I have no direct concern with Mr. Russell's solution of his problem.
But if the prior analysis is correct, one may anticipate in advance
that it will consist simply in making explicit the assumptions which
have tacitly been made in stating the problem--subject to the
conditions involved in failure to recognize that they have been made.
And I think an analytic reading of the solution will bear out the
following statement. His various "peculiar," "private" points of view
and their perspectives are nothing but names for the positions and
projectional perspectives of the ordinary space of the public worlds.
Their correlation by likeness is nothing but the explicit recognition
that they are all defined and located, from the start, in one common
spatial continuum. One quotation must suffice. "If two men are sitting
in a room, two somewhat similar worlds are perceived by them; if a
third man enters and sits between them, a third world, intermediate
between the two others, begins to be perceived" (pp. 87-88). Pray what
is this room and what defines the position (standpoint and
perspective) of the two men and the standpoint "intermediate" between
them? If the room and all the positions and perspectives which they
determine are only within, say, Mr. Russell's private world, that
private world is interestingly complex, but it gives only the original
problem over again, not a "solution" of it. It is a long way from
likenesses _within_ a private world to likenesses _between_ private
worlds. And if the worlds are all private, pray who judges their
likeness or unlikeness? This sort of thing makes one conclude that Mr.
Russell's actual procedure is the reverse of his professed one. He
really starts with one room as a spatial continuum within which
different positions and projections are determined, and which are
readily correlated with one another just because they are projections
from positions within one and the same space-room. Having employed
this, he, then, can assign different positions to different
percipients and institute a comparison between what each perceives and
pass upon the extent of the likeness which exists between them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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