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

matter are constructed. Thus Holt says: “If

the terms and propositions of logic must be substantialized, they

are all strictly of one substance, for which perhaps the least

dangerous name is neutral-stuff. The relation of neutral-stuff

to matter and mind we shall have presently to consider at

considerable length.” *

 

* “The Concept of Consciousness” (Geo. Allen & Co., 1914), p. 52.

 

My own belief—for which the reasons will appear in subsequent

lectures—is that James is right in rejecting consciousness as an

entity, and that the American realists are partly right, though

not wholly, in considering that both mind and matter are composed

of a neutral-stuff which, in isolation, is neither mental nor

material. I should admit this view as regards sensations: what is

heard or seen belongs equally to psychology and to physics. But I

should say that images belong only to the mental world, while

those occurrences (if any) which do not form part of any

“experience” belong only to the physical world. There are, it

seems to me, prima facie different kinds of causal laws, one

belonging to physics and the other to psychology. The law of

gravitation, for example, is a physical law, while the law of

association is a psychological law. Sensations are subject to

both kinds of laws, and are therefore truly “neutral” in Holt’s

sense. But entities subject only to physical laws, or only to

psychological laws, are not neutral, and may be called

respectively purely material and purely mental. Even those,

however, which are purely mental will not have that intrinsic

reference to objects which Brentano assigns to them and which

constitutes the essence of “consciousness” as ordinarily

understood. But it is now time to pass on to other modern

tendencies, also hostile to “consciousness.”

 

There is a psychological school called “Behaviourists,” of whom

the protagonist is Professor John B. Watson,* formerly of the

Johns Hopkins University. To them also, on the whole, belongs

Professor John Dewey, who, with James and Dr. Schiller, was one

of the three founders of pragmatism. The view of the

“behaviourists” is that nothing can be known except by external

observation. They deny altogether that there is a separate source

of knowledge called “introspection,” by which we can know things

about ourselves which we could never observe in others. They do

not by any means deny that all sorts of things MAY go on in our

minds: they only say that such things, if they occur, are not

susceptible of scientific observation, and do not therefore

concern psychology as a science. Psychology as a science, they

say, is only concerned with BEHAVIOUR, i.e. with what we DO; this

alone, they contend, can be accurately observed. Whether we think

meanwhile, they tell us, cannot be known; in their observation of

the behaviour of human beings, they have not so far found any

evidence of thought. True, we talk a great deal, and imagine that

in so doing we are showing that we can think; but behaviourists

say that the talk they have to listen to can be explained without

supposing that people think. Where you might expect a chapter on

“thought processes” you come instead upon a chapter on “The

Language Habit.” It is humiliating to find how terribly adequate

this hypothesis turns out to be.

 

* See especially his “Behavior: an Introduction to Comparative

Psychology,” New York, 1914.

 

Behaviourism has not, however, sprung from observing the folly of

men. It is the wisdom of animals that has suggested the view. It

has always been a common topic of popular discussion whether

animals “think.” On this topic people are prepared to take sides

without having the vaguest idea what they mean by “thinking.”

Those who desired to investigate such questions were led to

observe the behaviour of animals, in the hope that their

behaviour would throw some light on their mental faculties. At

first sight, it might seem that this is so. People say that a dog

“knows” its name because it comes when it is called, and that it

“remembers” its master, because it looks sad in his absence, but

wags its tail and barks when he returns. That the dog behaves in

this way is matter of observation, but that it “knows” or

“remembers” anything is an inference, and in fact a very doubtful

one. The more such inferences are examined, the more precarious

they are seen to be. Hence the study of animal behaviour has been

gradually led to abandon all attempt at mental interpretation.

And it can hardly be doubted that, in many cases of complicated

behaviour very well adapted to its ends, there can be no

prevision of those ends. The first time a bird builds a nest, we

can hardly suppose it knows that there will be eggs to be laid in

it, or that it will sit on the eggs, or that they will hatch into

young birds. It does what it does at each stage because instinct

gives it an impulse to do just that, not because it foresees and

desires the result of its actions.*

 

* An interesting discussion of the question whether instinctive

actions, when first performed, involve any prevision, however

vague, will be found in Lloyd Morgan’s “Instinct and Experience”

(Methuen, 1912), chap. ii.

 

Careful observers of animals, being anxious to avoid precarious

inferences, have gradually discovered more and more how to give

an account of the actions of animals without assuming what we

call “consciousness.” It has seemed to the behaviourists that

similar methods can be applied to human behaviour, without

assuming anything not open to external observation. Let us give a

crude illustration, too crude for the authors in question, but

capable of affording a rough insight into their meaning. Suppose

two children in a school, both of whom are asked “What is six

times nine?” One says fifty-four, the other says fifty-six. The

one, we say, “knows” what six times nine is, the other does not.

