III. The originality of Jones’ thought 1. Does Jones Anticipate Frege

III. THE ORIGINALITY OF JONES’ THOUGHT 1. Does Jones Anticipate Frege?

In his earlier works, Begriffsschrifi33 and Grundlagen der Arithmetic Gottlob Frege analyzed quantified sentences based upon simpler sen-tences, but had not yet analyzed the distinction that he later became famous for. In 1892 Frege published the article “Uber Sinn und Bedeutung”35 (“On Sense and Reference”); in a prestigious German phi-losophy journal. There he articulated a view of identity analogous to Jones’ “identity in diversity.” The following year in Grundgesetze der Arithmetic begrijfsschriftlich abgeleitet36 Frege expanded on some of the more technical aspects of the view that he believed he had originated. Frege is usually credited with being the first to develop a theory of meaning of propositional identity that offers an account of sense and reference, or in Jones’ evolving taxonomy: qualitiveness and quantitiveness (1890), connotation and denotation (1892), intension and extension (1898), intension and denotation (1905, 1908). Frege asks whether identity is a relationship between things, or between the meanings of the names or signs of things, or between the names of things and the referent (denotation) of the names? The famous example he uses is that of the evening star and the morning star. The sense of “the evening star” is different from the sense of “the morning star.” Moreover, the names “evening star” and “morning star” are different. Yet, “evening star” and “morning star” have the same referent. Both names have different meanings but have the same referent, the planet Venus. Clearly, the “evening star” is not identical to “the morning star” if what we are asking is a question about the names (or signs). As symbols, “the evening star” and “the morning star” also connote different meanings. To paraphrase what Jones wrote in 1890: “There is a relationship of identity of denotation (the planet Venus) in diversity of intension (the ‘evening star’ and ‘morning star’).”

2. Does Jones Anticipate Russell?

Russell’s focus in Principles of Mathematics is on demonstrating the logical foundations of mathematics. Where Jones would have referred to names standing in a proposition and having denotation and connotation, or intension and extension, Russell referred instead to class- concepts:

Two class concepts need not be identical when their extensions are so: man and featherless biped are by no means identical, and no more are even prime and integer between 1 and 3.37

Or, as Jones might have said it: two terms can be understood to express non-identical qualities even though they have the same extension. To assert that man is identical to a featherless biped is to assert identity of denotation in diversity of intension. More important, it is to make a significant assertion that cannot be made by saying man is man or featherless bipeds are featherless bipeds. The correspondence between Jones’ theory of identity as identity of denotation in diversity of intention, and Russell’s view in Principles of Mathematics is clear. Russell says:

But the question arises: Why is it ever worth while to affirm identity? This question is answered by the theory of denoting. If we say “Edward VII is the King,” we assert an identity; the reason why this assertion is worth making is, that in the one case the actual term occurs, while in the other a denoting concept takes its place.38

It is clear that at this time in his philosophical development, Russell sees identity as significant (“worthwhile” is what he says) when an identity statement is of the form A = B. But Russell also acknowledges that the traditional formulation of the law of identity as A = A is also necessary for logic.39 (Jones never denies this; however her focus is on the “significant” assertion of identity in A = B.)

How might Russell’s theory of identity have developed into one that was analogous to that repeatedly previously articulated in depth by Jones? Jones and Russell had numerous mutual connections. Most obvious of these is that she was a faculty member at Girton College, Cambridge while he was a student at Trinity College, Cambridge. Bertrand Russell began studying at Cambridge in October 1890, the year that Jones,

while as Lecturer in Moral Sciences at Girton College published her Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions. Both worked on matters of common interest: the law of identity and the philosophy of Lotze. Both attended McTaggart’s lectures: Jones, the widely reviewed40 co-translator of Lotze’s Mikrocosmus, attending McTaggart’s Hegel Lectures; Russell attending McTaggart’s 1898 Lotze lectures. Both had close professional relationships with the same philosophers at Cambridge including Stout, Keynes, Sidgwick, Ward, and McTaggart. With this much in common, could Russell, who forsook Mathematics for Philosophy, who abandoned geometry for logic and philosophy of language, be not the least intrigued by the ideas of a Cambridge analytic philosopher whose work was so admired by his own philosophical mentors (especially Ward, Sidgwick and McTaggart), and who held the respect of the some of the greatest philosophers at Cambridge? Jones had become a member of the Aristotelian Society in 1892. Her works and her ideas must have been exceptionally well-received there, for item eight on the Society’s published list of a dozen suggested subjects for papers for its sixteenth session (1894) reads:

Lotze’s theory of Thought and Reality (with Jones’ “Philosophy of

Lotze”).

