In
his Introduction, Russell says 'Every isolated passion is, in isolation,
insane; sanity may be defined as a synthesis of insanities', and then
he proceeds to give us examples of isolated insanities—the Queen of
Sheba as Female Vanity, Bowdler as Prudery, the Psycho-Analyst as Social
Conformity, and so on. Amongst these, as you noted, is the
Existentialist as Ontological Scepticism. Here, Russell's satire is
directed partly against what Sartre has called 'a literature of extreme
situations'; and this, for an Englishman, is no doubt a legitimate
target, since the English do not admit that there are such
things—though, of course, this makes the English a target for the satire
of the rest of Europe, particularly the French.
But what Russell is not
entitled to do is to group the insanity of doubting one's existence
along with the other insanities, and this for the simple reason that it precedes
them. One may be vain or modest; one may be prudish or broadminded; one
may be a social conformist or an eccentric; but in order to be any of these things, one must at least be. The question of one's existence must be settled first—one cannot be insanely vain if one doubts whether one exists at all and, precisely, Russell's existentialist does not even
succeed in suffering—except when his philosophy is impugned (but this
merely indicates that he has failed to apply his philosophy to itself,
and not, as Russell would have us believe, because he has failed to
regard his philosophy in the light of his other insanities). The trouble really is, that Russell does not, or rather will not, admit that existence poses a problem at all; and, since he omits this category from all his thinking nothing he says concerns anybody in particular.
It is
noteworthy that the one nightmare that did amuse me, that of the
Metaphysician, does in fact represent Russell's own personal nightmare—a
fear of discovering existence (for existence and the negative—'not'—go
hand in hand). But Russell has long ago firmly repressed this fear by
harsh logical measures, and it only shows its head when he is off his
logical guard. Once upon a time, Russell said 'Whatever A may be, it
certainly is'; but that was in 1903. Since then Russell has learned
sanity (his own brand), and has declared (in 1919) 'It is of
propositional functions that you can assert or deny existence'. In other
words, Russell holds that you can assert 'lions exist', and that this means
'"X is a lion" is sometimes true', but that if you say 'this lion
exists' you have said something meaningless. From this it follows that
Russell regards the assertion 'I exist' as a meaningless utterance, and
this allows him to regard the existentialist as a lunatic.
It is no doubt true that the assertions, 'I exist', 'I do not exist', and so on, are meaningless, but only in the eyes of one who is no longer a puthujjana. And, even then, they are not meaningless in Russell's sense. According to one of the Commentaries, the Buddha once said that 'all puthujjanas are mad', and from this point of view the puthujjana's doubts about his existence are insanity. But this is not Russell's point of view, since he is still a puthujjana.
Together with existence, Russell has removed the word 'not' from Logic
(even if he does not go so far as his metaphysician Bumblowski, who has
expelled it from his ordinary language). Russell came to the conclusion
(I speak from memory) that to say 'A is not B', where A and B are
individual things, is illegitimate; what one should say is '"A is B" is
false'. Thus, instead of exists and not, Russell has true and false; but whereas the first pair applies to things, the second pair applies to facts—it is only of propositions that you can assert the truth or the falsity. (For the significance of this replacement of things by facts—it is the foundation of positivism—I would refer you to note (f) of the Preface to the Notes.)
I may say that I enjoyed Russell's idea of a special department of Hell
for those philosophers who have refuted Hume—this is one of the few
points about which I agree with Russell (but does it not make nonsense
of Russell's whole philosophy of the acceptance of 'scientific common
sense'? Russell would be only too happy to be able to refute Hume).
I was
interested by the Mathematician's Nightmare, but for quite a different
reason. There, you will remember, Professor Squarepoint has a vision in
which all the numbers come to life and dance a ballet. Amongst these
numbers there is one that refuses to be disciplined, and insists on
coming forward. It is 137,[1]
and this number is the cosmic number that Sir Arthur Eddington found to
be at the base of physics. Now it so happened that I used to be
interested in Eddington's interest in this apparently rather
undistinguished number, perhaps even because it is so
undistinguished in every other respect. And it happened that my interest
in this number enabled me, indirectly, to write FUNDAMENTAL STRUCUTRE.
Although, now, I have entirely lost my interest in 137, and although it
plays no part in my description of Fundamental Structure, yet it is not
difficult to trace it in the Notes. In §I/9,
I say that the structure of a thing of certain complexity is
represented by {mosimage}. This is arrived at by purely phenomenological
description (i.e. in the reflexive description of experience
as such). Now, Eddington (I reproduce his arguments as far as I remember
them) says that this figure represents the structure of a 'particle'
(in nuclear physics).[a]
Now, so long as Eddington sticks to the figure above as the structure
of a 'particle' he remains (whether he knows it or not) within the field
of phenomenology (which requires an 'observer' as well as an
'observed'—like the 'subject' and 'object' in phassa). But
Eddington is a quantum physicist, and must treat his results with
scientific objectivity (which eliminates the 'observer' or 'subject'—see
the last footnote
to the Preface), and so he must do away with himself. How does he do
it? Answer: by putting another 'particle', similar to the first, to take
his place. Eddington then quietly retires, leaving a relationship between two identical 'particles'.
To find out the nature of this relationship we simply have to multiply
the two 'particles' together. Since each 'particle' has 10 o's and 6
x's, simple arithmetic gives us 100 oo's, 36 xx's, and 120 xo's (or
ox's). For some reason that I now forget, we ignore the unlike pairs
(xo's and ox's), and consider only the oo's and xx's. Added together
these come to 136. And this, so it seems, is the number of degrees of freedom of the electron.
But there is a snag: since the two particles we multiplied together are
absolutely indistinguishable in all respects, we can never know, in any
calculation, whether we have got them the right way round or not. So
one extra degree of freedom has to be added to compensate for our
uncertainty. The total number is therefore 137. (I am afraid, perhaps,
that these pages may be something of 'The District Judge's Nightmare';
but there's nothing in them of any importance whatsoever.)
In any case, thank you for sending the book, which both satisfied my curiosity and exercised my critical faculty.
Footnote:
[73.a] I do not allow the validity of the arguments he uses to derive this figure; such, for example, as the postulate that a given particle A has an equal chance of existing or of not
existing. This strange assumption, which has currency neither with
Russell nor with me, has as its immediate consequence the remarkable
conclusion that exactly the same number of things exist as do not exist.
(Whatever one may think of this, it is apparently good currency in
quantum theory, if we are to judge from the following utterance by
Dirac: 'We may look upon these unoccupied states as holes among the
occupied ones.... The holes are just as much physical things as the
original particles....' [PQM, p. 252] But it must be remembered that quantum theory is an ad hoc
system made to account for the observed facts and produce results. So
long as it does this [and it does it only rather imperfectly] nobody
bothers about whether it is intelligible or not.)