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Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Philosophy
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United
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Title: Philosophy

Author: Bertrand Russell

Release date: February 18, 2024 [eBook #72981]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: W. W. Norton & Company,

Inc, 1927

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

PHILOSOPHY ***
PHILOSOPHY
 PHILOSOPHY
By

Bertrand Russell

NEW YORK
W · W · NORTON & COMPANY, INC.
Publishers
 Copyright, 1927,
BERTRAND RUSSELL

Published in Great Britain under the title “An Outline of Philosophy”

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAN REES PRESS
 CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. Philosophic Doubts 1

PART I
MAN FROM WITHOUT

II. Man and His Environment 16

III. The Process of Learning in Animals and
Infants 29
IV. Language 43
V. Perception Objectively Regarded 58
VI. Memory Objectively Regarded 70
VII. Inference as a Habit 79
VIII. Knowledge Behaviouristically Considered 88

PART II
THE PHYSICAL WORLD

IX. The Structure of the Atom 97

X. Relativity 107
XI. Causal Laws in Physics 114
XII. Physics and Perception 123
XIII. Physical and Perceptual Space 137
 XIV. Perception and Physical Causal Laws 144
XV. The Nature of Our Knowledge of Physics 151

PART III
MAN FROM WITHIN

XVI. Self-observation 161

XVII. Images 176
XVIII. Imagination and Memory 187
XIX. The Introspective Analysis of Perception 201
XX. Consciousness? 210
XXI. Emotion, Desire, and Will 218
XXII. Ethics 225

PART IV
THE UNIVERSE

XXIII. Some Great Philosophies of the Past 236

XXIV. Truth and Falsehood 254
XXV. The Validity of Inference 266
XXVI. Events, Matter, and Mind 276
XXVII. Man’s Place in the Universe 292
PHILOSOPHY
 CHAPTER I
PHILOSOPHIC DOUBTS

