Read Online Russell - A Very Short Indroduction by A. C. Grayling - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: A. C. Grayling
Tags: Philosophy
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the room. We can buy the table, put a cloth over it, move it about. We require that different perceivers should be able to perceive the same table. All this suggests that a table is something over and above the sense-data that appear to us. But if there were no table out there in the world we should have to formulate a complicated hypothesis about there being as many different seeming-tables as there are perceivers, and explain why nevertheless we all talk as if we are perceiving the same object.
But note that on the sceptical view, as Russell points out, we ought not even to think that there are other perceivers either: after all, if we cannot refute scepticism about objects, how are we to refute scepticism about other minds?
Russell cuts through this difficulty by accepting a version of what is called ‘the argument to the best explanation’. It is surely far simpler and more powerful, he argues, to adopt the hypothesis that, first, there really are physical objects existing independently of our sensory experience, and, secondly, that they cause our perceptions and therefore ‘correspond’ to them in a reliable way. Following Hume, Russell regards belief in this hypothesis as ‘instinctive’.
To this, he argues, we can add another kind of knowledge, namely, a priori knowledge of the truths of logic and pure mathematics (and even perhaps the fundamental propositions of ethics). Such knowledge is quite independent of experience, and depends wholly upon the self-evidence of the truths known, such as ‘1 + 1 = 2’ and ‘A = A’. When perceptual knowledge and a priori knowledge are conjoined they enable us to acquire general knowledge of the world beyond our immediate experience, because the first kind of knowledge gives us empirical data and the second permits us to draw inferences from it.
These two kinds of knowledge can each be farther divided into subkinds, described by Russell as immediate and derivative knowledge respectively. He gives the name ‘acquaintance’ to immediate knowledge of things. The objects of acquaintance are themselves of two sorts: particulars , that is, individual sense-data and – perhaps – ourselves; and universals . Universals are of various kinds. They include sensible qualities such as redness and smoothness, spatial and temporal relations such as ‘to the left of’ and ‘before’, and certain logical abstractions.
Derivative knowledge of things Russell calls ‘knowledge by description’, which is general knowledge of facts made possible by combination of and inference from what we are acquainted with. One’s knowledge that Everest is the world’s highest mountain is an example of descriptive knowledge.
Immediate knowledge of truths Russell calls ‘intuitive knowledge’, and he describes the truths so known as self-evident . These are propositions which are just ‘luminously evident, and not capable of being deduced from anything more evident’. For example, we just see that ‘1 + 1 = 2’ is true. Among the items of intuitive knowledge are reports of immediate experience; if I simply state what sense-data I am now aware of, I cannot (barring trivial slips of the tongue) be wrong.
Derivative knowledge of truths consists of whatever can be inferred from self-evident truths by self-evident principles of deduction.
Despite the appearance of rigour introduced by our possession of a priori knowledge, says Russell, we have to accept that our ordinary general knowledge is only as good as its foundation in the ‘best explanation’ justification and the instincts which render it plausible. Ordinary knowledge amounts at best, therefore, to ‘more or less probable opinion’. But when we note that our probable opinions form a coherent and mutually supportive system – the more coherent and stable the system, the greater the probability of the opinions forming it – we see why we are entitled to repose confidence in them.
An important feature of Russell’s theory
But note that on the sceptical view, as Russell points out, we ought not even to think that there are other perceivers either: after all, if we cannot refute scepticism about objects, how are we to refute scepticism about other minds?
Russell cuts through this difficulty by accepting a version of what is called ‘the argument to the best explanation’. It is surely far simpler and more powerful, he argues, to adopt the hypothesis that, first, there really are physical objects existing independently of our sensory experience, and, secondly, that they cause our perceptions and therefore ‘correspond’ to them in a reliable way. Following Hume, Russell regards belief in this hypothesis as ‘instinctive’.
To this, he argues, we can add another kind of knowledge, namely, a priori knowledge of the truths of logic and pure mathematics (and even perhaps the fundamental propositions of ethics). Such knowledge is quite independent of experience, and depends wholly upon the self-evidence of the truths known, such as ‘1 + 1 = 2’ and ‘A = A’. When perceptual knowledge and a priori knowledge are conjoined they enable us to acquire general knowledge of the world beyond our immediate experience, because the first kind of knowledge gives us empirical data and the second permits us to draw inferences from it.
These two kinds of knowledge can each be farther divided into subkinds, described by Russell as immediate and derivative knowledge respectively. He gives the name ‘acquaintance’ to immediate knowledge of things. The objects of acquaintance are themselves of two sorts: particulars , that is, individual sense-data and – perhaps – ourselves; and universals . Universals are of various kinds. They include sensible qualities such as redness and smoothness, spatial and temporal relations such as ‘to the left of’ and ‘before’, and certain logical abstractions.
Derivative knowledge of things Russell calls ‘knowledge by description’, which is general knowledge of facts made possible by combination of and inference from what we are acquainted with. One’s knowledge that Everest is the world’s highest mountain is an example of descriptive knowledge.
Immediate knowledge of truths Russell calls ‘intuitive knowledge’, and he describes the truths so known as self-evident . These are propositions which are just ‘luminously evident, and not capable of being deduced from anything more evident’. For example, we just see that ‘1 + 1 = 2’ is true. Among the items of intuitive knowledge are reports of immediate experience; if I simply state what sense-data I am now aware of, I cannot (barring trivial slips of the tongue) be wrong.
Derivative knowledge of truths consists of whatever can be inferred from self-evident truths by self-evident principles of deduction.
Despite the appearance of rigour introduced by our possession of a priori knowledge, says Russell, we have to accept that our ordinary general knowledge is only as good as its foundation in the ‘best explanation’ justification and the instincts which render it plausible. Ordinary knowledge amounts at best, therefore, to ‘more or less probable opinion’. But when we note that our probable opinions form a coherent and mutually supportive system – the more coherent and stable the system, the greater the probability of the opinions forming it – we see why we are entitled to repose confidence in them.
An important feature of Russell’s theory
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