BR TO RALPH BARTON PERRY, 9 NOV. 1913
BRACERS 54129. ALS. Harvard U.
Proofread by K. Blackwell

Trin. Coll.1
9 Nov. ’13

Dear Professor Perry

I enclose a syllabus2 of my lectures on theory of knowledge. I don’t know whether you wished for something fuller. As for reading, I haven’t the least idea how much I ought to have put down — if the enclosed list is too long or too short, or in any other way unsuitable, please treat it merely as suggestions. In my lectures, B will be shorter than it should be, because I can’t arrive at satisfactory views on the subjects concerned; on the other hand, I shall have a lot to say about physics of sense-data and realism.

Would it suit you to discuss pragmatism and idealism before I come? Also if you would point out the weak spots in my armour, it might make things more interesting when I come. The Monist has delayed: a preliminary article will appear in January, but the one on “neutral monism”3 (i.e. James and you) will not appear till April.

As regards logic, I gather from Wiener that I can give symbolic stuff in moderation without any harm. I should propose, however, to give a good deal of stuff that would be new. There is a lot of fundamental philosophical stuff that I should like to make clear — it bears on the theory of descriptions and classes, which I think important. I should like to begin in some such way as this:

Names.
Predicates, Relations-in-intension. Indefinables in general.
Propositions and Facts: in a logically correct symbolism, the symbol for what is complex should contain the symbols for its components.
Propositional Functions.
Truth-functions: negation, disjunction, etc.
Descriptions.
Classes, Relations-in-extension.
Types: all except the first are fictions.

This will give the philosophy involved in Principia Mathematica, tho’ not as it is given there.

I hope those who read German in the logic class will read Freg’s Grundlagen and the introduction to his Grundgesetze. There is nothing else in any language, so far as I know, that is any good on philosophical logic. If Dr. Costello could teach the elements of the symbolism in Principia Matha., down to ∗21, or part of the way, it would save time.

Yours faithfully
Bertrand Russell.

• 1

  [document] Proofread against a photocopy of the original letter.

• 2

  syllabus Only the outline for Part II of the Theory of Knowledge lectures survives and is presumed to be part of the syllabus. It is Appendix A.7 of Papers 7.

• 3

  “neutral monism” Also published as Pt. I, Chap. II of Papers 7.