ABSTRACT
Russell’s views both about the nature of analysis and about the analysis of belief were coloured – and, I think, vitiated – by his confusions about the notion of a proposition. He provides an interesting case history for the student of propositions since he was a prey to just those puzzles about their nature which have beset most investigators of the notion. Like them, he was torn between the reasons for identifying propositions and sentences and the reasons for distinguishing them. It is these reasons that I wish to discuss in the present chapter. Any attempt, however, to delineate his views is doubly difficult because he was, admirably, a changeable and, less admirably, a careless writer; careless both in that he neither took much care to be nor, apparently, cared much about being consistent even within the same piece of writing. The dating of the references shows his explicit changes of view; but they also show, I feel, that no consistent pattern of change can be found.
