In this paper I present Bertrand Russell’s contacts with Polish readers and outstanding Polish writers. In paragraphs 2 and 3 I discuss books by Russell that were published in Poland and mention his personal contacts and correspondence. Russell exchanged letters with L. Chwistek, J. Conrad‑Korzeniowski, M. Dziewicki, G. Herling-‑Grudziński, S. Leśniewski, W. Lutosławski and A. Tarski. Interesting comments on his philosophy were offered by M. Ossowska, K. Twardowski, J. Salamucha and M. Heitzman. Paragraphs 4 and 5 discuss the influence that Russell’s logical ideas have exerted on the development of logic in Poland, especially in the works of L. Chwistek and S. Leśniewski.
The article traces Bertrand Russell’s interest in anarchist thought. I take his The Roads to Freedom as the main reference point, because that was the book where Russell applied himself most consistently to the study of the ideas put forward by anarchist thinkers. Those ideas – as he points out – undertake to conceive more imaginatively a better ordering of the human society than one finds in ʻthe destructive and cruel chaos in which mankind has hitherto existed’. He emphasizes that across the ages individuals had to face harsh conditions in which state ensnared them. The conflict between freedom and enslavement was the most important aspect of that condition. Bertrand Russell i anarchizm 513
The distinction introduced by Bertrand Russell between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description is the starting point for analyses related to the concept of acquaintance. I propose to assume that the following three concepts used by Russell are equivalent: knowledge of things, knowledge by acquaintance, and acquaintance. Then I present linguistic analyses concerning the construction of ‘know‑NP’ and ‘znać‑NP’, which lead to (i) division into a direct and indirect acquaintance and (ii) separation of knowledge from acquaintance, recognizing them as two different cognitive relations. Then, through the prism of knowledge, I describe the concept of acquaintance, pointing to the common properties of these concepts (aptness, non‑voluntariness, dispositiona-lity, contextual dependency), and postulate similar normative functions. This paper can be treated as an introduction to the concept of acquaintance and an elucidation of its role in epistemology.
The article analyzes Bertrand Russell’s distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description contained in his writings from 1910 to 1912. I point to some problems that arise from Russell’s concept of direct knowledge if they are observed in the light of modern psychological and neuroscientific research. In some cases knowledge by acquaintance may be mediated by certain unconscious operations and by mental representations of conceptual nature. I point out however that some of the examples given in The Problems of Philosophy can be characterized by a different degree of indirectness. Consequently, I propose to view Russell’s distinction as a typology. Because Russell narrows knowledge by description to specific descriptions, Russell’s division is not exhaustive and therefore is not a logical one. The article also shows that there are reasons for both narrowing his category of direct knowledge (e.g. by excluding universals) and for expanding it (e.g. by unconscious experiences).
Charles Travis argues that perception has no representational content and consists only in the relation of direct presentation (acquaintance) of mind‑independent particulars. He bases his argument on an interpretation of Gottlob Frege’s writings. I argue against Travis that, according to Frege, not only perceptual beliefs but also perception as a presentation of particulars has representational content. The paper identifies three problems for the claim that perceptual acquaintance involves representation.
The article tackles the problem of weak definite descriptions, i.e., it attempts to explain the mysterious uses of definite descriptions which do not meet Russell’s uniqueness condition. The author discusses theories of weak definite descriptions offered in relevant literature and proposes an original solution to the problem which she presents in terms of modern type‑theoretical semantics.
According to the usual, simplified picture of the Meinong‑Russell controversy, Meinong’s semantics is structurally amazingly simple but ontologically very expensive, while Russell’s theory contains some counter‑intuitive syntactic complica-tions, but to make up for this expense it releases us from almost all ontological troubles. Now the reality is much more complex. On the one hand it appears that the alleged ontological innocence of Russell’s solution has been highly exaggerated. In particular it assumes a Platonic ontology of universal properties. At the same time, if we look a bit closer, also Meinong’s theory turns out to be much more complicated than it looks at the first sight. It involves a hierarchy of objects exhibiting different degrees of completeness and in the later period of Meinong’s thought the structure of intentional reference takes a form very similar to that which has been proposed by Russell in his On Denoting.
