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Full Idea
Imagine a person who knew everything that can be stated without using the word 'not' or some equivalent; would such a person know the whole course of nature, or would he not?
Gist of Idea
Is it possible to state every possible truth about the whole course of nature without using 'not'?
Source
Bertrand Russell (Human Knowledge: its scope and limits [1948], 9)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'Human Knowledge' [Routledge 2009], p.111
A Reaction
Nowadays we might express Russell's thought as 'Does God need the word 'not'?'. Russell's thesis is that such words concern psychology, and not physics. God would need 'not' to describe how human minds work.
Related Idea
Idea 16488 It is hard to explain how a sentence like 'it is not raining' can be found true by observation [Russell]
| 20788 | The contradictory of a contradictory is an affirmation [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 22017 | Normativity needs the possibility of negation, in affirmation and denial [Fichte, by Pinkard] |
| 21777 | Negation of negation doubles back into a self-relationship [Hegel, by Houlgate] |
| 16489 | Is it possible to state every possible truth about the whole course of nature without using 'not'? [Russell] |
| 18722 | Negations are not just reversals of truth-value, since that can happen without negation [Wittgenstein on Russell] |
| 18723 | We may correctly use 'not' without making the rule explicit [Wittgenstein] |
| 23493 | 'Not' isn't an object, because not-not-p would then differ from p [Wittgenstein] |
| 23066 | Negation doesn't arise from reasoning, but from deep instincts [Cioran] |
| 18903 | Sommers promotes the old idea that negation basically refers to terms [Sommers, by Engelbretsen] |
| 18801 | Classical negation is circular, if it relies on knowing negation-conditions from truth-conditions [Dummett] |
| 19052 | Natural language 'not' doesn't apply to sentences [Dummett] |
| 18476 | 'A is F' may not be positive ('is dead'), and 'A is not-F' may not be negative ('is not blind') [MacBride] |
| 18908 | Standard logic only negates sentences, even via negated general terms or predicates [Engelbretsen] |