## 1. Russell's Chronology



A short chronology of the major events in Russell's life is as
follows: 




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| (1872) |  Born May 18 at Ravenscroft in Trelleck, Monmouthshire,
UK. |
| (1874) |  Death of mother and sister. |
| (1876) |  Death of father; Russell's grandfather, Lord John
Russell (the former Prime Minister), and grandmother succeed in
overturning Russell's father's will to win custody of
Russell and his brother, rather than have them raised as
free-thinkers. |
| (1878) |  Death of grandfather; Russell's grandmother, Lady
Russell, supervises Russell's upbringing at Pembroke Lodge,
London. |
| (1883) |  Receives his first lessons in geometry from his brother
Frank. |
| (1890) |  Enters Trinity College, Cambridge; meets
 Whitehead. |
| (1893) |  Awarded first-class BA in Mathematics. |
| (1894) |  Completes the Moral Sciences Tripos (Part II); appointed
Honorary British Attache in Paris; marries Alys Pearsall
Smith. |
| (1895) |  Studies at the University of Berlin. |
| (1896) |  Appointed lecturer at the London School of Economics;
lectures in the US at Johns Hopkins and Bryn Mawr. |
| (1899) |  Appointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. |
| (1900) |  Meets Peano at the First International Congress of
Philosophy in Paris. |
| (1901) |  Reappointed lecturer at Cambridge; discovers
 Russell's paradox. |
| (1902) |  Corresponds with
 Frege. |
| (1905) |  Develops his theory of
 descriptions. |
| (1907) |  Runs for parliament and is defeated. |
| (1908) |  Elected Fellow of the Royal Society. |
| (1910) |  Fails to receive Liberal Party nomination for parliament
because of his atheism; reappointed lecturer at Trinity College,
Cambridge. |
| (1911) |  Meets
 Wittgenstein;
 elected President of the Aristotelian Society; separates from
Alys. |
| (1913) |  Lectures at the Ecole des Hautes Sociales in
Paris. |
| (1914) |  Visits Harvard and teaches courses in logic and the theory
of knowledge; meets T.S. Eliot. |
| (1915) |  Reappointed lecturer at Trinity College, Cambridge. |
| (1916) |  Fined 100 pounds and dismissed from Trinity College as a
result of anti-war writings; denied a passport and so unable to
lecture at Harvard. |
| (1918) |  Imprisoned for five months as a result of anti-war
writings. |
| (1920) |  Visits Russia. |
| (1921) |  Divorce from Alys and marriage to Dora Black; visits China
and Japan. |
| (1922) |  Runs for parliament and is defeated. |
| (1923) |  Runs for parliament and is defeated. |
| (1924) |  Lectures in the US. |
| (1927) |  Lectures in the US; opens experimental school in the UK
with Dora. |
| (1929) |  Lectures in the US. |
| (1931) |  Lectures in the US; becomes the third Earl Russell upon the
death of his brother. |
| (1935) |  Divorce from Dora. |
| (1936) |  Marriage to Patricia (Peter) Helen Spence. |
| (1938) |  Appointed visiting professor of philosophy at Chicago. |
| (1939) |  Appointed professor of philosophy at the University of
California at Los Angeles. |
| (1940) |  Appointment at City College New York revoked prior to
Russell's arrival as the result of public protests and a legal
judgment in which Russell was found to be "morally unfit"
to teach at the college; delivers the William James Lectures at
Harvard. |
| (1941) |  Appointed lecturer at the Barnes Foundation in
Pennsylvania. |
| (1942) |  Dismissed from Barnes Foundation, but wins a lawsuit
against the Foundation for wrongful dismissal. |
| (1944) |  Reappointed a Fellow of Trinity College. |
| (1948) |  Involved in a plane crash en route to Norway, he and other
passengers save themselves by swimming in the ocean until help
arrives. |
| (1949) |  Awarded the Order of Merit; elected a Lifetime Fellow at
Trinity College. |
| (1950) |  Awarded Nobel Prize for Literature; visits Australia. |
| (1951) |  Lectures in the US. |
| (1952) |  Divorce from Patricia (Peter) and marriage to Edith
Finch. |
| (1955) |  Releases Russell-Einstein Manifesto. |
| (1957) |  Elected President of the first Pugwash Conference. |
| (1958) |  Becomes founding President of the Campaign for Nuclear
Disarmament. |
| (1961) |  Imprisoned for one week in connection with anti-nuclear
protests. |
| (1963) |  Establishes the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation. |
| (1967) |  Launches the International War Crimes Tribunal. |
| (1970) |  Dies February 02 at Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales. |



Attempts to sum up Russell's life have been numerous. One of the
more famous comes from the Oxford philosopher
 A.J. Ayer.
 As Ayer writes, "The popular conception of a philosopher as one
who combines universal learning with the direction of human conduct
was more nearly satisfied by Bertrand Russell than by any other
philosopher of our time" (1972a, 127). Another telling comment
comes from the Harvard philosopher
 W.V. Quine:
 "I think many of us were drawn to our profession by
Russell's books. He wrote a spectrum of books for a graduated
public, layman to specialist. We were beguiled by the wit and a sense
of new-found clarity with respect to central traits of reality"
(1966c, 657). 



Despite such comments, perhaps the most memorable encapsulation of
Russell's life and work comes from Russell himself. As Russell
tells us, 



> 
> 
> Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my
> life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable
> pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds,
> have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great
> ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.
> 
> 
> 
> I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy
> so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a
> few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves
> loneliness - that terrible loneliness in which one shivering
> consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold
> unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the
> union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring
> vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what
> I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is
> what - at last - I have found.
> 
> 
> 
> With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to
> understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars
> shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which
> number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I
> have achieved. 
> 
> 
> 
> Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward
> the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries
> of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured
> by oppressors, helpless old people a hated burden to their sons, and
> the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of
> what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I
> cannot, and I too suffer.
> 
> 
> 
> This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly
> live it again if the chance were offered me. (1967, 3-4)
> 
> 
> 



By any standard, Russell led an enormously full life. In addition to
his ground-breaking intellectual work in logic and analytic
philosophy, he involved himself for much of his life in politics. As
early as 1904 he spoke out frequently in favour of internationalism
and in 1907 he ran unsuccessfully for Parliament. Although he stood as
an independent, he endorsed the full 1907 Liberal platform. He also
advocated extending the franchise to women, provided that such a
radical political change could be introduced through constitutionally
recognized means (Wood 1957, 71). Three years later he published his
*Anti-Suffragist Anxieties* (1910).



With the outbreak of World War I, Russell became involved in anti-war
activities and in 1916 he was fined 100 pounds for authoring an
anti-war pamphlet. Because of his conviction, he was dismissed from
his post at Trinity College, Cambridge (Hardy 1942). Two years later,
he was convicted a second time, this time for suggesting that American
troops might be used to intimidate strikers in Britain (Clark 1975,
337-339). The result was five months in Brixton Prison as
prisoner No. 2917. In 1922 and 1923 Russell ran twice more for
Parliament, again unsuccessfully, and together with his second wife,
Dora, he founded an experimental school that they operated during the
late 1920s and early 1930s (Russell 1926 and Park 1963). Perhaps not
surprisingly, some of Russell's more radical activities -
including his advocacy of post-Victorian sexual practices - were
linked in many people's minds to his atheism, made famous in
part by his 1948 BBC debate with the Jesuit philosopher Frederick
Copleston over the existence of God. 



Although Russell became the third Earl Russell upon the death of his
brother in 1931, Russell's radicalism continued to make him a
controversial figure well through middle-age. While teaching at UCLA
in the United States in the late 1930s, he was offered a teaching
appointment at City College, New York. The appointment was revoked
following a series of protests and a 1940 judicial decision which
found him morally unfit to teach at the College (Dewey and Kallen
1941, Irvine 1996, Weidlich 2000). The legal decision had been based
partly on Russell's atheism and partly on his fame as an
advocate of free love and open marriages.



In 1954, Russell delivered his famous "Man's Peril"
broadcast on the BBC, condemning the Bikini H-bomb tests. A year
later, together with Albert Einstein, he released the Russell-Einstein
Manifesto calling for the curtailment of nuclear weapons. In 1957, he
became a prime organizer of the first Pugwash Conference, which
brought together a large number of scientists concerned about the
nuclear issue. He became founding president of the Campaign for
Nuclear Disarmament in 1958 and Honorary President of the Committee of
100 in 1960. 



In 1961, Russell was once again imprisoned, this time for a week in
connection with anti-nuclear protests. The media coverage surrounding
his conviction only served to enhance Russell's reputation and
to further inspire the many idealistic youth who were sympathetic to
his anti-war and anti-nuclear message. Beginning in 1963, he began
work on a variety of additional issues, including lobbying on behalf
of political prisoners under the auspices of the Bertrand Russell
Peace Foundation.



