display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
21 ideas
| 5420 | Truth is a property of a belief, but dependent on its external relations, not its internal qualities [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Although truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs, they are properties dependent upon the relations of the beliefs to other things, not upon any internal quality of the beliefs. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: Beliefs can have an intrinsic property of subjective certainty, but Russell is right that that is not enough. So is truth a property or a relation? |
| 6442 | Truth belongs to beliefs, not to propositions and sentences [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Truth and falsehood both belong primarily to beliefs, and only derivatively to propositions and sentences. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (My Philosophical Development [1959], Ch.15) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure why a proposition which is date/place stamped ('it is raining, here and now') could not be considered a truth, even if no one believed it. Is not the proposition 'squares have four sides' true? |
| 5419 | Truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Truth and falsehood are properties of beliefs and statements, so a world of mere matter would contain no truth or falsehood. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: Can it be beliefs AND statements? What about propositions? All that matters here is to establish that truth is a feature of certain mental states. This makes possible my slogan that "the brain is a truth-machine". Out there are the 'facts'. |
| 14102 | What is true or false is not mental, and is best called 'propositions' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I hold that what is true or false is not in general mental, and requiring a name for the true or false as such, this name can scarcely be other than 'propositions'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], Pref) | |
| A reaction: This is the Fregean and logicians' dream that that there is some fixed eternal realm of the true and the false. I think true and false concern the mental. We can talk about the 'facts' which are independent of minds, but not the 'truth'. |
| 5784 | In its primary and formal sense, 'true' applies to propositions, not beliefs [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We call a belief true when it is belief in a true proposition, ..but it is to propositions that the primary formal meanings of 'truth' and 'falsehood' apply. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV) | |
| A reaction: I think this is wrong. A proposition such as 'it is raining' would need a date-and-time stamp to be a candidate for truth, and an indexical statement such as 'I am ill' would need to be asserted by a person. Of course, books can contain unread truths. |
| 5417 | A good theory of truth must make falsehood possible [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A good theory of truth must be such as to admit of its opposite, falsehood. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) |
| 16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
| Full Idea: When you do what a logician would call 'asserting not-p', you are saying 'p is false'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5) | |
| A reaction: This is presumably classical logic. If we could label p as 'undetermined' (a third truth value), then 'not-p' might equally mean 'undetermined'. |
| 5777 | The truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief 'refers' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: I take it as evident that the truth or falsehood of a belief depends upon a fact to which the belief 'refers'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], p.285) | |
| A reaction: A nice bold commitment to a controversial idea. The traditional objection is to ask how you are going to formulate the 'facts' except in terms of more beliefs, so you ending up comparing beliefs. Facts are a metaphysical commitment, not an acquaintance. |
| 6090 | Facts make propositions true or false, and are expressed by whole sentences [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A fact is the kind of thing that makes a proposition true or false, …and it is the sort of thing that is expressed by a whole sentence, not by a single name like 'Socrates'. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism [1918], §I) | |
| A reaction: It is important to note a point here which I consider vital - that Russell keeps the idea of a fact quite distinct from the language in which it is expressed. Facts are a 'sort of thing', of the kind which are now referred to as 'truth-makers'. |
| 21544 | It seems that when a proposition is false, something must fail to subsist [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It seems that when a proposition is false, something does not subsist which would subsist if the proposition were true. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Meinong on Complexes and Assumptions [1904], p.76) | |
| A reaction: This looks to me like a commitment by Russell to the truthmaker principle. The negations of false propositions are made true by some failure of existence in the world. |
| 18348 | Not only atomic truths, but also general and negative truths, have truth-makers [Russell, by Rami] |
| Full Idea: In 1918 Russell held that beside atomic truths, also general and negative truths have truth-makers. | |
| From: report of Bertrand Russell (The Philosophy of Logical Atomism [1918]) by Adolph Rami - Introduction: Truth and Truth-Making note 04 |
| 6343 | For Russell, both propositions and facts are arrangements of objects, so obviously they correspond [Horwich on Russell] |
