Russell on universals and particulars.

Russell's effort in this work of his is similar with other analytic philosopher, that is the reduction of language from vague and obscure to distinct and apprehendable. Russell limits the language by pointing out some limitations of understanding within a conscious being and its distance with the actual object outside of it. Therefore he reduce the reality and its understanding within the experience of thinkable being. A thinkable being know something outside of her by the sense-data which is derived from the sensations. Sense-data is the primary information arise from the contact of object and sensation and sensation is ever active consciousness, which is like a thin cloth over an object just giving hints to objects some properties and not the actual object what is there. Sense-data is the sign of things outside. Now coming to the topic of universal and particular. Both particular and universals can be known in different ways according to Russell, like universal a priori facts or universal by descriptive ones or the most basic ones universal by acquaintance. Acquaintance is the direct and immediate information we get by the contact of an object, it is when sense-data in a collected way make shape or picture of an object. We can say that acquaintance is the foundation of any analyzable information. Particulars and universals are the basic element of language which helps in describing the facts in the world. Now what is particular according to Russel? It the object known either by immediate or inferred knowledge about a particular object which has existed or existing or will exist in the actual world denoting only to a single entity, independent of any other being. E. g- Socrates was a Greek philosopher. Here Socrates, a name denoting to a particular person lived in a particular time in past(if mentioned) in a particular place having such and such property. On the other hand universals according to Russell is quite close to the definition given by Plato for 'idea'. Universal is an abstract and real entity, which exists outside the realm of the empirical world, immutable and always existing in the absence of the time-space domain, shared by particulars but is not in particular. contrary to particular which lives in the domain of time-space, for instance, justice is not a just act, just act can be identified as sharing the properties of justice but is not justice itself. E. g- again- Socrates was a Greek philosopher, here mention of time is not specific so it will be considered as universal and next a philosopher or the philosopher is universal concept, since philosopher itself is not denoting anything or anyone. The above statement is true because according to Russell, even the most particular sentence could not be constructed without universals. For instance, my laptop is in front of me, here we see that it seems there is no mention of universals. But for Russell people and thinkers do avoid a universal expression believing it as unimportant, which is the relational expression, in our case in front of and is. Relation is a universal expression which does not exist in any time-space dimension but it exist only as expression of direction which is universally conceived. Russell by this argument pointed out errors in big conceptions of many thinkers of past and contemporary like Berkeley from the idealist and Hume from empiricist school.