Moore, Russell & Early Wittgenstein

Answer : Theory of description occupies significant place in Russell’s discussion of the analysis of language. This theory has been discussed in his paper entitled “On denoting”.

In his philosophy, Russell distinguishes between proper names and descriptive phrases. According to Russel, proper names are the logical subjects of ordinary statements and are name similar to individual or particulars. They are designated by the name. Any individual designated by the name is the meaning of the name. For example, ....

Answer : According to G.E. Moore esse est percipi forms the most important premise of the Idealism upon which all its arguments are based. Though idealism is not based only on this single premise, yet this forms one of the links in the chain of arguments advanced by an idealist to prove his theory. If any premise in a chain is proved false then the conclusion becomes inconclusive, even though all other premises may be sound. Moore ....

Answer : An important aspect of Moore’s rejection of idealism was his affirmation of a ‘common sense’ realist position, according to which our ordinary common-sense view of the world is largely correct. Moore first explicitly championed this position in his 1910-11 lectures--- Some Main Problems of Philosophy but he made it his own when he responded in 1925 to an invitation to describe his ‘philosophical position’ by setting this out as ‘A Defence of Common Sense’ The ....

Answer : Logical Atomism, theory, developed primarily by the British logician Bertrand Russell and the Austrian-born philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, proposing that language, like other phenomena, can be analyzed in terms of aggregates of fixed, irreducible units or elements. Logical Atomism supposes that a perfect one-to-one correspondence exists between an “atom” of language (an atomic proposition) and an atomic fact; thus, for each atomic fact there is a corresponding atomic proposition. An atomic proposition is one that asserts ....

Answer : According to Wittgenstein, philosophical problems arise from the intellectual bewilderment induced by the misuse of language and the only way to resolve them is to use examples from ordinary language to deflate the pretensions of traditional thought. The only legitimate role for philosophy, then, is as a kind of therapy, a remedy for the bewitchment of human thought by philosophical language. Careful attention to the actual usage of ordinary language helps avoid the conceptual confusions ....

Answer : Moore first explicitly championed this position in his 1910-11 lectures ‘Some Main Problems of Philosophy’ but he made it his own when he responded in 1925 to an invitation to describe his ‘philosophical position’ by setting this out as ‘A Defence of Common Sense’.

Moore begins the paper by listing a large number of ‘truisms’ such as that ‘the earth had existed also for many years before my body was born’. Concerning these truisms he then ....

Answer : Philosophical positions are thoughts on certain matters that we have valued as ‘true’ or ‘false’. The reason this is important is because when we observe new information we compare it to what we already know. If ‘A’ would see a person crossing the street without looking left and right first I’d judge it unsafe because ‘A’ has been taught by experience that people can get killed that way. What ‘A’ perceive (what the mind understands ....

Answer : Russell accepts the referential theory of meaning. But later he found difficulty in this and gave the theory of definite description. Here only those words are meaningful which actually refer to something. Those symbols which do not refer to something are incomplete symbols. They are meaningful only in the context. And even here they don’t refer. They can be eliminated by proper analysis. The grammatical form is not the same as the logical form. Any ....

Answer : Moore says that there are many types of idealism. It is not possible to examine all idealistic system and all given arguments. But all idealists believe that reality is spritual. It is not possible even to refute this. But all idealistic schools have one basic principle-Berkley’s ‘Esse est percipi’ (EEP).If this can be refuted then idealism may not be accepted. Still it does not mean idealism is false. But there would be no reason to ....

Answer : The theory of Incomplete symbols is part of the Theory of Description. Russel says some words do not refer to anything. For example, the sentence, “Dragons do not exist” is both meaning and true. But, here the sentence is about nothing, thus Dragons must have no place in logic. These words are called in-complete symbols.

Incomplete symbol is a word/expression which is meaningfully used in a sentence but outside the context of a sentence it has ....

Answer : In philosophical investigations, Wittgenstein says that, “for a large class of cases though not for all-in which we employ that word ‘meaning’ it can be defined thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.”

Here Wittgenstein is not offering the general theory that “meaning is use”. The main rival views that Wittgenstein warns against are that the meaning of a word is some object that it names in which case the meaning ....

Answer : Wittgenstein discusses what can and cannot be expected of a logical notation. Here we get a clearer idea of what atomic facts really are, as Wittgenstein is forced to grapple with the issue of how we represent them logically in propositions. As we saw earlier, an atomic fact is a relational structure of “objects”, which individually can only be defined in terms of their potential to combine into such structures. Elementary propositions, since they represent ....