Throughout much of his life, Russell saw himself primarily as a writer
rather than as a philosopher, listing "Author" as his
profession on his passport. As he says in his *Autobiography*,
"I resolved not to adopt a profession, but to devote myself to
writing" (1967, 125). Upon being awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature in 1950, Russell used his acceptance speech once again to emphasize 
themes relating to his social activism. 



Over the years, Russell has served as the subject of numerous creative
works, including T.S. Eliot's "Mr Apollinax" (1917),
D.H. Lawrence's "The Blind Man" (1920), Aldous
Huxley's *Chrome Yellow* (1921), Bruce Duffy's
*The World as I Found It* (1987) and the graphic novel by
Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos Papadimitriou, *Logicomix: An Epic
Search for Truth* (2009).



Readers wanting additional information about Russell's life are
encouraged to consult Russell's five autobiographical volumes:
*Portraits from Memory and other Essays* (A1956b), *My
Philosophical Development* (1959) and *The Autobiography of
Bertrand Russell* (3 volumes, 1967, 1968, 1969). In addition, John
Slater's accessible *Bertrand Russell* (1994) gives a
short but informative introduction to Russell's life, work and
influence. Other sources of biographical information include Ronald
Clark's authoritative *The Life of Bertrand Russell*
(1975), Ray Monk's two volumes, *Bertrand Russell: The Spirit
of Solitude* (1996) and *Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of
Madness* (2000), and the first volume of Andrew Irvine's
*Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments* (1999).



For a chronology of Russell's major publications, readers are
encouraged to consult the
 Primary Literature
 section of the Bibliography below. For a complete, descriptive
bibliography, see *A Bibliography of Bertrand Russell* (3
volumes, 1994), by Kenneth Blackwell and Harry Ruja. A less detailed
list appears in Paul Arthur Schilpp, *The Philosophy of Bertrand
Russell* (1944). 



For a detailed bibliography of the secondary literature surrounding
Russell up to the close of the twentieth century, see Andrew Irvine,
*Bertrand Russell: Critical Assessments*, Volume 1 (1999). For
a list of new and forthcoming books relating to Russell, see the
 Forthcoming Books
 page at the Bertrand Russell Archives. 


## 2. Russell's Work in Logic



Russell's main contributions to logic and the foundations of
mathematics include his discovery of
 Russell's paradox,
 also known as the Russell-Zermelo paradox (Linsky 2013), his development (together with Whitehead) of the
 theory of types,
 his championing of logicism (the view that mathematics is, in some
significant sense, reducible to formal logic), his impressively
general theory of logical relations, his formalization of the
mathematics of quantity and of the real numbers, and his refining of
the first-order predicate calculus. 



Russell discovered the paradox that bears his name in 1901, while
working on his *Principles of Mathematics* (1903). The paradox
arises in connection with the set of all sets that are not members of
themselves. Such a set, if it exists, will be a member of itself if
and only if it is not a member of itself. In his 1901 draft of the
*Principles of Mathematics*, Russell summarizes the problem as
follows:



> 
> The axiom that all referents with respect to a given relation form a
> class seems, however, to require some limitation, and that for the
> following reason. We saw that some predicates can be predicated of
> themselves. Consider now those ... of which this is not the case.
> ... [T]here is no predicate which attaches to all of them and to
> no other terms. For this predicate will either be predicable or not
> predicable of itself. If it is predicable of itself, it is one of
> those referents by relation to which it was defined, and therefore, in
> virtue of their definition, it is not predicable of itself.
> Conversely, if it is not predicable of itself, then again it is one of
> the said referents, of all of which (by hypothesis) it is predicable,
> and therefore again it is predicable of itself. This is a
> contradiction. (CP, Vol. 3, 195)
> 



The paradox is significant since, using classical logic, all sentences
are entailed by a contradiction. Russell's discovery thus
prompted a large amount of work in logic, set theory, and the
 philosophy and foundations of mathematics.



Russell's response to the
 paradox
 came between 1903 and 1908 with the development of his
 theory of types.
 It was clear to Russell that some form of restriction needed to be
placed on the original comprehension (or abstraction) axiom of
naive set theory, the axiom that formalizes the intuition that
any coherent condition (or property) may be used to determine a set.
Russell's basic idea was that reference to sets such as the
so-called Russell set (the set of all sets that are not members of
themselves) could be avoided by arranging all sentences into a
hierarchy, beginning with sentences about individuals at the lowest
level, sentences about sets of individuals at the next lowest level,
sentences about sets of sets of individuals at the next lowest level,
and so on. Using a vicious circle principle similar to that adopted by
the mathematician Henri Poincare, together with his so-called
"no class" theory of classes (in which class terms gain
meaning only when placed in the appropriate context), Russell was able
to explain why the unrestricted comprehension axiom fails:
 propositional functions,
 such as the function "*x* is a set," may not be
applied to themselves since self-application would involve a vicious
circle. As a result, all objects for which a given condition (or
predicate) holds must be at the same level or of the same
"type." Sentences about these objects will then always be
higher in the hierarchy than the objects themselves.



Although first introduced in 1903, the theory of types was further
developed by Russell in his 1908 article "Mathematical Logic as
Based on the Theory of Types" and in the three-volume work he
co-authored with
 Alfred North Whitehead,
 *Principia Mathematica* (1910, 1912, 1913). The theory thus admits of two
versions, the "simple theory" of 1903 and the
"ramified theory" of 1908. Both versions of the theory
came under attack: the simple theory for being too weak, the ramified
theory for being too strong. For some, it was important that any
proposed solution be comprehensive enough to resolve all known
paradoxes at once. For others, it was important that any proposed
solution not disallow those parts of classical mathematics that
remained consistent, even though they appeared to violate the vicious
circle principle. (For discussion of related paradoxes, see Chapter 2
of the Introduction to Whitehead and Russell (1910), as well as the
entry on
 paradoxes and contemporary logic
 in this encyclopedia.)



Russell himself had recognized several of these same concerns as early
as 1903, noting that it was unlikely that any single solution would
resolve all the known paradoxes. Together with Whitehead, he was also
able to introduce a new axiom, the axiom of reducibility, which
lessened the vicious circle principle's scope of application and
so resolved many of the most worrisome aspects of type theory. Even
so, critics claimed that the axiom was simply too ad hoc to be
justified philosophically. (For additional discussion see Linsky
(1990), Linsky (2002) and Wahl (2011).)



Of equal significance during this period was Russell's defense
of logicism, the theory that mathematics is in some important sense
reducible to logic. First defended in his 1901 article "Recent
Work on the Principles of Mathematics," and later in greater
detail in his *Principles of Mathematics* and in *Principia
Mathematica*, Russell's logicism consisted of two main
theses. The first was that all mathematical truths can be translated
into logical truths or, in other words, that the vocabulary of
mathematics constitutes a proper subset of the vocabulary of logic.
The second was that all mathematical proofs can be recast as logical
proofs or, in other words, that the theorems of mathematics constitute
a proper subset of the theorems of logic. As Russell summarizes,
"The fact that all Mathematics is Symbolic Logic is one of the
greatest discoveries of our age; and when this fact has been
established, the remainder of the principles of mathematics consists
in the analysis of Symbolic Logic itself" (1903, 5).



Like
 Gottlob Frege,
 Russell's basic idea for defending logicism was that numbers
may be identified with classes of classes and that number-theoretic
statements may be explained in terms of quantifiers and identity. Thus
the number 1 is to be identified with the class of all unit classes,
the number 2 with the class of all two-membered classes, and so on.
Statements such as "There are at least two books" would be
recast as statements such as "There is a book, *x*, and
there is a book, *y*, and *x* is not identical to
*y*." Statements such as "There are exactly two
books" would be recast as "There is a book, *x*,
and there is a book, *y*, and *x* is not identical to
*y*, and if there is a book, *z*, then *z* is
identical to either *x* or *y*." It follows that
number-theoretic operations may then be explained in terms of
set-theoretic operations such as intersection, union, and difference.
In *Principia Mathematica*, Whitehead and Russell were able to
provide many detailed derivations of major theorems in set theory,
finite and transfinite arithmetic, and elementary measure theory. They
were also able to develop a sophisticated theory of logical relations
and a unique method of founding the real numbers. Even so, the issue
of whether set theory itself can be said to have been successfully
reduced to logic remained controversial. A fourth volume on geometry
was planned but never completed.



Russell's most important writings relating to these topics
include not only his *Principles of Mathematics* (1903),
"Mathematical Logic as Based on the Theory of Types"
(1908), and *Principia Mathematica* (1910, 1912, 1913), but
also his earlier *Essay on the Foundations of Geometry* (1897)
and his *Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy* (1919a), the
last of which was written while Russell was serving time in Brixton
Prison as a result of his anti-war activities. Coincidentally, it was
at roughly this same time that
 Ludwig Wittgenstein,
 Russell's most famous pupil, was completing his *Tractatus
Logico-Philosophicus* (1921) while being detained as a prisoner of
war at Monte Cassino in Italy during World War I. 



