The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (best large ereader .txt) 📖
- Author: Bertrand Russell
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follow immediately upon the sensational stimulus, but that makes
no difference as regards our present question. Thus to revert to
memory: A memory is “vague” when it is appropriate to many
different occurrences: for instance, “I met a man” is vague,
since any man would verify it. A memory is “precise” when the
occurrences that would verify it are narrowly circumscribed: for
instance, “I met Jones” is precise as compared to “I met a man.”
A memory is “accurate” when it is both precise and true, i.e. in
the above instance, if it was Jones I met. It is precise even if
it is false, provided some very definite occurrence would have
been required to make it true.
It follows from what has been said that a vague thought has more
likelihood of being true than a precise one. To try and hit an
object with a vague thought is like trying to hit the bull’s eye
with a lump of putty: when the putty reaches the target, it
flattens out all over it, and probably covers the bull’s eye
along with the rest. To try and hit an object with a precise
thought is like trying to hit the bull’s eye with a bullet. The
advantage of the precise thought is that it distinguishes between
the bull’s eye and the rest of the target. For example, if the
whole target is represented by the fungus family and the bull’s
eye by mushrooms, a vague thought which can only hit the target
as a whole is not much use from a culinary point of view. And
when I merely remember that I met a man, my memory may be very
inadequate to my practical requirements, since it may make a
great difference whether I met Brown or Jones. The memory “I met
Jones” is relatively precise. It is accurate if I met Jones,
inaccurate if I met Brown, but precise in either case as against
the mere recollection that I met a man.
The distinction between accuracy and precision is however, not
fundamental. We may omit precision from out thoughts and confine
ourselves to the distinction between accuracy and vagueness. We
may then set up the following definitions:
An instrument is “reliable” with respect to a given set of
stimuli when to stimuli which are not relevantly different it
gives always responses which are not relevantly different.
An instrument is a “measure” of a set of stimuli which are
serially ordered when its responses, in all cases where they are
relevantly different, are arranged in a series in the same order.
The “degree of accuracy” of an instrument which is a reliable
measurer is the ratio of the difference of response to the
difference of stimulus in cases where the difference of stimulus
is small.* That is to say, if a small difference of stimulus
produces a great difference of response, the instrument is very
accurate; in the contrary case, very inaccurate.
* Strictly speaking, the limit of this, i.e. the derivative of
the response with respect to the stimulus.
A mental response is called “vague” in proportion to its lack of
accuracy, or rather precision.
These definitions will be found useful, not only in the case of
memory, but in almost all questions concerned with knowledge.
It should be observed that vague beliefs, so far from being
necessarily false, have a better chance of truth than precise
ones, though their truth is less valuable than that of precise
beliefs, since they do not distinguish between occurrences which
may differ in important ways.
The whole of the above discussion of vagueness and accuracy was
occasioned by the attempt to interpret the word “this” when we
judge in verbal memory that “this occurred.” The word “this,” in
such a judgment, is a vague word, equally applicable to the
present memory-image and to the past occurrence which is its
prototype. A vague word is not to be identified with a general
word, though in practice the distinction may often be blurred. A
word is general when it is understood to be applicable to a
number of different objects in virtue of some common property. A
word is vague when it is in fact applicable to a number of
different objects because, in virtue of some common property,
they have not appeared, to the person using the word, to be
distinct. I emphatically do not mean that he has judged them to
be identical, but merely that he has made the same response to
them all and has not judged them to be different. We may compare
a vague word to a jelly and a general word to a heap of shot.
Vague words precede judgments of identity and difference; both
general and particular words are subsequent to such judgments.
The word “this” in the primitive memory-belief is a vague word,
not a general word; it covers both the image and its prototype
because the two are not distinguished.*
* On the vague and the general cf. Ribot: “Evolution of General
Ideas,” Open Court Co., 1899, p. 32: “The sole permissible
formula is this: Intelligence progresses from the indefinite to
the definite. If ‘indefinite’ is taken as synonymous with
general, it may be said that the particular does not appear at
the outset, but neither does the general in any exact sense: the
vague would be more appropriate. In other words, no sooner has
the intellect progressed beyond the moment of perception and of
its immediate reproduction in memory, than the generic image
makes its appearance, i.e. a state intermediate between the
particular and the general, participating in the nature of the
one and of the other—a confused simplification.”
But we have not yet finished our analysis of the memory-belief.
The tense in the belief that “this occurred” is provided by the
nature of the belief-feeling involved in memory; the word “this,”
as we have seen, has a vagueness which we have tried to describe.
