The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (best large ereader .txt) 📖

knower for the different items is one and the same” (ib.).

 

In this statement, to my mind, Dunlap concedes far more than

James did in his later theory. I see no reason to suppose that

“the knower for different items is one and the same,” and I am

convinced that this proposition could not possibly be ascertained

except by introspection of the sort that Dunlap rejects. The

first of these points must wait until we come to the analysis of

belief: the second must be considered now. Dunlap’s view is that

there is a dualism of subject and object, but that the subject

can never become object, and therefore there is no awareness of

an awareness. He says in discussing the view that introspection

reveals the occurrence of knowledge: “There can be no denial of

the existence of the thing (knowing) which is alleged to be known

or observed in this sort of ‘introspection.’ The allegation that

the knowing is observed is that which may be denied. Knowing

there certainly is; known, the knowing certainly is not”(p. 410).

And again: “I am never aware of an awareness” (ib.). And on the

next page: “It may sound paradoxical to say that one cannot

observe the process (or relation) of observation, and yet may be

certain that there is such a process: but there is really no

inconsistency in the saying. How do I know that there is

awareness? By being aware of something. There is no meaning in

the term ‘awareness’ which is not expressed in the statement ‘I

am aware of a colour (or what-not).’ “

 

But the paradox cannot be so lightly disposed of. The statement

“I am aware of a colour” is assumed by Knight Dunlap to be known

to be true, but he does not explain how it comes to be known. The

argument against him is not conclusive, since he may be able to

show some valid way of inferring our awareness. But he does not

suggest any such way. There is nothing odd in the hypothesis of

beings which are aware of objects, but not of their own

awareness; it is, indeed, highly probable that young children and

the higher animals are such beings. But such beings cannot make

the statement “I am aware of a colour,” which WE can make. We

have, therefore, some knowledge which they lack. It is necessary

to Knight Dunlap’s position to maintain that this additional

knowledge is purely inferential, but he makes no attempt to show

how the inference is possible. It may, of course, be possible,

but I cannot see how. To my mind the fact (which he admits) that

we know there is awareness, is ALL BUT decisive against his

theory, and in favour of the view that we can be aware of an

awareness.

 

Dunlap asserts (to return to James) that the real ground for

James’s original belief in introspection was his belief in two

sorts of objects, namely, thoughts and things. He suggests that

it was a mere inconsistency on James’s part to adhere to

introspection after abandoning the dualism of thoughts and

things. I do not wholly agree with this view, but it is difficult

to disentangle the difference as to introspection from the

difference as to the nature of knowing. Dunlap suggests (p. 411)

that what is called introspection really consists of awareness of

“images,” visceral sensations, and so on. This view, in essence,

seems to me sound. But then I hold that knowing itself consists

of such constituents suitably related, and that in being aware of

them we are sometimes being aware of instances of knowing. For

this reason, much as I agree with his view as to what are the

objects of which there is awareness, I cannot wholly agree with

his conclusion as to the impossibility of introspection.

 

The behaviourists have challenged introspection even more

vigorously than Knight Dunlap, and have gone so far as to deny

the existence of images. But I think that they have confused

various things which are very commonly confused, and that it is

necessary to make several distinctions before we can arrive at

what is true and what false in the criticism of introspection.

 

I wish to distinguish three distinct questions, any one of which

may be meant when we ask whether introspection is a source of

knowledge. The three questions are as follows:

 

(1) Can we observe anything about ourselves which we cannot

observe about other people, or is everything we can observe

PUBLIC, in the sense that another could also observe it if

suitably placed?

 

(2) Does everything that we can observe obey the laws of physics

and form part of the physical world, or can we observe certain

things that lie outside physics?

 

(3) Can we observe anything which differs in its intrinsic nature

from the constituents of the physical world, or is everything

that we can observe composed of elements intrinsically similar to

the constituents of what is called matter?

 

Any one of these three questions may be used to define

introspection. I should favour introspection in the sense of the

first question, i.e. I think that some of the things we observe

cannot, even theoretically, be observed by any one else. The

second question, tentatively and for the present, I should answer

in favour of introspection; I think that images, in the actual

condition of science, cannot be brought under the causal laws of

physics, though perhaps ultimately they may be. The third

question I should answer adversely to introspection I think that

observation shows us nothing that is not composed of sensations

and images, and that images differ from sensations in their

causal laws, not intrinsically. I shall deal with the three

questions successively.