Anyone needing assistance in deciphering the symbolism found in the
more technical of Russell's writings is encouraged to consult
the
 Notation in *Principia Mathematica*
 entry in this encyclopedia.


## 3. Russell's Work in Analytic Philosophy



In much the same way that Russell used logic in an attempt to clarify
issues in the foundations of mathematics, he also used logic in an
attempt to clarify issues in philosophy. As one of the founders of
analytic philosophy, Russell made significant contributions to a wide
variety of areas, including
 metaphysics,
 epistemology,
 ethics
 and political theory. His advances in logic and metaphysics also had
significant influence on Rudolf Carnap and the
 Vienna Circle.
 



According to Russell, it is the philosopher's job to discover a
logically ideal language - a language capable of describing the
world in such a way that we will not be misled by the accidental,
imprecise surface structure of natural language. As Russell writes,
"Ordinary language is totally unsuited for expressing what
physics really asserts, since the words of everyday life are not
sufficiently abstract. Only mathematics and mathematical logic can say
as little as the physicist means to say" (1931, 82). Just as
atomic facts (the association of properties and relations with
individuals) combine to form molecular facts in the world itself, such
a language will allow for the description of such combinations using
logical connectives such as "and" and "or." In
addition to the existence of atomic and molecular facts, Russell also
held that general facts (facts about "all" of something)
are needed to complete our picture of the world. Famously, he
vacillated on whether negative facts are also required (1918, 1919).




The reason Russell believes many ordinarily accepted statements are
open to doubt is that they appear to refer to entities that may be
known only through inference. Thus, underlying Russell's various
projects was not only his use of logical analysis, but also his
long-standing aim of discovering whether, and to what extent,
knowledge is possible. "There is one great question," he
writes in 1911. "Can human beings *know* anything, and if
so, what and how? This question is really the most essentially
philosophical of all questions" (quoted in Slater 1994, 67).



Motivating this question was the traditional problem of the external
world. If our knowledge of the external world comes through inferences
to the best explanation, and if such inferences are always fallible,
what guarantee do we have that our beliefs are true?
Russell's response to this question was partly metaphysical and
partly epistemological. On the metaphysical side, Russell developed
his famous theory of
 logical atomism,
 in which the world is said to consist of a complex of logical atoms
(such as "little patches of colour") and their properties
and relations. (The theory was crucial for influencing
 Wittgenstein's theory
 of the same name.) Together these atoms and their properties form the
facts which, in turn, combine to form logically complex objects. What
we normally take to be inferred entities (for example, enduring
physical objects) are then understood as
 logical constructions
 formed from the immediately given entities of sensation, viz.,
"sensibilia."



On the epistemological side, Russell argues that it is also important
to show how each questionable entity may be reduced to, or defined in
terms of, another entity (or entities) whose existence is more
certain. For example, on this view, an ordinary physical object that
normally might be thought to be known only through inference may be
defined instead 



> 
> as a certain series of appearances, connected with each other by
> continuity and by certain causal laws. ... More generally, a
> 'thing' will be defined as a certain series of aspects,
> namely those which would commonly be said to be *of* the thing.
> To say that a certain aspect is an aspect *of* a certain thing
> will merely mean that it is one of those which, taken serially,
> *are* the thing. (1914a, 106-107)
> 



The reason we are able to do this, says Russell, is that 



> 
> our world is not wholly a matter of inference. There are things that
> we know without asking the opinion of men of science. If you are too
> hot or too cold, you can be perfectly aware of this fact without
> asking the physicist what heat and cold consist of. ... We may
> give the name 'data' to all the things of which we are
> aware without inference. (1959, 23)
> 



We can then use these data (or "sensibilia" or
 "sense data")
 with which we are directly acquainted to construct the relevant
objects of knowledge. Similarly, numbers may be reduced to collections
of classes; points and instants may be reduced to ordered classes of
volumes and events; and classes themselves may be reduced to
propositional functions. 



It is with these kinds of examples in mind that Russell suggests we
adopt what he calls "the supreme maxim in scientific
philosophizing," namely the principle that "Whenever
possible, logical constructions," or as he also sometimes puts
it, "logical fictions," are "to be substituted for
inferred entities" (1914c, 155; cf. 1914a, 107, and 1924, 326).
Anything that resists construction in this sense may be said to be an
ontological atom. Such objects are atomic, both in the sense that they
fail to be composed of individual, substantial parts, and in the sense
that they exist independently of one another. Their corresponding
propositions are also atomic, both in the sense that they contain no
other propositions as parts, and in the sense that the members of any
pair of true atomic propositions will be logically independent of one
another. Russell believes that formal logic, if carefully developed,
will mirror precisely, not only the various relations between all such
propositions, but their various internal structures as well. 



It is in this context that Russell also introduces his famous
distinction between two kinds of knowledge of truths: that which is
direct, intuitive, certain and infallible, and that which is indirect,
derivative, uncertain and open to error (1905, 41f; 1911, 1912, and
1914b). To be justified, every indirect knowledge claim must be
capable of being derived from more fundamental, direct or intuitive
knowledge claims. The kinds of truths that are capable of being known
directly include truths about immediate facts of sensation and truths
of logic. Examples are discussed in *The Problems of
Philosophy* (1912a) where Russell states that propositions with
the highest degree of self-evidence (what he here calls
"intuitive knowledge") include "those which merely
state what is given in sense, and also certain abstract logical and
arithmetical principles, and (though with less certainty) some ethical
propositions" (1912a, 109).



Eventually, Russell supplemented this distinction between direct and
indirect knowledge of truths with his equally famous distinction
between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. As
Russell explains, "I say that I am acquainted with an object
when I have a direct cognitive relation to that object, i.e. when I am
directly aware of the object itself. When I speak of a cognitive
relation here, I do not mean the sort of relation which constitutes
judgment, but the sort which constitutes presentation" (1911,
209). Later, he clarifies this point by adding that acquaintance
involves, not knowledge of truths, but knowledge of things (1912a,
44). Thus, while intuitive knowledge and derivative knowledge both
involve knowledge of propositions (or truths), knowledge by
acquaintance and knowledge by description both involve knowledge of
things (or objects). This distinction is slightly complicated by the
fact that, even though knowledge by description is in part based upon
knowledge of truths, it is still knowledge of things, and not of
truths. (I am grateful to Russell Wahl for reminding me of this
point.) Since it is things with which we have direct acquaintance that
are the least questionable members of our ontology, it is these
objects upon which Russell ultimately bases his epistemology.



Also relevant was Russell's reliance upon his so-called
regressive method (Irvine 1989, Mayo-Wilson 2011) and his eventual
abandoning of foundationalism in favour of a more recognizably
coherentist approach to knowledge (Irvine 2004). As Russell puts it,
even in logic and mathematics



> 
> We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their
> consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because
> we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from
> consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in
> investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive
> method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering
> general laws in any other science. (1907, 273-274)
> 



Russell's contributions to metaphysics and epistemology are also
unified by his views concerning the centrality of scientific
knowledge and the importance of there being an underlying methodology
common to philosophy and science. In the case of philosophy, this
methodology expresses itself through Russell's use of logical
analysis (Hager 1994, Irvine 2004). In fact, Russell often claims that
he has more confidence in his methodology than in any particular
philosophical conclusion.



This broad conception of philosophy arose in part from Russell's
idealist origins (Hylton 1990a, Griffin 1991). This is so, even though
Russell tells us that his one, true revolution in philosophy came as a
result of his break from idealism. Russell saw that the idealist
doctrine of internal relations led to a series of contradictions
regarding asymmetrical (and other) relations necessary for
mathematics. As he reports, 



> 
> It was towards the end of 1898 that Moore and I rebelled against both
> Kant and Hegel. Moore led the way, but I followed closely in his
> footsteps. ... [Our rebellion centred upon] the doctrine that
> fact is in general independent of experience. Although we were in
> agreement, I think that we differed as to what most interested us in
> our new philosophy. I think that Moore was most concerned with the
> rejection of idealism, while I was most interested in the rejection of
> monism. (1959, 54)
> 



The two ideas were closely connected through the so-called doctrine of
internal relations. In contrast to this doctrine, Russell proposed his
own new doctrine of *external* relations: 



> 
> The doctrine of internal relations held that every relation between
> two terms expresses, primarily, intrinsic properties of the two terms
> and, in ultimate analysis, a property of the whole which the two
> compose. With some relations this view is plausible. Take, for
> example, love or hate. If A loves B, this relation exemplifies itself
> and may be said to consist in certain states of mind of A. Even an
> atheist must admit that a man can love God. It follows that love of
> God is a state of the man who feels it, and not properly a relational
> fact. But the relations that interested me were of a more abstract
> sort. Suppose that A and B are events, and A is earlier than B. I do
> not think that this implies anything in A in virtue of which,
> independently of B, it must have a character which we inaccurately
> express by mentioning B. Leibniz gives an extreme example. He says
> that, if a man living in Europe has a wife in India and the wife dies
> without his knowing it, the man undergoes an intrinsic change at the
> moment of her death. (1959, 54)
> 



