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The Mathematical Roots of Russell's Naturalism and Behaviorism Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication Volume 4 200 YEARS OF ANALYTICAL PHILOSOPHY Article 10 2008 The Mathematical Roots Of Russell’s Naturalism And Behaviorism James Levine Trinity College Dublin, IRE Follow this and additional works at: https://newprairiepress.org/biyclc This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. Recommended Citation Levine, James (2008) "The Mathematical Roots Of Russell’s Naturalism And Behaviorism," Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication: Vol. 4. https://doi.org/10.4148/ biyclc.v4i0.134 This Proceeding of the Symposium for Cognition, Logic and Communication is brought to you for free and open access by the Conferences at New Prairie Press. It has been accepted for inclusion in Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication by an authorized administrator of New Prairie Press. For more information, please contact [email protected]. From Moore to Peano to Watson 2 The Baltic International Yearbook of with meaning, which in earlier days I had completely ignored” (1968, Cognition, Logic and Communication 194) when “I had regarded language as ‘transparent’ and had never examined what makes its relation to the non–linguistic world” (1959, August 2009 Volume 4: 200 Years of Analytical Philosophy 145). pages 1-126 DOI: 10.4148/biyclc.v4i0.134 Until relatively recently (in particular, before the 1990’s with the publication of Hylton (1990) and Griffin (1991)), the main focus of interest in Russell’s philosophy, has been, I think it is fair to say, on JAMES LEVINE his views from his 1905 paper “On Denoting” through his 1918 lec- Trinity College, Dublin tures ”The Philosophy of Logical Atomism”1—that is, on the period that includes his acceptance of his theory of descriptions, his completing, with Whitehead, Principia Mathematica (PM), his writing the popular FROM MOORE TO PEANO TO WATSON book The Problems of Philosophy (PoP), and his active engagement with The Mathematical Roots of Russell’s Naturalism and Behaviorism Wittgenstein that leads him to abandon his 1913 manuscript, The The- ory of Knowledge (TK), and culminates in his 1918 lectures entitled “The Philosophy of Logical Atomism” (PLA). Such a focus does not involve distinguishing Russell’s early Moore–influenced post–Idealist position INTRODUCTION: SOME ISSUES REGARDING RUSSELL’S PHILOSOPHICAL from the views he accepted in the wake of the 1900 Paris Congress DEVELOPMENT or considering the interplay between these two aspects of Russell’s de- velopment in his 1903 book, The Principles of Mathematics (PoM); nor Russell’s philosophical development is marked by a number of key shifts does it involve any consideration of his concerns with “the problems in his outlook that he vividly describes in his retrospective writings. connected with meaning” that are reflected in such post–1918 publica- Among these are his “becom[ing] a Hegelian” in 1894 (1944a, 10; tions as “On Propositions: What They Are and How They Mean” or The 1967, 63); his 1898 “revolt” against Idealism in which “Moore led the Analysis of Mind. way, but I followed closely in his footsteps” (1959, 54); his attending Further, given a focus on Russell’s writings from 1905–1918, es- the International Congress of Philosophy in Paris in August 1900 which pecially on his less technical writings over that period, it is perhaps he calls “the most important event” in “the most important year in my understandable that a certain picture Russell’s philosophical outlook intellectual life” and at which he was impressed by the “precision” of emerges, one according to which he embraces a foundationalist epis- Peano and his students (1944a, 12); his arriving in 1905 at his theory temology along with an “Augustinian” view of language, both of which of descriptions, which he characterizes as his “first success” in enabling reinforce the general view that the tasks of philosophy are sharply dis- him to resolve his paradox (1959, 79); his “discover[ing] the Theory of tinguished from those of science and both of which make central use Types” in 1906, after which “it only remained to write the book [Prin- of the notion of “acquaintance”. For on the foundationalist epistemol- cipia Mathematica] out” (1967, 152); his beginning in 1911 his associ- ogy that may be found in at least some of these writings, a central task ation with Wittgenstein, whom he characterizes as “perhaps the most of philosophy is to show how, or whether, the beliefs that are taken perfect example I have ever known of genius as traditionally conceived, for granted in ordinary life and science, such as our perceptual beliefs passionate, profound, intense, and dominating” (1968, 98–9); and his concerning ordinary physical objects, may be justified, given that we are “becom[ing] interested”—“during my time in prison in 1918” and in- acquainted with sense–data but not physical objects themselves. And on fluenced, at least in part, by his study at that time of the writings of the view of language that is presented in at least some of these