Another form of duality arises in imagination and memory. If I remember now what happened on some past occasion, it is obvious that what is happening in me now is not identical with the events remembered, since one is in the present and one is in the past. There is, therefore, in memory something that may be called a relation of subject and object. And this will require careful interpretation. I do not think the interpretation is possible without introducing ‘belief’. When I remember, I believe that something happened in the past, and the something that happened is in some sense ‘represented’ by what is happening in me now. The essential problem here is the relation of an image to its sensational prototype. I can visualize my room, and then go into my room and find that it ‘agrees’ with my visual image. Such experiences lead us to give a certain credence to memory images, but not that absolute credence that we give to sensations which we notice, because memories are found sometimes to be misleading. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-100.HTM
Perception’ as opposed to ‘sensation’ involves habit based upon past experience. We may distinguish sensation as that part of our total experience which is due to the stimulus alone, independently of past history. This is a theoretical core in the total occurrence. The total occurrence is always an interpretation in which the sensational core has accretions embodying habits. When you see a dog, the sensational core is a patch of colour stripped of all the adjuncts involved in recognizing it as a dog. You expect the patch of colour to move in the way that is characteristic of dogs, you expect that if it makes a noise it will bark or growl, and not crow like a cock. You are convinced that it could be touched and that it will not vanish into thin air, but has a future and a past. I do not mean that all this is ‘conscious’, but its presence is shown by the astonishment that you would feel if things worked out otherwise. It is these accretions that turn a sensation into a perception, and it is these, also, that make perception possibly misleading. Walt Disney might lead you to suppose that you were seeing a ‘real’ dog, and it might astonish you by crowing or vanishing. Since, however, your expectations are the result of experience, it is clear that they must represent what usually happens — always assuming that the laws of nature are constant. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-090.HTM
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.8 ‘We are to say, then, that it is one thing to see a puddle, and another to know that I see a puddle. “Knowing” may be defined as “acting appropriately”; this is the sense in which we say that a dog knows his name, or that a carrier pigeon knows the way home. In this sense, my knowing of the puddle consisted of my stepping aside. But this is vague, both because other things might have made me step aside, and because “appropriate” can only be defined in terms of my desires. I might have wished to get wet, because I had just insured my life for a large sum, and thought death from pneumonia would be convenient; in that case, my stepping aside would be evidence that I did not see the puddle. Moreover, if desire is excluded, appropriate reaction to certain stimuli is shown by scientific instruments, but no one would say that the thermometer “knows” when it is cold. ‘What must be done with an experience in order that we may know it? Various things are possible. We may use words describing it, we may remember it either in words or in images, or we may merely “notice” it. But “noticing” is a matter of degree, and very hard to define; it seems to consist mainly in isolating from the sensible environment. You may, for instance, in listening to a piece of music, deliberately notice only the part of the cello. You hear the rest, as is said, “unconsciously” ? but this is a word to which it would be hopeless to attempt to attach any definite meaning. In one sense, it may be said that you “know” a present experience if it rouses in you any emotion, however faint ? if it pleases or displeases you, or interests or bores you, or surprises you or is just what you