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Full Idea
The non-mental world can be completely described without the use of any logical word, …but when it comes to the mental world, there are facts which cannot be mentioned without the use of logical words.
Gist of Idea
The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does
Source
Bertrand Russell (An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth [1940], 5)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth' [Penguin 1967], p.88
A Reaction
He adds that logical words are not needed for physics, but are needed for psychology. I love Russell's interest in the psychology of logic (in defiance of the anti-psychologism of Frege). See also the ideas of Robert Hanna.
Related Idea
Idea 11058 Logic is explanatorily and ontologically dependent on rational animals [Hanna]
| 16477 | Asserting not-p is saying p is false [Russell] |
| 16484 | There are four experiences that lead us to talk of 'some' things [Russell] |
| 16486 | The physical world doesn't need logic, but the mental world does [Russell] |
| 16483 | Disjunction may also arise in practice if there is imperfect memory. [Russell] |
| 16480 | A disjunction expresses indecision [Russell] |
| 16479 | 'Or' expresses hesitation, in a dog at a crossroads, or birds risking grabbing crumbs [Russell] |
| 16481 | 'Or' expresses a mental state, not something about the world [Russell] |
| 16487 | Maybe the 'or' used to describe mental states is not the 'or' of logic [Russell] |
| 16475 | A 'heterological' predicate can't be predicated of itself; so is 'heterological' heterological? Yes=no! [Russell] |
| 16482 | All our knowledge (if verbal) is general, because all sentences contain general words [Russell] |
| 16476 | For simple words, a single experience can show that they are true [Russell] |
| 16485 | Perception can't prove universal generalisations, so abandon them, or abandon empiricism? [Russell] |
| 16478 | A mother cat is paralysed if equidistant between two needy kittens [Russell] |
| 2947 | Questions wouldn't lead anywhere without the law of excluded middle [Russell] |
| 4758 | Naïve realism leads to physics, but physics then shows that naïve realism is false [Russell] |