Russell's "Logicism" vs. Pure Logicism

[Alasdair Urquhart]

I give a detailed discussion of Russell's surprising
1963 letter to Leon Henkin in my article on Russell
and Gödel (BSL Volume 22, 504-520).  The original
letter is in the Russell Archives in Hamilton,
Ontario; my article gives a reference to its
reprinting in a book by Ivor Grattan-Guinness.

My analysis of the letter and its odd remarks
is this: Russell was never able to separate
clearly the formalism of Principia Mathematica from
its intended interpretation.  This leads him
to confuse the incompleteness theorem with
a logical paradox.

Russell's failure to separate
truth from provability throws some light on the
questions raised by Joe Shipman in earlier
discussions on FOM.

Alasdair Urquhart