Frege, Russell, & Modern Logic - A. J. Ayer

[Music] a great deal of the philosophy that's going on today in the english-speaking world in fact probably most of it can be traced back through intermediate developments to the work of two men got flogged Frager and Bertrand Russell working for the most part independently of each other they laid the foundations of modern logic but more than that although the work on which they began concerned chiefly the principles of mathematics and the relationship between mathematics and logic its implications went so wide but in the course of time it came to have a profound influence on philosophy in general exactly the same happen with the philosopher who most obviously and directly followed on from them named David Ben Stein Vixen Stein started by developing Russell's & frege's work in mathematical logic but he ended up acquiring an influence of large on 20th century philosophy which is second to nobody in this program without going into any of the technicalities of mathematics or logic I want to give some indication of how fragrant and Russell came to have this enormous influence on 20th century fork and to say a little about some of the more recent individuals and groups who've come under that influence but first a word about the individuals themselves Frager a German was born in 1848 and spent his entire working life in comparative obscurity in the mathematics department of the University of Vienna not until after his death that his name to come down at all widely even among philosophers his first major work published in 1879 was called big wishlist and I'm afraid even the English translation keeps the German title because there's no satisfactory English for it it means something like the putting of concepts into notation and we'll begin to see later what that's about his next major work published in 1884 is called in English the foundations of arithmetic he went on producing important and original work most notably in 1893 and 1903 two volumes of the projected larger work in English the basic laws of arithmetic but it was all one of such depth difficulty that his work in general remained very largely unknown until Bertrand Russell drew attention to it in 1903 Russell was a totally different sort of person grandson of the British prime minister from whom he was later by his elder brother to inherit an earldom he was always prominent on the political and social scene as well as in philosophy in fact a famous public figure or his life he did a tremendous amount of popular writing and journalism and broadcasting which influenced social attitudes among successive generations of British people I think this is obscured for many the fact of the true foundations of his fame as a philosopher lying contributions to mathematical logic of a highly professional and technical character he was born in 1872 and little 1970 it was politically active almost to the end though the great bulk of his philosophical work was done by the 1920 here to discuss the work of these two men and some of its influences down to our own day is one of the most famous philosophers in our time a jair who has written a great deal about Russell including the best short introductory book on Russell's work but that's right let's start with Frager as being the earliest figure when he began what was it he was trying to do well he was trying to make up what he thought well deficiencies in arithmetic he thought that mathematical statements as they were expressing his day were not sufficiently precise and that mathematical proofs were not sufficiently rigorous and so he began by trying to develop a notation the belief shift he referred to in which to become good in which this will be remedied and occasions to show exactly what measure met men medical statement stated and exactly what their proof statistically was first made obvious how one step in the proof succeeded another and this is deficient in mathematics in his time applying even to Euclid where there were assumptions not made explicit for power fidelity wasn't one of the points involved that every argument including a mathematical proof has to have premises and what those premises are often creates problems and he tried to show that all mathematics was ultimately derived from pure principles of logic exactly his mercy and Russell did this and this involved to enterprise is first of all defining mathematical concepts enjoy logical one and secondly showing that mathematics recently gave me how not all mathematics but arithmetic was reducible from Charlie logical premises and this was achieved the first part was a she'd fairly simply I think that it's important station will show higher to some if you take say a couple let's take Tom and Jerry then you can define them as a couple by saying that they are both members of the set and anything which remember was set aside is identical with one or other of them they will define the number two as a set of subsets for set of couples and we do this for all numbers more certain complications about infinity but in this way you can define a cardinal number in purely logical terms what he did and then also by generalizing logic which had until to been done a zillion logic which had prevailed or from ancient times until the 19th century was not wholly general he was able to state premises from which most risk equals Abdullah's reducible it was shown later by somebody about our the logician the Austrian girdle that in fact this couldn't be can pick you down the diversity couldn't be completed but the intrabody could be completed figure a method of doing it wouldn't it also be true to say that the full Frager of the laws of logic had been regarded as laws of thought that's to say of something to do with human mental processes but Frager realized that that but this couldn't be so that the validity of a proof couldn't depend on our psychology oh yes this was very important this is one of one of the most important things that Sega did and he again by one of his early work was an attack on a book of autistic by James Lafleur called his cell in which logic was represented as a theory of judgment and this was hybrid ruled by the German idealists and fragrance sisters it was entirely