"[T]he "is" in "Scott is the author of Waverley" is the "is" of identity
and not of predication." -- Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism.
(cfr. the exegesis of this passage by Pears in his illuminating introduction
to Russell's rather colloquial notes delivered at Gordon Square and
published, just to irritate the board of editors, in (of all places), "The
Monist").
Omar was offering 'atom' as a lexeme that may have different senses.
Re-reading Russell's Philosophy of Logical Atomism, I am tempted to say that
Russell thought (wrongly, of course) that 'is', since Geary was mentioning
this, has two senses: what Russell calls the 'is' of predication and the 'is'
of identity. He does not use 'sense' but I sense this is what Russell
senses, as if he were to read in the Oxford dictionary: "TO BE". Sense 1:
identity. Sense 2: Predication.
Grice thought that Aristotle made the same mistake, and he didn't care.
What he did care was that G. E. L. Owen, in Oxford ("never mind good ole
Athens") was making the SAME mistake in "The snares of ontology" and decides to
repair Owen's mistake in "Aristotle on the multiplicity of being".
For that Grice distinguishes two corpuscules:
i. Socrates izzes human.
and
ii. Socrates hazzes blond.
"izzing" is like the 'is' of essential predication, while 'hazzing' is
not. If "is" LOOKS LIKE it has two senses for Russell that's because his
atomicity (i.e. capacity of analysis, ultimately) was 'relative' to Russell's
interests, whereas a more absolute approach to atomicity should yield better
(as Grice notes) results.
Cheers,
Speranza
In a message dated 9/16/2015 12:57:24 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
jejunejesuit.geary2@xxxxxxxxx writes:
Was it Macleish who said "a poem shouldn't mean, but be"? I agree whether
'twas he or not. And a poem BE in it's saying, not in what is said --
the said is said in the saying, but the poem is in the how and the now and
the wow of the words .
"[T]he "is" in "Scott is the author of Waverley" is the "is" of identity
and not of predication." -- Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism.
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