But we must still ask what we mean by “occurred.” The image is,
in one sense, occurring now; and therefore we must find some
other sense in which the past event occurred but the image does
not occur.
There are two distinct questions to be asked: (1) What causes us
to say that a thing occurs? (2) What are we feeling when we say
this? As to the first question, in the crude use of the word,
which is what concerns us, memory-images would not be said to
occur; they would not be noticed in themselves, but merely used
as signs of the past event. Images are “merely imaginary”; they
have not, in crude thought, the sort of reality that belongs to
outside bodies. Roughly speaking, “real” things would be those
that can cause sensations, those that have correlations of the
sort that constitute physical objects. A thing is said to be
“real” or to “occur” when it fits into a context of such
correlations. The prototype of our memory-image did fit into a
physical context, while our memory-image does not. This causes us
to feel that the prototype was “real,” while the image is
“imaginary.”
But the answer to our second question, namely as to what we are
feeling when we say a thing “occurs” or is “real,” must be
somewhat different. We do not, unless we are unusually
reflective, think about the presence or absence of correlations:
we merely have different feelings which, intellectualized, may be
represented as expectations of the presence or absence of
correlations. A thing which “feels real” inspires us with hopes
or fears, expectations or curiosities, which are wholly absent
when a thing “feels imaginary.” The feeling of reality is a
feeling akin to respect: it belongs PRIMARILY to whatever can do
things to us without our voluntary co-operation. This feeling of
reality, related to the memory-image, and referred to the past by
the specific kind of belief-feeling that is characteristic of
memory, seems to be what constitutes the act of remembering in
its pure form.
We may now summarize our analysis of pure memory.
Memory demands (a) an image, (b) a belief in past existence. The
belief may be expressed in the words “this existed.”
The belief, like every other, may be analysed into (1) the
believing, (2) what is believed. The believing is a specific
feeling or sensation or complex of sensations, different from
expectation or bare assent in a way that makes the belief refer
to the past; the reference to the past lies in the
belief-feeling, not in the content believed. There is a relation
between the belief-feeling and the content, making the
belief-feeling refer to the content, and expressed by saying that
the content is what is believed.
The content believed may or may not be expressed in words. Let us
take first the case when it is not. In that case, if we are
merely remembering that something of which we now have an image
occurred, the content consists of (a) the image, (b) the feeling,
analogous to respect, which we translate by saying that something
is “real” as opposed to “imaginary,” (c) a relation between the
image and the feeling of reality, of the sort expressed when we
say that the feeling refers to the image. This content does not
contain in itself any time-determination
the time-determination lies in the nature of the belief feeling,
which is that called “remembering” or (better) “recollecting.” It
is only subsequent reflection upon this reference to the past
that makes us realize the distinction between the image and the
event recollected. When we have made this distinction, we can say
that the image “means” the past event.
The content expressed in words is best represented by the words
“the existence of this,” since these words do not involve tense,
which belongs to the belief-feeling, not to the content. Here
“this” is a vague term, covering the memory-image and anything
very like it, including its prototype. “Existence” expresses the
feeling of a “reality” aroused primarily by whatever can have
effects upon us without our voluntary co-operation. The word “of”
in the phrase “the existence of this” represents the relation
which subsists between the feeling of reality and the “this.”
This analysis of memory is probably extremely faulty, but I do
not know how to improve it.
NOTE.-When I speak of a FEELING of belief, I use the word
“feeling” in a popular sense, to cover a sensation or an image or
a complex of sensations or images or both; I use this word
because I do not wish to commit myself to any special analysis of
the belief-feeling.
LECTURE X. WORDS AND MEANING
The problem with which we shall be concerned in this lecture is
the problem of determining what is the relation called “meaning.”
The word “Napoleon,” we say, “means” a certain person. In saying
this, we are asserting a relation between the word “Napoleon” and
the person so designated. It is this relation that we must now
investigate.
Let us first consider what sort of object a word is when
considered simply as a physical thing, apart from its meaning. To
begin with, there are many instances of a word, namely all the
different occasions when it is employed. Thus a word is not
something unique and particular, but a set of occurrences. If we
confine ourselves to spoken words, a word has two aspects,
according as we regard it from the point of view of the speaker
or from that of the hearer. From the point of view of the
speaker, a single instance of the use of a word consists of a
certain set of movements in the throat and mouth, combined with
breath. From the point of view of the hearer, a single instance
of the use of a word consists of a certain
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