were expecting. ‘There is an important sense in which you can know anything that is in your present sensible field. If somebody says to you “are you now seeing yellow?” or “do you hear a noise?” you can answer with perfect confidence, even if, until you were asked, you were not noticing the yellow or the noise. And often you can be sure that it was already there before your attention was called to it. ‘It seems, then, that the most immediate knowing of which we have experience involves sensible presence plus something more, but that any very exact definition of the more that is needed is likely to mislead by its very exactness, since the matter is essentially vague and one of degree. What is wanted may be called “attention”; this is partly a sharpening of the appropriate sense-organs, partly an emotional reaction. A sudden loud noise is almost sure to command attention, but so does a very faint sound that has emotional significance. ‘Every empirical proposition is based upon one or more sensible occurrences that were noticed when they occurred, or immediately after, while they still formed part of the specious present. Such occurrences, we shall say, are “known” when they are noticed. The word “know” has many meanings, and this is only one of them; but for the purposes of our inquiry it is fundamental’ (pages 49-51). Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-080.HTM
知識の理論の見地から見ると、このことは、「経験の証拠」 (empirical evidence) がいったい何を 意味するかということに関して、きわめて困難な問題を生み出す。『意味と真理の探求』は主とし この問題を扱ったのであるが、その中で私は、それまで採っていた 「熟知」 (acquaintance) の代 りに「注意」 (noticing) をおき、これを、定義されない用語として受け入れた。 次の引用がこの点を明らかにするであろう。 「雨の日に外を歩いていて、水たまりを見てそれを避ける、と仮定しよう。その時、我々は心の中で次のように言うことはなさそうである。『水たまりがある。 それに踏み込まないほうが望ましい』。しかし、誰かが『なぜあなたは急に横へ寄ったのか』と言えば、『あの水たまりに踏み込みたくなかったからです』と答えるであろう。我々は、自分が視覚による知覚をもったのであり、それに適切に反応したのであることを、後から回顧的に(振り返って)知るのである。そして上記の例の場合には、その知識を言語で表現して いるのである。しかし、もし我々の注意が質問者によってその方に向けられることがなかったなら ば、我々は水たまりを避けたときに何を知っていたのであろうか?またいかなる意味で知っていたのであろうか? 「質問された時(には)その出来事はもう終っていたのであり、我々は記憶によって答えた のである。しかし、前に知らなかったことを思い出すことができるだろうか(想起できるだろうか)?。しかし、これは『知る』という語の意味に依存する。 「『知る』という語(言葉)はとても曖昧な語(言葉)である。『知る』という語(を使う時)の大部分の場合の意味は、ひとつの事象(event 出来事)を知ることは、知られる事象(event 出来事)とは異なるひとつの出来事(occurrence)である。 し かし『知ること』の意味には、我々がひとつの経験を持つとき、その経験と、それを持つと知る ことが、別のことではないという場合がある。我々は我々の現在の経験を常に知っている、と主張されることがあるが、これは、もし知ることが経験することとは別のことであるなら、真ではあ りえない。なぜならば、もしひとつの経験と、それを知ることとが別のことであるのなら、経験が現に起っている時我々は必ずそれを知っているのだという想定は、一々の出来事を無限に多様なものにすることになる。 私が熱いと感ずる。これはひとつの出来事である。私は私が熱いと感じ ていることを知る。これは第二の出来事である。私は私が熱いと感ずることを知ることを知る。これは第三の出来事である。かくして無限に進むことになるが、これは不合理である。それゆえ、私の現在の経験と私がその現在している経験を知ることとは区別不可能な同一のことであると言うか、あるいはまた、原則として我々は我々の現在の経験を知らないのだと言うか、しなければならない。全体として言えば私は、『知る』という語を、知ることが知られるものとは異なっているという意味に 用いるほうがよいと思う。そして、原則として我々は我々の現在の経験を知らないとい う結論(帰結)を受けいれるほうがよいと思う。 Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.7 From the point of view of theory of knowledge, this raises very difficult questions as to what is meant by ‘empirical evidence’. In the Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, which is largely concerned with this problem, I replaced ‘acquaintance’ by ‘noticing’, which I accepted as an undefined term. A quotation will make this point clear; ‘Suppose you are out walking on a wet day, and you see a puddle and avoid it. You are not likely to say to yourself: “there is a puddle; it will be advisable not to step into it”. But if somebody said “why did you suddenly step aside?” you would answer “because I didn’t wish to step into that puddle”. You know, retrospectively, that you had a visual perception, to which you reacted appropriately; and in the case supposed, you express this knowledge in words. But what would you have known, and in what sense, if your attention had not been called to the matter by your questioner? “When you were questioned, the incident was over, and you answered by memory. Can one remember what one never knew? That depends upon the meaning of the word “know”. ‘The word “know” is highly ambiguous. In most senses of the word, “knowing” an event is a different occurrence from the event which is known; but there is a sense of “knowing” in which, when you have an experience, there is no difference between the experience and knowing that you have it. It might be maintained