The Analysis of Mind, Bertrand Russell [best desktop ebook reader .txt] 📗

content has essential

reference to an object, it is then natural to suppose that there

is some peculiar kind of mental content of which the object is a

universal, as oppose to a particular. According to this view, a

particular cat can be PERceived or imagined, while the universal

“cat” is CONceived. But this whole manner of viewing our dealings

with universals has to be abandoned when the relation of a mental

occurrence to its “object” is regarded as merely indirect and

causal, which is the view that we have adopted. The mental

content is, of course, always particular, and the question as to

what it “means” (in case it means anything) is one which cannot

be settled by merely examining the intrinsic character of the

mental content, but only by knowing its causal connections in the

case of the person concerned. To say that a certain thought

“means” a universal as opposed to either a vague or a particular,

is to say something exceedingly complex. A horse will behave in a

certain manner whenever he smells a bear, even if the smell is

derived from a bearskin. That is to say, any environment

containing an instance of the universal “smell of a bear”

produces closely similar behaviour in the horse, but we do not

say that the horse is conscious of this universal. There is

equally little reason to regard a man as conscious of the same

universal, because under the same circumstances he can react by

saying, “I smell a bear.” This reaction, like that of the horse,

is merely closely similar on different occasions where the

environment affords instances of the same universal. Words of

which the logical meaning is universal can therefore be employed

correctly, without anything that could be called consciousness of

universals. Such consciousness in the only sense in which it can

be said to exist is a matter of reflective judgment consisting in

the observation of similarities and differences. A universal

never appears before the mind as a single object in the sort of

way in which something perceived appears. I THINK a logical

argument could be produced to show that universals are part of

the structure of the world, but they are an inferred part, not a

part of our data. What exists in us consists of various factors,

some open to external observation, others only visible to

introspection. The factors open to external observation are

primarily habits, having the peculiarity that very similar

reactions are produced by stimuli which are in many respects very

different from each other. Of this the reaction of the horse to

the smell of the bear is an instance, and so is the reaction of

the man who says “bear” under the same circumstances. The verbal

reaction is, of course, the most important from the point of view

of what may be called knowledge of universals. A man who can

always use the word “dog” when he sees a dog may be said, in a

certain sense, to know the meaning of the word “dog,” and IN THAT

SENSE to have knowledge of the universal “dog.” But there is, of

course, a further stage reached by the logician in which he not

merely reacts with the word “dog,” but sets to work to discover

what it is in the environment that causes in him this almost

identical reaction on different occasions. This further stage

consists in knowledge of similarities and differences:

similarities which are necessary to the applicability of the word

“dog,” and differences which are compatible with it. Our

knowledge of these similarities and differences is never

exhaustive, and therefore our knowledge of the meaning of a

universal is never complete.

 

In addition to external observable habits (including the habit of

words), there is also the generic image produced by the

superposition, or, in Semon’s phrase, homophony, of a number of

similar perceptions. This image is vague so long as the

multiplicity of its prototypes is not recognized, but becomes

universal when it exists alongside of the more specific images of

its instances, and is knowingly contrasted with them. In this

case we find again, as we found when we were discussing words in

general in the preceding lecture, that images are not logically

necessary in order to account for observable behaviour, i.e. in

this case intelligent speech. Intelligent speech could exist as a

motor habit, without any accompaniment of images, and this

conclusion applies to words of which the meaning is universal,

just as much as to words of which the meaning is relatively

particular. If this conclusion is valid, it follows that

behaviourist psychology, which eschews introspective data, is

capable of being an independent science, and of accounting for

all that part of the behaviour of other people which is commonly

regarded as evidence that they think. It must be admitted that

this conclusion considerably weakens the reliance which can be

placed upon introspective data. They must be accepted simply on

account of the fact that we seem to perceive them, not on account

of their supposed necessity for explaining the data of external

observation.

 

This, at any rate, is the conclusion to which. we are forced, so

long as, with the behaviourists, we accept common-sense views of

the physical world. But if, as I have urged, the physical world

itself, as known, is infected through and through with

subjectivity, if, as the theory of relativity suggests, the

physical universe contains the diversity of points of view which

we have been accustomed to regard as distinctively psychological,

then we are brought back by this different road to the necessity

for trusting observations which are in an important sense

private. And it is the privacy of introspective data which causes

much of the behaviourists’ objection to them.