The article addresses the problem of properties and epistemic functions of Russellian ‘knowledge by acquaintance’ interpreted here as a variant of intuition. The epistemic functions of intuition can be performed in two ways: first, as propositional knowledge of direct and immediate kind (a foundational function), and secondly, as a non-‑propositional form of consciousness that provides a justifying basis for intuitive truths. The distinction between these two functions of intuition presupposes a differentiation – not explicitly articulated by Bertrand Russell – between acquaintance and knowledge by acquaintance. Acquaintance as a form of non‑propositional consciousness is not epistemically autonomous, which is to say that it is not a judgment and cannot be qualified as either true or false, so a separate epistemic problem arises here, one of the shift from acquaintance to knowledge by acquaintance. The author points out that the shift from acquaintance to knowledge by acquaintance is difficult to accomplish, and she offers the opinion that the epistemic function of acquaintance or, more generally, of various similar kinds of consciousness, should not be interpreted in terms of justification. They should be understood not as a justifying element or a justifying reason for propositions that underlie other propositions, but as a factor that is an indispensable genetic and simultaneously structural element of propositional content in the sense assumed in transcendental philosophy.
According to Kurt Gödel, Bertrand Russell misinterpreted the incompleteness theorem, but did it in ʻa very interesting manner’. To understand what he meant we need to consider their attitudes to defining truth. Even more revealing is the discussion of two fundamental approaches to logic: one is universalistic, and assumed by both Russell and Gödel, and the other is model‑theoretical, Alfred Tarski’s style. It turns out that a misleading or erroneous interpretation can be interesting, as it reveals something fundamental. William Byers claims that truly great ideas in mathematics and about mathematics are in a way false, as they lead to errors, but at the same time they can help to make advances in math. Logicism provides a good example. In addition it may be mentioned that when Russell argued in its favor, he committed a logical fallacy.
This article discusses the main points in the Bertrand Russell and Frederick Copleston’s debate about the existence of God. Copleston defended the cosmological argument based on a sufficient reason and argued against radical contingency in explaining the origin of the world. During the debate, the understanding of necessity was discussed, whether the word ‘God’ is a proper name or a description, whether the universe as a whole can have a cause, and the arguments about the origin of the world formulated in modern physics. The whole debate is an excellent example of the difference between a theist and an atheist with regard to Leibnizian type of the cosmological argument.i
The celebrated Polish avant‑garde artist Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz turned form arts to philosophy in the later years of his life. He was in contact with prominent Polish professional philosophers, e.g., T. Kotarbiński and R. Ingarden. He wrote a philosophi-cal treatise of his own and published several essays explaining his views, defending them in fiery polemical tracts. Although an autodidact himself, his erudition on recent philosophical topics, scientific trends and achievements was impressive. To his favorite philosophical ‘enemies’, as he was fond to say, belonged Bertrand Russell, along with other famous thinkers of that time, e.g., A. Whitehead, R. Carnap or L. Wittgenstein.
Bertrand Russell is known primarily as a logician, philosopher of mathematics, and analytical philosopher. However, a significant part of his life was devoted to world peace: he was an active pacifist from 1901 until his death. This article shows him in this role. Russell’s pacifist activities included not only participation in demonstrations and organizations, but also educational activities. He dealt with issues of education as a theorist and a practitioner. He organized his educational endeavour round the question of how to educate a pacifist and at the same time help her/him remain a free and creative woman/man.
The most interesting area of ethical considerations by Bertrand Russell belongs to the field of metaethics and concerns the meaning of basic ethical concepts and their epistemological status. In the classic dispute between cognitivism and noncognitivism, Russell has chosen the emotivist position which deprives moral opinions of any cognitive value by treating them as an expression of individual emotive attitudes. Thus, he advocates a kind of subjectivism in ethics, and at the same time he refutes all arguments ascribing to moral phenomena specific objective qualities independent of human attitudes and emotions. He also puts to doubt all sources of morality that have a religious character. His own normative statements concerning metaethical issues are so phrased, however, that a serious methodological doubt arises: Is it possible to practice normative ethics without using an objectivist hypothesis?
This paper sets out to characterise and analyse logical atomism of Bertrand Russell. Main tenets of that theory are described by reference to Russell’s lecture Facts and Propositions (1918) and to other publications by that author. The essential claims of Russell’s position are discussed and confronted with tenets of ontology of situations developed by Bogusław Wolniewicz, a position inspired by logical atomism of Ludwig Wittgenstein. The author argues that several of Russell’s theses on logical atomism can be interpreted in the light of Wolniewicz’s ontology of situations. Finally, some minor concluding remarks are offered that can help to develop an ontology conceived in the spirit of the ontology of logical atomism. 366 Janusz Kaczmarek
Russell puts much weight on the concept of relation. In his view relations are real entities that are indispensable in the enterprise of defining mathematical objects, particularly numbers. In the paper I try to extend Russell’s idea beyond the domain of abstract entities. I make an attempt to show that the basic criterion of identity for concrete objects – the criterion of space‑time continuity – can be supplemented, whenever it appears inadequate, by taking into account some relations apart from those that are spatiotemporal. On this occasion I argue for the metaphysical impossibility of time travel and offer some resolutions of the classical paradoxes of identity: amoebas’ reproduction by fission or Theseus’ boat. With respect to relations I argue, against the radical separation of the self from its attributes, that there are essential attributes of the self that constitute its relatively stable individual essence.
