Mysticism and Logic and Other EssaysRussell, Bertrand
Philosophy
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
Russell, Bertrand
Mathematics; Philosophy; Science
however, is not important for our present purposes, and I shall
therefore not discuss it further.
The awarenesses we have considered so far have all been awarenesses of
particular existents, and might all in a large sense be called
sense-data. For, from the point of view of theory of knowledge,
introspective knowledge is exactly on a level with knowledge derived
from sight or hearing. But, in addition to awareness of the above kind
of objects, which may be called awareness of _particulars_; we have
also (though not quite in the same sense) what may be called awareness
of _universals_. Awareness of universals is called _conceiving_, and a
universal of which we are aware is called a _concept_. Not only are we
aware of particular yellows, but if we have seen a sufficient number
of yellows and have sufficient intelligence, we are aware of the
universal _yellow_; this universal is the subject in such judgments as
"yellow differs from blue" or "yellow resembles blue less than green
does." And the universal yellow is the predicate in such judgments as
"this is yellow," where "this" is a particular sense-datum. And
universal relations, too, are objects of awarenesses; up and down,
before and after, resemblance, desire, awareness itself, and so on,
would seem to be all of them objects of which we can be aware.
In regard to relations, it might be urged that we are never aware of
the universal relation itself, but only of complexes in which it is a
constituent. For example, it may be said that we do not know directly
such a relation as _before_, though we understand such a proposition
as "this is before that," and may be directly aware of such a complex
as "this being before that." This view, however, is difficult to
reconcile with the fact that we often know propositions in which the
relation is the subject, or in which the relata are not definite given
objects, but "anything." For example, we know that if one thing is
before another, and the other before a third, then the first is before
the third; and here the things concerned are not definite things, but
"anything." It is hard to see how we could know such a fact about
"before" unless we were acquainted with "before," and not merely with
actual particular cases of one given object being before another given
object. And more directly: A judgment such as "this is before that,"
where this judgment is derived from awareness of a complex,
constitutes an analysis, and we should not understand the analysis if
we were not acquainted with the meaning of the terms employed. Thus we
must suppose that we are acquainted with the meaning of "before," and
not merely with instances of it.
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