Mysticism and Logic and Other EssaysRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Russell, Bertrand
Mathematics; Philosophy; Science
The first fact to notice is that, so far as can be discovered, no
sensibile is ever a datum to two people at once. The things seen by
two different people are often closely similar, so similar that the
same _words_ can be used to denote them, without which communication
with others concerning sensible objects would be impossible. But, in
spite of this similarity, it would seem that some difference always
arises from difference in the point of view. Thus each person, so far
as his sense-data are concerned, lives in a private world. This
private world contains its own space, or rather spaces, for it would
seem that only experience teaches us to correlate the space of sight
with the space of touch and with the various other spaces of other
senses. This multiplicity of private spaces, however, though
interesting to the psychologist, is of no great importance in regard
to our present problem, since a merely solipsistic experience enables
us to correlate them into the one private space which embraces all our
own sense-data. The place _at_ which a sense-datum is, is a place in
private space. This place therefore is different from any place in the
private space of another percipient. For if we assume, as logical
economy demands, that all position is relative, a place is only
definable by the things in or around it, and therefore the same place
cannot occur in two private worlds which have no common constituent.
The question, therefore, of combining what we call different
appearances of the same thing in the same place does not arise, and
the fact that a given object appears to different spectators to have
different shapes and colours affords no argument against the physical
reality of all these shapes and colours.
In addition to the private spaces belonging to the private worlds of
different percipients, there is, however, another space, in which one
whole private world counts as a point, or at least as a spatial unit.
This might be described as the space of points of view, since each
private world may be regarded as the appearance which the universe
presents from a certain point of view. I prefer, however, to speak of
it as the space of _perspectives_, in order to obviate the suggestion
that a private world is only real when someone views it. And for the
same reason, when I wish to speak of a private world without assuming
a percipient, I shall call it a "perspective."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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