Notes on Logic: Difference between revisions

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Russell's "complexes" were to have the useful property of being compounded, and were to combine with this the agreeable property that they could be treated like "simples". But this alone makes them unserviceable as logical types (forms), since there would then have been significance in asserting, of a simple, that it was complex. But a ''property'' cannot be a logical type.
Russell's "complexes" were to have the useful property of being compounded, and were to combine with this the agreeable property that they could be treated like "simples". But this alone makes them unserviceable as logical types (forms), since there would then have been significance in asserting, of a simple, that it was complex. But a ''property'' cannot be a logical type.


A false theory of relations makes it easily seem as if the relation of fact and constituent were the same as that of fact and fact-which­follows-from-it. But there is a similarity of the two, expressible thus: φa . ⊃<sub>φ,α</sub>.a = a.
A false theory of relations makes it easily seem as if the relation of fact and constituent were the same as that of fact and fact-which­-follows-from-it. But there is a similarity of the two, expressible thus: <span class="nowrap">φa . ⊃<sub>φ,α</sub>.a = a.</span>


Every statement about complexes can be resolved into the logical sum of a statement about the constituents and a statement about the proposition which describes the complex completely. [''Cf.'' 2.0201.] How, in each case, the resolution is to be made, is an important question, but its answer is not unconditionally necessary for the construction of logic. To repeat: every proposition which seems to be about a complex can be analysed into a proposition about its constituents and about the proposition which describes the complex perfectly; i.e. that proposition which is equivalent to saying the complex exists.
Every statement about complexes can be resolved into the logical sum of a statement about the constituents and a statement about the proposition which describes the complex completely. [''Cf.'' 2.0201.] How, in each case, the resolution is to be made, is an important question, but its answer is not unconditionally necessary for the construction of logic. To repeat: every proposition which seems to be about a complex can be analysed into a proposition about its constituents and about the proposition which describes the complex perfectly; i.e. that proposition which is equivalent to saying the complex exists.