The tortures of the Inquisition, the condoning of slavery in the Bible and the Koran, the burning of women and men for witchcraft, the coming together to pray for deliverance at times of plague which only led to the further spread of disease , all resulted from religious beliefs and practices. Against the practice of his time, he advocated sex education for the young.
She should be ashamed at the very thought that she is a woman. Contrary to what was often said about his personal life, it is also worth noting that Russell did not practice or defend a libertine ethic. As Wood also notes,. This explains why arguments against the existence of the supernatural, although influential among intellectuals, are not the main driving force behind most religious belief A, 9.
Instead, religion is based largely on fear and ignorance: our fear of the mysterious, our lack of knowledge of natural causes, our fear of death A, Since it is this propositional content that varies from religion to religion, it turns out, as a matter of logic, that at most one religion can be true A, xi. Russell says much the same thing when he notes that. See Swanson, , 93—4 for a helpful discussion of this suggestion. For Russell, this is a view so basic that it is more like a goal than a description.
As a result, it becomes impossible to think of it as a claim purely connected to propositional content. As Russell explains,. These observations should not be interpreted as giving unfettered licence to religious belief.
I think this applies especially to the virtue of truthfulness or intellectual integrity. In the case of religion, it is not simply that such virtues are ignored. Instead, they are positively frustrated:. Societies as well as individuals, says Russell, need to choose whether the good life is one that is guided by honest inquiry and the weighing of evidence, or by the familiarity of superstition and the comforts of religion. Both of these books, as well as his numerous books popularizing science, have done much to educate and inform generations of general readers.
His History is still widely read and did much to initiate twentieth-century research on a wide range of historical figures from the presocratics to Leibniz. His Problems is still used as an introductory textbook over a century after it was first published. Both books can be read by the layman with satisfaction.
Even so, they continue to convey something of the intellectual excitement associated with advances in twentieth-century science and philosophy. Naturally enough, Russell saw a link between education in this broad sense and social progress. Partly this is due to our need to understand nature, but equally important is our need to understand each other:. The thing, above all, that a teacher should endeavor to produce in his pupils, if democracy is to survive, is the kind of tolerance that springs from an endeavor to understand those who are different from ourselves.
It is perhaps a natural human impulse to view with horror and disgust all manners and customs different from those to which we are used. Ants and savages put strangers to death.
And those who have never traveled either physically or mentally find it difficult to tolerate the queer ways and outlandish beliefs of other nations and other times, other sects and other political parties. This kind of ignorant intolerance is the antithesis of a civilized outlook, and is one of the gravest dangers to which our overcrowded world is exposed.
In part, this has been because Russell himself repeatedly maintained that he saw no significant connection between his philosophical work and his political activism. Others have seen things differently. One of the best summaries is given by Alan Wood:. Russell also anticipated the modern theory of emotivism as introduced by A. Even so, Russell remained less than satisfied with his views on meta-ethics for most of his life CP, Vol. This dissatisfaction appears not to have extended to his work in political theory.
As a result, it is only by understanding power in all its human instantiations that we understand the social world around us. This increase in reputation has been accompanied by a corresponding increase in scholarship. Ludwig Wittgenstein and Frank Ramsey especially presented Russell with helpful criticisms of his work and new problems to solve. Both men pushed Russell to develop new theories in logic and epistemology. Others have noted his apparent early antisemitism and his advocacy of a preemptive nuclear war against the Soviet Union following World War II Hook , Stone , Perkins , Blitz On the issue of a preemptive war, Russell himself later denied he had ever advocated such a course of action.
However, after carefully reviewing the historical record, biographer Ronald Clark comes to a different conclusion. See, for example, Russell and c, and Russell et al. How is the ordinary reader to decide between such conflicting evaluations?
Unlike the many logical advances Russell introduced, in politics he is still usually understood to be more of an advocate than a theoretician. As a result, his reputation as a political thinker has not been as high as his reputation in logic, metaphysics and epistemology. As a young man, he says, he spent part of each day for many weeks. Photo by Larry Burrows.
As Russell tells us, Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. In his draft of the Principles of Mathematics , Russell summarizes the problem as follows: The axiom that all referents with respect to a given relation form a class seems, however, to require some limitation, and that for the following reason.
We saw that some predicates can be predicated of themselves. Consider now those … of which this is not the case. For this predicate will either be predicable or not predicable of itself.
