ONT Re: Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
POLA. Note 8
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
| 1. Facts and Propositions (cont.)
|
| There are a great many different kinds of facts, and we shall be
| concerned in later lectures with a certain amount of classification
| of facts. I will just point out a few kinds of facts to begin with,
| so that you may not imagine that facts are all very much alike.
|
| There are 'particular facts', such as "This is white"; then there
| are 'general facts', such as "All men are mortal". Of course, the
| distinction between particular and general facts is one of the most
| important.
|
| There again it would be a very great mistake to suppose that
| you could describe the world completely by means of particular
| facts alone. Suppose that you had succeeded in chronicling every
| single particular fact throughout the universe, and that there did
| not exist a single particular fact of any sort anywhere that you had
| not chronicled, you still would not have got a complete description of
| the universe unless you also added: "These that I have chronicled are
| all the particular facts there are". So you cannot hope to describe the
| world completely without having general facts as well as particular facts.
|
| Another distinction, which is perhaps a little more difficult to make, is
| between positive facts and negative facts, such as "Socrates was alive" --
| a positive fact -- and "Socrates is not alive" -- you might say a negative
| fact. But the distinction is difficult to make precise.
|
| Then there are facts concerning particular things or particular qualities
| or relations, and, apart from them, the completely general facts of the sort
| that you have in logic, where there is no mention of any constituent whatever
| of the actual world, no mention of any particular thing or particular quality
| or particular relation, indeed strictly you may say no mention of anything.
|
| That is one of the characteristics
| of logical propositions, that they
| mention nothing.
|
| Such a proposition is: "If one class is
| part of another, a term which is a member
| of the one is also a member of the other".
|
| All those words that come in the statement of a pure logical proposition
| are words really belonging to syntax. They are words merely expressing
| form or connection, not mentioning any particular constituent of the
| proposition in which they occur. This is, of course, a thing that
| wants to be proved; I am not laying it down as self-evident.
|
| Then there are facts about the properties of single things; and facts
| about the relations between two things, three things, and so on; and
| any number of different classifications of some of the facts in the
| world, which are important for different purposes.
|
| Russell, POLA, pp. 42-43.
|
| Bertrand Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", pp. 35-155
| in 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', edited with an introduction
| by David Pears, Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1985. First published 1918.
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o