objective and I could do it with psychological processes but set in Capriccio deuce numbers were entirely objective things and that logic was cracking dependent or of wasn't about psychology at all these were objective truths which of course the mind is capable of gasping they didn't depend upon features of thinking so the search then becomes in a matter Batman ematic aloof for watching tears that the proof conveys from step to step attracts that impersonally validates the conclusion after regardless of how we think and this in a way accounts for figure having a sucessful interest beyond his 20 mathematical work but what he also developed a theory of meaning a theory of meaning which would show how mathematics could be objectively valid and he talked of the he tied up the meaning of measure of statement but it could be said to state was in general with truth conditions with with the features in them that made them candidates for tools of office I suppose the most historically influential distinction that he introduced was the distinction between sense and reference mm-hm which has to do with his theory of meaning and one still has people constantly referring to this can you explain it yes it's it's fairly it's fairly complicated the tool German accessions ours in which is generally associated sense and the duck tongue which is translated what is it that the German word for meaning but is bad loss was usually translated as either reference or unification and the denotation of a name is the object to which it which it names I mean communication of Brahmaji is is you the actual stuff whereas the sense of them is the contribution that it makes to the meaning and if I just say Tom you have say to me who's Tom and then I say well Tom Easterners Baba and all the person who invented such and such or all the first person the titles of a mountain and in this way I give you a sense and in this way I'm able to identify him now this distinction becomes important in certain contexts generally what you care about in the case of a name is what the name stands for and but there are certain cases where it's important to make a distinction between sense and unification and one good example would be statement to identity the frege's own a favorite example was that of the evening star and the morning star both of which as you know are very same stuff they have our Venus yeah and but if someone says leading stars identify the morning star a man takes the reference of these two expressions to be a lady notation then he simply saying Venus is Venus which is a tautology and of no interest whereas in fact the morning star in the unisza is a mathematical discovery and therefore in this usage but the excessive desert who is not study notation not the objects but their senses so in other words he analyzed that may have a sense but not have a reference yes this can happen but in Rob in well this happens in two ways and there could be name or nominal expressions like here for example which have a sense but no reference because nobody car correspond to it and also there is a complicated case of expressions which have a function in in a sentence as significant to it making it capable of intro false but don't you know the same like predicate is-is-is good is bad it's Lanza which themselves are what he call it beat expressions namely don't hit themselves have a reference but contribute to giving the sentence a sense and through its sensor reference and these distinctions that he introduced and his theory of meeting had in fact had a very widespread influence in philosophy and they've become very fashionable in recent years and you say and and there's been a change in the anyhow in England and testable in the del United States are extended a change in the main concern of loss it's a very long time the theory of knowledge was dominant ever since Descartes in the seventeenth century the main concerns in a theory of knowledge what be what what we can know and how we can know how we are justified know it in the beliefs we do and in recent years has given way to what sometimes called the philosophy of logic which is mainly concerned with questions about meaning and here sega's coming to great prominence from Princeton's my successors successor of logic at oxford the macadam it has rotated nearly i mean certainly two large books to sega's work and is concerned exploring the implications of frege's distinction for a theory of meaning so Michael Dermott who I suppose it must be called the leading living commentator on fragrance makes enormously large claims for him lovely he says that he's introduced a whole new era in philosophy but he has D psychologize philosophy but in the way you just explained he he throws the theory of knowledge from the center of the law and this has changed 300 years of philosophical development well I think you go along with that well I think that there has been a different emphasis but I think that Michael exaggerated in two ways first of all Russell's are always been concerned with meaning ever since Socrates went about saying what is knowledge what is what is goodness and so on which is a way of asking what what feeds about the grease turbulence of these terms meant was always an interest in in meaning is in in fluffier and secondly I don't think interest in the theory of knowledge and certainly disappeared I think it I think that there are some people who are connected with with with concern to this and insofar as even in academics own work the area meaning is very much bound up with questions about truth and falsehood this also doesn't entirely take us away from the idea of knowledge because after all as Illinois is concerned with what reason we have to suppose that certain statements propositions are true or false so I think that they had initiative emphasis but not the great break the damage insist on before we continue with the more recent applications of the frege's work I want to turn to Russell for a moment when I introduced this discussion I emphasized the fact that Frager worked in isolation throughout almost the whole of his life and this becomes very important when one starts to consider Russell because for Russell spent the first several years of his life