that we always know our present experiences; but this cannot be the case if the knowing is something different from the experience. For, if an experience is one thing and knowing it is another, the supposition that we always know an experience when it is happening involves an infinite multiplication of every event. I feel hot; this is one event. I know that I feel hot; this is a second event. I know that I know that I feel hot; this is a third event. And so on ad infinitum y which is absurd. We must therefore say either that my present experience is indistinguishable from my knowing it while it is present, or that, as a rule, we do not know our present experiences. On the whole, I prefer to use the word “know” in a sense which implies that the knowing is different from what is known, and to accept the consequence that, as a rule, we do not know our present experiences. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-070.HTM
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.6 One of the most important issues affected by the question (whether sensation is essentially relational is as to the theory which is called ‘Neutral Monism’. So long as the ‘subject’ was retained there was a ‘mental’ entity to which there was nothing analogous in the material world, but, if sensations are occurrences which are not essentially relational, there is not the same need to regard mental and physical occurrences as fundamentally different. It becomes possible to regard both a mind and a piece of matter as logical constructions formed out of materials not differing vitally and sometimes actually identical. It became possible to think that what the physiologist regards as matter in the brain is actually composed of thoughts and feelings, and that the difference between mind and matter is merely one of arrangement. I illustrated this by the analogy of the Post Office Directory, which classifies people in two ways, alphabetical and geographical. In the first arrangement, a man’s neighbours are those who come near him in the alphabet; in the other, they are those who live next door. In like manner, a sensation may be grouped with a number of other occurrences by a memory-chain, in which case it becomes part of a mind ; or it may be grouped with its causal antecedents, in which case it appears as part of the physical world. This view affords an immense simplification. I was glad when I realized that abandonment of the ‘subject’ made it possible to accept this simplification and to regard the traditional problem of the relation of mind and matter as definitively solved. There were, however, other respects in which the consequences of the new view were less convenient. There is a duality which is essential in any form of knowledge except that which is shown in mere bodily behaviour. We are aware of something, we have a recollection of something, and, generally, knowing is distinct from that which is known. This duality, after it has been banished from sensation, has to be somehow re-introduced. The first form in which the problem arises is as to ‘perception’. In this respect there is a difference between different sensations. Smells and tastes and bodily feelings such as headache or stomach-ache do not suggest this duality as forcibly as sight and touch and hearing. Before we begin to reflect, we think of the things that we see and hear and touch as external to ourselves, and it is only by an effort that we can turn our attention to seeing as opposed to what is seen. When a dog sees a rabbit, we can hardly suppose that it says to itself, ‘I am having a visual sensation which probably has an external cause*. But if the view of James and Mach is right, what occurs in the dog when it ‘sees a rabbit’ has only an indirect and causal relation to the rabbit. This view strikes one as odd, and it is on account of the oddity that I was so slow in adopting it. I think, however, that the whole theory as to the causes of sensation, which are partly physical and partly physiological, makes it unavoidable that we should regard ‘perception’ as something much less direct than it seems to be. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.: https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-060.HTM