If it is predicable of itself, it is one of those referents by relation to which it was defined, and therefore, in virtue of their definition, it is not predicable of itself. Conversely, if it is not predicable of itself, then again it is one of the said referents, of all of which by hypothesis it is predicable, and therefore again it is predicable of itself. This is a contradiction. CP, Vol. For example, on this view, an ordinary physical object that normally might be thought to be known only through inference may be defined instead as a certain series of appearances, connected with each other by continuity and by certain causal laws.
To say that a certain aspect is an aspect of a certain thing will merely mean that it is one of those which, taken serially, are the thing. There are things that we know without asking the opinion of men of science. If you are too hot or too cold, you can be perfectly aware of this fact without asking the physicist what heat and cold consist of.
As Russell puts it, even in logic and mathematics We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science.
Moore led the way, but I followed closely in his footsteps. Although we were in agreement, I think that we differed as to what most interested us in our new philosophy. I think that Moore was most concerned with the rejection of idealism, while I was most interested in the rejection of monism. In contrast to this doctrine, Russell proposed his own new doctrine of external relations: The doctrine of internal relations held that every relation between two terms expresses, primarily, intrinsic properties of the two terms and, in ultimate analysis, a property of the whole which the two compose.
With some relations this view is plausible. Take, for example, love or hate. If A loves B, this relation exemplifies itself and may be said to consist in certain states of mind of A.
Even an atheist must admit that a man can love God. It follows that love of God is a state of the man who feels it, and not properly a relational fact. But the relations that interested me were of a more abstract sort. Suppose that A and B are events, and A is earlier than B. I do not think that this implies anything in A in virtue of which, independently of B, it must have a character which we inaccurately express by mentioning B.
Leibniz gives an extreme example. He says that, if a man living in Europe has a wife in India and the wife dies without his knowing it, the man undergoes an intrinsic change at the moment of her death. For example, consider two numbers, one of which is found earlier than the other in a given series: If A is earlier than B, then B is not earlier than A. If you try to express the relation of A to B by means of adjectives of A and B, you will have to make the attempt by means of dates.
You may say that the date of A is a property of A and the date of B is a property of B, but that will not help you because you will have to go on to say that the date of A is earlier than the date of B, so that you will have found no escape from the relation. This distinction between logical forms allows Russell to explain three important puzzles.
Sentence 3 , for example, is a necessary truth, while sentence 4 is not. The affinities of a given thing are quite different in the two orders, and its causes and effects obey different laws. Two objects may be connected in the mental world by the association of ideas, and in the physical world by the law of gravitation. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense.
If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.
It is customary to suppose that, if a belief is widespread, there must be something reasonable about it. I do not think this view can be held by anyone who has studied history. Before He created the world He foresaw all the pain and misery that it would contain; He is therefore responsible for all of it. It is useless to argue that the pain in the world is due to sin.
In the first place, this is not true; it is not sin that causes rivers to overflow their banks or volcanoes to erupt. But even if it were true, it would make no difference. If I were going to beget a child knowing that the child was going to be a homicidal maniac, I should be responsible for his crimes. If God knew in advance the sins of which man would be guilty, He was clearly responsible for all the consequences of those sins when He decided to create man.
Today, no one believes that the world was created in BC; but not so very long ago skepticism on this point was thought an abominable crime … It is no credit to the orthodox that they do not now believe all the absurdities that were believed years ago. The gradual emasculation of the Christian doctrine has been effected in spite of the most vigorous resistance, and solely as the result of the onslaughts of Freethinkers A, It is intellectual blindness not to recognize the revolutionary import of early Christianity, whatever the contemporary feeling concerning the sacrament of marriage may be, when it set itself like a wall against the tides of boundless sensuality and impressed upon the Roman world the sanctity of human life.
Kayden , 88 Contrary to what was often said about his personal life, it is also worth noting that Russell did not practice or defend a libertine ethic.
As Wood also notes, Perhaps the finest tribute to his success is that few people now even realize the nature of the old ideas. Russell, it must be repeated, was fighting a cruel and indefensible state of affairs where sexual ignorance was deliberately fostered, so a boy might think the changes of puberty were signs of some dreadful disease, and a girl might marry without knowing anything of what lay ahead of her on her bridal night; were women were taught to look on sex, not as a source of joy, but of painful matrimonial duty; where prudery went to the extent of covering the legs of pianos in draperies; where artificial mystery evoked morbid curiosity, and where humbug went hand in hand with unhappiness ….
Russell says much the same thing when he notes that Religion has three main aspects. In the second place there is theology. In the third place there is institutionalized religion, i.
Schilpp , —6. As Russell explains, Suppose, for instance, your child is ill. Love makes you wish to cure it, and science tells you how to do so.