In 1896, Jones was named Vice-Mistress of Girton College. Her Elements of Logic had become so well known beyond England that a copy of it was acquired by Miami University of Ohio that same year, the year that Bertrand Russell joined the Aristotelian Society. An adver-tisement for the Aristotelian Society Proceedings Old Series Volume IV, No. 2, 1896 lists both Jones and Russell as giving papers that were published in that issue. This usually means that both papers were given at the same session. However, that issue was never published as part of the Proceedings, rather, its papers appeared in Mind which incorporated the Proceedings for a brief time.

In 1897 Russell, back from Germany and the United States, completed his dissertation “An Essay on the Foundations of Geometry.” In it, he adopts a view regarding measurable and non-measurable theoretical geometry that holds that in order to make judgments about geometric projections we must be able to apprehend the projection as the simultaneous presentation of diverse content. According to Griffin and Lewis: 

Russell follows Bradley in holding that all judgment (and thus all knowledge and belief) involves identity-in-diversity, though he differs from Bradley in thinking that this requires a plurality of diverse things or contents.41

But what of Bradley is Russell following? Certainly not the early Bradley whom Jones quoted, who conflated equation and identity. According to Russell in My Philosophical Development,42 his early ideas on identity in diversity are from page 519 of the second edition of Bradley’s Appearance and Reality. The first edition of this work was in 1893, and the second, revised edition appeared in 1897. This means that the second, revised edition, appeared in time for Russell to take Bradley’s views into account while preparing his dissertation. And it is the second edition that Russell specifically cites as influencing him towards identity in diversity. Yet, both editions of Bradley appeared long following Jones’ initial publication of her view on identity in diver-sity in 1890, and following her second expression of it in 1892. Bradley’s second edition appeared after Jones’ reiteration of her view at the Aristotelian Society Symposium (with Mann and Stout) in 1893.43 Was Bradley indebted to Jones, and Russell through him? That is possible, for the correction Jones made to Bradley is more on the order of urging Bradley to clear up some confusion between equality and identity that would then permit Bradley to adopt identity in diversity as an analysis of logical identity. He followed her suggestion.

No account would be complete of the many opportunities for Russell to know of Jones’ work while he was at Cambridge unless we consider the participation of both in the Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club (hereafter as CUMC). Three years following the publication of Elements of Logic and only one year following the publication of An Introduction to General Logic, Jones attended Miss Sidney Webb’s pre-sentation of “The Economic Basis of Trade Unionism,” to the CUMC. This is the first recorded instance of women presenting papers at the CUMC (indeed, the first recorded mention of women attending as guests). The records of the club are erratic and from what is reported of them by Pitt44 attendance by Jones and Russell may well have coincided. Both were concurrently active (she as guest and presenter, he as member and presenter). According to Pitt, who included Jones among three “senior people” (along with Moore and Johnson) of CUMC, the avail-able records show that Jones attended one meeting in 1894, and at least 

three in 1895. Russell was travelling in Europe and the United States during this period. The records also show that Jones presented a paper in 1899 on Ward’s naturalism and agnosticism in McTaggart’s rooms with Sidgwick in the chair, a paper on Moore’s view of Ward in November of 1900, and a paper on Moore’s account of hedonism on February 16,

1906. In “Monistic Theory of Truth” written in 1906 Russell was still defending identity in diversity.45

A letter to Russell dated August 28, 1909 from his friend and former student Philip Jourdain, apparently remarked that Russell’s earlier ideas on identity expressed in Principles of Mathematics had been anticipated not originally by Frege’s distinction between sense and reference in 1892 “Uber Sinn und Bedeutung” (as acknowledged by Russell in Principles), but by Jones in 1890,46 as evidenced by Keynes in his Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic, 1906. On September 5, 1909, as he is frantically tying up loose ends on Principia Mathematica where he will revise the earlier view, Russell responds:

