The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (best large ereader .txt) 📖
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any more than a stone rolling down hill knows the way to the
valley.
On the features which distinguish knowledge from accuracy of
response in general, not much can be said from a behaviourist
point of view without referring to purpose. But the necessity of
SOMETHING besides accuracy of response may be brought out by the
following consideration: Suppose two persons, of whom one
believed whatever the other disbelieved, and disbelieved whatever
the other believed. So far as accuracy and sensitiveness of
response alone are concerned, there would be nothing to choose
between these two persons. A thermometer which went down for warm
weather and up for cold might be just as accurate as the usual
kind; and a person who always believes falsely is just as
sensitive an instrument as a person who always believes truly.
The observable and practical difference between them would be
that the one who always believed falsely would quickly come to a
bad end. This illustrates once more that accuracy of response to
stimulus does not alone show knowledge, but must be reinforced by
appropriateness, i.e. suitability for realizing one’s purpose.
This applies even in the apparently simple case of answering
questions: if the purpose of the answers is to deceive, their
falsehood, not their truth, will be evidence of knowledge. The
proportion of the combination of appropriateness with accuracy in
the definition of knowledge is difficult; it seems that both
enter in, but that appropriateness is only required as regards
the general type of response, not as regards each individual
instance.
II. I have so far assumed as unquestionable the view that the
truth or falsehood of a belief consists in a relation to a
certain fact, namely the objective of the belief. This view has,
however, been often questioned. Philosophers have sought some
intrinsic criterion by which true and false beliefs could be
distinguished.* I am afraid their chief reason for this search
has been the wish to feel more certainty than seems otherwise
possible as to what is true and what is false. If we could
discover the truth of a belief by examining its intrinsic
characteristics, or those of some collection of beliefs of which
it forms part, the pursuit of truth, it is thought, would be a
less arduous business than it otherwise appears to be. But the
attempts which have been made in this direction are not
encouraging. I will take two criteria which have been suggested,
namely, (1) self-evidence, (2) mutual coherence. If we can show
that these are inadequate, we may feel fairly certain that no
intrinsic criterion hitherto suggested will suffice to
distinguish true from false beliefs.
* The view that such a criterion exists is generally held by
those whose views are in any degree derived from Hegel. It may be
illustrated by the following passage from Lossky, “The Intuitive
Basis of Knowledge” (Macmillan, 1919), p. 268: “Strictly
speaking, a false judgment is not a judgment at all. The
predicate does not follow from the subject S alone, but from the
subject plus a certain addition C, WHICH IN NO SENSE BELONGS TO
THE CONTENT OF THE JUDGMENT. What takes place may be a process of
association of ideas, of imagining, or the like, but is not a
process of judging. An experienced psychologist will be able by
careful observation to detect that in this process there is
wanting just the specific element of the objective dependence of
the predicate upon the subject which is characteristic of a
judgment. It must be admitted, however, that an exceptional power
of observation is needed in order to distinguish, by means of
introspection, mere combination of ideas from judgments.”
(1) Self-evidence.—Some of our beliefs seem to be peculiarly
indubitable. One might instance the belief that two and two are
four, that two things cannot be in the same place at the same
time, nor one thing in two places, or that a particular buttercup
that we are seeing is yellow. The suggestion we are to examine is
that such: beliefs have some recognizable quality which secures
their truth, and the truth of whatever is deduced from them
according to self-evident principles of inference. This theory is
set forth, for example, by Meinong in his book, “Ueber die
Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens.”
If this theory is to be logically tenable, self-evidence must not
consist merely in the fact that we believe a proposition. We
believe that our beliefs are sometimes erroneous, and we wish to
be able to select a certain class of beliefs which are never
erroneous. If we are to do this, it must be by some mark which
belongs only to certain beliefs, not to all; and among those to
which it belongs there must be none that are mutually
inconsistent. If, for example, two propositions p and q were
self-evident, and it were also self-evident that p and q could
not both be true, that would condemn self-evidence as a guarantee
of truth. Again, self-evidence must not be the same thing as the
absence of doubt or the presence of complete certainty. If we are
completely certain of a proposition, we do not seek a ground to
support our belief. If self-evidence is alleged as a ground of
belief, that implies that doubt has crept in, and that our
self-evident proposition has not wholly resisted the assaults of
scepticism. To say that any given person believes some things so
firmly that he cannot be made to doubt them is no doubt true.
Such beliefs he will be willing to use as premisses in reasoning,
and to him personally they will seem to have as much evidence as
any belief can need. But among the propositions which one man
finds indubitable there will be some that another man finds it
quite possible to doubt. It used to seem self-evident that there
could not be men at the Antipodes, because they would fall off,
or at best grow giddy from standing on their heads. But New
Zealanders find the falsehood of this proposition self-evident.
