Russell and the Universalist Conception of Logic

Russell is often said to have shared with Frege a distinctively “universalist” conception of logic.1 This supposed feature of his view is commonly taken to mark a deep contrast with contemporary conceptions of logic, and to be something from which important consequences flow. But although the universalist interpretation has been widely endorsed, its precise content remains elusive, and its accuracy, consequently, open to question.2 One sign of this elusiveness is the proliferation of glosses on the claim that for Russell “logic is universal.” Some commentators have meant by this that for Russell logic is a “universally applicable theory,”3 others, that it constitutes a “universal language,”4 still others, that its laws are “maximally general truths,”5 or that its principles are “all-encompassing.”6 Given such a wide variety of glosses, one has to wonder whether there can really be a single, unitary conception at which they all aim. If not, one wonders which of these characterizations, if any, latches on to something important and interestingly distinctive in Russell’s way of thinking about logic. The present essay is an attempt to investigate these questions. Its method will be to try to tease out the various ideas touched on in these glosses and to compare the results with Russell’s actual statements and commitments. Although the investigation is primarily historical, a number of substantive issues will be at stake: What are the prospects for using a conception of logic as “the body of maximally general truths” as a way of demarcating this science? Is it true, as some commentators have claimed, that universalism about logic carries with it a commitment to the unintelligibility or impossibility of metalogical theorizing?7 In what sense, if any, ought logic to be conceived of as “the most general of the sciences”? My immediate goal in addressing these questions will be to arrive at a clearer view of Russell’s conception of