This is the type of doctrine Russell opposed, especially with respect
to the asymmetrical relations necessary for mathematics. For example,
consider two numbers, one of which is found earlier than the other in
a given series: 



> 
> If A is earlier than B, then B is not earlier than A. If you try to
> express the relation of A to B by means of adjectives of A and B, you
> will have to make the attempt by means of dates. You may say that the
> date of A is a property of A and the date of B is a property of B, but
> that will not help you because you will have to go on to say that the
> date of A is earlier than the date of B, so that you will have found
> no escape from the relation. If you adopt the plan of regarding the
> relation as a property of the whole composed of A and B, you are in a
> still worse predicament, for in that whole A and B have no order and
> therefore you cannot distinguish between "A is earlier than
> B" and "B is earlier than A." As asymmetrical
> relations are essential in most parts of mathematics, this doctrine
> was important. (1959, 54-55)
> 



Thus, by the end of 1898 Russell had abandoned the idealism that he
had been encouraged to adopt as a student at Cambridge, along with his
original Kantian methodology. In its place he adopted a new,
pluralistic
 realism.
 As a result, he soon became famous as an advocate of "the new
realism" and of his "new philosophy of logic,"
emphasizing as he did the importance of modern logic for philosophical
analysis. The underlying themes of this revolution included
Russell's belief in pluralism, his emphasis on anti-psychologism
and his belief in the importance of science. Each of these themes
remained central to his philosophy for the remainder of his life
(Hager 1994, Weitz 1944).



Russell's most important writings relating to these topics
include *Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by
Description* (1911), *The Problems of Philosophy* (1912a),
"Our Knowledge of the External World" (1914a), *On the
Nature of Acquaintance* (1914b, published more completely in
*Collected Papers*, Vol. 7), "The Philosophy of Logical
Atomism" (1918, 1919), "Logical Atomism" (1924),
*The Analysis of Mind* (1921), *The Analysis of Matter*
(1927a), *Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits* (1948), and
*Theory of Knowledge* (CP, Vol. 7).


## 4. Russell's Theory of Definite Descriptions



Russell's philosophical method has at its core the making and
testing of hypotheses through the weighing of evidence. Hence
Russell's comment that he wished to emphasize the
"scientific method" in philosophy. His method also
requires the rigorous analysis of problematic propositions using the
machinery of first-order logic. It was Russell's belief that by
using the new logic of his day, philosophers would be able to exhibit
the underlying "logical form" of natural-language
statements. A statement's logical form, in turn, would help
resolve various problems of reference associated with the ambiguity
and vagueness of natural language. 



Since the introduction of the modern predicate calculus, it has been
common to use three separate logical notations
("*Px*", "*x* = *y*", and
"[?]*x*") to represent three separate senses of
the natural-language word "is": the *is* of
predication, e.g. "Cicero is wise"; the *is* of
identity, e.g. "Cicero is Tully"; and the *is* of
existence, e.g. "Cicero is". It was Russell's
suggestion that, just as we use logic to make clear these
distinctions, we can also use logic to discover other ontologically
significant distinctions, distinctions that should be reflected in the
analysis we give of each sentence's correct logical form. 



On Russell's view, the subject matter of philosophy is then
distinguished from that of the sciences only by the generality and
*a prioricity* of philosophical statements, not by the
underlying methodology of the discipline. In philosophy, just as in
mathematics, Russell believed that it was by applying logical
machinery and insights that advances in analysis would be made.



Russell's most famous example of his new "analytic
method" concerns so-called denoting phrases, phrases that
include both
 definite descriptions
 and proper names. Like
 Alexius Meinong,
 Russell had initially adopted the view that every denoting phrase
(for example, "Scott," "the author of
*Waverley*," "the number two," "the
golden mountain") denoted, or referred to, an existing entity.
On this view, even fictional and imaginary entities had to be real in
order to serve as truth-makers for true sentences such as
"Unicorns have exactly one horn." By the time his landmark
article, "On Denoting," appeared in 1905, Russell had
modified his extreme realism, substituting in its place the view that
denoting phrases need not possess a theoretical unity. As Russell puts
it, the assumption that every denoting phrase must refer to an
existing entity was the type of assumption that exhibited "a
failure of that feeling for reality which ought to be preserved even
in the most abstract studies" (1919a, 165).



While logically proper names (words such as "this" or
"that" which refer to sensations of which an agent is
immediately aware) do have referents associated with them, descriptive
phrases (such as "the smallest number less than pi")
should be viewed merely as collections of quantifiers (such as
"all" and "some") and
 propositional functions
 (such as "*x* is a number"). As such, they are not
to be viewed as referring terms but, rather, as "incomplete
symbols." In other words, they are to be viewed as symbols that
take on meaning within appropriate contexts, but that remain
meaningless in isolation.



Put another way, it was Russell's insight that some phrases may
contribute to the meaning (or reference) of a sentence without
themselves being meaningful. As he explains, 



> 
> If "the author of *Waverley*" meant anything other
> than "Scott", "Scott is the author of
> *Waverley*" would be false, which it is not. If
> "the author of *Waverley*" meant
> "Scott", "Scott is the author of
> *Waverley*" would be a tautology, which it is not.
> Therefore, "the author of *Waverley*" means neither
> "Scott" nor anything else - i.e. "the author
> of *Waverley*" means nothing, Q.E.D. (1959, 85)
> 



If Russell is correct, it follows that in a sentence such as



> 
> (1) The present King of France is bald,
> 



the definite description "The present King of France"
plays a role quite different from the role a proper name such as
"Scott" plays in the sentence 



> 
> (2) Scott is bald.
> 



Letting *K* abbreviate the predicate "is a present King
of France" and *B* abbreviate the predicate "is
bald," Russell assigns sentence (1) the logical form 



> 
> (1') There is an *x* such that
> 
> 1. *Kx*,
> 2. for any *y*, if *Ky* then *y=x*, and
> 3. *Bx*.
> 
> 
> 



Alternatively, in the notation of the predicate calculus, we write




> 
> (1'') [?]*x*[(*Kx* &
> [?]*y*(*Ky* - *y=x*)) &
> *Bx*].
> 



In contrast, by allowing *s* to abbreviate the name
"Scott," Russell assigns sentence (2) the very different
logical form 



> 
> (2') *Bs*.
> 



This distinction between logical forms allows Russell to explain three
important puzzles. 



The first concerns the operation of the Law of Excluded Middle and how
this law relates to denoting terms. According to one reading of the
Law of Excluded Middle, it must be the case that either "The
present King of France is bald" is true or "The present
King of France is not bald" is true. But if so, both sentences
appear to entail the existence of a present King of France, clearly an
undesirable result, given that France is a republic and so has no
king. Russell's analysis shows how this conclusion can be
avoided. By appealing to analysis (1''), it follows that
there is a way to deny (1) without being committed to the existence of
a present King of France, namely by changing the scope of the negation
operator and thereby accepting that "It is not the case that
there exists a present King of France who is bald" is true.



The second puzzle concerns the Law of Identity as it operates in
(so-called) opaque contexts. Even though "Scott is the author of
*Waverley*" is true, it does not follow that the two
referring terms "Scott" and "the author of
*Waverley*" need be interchangeable in every situation.
Thus, although "George IV wanted to know whether Scott was the
author of *Waverley*" is true, "George IV wanted to
know whether Scott was Scott" is, presumably, false. 



Russell's distinction between the logical forms associated with
the use of proper names and definite descriptions again shows why this
is so. To see this, we once again let *s* abbreviate the name
"Scott." We also let *w* abbreviate
"*Waverley*" and *A* abbreviate the
two-place predicate "is the author of." It then follows
that the sentence



> 
> (3) *s=s*
> 



is not at all equivalent to the sentence 



> 
> (4) [?]*x*[(*Axw* &
> [?]*y*(*Ayw* - *y=x*)) &
> *x=s*].
> 



Sentence (3), for example, is a necessary truth, while sentence (4) is
not. 



The third puzzle relates to true negative existential claims, such as
the claim "The golden mountain does not exist." Here, once
again, by treating definite descriptions as having a logical form
distinct from that of proper names, Russell is able to give an account
of how a speaker may be committed to the truth of a negative
existential without also being committed to the belief that the
subject term has reference. That is, the claim that Scott does not
exist is false since 



> 
> (5) ~[?]*x*(*x=s*)
> 



is self-contradictory. (After all, there must exist at least one thing
that is identical to *s* since it is a logical truth that
*s* is identical to itself!) In contrast, the claim that a
golden mountain does not exist may be true since, assuming that
*G* abbreviates the predicate "is golden" and
*M* abbreviates the predicate "is a mountain,"
there is nothing contradictory about



> 
> (6) ~[?]*x*(*Gx* & *Mx*).
> 



Russell's most important writings relating to his theory of
descriptions include not only "On Denoting" (1905), but
also *The Principles of Mathematics* (1903), *Principia
Mathematica* (1910) and *Introduction to Mathematical
Philosophy* (1919). (See too Kaplan 1970, Kroon 2009 and Stevens
2011.) 


