Anssi Lauri Korhonen

Russell’s discussion of belief in The Philosophy of Logical Atomism is brief, tentative, and mostly negative. The standard view has been that in the lectures, Russell no longer believed in the multiple-relation theory of judgment but was not yet in a position to articulate an alternative conception of belief; that came only a little later, with the psychological account of belief that is found in such works as On Propositions (1919) and The Analysis of Mind (1921). In this paper, I challenge the standard view. First, I present evidence to support the claim that the views that Russell held in 1918 at least leave room for a version of the multiple-relation theory, albeit one that would be rather different from the view he held before. Second, I consider some key developments in Russell’s thinking about judgment during 1913–1918. These developments indicate the direction in which he may have been moving. Third, I present some speculation—partly relying on a recent work by Fraser MacBride—regarding a positive account of judgment in Russell’s lectures; an important connection that emerges from this speculation is one between the multiple-relation theory of judgment and the distinction between positive and negative facts.

An exciting trend in current analytic philosophy is the emergence of several topics that draw their inspiration partly from the work of Rudolf Carnap, a leading figure in the Vienna Circle. Approaches such as deflationary metaontology, conceptual engineering, logical pluralism, and related views on the normativity of logic are seen to have Carnapian roots; however, these topics are quite foreign to the once-prevalent but rather narrow reading of Carnap that derives from W. V. Quine’s and others’ appraisal of him in the 1950s and 1960s. The case of Carnap raises questions about the potential narrowness of our understanding of the Vienna Circle in general. While the reappraisal of the history of the Vienna Circle has been ongoing since the early 1980s, the more recent developments in analytic philosophy suggest that there might be even more interesting yet previously unnoticed views pertinent to present-day concerns. This Special Issue collects such novel perspectives on the Vienna Circle. The covered topics range from rereadings of the doctrines of the members of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap, Otto Neurath, and Moritz Schlick, but also less well known figures, including its female members or sympathizers. We look for constructive connections between the Vienna Circle and different philosophical traditions as well as new perspectives on various thematic questions, such as the development of contemporary logic and unity of science.

This paper considers the role of constitutivity and normativity in Frege’s conception of logic. It outlines an historical interpretation with two goals. First, it traces these concepts back to their origins in Kant’s philosophy. Second, it considers some of the different ways in which the issue of normativity and its proper grounding was addressed in the neo-Kantian tradition and in early analytic philosophy. Some neo-Kantians worked out an epistemic-normative conception of objective judgment, according to which the objectivity of cognition is constituted by distinctively logical norms. In Frege we find an original and sophisticated version of this line of thought. For Frege, the normative and constitutive roles of logic come to the fore in the articulation of scientific reason which follows the classical model of demonstrative science as cognitio ex principiis. Wittgenstein’s Tractatus then opens up a fresh Kantian perspective on the constitutivity of logic, one that grounds logic in structure rather than norms, and does so in conscious opposition to Frege and his normative science. Logic is transcendental, according to Wittgenstein, being the essence of the world and of all description. Hence, the normative function of logic becomes, in a way, superfluous.

This paper concerns Bertrand Russell’s changing views on negative judgement. ‘Negative judgement’ is considered in the context of three theories of judgement that Russell put forth at different times: a dual relation theory ; a multiple relation theory ; a psychological theory of judgement. Four issues are singled out for a more detailed discussion: quality dualism versus quality monism, that is, the question whether judgement comes in two kinds, acceptance and rejection, or whether there is only one judgement-quality ; the structure of negative judging; the problem of truth-making for negative facts; the different roles of ‘fact’ in Russell’s theories of truth. What emerges from the discussion is a rough chronology of Russell’s views on negative judgement during the period from 1903 to 1948.

Since its publication in 1967, van Heijenoort’s paper, “Logic as Calculus and Logic as Language” has become a classic in the historiography of modern logic. According to van Heijenoort, the contrast between the two conceptions of logic provides the key to many philosophical issues underlying the entire classical period of modern logic, the period from Frege’s Begriffsschrift (1879) to the work of Herbrand, Gödel and Tarski in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The present paper is a critical reflection on some aspects of van Heijenoort’s thesis. I concentrate on the case of Frege and Russell and the claim that their philosophies of logic are marked through and through by acceptance of the universalist conception of logic, which is an integral part of the view of logic as language. Using the so-called “Logocentric Predicament” (Henry M. Sheffer) as an illustration, I shall argue that the universalist conception does not have the consequences drawn from it by the van Heijenoort tradition. The crucial element here is that we draw a distinction between logic as a universal science and logic as a theory. According to both Frege and Russell, logic is first and foremost a universal science, which is concerned with the principles governing inferential transitions between propositions; but this in no way excludes the possibility of studying logic also as a theory, i.e., as an explicit formulation of (some) of these principles. Some aspects of this distinction will be discussed.

In Bertrand Russell’s The Principles of Mathematics and related works, the notion of a proposition plays an important role; it is by analyzing propositions, showing what kinds of constituents they have, that Russell arrives at his core logical concepts. At this time, his conception of proposition contains both a conventional and an unconventional part. The former is the view that propositions are the ultimate truth-bearers; the latter is the view that the constituents of propositions are “worldly” entities. In the latter respect, Russellian propositions are akin to states-of-affairs on some robust understanding of these entities. The idea of Russellian propositions is well known, at least in outline. Not so well known is his treatment of truth, which nevertheless grows directly out of this notion of proposition. For the early Russell, the import of truth is primarily metaphysical, rather than semantic; reversing the usual direction of explanation, he holds that truth is explanatory of what is the case rather than vice versa. That is, what properties a thing has and what relations it bears to other things is determined, metaphysically speaking, by there being a suitable array of true and false propositions. In the present paper, this doctrine is examined for its content and motivation. To show that it plays a genuine role in Russell’s early metaphysics and logic, I examine its consequences for the possibility of truth-definitions and the problem of the unity of the proposition. I shall draw a few somewhat tentative conclusions about where Russell stood vis-à-vis his metaphysics of propositions, suggesting a possible source of dissatisfaction that may have played a role in his eventual rejection of his early notion of proposition.

Finland is internationally known as one of the leading centers of twentieth century analytic philosophy. This volume offers for the first time an overall survey of the Finnish analytic school. The rise of this trend is illustrated by original articles of Edward Westermarck, Eino Kaila, Georg Henrik von Wright, and Jaakko Hintikka. Contributions of Finnish philosophers are then systematically discussed in the fields of logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, history of philosophy, ethics and social philosophy. Metaphilosophical reflections on the nature of philosophy are highlighted by the Finnish dialogue between analytic philosophy, phenomenology, pragmatism, and critical theory.