CHAPTER XI
ON INTUITIVE
KNOWLEDGE
Note 1: Starting with the common beliefs of daily
life, we can be driven back from point to point,
until we come to some general principle, or some
instance of a general principle, which seems
luminously evident, and is not itself capable of
being deduced from anything more evident.
I largely agree, but
the references to evidence (and luminous evidence)
are mistaken though natural: assumptions from
which deductively follows what we desire to
explain need not be evident or luminous at
all, and indeed usually are not ("God made it!",
"Santa Clause gave it!"), and only become so by
familiarity.
In general terms, we
may assume what we please and deduce from it what
we can. But we don't need to know more than such
assumptions, and we also don't need to worry about
such evidence they seem to have initially,
provided we can deduce conclusions from them that
are supported in experience, for such conclusions
provides real evidence for them, that again may be
independent from what we would wish to believe is
evident or luminous. Back.
Note 2: (..) there is no reasoning which,
starting from some simpler self-evident
principle, leads us to the principle of
induction as its conclusion.
I disagree, but my
reasons are too technical to state here. And
again, the true explanation of things need not at
all be self-evident to be true nevertheless. Back.
Note 3: (..) the propositions deduced are
often just as self-evident
Sometimes - and this
is the more interesting case - the propositions
deduced by self-evident principles from
self-evident truths are not at all self-evident
themselves. (Thomas Hobbes somewhere gives a nice
account of his first encountering Pythagoras'
Theorem in Euclid.) Back.
Note 4: All arithmetic, moreover, can be
deduced from the general principles of logic
(..)
This is what Frege
and Russell believed themselves to have proved,
but they were mistaken on the current
understanding of logic, since to deduce all
arithmetic we need, besides the general principles
of logic, some principles about classes or
numbers. Back.
Note 5: It would seem, also, though this
is more disputable, that there are some
self-evident ethical principles, such as 'we
ought to pursue what is good'.
Why the existence of
ethical principles, self-evident or not, should be
more disputable than the existence of logical and
arithmetical principles is not altogether clear to
me. Probably the reason is that there seem to have
been more disagreement between humans concerning
ethical principles than concerning mathematical or
logical principles. However, most such
disagreements did not concern ethical principles
as such, like 'people should not steal' and
'people should not murder' since the disagreeing
parties nearly always agreed on them, but
disagreed about their scope or application.
(Indeed, the self-evident (?) ethical principle
most people seem to live and survive by is that it
is better to conform with than to deviate from
one's fellows: "if in Rome, do as the Romans do",
even if it involves gloating over dying gladiators
in the circus, since conformism generally is much
safer than non-conformism). Back.
Note 6: Only those who are practised in
dealing with abstractions can readily grasp a
general principle without the help of instances.
This seems to me
unduly empirical. This may be true in many cases,
but especially in the present context, in which
our intuitive knowledge is considered, it should
be noted that it seems as if human beings know
some general principles without the help of
instances. Two of these may be those that are
involved in learning from experience: that all
things come in kinds, and that recurrences recur
(or thirdly, whatever happened several times
thereby has a somewhat increased chance of
happening again). Another may be our intuitive
grasp of symbols and signs i.e. that given
experiences may include clues or information about
something else. (In this remark, as in others, I
am not aiming at the precise literal and eternal
metaphysical truth of the matters at hand, but
only at some rather clear expression of what seems
likely to me, and may be better and more fully
expressed elsewhere.) Back.
Note 7: In addition to general
principles, the other kind of self-evident
truths are those immediately derived from
sensation. We will call such truths 'truths of
perception', and the judgements expressing them
we will call 'judgements of perception'.
In view of Russell
peculiar opinions about sense-data and universals,
this will need some remarks, as he himself notes
in the text that follows. I'll try to be as brief
as I can. Back.
Note 8: The actual sense-data are
neither true nor false. A particular patch of
colour which I see, for example, simply exists:
it is not the sort of thing that is true or
false.
Here the puzzles
start. If sense-data are things or events, it is
obvious they are neither true nor false, for the
same reason as, say, sausages or the weather are
not things that are, themselves, true or false.
But even so, they are supposed to be true or false
of the things they are sense-data of (since we may
hallucinate), while it seems a bit odd to say,
without further clarification, that a particular
patch of colour one sees 'simply exists', for if
it does, it does not necessarily exist in the same
sense as does a real sausage. The reason is,
again, that a patch of colour may be a
hallucination. Back.
Note 9: Thus whatever self-evident
truths may be obtained from our senses must be
different from the sense-data from which they
are obtained.
On Russell's own
account this cannot be true: Surely, there are
truths derived from our senses about sense-data,
for else we could not know there are sense-data. I
agree that what our experiences are experiences of
differs normally from our experiences and may be
known by means of them, but that again is
something that is difficult to understand on
Russell's account. Back.
Note 10: Another class of intuitive judgements,
analogous to those of sense and yet quite
distinct from them, are judgements of memory.
