BERTRAND RUSSELL
Sir-Mr. Mouat asks: Who has. grasped the meaning of the word "is’’? The answer is: Anyone who has traded his common sense for a sceptical philosophy such as Bertrand Russell’s. Russell has asserted that the use of "is" to express both predication and is a disgrace to the-human race. For him the word is merely a link between concepts in the. mind and has no objective reference. For the commonsense person it has objective reference and asserts an objective identity, e.g., in the statement: "Whisky is an intoxicating drink." ‘The commonsense person understands quite well the difference between this statement and its contradictory, "Whisky is not an _ intoxicating drink." I fear that irritating smile at Russell’s comments on Socrates, Plato and Aristotle broadened somewhat when I read Mr, Mouat’s "refutation" of a number of statements I made, e.g., that 99.9 per cent. of humanity admit causation. Few logicians will agree that Mr. Mouat has "sufficiently answered" these state-
ments by simply referring to "Uncle Toby’s Argumentun? Fistulatorium," I must thank Mr. Mouat for expounding so clearly the theory of ethical relativism which he shares with Bertrand Russell. It is interesting to learn that he holds treachery to truth to be mor ally reprehensible for Englishmen, but not fecessarily for "the lesser breeds without the law," because, as he puts it, "morals depend on the people they belong to." This idea was put forward by Russell’s prototype, Protagoras, and refuted by Plato in the dialogue of that name. According to the relativist theory, if you fall in with the code of your social group, your conduct will be morally good. This means that /if: you are a Thug, as Mr. Mouat explains, "it will not be immoral. to steal or to murder." And if you are a Nazi, I suppose, you may obey the Nazi code and exterminate every Jew you can. And if the Nazi-code prescribes treachery to truth, then treachery to truth will not be morally reprehensible. I fear that Mr. Mouat has yet to show on other than Theistic grounds that treachery to eS is morally ; reprehensible,
G.H.
D.
(Greenmeadows).
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 530, 19 August 1949, Page 5
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354BERTRAND RUSSELL New Zealand Listener, Volume 21, Issue 530, 19 August 1949, Page 5
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