Therefore, if self-evidence is a guarantee of truth, our
ancestors must have been mistaken in thinking their beliefs about
the Antipodes self-evident. Meinong meets this difficulty by
saying that some beliefs are falsely thought to be self-evident,
but in the case of others it is self-evident that they are
self-evident, and these are wholly reliable. Even this, however,
does not remove the practical risk of error, since we may
mistakenly believe it self-evident that a certain belief is
self-evident. To remove all risk of error, we shall need an
endless series of more and more complicated self-evident beliefs,
which cannot possibly be realized in practice. It would seem,
therefore, that self-evidence is useless as a practical criterion
for insuring truth.
The same result follows from examining instances. If we take the
four instances mentioned at the beginning of this discussion, we
shall find that three of them are logical, while the fourth is a
judgment of perception. The proposition that two and two are four
follows by purely logical deduction from definitions: that means
that its truth results, not from the properties of objects, but
from the meanings of symbols. Now symbols, in mathematics, mean
what we choose; thus the feeling of self-evidence, in this case,
seems explicable by the fact that the whole matter is within our
control. I do not wish to assert that this is the whole truth
about mathematical propositions, for the question is complicated,
and I do not know what the whole truth is. But I do wish to
suggest that the feeling of self-evidence in mathematical
propositions has to do with the fact that they are concerned with
the meanings of symbols, not with properties of the world such as
external observation might reveal.
Similar considerations apply to the impossibility of a thing
being in two places at once, or of two things being in one place
at the same time. These impossibilities result logically, if I am
not mistaken, from the definitions of one thing and one place.
That is to say, they are not laws of physics, but only part of
the intellectual apparatus which we have manufactured for
manipulating physics. Their self-evidence, if this is so, lies
merely in the fact that they represent our decision as to the use
of words, not a property of physical objects.
Judgments of perception, such as “this buttercup is yellow,” are
in a quite different position from judgments of logic, and their
self-evidence must have a different explanation. In order to
arrive at the nucleus of such a judgment, we will eliminate, as
far as possible, the use of words which take us beyond the
present fact, such as “buttercup” and “yellow.” The simplest kind
of judgment underlying the perception that a buttercup is yellow
would seem to be the perception of similarity in two colours seen
simultaneously. Suppose we are seeing two buttercups, and we
perceive that their colours are similar. This similarity is a
physical fact, not a matter of symbols or words; and it certainly
seems to be indubitable in a way that many judgments are not.
The first thing to observe, in regard to such judgments, is that
as they stand they are vague. The word “similar” is a vague word,
since there are degrees of similarity, and no one can say where
similarity ends and dissimilarity begins. It is unlikely that our
two buttercups have EXACTLY the same colour, and if we judged
that they had we should have passed altogether outside the region
of self-evidence. To make our proposition more precise, let us
suppose that we are also seeing a red rose at the same time. Then
we may judge that the colours of the buttercups are more similar
to each other than to the colour of the rose. This judgment seems
more complicated, but has certainly gained in precision. Even
now, however, it falls short of complete precision, since
similarity is not prima facie measurable, and it would require
much discussion to decide what we mean by greater or less
similarity. To this process of the pursuit of precision there is
strictly no limit.
The next thing to observe (although I do not personally doubt
that most of our judgments of perception are true) is that it is
very difficult to define any class of such judgments which can be
known, by its intrinsic quality, to be always exempt from error.
Most of our judgments of perception involve correlations, as when
we judge that a certain noise is that of a passing cart. Such
judgments are all obviously liable to error, since there is no
correlation of which we have a right to be certain that it is
invariable. Other judgments of perception are derived from
recognition, as when we say “this is a buttercup,” or even merely
“this is yellow.” All such judgments entail some risk of error,
though sometimes perhaps a very small one; some flowers that look
like buttercups are marigolds, and colours that some would call
yellow others might call orange. Our subjective certainty is
usually a result of habit, and may lead us astray in
circumstances which are unusual in ways of which we are unaware.
For such reasons, no form of self-evidence seems to afford an
absolute criterion of truth. Nevertheless, it is perhaps true
that judgments having a high degree of subjective certainty are
more apt to be true than other judgments. But if this be the
case, it is a result to be demonstrated, not a premiss from which
to start in defining truth and falsehood. As an initial
guarantee, therefore, neither self-evidence nor subjective
certainty can be accepted as adequate.
(2) Coherence.—Coherence as the definition of truth is advocated
by idealists, particularly by those who in the main follow Hegel.
It is set forth ably in Mr. Joachim’s book,
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