| Full Idea: Given Russell's notion of a proposition, as an arrangement of objects and properties, it is hard to see how there could be any difference at all between such a proposition and the fact corresponding to it, since they each involve the same arrangement. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (On the Nature of Truth and Falsehood [1910]) by Paul Horwich - Truth (2nd edn) Ch.7.35 | |
| A reaction: This seems a little unfair, given that Russell (in 1912) uses the notion now referred to as 'congruence', so that the correspondence is not in the objects and properties, but in how they are 'ordered', which may differ between proposition and fact. |
| 7395 | Truth as congruence may work for complex beliefs, but not for simple beliefs about existence [Joslin on Russell] |
| Full Idea: If truth is congruence between a complex belief and a complex relation between objects in the world, this may work for Othello's belief about Desdemona, but it doesn't seem to work for the simple belief that an object exists. | |
| From: comment on Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) by Jack Joslin - talk | |
| A reaction: Though Russell has an interesting and persuasive theory, this seems like a big problem. To have a complex belief about a complex of objects, you must first have beliefs about the objects (and that can't be acquaintance, because error is possible). |
| 5428 | Beliefs are true if they have corresponding facts, and false if they don't [Russell] |
| Full Idea: A belief is true when there is a corresponding fact, and is false when there is no corresponding fact. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: Russell tries to explain a 'fact' as a complex unity of constituents with a certain order among them. There is an obvious problem that some of the 'orders' in the world are imposed on it by the mind. But we don't invent 'D's love for C'. |
| 5783 | Propositions of existence, generalities, disjunctions and hypotheticals make correspondence tricky [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The correspondence of proposition and fact grows increasingly complicated as we pass to more complicated types of propositions: existence-propositions, general propositions, disjunctive and hypothetical propositions, and so on. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (On Propositions: What they are, and Meaning [1919], §IV) | |
| A reaction: An important point. Truth must not just work for 'it is raining', but also for maths, logic, tautologies, laws etc. This is why so many modern philosophers have retreated to deflationary and minimal accounts of truth, which will cover all cases. |
| 5421 | The coherence theory says falsehood is failure to cohere, and truth is fitting into a complete system of Truth [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The coherence theory of truth says falsehood is a failure to cohere in the body of our beliefs, and that it is the essence of a truth to form part of the completely rounded system which is The Truth. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: One could embrace the idea of coherence without accepting the extravagant ninenteenth century Idealists' dream of an ultimate complete Truth (or Absolute). The theory needs a decent account of coherence to get off the ground. |
| 5422 | More than one coherent body of beliefs seems possible [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason to suppose that only one coherent body of beliefs is possible. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: Presumably this possibility would not be accepted for the ultimate ideal body of beliefs, but it seems undeniable that limited humanity will be stuck with several coherent possibilities. Coherence, though, is within our grasp, unlike correspondence. |
| 5423 | If we suspend the law of contradiction, nothing will appear to be incoherent [Russell] |
| Full Idea: If the law of contradiction itself were subjected to the test of coherence, we should find that, if we choose to suppose it false, nothing will any longer be incoherent with anything else. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: Russell is in error in treating coherence as if it was merely non-contradiction. If I see you as four feet tall today and six feet tall tomorrow, that is incoherent (to me) but not an actual contradiction. All accounts of truth need presuppositions. |
| 5424 | Coherence is not the meaning of truth, but an important test for truth [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Coherence cannot be accepted as the meaning of truth, though it is often a most important test of truth after a certain amount of truth has become known. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Problems of Philosophy [1912], Ch.12) | |
| A reaction: The coherence theory is in fact a confusion of epistemology and ontology. Compare Idea 1364, where Reid charges Locke with confusing the test for personal identity with the thing itself. I wonder if refusal to accept essences causes this problem? |
| 14454 | An argument 'satisfies' a function φx if φa is true [Russell] |
| Full Idea: We say that an argument a 'satisfies' a function φx if φa is true. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy [1919], XV) | |
| A reaction: We end up with Tarski defining truth in terms of satisfaction, so we shouldn't get too excited about what he achieved (any more than he got excited). |
| 14176 | "The death of Caesar is true" is not the same proposition as "Caesar died" [Russell] |
| Full Idea: "The death of Caesar is true" is not, I think, the same proposition as "Caesar died". | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §478) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that it was this remark which provoked Ramsey into rebellion, because he couldn't see the difference. Nowadays we must talk first of conversational implicature, and then of language and metalanguage. |