Logical atomism

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The logical atomism was an influential in the 20s and 30s of the 20th century direction within the analytical philosophy . He claims that the analysis of ordinary sentences leads to an underlying ideal, logical language, the sentences of which are in a mapping relationship to atomic facts (or facts).

Origins

The term goes back to an essay by Bertrand Russell from 1911. However, the ideas of Logical Atomism first became known to a wider audience with lectures that Russell gave in 1918 and published as The Philosophy of Logical Atomism . Russell was significantly influenced by Ludwig Wittgenstein , whom he expressly acknowledges in an introductory note. In fact, Wittgenstein's influence, first his pupil and then his friend from 1911 to 1914, was so great that Russell left a 1913 manuscript unfinished and unpublished because of Wittgenstein's criticism, especially of judgment theory. This manuscript, which was only published in 1984 under the title Theory of Knowledge in the “Collected Papers”, can be considered the actual manifesto of Logical Atomism.

In the 1890s Russell was still in the tradition of British idealism, which was shaped by people like Bernard Bosanquet , TH Green , HH Joachim and especially FH Bradley . Together with GE Moore he broke away from this school and, as he remembers in My Mental Development , “with a sense of escaping from prison, we allowed ourselves to think that grass is green, that the sun and stars would exist if no one was aware of them ... ". Logical atomism must therefore be seen as a conscious departure from the monistic and idealistic ideas of its teachers.

The teaching

Russell calls his teaching atomistic in contrast to the monistic logic "of the people who more or less follow Hegel" (PLA 178) and logical, since he wishes to come across logical, not physical objects in the analysis (PLA 179)

The first claim of Logical Atomism is that the world contains "facts". The facts are complex structures made up of objects ("particulars"). He defines objects as “terms of relations in atomic facts” (PLA 199). A fact consists either of an object with a simple property or of various objects that are in simple relation to one another. In addition, there are judgments (“beliefs”) that are related to the facts and are either true or false through this relationship.

According to Russell, relations are external, which means that a relational proposition cannot generally be reduced to a subject-predicate proposition. That was the position of Bradley and idealism, and, Russell believed, Leibniz too . One consequence of the doctrine of internal relations was that the relation as a predicate is already in the object, and thus that “everything is related to everything”. External relations, on the other hand, allow the common sense view that some facts can be independent of others.

Ordinary objects of everyday life are also apparently complex entities. Names are the words for particulars. For Russell, these are words like "this" and "that". On the other hand, common names like “Socrates” for Russell are actually descriptions that have to be replaced in the analysis by “Plato's teacher”. Russell had this in 1905 as part of its markings theory ( Theory of Descriptions ) (in On Denoting required) and that in response to the problem of non-existent objects into confrontation with Alexius Meinong should, can nevertheless speak meaningfully about. (Wittgenstein also refers in a comment in the Philosophical Investigations where he explains the problem using the example of the sword Nothung (PU §39)). The theory of descriptions is of central importance to logical atomism insofar as Russell believed he was showing that ordinary language had to be analyzed in order to reveal its true structure. To a certain extent, this is also true of his Theory of Types with which he countered Russell's antinomies .

A further element in Russell's logical atomism is the theory of knowledge ( theory of Acquaintance ). Russell believed he had to postulate a special kind of relation which guarantees that a subject can have views of reality: "I think the relation of subject and object in presentation may be identified with the relation which I call 'acquaintance'". (1914 On the Nature of Acquaintance 169) Among the objects of acquaintance he also counted logical constants (“and”, “or” etc.), but also n-digit relations (TK 97-101). He considers acquaintance to be the prerequisite for understanding logical propositions.

All meaningful propositions, so the core statement of Logical Atomism, are truth functions of the elementary propositions, whereby the tautologies and contradictions take a special position insofar as their truth content is given a priori. (PLA 210)

method

Russell says that he made his decision in favor of pluralism and relations for empirical reasons, since he was convinced that the a priori arguments for the opposite were wrong. ( Logical Atomism 339). "The business of philosophy, as I conceive it, is essentially that of logical analysis, followed by logical synthesis." (LA 341) In this context, "developed entities" should be replaced by "logical constructions". This "method" of Logical Atomism, which included the strict application of Occam's razor , had perhaps more influence on analytic philosophy than its metaphysical content. Russell sums it up as follows: "[T] here are fewer things in heaven or earth than are dreamt on in our philosophy." (PLA 260)

Metaphysical versus Epistemological Atomism

By the time Russell was giving his lectures on Logical Atomism, he had lost contact with Wittgenstein for several years. After the First World War, however, Russell met again with Wittgenstein and was instrumental in publishing Wittgenstein's version of Logical Atomism, the Tractatus .