 

This is an example of the difficulty of constructing an adequate

philosophy of any one science without taking account of other

sciences. The behaviourist philosophy of psychology, though in

many respects admirable from the point of view of method, appears

to me to fail in the last analysis because it is based upon an

inadequate philosophy of physics. In spite, therefore, of the

fact that the evidence for images, whether generic or particular,

is merely introspective, I cannot admit that images should be

rejected, or that we should minimize their function in our

knowledge of what is remote in time or space.

 

LECTURE XII. BELIEF

 

Belief, which is our subject to-day, is the central problem in

the analysis of mind. Believing seems the most “mental” thing we

do, the thing most remote from what is done by mere matter. The

whole intellectual life consists of beliefs, and of the passage

from one belief to another by what is called “reasoning.” Beliefs

give knowledge and error; they are the vehicles of truth and

falsehood. Psychology, theory of knowledge and metaphysics

revolve about belief, and on the view we take of belief our

philosophical outlook largely depends.

 

Before embarking upon the detailed analysis of belief, we shall

do well to note certain requisites which any theory must fulfil.

 

(1) Just as words are characterized by meaning, so beliefs are

characterized by truth or falsehood. And just as meaning consists

in relation to the object meant, so truth and falsehood consist

in relation to something that lies outside the belief. You may

believe that such-and-such a horse will win the Derby. The time

comes, and your horse wins or does not win; according to the

outcome, your belief was true or false. You may believe that six

times nine is fifty-six; in this case also there is a fact which

makes your belief false. You may believe that America was

discovered in 1492, or that it was discovered in 1066. In the one

case your belief is true, in the other false; in either case its

truth or falsehood depends upon the actions of Columbus, not upon

anything present or under your control. What makes a belief true

or false I call a “fact.” The particular fact that makes a given

belief true or false I call its “objective,”* and the relation of

the belief to its objective I call the “reference” or the

“objective reference” of the belief. Thus, if I believe that

Columbus crossed the Atlantic in 1492, the “objective” of my

belief is Columbus’s actual voyage, and the “reference” of my

belief is the relation between my belief and the voyage—that

relation, namely, in virtue of which the voyage makes my belief

true (or, in another case, false). “Reference” of beliefs differs

from “meaning” of words in various ways, but especially in the

fact that it is of two kinds, “true” reference and “false”

reference. The truth or falsehood of a belief does not depend

upon anything intrinsic to the belief, but upon the nature of its

relation to its objective. The intrinsic nature of belief can be

treated without reference to what makes it true or false. In the

remainder of the present lecture I shall ignore truth and

falsehood, which will be the subject of Lecture XIII. It is the

intrinsic nature of belief that will concern us to-day.

 

* This terminology is suggested by Meinong, but is not exactly

the same as his.

 

(2) We must distinguish between believing and what is believed. I

may believe that Columbus crossed the Atlantic, that all Cretans

are liars, that two and two are four, or that nine times six is

fifty-six; in all these cases the believing is just the same, and

only the contents believed are different. I may remember my

breakfast this morning, my lecture last week, or my first sight

of New York. In all these cases the feeling of memory-belief is

just the same, and only what is remembered differs. Exactly

similar remarks apply to expectations. Bare assent, memory and

expectation are forms of belief; all three are different from

what is believed, and each has a constant character which is

independent of what is believed.

 

In Lecture I we criticized the analysis of a presentation into

act, content and object. But our analysis of belief contains

three very similar elements, namely the believing, what is

believed and the objective. The objections to the act (in the

case of presentations) are not valid against the believing in the

case of beliefs, because the believing is an actual experienced

feeling, not something postulated, like the act. But it is

necessary first to complete our preliminary requisites, and then

to examine the content of a belief. After that, we shall be in a

position to return to the question as to what constitutes

believing.

 

(3) What is believed, and the believing, must both consist of

present occurrences in the believer, no matter what may be the

objective of the belief. Suppose I believe, for example, “that

Caesar crossed the Rubicon.” The objective of my belief is an

event which happened long ago, which I never saw and do not

remember. This event itself is not in my mind when I believe that

it happened. It is not correct to say that I am believing the

actual event; what I am believing is something now in my mind,

something related to the event (in a way which we shall

investigate in Lecture XIII), but obviously not to be confounded

with the event, since the event is not occurring now but the

believing is. What a man is believing at a given moment is wholly

determinate if we know the contents of his mind at that moment;

but Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon was an historical physical

event, which is distinct from the present contents of every

present mind. What is believed, however true it may be, is not

the actual fact that makes the belief true, but a present event

related to the fact. This present event, which is what is

believed, I shall call the “content” of the belief. We have

already