writings, the behavioral psychologist J. B. Watson—“in the problems connected Vol. 4: 200 Years of Analytical Philosophy 3 James Levine From Moore to Peano to Watson 4 the meaning of a word (in a fully analyzed sentence) is an entity cor- [D]oubts had often been expressed about Russell’s notion of responding to that word, while—in accord with his so–called “principle “knowledge by acquaintance” . These doubts only came of acquaintance”—understanding a sentence requires being acquainted to a head, however, in the early 1950s, with the appearance with the entities corresponding to the words in that sentence, and a of Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, Austin’s mock- central task of philosophy consists in analyzing the meanings of our ery of “the ontology of the sensible manifold,” and Sellars’s sentences concerning physical objects, given that we are not acquainted “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, with such objects. Moreover, against the background of this understanding of Rus- but also his views of meaning: sell’s philosophy, it is natural to regard some of the major figures in The distinction between the necessary and contingent—re- post–World War II analytic philosophy—including, for example, the vitalized by Russell and the Vienna Circle as the distinction later Wittgenstein, Quine, Austin, and Sellars—as seeking to under- between “true by virtue of meaning” and “true by virtue mine characteristic features of Russell’s position. This familiar view is of experience”—had usually gone unchallenged, and had reflected, for example, in Richard Rorty’s 1979 book Philosophy and the formed the least common denominator of “ideal language” Mirror of Nature. There Rorty presents Russell, along with Husserl, as and “ordinary language” analysis. However, also in the seeking, in different ways, to establish philosophy as the foundational early fifties, Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” challenged discipline, which through its knowledge of “apodictic truths” (Russell’s this distinction, and with it the standard notion (common “logical forms”, Husserl’s “essences”) is able to assess the standing of to Kant, Husserl, and Russell) that philosophy stood to em- other disciplines. According to Rorty, pirical science as the study of structure to the study of con- . the kind of philosophy which stems from Russell and tent. Given Quine’s doubts (buttressed by similar doubts in Frege is, like classical Husserlian phenomenology, simply Wittgenstein’s Investigations) . , it became difficult to ex- one more attempt to put philosophy in the position which plain in what sense philosophy had a separate “formal” field Kant wished it to have—that of judging other areas of cul- of inquiry and thus how its results might have the desired ture on the basis of a special knowledge of the “founda- apodictic character. (Ibid., 169) tions” of these areas. (1979, 8) According to Rorty, these challenges to Russell’s views of acquaintance along with his views of meaning “were challenges to the views idea of And the “story” Rorty “want[s] to tell” (ibid., 168) is how such founda- a ‘theory of knowledge,’ and thus to philosophy itself, conceived of as a tionalist aspirations of Russell and Husserl were called into question by discipline which centers around such a theory” (ibid.). their successors: Recently, there has been a growing awareness that Russell’s post– [I]n the end, heretical followers of Husserl (Sartre and Hei- 1918 writings call into question the sort of picture that Rorty presents degger) and heretical followers of Russell (Sellars and Quine) of the relation of Russell’s philosophy to the views of subsequent figures raised the same sorts of questions about the possibility of such as the later Wittgenstein, Quine, and Sellars. For an examination apodictic truth which Hegel raised about Kant, (ibid., 167) of those writings shows that by the early 1920’s Russell himself was advocating views—including an anti-foundationalist naturalized epis- thereby undermining the view of philosophy as having a preeminent, temology, and a behaviorist–inspired account of what is involved in un- privileged status. More specifically, for Rorty, Russell’s mid–century suc- derstanding language—that are more typically associated with philoso- cessors attacked not only his views of acquaintance and his sense-data phers from later decades whom Rorty presents as dismantling Russell’s epistemology: philosophy. www.thebalticyearbook.org Vol. 4: 200 Years of Analytical Philosophy 5 James Levine From Moore to Peano to Watson 6 Hence, Thomas Baldwin begins his 2003 paper “From Knowledge Numerous passages support these claims of Baldwin and Dreben.2 Thus, by Acquaintance to Knowledge by Causation” by writing: for example, in his 1924 paper “Logical Atomism”, Russell writes: There are many familiar themes in Russell’s repertoire, but I began to think it probable that philosophy had erred in his later discussions of knowledge include many insights adopting heroic remedies for intellectual difficulties, and which have received little notice.
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