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Authors: A. C. Grayling
Tags: Philosophy
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on use is controversial; one view claims that it comes close to exhausting meaning, others reject this claim. Russell’s theory demands that we think of the semantics of expressions and their uses as at least separable questions.
For this and other reasons mainly related to the philosophically crucial question of reference – of how language hooks onto the world – Russell’s theory of descriptions plays an important role in debates in the philosophy of language. For present purposes it is significant as an example of the analytic technique he applied in his attempts to solve problems in the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, as we shall now see.
Perception and knowledge
One of the central questions of philosophy is: what is knowledge and how do we get it? John Locke and his successors in the empiricist tradition argued that the foundation of contingent knowledge about the world lies in sensory experience – the use of the five senses, aided when necessary by instruments such as telescopes and the like. With this Russell agrees. But empiricism faces challenge from sceptical arguments aimed at showing that our claims to knowledge might often – perhaps always – be unjustified. There are various reasons for this. We sometimes commit errors in perceiving or reasoning, we sometimes dream without knowing that we are dreaming, we are sometimes deluded because of the effects of fever or alcohol. How, on any occasion of claiming to know something, can we be sure that the claim is not undermined in any of these ways?
In The Problems of Philosophy ( PP ) in 1912 Russell made his first systematic attempt to address these questions. ‘Is there any knowledge’, he asks, ‘which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?’ He answers in the affirmative; but the certainty, as it turns out, is far from the absolute certainty of proof.
On the basis of straightforward observations about perceptual experience – the fact that, say, a table appears to have different colours, shapes, and textures depending upon variations either in the perceiver or in the conditions under which it is perceived – we can see that there is a distinction to be drawn between the appearances of things and what they are like in themselves. How can we be sure that appearance faithfully represents the reality we suppose to lie beyond it? The question might even arise, as the sceptical points about dreams and delusions suggest, whether we can be confident that there are indeed real things ‘behind’ our sense experiences at all.
To deal with these questions Russell introduces the term ‘sense-data’ to designate the things immediately known in sensation: particular instances in perceptual awareness of colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures, each class of data corresponding to one of the five senses. Sense-data are to be distinguished from acts of sensing them: they are what we are immediately aware of in acts of sensing. But they must also, as the considerations of the preceding paragraph show, be distinguished from the things in the world outside us with which we suppose them associated. The crucial question therefore is: what is the relation of sense-data to physical objects?
Russell’s response to the sceptic who questions our right to claim knowledge of what lies beyond the veil of sense-data, or even to think that physical objects exist at all, is to say that although sceptical arguments are strictly speaking irrefutable, there is nevertheless ‘not the slightest reason’ to suppose them true ( PP 17). His strategy is to collect persuasive considerations in support of this view. First, we can take it that our immediate sense-datum experiences have a ‘primitive certainty’. We recognize that when we experience sense-data which we naturally regard as associated with, say, a table, we have not said everything there is to be said about the table. We think, for example, that the table continues to exist when we are out of
For this and other reasons mainly related to the philosophically crucial question of reference – of how language hooks onto the world – Russell’s theory of descriptions plays an important role in debates in the philosophy of language. For present purposes it is significant as an example of the analytic technique he applied in his attempts to solve problems in the theory of knowledge and metaphysics, as we shall now see.
Perception and knowledge
One of the central questions of philosophy is: what is knowledge and how do we get it? John Locke and his successors in the empiricist tradition argued that the foundation of contingent knowledge about the world lies in sensory experience – the use of the five senses, aided when necessary by instruments such as telescopes and the like. With this Russell agrees. But empiricism faces challenge from sceptical arguments aimed at showing that our claims to knowledge might often – perhaps always – be unjustified. There are various reasons for this. We sometimes commit errors in perceiving or reasoning, we sometimes dream without knowing that we are dreaming, we are sometimes deluded because of the effects of fever or alcohol. How, on any occasion of claiming to know something, can we be sure that the claim is not undermined in any of these ways?
In The Problems of Philosophy ( PP ) in 1912 Russell made his first systematic attempt to address these questions. ‘Is there any knowledge’, he asks, ‘which is so certain that no reasonable man could doubt it?’ He answers in the affirmative; but the certainty, as it turns out, is far from the absolute certainty of proof.
On the basis of straightforward observations about perceptual experience – the fact that, say, a table appears to have different colours, shapes, and textures depending upon variations either in the perceiver or in the conditions under which it is perceived – we can see that there is a distinction to be drawn between the appearances of things and what they are like in themselves. How can we be sure that appearance faithfully represents the reality we suppose to lie beyond it? The question might even arise, as the sceptical points about dreams and delusions suggest, whether we can be confident that there are indeed real things ‘behind’ our sense experiences at all.
To deal with these questions Russell introduces the term ‘sense-data’ to designate the things immediately known in sensation: particular instances in perceptual awareness of colours, sounds, tastes, smells, and textures, each class of data corresponding to one of the five senses. Sense-data are to be distinguished from acts of sensing them: they are what we are immediately aware of in acts of sensing. But they must also, as the considerations of the preceding paragraph show, be distinguished from the things in the world outside us with which we suppose them associated. The crucial question therefore is: what is the relation of sense-data to physical objects?
Russell’s response to the sceptic who questions our right to claim knowledge of what lies beyond the veil of sense-data, or even to think that physical objects exist at all, is to say that although sceptical arguments are strictly speaking irrefutable, there is nevertheless ‘not the slightest reason’ to suppose them true ( PP 17). His strategy is to collect persuasive considerations in support of this view. First, we can take it that our immediate sense-datum experiences have a ‘primitive certainty’. We recognize that when we experience sense-data which we naturally regard as associated with, say, a table, we have not said everything there is to be said about the table. We think, for example, that the table continues to exist when we are out of
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