Answer : Moore’s main intention is to refute idealism as it is based on hypothetical notions and makes life more complex than it is, as Moore says. An important aspect of Moore’s rejection of idealism was his affirmation of a ‘common sense’ realist position, according to which our ordinary common-sense view of the world is largely correct. Moore begins by listing a large number of ‘truisms’ such as that ‘the earth had existed also for many years ....

Answer : Definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of “the X” where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. The definite description is proper if X applies to a unique individual or object. For example: “the first person in space” and “the 42nd President of the United States of America”, are proper. The definite descriptions “the person in space” and “the Senator from Ohio” are improper because the noun phrase X applies ....

Answer : The proposition which Moore disputed is: esse is percipi. This is a very ambiguous proposition, but, in some sense or other, it has been very widely held. That wherever you can truly predicate esse you can truly predicate percipi, in some sense or other, is, a necessary step in all arguments, properly to be called Idealistic, and, what is more, in all arguments hitherto offered for the idealistic conclusion. If esse is percipi, this is ....

Answer : The proposition which Moore disputed is: esse is percipi. This is a very ambiguous proposition, but, in some sense or other, it has been very widely held. That wherever you can truly predicate esse you can truly predicate percipi, in some sense or other, is, a necessary step in all arguments, properly to be called Idealistic, and, what is more, in all arguments hitherto offered for the idealistic conclusion. If esse is percipi, this is ....

Answer : In the picture theory of Wittgenstein, aboutness is not the only semantic property defined in terms of resemblance—truth is also cashed out in pictorial terms. This is a correspondence theory of truth in which correspondence is a species of resemblance. A picturing fact has aboutness in virtue of resembling some possible states of affairs. A picturing fact is true if and only if the possible state of affairs also happens to be actual.What a picturing ....

Answer : Russell’s philosophy of logical atomism is attributed to the influence of Wittgenstein. Russell belonged to a tradition in contemporary philosophy called logical analysis. This tradition was developed as a challenge to the dominant Hegelian system in the British/American universities at the turn of the century. Logical analysis was a revival of British empiricism, though, with a strong emphasis on logic unprecedented in British empiricism prior to and including John Stuart Mill. Russell did not consider ....

Answer : An important aspect of Moore’s rejection of idealism was his affirmation of a ‘common sense’ realist position, according to which our ordinary common-sense view of the world is largely correct. Moore begins by listing a large number of ‘truisms’ such as that ‘the earth had existed also for many years before my body was born’. Concerning these truisms he then asserts, first, that he knows them for certain, second, that other people likewise know for ....

Answer : Bertrand Russell described several different definitions and philosophical analyses as treating certain entities and expressions as “logical constructions”. Examples he cited were the Frege/Russell definition of numbers as classes of equinumerous classes, the theory of definite descriptions, the construction of matter from sense data, and several others. Generally expressions for such entities are called “incomplete symbols” and the entities themselves “logical fictions”.

The notion originates with Russell’s logicist program of reducing mathematics to logic, was widely ....

Answer : The purpose of philosophical analysis, according to Moore, is merely to explicate the precise implications of the truth of such beliefs, and that is the procedure he followed in “A Defence of Common Sense” (1925).

Moore began with a simple list of “common-sense” beliefs that each of us holds about many things, including my own body, other human bodies, my own experiences, and the experiences of other human beings. He then declared further that we all ....

Answer : according to Russell objects (that is, logical constructions) in their relations or with their qualities constitute the various forms of facts. Assuming that what makes a sentence true is a fact, what sorts of facts must exist to explain the truth of the kinds of sentences there are? Russell answers this question by accounting for the truth of several different kinds of sentences: atomic and molecular sentences, general sentences, and those expressing propositional attitudes like ....

Answer : Bertrand Russell described his philosophy as a kind of “logical atomism”, by which he meant to endorse both a metaphysical view and a certain methodology for doing philosophy. The metaphysical view amounts to the claim that the world consists of a plurality of independently existing things exhibiting qualities and standing in relations. According to logical atomism, all truths are ultimately dependent upon a layer of atomic facts, which consist either of a simple particular exhibiting ....

Answer : Russell’s theory of descriptions was most clearly expressed in his 1905 essay “On Denoting”. Russell’s theory is about the logical form of expressions involving denoting phrases, which he divides into three groups:

1. Denoting phrases which do not denote anything, for example “the present King of France”.
2. Phrases which denote one definite object, for example “the present King of England”. We need not know which object the phrase refers to for it to be unambiguous, for example ....

Answer : Wittgenstein’s view of what philosophy is or should be changed little over his life. In his book Tractatus he says that philosophy is not one of the natural sciences. It aims as the logical clarification of thoughts. Philosophy is not descriptive but. elucidatory. Its aim is to clear up middle and confusion. It follows that philosophers should not concern themselves so much with what is actual keeping up with the latest popularizations of sciences say ....