reinventing work that Reagan already done without realizing he'd done it didn't be capture that should make it rather easy for you to explain to us something about the importance of Russell's very early well I don't quite know I would say poor Russell because it gets like true that Russell did a lot of work that Vega had done before him but Russell also exposed a fatal deficiency in Vegas system he showed the Vegas system of logic actually contained the paradox that it knows who should respond about addiction of a permenant he is the question serve all people as in plumbers and it comes into the category of self-defeating proposition and in well although on the surface it seems to be trivial it's not trivial beneficial it shows that the underlying argumentation has something wrong with it he does it shows one of one of Sega's essential assumptions lead contradiction and when and Russell in nineteen that he wasn't making three conveyed this in a letter to Frager and Sega's first reaction was not oh I'm wrong you've seen the arrogance reply the whole of mathematics has been shown to be worthless eddie thawne is going too far and he then managed to put together some sort of answer to Russell's addiction but then it was shown earlier figures death exact by a Paris edition that figures answer also option Otto Bishop to think of the Bishop see yes we know really good news at buttons you learn self said earlier you never wrote the third volume and he simply came up from 19 three to nineteen twenty five is getting evidently and this was the result he thought his life's work and his life had been demolished yes yes so that in fact it was very sad story yeah can his only it remains true I had oughta press this point but an enormous amount of the work that Russell had done and spent years over fraida had already died and Russell didn't know that issue but it's also true but although favor did its first and some experts today think that they did did most of it better it was through Russell that the ideas actually became famous in philosophy and influential in philosophy that is true I don't know why it was the figures work was so neglected a park across from third reason that interest in new developments of logic was very much in English seeing people like who the Morgan wasn't taken up in Germany because in Germany the psychological mistaken psychological view of logic still prevailed and wasn't taken up in England dicta because of English in severity and in incompetence and foreign languages and wallet levered Russell have been brought up by German gut missus in German nurses did know German but even roughly but indirectly what happened was the Russell and collaborator white-haired went to a Congress in Paris in nineteen three I met Natalia logician called piano and it was super on Oh who's working normally best them and who was working in the same direction though we were less efficient at the science of logic which had remained virtually static for over 2,000 years since Aristotle suddenly exploded their whole new and in normal you know I feel so rough mein little Russell and we're kids Principia Mathematica which she took them together about ten jenny zurawell Russell wrote the principles of mathematics in nineteen three where he does Ricky Martin went to Prague I think in the preparation and India periods yes and then then he went on with his Vidya tutor at twenty Cambridge Whitehead to write a free volume work called Panchita Mathematica in which he actually tried to do the work of reducing mathematics from logic and it's full of formulae and because it gives a stupendous work although as you rightly said it doesn't quite achieve the standards about the rigor that the fair girl achieved before it but this was the one that really popular rides or subjects then all sorts of people took it out but it man it took four men on it has proceeded by leaps and bounds and it's now so to speak a major field of intellectual endeavor throughout the Mayan world in every universe but is interesting I think also should be mentioned that one of the effects has been not so much to subdue mathematics or logic which is what Sega and Russell wanted but subdued oddity mathematics and the in recent years seem mathematical logic has become more and more mathematical and less and has had less less to do with fluffy in general and even a disciple of figure like Michel damage is more interested in the semantic side of it the theory of meaning that he had hitherto said himself to be in the column as radical side but unlike Frager Russell actually made the explicit step after we've done all this work to general philosophy early not until he was 40 years old but then he did and he started producing general works of philosophy can you give us some indication of what position well it's very odd how little two are connected they one place where as they are connected is something a buffer called the theory of descriptions there was a puzzle about the meaning of our statements like the present King of France which didn't know what did you say the president king of France is bald yet there isn't anything up front I never and didn't know anything and therefore there was a question hi could be meaningful and they had been philosophers a medical example is a German called my nan who then thought of that these things no he what he called subsystem entities and Russell forces rubbish and he shared a way of translating out such expressions by saying that say in fact contained cavett existence claims and causes in board saw same into there is one thing that now rules over France and whatever it is over France is bald okay and this got rid of the of the apparent paradox and so in that way is not for work edifice or implication but in the main he simply went off from mallet axe he says surely philosophical book came out 1912 it's called the problems of loss racial home university library book and in my view still the best introductions of losses there is because ruffles a marvelous writer though it's a good old-fashioned and there he really takes no account he's also look at all he simply continues the British imperialist edition this is a book and follows straight on from Berkeley Locke park in Hume and it starts