Wittgenstein does not use the term logical atomism, but almost all of the positions outlined can also be found in the Tractatus, with the decisive exception, as mentioned, of judgment theory. (M 5.4 and 5.5541) (Russell had already withdrawn from this position in 1918.) Nevertheless, the Tractatus differed so fundamentally from Russell's philosophy that Wittgenstein felt misunderstood by his old teacher, and even against the inclusion of Russell's preface in the Work was.

The differences involve many details, but the crucial difference is a fundamentally different understanding of the task of philosophy. While Russell was ultimately in the tradition of British empiricism, Wittgenstein, at least in the Tractatus, has a continental approach that is based on rationalism. This can already be seen formally: the numbering system gives the Tractatus sentences a weight that reinforces the apodictic tone of content. Russell makes a statement like Wittgenstein's in the preface that the truth of thoughts is inviolable and definitive is unthinkable. Russell is ultimately concerned with epistemological foundations, Wittgenstein with showing the “limits of the world”, and that means setting out the metaphysical conditions for the possibility of language and truth. Apparently, Wittgenstein is hardly interested in how knowledge is actually possible. That is why the question of the nature of objects, for example, is of little interest to Wittgenstein. For Russell, the question of how many things there are must in principle be decided empirically, for Wittgenstein, on the other hand, the question has no meaning. For Russell, the possibility of external relations is a prerequisite for the possibility of independent facts, but for Wittgenstein all states of affairs are independent of one another, since only in this way can he construct all possible worlds through any combination of elementary propositions.

For Wittgenstein, sentences of metaphysics, ethics, etc. were nonsensical, Russell, on the other hand, believed that he could use metalanguages ​​to talk about what Wittgenstein thought was only "showing" itself.

Although Wittgenstein and Russell jointly developed Logical Atomism, it can be said that their respective positions had separated them so widely that they never found a common language again.

influence

The direct influence of the Tractatus was tremendous, especially because of the acceptance it received from the Vienna Circle . However, it should not be an exaggeration to state that a large part of this influence was based on misunderstandings, for example regarding the nature of elementary sentences. The indirect influence of the method, however, was perhaps even greater in the long term. The fact that Russell changed his mind extremely often makes it almost impossible, except in technical aspects, to adhere to a philosophy of Russell. That's why he didn't leave a school. But the willingness to question one's own positions again and again, and to accept and implement criticism, is still a role model for analytical philosophy.

Wittgenstein's later philosophy is not least a confrontation with his early views. To this extent, he is his own successor in the history of philosophy. An important part of the philosophical investigations deals, for example, with the private language argument, which can be traced back to Bertrand Russell, who said: "A logical perfect language ... would be very largely private to one speaker." (PLA 198) For the late Wittgenstein, however a private language is impossible ( private language ).

The database expert and computer science pioneer Hartmut Wedekind sees in the use of several predicators in an elementary sentence by Paul Lorenzen and in Edgar F. Codd's introduction of the relational databases, an overcoming of logical atomism.

literature

Russell

  • Logic and Knowledge, London, 1956, (LK)
  • My Philosophical Development, London, 1959
  • Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript, London, 1984
  • On the Nature of Acquaintance (1914), in LK pp. 125-74
  • On Denoting (1905), in LK pp. 41-56
  • The Philosophy of Logical Atomism (1918), in LK pp. 175–281 (PLA)
  • Logical Atomism (1924), in LK pp. 323-43 (LA)

Wittgenstein

  • Logical-philosophical treatise Tractatus logico-philosophicus - Critical Edition, Frankfurt a. M., 1989

Further

  • Raymond Bradley: The Nature of All Beeing, Oxford 1992
  • PMS Hacker: Wittgenstein in the Context of Analytical Philosophy, Frankfurt a. M., 1997
  • Jan Faye, Uwe Scheffler, Max Urchs: Things, Facts and Events, Amsterdam / Atlanta, 2001
  • Holger Leerhoff: Logical form and interpretation. A systematic-historical study of logical atomism . Paderborn: 2008
  • Gregory Landini: Wittgenstein's Apprenticeship with Russell , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2007, ISBN 9780521870238
  • DF Pears (ed.): Russell's Logical Atomism . London: Fontana 1972
  • J. Griffin: Wittgenstein's Logical Atomism . Oxford: Oxford University Press 1964

Web links

Individual evidence

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