BR TO O.S. WAUCHOPE, 21 MAY 1945
BRACERS 54105. ALS. McMaster
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Grosvenor Lodge, Babraham Rd.,
Cambridge.
21 May 1945

Dear Sir

I have read the whole of the typescript you sent me. I think it shows very considerable philosophical ability, especially if, as I assume, you have not gone through the process of training by which professional philosophers are usually manufactured. But I do not think that your theories are all valid.

You ask in particular my opinion of §122, on Number. I think that here, as sometimes elsewhere, you confused noticing with what is noticed; you use “number” and “numbering” as synonyms. Also “number” is a general concept of which the instances are 0, 1, 2, 3, … , not a certain unit, a certain couple, a certain trio, etc. I think you bring in “consciousness” where it is irrelevant. There is a value of n for which the statement “There are n pigs in Yugoslavia” is true. I don’t know what the value of n is, and perhaps no one knows, but yet propositions of the above form are false for all values of n except one.

I like what you say about the trial of a murderer, and about ethical matters generally. I do not know whether you have access to a good library; if you have, there are some books that I could recommend. At the moment I don’t know how to return your typescript, but I will return it when I can.

Yours sincerely
Bertrand Russell.

§101. Good.

§103. Here begins what seems to me an error, running through much of the discussion, viz. that true-or-false, as opposed to more-or-less-valid, is an analytic matter, belonging to logic. I think “true” must apply to empirical propositions, not only to tautologies.

§106. “If you have already decided that a proposition is valid, it is logical to say that its contradictory is untrue.” Not if “untrue” means “self-contradictory”.

§107. “All hens eat corn” is not only about all hens, but about everything. It says: “Everything in the universe either is not a hen or else eats corn” [non-exclusive “or”]. To suggest, as you do, another use of “all”, in which it means “all observed hens have eaten corn”, seems useless. You use copper for telephone wires, not because previously observed copper conducted electricity, but because you believe this copper will. It is only as generating this belief that past observations are relevant.

§108. I don’t think this will do. What happens in my consciousness is irrelevant. The electricity travels along the wire (or does not do so) regardless of what I think.

As for the sum of the angles of a triangle being two right angles, this is now regarded as empirical and only approximate.