James Levine

I distinguish three periods in Russell’s philosophical development: the Moorean period, following his break with Idealism around 1899 through his attending the Paris conference in August 1900 at which he saw Peano; the period following the Paris conference through his prison stay in 1918; and his post-prison period, in which he becomes concerned with the nature of language as such. I argue that while the topic of vagueness becomes an explicit theme in his post-1918 writings, his view that ordinary language is vague plays a central role in his post-Peano practice and characterization of analysis. On the Moorean view, analysis is intended to make explicit what is already “present to the mind” of anyone who understands the relevant sentence prior to analysis; post-Peano and pre-prison, Russell presents analysis as making precise what was previously vague; post-prison, he denies that any language is precise, so that analysis involves a transition only from the more to the less vague. I ...

... In particular, for Geach, the thought expressed by the sentence 'Fa' is the value of the function (the sense) expressed by the predicate 'F' given the argument (the sense) expressed by the ... The complete part of a sentence I call a proper name, the unsaturated part a concept-name ...