off with the failure of perceptions they like Berkeley there it says that what we perceive and not stables and jazz and things but what barking but Locke called simple ideas what Russell following his friend work or sin theta and then another recent audience awful question how on the basis of being presented with the st. impressions we arrive at physical objects so then he deals is the sense additional to suffer problems in in that sort of way and he more or less gave up logic after consumed animatic ieave self said that this wore him out he collaborated in the books on a book with Whitehead but Whitehead was teaching mathematics at Cambridge and mainly occupied was that Russell that was living independently already had a lectureship at a mixer and I could get that 15 but in the first decade of the century he was living on his independent income and so he had @y actual worker back at all his proofs and he shared that this really fascinated him ever doing any detailed work in future and some extent true all his later work is full of brilliant ideas he never he no fully works out it doesn't get bored he's obviously it goes on like this oh he doesn't bother to dot the i's and cross the two awards go to work I think that I see one very important continuing concern in the later work I've been should know if you agree with this or not you've just said I'm sure rightly that that Russell was a radical empiricist you know a direct tradition of Locke and humanly it seems to me the Brussels was always concerned to validate the Natural Sciences in terms of sense data that he always wanted to show that the whole corpus of our scientific knowledge could be derived from and was derived from nothing but observations and our reflections on our object well not always I think you'll make one very important to important point here and well in fact that I overlooked when I was talking a few moments ago and that is that from the very beginning Russell's approaches philosophy was an interesting justification of reading using story that when use about 12 his older brother who was said to school Russell to store at home the other brother Franco said school taught Russell geometry and Russell refused to accept the actions he wanted to have improved and mibella said that they couldn't get on mystic you got to exhibit the actions they agreed to originally but he always wanted to have everything justified and this was common both in his approach to logical mathematics and his approach to other branches of knowledge and as you say also means opposed to science he wanted to have a spacious flower buddy concerns and but here he is used buried in the book I mentioned a problem with philosophy it's quite rude he won't start sense-data but he didn't think that all scientific or even nor a common-sense statement save as I had a disabled can be could be reduced to sensory statement he adopted a causal theory that you could assume the existence of physical world as the best explanation for our sensory experiences then he changed his view and in the next important book that he published on theory of knowledge which was a larger the external world which came out in 1914 he did take the view you just you just referred to namely he thought you could actually reduce every mother and every common sense statement very scientific statement to statements about our actual and had possible hypothetical assent experiences and this year is this food this view which is technically known as phenomenal is really most view of of Berkeley if you rob Berkeley of God and also the viewer John Stuart Mill was instead the wrath of God father may God solid oxide because unbeliever article to believe in garbage hey Godfather this phenomena listing you who was developed in another external world and also in some important essay to Russell wrote in book cornices and logic which he produced in the First World War and then I say called something like sense data and physics is the most important lambda and he continued this in another important book called analysis of mind which came out I think in 1921 and he adopted a theory which had been advanced before him by the pragmatist William James Henry James's elder brother in which both mind and matter were composed of what James called neutral stuff and which were wearing fact since data and images and then they differed only in being different arrangements with fundamental data but then Russell gave this up and in 925 will emphasize the curious forged as no matter where he where that places issues too remaining but he mainly went back to the causal theory that that he'd held in 1912 and when he revived his interested philosophy in the 1940s and any final through all his next last Rosasco book human largest open limits he goes back to a causal theory he always he always thought that the basis of our knowledge was laying in sense variance but he varied in in the next step I mean it was only during one period of his work that he thought that the whole thing could be reduced to centric term more often and certainly in a lot of the enemies like very violently he he had he had the causal theory which put the physical world beyond the veil observation in fact he ended up with very curious what is the attempt to bring a wholly new rigor to bear he'll also say not only of a logical kind but once tempted to say the scientific kind he was always very concerned for example that our beliefs should relate to the evidence form which is something he reiterated over and over again isn't it and it's something which if taken seriously sweeps aside a great deal of traditional philosophizing and traditional thinking oh yes that let any is true and I think that this you already mentioned that Russell and in from Vicki Stein indeed the concern was Russell's bookable and as you know Wickham Stein and also that goof losses in Vienna called the Vienna circle condemned what they call better physics and metaphysics in their view was participative least partly any attempt to describe and the world in non scientific terms they thought that this was the only world there is and the sand was a method of forming theories about it which are verified by observation and any assumptions were most superior world a