Thoughts, propositions, and unities : a historical and critical examination

Abstract

This thesis examines the impact of early analytical philosophy on issues that, in turn, impact on work in current philosophy of language and mind. The contribution made by the thesis is therefore twofold: firstly it addresses exegetical issues regarding the origins of the analytical tradition and, secondly, extracts from this study insights into the current state of the philosophies of language and mind. I begin by discussing Frege's revolutionary work in logic and isolate three doctrines which I hold to be essential to the philosophical study of content: the independence of thoughts from the psychological process of thinking, the distinction between sense and reference, and the recognition that thoughts are structured unities. The thesis explores, defends, and develops these three notions and argues, ultimately, that any attempt to provide a philosophical account of thought and meaning must make provision for these concerns.

The thesis divides into five chapters, following a historical and thematic course. Chapter one introduces the central doctrines of Frege's philosophy and those of Russell's Principles of Mathematics. The problem of the unity of the proposition is introduced and the differing approaches to the problem offered by Frege and Russell are compared and evaluated. Chapter two examines in detail Russell's attempts to overcome the paradoxes of set theory in his development of the logical theory of Principia Mathematica. Special attention is given to the role of the theory of descriptions and the substitutional theory of classes and relations, as well as the later ramified theory of types and multiple relation theory of judgement, exploring how the problem of the unity of the proposition plays a pivotal role in determining the successes and failures of these approaches. These issues are further developed in chapter three by examining Wittgenstein's criticisms of Russell's logical theory and the subsequent development of Wittgenstein's own solution to these problems in his Tractatus Logic-Philosophicus.

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