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

on “abstract ideas.”

They meant by an idea approximately what we should call an image.

Locke having maintained that he could form an idea of triangle in

general, without deciding what sort of triangle it was to be,

Berkeley contended that this was impossible. He says:

 

“Whether others,have this wonderful faculty of abstracting their

ideas, they best can tell: for myself, I dare be confident I have

it not. I find, indeed, I have indeed a faculty of imagining, or

representing to myself, the ideas of those particular things I

have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. I

can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a man

joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye,

the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of

the body. But, then, whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have

some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of a man that

I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a

tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a

middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the

abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for

me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body

moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor

rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract

general ideas whatsoever. To be plain, I own myself able to

abstract in one sense, as when I consider some particular parts

of qualities separated from others, with which, though they are

united in some object, yet it is possible they may really exist

without them. But I deny that I can abstract from one another, or

conceive separately, those qualities which it is impossible

should exist so separated; or that I can frame a general notion,

by abstracting from particulars in the manner aforesaid—which

last are the two proper acceptations of ABSTRACTION. And there is

ground to think most men will acknowledge themselves to be in my

case. The generality of men which are simple and illiterate never

pretend to ABSTRACT NOTIONS. It is said they are difficult and

not to be attained without pains and study; we may therefore

reasonably conclude that, if such there be, they are confined

only to the learned.

 

“I proceed to examine what can be alleged in defence of the

doctrine of abstraction, and try if I can discover what it is

that inclines the men of speculation to embrace an opinion so

remote from common sense as that seems to be. There has been a

late excellent and deservedly esteemed philosopher who, no doubt,

has given it very much countenance, by seeming to think the

having abstract general ideas is what puts the widest difference

in point of understanding betwixt man and beast. ‘The having of

general ideas,’ saith he, ‘is that which puts a perfect

distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which

the faculties of brutes do by no means attain unto. For, it is

evident we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general

signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine

that they have not the faculty of abstracting, or making general

ideas, since they have no use of words or any other general

signs.’ And a little after: ‘Therefore, I think, we may suppose

that it is in this that the species of brutes are discriminated

from men, and it is that proper difference wherein they are

wholly separated, and which at last widens to so wide a distance.

For, if they have any ideas at all, and are not bare machines (as

some would have them), we cannot deny them to have some reason.

It seems as evident to me that they do, some of them, in certain

instances reason as that they have sense; but it is only in

particular ideas, just as they receive them from their senses.

They are the best of them tied up within those narrow bounds, and

have not (as I think) the faculty to enlarge them by any kind of

abstraction.* (“Essay on Human Understanding,” Bk. II, chap. xi,

paragraphs 10 and 11.) I readily agree with this learned author,

that the faculties of brutes can by no means attain to

abstraction. But, then, if this be made the distinguishing

property of that sort of animals, I fear a great many of those

that pass for men must be reckoned into their number. The reason

that is here assigned why we have no grounds to think brutes have

abstract general ideas is, that we observe in them no use of

words or any other general signs; which is built on this

supposition-that the making use of words implies the having

general ideas. From which it follows that men who use language

are able to abstract or generalize their ideas. That this is the

sense and arguing of the author will further appear by his

answering the question he in another place puts: ‘Since all

things that exist are only particulars, how come we by general

terms?’ His answer is: ‘Words become general by being made the

signs of general ideas.’ (“Essay on Human Understanding,” Bk.

III, chap. III, paragraph 6.) But it seems that a word becomes

general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea,

but of several particular ideas, any one of which it

indifferently suggests to the mind. For example, when it is said

‘the change of motion is proportional to the impressed force,’ or

that ‘whatever has extension is divisible,’ these propositions

are to be understood of motion and extension in general; and

nevertheless it will not follow that they suggest to my thoughts

an idea of motion without a body moved, or any determinate

direction and velocity, or that I must conceive an abstract

general idea of extension, which is neither line, surface, nor

solid, neither great nor small, black, white, nor red, nor of any

other determinate colour. It is only implied that whatever

particular motion I consider, whether it be swift or slow,

perpendicular, horizontal, or oblique, or in whatever object, the

axiom concerning it holds equally true. As does the other of

every particular extension, it matters not whether line, surface,

or solid, whether of this or that magnitude or figure.

