Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

Several discussions of "The Problem of the Unity of the Proposition" have appeared recently which trace it to Bertrand Russell's Principles of Mathematics. In fact the "problem" is really a complex of different issues that confronted Russell, Frege and Wittgenstein. This paper aims to sort out those issues and indicate Russell's views on each based on some notes and letters in the Bertrand Russell Archives. I will discuss some ideas that have been presented as attempted solutions to the problem of the Unity of the Proposition: Frege's notion of concepts as unsaturated, his Context Principle, Russell's Multiple Relation Theory of Judgment and Wittgenstein's objections to it and a little known response by Dorothy Wrinch, and finally Russell's treatment of propositional attitude sentences in Appendix C of the second edition of Principia Mathematica. I will conclude with some speculation about why contemporary issues have led to this interest in Russell's "problem" by Richard Gaskin, Donald Davidson and Jeff King.