Perhaps it might be expected that I should begin with a definition of

“philosophy”, but, rightly or wrongly, I do not propose to do so. The
definition of “philosophy” will vary according to the philosophy we
adopt; all that we can say to begin with is that there are certain
problems, which certain people find interesting, and which do not, at
least at present, belong to any of the special sciences. These
problems are all such as to raise doubts concerning what commonly
passes for knowledge; and if the doubts are to be answered, it can
only be by means of a special study, to which we give the name
“philosophy”. Therefore the first step in defining “philosophy” is the
indication of these problems and doubts, which is also the first step
in the actual study of philosophy. There are some among the
traditional problems of philosophy that do not seem to me to lend
themselves to intellectual treatment, because they transcend our
cognitive powers; such problems I shall not deal with. There are
others, however, as to which, even if a final solution is not possible at
present, yet much can be done to show the direction in which a
solution is to be sought, and the kind of solution that may in time
prove possible.
Philosophy arises from an unusually obstinate attempt to arrive
at real knowledge. What passes for knowledge in ordinary life suffers
from three defects: it is cocksure, vague, and self-contradictory. The
first step towards philosophy consists in becoming aware of these
defects, not in order to rest content with a lazy scepticism, but in
order to substitute an amended kind of knowledge which shall be
tentative, precise, and self-consistent. There is of course another
quality which we wish our knowledge to possess, namely
comprehensiveness: we wish the area of our knowledge to be as
wide as possible. But this is the business of science rather than of
philosophy. A man does not necessarily become a better philosopher
through knowing more scientific facts; it is principles and methods
and general conceptions that he should learn from science if
philosophy is what interests him. The philosopher’s work is, so to
speak, at the second remove from crude fact. Science tries to collect
facts into bundles by means of scientific laws; these laws, rather
than the original facts, are the raw material of philosophy. Philosophy
involves a criticism of scientific knowledge, not from a point of view
ultimately different from that of science, but from a point of view less
concerned with details and more concerned with the harmony of the
whole body of special sciences.
The special sciences have all grown up by the use of notions
derived from common sense, such as things and their qualities,
space, time, and causation. Science itself has shown that none of
these common-sense notions will quite serve for the explanation of
the world; but it is hardly the province of any special science to
undertake the necessary reconstruction of fundamentals. This must
be the business of philosophy. I want to say, to begin with, that I
believe it to be a business of very great importance. I believe that the
philosophical errors in common-sense beliefs not only produce
confusion in science, but also do harm in ethics and politics, in social
institutions, and in the conduct of everyday life. It will be no part of
my business, in this volume, to point out these practical effects of a
bad philosophy: my business will be purely intellectual. But if I am
right, the intellectual adventures which lie before us have effects in
many directions which seem, at first sight, quite remote from our
theme. The effect of our passions upon our beliefs forms a favourite
subject of modern psychologists; but the converse effect, that of our
beliefs upon our passions, also exists, though it is not such as an
old-fashioned intellectualist psychology would have supposed.
Although I shall not discuss it, we shall do well to bear it in mind, in
order to realise that our discussions may have bearings upon
matters lying outside the sphere of pure intellect.
 I mentioned a moment ago three defects in common beliefs,
namely, that they are cocksure, vague, and self-contradictory. It is
the business of philosophy to correct these defects so far as it can,
without throwing over knowledge altogether. To be a good
philosopher, a man must have a strong desire to know, combined
with great caution in believing that he knows; he must also have
logical acumen and the habit of exact thinking. All these, of course,
are a matter of degree. Vagueness, in particular, belongs, in some
degree, to all human thinking; we can diminish it indefinitely, but we
can never abolish it wholly. Philosophy, accordingly, is a continuing
activity, not something in which we can achieve final perfection once
for all. In this respect, philosophy has suffered from its association
with theology. Theological dogmas are fixed, and are regarded by
the orthodox as incapable of improvement. Philosophers have too
often tried to produce similarly final systems: they have not been
content with the gradual approximations that satisfied men of
science. In this they seem to me to have been mistaken. Philosophy
should be piecemeal and provisional like science; final truth belongs
to heaven, not to this world.
The three defects which I have mentioned are interconnected,
and by becoming aware of any one we may be led to recognise the
other two. I will illustrate all three by a few examples.
Let us take first the belief in common objects, such as tables and
chairs and trees. We all feel quite sure about these in ordinary life,
and yet our reasons for confidence are really very inadequate. Naive
common sense supposes that they are what they appear to be, but
that is impossible, since they do not appear exactly alike to any two
simultaneous observers; at least, it is impossible if the object is a
single thing, the same for all observers. If we are going to admit that
the object is not what we see, we can no longer feel the same
assurance that there is an object; this is the first intrusion of doubt.
However, we shall speedily recover from this set-back, and say that
1
of course the object is “really” what physics says it is. Now physics
says that a table or a chair is “really” an incredibly vast system of
electrons and protons in rapid motion, with empty space in between.
This is all very well. But the physicist, like the ordinary man, is
dependent upon his senses for the existence of the physical world. If
you go up to him solemnly and say, “would you be so kind as to tell
me, as a physicist, what a chair really is”, you will get a learned
answer. But if you say, without preamble: “Is there a chair there?” he
will say: “Of course there is; can’t you see it?” To this you ought to
reply in the negative. You ought to say, “No, I see certain patches of
colour, but I don’t see any electrons or protons, and you tell me that
they are what a chair consists of”. He may reply: “Yes, but a large
number of electrons and protons close together look like a patch of
colour”. What do you mean by “look like”? you will then ask. He is
ready with an answer. He means that light-waves start from the
electrons and protons (or, more probably, are reflected by them from
a source of light), reach the eye, have a series of effects upon the
rods and cones, the optic nerve, and the brain, and finally produce a
sensation. But he has never seen an eye or an optic nerve or a
brain, any more than he has seen a chair; he has only seen patches
of colour which, he says, are what eyes “look like.” That is to say, he
thinks that the sensation you have when (as you think) you see a
chair, has a series of causes, physical and psychological, but all of
them, on his own showing, lie essentially and forever outside
experience. Nevertheless, he pretends to base his science upon
observation. Obviously there is here a problem for the logician, a
problem belonging not to physics, but to quite another kind of study.
This is a first example of the way in which the pursuit of precision
destroys certainty.

