Anyone familiar with Russell’s work on the multiple-relation theory of judgment will at some point have puzzled over the map of the five-term understanding complex at the end of Chapter 1, Part II of his Theory of Knowledge (1913). Russell presents the map with the intention of clarifying what goes on when a subject S understands the “proposition” that A and B are similar. But the map raises more questions than it answers. In this paper I present and develop some of the central issues that arise from Russell’s map, and I offer an interpretation of it that reflects his evolving views in the manuscript. I argue that multiple lines in the map are not meant to represent many relations, but rather one comprehensive multiple relation of understanding. And I argue that such a relation relates in a complex way due to the distinctive nature of its relata.
This chapter radically redraws the relationship between Russell and Wittgenstein in the 1910s, overturning the orthodox theory that Wittgenstein sunk Russell’s multiple theory of judgement. Starting from 1903, the chapter explains how Russell’s conception of the particular–universal distinction evolved under pressure from both developments in his thinking about the nature of judgement and the nature of relations, concerning the unity of the former and the direction of the latter. This shows that Russell wasn’t overcome by Wittgenstein’s criticisms of his multiple relation theory of judgement in 1913 and that Russell continued to develop the multiple relation theory up until 1919.
A Historically Informed Defence of the Multiple-Relation Theory of Judgment [review of Samuel Lebens, Bertrand Russell and the Nature of Propositions: a History and Defense of the Multiple Relation Theory of Judgement]
