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

in both cases. We can expect an egg for breakfast, or merely

entertain the supposition that there may be an egg for breakfast.

A moment ago I considered the possibility of being invited to

become King of Georgia, but I do not believe that this will

happen. Now, it seems clear that, since believing and considering

have different effects if one produces bodily movements while the

other does not, there must be some intrinsic difference between

believing and considering*; for if they were precisely similar,

their effects also would be precisely similar. We have seen that

the difference between believing a given proposition and merely

considering it does not lie in the content; therefore there must

be, in one case or in both, something additional to the content

which distinguishes the occurrence of a belief from the

occurrence of a mere consideration of the same content. So far as

the theoretical argument goes, this additional element may exist

only in belief, or only in consideration, or there may be one

sort of additional element in the case of belief, and another in

the case of consideration. This brings us to the second view

which we have to examine.

* Cf. Brentano, “Psychologie vom empirischen Standpunkte,” p. 268

(criticizing Bain, “The Emotions and the Will”).

(1) The theory which we have now to consider regards belief as

belonging to every idea which is entertained, except in so far as

some positive counteracting force interferes. In this view belief

is not a positive phenomenon, though doubt and disbelief are so.

What we call belief, according to this hypothesis, involves only

the appropriate content, which will have the effects

characteristic of belief unless something else operating

simultaneously inhibits them. James (Psychology, vol. ii, p. 288)

quotes with approval, though inaccurately, a passage from Spinoza

embodying this view:

“Let us conceive a boy imagining to himself a horse, and taking

note of nothing else. As this imagination involves the existence

of the horse, AND THE BOY HAS NO PERCEPTION WHICH ANNULS ITS

EXISTENCE [James’s italics], he will necessarily contemplate the

horse as present, nor will he be able to doubt of its existence,

however little certain of it he may be. I deny that a man in so

far as he imagines [percipit] affirms nothing. For what is it to

imagine a winged horse but to affirm that the horse [that horse,

namely] has wings? For if the mind had nothing before it but the

winged horse, it would contemplate the same as present, would

have no cause to doubt of its existence, nor any power of

dissenting from its existence, unless the imagination of the

winged horse were joined to an idea which contradicted [tollit]

its existence” (“Ethics,” vol. ii, p. 49, Scholium).

To this doctrine James entirely assents, adding in italics:

“ANY OBJECT WHICH REMAINS UNCONTRADICTED IS IPSO FACTO BELIEVED

AND POSITED AS ABSOLUTE REALITY.”

If this view is correct, it follows (though James does not draw

the inference) that there is no need of any specific feeling

called “belief,” and that the mere existence of images yields all

that is required. The state of mind in which we merely consider a

proposition, without believing or disbelieving it, will then

appear as a sophisticated product, the result of some rival force

adding to the image-proposition a positive feeling which may be

called suspense or non-belief—a feeling which may be compared to

that of a man about to run a race waiting for the signal. Such a

man, though not moving, is in a very different condition from

that of a man quietly at rest And so the man who is considering a

proposition without believing it will be in a state of tension,

restraining the natural tendency to act upon the proposition

which he would display if nothing interfered. In this view belief

primarily consists merely in the existence of the appropriate

images without any counteracting forces.

There is a great deal to be said in favour of this view, and I

have some hesitation in regarding it as inadequate. It fits

admirably with the phenomena of dreams and hallucinatory images,

and it is recommended by the way in which it accords with mental

development. Doubt, suspense of judgment and disbelief all seem

later and more complex than a wholly unreflecting assent. Belief

as a positive phenomenon, if it exists, may be regarded, in this

view, as a product of doubt, a decision after debate, an

acceptance, not merely of THIS, but of THIS-RATHER-THAN-THAT. It

is not difficult to suppose that a dog has images (possible

olfactory) of his absent master, or of the rabbit that he dreams

of hunting. But it is very difficult to suppose that he can

entertain mere imagination-images to which no assent is given.

I think it must be conceded that a mere image, without the

addition of any positive feeling that could be called “belief,”

is apt to have a certain dynamic power, and in this sense an

uncombated image has the force of a belief. But although this may

be true, it accounts only for some of the simplest phenomena in

the region of belief. It will not, for example, explain memory.