But all that we can observe is a certain language-habit. The one

child has acquired the habit of saying “six times nine is

fifty-four”; the other has not. There is no more need of

“thought” in this than there is when a horse turns into his

accustomed stable; there are merely more numerous and complicated

habits. There is obviously an observable fact called “knowing”

such-and-such a thing; examinations are experiments for

discovering such facts. But all that is observed or discovered is

a certain set of habits in the use of words. The thoughts (if

any) in the mind of the examinee are of no interest to the

examiner; nor has the examiner any reason to suppose even the

most successful examinee capable of even the smallest amount of

thought.

 

Thus what is called “knowing,” in the sense in which we can

ascertain what other people “know,” is a phenomenon exemplified

in their physical behaviour, including spoken and written words.

There is no reason—so Watson argues—to suppose that their

knowledge IS anything beyond the habits shown in this behaviour:

the inference that other people have something nonphysical called

“mind” or “thought” is therefore unwarranted.

 

So far, there is nothing particularly repugnant to our prejudices

in the conclusions of the behaviourists. We are all willing to

admit that other people are thoughtless. But when it comes to

ourselves, we feel convinced that we can actually perceive our

own thinking. “Cogito, ergo sum” would be regarded by most people

as having a true premiss. This, however, the behaviourist denies.

He maintains that our knowledge of ourselves is no different in

kind from our knowledge of other people. We may see MORE, because

our own body is easier to observe than that of other people; but

we do not see anything radically unlike what we see of others.

Introspection, as a separate source of knowledge, is entirely

denied by psychologists of this school. I shall discuss this

question at length in a later lecture; for the present I will

only observe that it is by no means simple, and that, though I

believe the behaviourists somewhat overstate their case, yet

there is an important element of truth in their contention, since

the things which we can discover by introspection do not seem to

differ in any very fundamental way from the things which we

discover by external observation.

 

So far, we have been principally concerned with knowing. But it

might well be maintained that desiring is what is really most

characteristic of mind. Human beings are constantly engaged in

achieving some end they feel pleasure in success and pain in

failure. In a purely material world, it may be said, there would

be no opposition of pleasant and unpleasant, good and bad, what

is desired and what is feared. A man’s acts are governed by

purposes. He decides, let us suppose, to go to a certain place,

whereupon he proceeds to the station, takes his ticket and enters

the train. If the usual route is blocked by an accident, he goes

by some other route. All that he does is determined—or so it

seems—by the end he has in view, by what lies in front of him,

rather than by what lies behind. With dead matter, this is not

the case. A stone at the top of a hill may start rolling, but it

shows no pertinacity in trying to get to the bottom. Any ledge or

obstacle will stop it, and it will exhibit no signs of discontent

if this happens. It is not attracted by the pleasantness of the

valley, as a sheep or cow might be, but propelled by the

steepness of the hill at the place where it is. In all this we

have characteristic differences between the behaviour of animals

and the behaviour of matter as studied by physics.

 

Desire, like knowledge, is, of course, in one sense an observable

phenomenon. An elephant will eat a bun, but not a mutton chop; a

duck will go into the water, but a hen will not. But when we

think of our own. desires, most people believe that we can know

them by an immediate self-knowledge which does not depend upon

observation of our actions. Yet if this were the case, it would

be odd that people are so often mistaken as to what they desire.

It is matter of common observation that “so-and-so does not know

his own motives,” or that “A is envious of B and malicious about

him, but quite unconscious of being so.” Such people are called

self-deceivers, and are supposed to have had to go through some

more or less elaborate process of concealing from themselves what

would otherwise have been obvious. I believe that this is an

entire mistake. I believe that the discovery of our own motives

can only be made by the same process by which we discover other

people’s, namely, the process of observing our actions and

inferring the desire which could prompt them. A desire is

“conscious” when we have told ourselves that we have it. A hungry

man may say to himself: “Oh, I do want my lunch.” Then his desire

is “conscious.” But it only differs from an “unconscious” desire

by the presence of appropriate words, which is by no means a

fundamental difference.

 

The belief that a motive is normally conscious makes it easier to

be mistaken as to our own motives than as to other people’s. When

some desire that we should be ashamed of is attributed to us, we

notice that we have never had it consciously, in the sense of

saying to ourselves, “I wish that would happen.” We therefore

look for some other interpretation of our actions, and regard our

friends as very unjust when they refuse to be convinced by our

repudiation of what we hold to be a calumny. Moral considerations

greatly increase the difficulty of clear thinking in this matter.

It is commonly argued that