It would seem, from what you say in your letter, that Miss Jones’s distinction of signification and denotation must be much the same as Frege’s Sinn and Bedeutung. But of course some such distinction is a commonplace of logic, and everything turns on the form given to the distinction. I have neither Keynes nor Miss Jones here, or I would have looked up the point.47

This remark is clever for it suggests that Russell was ignorant of Jones’s 1890 and 1892 books as well as of her later papers and Keynes’ citation to her work. On closer reading, however, what Russell says is that he doesn’t have the books with him. On that account, a proper response to Jourdain would have been that he would have someone else “look up the point.” Even if we allow the former possibility, it is con-ceivable that, as a regular contributor to Mind, he would have overlooked Jones’ 1898 article, “The Paradox of Logical Inference.”48 Likewise, it is conceivable that he remained ignorant of her views when, as a member of the Aristotelian Society, he would have received copies of the Proceedings containing her papers “The Meaning of Sameness” (1900/1901)49 as well as her widely discussed “The Import of Categorical Propositions” (1901/1902)?50 And even if Russell had vowed never to look at anything written by Jones, would he not have been familiar with Keynes’ Studies and Exercises in Formal Logic of 1906, where Keynes, too, as Jones later mentioned “... has practically adopted it”?51 

The earlier publications by Jones afforded Russell an opportunity to acknowledge her as the originator of the law of identity in diversity by the time of the publication in 1903 of his Principles of Mathematics. The Keynes book and Jones’ works presented between 1903 and October, 1909 when the manuscript of Principia Mathematica was delivered to press, would have afforded Russell opportunity to mention Jones’ (as well as Frege’s) anticipation of views on identity that he and Whitehead were about to revise.

In a 1907 article “Logic and Identity in Difference” (in the Aristotelian Society Proceedings) Jones offers brief, but stinging criticisms of the lack of clarity in Russell’s “On the Nature of Truth.” In her 1908 article “Precise and Numerical Identity,” (in Mind) she gives a passing nod to Russell and Moore. But it was not until 1910 that Jones really decided to take on the Hon. B. Russell in print. She published a criticism of Russell, “Mr. Russell’s Objections to Frege’s Analysis of Propositions” where she defended Frege’s view, which she recognized as consistent with her own.52 Next, on December 2, 1910, Jones read “Categorical Propositions and the Law of Identity” before the CUMC. Jones’ 1910 paper to the CUMC came just at the time of Russell’s final preparation for publication of Principia Mathematica with Whitehead, where Russell’s earlier view is definitely revised. As far as we have determined, Jones never published a paper by this title, but from her later mention53 of Russell’s reply to it, it appears to have been published in Mind, as “A New ‘Law of Thought’ and its Implications.”54 In that article, she made mention of Russell’s newly revised view of propositional identity. In March of the following year, Russell replied, and according to summaries of CUMC meetings then kept by G. H. Geach, made

... specific reference to certain opposing views of E. E. C. Jones

as to whether the denotation of a term is a constituent of the propo-sition in which it occurs.55

The references by Russell to Jones were made in his oral version of “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description,” presented before the comparatively small audience of the CUMC, but Jones’ name disappeared from his written version of the paper soon afterwards presented to the wider audience of the Aristotelian Society and published in its Proceedings.56 Undaunted, Jones replied before the Aristotelian Society, criticizing Russell’s retreat from his earlier view in Principles of Mathematics of identity in diversity to that offered (with Whitehead) 

in Principia Mathematical Referring to their famous “Scott is the author of Waverley” example, she accused Russell of philosophical double entendre:

When it is said that the author of Waverley cannot mean the same as Scott, [the word] meaning signifies intension or connotation; plainly, intension (or connotation) of the author of Waverley and of Scott, cannot be the same. But when it is said that the author of Waverley cannot mean anything other than Scott, or Scott is the author of Waverley would be false, “mean anything other than Scott” must be understood of denotation; if Scott and the author of Waverley are two distinct persons, clearly Scott is the author of Waverley must be false. (My identity-in-diversity theory removes the difficulty at once.)58

