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in both cases. We can expect an egg for breakfast, or merely
entertain the supposition that there may be an egg for breakfast.
A moment ago I considered the possibility of being invited to
become King of Georgia, but I do not believe that this will
happen. Now, it seems clear that, since believing and considering
have different effects if one produces bodily movements while the
other does not, there must be some intrinsic difference between
believing and considering*; for if they were precisely similar,
their effects also would be precisely similar. We have seen that
the difference between believing a given proposition and merely
considering it does not lie in the content; therefore there must
be, in one case or in both, something additional to the content
which distinguishes the occurrence of a belief from the
occurrence of a mere consideration of the same content. So far as
the theoretical argument goes, this additional element may exist
only in belief, or only in consideration, or there may be one
sort of additional element in the case of belief, and another in
the case of consideration. This brings us to the second view
which we have to examine.
* Cf. Brentano, “Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte,” p. 268
(criticizing Bain, “The Emotions and the Will”).
(1) The theory which we have now to consider regards belief as
belonging to every idea which is entertained, except in so far as
some positive counteracting force interferes. In this view belief
is not a positive phenomenon, though doubt and disbelief are so.
What we call belief, according to this hypothesis, involves only
the appropriate content, which will have the effects
characteristic of belief unless something else operating
simultaneously inhibits them. James (Psychology, vol. ii, p. 288)
quotes with approval, though inaccurately, a passage from Spinoza
embodying this view:
“Let us conceive a boy imagining to himself a horse, and taking
note of nothing else. As this imagination involves the existence
of the horse, AND THE BOY HAS NO PERCEPTION WHICH ANNULS ITS
EXISTENCE [James’s italics], he will necessarily contemplate the
horse as present, nor will he be able to doubt of its existence,
however little certain of it he may be. I deny that a man in so
far as he imagines [percipit] affirms nothing. For what is it to
imagine a winged horse but to affirm that the horse [that horse,
namely] has wings? For if the mind had nothing before it but the
winged horse, it would contemplate the same as present, would
have no cause to doubt of its existence, nor any power of
dissenting from its existence, unless the imagination of the
winged horse were joined to an idea which contradicted [tollit]
its existence” (“Ethics,” vol. ii, p. 49, Scholium).
To this doctrine James entirely assents, adding in italics:
“ANY OBJECT WHICH REMAINS UNCONTRADICTED IS IPSO FACTO BELIEVED
AND POSITED AS ABSOLUTE REALITY.”
If this view is correct, it follows (though James does not draw
the inference) that there is no need of any specific feeling
called “belief,” and that the mere existence of images yields all
that is required. The state of mind in which we merely consider a
proposition, without believing or disbelieving it, will then
appear as a sophisticated product, the result of some rival force
adding to the image-proposition a positive feeling which may be
called suspense or non-belief—a feeling which may be compared to
that of a man about to run a race waiting for the signal. Such a
man, though not moving, is in a very different condition from
that of a man quietly at rest And so the man who is considering a
proposition without believing it will be in a state of tension,
restraining the natural tendency to act upon the proposition
which he would display if nothing interfered. In this view belief
primarily consists merely in the existence of the appropriate
images without any counteracting forces.
There is a great deal to be said in favour of this view, and I
have some hesitation in regarding it as inadequate. It fits
admirably with the phenomena of dreams and hallucinatory images,
and it is recommended by the way in which it accords with mental
development. Doubt, suspense of judgment and disbelief all seem
later and more complex than a wholly unreflecting assent. Belief
as a positive phenomenon, if it exists, may be regarded, in this
view, as a product of doubt, a decision after debate, an
acceptance, not merely of THIS, but of THIS-RATHER-THAN-THAT. It
is not difficult to suppose that a dog has images (possible
olfactory) of his absent master, or of the rabbit that he dreams
of hunting. But it is very difficult to suppose that he can
entertain mere imagination-images to which no assent is given.
I think it must be conceded that a mere image, without the
addition of any positive feeling that could be called “belief,”
is apt to have a certain dynamic power, and in this sense an
uncombated image has the force of a belief. But although this may
be true, it accounts only for some of the simplest phenomena in
the region of belief. It will not, for example, explain memory.
Nor can it explain beliefs which do not issue in any proximate
action, such as those of mathematics. I conclude, therefore, that
there must be belief-feelings of the same order as those of doubt
or disbelief, although phenomena closely analogous to those of
belief can be produced by mere uncontradicted images.
