I read The Problems of Philosophy over a century after it was published, and it's remarkable how well it has held up. A much more recent philosopher who is alive Daniel Dennett described philosophy in a TED Talk as making sense of what the sciences tell us. Russell himself described philosophy as concerning problems science hasn't yet answered or found a way to frame the question in a way it could be answered, and as a critical means of unifying the sciences. Philosophers still debate the nature of consciousness, free will, sense data, God, morality, Justice etc which the sciences still haven't taken over. The discovery that space and time don't always work the way we think we do was known to Russell back in 1912. The content is still relevant to philosophical problems today.
The specific problems of philosophy are the difference between how we perceive the world and how it actually is (if there is a difference), the nature of physical objects and how we come to know them, the existence of universals like the kind we use in discourse, and the justification of truth. Absent are discussions of more "hot button" controversial issues like free will, God, ethics, or justice. Russell by his own admission follows in the tradition of modern philosophy since Rene Descartes and begins with doubt. Whatever cant be doubted should be the basis of philosophy if we are to find any certainty to our beliefs. This is a very different understanding of philosophy than the ancient Greeks or medieval thinkers had, and was inspired because of how wrong these old trusted authorities were about many things. This way of thinking precludes moral and metaphysical thinking until a basis for them is established, which is what Russell is trying to do here. It is critical for if there aren't things like universals as Russell thinks there are then universal morality and justice are in question. In Russell's time the certainty of the Newtonian worldview of classical physics was being undermined by the discovery of non-Euclidean space and the nature of light as a physical phenomenon, etc. Advances in logic, which Russell helped pioneer, made many philosophical questions capable of an answer or at least clarification. This of course became the "Analytic" school of philosophy which is dominant in English speaking countries.
Russell can be described as an indirect realist. He acknowledges the difference between perception and reality, and that all we know if what we perceive, which is sense data. Yet he believes we can infer the independent existence of physical objects. Besides immediate sense data we have memories which gives us a sense of a past which is no longer. Next we alone among animals are aware of our own awareness, self-consciousness. We surmise that this thinking activity belongs to a self, which is the first relation to a universal concept we know. Our awareness of properties apart from instances implies something common with them.
Yet Russell shares Hume's skeptical doubts regarding the "I think therefore I am"; that among our different thoughts there exists a self which is not located in any of these thoughts. So universals are relations between things, not an actual thing as it was for Plato. Universals have being, but not existence. For it to be true that Russia is north of Turkey, there must be truth to the relation north. The relation north is not mental or physical, it is just in mind, kind of like the self. This is the most confusing but I think crucial part of the book to establish Russell's indirect realism, and any realism I suppose.
Idealists and phenomenalists argue that these relations are mental, either constituted by mind or not independent of the phenomena we're describing. Russell devotes a chapter refuting idealism by claiming it conflates having an idea of something in the mind as constituting the nature of that thing. As Berkeley argued, for something to exist it must be perceived by a mind, either our mind or the mind of someone else like God. Yet my having an idea of a tree doesn't really constitute its essence besides it being a thought of something. I don't get anymore information than that from just the having of an idea. As for phenomenalism I think he spends the whole book trying to argue not that it's wrong but that there is more than sense data. But his accordance with Humean doubts makes that difficult. Perhaps if he was a direct realist this wouldn't be as much a problem.
An important distinction he makes is between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. It is possible for something to be true without our being familiar with it. It's true that Australia exists because others who are acquainted with the country can describe it to me in ways I'd understand if I had been there. This is like the criteria of replicability for experiments, under the same conditions the same conclusion should hold. Of course the phenomenalist would define this as the possibility of experience, not the knowledge of something without experience. This distinction relies on his acceptance of universals, more important than I realized.
Russell holds what is called a correspondence theory of truth. All true statements refer to something beyond themselves, be it physical facts or universals. He has three requirements for truth: 1) truth has the opposite falsehood possible 2) truth is a property of beliefs 3) truth is related to outside things. The opposing theory of truth is called coherentism; the truth of a statement is relative to the truth of other statements. Something can be true in a circular way, coherent with one's background beliefs, and not refer to anything outside. Coherentism accepts the first two criteria of truth and denies the third. Russell claims that by relying on noncontradiction for coherence this view depends on the truth of logic being itself independent of statements. Again the importance of universals.
The rest of the book from beginning to end is familiar ground for those with background knowledge of philosophy. He recommends Plato's Republic, Descartes' Meditations, Spinoza's Ethics, Leibniz's Monadology, Berkeley's Three Dialogues, Hume's Enquiry, and Kant's Prolegomena to any Future Metaphysics for beginners from which he draws from all heavily.
What Russell gives in this short book are the important questions from the foundations of these author's arguments, minus the historical idiosyncrasies. Given the depth of Russell's work, this is a simple and very accessible book which does a good job of summarizing modern philosophy, even in the 21st century. I pretty much agree with it.
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