Russell’s later theory of perception

Abstract

Russell's later theory of perception by Thomas A. Wilson 1. CONSTRUCTION OF THE THEORY THIS ESSAY IS primarily an account of Bertrand Russell's later theory of perception. Russell scholarship has tended to ignore his views on this topic, and on epistemology generally, as published in his works after The Analysis ofMind in 1921. This omission has lately begun to be corrected,I and this work is offered as a contribution to that end. In Human Knowledge, Russell maintains that common sense divides the world of human experience into mental and physical objects and events. Mental events include emotions, feelings of pleasure and pain, sentiments, passions, desires, and volitions. All of these mental occurr- .ences are capable of perception by the human subject to whom and in I Perhaps the reasons for this omission may be found in Russell's bewildering changes of position from the Platonic realism of The Problems ofPhilosophy through the constructionism of Our Knowledge of the External World to the logical atomism of "The Philosophy of Logical Atomism". The reasons for these changes have lately been made clear by the publication of Theory of Knowledge: The 1913 Manuscript, ed. Elizabeth Ramsden Eames in collaboration with Kenneth Blackwell, Vol. 7ofThe Collected Papers ofBertrand Russell (London and Boston: George Allen and Unwin, 1984). For works providing a remedy to the lack of attention paid to Russell's later epistemology, see A. J. Ayer, "The Causal Theory of Perception", Aristotelian Society: Supplemental Volume, 51 (1977): 105-25; Renford Bambrough, "Conflict and the Scope of Reason", Ratio, 20 (Dec. 1978): 77-91; Aaron BenZeev, "The Analytic, Syntheticand 'A Priori"', Scientia, 1I4 (Oct. 1979): 481-93; William Edward Morris, "Moore and Russell on Philosophy and Science", Metaphilosophy, 10 (April 1979): 11I-38; and C. Mason Myers, "The Concept of Substance", Southern Journal of Philosophy, 15 (Winter 1977): 505-19. 26 Russell's later theory of perception 27 whom they happen, and they are all classified as events in that person's life.2 Physical things and events are those occurrences which are believed by common sense to take place outside of the human subject, such as a noise or a flash of lightning. They also include inferences to what is not perceived, such as the centre of the earth and (at the time when Russell wrote) the dark side of the moon (pp. 224-5). These common-sense notions are on the whole adequate as regards mental events but confused enough to require "radical alteration" as to the nature of physical objects and events. What is known without inference about such allegedly external events as "seeing the sun", for example , is that what is actually seen is a mental event in the perceiving human subject. Similarly, in the case ofseeing tables and chairs, what is actually seen are percepts in the private visual space of the perceiver and what is felt consists of tactual sensations in the private tactual space of the perceiver (p. 225). Inferences of this sort are unnoticed by common sense. They are only revealed by the examination of the relation of physics to common sense. Russell observes that physics starts out with the intention of justifying naive realism but ends by elaborating a theory which holds that the perception of a table or chair, for instance, only resembles the physical table or chair in certain abstract structural respects (ibid.). Physical objects and events must be assumed to cause the perceptions of human beings since otherwise there is no reason to accept science in general, and the refusal of this acceptance is probably irrational (p. 228). Positive grounds for the assumption that there are physical and mental events are based ona distinction between these two types ofevents which are clearer than that provided by common sense. A physical event is one which, if it is known to occur, is an event which is inferred and is not known to be mental. A mental event, on the other hand, is known otherwise than by inference (p. 229). Given this distinction, the inference from the existence of a percept, such as a red colour patch or the hardness ofa common-sensical table, to the existence of a physical object...