 

(1) PUBLICITY OR PRIVACY OF WHAT IS OBSERVED. Confining

ourselves, for the moment, to sensations, we find that there are

different degrees of publicity attaching to different sorts of

sensations. If you feel a toothache when the other people in the

room do not, you are in no way surprised; but if you hear a clap

of thunder when they do not, you begin to be alarmed as to your

mental condition. Sight and hearing are the most public of the

senses; smell only a trifle less so; touch, again, a trifle less,

since two people can only touch the same spot successively, not

simultaneously. Taste has a sort of semi-publicity, since people

seem to experience similar taste-sensations when they eat similar

foods; but the publicity is incomplete, since two people cannot

eat actually the same piece of food.

 

But when we pass on to bodily sensations—headache, toothache,

hunger, thirst, the feeling of fatigue, and so on—we get quite

away from publicity, into a region where other people can tell us

what they feel, but we cannot directly observe their feeling. As

a natural result of this state of affairs, it has come to be

thought that the public senses give us knowledge of the outer

world, while the private senses only give us knowledge as to our

own bodies. As regards privacy, all images, of whatever sort,

belong with the sensations which only give knowledge of our own

bodies, i.e. each is only observable by one observer. This is the

reason why images of sight and hearing are more obviously

different from sensations of sight and hearing than images of

bodily sensations are from bodily sensations; and that is why the

argument in favour of images is more conclusive in such cases as

sight and hearing than in such cases as inner speech.

 

The whole distinction of privacy and publicity, however, so long

as we confine ourselves to sensations, is one of degree, not of

kind. No two people, there is good empirical reason to think,

ever have exactly similar sensations related to the same physical

object at the same moment; on the other hand, even the most

private sensation has correlations which would theoretically

enable another observer to infer it.

 

That no sensation is ever completely public, results from

differences of point of view. Two people looking at the same

table do not get the same sensation, because of perspective and

the way the light falls. They get only correlated sensations. Two

people listening to the same sound do not hear exactly the same

thing, because one is nearer to the source of the sound than the

other, one has better hearing than the other, and so on. Thus

publicity in sensations consists, not in having PRECISELY similar

sensations, but in having more or less similar sensations

correlated according to ascertainable laws. The sensations which

strike us as public are those where the correlated sensations are

very similar and the correlations are very easy to discover. But

even the most private sensations have correlations with things

that others can observe. The dentist does not observe your ache,

but he can see the cavity which causes it, and could guess that

you are suffering even if you did not tell him. This fact,

however, cannot be used, as Watson would apparently wish, to

extrude from science observations which are private to one

observer, since it is by means of many such observations that

correlations are established, e.g. between toothaches and

cavities. Privacy, therefore does not by itself make a datum

unamenable to scientific treatment. On this point, the argument

against introspection must be rejected.

 

(2) DOES EVERYTHING OBSERVABLE OBEY THE LAWS OF PHYSICS? We come

now to the second ground of objection to introspection, namely,

that its data do not obey the laws of physics. This, though less

emphasized, is, I think, an objection which is really more

strongly felt than the objection of privacy. And we obtain a

definition of introspection more in harmony with usage if we

define it as observation of data not subject to physical laws

than if we define it by means of privacy. No one would regard a

man as introspective because he was conscious of having a stomach

ache. Opponents of introspection do not mean to deny the obvious

fact that we can observe bodily sensations which others cannot

observe. For example, Knight Dunlap contends that images are

really muscular contractions,* and evidently regards our

awareness of muscular contractions as not coming under the head

of introspection. I think it will be found that the essential

characteristic of introspective data, in the sense which now

concerns us, has to do with LOCALIZATION: either they are not

localized at all, or they are localized, like visual images, in a

place already physically occupied by something which would be

inconsistent with them if they were regarded as part of the

physical world. If you have a visual image of your friend sitting

in a chair which in fact is empty, you cannot locate the image in

your body, because it is visual, nor (as a physical phenomenon)

in the chair, because the chair, as a physical object, is empty.

Thus it seems to follow that the physical world does not include

all that we are aware of, and that images, which are

introspective data, have to be regarded, for the present, as not

obeying the laws of physics; this is, I think, one of the chief

reasons why an attempt is made to reject them. I shall try to

show in Lecture VIII that the purely empirical reasons for

accepting images are overwhelming. But we cannot be nearly so

certain that they will not ultimately be brought under the laws

of physics. Even if this should happen, however, they would still

be distinguishable from sensations by their proximate causal

laws, as gases remain distinguishable from solids.

 

* “Psychological Review,” 1916, “Thought-Content and Feeling,” p.

59. See also ib., 1912, “The Nature of Perceived Relations,”

where he says: “‘Introspection,’ divested of its mythological

suggestion of the observing of consciousness, is really the

observation of bodily sensations (sensibles) and feelings

(feelables)”(p. 427