 

“By observing how ideas become general, we may the better judge

how words are made so. And here it is to be noted that I do not

deny absolutely there are general ideas, but only that there are

any ABSTRACT general ideas; for, in the passages we have quoted

wherein there is mention of general ideas, it is always supposed

that they are formed by abstraction, after the manner set forth

in sections 8 and 9. Now, if we will annex a meaning to our

words, and speak only of what we can conceive, I believe we shall

acknowledge that an idea which, considered in itself, is

particular, becomes general by being made to represent or stand

for all other particular ideas of the same sort. To make this

plain by an example, suppose a geometrician is demonstrating the

method of cutting a line in two equal parts. He draws, for

instance, a black line of an inch in length: this, which in

itself is a particular line, is nevertheless with regard to its

signification general, since, as it is there used, it represents

all particular lines whatsoever; so that what is demonstrated of

it is demonstrated of all lines, or, in other words, of a line in

general. And, as THAT PARTICULAR LINE becomes general by being

made a sign, so the NAME ‘line,’ which taken absolutely is

particular, by being a sign is made general. And as the former

owes its generality not to its being the sign of an abstract or

general line, but of all particular right lines that may possibly

exist, so the latter must be thought to derive its generality

from the same cause, namely, the various particular lines which

it indifferently denotes.” *

 

* Introduction to “A Treatise concerning the Principles of Human

Knowledge,” paragraphs 10, 11, and 12.

 

Berkeley’s view in the above passage, which is essentially the

same as Hume’s, does not wholly agree with modern psychology,

although it comes nearer to agreement than does the view of those

who believe that there are in the mind single contents which can

be called abstract ideas. The way in which Berkeley’s view is

inadequate is chiefly in the fact that images are as a rule not

of one definite prototype, but of a number of related similar

prototypes. On this subject Semon has written well. In “Die

Mneme,” pp. 217 ff., discussing the effect of repeated similar

stimuli in producing and modifying our images, he says: “We

choose a case of mnemic excitement whose existence we can

perceive for ourselves by introspection, and seek to ekphore the

bodily picture of our nearest relation in his absence, and have

thus a pure mnemic excitement before us. At first it may seem to

us that a determinate quite concrete picture becomes manifest in

us, but just when we are concerned with a person with whom we are

in constant contact, we shall find that the ekphored picture has

something so to speak generalized. It is something like those

American photographs which seek to display what is general about

a type by combining a great number of photographs of different

heads over each other on one plate. In our opinion, the

generalizations happen by the homophonic working of different

pictures of the same face which we have come across in the most

different conditions and situations, once pale, once reddened,

once cheerful, once earnest, once in this light, and once in

that. As soon as we do not let the whole series of repetitions

resound in us uniformly, but give our attention to one particular

moment out of the many… this particular mnemic stimulus at once

overbalances its simultaneously roused predecessors and

successors, and we perceive the face in question with concrete

definiteness in that particular situation.” A little later he

says: “The result is—at least in man, but probably also in the

higher animals—the development of a sort of PHYSIOLOGICAL

abstraction. Mnemic homophony gives us, without the addition of

other processes of thought, a picture of our friend X which is in

a certain sense abstract, not the concrete in any one situation,

but X cut loose from any particular point of time. If the circle

of ekphored engrams is drawn even more widely, abstract pictures

of a higher order appear: for instance, a white man or a negro.

In my opinion, the first form of abstract concepts in general is

based upon such abstract pictures. The physiological abstraction

which takes place in the above described manner is a predecessor

of purely logical abstraction. It is by no means a monopoly of

the human race, but shows itself in various ways also among the

more highly organized animals.” The same subject is treated in

more detail in Chapter xvi of “Die mnemischen Empfindungen,” but

what is said there adds nothing vital to what is contained in the

above quotations.

 

It is necessary, however, to distinguish between the vague and

the general. So long as we are content with Semon’s composite

image, we MAY get no farther than the vague. The question whether

this image takes us to the general or not depends, I think, upon

the question whether, in addition to the generalized image, we

have also particular images of some of the instances out of which

it is compounded. Suppose, for example, that on a number of

occasions you had seen one negro, and that you did not know

whether this one was the same or different on the different