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.5 Response to stimulus is not, in itself, a characteristic of living matter. A galvanometer responds to an electric current and a thermometer responds to temperature. What is characteristic of animals, and especially of the higher animals, is what may be called ‘learning’, which consists in changing the response to a given stimulus as the result of the acquisition of a habit. There is a great difference between higher and lower animals in the capacity of acquiring habits that arc useful. A fly will continue indefinitely to try to get through a pane of glass, whereas a cat or a dog very soon learns that this is impossible. A large part of the superiority of human beings to other animals consists in their greater capacity for acquiring numerous and complex habits. Will this principle cover the whole of what is meant by ‘knowledge derived from experience’? I have never myself thought that it will, but I think it may cover more of the ground than one might naturally suppose. If, when you see a dog you say ‘dog’, and when you see a cat you say ‘cat’, that will be taken as evidence that you ‘know’ the difference between a cat and a dog. But it is clear that you could make a machine that would do this, and if you said that the machine ‘knew’ anything you would be thought to be speaking metaphorically. Everybody who is not a philosopher addicted to Behaviourism is persuaded that things happen in us which do not happen in any machine. If you have a toothache, you know that you are feeling pain. You could make a machine which would groan and even say, ‘This is unendurable’, but you would still not believe that the machine was undergoing what you undergo when you feel toothache. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-050.HTM
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.4 But at the time when I wrote the Analysis of Mind I was not fully aware of the need for re-interpreting what common sense calls ‘the evidence of the senses’. A part of the problem can be dealt with by behaviourist methods. One of the differences between dead matter and a living body is that the response of the living body to a frequently applied stimulus changes with repetitions of the stimulus, whereas the response of dead matter in general shows no such change. This is embodied in the proverb, ‘a burnt child dreads the fire’. An automatic machine, however often it has responded to the insertion of a penny, never learns to respond to the mere sight of a penny. Habit, which is one of the most fundamental characteristics of living matter, and especially of the higher forms of life, consists essentially in the ‘conditioned reflex’. The essence of the ‘conditioned reflex’ is this: Given that an animal responds to a stimulus A by a certain action and that the stimulus A is frequently presented to it along with another stimulus B, the animal tends in time to react to B as it formerly reacted to A. Pavlov carried out a large number of experiments on dogs showing how they learnt to view one thing as a ‘sign’ of another and to behave in a manner which showed that in one sense of the word they had ‘knowledge’. For instance, there were two doors, on one of which an ellipse was painted and on the other a circle. If the dog chose the door that had a circle, it got a good dinner, but if it chose the door that had an ellipse it got an electric shock. After a certain number of trials, the dog invariably chose the circle. The dog, however, was inferior to Kepler in the capacity of distinguishing ellipses from circles. Pavlov made the ellipse gradually more nearly circular until at last the dog was unable to make the distinction and suffered a nervous breakdown. Much the same thing happens to schoolboys when they are asked, ‘What is six times nine?’ or ‘What is seven times eight.?’ They soon get to know that the answer is either fifty-four or fifty-six, but it may be a long time before they can choose between these two numbers. Such experiments with dogs and schoolboys can be conducted in a purely behaviourist manner – that is to say, we are investigating a bodily response to a bodily stimulus, and we do not have to ask ourselves whether the dog or the schoolboy ‘thinks’. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-040.HTM
