ONT Re: Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
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POLA. Note 26
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| 4.3. How shall we describe the logical form of a belief? (cont.)
|
| There is a great deal that is odd about belief from a
| logical point of view. One of the things that are odd
| is that you can believe propositions of all sorts of forms.
| I can believe that "This is white" and "Two and two are four".
| They are quite different forms, yet one can believe both. The
| actual occurrence can hardly be of exactly the same logical form
| in those two cases because of the great difference in the forms
| of the propositions believed. Therefore it would seem that
| belief cannot strictly be logically one in all different
| cases but must be distinguished according to the nature
| of the proposition that you believe.
|
| If you have "I believe p" and I believe q" those two facts, if p and q are
| not of the same logical form, are not of the same logical form in the sense
| I was speaking of a moment ago, that is in the sense that from "I believe p"
| you can derive "I believe q" by replacing the constituents of one by the
| constituents of the other.
|
| That means that belief itself cannot be treated as being a proper sort of
| single term. Belief will really have to have different logical forms
| according to the nature of what is believed. So that the apparent
| sameness of believing in different cases is more or less illusory.
|
| Russell, POLA, p. 91.
|
| 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.
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