Bertrand Russell formulated neutral monism by default, unguided by any strong idea of a uniform, monistic world. Apparently he worked under the urge to liberate philosophy from the quarrel between physicalists and idealists. But he did not succeed in defusing the controversy, instead he fanned it with his fresh ideas. He argued that matter was indestructible, that some mental regularities occurred independently of our will, and that they unfold as if guided by natural laws. He claimed that some conscious states were to be interpreted as objective events despite the fact that they were accessible only privately. But the concurrence between physical and mental facts indicated a similarity between the principles that guided them, or pointed to their singular common nature. He did not undertake to defend his unitary theory vigorously and did not claim it was indisputable. Possibly he hoped to find an additional support for his theory some day and this paper responds to this unspoken request.
The aim of the article is presentation and critical analysis of various interpretations of neutral monism (in Bertrand Russell’s version). The subject of the author’s particular interest is the analysis of the main methodological assumptions of neutral monism, which are presented as a method of deriving logical constructions. The article discusses problems inspired by the following questions: What is the declared neutrality of base objects? Is neutral monism a kind of reductionism? Is it an ontological or logical‑epistemological position? What is the place of phenomenal consciousness in the universe of neutral monism? Can neutral monism be reconciled with different versions of emergence theory? Does neutral monism solve the mind‑body problem? Finally, the possibility of non‑standard interpretation of neutral monism is outlined by reference to information theory.
In the article I indicate and synthetically discuss issues that can be found in the achievements of Bertrand Russell, and which can be included in the domain of metaphilosophy. I point to Russell’s philosophical inspirations and to his views on philosophy. His views are intertwined with the threads of the traditional understanding of philosophy and innovative elements. These innovative elements include assigning a special role to mathematical logic, of which Russell is one of the founders, and emphasizing the role of analysis in philosophical research. It is also characteristic of him to emphasize the role of science for philosophical reflection. At the same time, however, Russell rejects the radical slogans of logical positivism. This justifies the thesis that in his oeuvre there are threads of both traditional and innovative understanding of philosophy and its tasks.
The aim of the paper is to provide an answer to the following question: How to interpret the principle of acquaintance and what role does it play in Bertrand Russell’s epistemology? It seems that the principle itself should be so adjusted as to take into account two concepts: (1) an act of judgment as a multiple relation and (2) the division of reality into what is directly given (sense‑data) and physical objects. I show, contrary to Russell’s assurances, that the content and the role of the principle is not clear, and its acceptance leads to a paradox. Having discovered that consequence, Russell abandoned the dualistic division of reality and with the help of the method of logical constructions, sought a position that embraced phenomena
In this paper, existing knowledge on the behaviour of soil-steel composite structures (SSCSs) has been reviewed. In particular, the response of buried corrugated steel plates (CSPs) to static, semistatic, and dynamic loads has been covered. Furthermore, the performance of SSCS under extreme loading, i.e., loading until failure, has been studied. To investigate the behaviour of the type of composite structures considered, numerous full-scale tests and numerical simulations have been conducted for both arched and box shapes of the shell. In addition, researchers have examined different span lengths and cover depths. Furthermore, to enhance the load-bearing capacity of the composite structures, various stiffening elements have been applied and tested. The reviewshows that the mechanical features of SSCSs are mainly based on the interaction of the shell with the soil backfill. The structures, as a composite system, become appropriately stiff when completely backfilled. For this reason, the construction phase corresponds to the highest values of shell displacement and stress. Moreover, the method of laying and compacting the backfill, as well as the thickness of the cover, has a significant impact on the behaviour of the structure at the stage of operation in both the quantitative and qualitative sense. Finally, a limited number of studies are conducted on the ultimate bearing capacity of large-span SSCS and various reinforcing methods. Considerably more works will need to be done on this topic. It applies to both full scale tests and numerical analysis.
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