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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
It is an historical fact that one of Russell's greatest philosophical contributions was to highlight the role that premises about logical form play in ontological arguments. A pair of quotations will introduce his point that great metaphysical systems are often not only based on, but are debased by, the belief that certain statements of philosophical discourse are logically subject-predicate in form.
Speaking of Hegel's Absolute Idealism, Russell wrote in Our Knowledge of The Extemal World:
Mr. Bradley has worked out a theory according to which, in all judgment, we are ascribing a predicate to Reality as a whole; and this theory is derived from Hegel. Now the traditional logic holds that every proposition ascribes a predicate to a subject, and from this it easily follows that there can be only one subject, the Absolute, for if there were two, the proposition that there were two would not ascribe a predicate to either. Thus Hegel's doctrine, that philosophical propositions must be of the form, “the Absolute is such and such,” depends on the traditional belief in the universality of the subject-predicate form. This belief, being traditionaL scarcely self-conscious, and not supposed to be important, operates underground, and is assumed in arguments which, like the refutation of relations, appear at first sight to e;tablish its truth.
This essay is a revised version of an invited address presented to the 10th International Wittgenstein Symposium in Kirchberg, Austria in August, 1985. I am grateful to the directors of the Symposium for granting me permission to publish the current version of that address in this Journal.
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5 He does not regard ‘Vulcan’ in the usual contexts as irreferential. But he thinks there are occasions where a singular term can be irreferential. See his essay, ‘The Problem of Nonexistent Objects,’ Topoi 1 (1982) 97-140; especially footnote 6.
6 Quine, W.V.O. Word and Object (New York: The MIT Press 1960) 96Google Scholar. My italics.
7 Quine, Word and Object, 177
8 See my essay ‘Predication and Extensionality,’ Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 (1974) 255-64.
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10 Quine, Word and Object, 187
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12 Revised Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1969)