Nor can it explain beliefs which do not issue in any proximate

action, such as those of mathematics. I conclude, therefore, that

there must be belief-feelings of the same order as those of doubt

or disbelief, although phenomena closely analogous to those of

belief can be produced by mere uncontradicted images.

(3) I come now to the view of belief which I wish to advocate. It

seems to me that there are at least three kinds of belief, namely

memory, expectation and bare assent. Each of these I regard as

constituted by a certain feeling or complex of sensations,

attached to the content believed. We may illustrate by an

example. Suppose I am believing, by means of images, not words,

that it will rain. We have here two interrelated elements, namely

the content and the expectation. The content consists of images

of (say) the visual appearance of rain, the feeling of wetness,

the patter of drops, interrelated, roughly, as the sensations

would be if it were raining. Thus the content is a complex fact

composed of images. Exactly the same content may enter into the

memory “it was raining” or the assent “rain occurs.” The

difference of these cases from each other and from expectation

does not lie in the content. The difference lies in the nature of

the belief-feeling. I, personally, do not profess to be able to

analyse the sensations constituting respectively memory,

expectation and assent; but I am not prepared to say that they

cannot be analysed. There may be other belief-feelings, for

example in disjunction and implication; also a disbelief-feeling.

It is not enough that the content and the belief-feeling should

coexist: it is necessary that there should be a specific relation

between them, of the sort expressed by saying that the content is

what is believed. If this were not obvious, it could be made

plain by an argument. If the mere coexistence of the content and

the belief-feeling sufficed, whenever we were having (say) a

memory-feeling we should be remembering any proposition which

came into our minds at the same time. But this is not the case,

since we may simultaneously remember one proposition and merely

consider another.

We may sum up our analysis, in the case of bare assent to a

proposition not expressed in words, as follows: (a) We have a

proposition, consisting of interrelated images, and possibly

partly of sensations; (b) we have the feeling of assent, which is

presumably a complex sensation demanding analysis; (c) we have a

relation, actually subsisting, between the assent and the

proposition, such as is expressed by saying that the proposition

in question is what is assented to. For other forms of

belief-feeling or of content, we have only to make the necessary

substitutions in this analysis.

If we are right in our analysis of belief, the use of words in

expressing beliefs is apt to be misleading. There is no way of

distinguishing, in words, between a memory and an assent to a

proposition about the past: “I ate my breakfast” and “Caesar

conquered Gaul” have the same verbal form, though (assuming that

I remember my breakfast) they express occurrences which are

psychologically very different. In the one case, what happens is

that I remember the content “eating my breakfast”; in the other

case, I assent to the content “Caesar’s conquest of Gaul

occurred.” In the latter case, but not in the former, the

pastness is part of the content believed. Exactly similar remarks

apply to the difference between expectation, such as we have when

waiting for the thunder after a flash of lightning, and assent to

a proposition about the future, such as we have in all the usual

cases of inferential knowledge as to what will occur. I think

this difficulty in the verbal expression of the temporal aspects

of beliefs is one among the causes which have hampered philosophy

in the consideration of time.

The view of belief which I have been advocating contains little

that is novel except the distinction of kinds of belief-feeling~

such as memory and expectation. Thus James says: “Everyone knows

the difference between imagining a thing and believing in its

existence, between supposing a proposition and acquiescing in its

truth…IN ITS INNER NATURE, BELIEF, OR THE SENSE OF REALITY, IS

A SORT OF FEELING MORE ALLIED TO THE EMOTIONS THAN. TO ANYTHING

ELSE” (“Psychology,” vol. ii, p. 283. James’s italics). He

proceeds to point out that drunkenness, and, still more, nitrous-oxide intoxication, will heighten the sense of belief: in the

latter case, he says, a man’s very soul may sweat with

conviction, and he be all the time utterly unable to say what he

is convinced of. It would seem that, in such cases, the feeling

of belief exists unattached, without its usual relation to a

content believed, just as the feeling of familiarity may

sometimes occur without being related to any definite familiar

object. The feeling of belief, when it occurs in this separated

heightened form, generally leads us to look for a content to

which to attach it. Much of what passes for revelation or mystic

insight probably comes in this way: the belief-feeling, in

abnormal strength, attaches itself, more or less accidentally, to

some content which we happen to think of at the appropriate

moment. But this is only a speculation, upon which I do not wish

to lay too much stress.

LECTURE XIII. TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD

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