## 5. Russell's Theory of Neutral Monism



Yet another of Russell's contributions is his defence of
 neutral monism,
 the view that the world consists of just one type of substance which
is neither exclusively mental nor exclusively physical. Like idealism
(the view that nothing exists but the mental) and physicalism (the
view that nothing exists but the physical), neutral monism rejects
dualism (the view that there exist distinct mental and physical
substances). However, unlike both idealism and physicalism, neutral
monism holds that this single existing substance may be viewed in some
contexts as being mental and in others as being physical. As Russell
puts it, 



> 
> "Neutral monism" - as opposed to idealistic monism
> and materialistic monism - is the theory that the things
> commonly regarded as mental and the things commonly regarded as
> physical do not differ in respect of any intrinsic property possessed
> by the one set and not by the other, but differ only in respect of
> arrangement and context. (CP, Vol. 7, 15)
> 



To help understand this general suggestion, Russell introduces his
analogy of a postal directory:



> 
> The theory may be illustrated by comparison with a postal directory,
> in which the same names come twice over, once in alphabetical and once
> in geographical order; we may compare the alphabetical order to the
> mental, and the geographical order to the physical. The affinities of
> a given thing are quite different in the two orders, and its causes
> and effects obey different laws. Two objects may be connected in the
> mental world by the association of ideas, and in the physical world by
> the law of gravitation. ... Just as every man in the directory
> has two kinds of neighbours, namely alphabetical neighbours and
> geographical neighbours, so every object will lie at the intersection
> of two causal series with different laws, namely the mental series and
> the physical series. 'Thoughts' are not different in
> substance from 'things'; the stream of my thoughts is a
> stream of things, namely of the things which I should commonly be said
> to be thinking of; what leads to its being called a stream of thoughts
> is merely that the laws of succession are different from the physical
> laws. (CP, Vol. 7, 15)
> 



In other words, when viewed as being mental, a thought or idea may
have associated with it other thoughts or ideas that seem related even
though, when viewed as being physical, they have very little in
common. As Russell explains, "In my mind, Caesar may call up
Charlemagne, whereas in the physical world the two were widely
sundered" (CP, Vol. 7, 15). Even so, it is a mistake, on this
view, to postulate two distinct types of thing (the idea of Caesar and
the man Caesar) that are composed of two distinct substances (the
mental and the physical). Instead, "The whole duality of mind
and matter, according to this theory, is a mistake; there is only one
kind of stuff out of which the world is made, and this stuff is called
mental in one arrangement, physical in the other" (CP, Vol. 7,
15).



Russell appears to have developed this theory around 1913, while
working on his *Theory of Knowledge* manuscript and on his 1914
*Monist* article, "On the Nature of Acquaintance."
Decades later, in 1964, he remarked that "I am not conscious of
any serious change in my philosophy since I adopted neutral
monism" (Eames 1967, 511). Even so, over the next several
decades Russell continued to do a large amount of original work,
authoring such important books as *The Analysis of Mind*
(1921), *The Analysis of Matter* (1927a), *An Inquiry into
Meaning and Truth* (1940) and *Human Knowledge: Its Scope and
Limits* (1948).



Today several authors, including David Chalmers (1996, 155), Thomas
Nagel (2002, 209) and Erik Banks (2014, 114), have shown renewed
interest in considering Russell's general approach to the mind.




In addition to the above titles by Russell, Russell's most
influential writings relating to his theories of metaphysics and
epistemology include *Our Knowledge of the External World*
(1914a), "The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics" (1914c),
"The Philosophy of Logical Atomism" (1918, 1919),
"On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean" (1919b)
and *An Outline of Philosophy* (1927b).


## 6. Russell's Atheism



Russell sums up his views about religion quite plainly: "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"
(A1957, 18). According to Russell, not only are most religious beliefs
intellectually and morally pernicious, the religious point of view
itself "is a conception quite unworthy of free men"
(A1957, 17). Throughout his life, Russell thus put significant effort
into opposing religious ideas and institutions of all kinds. As he
reports in his *Autobiography*, upon arriving at Brixton Prison
in 1918, "I was much cheered on my arrival by the warder at the
gate, who had to take particulars about me. He asked my religion, and
I replied 'agnostic.' He asked how to spell it, and remarked with
a sigh: 'Well, there are many religions, but I suppose they all
worship the same God.' This remark kept me cheerful for about a
week" (1968, 34). 



Russell's discussions about religion fall largely into four
categories: his criticisms of arguments favouring the existence of
God; his observation that religion has historically served to impede
the advancement of knowledge; his observation that religion has
regularly advanced theories of morality that are more harmful than
good; and his analysis of religion, not simply as a body of belief but
as a mode of feeling.



Perhaps most importantly, Russell opened the door to the
demystification of religion, writing in plain language at a time when
people had been told that serious discussions about religion required
a detailed knowledge of Latin and church history. The result was
twofold: first, that many people came to understand religion as a
subject about which they were entitled to develop their own beliefs
and views; second, that arguments from ecclesiastical authority
suddenly became less formidable and less influential than they had
been for centuries. In this respect, it is not too much to say that
Russell did as much to usher in the twentieth century's age of
secularism as Luther did to usher in the sixteenth century's age of
Protestantism. As the Nobel Prize committee noted, the 1950 award went
to Russell "in recognition of his varied and significant
writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of
thought" (Nobel Media 2020). Russell himself reports that he
received the award primarily for his anti-religious book, *Marriage
and Morals* (1969, 30). 



Russell's analysis of traditional arguments in favour of the
existence of God appears in both his popular and his philosophical
writings. In his book on Leibniz, he discusses Leibniz's treatment
of several such arguments, noting that they are "the weakest
part in Leibniz's philosophy, the part most full of
inconsistencies" (1900, sec. 106, p. 172). In his more popular
writings, he repeatedly emphasizes his views about religion, noting
that "The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no
evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd" (1929, 58). In his 1922 booklet *Free Thought and Official
Propaganda*, he tells his readers that "I am myself a dissenter from all known
religions, and I hope that every kind of religious belief will die
out" (1922a, 1). Later, in his 1941 collection of essays
*Let the People Think*, he adds that "modern science gives us no
indication whatever of the existence of the soul" (A1941, 113),
and in the preface to his 1957 book *Why I Am Not a
Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects*, he notes that 
"I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that
they are untrue" (1957, xi).



Russell's criticism of arguments traditionally offered in favour of
the existence of God includes his discussion of the First Cause
Argument, the Problem of Evil, the Ontological Argument, the
Teleological Argument, the Argument from Pre-established Harmony, the
Natural Law Argument, the Argument from Morality, the Remediation of
Injustice Argument and the Argument from Religious Experience.


Underlying all of these discussions is Hume's suggestion that
belief needs to be proportioned to the available evidence, an idea
neatly summed up in Russell's teapot analogy:



> 
> If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china
> teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be
> able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the
> teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful
> telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion
> cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of
> human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking
> nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in
> ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled
> into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its
> existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter
> to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the
> Inquisitor in an earlier time. It is customary to suppose that, if a
> belief is widespread, there must be something reasonable about it. I
> do not think this view can be held by anyone who has studied
> history. (1952, 547-8)
> 



The *First Cause* (or *Cosmological*) *Argument*
is the argument that since everything has a cause, there must have
been a first cause, and it is to this first cause that we give the
name God. In response to this argument, Russell notes the obvious: If
everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If
everything must have a creator, then God must have a creator.
Alternatively, if God can exist without a cause, then it is just as likely
that the world can exist without a cause. In fact, this is even more
likely than the existence of an uncaused, hypothetical, supernatural
creator who manufactures and then intervenes in the world, since there
"is no reason to suppose that the world had a beginning at
all" (A1957, 4). To those who suggest that unlike God, since
every part of the world has a cause, it follows that the world itself
must have a cause, Russell notes that just because every man has a
mother it does not follow that the human race must have a mother
(A1957, 152). Put in more formal language, although causation connects
each contingent stage of the world to the next, it need not follow
that there is an "extramundane" creator of the world as a
whole (1900, sec. 109, p. 176). To those who claim that without such a
creator, there can never be sufficient reason for "why there are
any states at all," Russell points out that the traditional view
of God as being uncaused because he exists necessarily is simply
inconsistent with God's creation of a contingent universe. No series of
contingent states may have come about by the necessity that
accompanies God's actions, since the contingency of existential
propositions rests on the assertion that God acts, not from necessity
but contingently (1900, sec. 110, p. 177). Thus, either the world
itself has no supernatural cause or the supernatural cause itself will
act and exist contingently, and so it, too, cannot be necessary and must require a
creator.