1
I am not thinking here of the elementary
physics to be found in a school text-book; I am
thinking of modern theoretical physics, more
particularly as regards the structure of atoms, as
to which I shall have more to say in later
chapters.

The physicist believes that he infers his electrons and protons

from what he perceives. But the inference is never clearly set forth in
a logical chain, and, if it were, it might not look sufficiently plausible
to warrant much confidence. In actual fact, the whole development
from common-sense objects to electrons and protons has been
governed by certain beliefs, seldom conscious, but existing in every
natural man. These beliefs are not unalterable, but they grow and
develop like a tree. We start by thinking that a chair is as it appears
to be, and is still there when we are not looking. But we find, by a
little reflection, that these two beliefs are incompatible. If the chair is
to persist independently of being seen by us, it must be something
other than the patch of colour we see, because this is found to
depend upon conditions extraneous to the chair, such as how the
light falls, whether we are wearing blue spectacles, and so on. This
forces the man of science to regard the “real” chair as the cause (or
an indispensable part of the cause) of our sensations when we see
the chair. Thus we are committed to causation as an a priori belief
without which we should have no reason for supposing that there is
a “real” chair at all. Also, for the sake of permanence we bring in the
notion of substance: the “real” chair is a substance, or collection of
substances, possessed of permanence and the power to cause
sensations. This metaphysical belief has operated, more or less
unconsciously, in the inference from sensations to electrons and
protons. The philosopher must drag such beliefs into the light of day,
and see whether they still survive. Often it will be found that they die
on exposure.
Let us now take up another point. The evidence for a physical
law, or for any scientific law, always involves both memory and
testimony. We have to rely both upon what we remember to have
observed on former occasions, and on what others say they have
observed. In the very beginnings of science, it may have been
possible sometimes to dispense with testimony; but very soon every
scientific investigation began to be built upon previously ascertained
results, and thus to depend upon what others had recorded. In fact,
without the corroboration of testimony we should hardly have had
much confidence in the existence of physical objects. Sometimes
people suffer from hallucinations, that is to say, they think they
perceive physical objects, but are not confirmed in this belief by the
testimony of others. In such cases, we decide that they are
mistaken. It is the similarity between the perceptions of different
people in similar situations that makes us feel confident of the
external causation of our perceptions; but for this, whatever naive
beliefs we might have had in physical objects would have been
dissipated long ago. Thus memory and testimony are essential to
science. Nevertheless, each of these is open to criticism by the
sceptic. Even if we succeed, more or less, in meeting his criticism,
we shall, if we are rational, be left with a less complete confidence in
our original beliefs than we had before. Once more, we shall become
less cocksure as we become more accurate.
Both memory and testimony lead us into the sphere of
psychology. I shall not at this stage discuss either beyond the point
at which it is clear that there are genuine philosophical problems to
be solved. I shall begin with memory.
Memory is a word which has a variety of meanings. The kind that
I am concerned with at the moment is the recollection of past
occurrences. This is so notoriously fallible that every experimenter
makes a record of the result of his experiment at the earliest possible
moment: he considers the inference from written words to past
events less likely to be mistaken than the direct beliefs which
constitute memory. But some time, though perhaps only a few
seconds, must elapse between the observation and the making of
the record, unless the record is so fragmentary that memory is
needed to interpret it. Thus we do not escape from the need of
trusting memory to some degree. Moreover, without memory we
should not think of interpreting records as applying to the past,
because we should not know that there was any past. Now, apart
from arguments as to the proved fallibility of memory, there is one
awkward consideration which the sceptic may urge. Remembering,
which occurs now, cannot possibly—he may say—prove that what is
remembered occurred at some other time, because the world might
have sprung into being five minutes ago, exactly as it then was, full
