ONT Re: Epicyclic Recidivicious Recapitulation Of Russell
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| It follows that, when a subject S understands
| "A and B are similar", "understanding" is the
| relating relation, and the terms are S and A and B
| and similarity and R(x, y), where R(x, y) stands for
| the form "something and something have some relation".
| Thus a first symbol for the complex will be
|
| U{S, A, B, similarity, R(x, y)}.
|
| This symbol, however, by no means exhausts the analysis of
| the form of the understanding-complex. There are many kinds
| of five-term complexes, and we have to decide what the kind is.
|
| It is obvious, in the first place, that S is related to the four
| other terms in a way different from that in which any of the four
| other terms are related to each other. (It is to be observed that
| we can derive from our five-term complex a complex having any smaller
| number of terms by replacing any one or more of the terms by "something".
| If S is replaced by "something", the resulting complex is of a different
| form from that which results from replacing any other term by "something".
| This explains what is meant by saying that S enters in a different way from
| the other constituents.) It is obvious, in the second place, that R(x, y)
| enters in a different way from the other three objects, and that "similarity"
| has a different relation to R(x, y) from that which A and B have, while A and B
| have the same relation to R(x, y). Also, because we are dealing with a proposition
| asserting a symmetrical relation between A and B, A and B have each the same relation
| to "similarity", whereas, if we had been dealing with an asymmetrical relation, they
| would have had different relations to it. Thus we are led to the following map of
| our five-term complex.
|
| A o
| \ <
| ^\ *
| \ *
| % \ *
| \ *
| % \ R(x, y) *
| o------o------> o---------<---------o Similarity
| % / ^ * ^
| / | * /
| /% | * /
| / |* /
| / % * | /
| / < | /
| B o % | /
| ^ | /
| \ % | /
| \ | /
| \ % | /
| \ | /
| \ % | /
| \ | /
| \ % | /
| \ | /
| \ % | /
| \ | /
| \%| /
| \| /
| o
| S
|
| In this figure, one relation goes from S to the four objects;
| one relation goes from R(x, y) to similarity, and another to
| A and B, while one relation goes from similarity to A and B.
| This figure, I hope, will help to make clearer the map of
| our five-term complex. But to explain in detail the exact
| abstract meaning of the various items in the figure would
| demand a lengthy formal logical discussion. Meanwhile the
| above attempt must suffice, for the present, as an analysis
| of what is meant by "understanding a proposition".
|
| BR, TOK 1913, pages 117-118.
|
| Bertrand Russell,
|'Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript',
| Edited by Elizabeth Ramsden Eames, in collaboration with Kenneth Blackwell,
| First published in 1984 by George Allen & Unwin; Routledge, London, UK, 1992.
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