There is some danger of confusion as to the
nature of memory, owing to the fact that memory
of an object is apt to be accompanied by an
image of the object, and yet the image cannot be
what constitutes memory. This is easily seen by
merely noticing that the image is in the
present, whereas what is remembered is known to
be in the past. Moreover, we are certainly able
to some extent to compare our image with the
object remembered, so that we often know, within
somewhat wide limits, how far our image is
accurate; but this would be impossible, unless
the object, as opposed to the image, were in
some way before the mind. Thus the essence of
memory is not constituted by the image, but by
having immediately before the mind an object
which is recognized as past. But for the fact of
memory in this sense, we should not know that
there ever was a past at all, nor should we be
able to understand the word 'past', any more
than a man born blind can understand the word
'light'. Thus there must be intuitive judgements
of memory, and it is upon them, ultimately, that
all our knowledge of the past depends.
This seems mainly
correct. Indeed, there is a difference between our
becoming aware of a memory and the memory itself,
and it is important to stress that generally all
that we do remember about something is far more
than is delivered in any particular act of
remembering it (as anyone may find out for himself
by remembering something and then asking himself
whether he remembers anything else about it: I
usually do, even if I did not believe so before I
tried).
And it is also true
and important that our minds somehow label a
number of our experiences as being of a certain
kind: memory, sensation and fantasy being three
important classes of such experiences that we
generally seem to be given as such, i.e. not as
just any kind of experience, but definitely as an
experience which is a memory, a sensation or a
fantasy. Back.
Note 11: Thus there is a continual
gradation in the degree of self-evidence of what
I remember, and a corresponding gradation in the
trustworthiness of my memory.
All of the present
paragraph seems correct to me (which itself is
interesting, in that Russell describes his unique
private experiences in 1912 and I agree nearly 90
years later that my own private experiences in the
respect he describes his are quite similar).
The problem that
memory may deceive us, and more generally that our
senses may deceive us, seems to me less of a
problem than it seemed to Russell. My reason is
that I do not expect not to be deceived by my
senses, but only expect that they usually
do not deceive me, and that I often may (and will)
find out if they do.
What is true is that,
since memory is involved in all or nearly all our
knowledge, it is important to be quite clear to
what extent and in which way one relies upon it:
by reference to all one's further knowledge and
belief, each instance of which may be mistaken,
but each and all of which may mutually support
each other in such a way that judgments based upon
various evidence from various senses concerning
the same presumed fact may make that presumption
very probable or practically certain indeed, in
specific cases where we have lots of evidence. Back.
Note 12: (..) reaching a limit of perfect
self-evidence and perfect trustworthiness in our
memory of events which are recent and vivid.
Not unqualifiedly so.
Russell's general account is correct, but he does
not mention he (or someone) may be drunk,
hallucinating, insane, in the throws of some
strong emotion etc. on the present moment, all of
which tend to make one's present memories (and
other sensations and judgments) more doubtful than
they would be in more ordinary circumstances. Back.
Note 13: It would seem that cases of
fallacious memory can probably all be dealt with
in this way, i.e. they can be shown to be not
cases of memory in the strict sense at all.
I doubt it very much.
Indeed, it seems from my own knowledge that
sometimes I have seemed to have remembered events
that in fact did not happen as I remembered them,
and it seems to me most people who are honest must
have similar memories about their own false
memories.
For the reason
mentioned in note 11 - for judgments to be
credible they must be supported by various kinds
of independent evidence, and many of our judgments
can be thus supported - this does not much trouble
me in principle. Back.
Note 14: Memories have a diminishing
self-evidence as they become remoter and
fainter;
Broadly speaking, I
agree with the present paragraph, but I like to
avoid the rather vague term 'self-evident' and
replace it by the more simpler 'evident'. Back.
Note 15: Judgements of intrinsic ethical
or aesthetic value are apt to have some
self-evidence, but not much.
Why not? This seems
to me to involve at least two serious fallacies.
First, it seems
factually false. Very many human judgments concern
ethical or aesthetical matters, and however
mistaken or misguided they are, they often seem to
be very self-evident and very well-based
to those who make these judgments. (I, for one,
just know beer tastes and smells awful, for me,
and I have always thought so.)
Second, it seems
false as a matter of principle. At least nearly
everything human beings do and don't do, believe
and don't believe, desire and don't desire, and so
on, is done, believed, desired etc. in the context
of judgments about what people should and should
not believe, desire, do, think about etc. and
these latter judgments tend to be undoubted,
sacrosanct, beyond criticism or Eternal Verities
the Nation, Church or Party is based on.
So whereas it is easy
to be flippant about such matters, especially in
the guise of a philosopher, the fact seems to be
that most human beings organise their life,
opinions and behaviour around judgments of ethical
and aesthetical value, and normally do so
to the extent that they hold strong opinions about
(supposed) matters of fact derived - usually
invalidly - from these judgments of value. Back.