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.3 But new problems, of which at first I was not fully conscious, arose as a consequence of the abandonment of ‘sense-data*. Such words as ‘awareness’, ‘acquaintance*, and ‘experience* had to be re-defined, and this was by no means an easy task. At the beginning of An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, I stated the problem as follows: ‘If you say to a person untrained in philosophy, “How do you know I have two eyes?” he or she will reply, “What a silly question! I can see you have”. It is not to be supposed that, when our inquiry is finished, we shall have arrived at anything radically different from this unphilosophical position. What will have happened will be that we shall have come to see a complicate structure where we thought everything was simple, that we shall have become aware of the penumbra of uncertainty surrounding the situations which inspire no doubt, that we shall find doubt more frequently justified than we supposed, and that even the most plausible premisses will have shown themselves capable of yielding implausible conclusions. The net result is to substitute articulate hesitation for inarticulate certainty. Whether this result has any value is a question which I shall not consider’ (page 11 ). Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-030.HTM
この問題は、当初、見かけ上そう思われた以上に重要なものであった。我々は経験によって学習するということは明らかであり、しかも少なくとも私には、学習が単にある種の行動の仕方を獲得することだけで成り立っているだけでなく、また「知識」と呼ぶことのできる何かを生みだすことで成り立っていることは明らかであると思われた。そしてこのことは、私が感覚は関係的事実であるとする説(関係説)に固執している間は困 難を生じなかった。この説によれば、あらゆる感覚(感覚するもの全ては、それ自身一つの認識であり、それは私が 「感覚所与(sense-datum センス・データ)」と呼んだものの意識(ものを意識すること)で成り立っていた。(しかし)『精神の分析』(1921年) において、私は「感覚所与(センス・データ)」という考えを明示的に捨てた。私はこう述べた、「感覚は、明らかに、我々自身の身体を含めて、世界についての我々の知識の源である。(従って)感覚はそれ自身一つの認識であると見なすことは当然であると思われ、私も、最近まではそう考えていた。(たとえば)知人が街で私に近づいてくるのを見る時、あたかも単に見ることそれ自体が知識であるかのように思われる。もちろん、知識は見ることを通して得られることは否定できない。しかし私は、単に見ることそれ自体を直ちに知識であると考えるのは誤まりだと考える。もし仮に、見ることが直ちに知ることであると考えるならば、我々は見ること(もの)を見られること(もの)とを区別しなければならない。 たとえば、我々がある形した一片の色を見る場合、その一片の色と、我々がそれを見ることは、別々のことであると言わなければならない。けれども、この見解(見方)はさきに(『精神の分析』の)第1項で論じた意味における『主観』(主体)ないしは『作用』を認めることを要求する(注:The Analysis of Mind は、1919年と1920年にロンドンで公開講義がなされている)。そしてもし仮に主観(主体)があるとするならば、主観(主体)はその色の一片に対して一つのの関係すなわち意識(awareness)と読んでよいような一つの関係を持つことが可能である。この場合、ひとつの心的事象(event)としての感覚は、色の意識で成りたっており、一方、色そのものは全く物理的なものであって、これを感覚と区別するために、感覚所与と呼んでよいであろう。けれども、主観(主体)は、数学的な点や瞬間と同様に、一つの論理的虚構であると思われるのである。 主観なるもの(論理的虚構)が導入されるのは、観察がそれ(その存在)を明らかに示すからではなく、そうすることが言語上便利であり、明らかに文法上必要とされるからである。こういう名目的な存在は、現実に存在するかも知れずまた存在しないかも知れないが、それが存在すると想定すべき十分な理由はない。そういう名目的存在が果たすと見える機能は、集合や系列(series)やその他の論理的構成物によって常に果たすことが可能であり、これらは(主観などの)名目的存在ほど疑わしくないもので成り立っている。我々が全く無根拠な想定(perfectly gratuitous assumption)をすることを避けるべきであるとしたら、我々は世界の実際の構成要素の一つとしての主観をなしですまさなければならない。しかしそれをやめると、感覚を感覚所与から区別する可能性もまた消え去る。少なくとも、私はその区別を保存する方法を知らない。従って、我々が一片の色を単純に見るときにもつ感覚は、その一片の色そのものであり、物理的世界の現実的要素であり、物理学がとり扱うものの一部である。 一片の色は確かに知識ではなく、それゆえ、我々は単なる感覚が認識的であると言うことはできない。感覚は それの生み出す心理的効果(結果)により、認識の原因となる。 それは、或る場合にはひとつの感覚がそれに関連する他のものの記号となることによってであり(たとえば視覚は触覚と関連する)、またある場合にはその感覚が消えた後に心像(イメージ)や記憶を生じさせることによってである。 だが、単なる感覚はそれ自身では認識ではないのである。」(pp.141-142)
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.2 The issue was more important than might at first be apparent. It is obvious that we learn by experience and it at least seemed obvious to me that learning does not consist merely in acquiring certain ways of behaving but also in the generation of something that may be called ‘knowledge’. So long as I adhered to the relational theory of sensation, this offered little difficulty. Every sensation, according to this view, was itself a cognition which consisted in awareness of what I called the ‘sense-datum’. In the Analysis of Mind (1921) I explicitly abandoned ‘sense-data’. I said: ‘Sensations are obviously the source of our knowledge of the world, including our own body. It might seem natural to regard a sensation as itself a cognition, and until lately I did so regard it. When, say, I see a person I know coming towards me in the street, it seems as though the mere seeing were knowledge. It