Contemporary Philosophy: Bertrand Russell and G. Moore Essay

Introduction

Analytic philosophy and logics are the closely related branches of the human thought. Logics presents formulas of the correct thought development, while the analytic philosophy puts these formulas into practice. The two most notable representatives of these branches are Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore respectively. This paper will analyze the role of the logics and analytic philosophy in the overall philosophical ideas of these authors, and consider the impact of Gottlob Frege’s ideas upon the philosophy of Bertrand Russell.

Main body

To start with, it is necessary to state that Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970) is the famous British philosopher, logician and mathematician who established the integral connection between mathematical and logical ideas (Bailie, 2002). Accordingly, the role of the symbolic logics is crucial in the development of his philosophical thought. To exemplify this, the so-called “Russell’s Paradox” and the defending logicism can be mentioned. The former is the idea according to which any set of objects can not be its own member. On the contrary, if the set is such a member in itself, it inevitably stops being the member of itself. The defending logicism, however, is a more logical idea stating that all mathematical symbols can be used as the units of logical assumptions, as well as all the mathematical operations with numbers and functions can be used to interpret the logical ideas. According to this logicism, Russell put logics above mathematics making the latter only a subdivision of logics (Bailie, 2002).

Thus, it is obvious that the symbolic logics played the crucial role in the philosophy by Bertrand Russell. However, the influence of the ideas by Gottlob Frege is also obvious in his work. Mr. Frege was a confident defender of the reciprocal importance of mathematics for logics and vice versa. Accordingly, the defending logicism by Russell is the development of the Frege’s ideas (Bailie, 2002).

Further on, the philosophy by G. E. Moore is another prominent direction of the human thought on the edge of the 19^th and 20^th centuries. G. E. Moore (1873 – 1958) is a famous British philosopher who gained the majority of his fame due to his consideration of common sense. One of the most notable works by this author is The Defense of the Common Sense. In this work, G. E. Moore develops the set of ideas, called truisms, about the objective and obvious phenomena of the reality that most philosophers tend to deny (Moore, 2004).

In more detail, the truisms by G. E. Moore are obvious truths that most people consider to be self-evident. For example, the author considers such phenomena as the actual existence of the Earth, existence of his own physical body and the existence of the bodies of all other human beings. Moreover, G. E. Moore divides the understanding of these truisms into several levels stating that, firstly, he certainly knows that they are true; secondly, that he exists in the world, and thirdly, that other people know these truisms and realize that they objectively exist in the world (Moore, 2004).

Conclusion

To conclude, it is obvious that the ideas by Bertrand Russell and G. E. Moore contributed greatly to the development of the modern philosophy. The roles played by the symbolic logics and analytic philosophy in their works are also obvious. Mr. Russell is known first of all as a logician and the author of the Russell’s Paradox. At the same time, the works by G. E. Moore are widely recognized as the basics of the analytic philosophy.

References

Bailie, J. (2002). Contemporary Analytic Philosophy: Core Readings. Prentice Hall, 2^nd Edition.

Moore, G. E. (2004). Philosophical Papers. Routledge; 1^st Edition.