Analysis and Logical Form in Russell: The 1913 Paradigm

Abstract

In the unpublished work Theory of Knowledge1 a complex is assumed to be “anything analyzable, any- thing which has constituents” (p. 79), and analysis is presented as the “discovery of the constituents and the manner of combination of a given complex” (p. 119). The notion of complex is linked in various ways with the notions of relating relation, logical form and proposition, taken as a linguistic expression provided with meaning. This paper mainly focuses on these notions, on their links and, more widely, on the role of logical form, by offering a new way of understanding what Russell was doing in TK as concerns the logical-ontological matter of this manuscript. In particular, a new account of Russell's theory of judgment will be given, by taking a stand with respect to the main accounts already given, and it will be argued for the presence in TK of a notion of type different from the one applied to propositional functions in ML and PM.