ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book shows that the time is past when logicians could write about Bertrand Russell’s logic in ignorance of Russell’s nonlogical works. Many philosophers seem unaware that Russell had any views on the subject of modality at all, or think he disliked it. The book describes five logical howlers Russell’s theory of modality seems to commit, including several Alfred Jules Ayer, Nicholas Rescher, Raymond Bradley, and Timothy Sprigge actually accuse Russell of. It suggests that Russell anticipated Saul Kripke’s modal logic by over seventy years, and influenced Kripke via Carnap and Evert Willem Beth. Modal logicians have criticized Russell’s logic for being too limited to accommodate their ideas. Russell’s idea is simple: to use notions of ordinary quantificational logic to define and analyze away modal notions.
