display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
5 ideas
| 14164 | The only unities are simples, or wholes composed of parts [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The only kind of unity to which I can attach any precise sense - apart from the unity of the absolutely simple - is that of a whole composed of parts. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §439) | |
| A reaction: This comes from a keen student of Leibniz, who was obsessed with unity. Russell leaves unaddressed the question of what turns some parts into a whole. |
| 14112 | A set has some sort of unity, but not enough to be a 'whole' [Russell] |
| Full Idea: In a class as many, the component terms, though they have some kind of unity, have less than is required for a whole. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §070) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting because (among many other things), sets are used to stand for numbers, but numbers are usually reqarded as wholes. |
| 6465 | We need not deny substance, but there seems no reason to assert it [Russell] |
| Full Idea: It is not necessary to deny a substance or substratum underlying appearances; it is merely expedient (by the application of Occam's Razor) to abstain from asserting this unnecessary entity. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §V) | |
| A reaction: Russell then goes on to struggle heroically in attempts to give accounts of 'matter' and 'objects' entirely in terms of 'sense-data'. If he failed, as many think he did, should we go back to belief in Aristotelian substance? |
| 6471 | The assumption by physicists of permanent substance is not metaphysically legitimate [Russell] |
| Full Idea: The assumption of permanent substance, which technically underlies the procedure of physics, cannot of course be regarded as metaphysically legitimate. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Relation of Sense-Data to Physics [1914], §XI) | |
| A reaction: It is a moot point whether physicists still thought this way after the full arrival of quantum theory in 1926. Russell raises all sorts of nice questions about the relationship between physics and philosophy here. I'm on Russell's side. |
| 14733 | An object produces the same percepts with or without a substance, so that is irrelevant to science [Russell] |
| Full Idea: There may be a substance at the centre of an object, but is no reason to think so, since the group of events making up the object will produce exactly the same percepts; so the substance, if there is one, is an abstract possibility irrelevant to science. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Analysis of Matter [1927], 23) | |
| A reaction: All empiricists (as Russell is in this passage) seem to neglect inference to the best explanation. Things can be indirectly testable, and I would say that there are genuine general entities which are too close to abstraction to ever be testable. |