Related to this argument is the *Problem of Evil*. As Russell
notes, the creation of a contingent world could never eliminate
God's responsibility for the existence of evil: 



> 
> The world, we are told, was created by a God who is both good and
> omnipotent. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and
> misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of
> it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin.
> In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers
> to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were
> true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child
> knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be
> responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which
> man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the
> consequences of those sins when He decided to create man. (A1957, 22)
> 



In response to the *Ontological Argument*, the argument that
since perfection implies existence, the idea of a non-existent,
perfect God is self-contradictory, Russell points out that the
argument rests ultimately on the mistaken claim that existence is a
property or, in Russell's terminology, a predicate. His reasoning is
as follows: If existence were a predicate then, like all other
predicates, it would (or would not) be part of the nature of any given
substance. But upon being created, each such substance would acquire a
new predicate. "Hence the special position of existence, as a
contingent and synthetic predicate, falls to the ground. If all
substances always contain all their predicates, then all substances
always contain or do not contain the predicate existence, and God must
be as powerless over this predicate as over any other. To add the
predicate existence must be metaphysically impossible. Thus, either
creation is self-contradictory, or, if existence is not a predicate,
the ontological argument is unsound" (1900, sec. 115, p.
185).



In response to the *Teleological Argument* (or *Argument
from Design*), the argument that the complexity and purpose we
find in the world shows that there must have been a creator, Russell
points out that "since the time of Darwin we understand much
better why living creatures are adapted to their environment. It is
not that their environment was made to be suitable to them, but that
they grew to be suitable to it, and that is the basis of adaption.
There is no evidence of design about it" (A1957, 6). Russell
also reminds his readers about the pre-Darwin observation made famous
by David Hume, that "it is a most astonishing thing that people
can believe that this world, with all the things that are in it, with
all its defects," is the best that an omnipotent, omniscient
creator could have been able to create in millions of years. (A1957,
6).



In response to the *Argument from Pre-established Harmony*, the
argument that "The world is so well constructed, we are told,
that it must have had a highly skillful Architect" or, as
Leibniz preferred to say, that "the harmony of all the monads
can only have arisen from a common cause" (1900, sec. 114, p.
183), Russell notes that this is simply a version of the Argument from
Design and that "Being more palpably inadequate than any of the
others, it has acquired a popularity which they have never
enjoyed" (1900, sec. 114, p. 183).



In response to the *Natural Law Argument*, the argument that
the existence of laws of nature shows that there must have been a
lawgiver, Russell points out that the argument arises simply as a result
of a confusion between natural and human laws (A1957, 5). Human laws
are commands that we choose to follow or ignore. In contrast, laws of
nature are simply descriptions of how things in fact are. There is
thus no need to assume a lawmaker unless the Argument from Design is
sound, which it is not. Aternatively, if we assume there must
have been a lawmaker who brought about these laws, this raises the
question of why the lawmaker chose to make these laws and not others:
"If you say that He did it simply from His own good pleasure,
and without any reason, you then find that there is something which is
not subject to law, and so your train of natural law is interrupted.
If you say, as more orthodox theologians do, that in all the laws
which God issues He had a reason for giving those laws rather than
others - the reason, of course, being to create the best
universe, although you would never think it to look at it - if
there was a reason for the laws which God gave, then God himself was
subject to law, and therefore you do not get any advantage by
introducing God as an intermediary" (A1957, 5-6). In
either case, there is no need to postulate a supernatural
lawmaker.



In response to the *Argument from Morality* (or the *Divine
Command Theory Argument*), the argument that there could be no
right or wrong unless God existed, Russell adapts the reply given by Socrates to Euthyphro 2,300 years earlier (Plato, *Euthyphro*,
5d-15e). Assuming there is a difference between right and wrong, is
this difference due to God's commands or not? If it is, then for God
there must have originally been "no difference between right and
wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is
good" (A1957, 8). Alternatively, if we take a more traditional
theological line and insist that God is good, and it is for this
reason that God commands some actions and not others, then we will
also have to say "that right and wrong have some meaning which
is independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are good and not
bad independently of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going
to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God
that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their
essence logically anterior to God" (A1957, 8). Of course, we
might then feel compelled to suggest the existence of a superior
deity, one who ordered the God who created world to act as he did, but
this option will be of no value to the traditional theist. There is
also "the line that some of the gnostics took up - a line
which I often thought was a very plausible one - that as a
matter of fact this world that we know was made by the devil at a
moment when God was not looking," but again, this is not the
kind of option that would give comfort to the traditional theist
(A1957, 8).



In response to the *Remediation of Injustice Argument*, the
argument that God is needed to bring justice to the world, to ensure
that at the end of time the scales of justice have been balanced,
Russell asks what evidence we have that such remediation is ever going
to occur. "In the part of this universe that we know there is
great injustice, and often the good suffer, and often the wicked
prosper, and one hardly knows which of those is the more annoying; but
if you are going to have justice in the universe as a whole you have
to suppose a future life to redress the balance of life here on earth.
So they say that there must be a God, and there must be heaven and
hell in order that in the long run there may be justice" (A1957,
9). Despite such wishful thinking, we have no concrete evidence that
such remediation is ever going to occur: "Supposing you got a crate of
oranges that you opened, and you found all the top layer of oranges
bad, you would not argue: 'The underneath ones must be good, so as
to redress the balance.' You would say: 'Probably the whole lot is
a bad consignment,' and that is really what a scientific person
would argue about the universe" (A1957, 9).



Finally, in response to the *Argument from Religious
Experience*, the argument that people report having had direct
experience of the supernatural or the divine, Russell simply notes
that we are just as likely to make mistakes when reporting such
experiences as we are to make mistakes in other areas of our lives:
"If you have jaundice you see things yellow that are not yellow.
You're making a mistake" (A1957, 161). Thus, it is our total
body of evidence that needs to be considered when making such
judgments, a body of evidence that leans heavily against the existence
of anything divine or supernatural.



On the question of whether religion has impeded the advancement of
knowledge and introduced harmful theories of morality, Russell writes
equally plainly: "The objections to religion are of two sorts
- intellectual and moral. The intellectual objection is that
there is no reason to suppose any religion true; the moral objection
is that religious precepts date from a time when men were more cruel
than they are, and therefore tend to perpetuate inhumanities which the
moral conscience of the age would otherwise outgrow" (A1957,
23). The conclusion to be drawn, says Russell, is that religious faith
has served as a shield against the advancement of knowledge, both in
ethics and in the sciences: "When two men of science disagree,
they do not invoke the secular arm; they wait for further evidence to
decide the issue, because, as men of science, they know that neither
is infallible. But when two theologians differ, since there are no
criteria to which either can appeal, there is nothing for it but
mutual hatred and an open or covert appeal to force" (A1957,
173). Today, no one 



> 
> believes that the world was created in 4004 BC; but not so very long
> ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime ... It is
> no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the
> absurdities that were believed 150 years ago. The gradual emasculation
> of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most
> vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of
> Freethinkers (A1957, 28).
> 



The tortures of the Inquisition, the condoning of slavery in the Bible
and the Koran, the burning of women and men for witchcraft, the coming together to
pray for deliverance at times of plague (which only led to the further
spread of disease), all resulted from religious beliefs and practices.
The conclusion, says Russell, is obvious: "the more intense has
been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the
dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has
been the state of affairs" (A1957, 15).



In his own time, Russell was criticized severely for his view that the
church's attempt to keep sexual knowledge away from the young was
"extremely dangerous to mental and physical heath" (A1957,
21). Against the practice of his time, he advocated sex education for
the young. He also recommended temporary, childless marriages for
those not ready to begin a family and held that "Christian
ethics inevitably, through the emphasis laid upon sexual virtue, did a
great deal to degrade the position of women" (1929,
60-61). In support of his view that the writings handed down by
the church fathers were "full of invectives against
Woman," he quotes the historian, W.E.H. Lecky: "Woman was
represented as the door to hell, as the mother of all human ills. She
should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. She should
live in continual penance, on account of the curses she has brought
upon the world" (1929, 61). Russell concludes that "It is
only in quite modern times that women have regained the degree of
freedom which they enjoyed in the Roman Empire" (1929,
60-61).



