Copyright (C) 2019 Dennis Joe Darland
I have a few thoughts inspired upon starting to read Donald Jager’s The Development of Bertand Russell’s Philosophy. I also recently finished Hagar’s Continuity and Change in the Development of Russell’s Philosophy. I have been thinking about the nature of change. Early on, both Russell and Wittgenstein seemed to think of logical atoms or individuals as themselves persisting unchanged through time, but undergoing changes it their properties and relations to each other. They never seemed to conclude what these things were. They considered physical particles. But, at least now, we know (or at least believe) elementary particles in physics are created and annihilated. Also Kripke in his philosophy of possible worlds seems to consider judgments of identity to be possible across different possible worlds. I don’t see any way that could be possible – especially of “complex” entities such as people. The only possibility I see is the possible existence of the same sort of entities in different possible worlds. I am inclined to think of the “ultimate” entities as “events” or “actual occasions” (as Whitehead calls them). These do not persist through time. Rather they vanish and come into being through time. I believe Whitehead says there is a “becoming of continuity but not a continuity of becoming”. Also these are not simples. They are a complex outcome of the events in their past (as in the physics of relativity). Whitehead also attempted to account for the then very young science of quantum physics. I see no problem in applying logic here, but see no application to a world of unchanging simple entities.