ONT Re: Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
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POLA. Note 28
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| 4.4. The Question of Nomenclature
|
| What sort of name shall we give to verbs like "believe"
| and "wish" and so forth? I should be inclined to call
| them "propositional verbs". This is merely a suggested
| name for convenience, because they are verbs which have
| the 'form' of relating an object to a proposition. As
| I have been explaining, that is not what they really do,
| but it is convenient to call them propositional verbs.
|
| Of course you might call them "attitudes", but I should not like that
| because it is a psychological term, and although all the instances in
| our experience are psychological, there is no reason to suppose that
| all the verbs I am talking of are psychological. There is never any
| reason to suppose that sort of thing.
|
| One should always remember Spinoza's infinite attributes of Deity.
| It is quite likely that there are in the world the analogues of his
| infinite attributes. We have no acquaintance with them, but there is
| no reason to suppose that the mental and the physical exhaust the whole
| universe, so one can never say that all the instances of any logical sort
| of thing are of such and such a nature which is not a logical nature: you
| do not know enough about the world for that. Therefore I should not suggest
| that all the verbs that have the form exemplified by believing and willing are
| psychological. I can only say all I know are.
|
| Russell, POLA, p. 92.
|
| 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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