world inhabited by God's when he that sought was nonsensical and certainly all the time held this and was always concerned to just write sound and was always worried by the back he thought a justification for sounds extremely problematic yeah I mean and it remained a problematic to the end to the end I mean and in the interesting in in the last book that he wrote only Salah Segovia's was a book he then sets out what he thinks are the set of assumptions of the party made if belief in sattvic theories is to be justified and makes it quite clear do you think these assumptions must be taken on faith yeah and he tried to work out what we called a theory of induction but was never entirely satisfied with it and more or less said well I mean I remember what he said he said that we really can't be sure science is true but it has a greater chance of being true than anything else but we survival his rival yes so he still couldn't validate it in the way he couldn't very dated may you'd like to know in like no time let's just talk now in an orderly way about the influence of Russell because he and Vidkun Stein I suppose must be the two most influential flog years in the 20th century at least in the english-speaking world now I suppose Russell's first ratings was on his immediate contemporaries and indeed OTA and their influence on him is there everyone yeah I mean well it's better for the best in in the purely logical work which was promoted collaborated he was I think Russell who had the molesting idea of and I think theory of types was their description came from Russell but when he came to trying to apply that sort of technique to floss famous research said Russell did in our knowledge of the external world for example in trying to reduce abstract concepts like concepts of points and instance to operational terms then it was Whitehead who took the lead and was regarded idea of the racket and he'd they quarreled over this because the Russell didn't say what a decision development your friend was very developed in two books I came out after all the principles of natural knowledge regardless of nature and Russell at one time was influenced by McTaggart who was the disciple of Hegel and God rustled to be both Russell Moore to be n to be idealist and were first of all rebelled against the interests of common sense Warwick defender of common sense and the inference russell to accept that he that he cured russ already belief in idealism so this is the aims of them france went that way also it was respect to ethics some truffles they were greatly interested he accepted like all bloom spray he accepted more specific i believe that good was a non-natural indefinable concept sorry but then a Russell has very big influence on the later for my generation of philosophers it is nothing he convinced us that since sound so sovereign in the description of the world or lust they could do was he elucidated analyze and so Russell to me in regard that he gets the father of analysis but he any difference profoundly from victim Stein I don't want to go too deeply to be concerned but well I'd rather you didn't because they're going to debate the whole you make a diagram but one things will come on next where m is the biggest giant of the floss he was largely a matter of people be getting into a muddle and the business of people like because I'm used to a genie turned the famous face show the fly the way out of a fire bottle to kill people of these models well as also always thought that philosophical problems had a solution and that was why he was so exposed to the purely linguistic philosophy of our production after war and the leadership of us in burritos the mere explanation of language which then sake really the exploration of the implications of English usage was trivial and Russell really thought of there were questions about justification of our beliefs that it was business losses to answer and these questions were answerable he thought that the answers could be discovered if you were to get all about alibi didn't we're doing I thought yet I do yes I could say I want to put a personal question - because you own your life you have acknowledged that you yourself have been enormous um so it laughs Solomon reverence yes it always have so you can tell us what it's like from the inside as it were to have been influenced by Russell what is his influence being on you on me uh it's been first of all but unlike most of my contemporaries I still think I should start with what Russell called sense data what I not read call since qualia that is a technical difference whether you begin with particulars or or something more general but he says that example same thing so that on the whole I share his some certainly the starting point which is on perception I share him I also agree with the importance of primacy he attaches to the theory of knowledge I am and the law I've always been a thoroughgoing empiricist I agree with the view of the Russell derived from human own a safety of a magical sensitive so that the such a thing as cause of this because well just remember what Hume originally said it was namely constant conjunction and something purely contingent I agree with Russell in rejecting any form of theology or any how transcendent theology injecting metaphysics right also most importantly a view is Russell the frost wouldn't be worth doing unless you'd pose questions which we could find the answers that's not he bets that I took camera persons but I will eventually idea and all these are examples not just to be or degree in with him but at him having influence oh yes are they all of them quickly yes guys directly exactly and I think the reason been to inspire him in the way you bite haven't with that well I you regard him as a mastering each pillars and well I think I'm not in the same class as Russell's Lhasa but I do think that I do write English reasonably well and I do get again partly under his influence and in-game question yes I think that was affiliation both of ideas and style from Hume through mill to Russell and coming down and said to me now the philosophers will be discussing it here Trager and Russell had enormous effect on the milling yourself included now I want to talk about the