(3) I come now to the view of belief which I wish to advocate. It
seems to me that there are at least three kinds of belief, namely
memory, expectation and bare assent. Each of these I regard as
constituted by a certain feeling or complex of sensations,
attached to the content believed. We may illustrate by an
example. Suppose I am believing, by means of images, not words,
that it will rain. We have here two interrelated elements, namely
the content and the expectation. The content consists of images
of (say) the visual appearance of rain, the feeling of wetness,
the patter of drops, interrelated, roughly, as the sensations
would be if it were raining. Thus the content is a complex fact
composed of images. Exactly the same content may enter into the
memory “it was raining” or the assent “rain occurs.” The
difference of these cases from each other and from expectation
does not lie in the content. The difference lies in the nature of
the belief-feeling. I, personally, do not profess to be able to
analyse the sensations constituting respectively memory,
expectation and assent; but I am not prepared to say that they
cannot be analysed. There may be other belief-feelings, for
example in disjunction and implication; also a disbelief-feeling.
It is not enough that the content and the belief-feeling should
coexist: it is necessary that there should be a specific relation
between them, of the sort expressed by saying that the content is
what is believed. If this were not obvious, it could be made
plain by an argument. If the mere coexistence of the content and
the belief-feeling sufficed, whenever we were having (say) a
memory-feeling we should be remembering any proposition which
came into our minds at the same time. But this is not the case,
since we may simultaneously remember one proposition and merely
consider another.
We may sum up our analysis, in the case of bare assent to a
proposition not expressed in words, as follows: (a) We have a
proposition, consisting of interrelated images, and possibly
partly of sensations; (b) we have the feeling of assent, which is
presumably a complex sensation demanding analysis; (c) we have a
relation, actually subsisting, between the assent and the
proposition, such as is expressed by saying that the proposition
in question is what is assented to. For other forms of
belief-feeling or of content, we have only to make the necessary
substitutions in this analysis.
If we are right in our analysis of belief, the use of words in
expressing beliefs is apt to be misleading. There is no way of
distinguishing, in words, between a memory and an assent to a
proposition about the past: “I ate my breakfast” and “Caesar
conquered Gaul” have the same verbal form, though (assuming that
I remember my breakfast) they express occurrences which are
psychologically very different. In the one case, what happens is
that I remember the content “eating my breakfast”; in the other
case, I assent to the content “Caesar’s conquest of Gaul
occurred.” In the latter case, but not in the former, the
pastness is part of the content believed. Exactly similar remarks
apply to the difference between expectation, such as we have when
waiting for the thunder after a flash of lightning, and assent to
a proposition about the future, such as we have in all the usual
cases of inferential knowledge as to what will occur. I think
this difficulty in the verbal expression of the temporal aspects
of beliefs is one among the causes which have hampered philosophy
in the consideration of time.
The view of belief which I have been advocating contains little
that is novel except the distinction of kinds of belief-feeling~
such as memory and expectation. Thus James says: “Everyone knows
the difference between imagining a thing and believing in its
existence, between supposing a proposition and acquiescing in its
truth…IN ITS INNER NATURE, BELIEF, OR THE SENSE OF REALITY, IS
A SORT OF FEELING MORE ALLIED TO THE EMOTIONS THAN. TO ANYTHING
ELSE” (“Psychology,” vol. ii, p. 283. James’s italics). He
proceeds to point out that drunkenness, and, still more, nitrous-oxide intoxication, will heighten the sense of belief: in the
latter case, he says, a man’s very soul may sweat with
conviction, and he be all the time utterly unable to say what he
is convinced of. It would seem that, in such cases, the feeling
of belief exists unattached, without its usual relation to a
content believed, just as the feeling of familiarity may
sometimes occur without being related to any definite familiar
object. The feeling of belief, when it occurs in this separated
heightened form, generally leads us to look for a content to
which to attach it. Much of what passes for revelation or mystic
insight probably comes in this way: the belief-feeling, in
abnormal strength, attaches itself, more or less accidentally, to
some content which we happen to think of at the appropriate
moment. But this is only a speculation, upon which I do not wish
to lay too much stress.
LECTURE XIII. TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD
The definition of truth and falsehood, which is our topic to-day,
lies strictly outside our general subject, namely the analysis of
mind. From the psychological standpoint, there may be different
kinds of belief, and different degrees of certainty, but there
cannot be any purely psychological means of distinguishing
between true and false beliefs. A belief is rendered true or
false by relation to a fact, which may lie outside the experience
of the person entertaining the belief. Truth and falsehood,
except in the case of beliefs about our own minds, depend upon
the relations of mental occurrences to outside things, and thus
take us beyond the analysis of mental occurrences as they are in
themselves. Nevertheless, we can hardly avoid the consideration
of truth and falsehood. We wish to believe that our beliefs,
sometimes at least, yield KNOWLEDGE, and a belief does not yield
knowledge unless it is true. The question whether our minds are
instruments of knowledge, and, if so, in what sense, is so vital
that any suggested analysis of mind must be examined in relation
to this question. To ignore this question would be like
describing a chronometer without regard to its accuracy as a
time-keeper, or a thermometer without mentioning the fact that it
measures
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