Jones summarizes the “admissions” that Russell has made both in Principia Mathematica and in “Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description.” These admissions are that “Scott is the author of Waverley” is a proposition asserting an identity; that the identity cannot be one of connotation/meaning/intension of Subject “Scott” with connotation of the predicate “is the author of Waverley”; and that “Scott is Scott” is an identity of denotation, but that the proposition is trivially true. Jones says that “I take it to be involved that the ‘triviality’ is due to the circumstance that there is no difference of intension as between Subject and Predicate.”59 Trivial assertions are uninformative, on Jones’ view. In ordinary language, no one ever needs to assert that “Scott is Scott” or that A = A because identity propositions of the form A = A are trivially true and uninformative. A = A may be axiomatic and necessarily true for logic, but if logic constitutes the formalization of rules for expressing linguistic truths, then A = A, although true, is far less informative than the usual identity propositions that take the form A = B. Indeed, A = В is the type of identity proposition most commonly found in ordinary language and most interesting precisely because it is a significant assertion. This, Jones notes is the kind of assertion of identity that we usually try to prove. The criminal prosecutor is called upon to prove that the intension of “the accused” and the intension of “the criminal” have the same denotation.60 She says

It is the names of things which have denotation and intension, and not the things themselves.61 

In 1911, Philip Jourdain moved to Girton. Wild speculation might have it that it is Jourdain to whom Jones, who is now sixty-three years old, refers in A New Law of Thought and its Logical Bearings (1911), when she remarks that:

... I have recently had my attention draw to the fact that Professor Frege’s analysis of Categoricals (published in 1892) was apparently the same as my own, and that a similar view was adopted by Mr.

B. Russell (1903) in his Principles of Mathematics, where Frege’s theory of the import of propositions is expounded with sympathetic approbation.62

3. Could Russell Not Have Read Frege?

The occasion of Russell’s response to Jourdain that he has “neither Keynes nor Miss Jones here” does not represent the only incident in which Russell seems to have feigned ignorance of the theory of identity in diversity first published by Jones in 1890, and then by Frege in 1892, only to have it appear as Russell’s own.

In a letter to Jourdain of November 22, 1902, and again in his Appendix to Principles of Mathematics in 1903, Russell indicated that he was unaware of the all-important Grundgesetze of 1893 until after he had completed his lectures of 1901-1902 that had formed the basis of Principles. Referring to Cantor’s logical definition of numbers, Russell states:

This definition however (as I have learnt since giving my lectures) is quite explicitly set forth by Frege, Grundlagen der Arithmetik, Breslau, 1884; see also his Grundzuge [sic] der Arithmetik, Jena, 1893. He is a very able man: I have been corresponding with him for some time about my paradox.63

Grattan-Guinness offers an astounding explanation for a discrepancy that demands further inquiry. Grattan-Guinness remarks:

Russell’s confession of ignorance of Frege’s work seems to contra-dict the opening of his first letter to Frege, dated 16 June 1902. There he claimed to have been acquainted with the Grundgesetze for eighteen months, well before the presentation of his lectures... Presumably his initial understanding of the book had been slight; he hinted as much to Jourdain later..,64 

Grattan-Guinness’ willingness to draw the inference that Russell couldn’t understand Frege well enough to read the book relies on a letter to Jourdain of April 15, 1910. This was Russell’s accounting:

I was led to buy Frege’s Grundgesetze by an unfavourable review... by Peano in RdM, accusing Frege of unnecessary subtlety. The introduction struck me as admirable but I could not understand Frege's use of Greek, German, and Latin Letters, and I put him away for nearly two years, by which time I had discovered for myself most of what he had to say, and was therefore able to understand him. I must have first got Grundgesetze late in 1900.65

It is a commonplace among Frege scholars that Frege’s notation was unnecessarily complex or overly subtle as Peano would remark.66 But Russell was raised by a series of German nurses and governesses; he studied economics and politics in Berlin for a year, and he read Cantor’s Zur Lehre vom Transfiniten. Russell at age fourteen kept a journal in Greek letters. Are we to believe that the man who was perhaps the greatest logician and mathematician of his time, was so stymied by Frege’s logical notation that he put the book back on the shelf after struggling through the much admired introduction, and, miraculously over the next two years intuited “most of what Frege had to say” and presented it as his own? In a footnote to Russell’s April 15, 1910 letter, Grattan-Guinness summarizes:

Russell meant only the first volume of Frege’s Grundgesetze... Note that he possessed the volume during part of the period of preparation of The Principles... but apparently did not read it.67

