Russell's Unknown Logicism


Book Description

In this excellent book Sebastien Gandon focuses mainly on Russell's two major texts, Principa Mathematica and Principle of Mathematics , meticulously unpicking the details of these texts and bringing a new interpretation of both the mathematical and the philosophical content. Winner of The Bertrand Russell Society Book Award 2013.




Principia Mathematica


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Origins and Varieties of Logicism


Book Description

This book offers a plurality of perspectives on the historical origins of logicism and on contemporary developments of logicist insights in philosophy of mathematics. It uniquely provides up-to-date research and novel interpretations on a variety of intertwined themes and historical figures related to different versions of logicism. The essays, written by prominent scholars, are divided into three thematic sections. Part I focuses on major authors like Frege, Dedekind, and Russell, providing a historical and theoretical exploration of such figures in the philosophical and mathematical milieu in which logicist views were first expounded. Part II sheds new light on the interconnections between these founding figures and a number of influential other traditions, represented by authors like Hilbert, Husserl, and Peano, as well as on the reconsideration of logicism by Carnap and the logical empiricists. Finally, Part III assesses the legacy of such authors and of logicist themes for contemporary philosophy of mathematics, offering new perspectives on highly debated topics—neo-logicism and its extension to accounts of ordinal numbers and set-theory, the comparison between neo-Fregean and neo-Dedekindian varieties of logicism, and the relation between logicist foundational issues and empirical research on numerical cognition—which define the prospects of logicism in the years to come. This book offers a comprehensive account of the development of logicism and its contemporary relevance for the logico-philosophical foundations of mathematics. It will be of interest to graduate students and researchers working in philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of logic, and the history of analytic philosophy.




Russell's Philosophy of Logical Analysis, 1897-1905


Book Description

This systematic and historical treatment of Russell's contributions to analytic philosophy, from his embrace of analysis in 1898 to his landmark theory of descriptions in 1905, draws important connections between his philosophically motivated conception of analysis and the technical apparatus he devised to facilitate analyses in mathematics




Innovations in the History of Analytical Philosophy


Book Description

This book offers new perspectives on the history of analytical philosophy, surveying recent scholarship on the philosophical study of mind, language, logic and reality over the course of the last 200 years. Each chapter contributes to a broader engagement with a wider range of figures, topics and disciplines outside of philosophy than has been traditionally associated with the history of analytical philosophy. The book acquaints readers with new aspects of analytical philosophy’s revolutionary past while engaging in a much needed methodological reflection. It questions the meaning associated with talk of 'analytic' philosophy and offers new perspective on its development. It offers original studies on a range of topics – including in the philosophy of language and mind, logic, metaphysics and the philosophy of mathematics – and figures whose relevance, when they is not already established as in the case of Russell, Moore and Wittgenstein, are just now beginning to become the topic of mainstream literature: Franz Brentano, William James, Susan Langer as well as the German and British logicians of the nineteenth century.




Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell


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Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) was a logician, a philosopher, and one of the twentieth century’s most visible public intellectuals. Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell: A Cultural Sociology brings those three aspects together to trace Russell’s changing views on the role of science and technology in society throughout his long intellectual career. Drawing from cultural sociology, history of science, and philosophy, Javier Pérez-Jara and Lino Camprubí provide a fresh multidimensional analysis of the general themes of science, technology, utopia, and apocalypse. The book critically examines Russell’s influential interpretations of the turn-of-the-century mathematical logic, World War I, the metaphysics and epistemology of mind and matter, World War II, nuclear holocaust, and the Vietnam War. In Russell’s compelling narratives, humanity was a powder keg and the match was represented by different and successive meta-adversaries, such as religion, communism, and American imperialism. And the only way to avoid a coming global Holocaust was to follow his own salvific recipes. In working around Russell’s role in the cultural perception of the final destiny of humanity, Science and Apocalypse in Bertrand Russell invites the reader to think about the place of the techno-scientific sphere in human progress and decadence in both our current epoch and the distant future.




The Palgrave Centenary Companion to Principia Mathematica


Book Description

To mark the centenary of the 1910 to 1913 publication of the monumental Principia Mathematica by Alfred N. Whitehead and Bertrand Russell, this collection of fifteen new essays by distinguished scholars considers the influence and history of PM over the last hundred years.




The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell


Book Description

A founder of modern analytic philosophy and one of the most important logicians of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell has influenced generations of philosophers. The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell explores this influence in detail and responds to renewed interest in Russell's philosophical approach, presenting the best guide to research in Russell studies today. Bringing new insights into Russell's relationship with his contemporaries, a team of experts explore his life-long battles with important philosophical issues. They consider how he influenced thinkers and schools of thought, from Schröder, Frege and Meinong to Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle, while also covering his impact on individual issues in epistemology, logic, metaphysics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, and political philosophy. Importantly this companion discusses often overlooked topics. Focusing on Russell's later views, including his moral philosophy and his politics, reveals that Russell did make significant contributions to ethics - both theoretical and practical - in the course of his career. Through a combination of enlightening historical background and sustained focus on Russell's impact on contemporary areas of philosophy, The Bloomsbury Companion to Bertrand Russell demonstrates why Russell continues to influence philosophers of language, mathematics, epistemology and metaphysics.




Repairing Bertrand Russell’s 1913 Theory of Knowledge


Book Description

This book repairs and revives the Theory of Knowledge research program of Russell’s Principia era. Chapter 1, 'Introduction and Overview', explains the program’s agenda. Inspired by the non-Fregean logicism of Principia Mathematica, it endorses the revolution within mathematics presenting it as a study of relations. The synthetic a priori logic of Principia is the essence of philosophy considered as a science which exposes the dogmatisms about abstract particulars and metaphysical necessities that create prisons that fetter the mind. Incipient in The Problems of Philosophy, the program’s acquaintance epistemology embraced a multiple-relation theory of belief. It reached an impasse in 1913, having been itself retrofitted with abstract particular logical forms to address problems of direction and compositionality. With its acquaintance epistemology in limbo, Scientific Method in Philosophy became the sequel to Problems. Chapter 2 explains Russell’s feeling intellectually dishonest. Wittgenstein’s demand that logic exclude nonsense belief played no role. The 1919 neutral monist era ensued, but Russell found no epistemology for the logic essential to philosophy. Repairing, Chapters 4–6 solve the impasse. Reviving, Chapters 3 and 7 vigorously defend the facts about Principia. Studies of modality and entailment are viable while Principia remains a universal logic above the civil wars of the metaphysicians.




Alasdair Urquhart on Nonclassical and Algebraic Logic and Complexity of Proofs


Book Description

This book is dedicated to the work of Alasdair Urquhart. The book starts out with an introduction to and an overview of Urquhart’s work, and an autobiographical essay by Urquhart. This introductory section is followed by papers on algebraic logic and lattice theory, papers on the complexity of proofs, and papers on philosophical logic and history of logic. The final section of the book contains a response to the papers by Urquhart. Alasdair Urquhart has made extremely important contributions to a variety of fields in logic. He produced some of the earliest work on the semantics of relevant logic. He provided the undecidability of the logics R (of relevant implication) and E (of relevant entailment), as well as some of their close neighbors. He proved that interpolation fails in some of those systems. Urquhart has done very important work in complexity theory, both about the complexity of proofs in classical and some nonclassical logics. In pure algebra, he has produced a representation theorem for lattices and some rather beautiful duality theorems. In addition, he has done important work in the history of logic, especially on Bertrand Russell, including editing Volume four of Russell’s Collected Papers.