[Corpora-List] minimal changes in a paragraph (based on a corpus as it appeared)

[John F. Sowa]

On 8/9/2011 7:39 AM, Krishnamurthy, Ramesh wrote:
> I don’t understand Russell’s assertion: “a perfectly logical natural
> language will contain only grammar words and no vocabulary items”.

Russell and Frege were brilliant logicians who were hopelessly confused
about the nature and structure of natural languages.  Frege's goal
was "to break the domination of the word over the human spirit by
laying bare the misconceptions that through the use of language often
almost unavoidably arise concerning the relations between concepts"
(from his _Begriffsschrift_, 1879).

What Russell meant is that NLs should look like predicate calculus:
only logical connectives in the base language, and all content terms
in whatever predicates the user defined.

But please don't blame all logicians for the narrowness of Frege and
Russell.  Whitehead had no sympathy with Russell's philosophy.  For
the second edition of the _Principia Mathematica_, Russell inserted
a lengthy introduction based on his own logical atomism.  Whitehead
sent a letter to _Mind_ saying that he had no part in preparing the
second edition, and he did not want his name associated with it.

John

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