Tuesday, January 21, 2014

Language and Atomism

The structure of one type of Proposition does correspond to that of what it represents--the Conditional, which, like its object, is sequential.  And yet, Russellian Logicism dismantles that ordering, replacing it with a Conjunction, which is a reversible relation.  So, the one case in which the Logical structure of a Proposition might be meaningful is one in which the structure is abandoned by that Logicism.  The example thus illustrates that for Russell, Atomism is more fundamental than Logicism, i. e. that that the World is an aggregate of irreducible independent elements, is more fundamental than that Language is essentially orderly.  Indeed, Atomism dissolves any such order, not only Inference, which is the heart of Logic, but any Relation, in general.  Thus, the distinctive feature of Russellian Logicism is his concept of Definite Description, in which the grammatical Subject is reduced to a disassociated 'x', though, which, to his critics, is an insular contrivance that is disassociated from any known 'Language'.

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