Event Detail

Wed Mar 12, 2008
234 Moses Hall
6–8 PM
Working Group in the History and Philosophy of Logic, Mathematics, and Science
Ian Proops (University of Michigan)
Puzzling out Russell: The Curiosity of George IV

This paper examines the philosophical consequences of Russell’s solution to his famous puzzle about George IV in “On Denoting”. It is argued that by solving the puzzle in the way he does Russell already commits himself to many aspects of his later logical atomist metaphysics, including an ontology of “uni-faceted” sense data, and the view that sentences are incomplete symbols.