is of course undeniable that knowledge comes through the seeing, but I think it is a mistake to regard the mere seeing itself as knowledge. If we are so to regard it, we must distinguish the seeing from what is seen: we must say that, when we see a patch of colour of a certain shape, the patch of colour is one thing and our seeing of it is another. This view, however, demands the admission of the subject, or act, in the sense discussed in our first lecture. If there is a subject, it can have a relation to the patch of colour, namely, the sort of relation which we might call awareness. In that case the sensation, as a mental event, will consist of awareness of the colour, while the colour itself will remain wholly physical, and may be called the sense-datum, to distinguish it from the sensation. The subject, however, appears to be a logical fiction, like mathematical points and instants. It is introduced, not because observation reveals it, but because it is linguistically convenient and apparently demanded by grammar. Nominal entities of this sort may or may not exist, but there is no good ground for assuming that they do. The functions that they appear to perform can always be performed by classes or series or other logical constructions, consisting of less dubious entities. If we are to avoid a perfectly gratuitous assumption, we must dispense with the subject as one of the actual ingredients of the world. But when we do this, the possibility of distinguishing the sensation from the sense-datum vanishes; at least I see no way of preserving the distinction. Accordingly the sensation that we have when we see a patch of colour simply is that patch of colour, an actual constituent of the physical world, and part of what physics is concerned with. A patch of colour is certainly not knowledge, and therefore we cannot say that pure sensation is cognitive. Through its psychological effects, it is the cause of cognitions, partly by being itself a sign of things that are correlated with it, as e.g. sensations of sight and touch are correlated, and partly by giving rise to images and memories after the sensation is faded. But in itself the pure sensation is not cognitive’ (pages 141-142) Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-020.HTM
Chapter 12: Consciousness and Experience , n.1 During 1918 my view as to mental events underwent a very important change. I had originally accepted Brentano’s view that in sensation there are three elements: act, content and object. I had come to think that the distinction of content and object is unnecessary, but I still thought that sensation is a fundamentally relational occurrence in which a subject is ‘aware’ of an object. I had used the concept ‘awareness’ or ‘acquaintance’ to express this relation of subject and object, and had regarded it as fundamental in the theory of empirical knowledge, but I became gradually more doubtful as to this relational character of mental occurrences. In my lectures on logical Atomism I expressed this doubt, but soon after I gave those lectures I became convinced that William James had been right in denying the relational character of sensations. In a long paper ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance’ published in The Monist in 1914, I criticized James’s view and rejected it. The argument is reprinted in Logic and Knowledge, edited by Robert C. Marsh, page 139 ff. The contrary view which I came to adopt was first published in 1919 in a paper read before the Aristotelian Society called ‘On Propositions: What they are and how they mean’. This article is also reprinted in Mr Marsh’s collection, and the relevant passage occurs on page 305 ff. James’s view was first set forth in an essay called ‘Does “Consciousness” Exist?’ In this essay he contended that the supposed subject is ‘the name of a nonentity’. He goes on to say: ‘Those who still cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing “soul” upon the air of philosophy.’ This essay was published in 1904, but it was not until fourteen years later that I became persuaded of its rightness. Source: My Philosophical Development, 1959, chapter 12 More info.:https://russell-j.com/beginner/BR_MPD_12-010.HTM