We confess some difficulty in sharing Grattan-Guinness’s conviction that Russell’s explanation is perfectly genuine. The disclaimer, in the Appendix to Principles of Mathematics must have shocked Frege, who, five months earlier, in a letter from Russell dated June 16, 1902 had been told by Russell that he, Russell, had been acquainted with the Grundgesetze for some eighteen months. Unless the early (1902) letter to Frege is spurious, Russell’s dating (in the 1910 letter) of the 1900 purchase of Grundgesetze fairly coincides with the time frame that he indicated to Frege was the date he became acquainted with the work that is, late 1900/early 1901. Russell’s acquaintance with Grundgesetze therefore would appear to precede his 1901-02 lecture series, and there-fore the composition dates of the lecture-drafts of what would become 

Principles of Mathematics. In effect, from Russell’s own pen we have reason to be concerned that the apologia to Frege in the Preface (written in December, 1902) and Appendix of Principles of Mathematics is disingenuous.

We have further, the evidence of Peano’s review of Frege - a review Russell acknowledges having read. The “review” is far more than the typical cursory assessments of merits and demerits. It is more on the order of a “reader’s guide” to reading Grundgesetze. Peano includes what can only be called a taxonomy of terms and notation that constitutes five of the six and one-half pages of the “review”. Peano introduces numerous examples of Frege’s notation, followed by an operational explanation and “translation” into his own notation which was then widely known amongst mathematicians and philosophers. This means that prior to obtaining Frege’s book, Russell had in hand a taxonomy of Frege’s notation including (on pages 126-127) a partial guide to deciphering Frege’s perplexing combination of alphabets for reference to classes, members of classes and functions. Peano’s review provided the key to reading Frege and to deciphering his cumbersome and idiosyncratic notation. Russell acknowledges that he had that key in hand before acquiring a copy of Frege’s Grundgesetze. How could he therefore claim agnosticism with respect to the content of Grundgesetze, and therefore innocence with respect to appropriation of Frege’s views? Curiously, Russell does not claim agnosticism with respect to the 1892 publication of “Uber Sinn und Bedeutung” in Zeitschrift filr Philosophie.

4. Might Frege Have Relied on Jones?

Might Frege have relied on Jones? We think not. Aside from common interests in Lotze’s philosophy and in the subject matter of predication of identity, and aside from the remote possibility that Jones and Frege may have met while she was attending a philosophy conference in Heidelburg, there is no reason to suspect Frege of any direct reliance on Jones. True, he might have been interested in the subsequent work of the woman who had со-translated a major work by Lotze. Rather, we suspect that it was their mutual acquaintance with the philosophy of Lotze that led them to follow through in like manners on questions suggested by Lotze. We have uncovered nothing to suggest that their discovery of the law of identity in diversity as the law of significant assertion was not mutually independent, with Jones preceding Frege by two years. 

IV. CONCLUSION

Emily Elizabeth Constance Jones was a faculty member at Girton College, Cambridge who in 1890, published Elements of Logic as a Science of Propositions. It attracted sufficient attention among Cambridge philosophers to gain her membership in and an invitation to present to the Aristotelian Society. Although Elements' taxonomy of “quantitiveness” and “qualitiveness” was clumsy, its articulation of a theory of “identity in diversity” was not. There followed an unbroken string of full- length works and formal papers in which Jones’ theory was refined, defended and further explained. Many of these papers were given before the Aristotelian Society and were published in their Proceedings. Jones’ papers appeared in the first volume of Mind and continued to do so through the turn of the century. Perhaps Russell scholars will have greater insight into the questions we raised here. Some will mention, as Professor Ambrose did, that “Russell was known for his photographic memory; he may have picked up someone else’s ideas and not have a clue as to where he first learned them.”68 If so, this might explain how he assimilated Jones’ and later, Frege’s ideas free of any recollection of the process by which he acquired them. Russell might therefore be considered morally innocent of what in contemporary academic circles otherwise would be considered a lack of academic integrity. The colleagues with whom Jones is associated, Sidgwick, Schiller, Stout, Bosanquet, Ward, Keynes and McTaggart were among the giants in philosophy. Her many works in both hedonistic ethics and analytic philosophy received considerable positive assessment from her peers who are counted among the great philosophers of that era. It is our pleasure to introduce you to her. 3.  Charlotte Perkins Gilman (1860-1935)