Among Russell's critics, it was argued that in this case and others
like it, Russell had simply got his facts wrong:



> 
> It is incredible that a philosopher of note could be so unreliable, so
> unfamiliar with the fact that early Christianity has exalted the
> conception of women in the adoration given to Mary and the saints, and
> that by treating marriage as a sacrament it emancipated women of all
> classes from the old traditions of the absolute authority of parents
> and the seignorial power of feudal lords. It is intellectual blindness
> not to recognize the revolutionary import of early Christianity,
> whatever the contemporary feeling concerning the sacrament of marriage
> may be, when it set itself like a wall against the tides of boundless
> sensuality and impressed upon the Roman world the sanctity of human
> life. (Kayden 1930, 88)
> 



Contrary to what was often said about his personal life, it is also
worth noting that Russell did not practice or defend a libertine
ethic. He thought that sex was a natural need, like food and drink,
but that it should not be trivialized by disassociating it "from
serious emotion and from feelings of affection" (1929, 127). As
Alan Wood notes, the result was that "More than anyone else, he
changed the outlook on sex morality of a whole new generation; and
during his lifetime he saw the cause of Women's Rights, once
regarded as a crank's crusade, end up as an established part of the
laws and customs of the land" (Wood, 1957, 166). As Wood also
notes,



> 
> Perhaps the finest tribute to his success is that few people now even
> realize the nature of the old ideas. Russell, it must be repeated, was
> fighting a cruel and indefensible state of affairs where sexual
> ignorance was deliberately fostered, so a boy might think the changes
> of puberty were signs of some dreadful disease, and a girl might marry
> without knowing anything of what lay ahead of her on her bridal night;
> were women were taught to look on sex, not as a source of joy, but of
> painful matrimonial duty; where prudery went to the extent of covering
> the legs of pianos in draperies; where artificial mystery evoked
> morbid curiosity, and where humbug went hand in hand with unhappiness
> ... . (Wood, 1957, 174)
> 



Underlying Russell's writings on religion was also his observation
that religion is not simply a body of doctrine but also a vehicle for
the expression of emotion. This explains why arguments against the
existence of the supernatural, although influential among
intellectuals, are not the main driving force behind most religious
belief (A1957, 9). Instead, religion is based largely on fear and ignorance: our fear of the mysterious, our lack
of knowledge of natural causes, our fear of death (A1957, 16).



With regard to the propositional content of religion, or what Russell
calls theology, Russell notes that central to the idea of Christianity
are belief in God, belief in immortality and, at the very least,
"belief that Christ was, if not divine, at least the best and
wisest of men. If you are not going to believe that much about Christ,
I do not think you have any right to call yourself a Christian"
(A1957, 2). Since it is this propositional content that varies from
religion to religion, it turns out, as a matter of logic, that at most
one religion can be true (A1957, xi).



Even so, as Jack Pitt writes, Russell is more than just a
"heroic heretic hounding the sacred cows of a sterile tradition
while spreading a new gospel of human freedom and secular
enlightenment" (Pitt 1975, 152). Instead, "Russell sees
religion (as distinct from theology) as essentially a mode of feeling,
perhaps as a set of attitudes which inevitably have practical consequences
for the ethical tone and style of a person's life" (Pitt 1975,
160). Russell says much the same thing when he notes that 



> 
> Religion has three main aspects. In the first place, there are a
> man's serious personal beliefs, insofar as they have to do with the
> nature of the world and the conduct of life. In the second place there
> is theology. In the third place there is institutionalized religion,
> i.e., the churches. The first of these aspects is somewhat vague, the
> but word "religion" is coming more and more to be used in
> this sense. ... What makes my attitude towards religion complex is
> that, although I consider some form of personal religion highly
> desirable, and feel many people unsatisfactory through the lack of it,
> I cannot accept the theology of any well-known religion, and I incline
> to think that most churches at most times have done more harm than
> good. (Schilpp 1944, 725-6).
> 



One suggestion about the source of this three-fold division is connected to Russell's love of Ottoline Morrell. Separating religious feelings from religious belief would have allowed Russell to find some common ground with Morrell's spiritually, without having to accept any particular theology. (See Swanson, 2019, 93-4 for a helpful discussion of this suggestion). An alternative view is that the complexity of Russell's view was generated by the fact that even our most serious
emotions and most important feelings need not result solely from the
propositional content of our beliefs. Among Russell's most
famous suggestions about the nature of the good life is his
observation that "The good life is one inspired by love and
guided by knowledge" (A1957, 44). For Russell, this is a view so
basic that it is more like a goal than a description. As a result, it
becomes impossible to think of it as a claim purely connected to propositional content. As
Russell explains, 



> 
> Suppose, for instance, your child is ill. Love makes you wish to cure
> it, and science tells you how to do so. There is not an intermediate
> stage of ethical theory, where it is demonstrated that your child had
> better be cured. Your act springs directly from desire for an end,
> together with knowledge of means. This is equally true of all acts,
> whether good or bad. (A1957, 48)
> 



The result is that in many cases, emotion drives belief: "I
cannot, therefore, prove that my view of the good life is right; I can
only state my view, and hope that as many as possible will
agree" (A1957, 44).



These observations should not be interpreted as giving unfettered licence
to religious belief. As Russell points out "some very important
virtues are more likely to be found among those who reject religious
dogmas than among those who accept them. I think this applies
especially to the virtue of truthfulness or intellectual integrity. I
mean by intellectual integrity the habit of deciding vexed questions
in accordance with the evidence, or of leaving them undecided where
the evidence is inconclusive" (A1957, 169). In the case of
religion, it is not simply that such virtues are ignored. Instead,
they are positively frustrated: 



> 
> If theology is thought necessary to virtue and if candid inquirers see
> no reason to think the theology true, the authorities will set to work
> to discourage candid inquiry. In former centuries, they did so by
> burning the inquirers at the stake. In Russia they still have methods
> which are little better; but in Western countries the authorities have
> perfected somewhat milder forms of persuasion. Of these, schools are
> perhaps the most important: the young must be preserved from hearing
> the arguments in favour of the opinions which the authorities dislike,
> and those who nevertheless persist in showing an inquiring disposition
> will incur social displeasure and, if possible, be made to feel
> morally reprehensible. (A1957, 171)
> 



Societies as well as individuals, says Russell, need to choose whether the good life is one that is guided by honest inquiry
and the weighing of evidence, or by the familiarity of superstition
and the comforts of religion.



Russell's writings on religion and related topics include
Chapter 15 of his *A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy of
Leibniz* (1900), as well as *A Free Man's Worship* (1923b), 
*Why I Am Not a Christian* (1927c), reprinted in
*Why I am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related
Subjects* (A1957), "The Existence and Nature of God" (1939), "Is There a God?" (1952) and *What I Believe* (A2013). 


## 7. Russell's Social and Political Philosophy



Russell's significant social influence stems from three main
sources: his long-standing social activism, his many writings on the
social and political issues of his day as well as on more theoretical
concerns, and his popularizations of numerous technical writings in
philosophy and the natural sciences. 



Among Russell's many popularizations are his two best-selling
works, *The Problems of Philosophy* (1912) and *A History of
Western Philosophy* (1945). Both of these books, as well as his
numerous books popularizing science, have done much to educate and
inform generations of general readers. His *History* is still
widely read and did much to initiate twentieth-century research on a
wide range of historical figures from the
 presocratics
 to
 Leibniz.
 His *Problems* is still used as an introductory textbook over
a century after it was first published. Both books can be read by the
layman with satisfaction. Other popular books, particularly those
relating to developments in modern science such as *The ABC of
Atoms* (1923a) and *The ABC of Relativity* (1925), are now
of more historical interest. Even so, they continue to convey
something of the intellectual excitement associated with advances in
twentieth-century science and philosophy. 



Naturally enough, Russell saw a link between education in this broad
sense and social progress. As he put it, "Education is the key
to the new world" (1926, 83). Partly this is due to our need to
understand nature, but equally important is our need to understand
each other:



> 
> 
> The thing, above all, that a teacher should endeavor to produce in his
> pupils, if democracy is to survive, is the kind of tolerance that
> springs from an endeavor to understand those who are different from
> ourselves. It is perhaps a natural human impulse to view with horror
> and disgust all manners and customs different from those to which we
> are used. Ants and savages put strangers to death. And those who have
> never traveled either physically or mentally find it difficult to
> tolerate the queer ways and outlandish beliefs of other nations and
> other times, other sects and other political parties. This kind of
> ignorant intolerance is the antithesis of a civilized outlook, and is
> one of the gravest dangers to which our overcrowded world is exposed.
> (1950, 121)
> 
> 
> 



It is in this same context that Russell is famous for suggesting that
a widespread reliance upon evidence, rather than superstition, would
have enormous social consequences: "I wish to propose for the
reader's favourable consideration," says Russell, "a
doctrine which may, I fear, appear wildly paradoxical and subversive.
The doctrine in question is this: that it is undesirable to believe a
proposition when there is no ground whatever for supposing it
true" (A1928, 11). 



