The Analysis of Mind by Bertrand Russell (red queen free ebook txt) 📕

present, can only be represented by images, not by those

intermediate stages, between sensations and images, which occur

during the period of fading.

* See Semon, “Die mnemischen Empfindungen,” chap. vi.

Immediate memory is important both because it provides experience

of succession, and because it bridges the gulf between sensations

and the images which are their copies. But it is now time to

resume the consideration of true memory.

Suppose you ask me what I ate for breakfast this morning.

Suppose, further, that I have not thought about my breakfast in

the meantime, and that I did not, while I was eating it, put into

words what it consisted of. In this case my recollection will be

true memory, not habit-memory. The process of remembering will

consist of calling up images of my breakfast, which will come to

me with a feeling of belief such as distinguishes memory-images

from mere imagination-images. Or sometimes words may come without

the intermediary of images; but in this case equally the feeling

of belief is essential.

Let us omit from our consideration, for the present, the memories

in which words replace images. These are always, I think, really

habit-memories, the memories that use images being the typical

true memories.

Memory-images and imagination-images do not differ in their

intrinsic qualities, so far as we can discover. They differ by

the fact that the images that constitute memories, unlike those

that constitute imagination, are accompanied by a feeling of

belief which may be expressed in the words “this happened.” The

mere occurrence of images, without this feeling of belief,

constitutes imagination; it is the element of belief that is the

distinctive thing in memory.*

* For belief of a specific kind, cf. Dorothy Wrinch “On the

Nature of Memory,” “Mind,” January, 1920.

There are, if I am not mistaken, at least three different kinds

of belief-feeling, which we may call respectively memory,

expectation and bare assent. In what I call bare assent, there is

no time-element in the feeling of belief, though there may be in

the content of what is believed. If I believe that Caesar landed

in Britain in B.C. 55, the time-determination lies, not in the

feeling of belief, but in what is believed. I do not remember the

occurrence, but have the same feeling towards it as towards the

announcement of an eclipse next year. But when I have seen a

flash of lightning and am waiting for the thunder, I have a

belief-feeling analogous to memory, except that it refers to the

future: I have an image of thunder, combined with a feeling which

may be expressed in the words: “this will happen.” So, in memory,

the pastness lies, not in the content of what is believed, but in

the nature of the belief-feeling. I might have just the same

images and expect their realization; I might entertain them

without any belief, as in reading a novel; or I might entertain

them together with a time-determination, and give bare assent, as

in reading history. I shall return to this subject in a later

lecture, when we come to the analysis of belief. For the present,

I wish to make it clear that a certain special kind of belief is

the distinctive characteristic of memory.

The problem as to whether memory can be explained as habit or

association requires to be considered afresh in connection with

the causes of our remembering something. Let us take again the

case of my being asked what I had for breakfast this morning. In

this case the question leads to my setting to work to recollect.

It is a little strange that the question should instruct me as to

what it is that I am to recall. This has to do with understanding

words, which will be the topic of the next lecture; but something

must be said about it now. Our understanding of the words

“breakfast this morning” is a habit, in spite of the fact that on

each fresh day they point to a different occasion. “This morning”

does not, whenever it is used, mean the same thing, as “John” or

“St. Paul’s” does; it means a different period of time on each

different day. It follows that the habit which constitutes our

understanding of the words “this morning” is not the habit of

associating the words with a fixed object, but the habit of

associating them with something having a fixed time-relation to

our present. This morning has, to-day, the same time-relation to

my present that yesterday morning had yesterday. In order to

understand the phrase “this morning” it is necessary that we

should have a way of feeling time-intervals, and that this

feeling should give what is constant in the meaning of the words

“this morning.” This appreciation of time-intervals is, however,

obviously a product of memory, not a presupposition of it. It

will be better, therefore, if we wish to analyse the causation of

memory by something not presupposing memory, to take some other

instance than that of a question about “this morning.”

Let us take the case of coming into a familiar room where

something has been changed—say a new picture hung on the wall.

We may at first have only a sense that SOMETHING is unfamiliar,

but presently we shall remember, and say “that picture was not on

the wall before.” In order to make the case definite, we will

suppose that we were only in the room on one former occasion. In

this case it seems fairly clear what happens. The other objects

in the room are associated, through the former occasion, with a

blank space of wall where now there is a picture. They call up an

image of a blank wall, which clashes with perception of the

picture. The image is associated with the belief-feeling which we

found to be distinctive of memory, since it can neither be

abolished nor harmonized with perception. If the room had

remained unchanged, we might have had only the feeling of

familiarity without the definite remembering; it is the change

that drives us from the present to memory of the past.

