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Bertrand Russell is often viewed as having been a phenomenalist in, as well as after, his 1914 work Our Knowledge of the External World. Yet in an interview with Elisabeth Ramsden Eames, Russell declared that he had never given up either realism or the causal theory of perception. Irem Kurstal Steen explains how these two facts can be reconciled in her article ‘Russell on Matter and Our Knowledge of the External World’, which she first presented at the BRS annual meeting this past June in Plymouth, New Hampshire. The article carefully disentangles several of the threads running through Russell’s work in those years to clarify what Russell was up to in his 1914 work. Whether this is your first reading of Our Knowledge of the External World or your fiftieth, you will find this article useful for understanding what is going on in this text. While Ms. Steen debunks the charge of phenomenalism in Russell’s 1914 work, Ray Perkins selects and introduces another of russell's letters to the editor—this one, a previously unpublished letter to the London Times written in May 1960. The letter contains one of Russell’s earliest proposals that Britain unilaterally give up its nuclear weapons. Some scholars—for example, Ray Monk—have said that Russell advocated unilateralism only under the “pernicious” influence of Ralph Schoenman. But Russell wrote this letter before he had met Schoenman, a fact that tells against the view that without Schoenman’s influence, Russell would not have adopted unilateralism. As an added bonus, Russell’s devastating wit is on full display in this letter. Ludwig Wittgenstein's views on art have in the past been a small sideshow in the long-running Wittgenstein circus—little-studied, and poorly understood. Several recent anthologies on Wittgenstein and aesthetics have attempted to rectify this situation and move the sideshow closer to the main ring in the Big Top. In this issue, Eran Guter reviews one of those recent anthologies, Wittgenstein, Aesthetics, and Philosophy (edited by Peter Lewis), clarifies some of the reasons why scholars have tended to mishandle the notion of aesthetics in Wittgenstein’s early and late works, gives us a good survey of the articles in the anthology, and points us in the direction he feels the field needs to go next. Is the intellectualism and rationality that characterizes Russell’s familiar objections to religious and Christian belief necessarily hostile to a treatment of religious belief styled after William James? This is the question that lies behind ‘At Cross Purposes: Atheism and Christianity’, a review of Michael Martin’s recent book Atheism, Morality, and Meaning. In this review, Rosalind Carey muses over the role of meta-beliefs—beliefs about believing—in shaping the seemingly peculiar way beliefs are sometimes held by religious believers as she reflects on the current state of the dialogue between theists and atheists.
Finally, Chad Trainer reviews Alan Schwerwin's recent collection of essays on Russell, Bertrand Russell on Nuclear War, Peace, and Language. Those who have not yet seen Alan’s book will get a very clear picture of its content in Chad’s survey of its articles here. And rounding out this issue of the Quarterly is information on next spring’s BRS Annual Meeting, news of the recent Society election for BRS Board of Directors, Nick Griffin’s ‘On Denoting’ conference report on the centennial celebration conference for ‘On Denoting’, the Traveler’s Diary/Conference Report, Treasurer’s Reports, and other Society News.
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