it was stated already in the early work “Problems of Philosophy”, “the value of philosophy is in fact largely to be found in its very uncertainty” (1: 272).
Russell’s atheistic works deserve special mention: the late version of “Mysticism and Logic”, “Has Religion Made a Useful Contribution to Civilization?”, “Religion and Science”, “Why I Am Not a Christian”. He was in the thick of the struggle for freethinking. In 1940, in New York, he was even arrested and deprived of the right to teach at City College for his atheistic views. In London, these were lively discussions – with Bishop Gore (1929), with the Jesuit historian F. Copleston (1948). For B. Russell, religion is a dogmatic way of thinking. He defines his position as agnostic – placing emphasis primarily on the natural scientific approach to worldview problems. In this series, we can also put those chapters of “The History of Western Philosophy” (1948) that are devoted to Catholic philosophy.
Russell wrote many works on the history of philosophy, both specialized (on the philosophical concepts of Leibniz, James, Hegel, Dewey, Santayana, Mill, Wittgenstein and others) and general overviews (History of Western Philosophy and The Wisdom of the West. A Historical Study of Western Philosophy in Connection with Social and Political Circumstances), which made philosophy popular throughout the world. Russell’s active life position extended primarily to those practical consequences of philosophical concepts that manifest themselves in politics (it is no coincidence that among his early works is German Social Democracy (1896), later translated into Russian) and the mentality of ordinary people.
Literature
1. Russell B. Problems of Philosophy // James W. Introduction to Philosophy; Russell B. Problems of Philosophy. Moscow, 2000.
2. Russell B. History of Western Philosophy. Vol. 1 – 2. Moscow, 1993.
3. Russell B. The Art of Thinking. Moscow, 1999.
4. Russell B. The Wisdom of the West. A Historical Study of Western Philosophy in Connection with Social and Political Circumstances. Moscow, 1998.