THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND (Special Nook Edition) BY BERTRAND RUSSELL [The Analysis of Mind] Winner of the NOBEL PRIZE (Author of A History of Western Philosophy, Why I Am Not A Christian, The Problems of Philosophy and More) NOOKBook Bertrand Russell [NOOK Book]

THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND (Special Nook Edition)
BY BERTRAND RUSSELL

[The Analysis of Mind]

NOOKBook Bertrand Russell

Winner of the NOBEL PRIZE (Author of A History of Western Philosophy, Why I Am Not A Christian, The Problems of Philosophy and More)

OVERVIEW

This book collects 15 seminal essays and lectures on the philosophy of mind by Bertrand Russell. In the book, Russell reconciles "the materialistic tendency of psychology with the anti-materialistic tendency of physics ... according to which the "stuff" of the world is neither mental nor material, but a "neutral stuff," out of which both are constructed."


CONTENTS

LECTURE I. RECENT CRITICISMS OF "CONSCIOUSNESS"
LECTURE II. INSTINCT AND HABIT
LECTURE III. DESIRE AND FEELING
LECTURE IV. INFLUENCE OF PAST HISTORY ON PRESENT OCCURRENCES IN LIVING
LECTURE V. PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PHYSICAL CAUSAL LAWS
LECTURE VI. INTROSPECTION
LECTURE VII. THE DEFINITION OF PERCEPTION
LECTURE VIII. SENSATIONS AND IMAGES
LECTURE IX. MEMORY
LECTURE X. WORDS AND MEANING
LECTURE XI. GENERAL IDEAS AND THOUGHT
LECTURE XII. BELIEF
LECTURE XIII. TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD
LECTURE XIV. EMOTIONS AND WILL
LECTURE XV. CHARACTERISTICS OF MENTAL PHENOMENA


EXCERPT

The definition of truth and falsehood, which is our topic to-day, lies strictly outside our general subject, namely the analysis of mind. From the psychological standpoint, there may be different kinds of belief, and different degrees of certainty, but there cannot be any purely psychological means of distinguishing between true and false beliefs. A belief is rendered true or false by relation to a fact, which may lie outside the experience of the person entertaining the belief. Truth and falsehood, except in the case of beliefs about our own minds, depend upon the relations of mental occurrences to outside things, and thus take us beyond the analysis of mental occurrences as they are in themselves. Nevertheless, we can hardly avoid the consideration of truth and falsehood. We wish to believe that our beliefs, sometimes at least, yield KNOWLEDGE, and a belief does not yield knowledge unless it is true. The question whether our minds are instruments of knowledge, and, if so, in what sense, is so vital that any suggested analysis of mind must be examined in relation to this question. To ignore this question would be like describing a chronometer without regard to its accuracy as a time-keeper, or a thermometer without mentioning the fact that it measures temperature.

Many difficult questions arise in connection with knowledge. It is difficult to define knowledge, difficult to decide whether we have any knowledge, and difficult, even if it is conceded that we sometimes have knowledge to discover whether we can ever know that we have knowledge in this or that particular case. I shall divide the discussion into four parts:

I. We may regard knowledge, from a behaviourist standpoint, as exhibited in a certain kind of response to the environment. This response must have some characteristics which it shares with those of scientific instruments, but must also have others that are peculiar to knowledge. We shall find that this point of view is important, but not exhaustive of the nature of knowledge.

II. We may hold that the beliefs that constitute knowledge are distinguished from such as are erroneous or uncertain by properties which are intrinsic either to single beliefs or to systems of beliefs, being in either case discoverable without reference to outside fact. Views of this kind have been widely held among philosophers, but we shall find no reason to accept them.

III. We believe that some beliefs are true, and some false. This raises the problem of VERIFIABILITY: are there any circumstances which can justifiably give us an unusual degree of certainty that such and such a belief is true? It is obvious that there are circumstances which in fact cause a certainty of this sort, and we wish to learn what we can from examining these circumstances.

IV. Finally, there is the formal problem of defining truth and falsehood, and deriving the objective reference of a proposition from the meanings of its component words.