There is not an intermediate stage of ethical theory, where it is demonstrated that your child had better be cured. Your act springs directly from desire for an end, together with knowledge of means. This is equally true of all acts, whether good or bad. Instead, they are positively frustrated: If theology is thought necessary to virtue and if candid inquirers see no reason to think the theology true, the authorities will set to work to discourage candid inquiry. In former centuries, they did so by burning the inquirers at the stake.
In Russia they still have methods which are little better; but in Western countries the authorities have perfected somewhat milder forms of persuasion. Of these, schools are perhaps the most important: the young must be preserved from hearing the arguments in favour of the opinions which the authorities dislike, and those who nevertheless persist in showing an inquiring disposition will incur social displeasure and, if possible, be made to feel morally reprehensible. A, Societies as well as individuals, says Russell, need to choose whether the good life is one that is guided by honest inquiry and the weighing of evidence, or by the familiarity of superstition and the comforts of religion.
Partly this is due to our need to understand nature, but equally important is our need to understand each other: The thing, above all, that a teacher should endeavor to produce in his pupils, if democracy is to survive, is the kind of tolerance that springs from an endeavor to understand those who are different from ourselves. One of the best summaries is given by Alan Wood: Russell sometimes maintained, partly I think out of perverseness, that there was no connection between his philosophical and political opinions.
This was perfectly legitimate, and even praiseworthy, in a world which never stays the same, and where changing circumstances continually change the balance of arguments on different sides. If they are successful, they carry out the behest of Power, becoming themselves as powerful, in terms of Mr. Victory in modern war depends primarily upon natural resources, industrial and scientific skill, and shrewdness in those who determine policy.
Of these requisites, skill and shrewdness are not so likely to be found among fanatics as among men whose outlook is more nearly scientific. Fanatics are unwilling to accept scientific discoveries made by their enemies, and therefore soon fall behind those whose outlook is more cosmopolitan. Some of those who fear that fanaticism is irresistible do so because they regard complete scepticism as the only alternative. The desirable alternative is not to be sceptical but to be scientific.
His creed, we must admit, is paralyzing, and a nation which accepts it is doomed to defeat, since it cannot adduce adequate motives for self-defence. But the scientific attitude is quite different. As against the sceptic, it holds that what has emerged from a scientific scrutiny is more likely to be true than what has not, and that in many cases this likelihood is almost certainty; in any event, it is the best hypothesis to accept in practice.
The dogmatist accepts one hypothesis regardless of the evidence; the sceptic rejects all hypotheses regardless of the evidence. Both are irrational. The rational man accepts the most probable hypothesis for the time being, while continuing to look for new evidence to confirm or confute it.
It is by acting in this way that man has acquired his power over nature, and that the scientific nations have acquired their power over the rest of mankind. The difference between a rational man and a dogmatist is not that the latter has beliefs and the former has none. The difference is as to the grounds of the beliefs and the way in which they are held.
The rational man is prepared to give reasons for his beliefs, and these reasons, except as regards values, are ultimately derived from observation of facts.
He will admit that his reasons are not absolutely conclusive, and that new facts may necessitate new beliefs. But he will be prepared to act upon a high degree of probability as vigorously as the dogmatist acts upon what he holds to be certainty. He has, moreover, one great advantage over the dogmatist. When the dogmatist is shown to be wrong—for example, by defeat in war—he suffers a total defeat which can never befall the rational man, who has always admitted that he may be mistaken.
Nothing can be more hopeless than a population of disillusioned bigots, who have lost the capacity to be rational, and have no longer any outlet but despair for their irrationality. Such a population has no power of self-direction, and little willingness to accept again the kind of direction from without which has been found to lead astray. The springs of action are dried up, and nothing remains but listless drifting. During the act of sensation i. In contrast, Russell believes we are also in possession of certain kinds of a priori knowledge.
These include the self-evident rules of logic, most important, and those of mathematics. Perceptual knowledge the knowledge of things and a priori knowledge the knowledge of truths work in concert: the first gives us empirical data, and the second tells us how to process that data.
Russell further divides human knowledge into knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. To be acquainted with something is to be directly and immediately aware of it, without the action of an intermediary. When you sit on a red plastic chair, you become acquainted with lots of sense-data associated with that chair. You know its redness, its smoothness, its coolness, and its hardness.
To know all that requires us to make inferences, based on our general knowledge of facts and on our acquaintance with other similar objects. Just as we can know objects either immediately or derivatively, we can also know truths immediately or derivatively. Russell defines immediate knowledge of truths as intuitive truths.
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