Relating Ontology and Logic

(P. 22) 172 Reviews RELATING ONTOLOGY AND LOGIC MICHAEL SCANLAN Philosophy / Oregon State U. Corvallis, OR 97331, USA SCANLANM@UCS.ORST.EDU Bernard Linsky. Russell's Metaphysical Logic. Stanford, Calif.: CSLI [Center for the Study of Language and Information] Publications, 1999; distributed by Cambridge U. P., 2000. Pp. viii, 150. Cloth: £37.50 (US$59.95); pb £13.95 (US$22·95)· The thesis of this book is that Russell's work in logic cannot be understood separately from his ontological ideas, here somewhat archaically labeled "metaphysical". The eight chapters are largely independent of each other, four of them having been published previously as journal articles. Some parts of the book make plausible the value of considering Russell's ontic commitments in evaluating his approach to issues of logic. In other places, however, the book's thesis seems to get lost. The time period examined is Russell's classic period from "On Denoting" (1905) through the logical atomism publications of1918 and 1924.1 The central work in this p~riod is clearly Principia Mathematica.. Previous writers have presented Russell in this period as constantly changing his thinking on such I Linsky dates his own period ofcentral concern in this book as 1908-19. Reviews 173 topics as the nature of propositions and the nature of logic and vieW" PM as somewhat cobbled together to show how the logicist project could be carried out, while leaving a good many loose ends. Professor Linsky will have none of this. In Chapter I he argues for his basic view that the seemingly later logical atomist ontology ofparticulars and universals which somehow combine to form facts is the Russellian ontology which is compatible with the logical framework of PM This interpretation presents a robustly realistic Russell, and not a nominalist or ontic minimalist, as Russell comes out on some others' interpretations . Linsky correctly argues against reading back, through Quine and later interpretations of "On Denoting", an interest on Russell's part in ontic economy for its own sake. In Chapter 2, Linsky addresses a crucial point for his project by considering how the ontic concept of universals is related to "propositional functions" in PM One approach in the literature is to treat propositional functions as linguistic devices which represent universals, akin to the open sentences of present-day logic. Linsky takes this interpretation to be incompatible with Russell's realist ontology and his construal of propositions as non-linguistic objects composed of actual entities. On Linskey's interpretation propositional functions are fragments ofpropositions and the propositions themselves are constructions out of particulars and universals. One problem here is showing how this squares with PM, in which propositional functions and not propositions are to be basic. It seems to me that Linsky "gives away the store" with respect to his general interpretative thesis when he says Russell himself did not have any clear idea about how to fit together his ontic views about universals with the logical framework of propositional functions in PM: When working on metaphysics, Russell would think of universals; when working on logic, his focus was on propositional functions. When combining the two, as in the introduction to PM, he did have an idea ofhow they fit together, but such mixed occasions were rare.... My proposal attributes only marginal consciousness on Russell's part to the distinction between universals and propositional functions. This rather tenuous relation between Russell's logical work and his ontic views does not bode well for a unified view of his "metaphysical logic". Chapter 3 considers a related topic, Russell's propositions, which are somehow composed of particulars and universals and are somehow related to propositional functions. Linsky is clear that up until he adopted the multiple-relation theory ofpropositions around 1908, Russell took propositions to be certain complexes of non-linguistic, non-referential entities. But with the multiplerelation theory propositions were no longer themselves entities that could occur in relations. Instead, there are certain many-place (multiple) relations contain- 174 Reviews ing a mind and a number of objects (i.e. beliefs). They are true if there is a "fact" that (somehow) corresponds to the belief, false otherwise. The critical thing for Russell is that there is...

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