Wittgenstein on Russell's Theory of Judgment

Guy Stock

doi:10.1017/S0080443600000273

Wittgenstein on Russell's Theory of Judgment

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010

Guy Stock

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In the early years of this century the debate as to the nature of judgment was a central issue dividing British philosophers. What a philosopher said about judgment was not independent of what he said about perception, the distinction between the a priori and empirical, the distinction between external and internal relations, the nature of inference, truth, universals, language, the reality of the self and so on.

Type: Papers
Information: Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 7: Understanding Wittgenstein , March 1973 , pp. 62 - 75

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0080443600000273 [Opens in a new window]
Copyright: Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1973

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^{page 62 note 1} Cf. Russell, B., Principles of Mathematics, chap. iv, p. 43Google Scholar; Bradley, F. H., Essays on Truth and Reality, ‘Coherence and Contradiction’, chap, viii, p. 230Google Scholar; Moore, G. E., ‘The Nature of Judgment’, Mind, N.S. viii (1899) 182–3CrossRef Google Scholar. Cf. also Stock, G., ‘Russell's Theory of Judgment in Logical Atomism’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, xxciii (1972).Google Scholar

^{page 63 note 1} Although by that time Russell himself had already begun to doubt its adequacy: cf. Logic and Knowledge, ed. R. C. Marsh, ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, e.g. p. 226.Google Scholar

^{page 63 note 2} Logic and Knowledge, ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’ p. 127.Google Scholar

^{page 63 note 3} Ibid., pp. 163–8.

^{page 63 note 4} Ibid., p. 164.

^{page 64 note 1} Ibid., p. 174, i.e. the apparent fact that ‘one part of the world is closer to me than another’.

^{page 64 note 2} Ibid., p. 165.

^{page 64 note 3} Russell, B., Philosophical Essays, ‘On the Nature of Truth’, pp. 182–3.Google Scholar

^{page 64 note 4} Russell, B., Mysticism and Logic, ‘Sense-data and Physics’, p. 147.Google Scholar

^{page 64 note 5} ‘Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, p. 188.Google Scholar

^{page 64 note 6} Mysticism and Logic, ‘Knowledge by Acquaintance’, p. 232.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 1} Mysticism and Logic, ‘Sense Data and Physics’, pp. 155ffGoogle Scholar; and ‘Constituents of Matter’, pp. 129ff.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 2} ‘Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ p. 288.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 3} Russell, B., The Problems of Philosophy, chap. v, p. 56Google Scholar; ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’, p. 168.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 4} ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’, p. 127.Google Scholar

^{page 65 note 5} i.e. the objects of the judgment or belief, in contrast to the subject.

^{page 65 note 6} The Problems of Philosophy, chap. xii, pp. 127–8Google Scholar; and also ‘On the Nature of Truth’, pp. 178ff.Google Scholar

^{page 66 note 1} ‘Philosophy of Logical Atomism’, p. 226.Google Scholar

^{page 66 note 2} Even, as Russell puts it, as an ‘apparent variable’, cf. ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’, p. 164.Google Scholar

^{page 66 note 3} TLP, 2.173.

^{page 66 note 4} TLP, 4.014.

^{page 66 note 5} Quoted by Anscombe, G. E. M., An Introduction to Wittgenstein's Tractatus, chap. I, p. 28.Google Scholar

^{page 66 note 6} TLP, 3.12.

^{page 66 note 7} TLP, 4.014.

^{page 67 note 1} The Problems of Philosophy, chap. v, p. 52.Google Scholar

^{page 67 note 2} This I take to be the kind of psychologistic ‘explanation’ of the relation of language to the world that, as Paul Engelmann points out, Wittgenstein took philosophy to be infected with. Cf. LLW, chap. v, p. 100.Google Scholar

^{page 67 note 3} TLP, 3.1.

^{page 67 note 4} Cf. the criticism that the Augustinian account of language treats the child as if it ‘could already think, only not yet speak …’ (PI, I, 32).Google Scholar

^{page 68 note 1} PI, II, xi, p. 217.Google Scholar

^{page 68 note 2} TLP, 3.11; and PTLP, 3.12–3.13 and cf. PI, I, 73.Google Scholar

^{page 68 note 3} LLW, p. 99.Google Scholar

^{page 68 note 4} TLP, 4.0311.

^{page 68 note 5} TLP, 4.03.

^{page 68 note 6} TLP, 2.1515.

^{page 68 note 7} Cf., for example, Bradley, F. H., Essays on Truth and Reality, ‘Truth and Copying’, p. 109.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 1} TLP, 4.0312

^{page 69 note 2} NB, p. 89Google Scholar entry dated 9 November 1916.

^{page 69 note 3} TLP, 4.12.

^{page 69 note 4} TLP, 2.173.

^{page 69 note 5} Cf. Bradley, F. H., Essays on Truth and Reality, p. 410Google Scholar: what Bradley says about the ‘finite centre’ has similarities to what can be ‘said’ about the subject in the Tractatus.

^{page 69 note 6} NB, p. 88.Google Scholar

^{page 69 note 7} TLP, 5.632–5.6331.

^{page 70 note 1} ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’, p. 147.Google Scholar

^{page 70 note 2} The Problems of Philosophy, chap. v, pp. 46–7.Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 1} Even if this kind of account does leave truth and existential propositions in a peculiar position. Cf. Moore, G. E., ‘The Nature of Judgment’, Mind, viii (1899).CrossRef Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 2} Cf., e.g. Frege, G., ‘The Thought’, Mind, LXV (1956).Google Scholar

^{page 71 note 3} Ramsey, F. P., The Foundations of Mathematics, ‘Universals’, pp. 132–4.Google Scholar

^{page 72 note 1} TLP, 3.203.

^{page 72 note 2} TLP, 3.23: ‘The postulate of the possibility of the simple signs is the postulate of the determinateness of sense’.

^{page 73 note 1} PTLP, 3.20103: ‘The requirement of determinateness … can be formulated in the following way: if a proposition can have a sense, the syntactical employment of each of its parts must have been established in advance … Before a proposition can have a sense, it must be completely settled what propositions follow from it.’

^{page 73 note 2} Cf., TLP, 5.634: ‘… everything we see could be otherwise …’: Bradley's theory of judgment in so far as it doesn't allow any judgment to be completely false involves a rejection of the thesis of the determinateness of sense; an account involving the concept-object distinction retains it – at a cost – by making out sense to be determined a priori by internal relations between concepts whilst the truth or falsity of a posteriori judgments depends on the existence or non-existence of something ‘falling under’ the concept or concepts involved.

^{page 73 note 3} TLP, 2.0232: this is also the source of the doctrine of the logical independence of atomic propositions. And one might add that the notion of such a colourless object stands at the opposite end of a continuum from the Idealist notion of a concrete universal, any thinkable property of which is an internal property, cf. Bosanquet, B., Essays and Addresses, ‘A True Theory of Identity’, pp. 165–8Google Scholar. Reprinted from Mind, xiii (1888).Google Scholar

^{page 74 note 1} TLP, 3.331.

^{page 75 note 1} Foundations of Mathematics, ‘Critical Notice on the Tractatus’, pp. 274–5.Google Scholar

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