Bertrand Russell’s Doxastic Sentimentalism (and Neutral Monism)

Abstract

This paper reinterprets doxastic sentimentalism and neutral monism, as these doctrines appear in Bertrand Russell’s “On Propositions” (1919) and The Analysis of Mind (1921). It argues that Russell’s theory of belief, in this particular period, posited at least seven distinct types of feeling, but only one type of entity. The paper’s principal thesis is that Russell treated believing as feelings, but it also draws the conclusions that monism and sentimentalism are logically independent of one another, and that sentimentalism and (at least one type of) behaviorism are inconsistent, qua theories of belief.