3. Theory of Descriptions

3. Theory of descriptions

Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)

• a philosopher, logician, mathematician, social critic and political activist; the most famous British intellectual of his generation

• a follower of Frege

• spent most of his life at Cambridge University, Trinity College

• George Edward Moore (1873-1958), colleague

• Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), student of Russel

• the Nobel Prize in Literature (1950), as one of only four philosophers: Henri Bergson (1927), Albert Camus (1957), Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)

Social philosophy

1. Pacifism

• an anti-war activist, a promoter of a peace symbol, that was created by the designer Gerald Holtom; Russel made it famous from flag semaphore letters “N” and “D” (as in “nuclear disarmament”)

• imprisoned twice: five months in 1918 for pacifism, a week in 1961 for anti-nuclear protests; in 1916 fired from Cambridge University for pacifism

• he was opposed to WWI

• a confirmed socialist and anti-communist; in 1920 met Lenin, but found him disappointing and cruel

• he thought that communism is such a huge danger for European society, so in 1948 he demanded the USA to strike first and drop an atom bomb on Russia

2. Feminism

• an advocate of women rights and liberal sexual morality; in a book Marriage and Morals (1929) he defended homosexuality, free love and polygamy: “And in all countries where there is an excess of women, it is an obvious injustice that those women who, by arithmetical necessity, must remain unmarried should be wholly debarred from sexual experience.”

• married four times, had many extra-marital affairs; in 1940 fired from the City College of New York for being “morally unfit” to teach

3. Atheism

• an advocate of agnosticism (we are not sure whether God exists or not) or atheism (deny that God exists)

“My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race. I cannot, however, deny that it has made some contributions to civilisation. It helped in early days to fix the calendar, and it caused Egyptian priests to chronicle eclipses with such care that in time they became able to predict them. These two services I am prepared to acknowledge, but I do not know of any others.” (“Has Religion Made Useful Contributions to Civilisation?”, 1930)

• Russell’s arguments precede New Atheists, e.g. Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris or Christopher Hitchens (write harshly about religious people)

Mathematical logic

Principia Mathematica I-III (1910-1913)

• construction of an ideal language with unambiguous lexical stock and logical syntax

Philosophy of language

“On Denoting” (1905)

• the main problem of Frege’s theory of meaning (the triangle from last session) was referring to non-existent objects (e.g. “the golden mountain”, “the present King of France” or “a round square”)

• these phrases have sense (Sinn), but they are missing physical reference (Bedeutung)

• the question is: Do they refer to anything real?