Unlike Russell's views about the importance of education, the
precise connection between Russell's political activism and his
more theoretical work has been more controversial. In part, this has
been because Russell himself repeatedly maintained that he saw no
significant connection between his philosophical work and his
political activism. Others have seen things differently. One of the
best summaries is given by Alan Wood: 



> 
> Russell sometimes maintained, partly I think out of perverseness, that
> there was no connection between his philosophical and political
> opinions. ... But in fact I think there are perfectly obvious
> connections between Russell's philosophical and other views.
> ... To begin with, it is natural enough to find an analytic
> anti-monist philosopher like Russell upholding the individual against
> the state, whereas Hegel did the reverse ... [In addition, the]
> whole bent of Russell's mind in philosophy was an attempt to
> eliminate the *a priori* and to accentuate the empirical; and
> there was exactly the same trend in his political thinking ...
> Unless it is realized that Russell's approach to political
> questions was usually empirical and practical, based on the evidence
> of the moment and not on *a priori* principles and
> preconceptions, it is quite impossible to understand why his views
> appeared to vary so much. This was perfectly legitimate, and even
> praiseworthy, in a world which never stays the same, and where
> changing circumstances continually change the balance of arguments on
> different sides. (Wood 1957, 73-4)
> 



Thus, in addition to Russell's numerous contributions to the
politics of his day, he also contributed significantly to our
understanding of the social world around us. Among Russell's
more theoretical contributions were his anticipation of John
Mackie's error theory in ethics, the view that moral judgments
are cognitive (that is, they are either true or false), but because of
their content they in fact are invariably false. (Mackie's paper
"The Refutation of Morals" appeared in 1946;
Russell's paper "Is There an Absolute Good?",
although not published until 1988 was first delivered in 1922.)



Russell also anticipated the modern theory of emotivism (as introduced
by
 A.J. Ayer
 in his 1936 *Language, Truth and Logic*), arguing that
"Primarily, we call something 'good' when we desire
it, and 'bad' when we have an aversion from it"
(1927b, 242), a view that "he had been flirting with since
1913" (see the entry on
 Russell's Moral Philosophy
 in this encyclopedia; see too Schilpp 1944, 719f). Even so, Russell
remained less than satisfied with his views on meta-ethics for most of
his life (CP, Vol. 11, 310). 



This dissatisfaction appears not to have extended to his work in
political theory. There Russell focused primarily on the notion of
power, or what he called "the production of intended
effects" (1938, 35). As V.J. McGill writes, "The concept
of power overshadows all of Russell's political and economic
writings" (Schilpp 1944, 581). Russell himself summarizes his
point of view with the observation that "The laws of social
dynamics are - so I shall contend - only capable of being
stated in terms of power in its various forms" (1938, 15). As a
result, it is only by understanding power in all its human
instantiations that we understand the social world around us. 



Russell's cataloging of the perceived evils of his age are well
known. (As Popper neatly sums up Russell's general outlook, "we
are clever, perhaps too clever, but we are also wicked; and this
mixture of cleverness and wickedness lies at the root of our
troubles" [1956, 365].) Even so, underlying Russell's criticism
of both the political left and the political right lies a common
worry: the unequal distribution of power. As McGill sums up,
"Evidently he has become convinced that the thirst for Power is
the primary danger of mankind, that possessiveness is evil mainly
because it promotes the power of man over man" (Schilpp 1944,
581). The problem with this analysis and of Russell's desire for
a more equitable distribution of power is that any proposed solution
appears to lead to paradox: 



> 
> Suppose certain men join a movement to disestablish Power, or to
> distribute it more equally among the people! If they are successful,
> they carry out the behest of Power, becoming themselves as powerful,
> in terms of Mr. Russell's definition, as any tyrant. Even though
> they spread the good life to millions, the more successful they are,
> the more usurpatious and dangerous. (Schilpp 1944, 586)
> 



Like his writings about religion, Russell's writings in ethics
and politics brought him to the attention of large numbers of
non-academic readers. His most influential books on these topics
include his *Principles of Social Reconstruction* (1916),
*On Education* (1926), *Marriage and Morals* (1929),
*The Conquest of Happiness* (1930), *The Scientific
Outlook* (1931), and *Power: A New Social Analysis*
(1938).


## 8. Contemporary Russell Scholarship



Since his death in 1970, Russell's reputation as a philosopher
has continued to grow. This increase in reputation has been
accompanied by a corresponding increase in scholarship. Older
first-hand accounts of Russell's life, such as Dora
Russell's *The Tamarisk Tree* (1975, 1981, 1985),
Katharine Tait's *My Father Bertrand Russell* (1975) and
Ronald Clark's *The Life of Bertrand Russell* (1975),
have been supplemented by more recent accounts, including Caroline
Moorehead's *Bertrand Russell* (1992), John
Slater's *Bertrand Russell* (1994), and Ray Monk's
*Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude* (1996) and
*Bertrand Russell: The Ghost of Madness* (2000). 



This increase in scholarship has benefited greatly from the existence
of the
 Bertrand Russell Archives
 at McMaster University, where the bulk of Russell's library and
literary estate are housed, and from the
 Bertrand Russell Research Centre,
 also housed at McMaster. Books such as Nicholas Griffin's
*Selected Letters of Bertrand Russell* (1992, 2001), Gregory
Landini's *Russell's Hidden Substitutional Theory*
(1998) and Bernard Linsky's *The Evolution of Principia
Mathematica* (2011) have helped make public archival material
that, in the past, has been available only to specialists. Since 1983
the
 Bertrand Russell Editorial Project,
 initiated by John Slater and Kenneth Blackwell, has also begun to
release authoritative, annotated editions of Russell's
 *Collected Papers*.
 When complete, this collection will run to over 35 volumes and will
bring together all of Russell's writings, other than his
correspondence and previously published monographs. 



Recent scholarship has also helped remind readers of the influence
Russell's students had on Russell's philosophy.
 Ludwig Wittgenstein
 and Frank Ramsey especially presented Russell with helpful criticisms
of his work and new problems to solve. Both men pushed Russell to
develop new theories in logic and epistemology. Despite the fact that
Wittgenstein was less than satisfied with Russell's Introduction
to his *Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus* (1921), Michael
Potter's *Wittgenstein's Notes on Logic* (2009) and
the introductory materials published in Russell's *Theory of
Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript* (CP, Vol. 7) show the extent and
fruitfulness of the interaction between teacher and student. 



Since Russell's death, debate has also taken place over the
ultimate importance of Russell's contributions, not just to
philosophy, but to other disciplines as well. Advocates of
Russell's inclusion in the canon remind readers that few have
done more to advance both formal logic and analytic philosophy. As P.F. Strawson concludes, Russell's influence "on the philosophy of his and our time has perhaps been greater than that of any other single individual" (Strawson 1984, 104). 


 Critics of Russell's inclusion in the canon, or at least of his canonization, remind
readers of Russell's early enthusiasm for British imperialism
(1967, 134) and of his controversial comments about eugenics and race
(1929, 259, 266). Others have noted his apparent early antisemitism
and his advocacy of a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union
following World War II (Hook 1976, Stone 1981, Perkins 1994, Blitz
2002). On the issue of a preemptive war, Russell himself later denied
he had ever advocated such a course of action. However, after carefully 
reviewing the historical record, biographer Ronald Clark
comes to a different conclusion. Clark is also unequivocal about
Russell's lack of sincerity on the issue: "If the
suggestion that he deliberately tried to conceal his earlier views is
repugnant, the record does not really allow any other conclusion to be
drawn" (Clark 1975, 530). Perhaps as a result of such
observations, many readers remain undecided when attempting to
evaluate Russell's overall contribution to the intellectual life
of the twentieth century. 



Monk's two volumes are a significant case in point. In addition
to his ground-breaking biographical work, Monk relates
Wittgenstein's humorous suggestion that all of Russell's
books should be bound in two colours, "those dealing with
mathematical logic in red - and all students of philosophy
should read them; those dealing with ethics and politics in blue
- and no one should be allowed to read them" (Monk 2000,
278). Others, such as Peter Stone, have argued that such caricatures
are based on "a misunderstanding of the nature of Russell as a
political figure" (2003, 89) and that "Whatever one thinks
of Russell's politics, he was one of the few public figures in
the west to stand against capitalism without succumbing to illusions
about Stalinist Russia. If for no other reason than this, Russell
deserves some credit for his political instincts" (2003, 85).
(See, for example, Russell 1920 and 1922c, and Russell et al. 1951.)



How is the ordinary reader to decide between such conflicting
evaluations? Unlike the many logical advances Russell introduced, in
politics he is still usually understood to be more of an advocate than
a theoretician. As a result, his reputation as a political thinker has
not been as high as his reputation in logic, metaphysics and
epistemology. 



Even so, regardless of his many particular contributions,
Russell's lasting reputation has also benefited significantly
from his constant willingness to abandon unsupported theories and
outdated beliefs. To his great credit, when new evidence presented
itself, Russell was always among the first to take it into account:
"Against my will, in the course of my travels, the belief that
everything worth knowing was known at Cambridge gradually wore off. In
this respect," says Russell, "my travels were very useful
to me" (1967, 133). 



A short anecdote recounted in Russell's *Autobiography*
is also typical. As a young man, he says, he spent part of each day
for many weeks 



> 
> reading Georg Cantor, and copying out the gist of him into a notebook.
> At that time I falsely supposed all his arguments to be fallacious,
> but I nevertheless went through them all in the minutest detail. This
> stood me in good stead when later on I discovered that all the
> fallacies were mine. (1967, 127)
>