Completing the Rejection of Idealism
This chapter shows how Russell’s rejection of modality rounds out his criticism of Bradleyan idealism. Russell’s argument against internal relations by itself is not a fully satisfying criticism of Bradley’s idealism, because it doesn’t show what exactly is wrong with Bradley’s arguments against the reality of relations. I show that several of Bradley’s arguments, including not only his famous regress argument against the reality of relations, but also his rejection of psychological atomism and his account of the philosophical method that leads to idealism, rest on a tacit modal principle of sufficient reason. In 1905-7, Russell became aware of this unacknowledged ground of Bradley’s arguments. Bradley’s tacit principle of sufficient reason presupposes the coherence of a distinction between the actual and the merely possible, and collapses in face of Russell’s amodalism.