ONT Re: Russell -- Philosophy Of Logical Atomism
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
POLA. Note 22
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
| 4.1. Are Beliefs, Etc., Irreducible Facts? (concl.)
|
| I have naturally a bias in favour of the theory of neutral monism
| because it exemplifies Occam's razor. I always wish to get on in
| philosophy with the smallest possible apparatus, partly because
| it diminishes the risk of error, because it is not necessary to
| deny the entities you do not assert, and therefore you run less
| risk of error the fewer entities you assume. The other reason --
| perhaps a somewhat frivolous one -- is that every diminution
| in the number of entities increases the amount of work for
| mathematical logic to do in building up things that look
| like the entities you used to assume. Therefore the
| whole theory of neutral monism is pleasing to me,
| but I do find so far very great difficulty in
| believing it.
|
| You will find a discussion of the whole question in some
| articles I wrote in 'The Monist'*, especially in July 1914,
| and in the two previous numbers also. I should really want
| to rewrite them rather because I think some of the arguments
| I used against neutral monism are not valid. I place most
| reliance on the argument about "emphatic particulars", "this",
| "I", all that class of words, that pick out certain particulars
| from the universe by their relation to oneself, and I think by
| the fact that they, or particulars related to them, are present
| to you at the moment of speaking. "This", of course, is what
| I call an "emphatic particular". It is simply a proper name
| for the present object of attention, a proper name, meaning
| nothing. It is ambiguous, because, of course, the object
| of attention is always changing from moment to moment
| and from person to person.
|
| I think it is extremely difficult, if you get rid of consciousness
| altogether, to explain what you mean by such a word as "this", what
| it is that makes the absence of impartiality. You would say that in
| a purely physical world there would be a complete impartiality. All
| parts of time and all regions of space would seem equally emphatic.
| But what really happens is that we pick out certain facts, past and
| future and all that sort of thing; they all radiate out from "this",
| and I have not myself seen how one can deal with the notion of "this"
| on the basis of neutral monism. I do not lay that down dogmatically,
| only I do not see how it can be done. I shall assume for the rest of
| this lecture that there are such facts as beliefs and wishes and so
| forth. It would take me really the whole of my course to go into the
| question fully. Thus we come back to more purely logical questions
| from this excursion into psychology, for which I apologize.
|
|*Reprinted as: "On the Nature of Acquaintance", pp. 127-174
| in Bertrand Russell, 'Logic and Knowledge: Essays 1901-1950',
| edited by Robert Charles Marsh, Routledge, London, UK, 1992.
|
| Russell, POLA, pp. 86-87.
|
| Bertrand Russell, "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism", pp. 35-155
| in 'The Philosophy of Logical Atomism', edited with an introduction
| by David Pears, Open Court, La Salle, IL, 1985. First published 1918.
o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o