revival of interest in fraida after the Second World War so that the interest in Frager can be interested in Russell for the first time proceed side by side into the age that we now live in it's very difficult to account for historical events particularly in such short of perspective and the Attic see if the certainly was in immediate reward decline in Russell's insolence in high earnings only and this is addict knock you to revival register Sega but to an increased importance attached to the work of Vic and Stein and more in worst case so I enormous li-like to infection as a man I think philosophically it was excessive and I think this was just to the responsiveness for partly not a trial who respected Russell but mainly Austin who was the linguistic philosopher and narrow as possible sense and had a great respect for more as as someone who - great importance tour during his huges of the common sense and so on common sense as said by Russell incidentally the metaphysics of savages and I think it was the upgrading of more that was responsible for at that time to downgrade Nebraska and this is it same it's now been reversed I'm glad I say I think you've got a bit too far in saying Russell was downgraded because if one thinks back to those post-war years it takes now who were the major philosophers in the english-speaking world the shortest short lists would have to include the parson Russell himself Vidkun Stein Karl Popper Quine Gilbert Ryle yourself and all of you were massively influenced by Russia yes perhaps perhaps I'm I I mean yes so you would know better than that because you are sober up at Oxford have been in the fifties and when I had already departed them for the London certainly the impression reaching is well the brussels began taking an oxford based view and i think that's mistaken about the view I saw I think there were other people around then who has perished roughly perfectly true yes but there were condemning for the landing and John and very glad yes yes and I certainly restless as recovered he himself here the best time in forever I can he himself boxes yeah cuz I was seeing gradients dealing with the time I organized the grouping Lauren in London that he attended and he was certainly miss kiss has to mal do heard but he thought that he that he wasn't getting his you and also lots of slack vein and all and he disliked all in vain and we agree in any case that that he's come back he's come back now the revival of figure is something that I really I think him can't explain I don't even know exactly how it happened probably it started in America with the development of suitable additions led by a man called Alonzo Church who insisted on very great rigor in lodged in mathematics and found in Sager and didn't find it in in Russell and Whitehead so of course they did find elsewhere the finest example Gilbert where a dispute over for other reasons and in England it seems shall been the first evidence second plan of it isn't a book published a fairly late about 96 planning by William ammonia which is a very impressive history of logic in which which very great importance is given to Frager he's put on the level with Aristotle he goes to great name and then I don't know whatever one I come to once again son behind me there was a translation in the early fifties nineteen fifty itself 9212 oh yeah they are made by Austin of Sega's good login' remember also translation made thirty years later by Max back an Englishman living work in America and by PT each of two figures very obscure but in port semantics essays one of them called sense reference from the other called function concept and so there was in the entities the sudden interest in Vega but I'm not quite certain what led to it Oh Angie what Constance is dead well a lot of very bright younger people took it up didn't they and were influenced by it whether that'll last or what I don't know but it certainly seems to be something going on which I find very little influence of Vega incurrence result we work apart from the work of damnit who if we look at the term planning now perhaps some of the most interesting we have being done is being done in America and if you look at the work of people like wine and platinum and and Thomas Nagel and and Donald Davidson in particular you don't find cyst on inputs of Vega except pepsin Davidson's case indirectly through the works of from the position tarski onto which edge links a created by the Vega link himself link meaning in groups are you confident with the influence of Russia will last yes you are why why so because I think because there because that is a who I think it was reading that that the questions he asks are the important result for questions and I think that he is answers to them whether right or wrong will always be to be taken into consideration and if I'm right about you to you also think that he's approached his conception of what philosophy is is the right conception yes but it consists of clarification there for analysis and justification there for argument about importantly written in straightforward English prose oh well not English written in business in straightforward prior straightforward ways thank you very much professor okay that's all that was splendid I thought it was better many of our mantras oh good you

Channel: Philosophy Overdose

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Keywords: Philosophy, Analytic Philosophy, Frege, Russell, Bertrand Russell, Modern Logic, Logic, Sense and Reference, Theory of Meaning, Philosophy of Language, Epistemology, Empiricism, Symbolic Logic, Theory of Knowledge, Phenomenalism, History of Philosophy, Positivism, Sense Data, Perception, Verificationism, G. E. Moore, Russell's Paradox, Predicate Logic, Dummett, Logicism, Philosophy of Mathematics

Id: ZOnzBSWIAzo

Length: 42min 6sec (2526 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 13 2017

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ABSTRACT:

Bryan Magee and A. J. Ayer, former Wykhem Professor of Logic at Oxford University and noted logical positivist, discuss the work of Frege and Russell on logic, language, and knowledge. This interview is from 1987.

[u/RavenIsAWritingDesk]

Great exchange. Thanks for sharing.