We may generalize this instance so as to cover the causes of many

memories. Some present feature of the environment is associated,

through past experiences, with something now absent; this absent

something comes before us as an image, and is contrasted with

present sensation. In cases of this sort, habit (or association)

explains why the present feature of the environment brings up the

memory-image, but it does not explain the memory-belief. Perhaps

a more complete analysis could explain the memory-belief also on

lines of association and habit, but the causes of beliefs are

obscure, and we cannot investigate them yet. For the present we

must content ourselves with the fact that the memory-image can be

explained by habit. As regards the memory-belief, we must, at

least provisionally, accept Bergson’s view that it cannot be

brought under the head of habit, at any rate when it first

occurs, i.e. when we remember something we never remembered

before.

We must now consider somewhat more closely the content of a

memory-belief. The memory-belief confers upon the memory-image

something which we may call “meaning;” it makes us feel that the

image points to an object which existed in the past. In order to

deal with this topic we must consider the verbal expression of

the memory-belief. We might be tempted to put the memory-belief

into the words: “Something like this image occurred.” But such

words would be very far from an accurate translation of the

simplest kind of memory-belief. “Something like this image” is a

very complicated conception. In the simplest kind of memory we

are not aware of the difference between an image and the

sensation which it copies, which may be called its “prototype.”

When the image is before us, we judge rather “this occurred.” The

image is not distinguished from the object which existed in the

past: the word “this” covers both, and enables us to have a

memory-belief which does not introduce the complicated notion

“something like this.”

It might be objected that, if we judge “this occurred” when in

fact “this” is a present image, we judge falsely, and the

memory-belief, so interpreted, becomes deceptive. This, however,

would be a mistake, produced by attempting to give to words a

precision which they do not possess when used by unsophisticated

people. It is true that the image is not absolutely identical

with its prototype, and if the word “this” meant the image to the

exclusion of everything else, the judgment “this occurred” would

be false. But identity is a precise conception, and no word, in

ordinary speech, stands for anything precise. Ordinary speech

does not distinguish between identity and close similarity. A

word always applies, not only to one particular, but to a group

of associated particulars, which are not recognized as multiple

in common thought or speech. Thus primitive memory, when it

judges that “this occurred,” is vague, but not false.

Vague identity, which is really close similarity, has been a

source of many of the confusions by which philosophy has lived.

Of a vague subject, such as a “this,” which is both an image and

its prototype, contradictory predicates are true simultaneously:

this existed and does not exist, since it is a thing remembered,

but also this exists and did not exist, since it is a present

image. Hence Bergson’s interpenetration of the present by the

past, Hegelian continuity and identity-in-diversity, and a host

of other notions which are thought to be profound because they

are obscure and confused. The contradictions resulting from

confounding image and prototype in memory force us to precision.

But when we become precise, our remembering becomes different

from that of ordinary life, and if we forget this we shall go

wrong in the analysis of ordinary memory.

Vagueness and accuracy are important notions, which it is very

necessary to understand. Both are a matter of degree. All

thinking is vague to some extent, and complete accuracy is a

theoretical ideal not practically attainable. To understand what

is meant by accuracy, it will be well to consider first

instruments of measurement, such as a balance or a thermometer.

These are said to be accurate when they give different results

for very slightly different stimuli.* A clinical thermometer is

accurate when it enables us to detect very slight differences in

the temperature of the blood. We may say generally that an

instrument is accurate in proportion as it reacts differently to

very slightly different stimuli. When a small difference of

stimulus produces a great difference of reaction, the instrument

is accurate; in the contrary case it is not.

* This is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. The subject

of accuracy and vagueness will be considered again in Lecture

XIII.

Exactly the same thing applies in defining accuracy of thought or

perception. A musician will respond differently to very minute

differences in playing which would be quite imperceptible to the

ordinary mortal. A negro can see the difference between one negro

and another one is his friend, another his enemy. But to us such

different responses are impossible: we can merely apply the word

“negro” indiscriminately. Accuracy of response in regard to any

particular kind of stimulus is improved by practice.

Understanding a language is a case in point. Few Frenchmen can

hear any difference between the sounds “hall” and “hole,” which

produce quite different impressions upon us. The two statements

“the hall is full of water” and “the hole is full of water” call

for different responses, and a hearing which cannot distinguish

between them is inaccurate or vague in this respect.

Precision and vagueness in thought, as in perception, depend upon

the degree of difference between responses to more or less

similar stimuli. In the case of thought, the