When Russell argued for his ontological convictions, for instance that there are negative facts or that there are universals, he expressed himself in English. But Wittgenstein must have noticed that from the point of view of Russell's ideal language these ontological statements appear to be pseudo-propositions. He believed therefore that what these statements pretend to say, could not really be said but only shown. Carnap discovered a way out of this mutism: what in the material mode of speech of the object language looks like a pseudo-proposition can be translated into a perfectly meaningful proposition in the formal mode of speech (in the metalinguistic mode of speech of the logical syntax of language). But is this ascent into the metalanguage necessary? Taking advantage of L~sniewski's logical system there exists another way out-we can expand the number of categories of our ideal language. But Leffniewski's formulas raise another profound problem, the problem of "semantical muteness" (cf. W. G. Lycan 'Semantic Competence and Funny Functors ' Monist 64 (1979), 209-222).
In this essay I would like to follow a chain of thought that begins with the neorealist ontology of Bertrand Russell and, through Wittgenstein, Carnap, and Tarski, arrives finally at one of the interesting aspects of Stanislaw Legniewski's logical system. It is only one line, one linking thread among many that could be brought out in the complex pattern of the logical and philosophical development of our century. I do not pretend to have made a detailed historical investigation. But I think it is worthwhile to focus our attention upon this relatively simple line, and that for two reasons. Firstly, because it throws light on a certain logical sequence in the historical evolution, and in so doing also assigns a place to Legniewski's logic, which so far has much been neglected in contemporary discussions; secondly, because it leads to fundamental questions of philosophical logic, concerning ontological commitment and concerning the intuitive intelligibility of artificial languages.
- Russell's neorealistie ontology 'aRb' is true, if and only" if the ordered pair formed