Bertrand Russell - Logical Atomism
Introduction
The three characteristics of 19th Century Empiricism are true also of Bertrand Russell. And what comes out of Bertrand Russell are the works of early Wittgenstein and logic positivism and certain types of analytic philosophy after logic positivism.
Russell’s initial interest was in mathematics, he started out as a mathematician, cooperated with Whitehead when they were both at Cambridge, in writing “Principia Mathematica”. In it he and Whitehead showed that mathematics is essentially the same as logic, in that they are both formal logical systems, a deductive system like Euclidean geometry, where from axioms you deduce the theorems and so on. The ideas is mathematics can all be formalized as deductive systems and what they developed was algebraic symbolism for dealing with other subject matter in formal fashion, and this was the first attempt to the symbolic logic. But his major works was in epistemology, beginning with a little popular work called “Problems of Philosophy”, on through works on our knowledge of the external world, works dealing with mind and matter, and his last systematic work in epistemology is called “Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits”. But running through all of his work in epistemology is this ideal developed in “Principia Mathematica” of the formal system. And in his little essay of “Logic as the Essence of Philosophy”, he spells that out. He spells out that as well in a longer essay titled “Logical Atomism”.
Logical Atomism
What is logical atomism? It’s the thesis that all of our thought, beliefs, knowledge, discourse on any subject what so ever, can and should be analyzed into atomic propositions. Admittedly atomic propositions are not smallest part of the speech so in addition to propositions there are terms, which are used in asserting or denying something. Atomic propositions combines to form molecular propositions and an atomic propositions is simply the smallest unit of thought. Atomic propositions refer to atomic fact. Term refers to either to general properties or they name individuals. So you analyze discourse into atomic propositions that correspond to atomic fact and then organize these atomic propositions into a formal deductive system showing how all the atomic propositions constituting our knowledge can be deduced from certain premises, from empirical generalizations, including hypothesis of utmost generality. So what it means to provide a logical explanation of something you belief? It is to show how it may be deduced logically from certain generalizations or hypothesis. So the foundationalist model of a deductive system is extended beyond natural science into ethics. The method of mathematics, that was analyzed in “Principia Mathematica” is now taken as the method of all scientific thought, of all logical understanding.
Atomic Fact
What are the atomic fact? It’s the smallest constituents of reality. It is the atomistic view of nature, it’s influenced by Ernst Mach’s theory of sensations. So the scientific theories are simply economical ways of talking about these atomic data. What Russell seems to be saying is that relationships between atomic facts are not given in experience, that’s an old story all the way back to Hume. Experience doesn’t come connected, it comes in atoms. Also Russell is assuming a metaphysical pluralism, that all all relationships are external, causal relationships of a mechanistic thought. He’s rejecting in his very starting point any monastic metaphysic like Hegel’s or any view that there are intrinsic organic relationships. He’s still working with the mechanistic model rather than an organismic one. One of his books “Mysticism and Logic” in which in arguing for his logical method he repudiated methodology of people like Bergson and Bradley, rooted in Hegel. Bergson talks about an intuition that we have of the whole scene out of which a worldview arises and Bradley speaks of an immediate awareness of being in its large scope. Russell calls that mysticism because he does not think there is any internal relationships between the atomic facts so you have no way of knowing that you’re related to the whole in that way, and intuition has no basis. So on the basis of metaphysical pluralism he comes up with his theory of logical atomism that tries to identify the atomic facts which are the basic constituents of reality. Their relationships are causal relationships and immediately you’ve got another problem coming up because causal relationships have been questioned by Hume and by John Stuart Mill, but it’s interesting to notice that in Russell’s work in epistemology when he questions knowledge of causal relationships he becomes a phenomenalist. Because if you don’t know if there is causal relationships how do you know that the atomic data of experience have any external causes. So what you have is phenomenon, the world for me. When he accept causal relationships, he tends to a realist rather than a phenomenalist, a realist in the sense that there are real material objects and we know their properties. He take science realistically. In his earliest work he has additional reason for being a realist, namely he accepts the notion that consciousness has intentionality that it is a mental acts, points, means an object. And the mental act gives to me an object. Russell started as a realist. But he came to reject the mental act and the knowledge of causal connections therefore he became a phenomenalist. The question is whether that mental act is empirically knowable, is the phenomenological account of it valid. Atomic fact then is loaded with philosophical assumptions.
Atomic Propositions
Secondly atomic propositions are the constituents of language and we have to analyze molecular propositions into such constituents. Notice that atomic propositions corresponds to atomic facts, so here you have a correspondence theory definition of truth and he spells that out very carefully. He wants to say that for a proposition to be true there has to be a one to one correlation between the atomic propositions and the atomic fact, between the terms of the atomic propositions and the properties in the atomic facts.
With that logical atomism he goes on to try the deductive process. But notice he’s landed up with philosophically already. Pluralism as distinct from monism in metaphysics, phenomenalism as distinct from realism, he’s rejecting speculative metaphysics in favor of analysis. His atomic facts are neither mental or material, they’re neutral with regards to these distinctions. He’s what we call a neutral monist, qualitative monist, only one quality of fact and that quality is neutral with regard to the mind body distinctions. That is possible because molecular propositions and complex ideas are mental constructs out of atomic facts, they don’t come to us already constructed because relationships are not given, and the object which emerges in our thinking of a material body that notion of a material object is a mental construct, a logical construct, it’s an ideal entity whether or not it’s real externally. This is known as the construction theory of knowledge because what we know are our own mental constructs. Now you see that despite being a foundationalist stumbled into being a postmodern. We construct our own world. He makes a distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Knowledge by acquaintance is knowledge of sense data, knowledge by description is knowledge of material objects.
Deductive Process
What about the deductive part? Take for example, his work “Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits”, published in 1948, he is trying to organize a logical form, the scope of the nature of scientific knowledge, trying to show how all of our knowledge rises by scientific methods are essentially this hypothetical deductive procedure. He came to the realization that if he wanted to do this by deduction from empirical generalizations of which we have certain direct empirical verification, that we don’t have enough premises to achieve the deduction. In other words, scientific knowledge has to involve additional hypothesis to simply hypothesis which are amenable to any kind of direct verification. He admits that therefore pure empiricism does not provide logical explanation, that we have to introduce additional premises that he calls scientific postulates. That is to say the postulates of modern science, postulates that makes scientific explanations of this hypothetical deductive sort workable. And he spells out what these are. The three most significant ones are things like the principle of induction, uniformity of nature, causal lines, the quasi-permanance of material objects. In other words he has to introduce as postulates the very things which earlier metaphysical systems had maintained the metaphysical ground for believing. So that in effect what Hume asserted as beliefs that are necessary in the course of life, Russell elevates to the state of scientific postulates, necessary in the course of science. But then on that basis he thinks that scientific knowledge can be justified, explained that the logical analysis works.