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In 2008, the Central APA met, as it often does, in Chicago. On the day of the Society’s paper session there, I received a forewarning of exactly how the day would skew. Waking far too early, I was first shooed by security from the booksellers’ room only to be promptly turned out of the registration area by the APA conveners. Lacking the better judgment that might have come with some coffee, by 9:00 a.m. I had, in short, managed to annoy everyone in the immediate vicinity. The die, as I was to learn shortly, had been cast. When it came time for the Bertrand Russell Society session to begin, it was discovered that the putative room assigned us did not exist, even as a logical fiction. Russellians – among them Charles Parsons – milled in the hallway. Overcome by the sight, I hastened again to registration only to be told succinctly that if I had looked, I’d have seen that the correct room was noted on the errata sheet. Clearly, I was becoming an encumbrance to this division of the APA. As though in anticipatory revenge, it soon became painfully clear that the APA had scheduled the History of Early Analytic Philosophy Society meeting at the same time as the meeting of the Bertrand Russell Society. Because concrete particulars cannot be in two places at once, this decision meant that we could not both enjoy the Russell session and hear Peter Simons and others speak on Twardowski and Polish analytic philosophy. Moreover, this overlap had the effect of diminishing the size of both groups. Only later was I to hear complaints on this point from the other group’s convener, Sandra Lapointe, but I saw it at the Bertrand Russell Society session myself: when we, the BRS people, finally collected in the correct room, our numbers were sadly diminished. Of course, this did make it an intimate gathering, which has its own charms. In fact, the speakers and respondents eventually just sat down together and talked about Wittgenstein, Russell, and atheism – the topics of the session. Montgomery Link (Suffolk University) opened the session by addressing Wittgenstein’s symbolism in the Tractatus in a paper titled “Russell and Wittgenstein on Logic and Mathematics in their August 1919 Correspondence.” In addition to making a substantial response to this paper, Kevin Klement (University of MA) gave the paper “Re-reading A.J. Ayer’s Russell and Moore: The Analytic Heritage,” in which he draws on his introduction to the new reprint of A. J. Ayer’s book on Russell. Michael Garral (Baruch College) concluded the session by speaking on “Russell v. Hume, Atheist or Agnostic,” addressing the coherence of the kind of knowledge claim made by atheists, as he thinks Russell understands them, and revising a position he first took in a similar paper read at the BRS annual meeting the previous summer.
In an ideal world, scholars would simply talk to each other in the quiet way we did, but at length, without the tension of conflicting appointments, until no ambiguity remained. But this is not an ideal world, and so the session concluded as scheduled, some going on to other talks and others to the booksellers, finally open for business. RC
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