of acts of remembering which were entirely misleading. Opponents
of Darwin, such as Edmund Gosse’s father, urged a very similar
argument against evolution. The world, they said, was created in
4004 b.c., complete with fossils, which were inserted to try our faith.
The world was created suddenly, but was made such as it would
have been if it had evolved. There is no logical impossibility about
this view. And similarly there is no logical impossibility in the view
that the world was created five minutes ago, complete with
memories and records. This may seem an improbable hypothesis,
but it is not logically refutable.
Apart from this argument, which may be thought fantastic, there
are reasons of detail for being more or less distrustful of memory. It
is obvious that no direct confirmation of a belief about a past
occurrence is possible, because we cannot make the past recur. We
can find confirmation of an indirect kind in the revelations of others
and in contemporary records. The latter, as we have seen, involve
some degree of memory, but they may involve very little, for instance
when a shorthand report of a conversation or speech has been
made at the time. But even then, we do not escape wholly from the
need of memory extending over a longer stretch of time. Suppose a
wholly imaginary conversation were produced for some criminal
purpose, we should depend upon the memories of witnesses to
establish its fictitious character in a law-court. And all memory which
extends over a long period of time is very apt to be mistaken; this is
shown by the errors invariably found in autobiographies. Any man
who comes across letters which he wrote many years ago can verify
the manner in which his memory has falsified past events. For these
reasons, the fact that we cannot free ourselves from dependence
upon memory in building up knowledge is, prima facie, a reason for
regarding what passes for knowledge as not quite certain. The whole
of this subject of memory will be considered more carefully in later
chapters.
Testimony raises even more awkward problems. What makes
them so awkward is the fact that testimony is involved in building up
our knowledge of physics, and that, conversely, physics is required
in establishing the trustworthiness of testimony. Moreover, testimony
raises all the problems connected with the relation of mind and
matter. Some eminent philosophers, e.g. Leibniz, have constructed
systems according to which there would be no such thing as
testimony, and yet have accepted as true many things which cannot
be known without it. I do not think philosophy has quite done justice
to this problem, but a few words will, I think, show its gravity.
For our purposes, we may define testimony as noises heard, or
shapes seen, analogous to those which we should make if we
wished to convey an assertion, and believed by the hearer or seer to
be due to someone else’s desire to convey an assertion. Let us take
a concrete instance: I ask a policeman the way, and he says, “Fourth
turn to the right, third to the left.” That is to say, I hear these sounds,
and perhaps I see what I interpret as his lips moving. I assume that
he has a mind more or less like my own, and has uttered these
sounds with the same intention as I should have had if I had uttered
them, namely to convey information. In ordinary life, all this is not, in
any proper sense, an inference; it is a belief which arises in us on
the appropriate occasion. But if we are challenged, we have to
substitute inference for spontaneous belief, and the more the
inference is examined the more shaky it looks.
The inference that has to be made has two steps, one physical
and one psychological. The physical inference is of the sort we
considered a moment ago, in which we pass from a sensation to a
physical occurrence. We hear noises, and think they proceed from
the policeman’s body. We see moving shapes, and interpret them as
physical motions of his lips. This inference, as we saw earlier, is in
part justified by testimony; yet now we find that it has to be made
before we can have reason to believe that there is any such thing as
testimony. And this inference is certainly sometimes mistaken.
Lunatics hear voices which other people do not hear; instead of
crediting them with abnormally acute hearing, we lock them up. But if
we sometimes hear sentences which have not proceeded from a
body, why should this not always be the case? Perhaps our
imagination has conjured up all the things that we think others have
said to us. But this is part of the general problem of inferring physical
objects from sensations, which, difficult as it is, is not the most
difficult part of the logical puzzles concerning testimony. The most
difficult part is the inference from the policeman’s body to his mind. I
do not mean any special insult to policemen; I would say the same of
politicians and even of philosophers.
