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Full Idea
'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are, I maintain, not merely silly remarks, but totally devoid of meaning.
Gist of Idea
'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are meaningless
Source
Bertrand Russell (Substitutional Classes and Relations [1906], p.166)
Book Ref
Russell,Bertrand: 'Essays in Analysis', ed/tr. Lackey,Douglas [George Braziller 1973], p.166
A Reaction
He connects this to paradoxes in set theory, such as the assertion that 'the class of human beings is a human being' (which is the fallacy of composition).
Related Idea
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| 12491 | Asking whether man's will is free is liking asking if sleep is fast or virtue is square [Locke] |
| 8632 | You can't transfer external properties unchanged to apply to ideas [Frege] |
| 8468 | The sentence 'procrastination drinks quadruplicity' is meaningless, rather than false [Russell, by Orenstein] |
| 6437 | The theory of types makes 'Socrates and killing are two' illegitimate [Russell] |
| 18002 | As well as a truth value, propositions have a range of significance for their variables [Russell] |
| 21561 | 'The number one is bald' or 'the number one is fond of cream cheese' are meaningless [Russell] |
| 18706 | Words of the same kind can be substituted in a proposition without producing nonsense [Wittgenstein] |
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