When I decided to read philosophical books systemically my first choice was Russell. He is from Britain, easy to find and cheap. Reading systemically includes suppressing quick wit if you have any. You'll find that Russell is very open to criticisms and you feel like you are very clever criticising him. But it'll be the most meaningless thing you'll have ever done. All you have to do reading philosophical books is recognize the profoundness of the philosophical problems. If you can you will enjoy reading one of the most tedious kind of books.
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2. Particulars, Predicates, and Relations
"What sort of things shall we regard as prima facie complex? For example, suppose that you were to analyse what appears to be a fact about Piccadilly, such as: "Piccadilly is a pleasant street." If you analysis a statement of that sort correctly, you will find that the fact corresponding to your statement does not contain any constituent corresponding to the word "Piccadilly".
"Considerations of that sort seem to take us from such prima facie complex entities as we started with to others as being more stubborn and more deserving of analytical attention, namely facts." In this way, though "you may not know exactly what Socrates means, but it is quite clear that "Socrates is mortal" expresses a fact. There is clearly some valid meaning in saying that the fact expressed by "Socrates is mortal" is complex. The things in the world have various properties, and stand in various relations to each other. That they have these properties and relations are facts. The analysis of apparently complex things such as we started with can be reduced by various means, to the analysis of facts which are apparently about those things. Therefore it is with analysis of facts that one's consideration of the problem of complexity must begin, not with the analysis of apparently complex things."
"The complexity of a fact is evidenced, to begin with, by the circumstance that the proposition which asserts a fact consists of several words, each of which may occur in other contexts."
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it."
"The characteristic, that you can understand a proposition through the understanding of its component words, is absent from the component words when those words express something simple. For example, you cannot understand the meaning of the word "red" except through seeing red things. It is clear that if you define "red" as "The colour with the greatest wave-length", you are not giving the actual meaning of the word at all; you are simply giving a true description, which is quite a different thing and the propositions which result are different propositions from those in which the word "red" occurs. In that sense the word "red" cannot be defined."
"Some one who knows a lot about Picadilly may not know just the things one know when one is walking along it."
"The components of a <proposition> are the symbols we must understand in order to understand the proposition; The components of the <fact> which makes a proposition true or false, as the case may be, are the meanings of the symbols which we must understand in order to understand the proposition."
"These definitions are preliminary because they start from the complexity of the proposition, which they define psychologically, and proceed to the complexity of the fact, whereas it is quite clear that in an orderly, proper procedure it is the complexity of the fact that you would start from. It is also clear that the complexity of the fact cannot be something merely phychological. However, I doubt whether complexity, in that fundamental objective sense in which one starts from complexity of a fact, is definable at all."
"It might be suggested that complexity is essential to do with symbols, or that it is essentially psychological. But I do not think it would be possible seriously to maintain either of these views."
"In a logically correct symbolism there will always be a certain fundamental identity of structure between a fact and the symbol for it. The complexity of the symbol corresponds very closely with the complexity of the facts symbolized by it."
"In a logically perfect language the words in a proposition would correspond one by one with the components of the corresponding fact, with the exception of such words as "or", "not", "if", "then", which have a different function. In a logically perfect language, there will be one word and no more for every simple objects, and everything that is not simple will be expressed by a combination of words. A language of that sort will be completely analytic, and will show at a glance the logical structure of the fact asserted or denied. A logically perfact language, if it could be constructed, would not only be intolerably prolix, but, as regards its vocabulary, would be very largely private to one speaker. That is to say, all the names that it wouls use would be private to that speaker and could not enter into the language of another speaker."
"The needs of logic are so extraordinarily different from the needs of daily life."
"The simplest imaginable facts are those which consist in the possession of a quality by some particular thing. Such facts, say, as "This is white." I do not want you think about the piece of chalk I am holding, but of what I see when you look at the chalk.
"In every atomic fact there is one componet which is naturally expressed by a verb(or, in the case of quality, it may be expressed by a predicate, by an adjective). This one component is a quality(monadic) or dyadic or triadic or tetradic... relation. In that case you can say that all atomic propositions assert relations of varying orders. Atomic facts contain, besides the relation, the terms of the relation - one term if it is a monadic relation so on. These terms which come into atomic facts I define as particulars.
Particulars = terms of relations in atomic facts. Df."
"The whole question of what particulars you actually find in the real world is a purely empirical one which does not interest the logician as such."
"The subject in a proposition will be the words expressing the terms of the relation which is expressed by the proposition. The only kind of word that is theoretically capable of standing for a particular is a proper name.
proper names = words for particulars.Df."
"The names that we commonly use, like "Socrates", are really abbreviations for descriptions; not only that, but what they describe are not particulars but complicated systems of classes or series. A name, in the narrow logical sense of a word whose meaning is a particular, can only be applied to a particular with which the speaker is acquainted. We are not acquainted with Socrates, and therefore cannot name him. When we use the word "Socrates", we are really using a description."
"The only words one does use as names in the logical sense are words like "this" or "that". One can use "this" as a name to stand for a particular with which one is acquainted at the moment. We say "This is white". If you agree that "This is white", meaning the "this" that you see, you are using "this" as a proper name. But if you try to apprehend the proposition that I am expressing when I say "This is white", you cannot do it."
"Particulars have this peculiarity that each of them stands entirely alone and is completely self-subsistent. That is to say, each particular that there is in the world does not in any way logically depend upon any other particular. Each one might happen to be the whole universe; it is a merely empirical fact that this is not the case. There is no reason why you should not have a universe consisting of one particular and nothing else. That is a peculiarity of particulars."
"When you are acquainted with that particular, you have a full, adequate, and complete understanding of the name, and no further information is required."
"I think it is perfectly possible to suppose that complex things are capable of analysis ad infinitum. But I do not think it is true."
"Mr. Neville: I do not feel clear that the proposition "This is white" is in any case a simpler proposition than the proposition "This and that have the same colour."
Mr. Russell: It may be the same as the proposition "This and that have the same colour." It may be that white is defined as the colour of "this", or rather that the proposition "This is white" means "This is identical in colour with that", the colour of "that" being, so to speak, the definition of white. That may be, but there is no special reason to think that it is.
Mr. Neville: Are there any monadic relations which would be better examples?"
Mr. Russell: I think not. It is perfectly obvious a priori that you can get rid of all monadic relations by that trick. You can get rid of dyadic and reduced to triadic, and so on. But there is no paricular reason to suppose that that is the way the world begins, that it begins with relations of order n instead of relations of order 1. You cannot reduce them downward, but you can reduce them upward."