 The inference to the policeman’s mind certainly may be wrong. It
is clear that a maker of wax-works could make a life-like policeman
and put a gramophone inside him, which would cause him
periodically to tell visitors the way to the most interesting part of the
exhibition at the entrance to which he would stand. They would have
just the sort of evidence of his being alive that is found convincing in
the case of other policemen. Descartes believed that animals have
no minds, but are merely complicated automata. Eighteenth-century
materialists extended this doctrine to men. But I am not now
concerned with materialism; my problem is a different one. Even a
materialist must admit that, when he talks, he means to convey
something, that is to say, he uses words as signs, not as mere
noises. It may be difficult to decide exactly what is meant by this
statement, but it is clear that it means something, and that it is true of
one’s own remarks. The question is: Are we sure that it is true of the
remarks we hear, as well as of those we make? Or are the remarks
we hear perhaps just like other noises, merely meaningless
disturbances of the air? The chief argument against this is analogy:
the remarks we hear are so like those we make that we think they
must have similar causes. But although we cannot dispense with
analogy as a form of inference, it is by no means demonstrative, and
not infrequently leads us astray. We are therefore left, once more,
with a prima facie reason for uncertainty and doubt.
This question of what we mean ourselves when we speak brings
me to another problem, that of introspection. Many philosophers
have held that introspection gave the most indubitable of all
knowledge; others have held that there is no such thing as
introspection. Descartes, after trying to doubt everything, arrived at “I
think, therefore I am”, as a basis for the rest of knowledge. Dr. John
B. Watson the behaviourist holds, on the contrary, that we do not
think, but only talk. Dr. Watson, in real life, gives as much evidence
of thinking as anyone does, so if he is not convinced that he thinks,
we are all in a bad way. At any rate, the mere existence of such an
opinion as his, on the part of a competent philosopher, must suffice
to show that introspection is not so certain as some people have
thought. But let us examine this question a little more closely.
 The difference between introspection and what we call
perception of external objects seems to me to be connected, not with
what is primary in our knowledge, but with what is inferred. We think,
at one time, that we are seeing a chair; at another, that we are
thinking about philosophy. The first we call perception of an external
object; the second we call introspection. Now we have already found
reason to doubt external perception, in the full-blooded sense in
which common-sense accepts it. I shall consider later what there is
that is indubitable and primitive in perception; for the moment, I shall
anticipate by saying that what is indubitable in “seeing a chair” is the
occurrence of a certain pattern of colours. But this occurrence, we
shall find, is connected with me just as much as with the chair; no
one except myself can see exactly the pattern that I see. There is
thus something subjective and private about what we take to be
external perception, but this is concealed by precarious extensions
into the physical world. I think introspection, on the contrary, involves
precarious extensions into the mental world: shorn of these, it is not
very different from external perception shorn of its extensions. To
make this clear, I shall try to show what we know to be occurring
when, as we say, we think about philosophy.
Suppose, as the result of introspection, you arrive at a belief
which you express in the words: “I am now believing that mind is
different from matter”. What do you know, apart from inferences, in
such a case? First of all, you must cut out the word “I”: the person
who believes is an inference, not part of what you know immediately.
In the second place, you must be careful about the word “believing”:
I am not now concerned with what this word should mean in logic or
theory of knowledge; I am concerned with what it can mean when
used to describe a direct experience. In such a case, it would seem
that it can only describe a certain kind of feeling. And as for the
proposition you think you are believing, namely, “mind is different
from matter”, it is very difficult to say what is really occurring when
you think you believe it. It may be mere words, pronounced,
visualised, or in auditory or motor images. It may be images of what
the words “mean”, but in that case it will not be at all an accurate
representation of the logical content of the proposition. You may
have an image of a statue of Newton “voyaging through strange