I agree with Russell's use of only giving denotations to things which exist to be able to talk intelligently/intelligibly about things that do not exist or are outside of personal experience (ie the largest prime number). This variability that Russell describes (Russell 1905, 480) seems very intuitive in that intelligent and intelligible conversations can include variability since we say things like "It depends..." and can talk about abstracts which are essentially variables. This seems like an adequate explanation of how to talk about nonexistent things while at the same time being a reasonable trait of language.
I somewhat disagree with what Russell has to say about identity concerning Scott and Waverley (Russell 1905, 492). By appending the "y is identical with Scott" onto the end of the statement, it still seems that any question about Scott and the authorship of Waverley could still turn into "Is Scott Scott?"
ONe question I had was whether or not the null category is still a thing in Russell's view. He mentions that it becomes the set containing no things, but does that mean it is still a set or does it become a non-thing itself? Since Russell brings up what the null category becomes in his view, I expected something more about what roll it had, if any. Am I missing something here, or is it really left ambiguous?
--André Robert
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