The paper critically scrutinizes the widespread idea that Russell subscribes to a "Universalist Conception of Logic." Various glosses on this somewhat under-explained slogan are considered, and their fit with Russell's texts and logical practice examined. The results of this investigation are, for the most part, unfavorable to the Universalist interpretation.

The positions of Frege, Russell and Wittgenstein on the priority of complexes over (propositional) functions are sketched, challenging those who take the "judgment centered" aspects of the Tractatus to be inherited from Frege not Russell. Frege's views on the priority of judgments are problematic, and unlike Wittgenstein's. Russell's views on these matters, and their development, are discussed in detail, and shown to be more sophisticated than usually supposed. Certain misreadings of Russell, including those regarding the relationship between propositional functions and (...) universals, are exposed. Wittgenstein's and Russell's views on logical grammar are shown to be very similar. Russell's type theory does not countenance types of genuine entities nor metaphysical truths that cannot be put into words, contrary to conventional wisdom. I relate this to the debate over "inexpressible truths" in the Tractatus. I lastly comment on the changes to Russell's views brought about by Wittgenstein's influence. (shrink)

The use of the symbol ∨for disjunction in formal logic is ubiquitous. Where did it come from? The paper details the evolution of the symbol ∨ in its historical and logical context. Some sources say that disjunction in its use as connecting propositions or formulas was introduced by Peano; others suggest that it originated as an abbreviation of the Latin word for “or,” vel. We show that the origin of the symbol ∨ for disjunction can be traced to Whitehead and (...) Russell’s pre-Principia work in formal logic. Because of Principia’s influence, its notation was widely adopted by philosophers working in logic (the logical empiricists in the 1920s and 1930s, especially Carnap and early Quine). Hilbert’s adoption of ∨ in his Grundzüge der theoretischen Logik guaranteed its widespread use by mathematical logicians. The origins of other logical symbols are also discussed. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that Russell's problems with the unity of the proposition were recurring and insoluble within the framework of the logical theory of his Principles of Mathematics. By contrast, Frege's functional analysis of thoughts (grounded in a type-theoretic distinction between concepts and objects) is commonly assumed to provide a solution to the problem or, at least, a means of avoiding the difficulty altogether. The Fregean solution is unavailable to Russell because of his commitment to the thesis that there (...) is only one ultimate ontological category. This, combined with Russell's reification of propositions, ensures that he must hold concepts and objects to be of the same logical and ontological type. In this paper I argue that, while Frege's treatment of the unity of the proposition has immediate advantages over Russell's, a deeper consideration of the philosophical underpinnings and metaphysical consequences of the two approaches reveals that Frege's supposed solution is, in fact, far from satisfactory. Russell's repudiation of the Fregean position in the Principles is, I contend, convincing and Russell's own position, despite its problems, conforms to a greater extent than Frege's with common sense and, furthermore, with certain ideas which are central to our understanding of the origins of the analytical tradition. (shrink)

An account of validity that makes what is invalid conditional on how many individuals there are is what I call a conditional account of validity. Here I defend conditional accounts against a criticism derived from Etchemendy’s well-known criticism of the model-theoretic analysis of validity. The criticism is essentially that knowledge of the size of the universe is non-logical and so by making knowledge of the extension of validity depend on knowledge of how many individuals there are, conditional accounts fail to (...) reflect that the former knowledge is basic, i.e., independent of knowledge derived from other sciences. Appealing to Russell’s pre-Principia logic, I defend conditional accounts against this criticism by sketching a rationale for thinking that there are infinitely many logical objects. (shrink)