Bertrand Russell is an English philosopher of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. During his long life, he created a huge number of intellectual works on a variety of topics. He was interested in mathematics, problems of religion, history of philosophy, politics, pedagogy and the theory of knowledge. In general, Russell's philosophy is distinguished by a mixture of dissimilar ideas and views. However, such eclecticism pays off with the clarity of the syllable and the precision of the philosopher's thought.
Bertrand Russell: Becoming a Philosopher
Bertrand Russell was born on May 18, 1872 in Trelleck, Welsh, UK, into an aristocratic family. In 1890, the young man entered Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he immediately showed brilliant talent for philosophy and mathematics. Initially, Russell was fond of the theory of idealism, according to which reality is a product of the activity of consciousness. However, a few years after studying at Cambridge, he radically changed his views in favor of realism, according to which consciousness and experience exist independently of the outside world, and empiricism, the main idea of which is that the source of knowledge is a sensitive experience received from the outside world.
Bertrand Russell's early intellectual writings were primarily about mathematics. According to the theory he defended, all mathematical knowledge can be reduced to the form of logical principles. But Russell simultaneously wrote on a variety of topics: metaphysics, philosophy of language, morality, religion, linguistics. In 1950 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
In the philosophical formation of Bertrand Russell, researchers distinguish 3 periods of creative and intellectual development:
- From 1890 to 1900, Russell was primarily engaged in research work. During this period, he accumulates material and replenishes the content of his worldview and produces little enough of anything original.
- The years 1900-1910 are considered the most fruitful and productive years in the work of a philosopher. At this time, he was studying the logical foundations of mathematics and, in collaboration with the Englishman Whitehead, created the fundamental work "Principles of Mathematics".
- The final period of Russell's philosophical formation falls on the age of forty. At this time, the range of his interests, in addition to epistemological topics, includes issues of a cultural, moral and socio-political nature. In addition to scientific works and monographs, the English thinker writes many publicistic reports and articles.
Bertrand Russell, along with the philosophers Ludwig Wittgenstein and George Moore, are considered the founders of analytic philosophy.
Analytical philosophy in the works of Bertrand Russell
Analytical philosophy is also called logical positivism. It is based on the idea that philosophy is necessary in the same way as scientific research: with precision, analogy, the use of logic and skepticism about hypotheses.
Russell first attracted public attention with his sharply negative beliefs about social reform. During the First World War, he actively expressed pacifist views, refuting the very essence of the war, participated in protest demonstrations. During World War II, he opposed the policies of Hitler and the Nazi Party, abandoning his pacifist ideas in favor of a more relativistic approach.
Russell actively criticized Stalin's totalitarian regime, US participation in the Vietnam War, and also advocated nuclear disarmament.
Logical atomism in the philosophy of Bertrand Russell
Russell owns the idea of "logical atomism", the main concept of which is the idea that language can be decomposed into smaller components, into "logical atoms." With their help, you can reveal the formulated assumptions and more accurately determine whether it is true.
As an example, consider the sentence: "The King of the United States is bald." Although simple in itself, it can be decomposed into the following three logical atoms:
- "The King of the United States exists."
- "There is one king in the USA."
- "The King of the United States has no hair."
Analyzing the first atom obtained, one can immediately notice its falsity, since it is known that there is no king in the United States. Therefore, we can conclude that the entire proposal "The US King is bald" is false. However, this does not mean that the proposal is truly false, since the opposite statement - "The king of the United States has hair" - will also not be true.
Thanks to the logical atomism created by Russell, it is possible to determine the reliability and degree of truth. This automatically raises a question discussed by philosophers to this day: if something is not truly false or true, then what is it?
The theory of descriptions in the philosophical writings of Bertrand Russell
One of the important intellectual contributions of the philosopher to the development of language was the theory of descriptions. According to Russell's ideas, truth cannot be expressed by linguistic means, since natural language is ambiguous and imprecise. To free philosophy from assumptions and errors, a more precise form of language is needed, logically correct, built on mathematical logic and expressed as a series of mathematical equations.
In an effort to answer the question that prompted the assumption: "The King of the United States is bald," Bertrand Russell creates a theory of descriptions. He refers to specific descriptions as names, words, and phrases denoting a specific object, such as "Australia" or "this chair." A descriptive sentence, according to Russell's theory, is a short way to describe a group of statements within a single series. For Russell, the grammar of a language obscures the logical form of a phrase. In the sentence "The Bald King of the United States", the object is non-existent or ambiguous, and the philosopher defined this as "incomplete symbols."
Set theory and Bertrand Russell's paradox
Russell defines sets as a collection of members or elements, that is, objects. They can also be negative and consist of subsets that can be excluded or added. An example of such a multitude is all Americans. The negative set are non-American people. An example of a subset is Americans - Washington residents.
Bertrand Russell revolutionized the fundamentals of set theory when he formulated his famous paradox in 1901. Russell's paradox is that there are sets of all sets that do not contain themselves as their element.
All cats that have ever existed can be cited as an example of such a multitude. Many cats are not cats. But there are sets that contain themselves as an element. In the multitude of everything that is not a cat, this multitude must also be included, because it is not a cat.
If you strive to find the set of all sets that do not contain themselves as an element, the very Russell paradox will arise. Why? There are many sets that do not contain themselves as an element, but according to their own definition, they must be included. And the definition says that this is unacceptable. Therefore, there is a contradiction.
It was thanks to Russell's formulated paradox that the imperfection of set theory became apparent. If any group of objects is taken as a set, situations that contradict the logic of situations may arise. According to the philosopher, to correct this deficiency, set theory should be more rigorous. A set should only be considered a group of objects that satisfy specific axioms. Before the paradox was formulated, set theory began to be called naive, and its development, taking into account Russell's ideas, was called axiomatic set theory.
