Bertrand Russell was initially a mathematician. That explains why he always used mathematical symbols to explain logical reasoning topics. Russell and Whitehead are the authors of the most important logic work of our time, Principia Mathematica , which consisted of showing that mathematics was reducible to logical calculus. This is called logicism.
Today, Bertrand Russell is considered one of the thinkers who has contributed the most to the development of the Philosophy of Language, above all, for his theory of descriptions, which he masterfully exposes in an essay called On Denoting , first published in 1905 in the Journal of Mind Philosophy .
Descriptions are expressions which he calls "denoting expressions." He distinguishes three types of cases, for example, 1.- An expression can be denotative and not denote anything, and then he places the famous example «the current king of France», but as is known, France does not have a King. 2.- A sentence can denote a certain object, example in On Dentonig "the present queen of England", in this case, if there is a certain woman who is queen of that country. 3.- An expression can denote something with a certain margin of vagueness, for example, “a man”, this expression does not make sense in isolation. Knowing this, we must consider that Russell is interested in the epistemological problem, so one must ask which of these three types of denotations really say something, what it contributes to knowledge, and if we can arrive through any of them to formulate logical arguments.
Russell distinguish that there are two types of knowledge, a) direct knowledge that comes from sensory data and of which we have a visual representation, for example, a tree and b) knowledge [about...], that is, of those things of which we take notice by means of denotative expressions. Here is the question for which Bertrand Russell is interested in the expressions [about...], due to the difficulties that these can present in the argument. He thinks that the denotative expressions never have a meaning in itself, but that every proposition in whose verbal expression those intervene, then has meaning. These make sense in the proposition. Understood by proposition those expressions of which we can judge whether they are true or false unequivocally. However, there are some linguistic expressions that mix in speech and are repugnant to logic and science, so we must take care of it, science deals with fundamentally objective issues.
Russell cites Meinong 's and Frege 's referential theories as an example of those contradiction. .Let's analyze Meinong work. According to him, every grammatically correct denotative expression represents an object, for example, "the current king of France" or "the round square", for Russell this violates the "principle of contradiction" because it is impossible for something to be at the same time and in the same way, that is, it is claimed that the current king of France exists and that, at the same time, he does not exist, and that the "round square" is round and, at the same time, not round . These elements are [non-enties], so it is inferred that they cannot be the subject of a proposition. It does not even comply with the principle of the «excluded third», that is, in principle, everything has to be in being, example (A) is (B) or (A) is not (B), there will not be a third possibility.
This law is represented in symbolic logic as follows: (AV ¬ A) : the disjunction of a proposition and its negation is always true. An example in natural language would be: it is true that "it is day or it is not day", but never both at the same time. That is, both things are possible, but not at the same time. In Meinong 's referentialist theory , the expression "the current king of France" the king cannot exist and not exist at the same time, neither can "the round square". Meinnog asserts that the "current king of France" refers to a non-existent but subsisting little object.
Frege would say that the linguistic expression "the present King of France" has meaning, but not reference, and since it has meaning, it has meaning, the lack of referent does not imply the lack of meaning, since meaning is meaning. Russell differs from this position, for how can (A) have meaning if (A) does not exist? A denotative expression is, by nature, part of a sentence and lacks, like the vast majority of isolated words, meaning on its own. For Bertrand Russell, denoting expressions are difficult to avoid in ordinary language, but they will become harmless if we know how to prevent them, symbolic logic manages to avoid them. Quoting Russell: "In the case of a thing of which we have no direct knowledge, but only a definition by means of denoting expressions, propositions in which that thing is introduced by means of a denoting expression will not really contain that thing." as a constitutive element, but only, instead, to the constitutive elements expressed by the various words of the denotative formula in question"
No comments:
Post a Comment