We’re talking about a field whose giants have included people like Russell, Quine, and (currently) Dennett.
You missed out Popper! I’d probably rank these four in the order Popper > Quine > Dennett > Russell.
Russell was historically important, and is always a pleasure to read, but his inventions were either utterly trivial (e.g. Russell’s paradox and his theory of descriptions) or else a monstrously ugly obfuscation of mathematical logic, parasitic on the original ideas of Frege, Pierce, Peano and Cantor, which was unbearable to use and became obsolete almost immediately (I’m talking about Principia Mathematica of course.)
Well that warrants a link to Karl Popper’s essay on the nature of philosophical problems.
You missed out Popper! I’d probably rank these four in the order Popper > Quine > Dennett > Russell.
Russell was historically important, and is always a pleasure to read, but his inventions were either utterly trivial (e.g. Russell’s paradox and his theory of descriptions) or else a monstrously ugly obfuscation of mathematical logic, parasitic on the original ideas of Frege, Pierce, Peano and Cantor, which was unbearable to use and became obsolete almost immediately (I’m talking about Principia Mathematica of course.)