Albert Einstein on Bertrand Russell

 

Remarks on Bertrand Russell's Theory of Knowledge

By Albert Einstein

When the editor asked me to write something about Bertrand Russell, my admiration and respect for that author at once induced me to say yes. I owe innumerable happy hours to the reading of Russell's works, something which I cannot say of any other contemporary scientific writer, with the exception of Thorstein Veblen. Soon, however, I discovered that it is easier to give such a promise than to fulfill it. I had promised to say something about Russell as philosopher and epistemologist. After having in full confidence begun with it, I quickly recognized what a slippery field I had ventured upon, having, due to lack of experience, until now cautiously limited myself to the field of physics. The present difficulties of his science force the physicist to come to grips with philosophical problems to a greater degree than was the case with earlier generations. Although I shall not speak here of those difficulties, it was my concern with them, more than anything else, which led me to the position outlined in this essay. 

In the evolution of philosophic thought through the centuries the following question has played a major role: What knowledge is pure thought able to supply independently of sense perception? Is there any such knowledge? If not, what precisely is the relation between our knowledge and the raw material furnished by sense-impressions? An almost boundless chaos of philosophical opinions corresponds to these questions and to a few others intimately connected with them. Nevertheless there is visible in this process of relatively fruitless but heroic endeavours a systematic trend of development, namely an increasing scepticism concerning every attempt by means of pure thought to learn something about the "objective world,"· about the world of "things" in contrast to the world of mere "concepts and ideas." Be it said parenthetically that, just as on the part of a real philosopher, quotation-marks are used here to introduce an illegitimate concept, which the reader is asked to permit for the moment, although the concept is suspect in the eyes of the philosophical police. 

During philosophy's childhood it was rather generally believed that it is possible to find everything which can be known by means of mere reflection. It was an illusion which any one can easily understand if, for a moment, he dismisses what he has learned from later philosophy and from natural science; he will not be surprised to find that Plato ascribed a higher reality to "Ideas" than to empirically experienceable things. Even in Spinoza and as late as in Hegel this prejudice was the vitalizing force which seems still to have played the major role. Someone, indeed, might even raise the question whether, without something of this illusion, anything really great can be achieved in the realm of philosophic thought-but we do not wish to ask this question. 

This more aristocratic illusion concerning the unlimited penetrative power of thought has as its counterpart the more plebeian illusion of na1ve realism, according to which things "are" as they are perceived by us through our senses. This illusion dominates the daily life of men and of animals; it is also the point of departure in all of the sciences, especially of the natural sciences. The effort to overcome these two illusions is not independent the one of the other. The overcoming of na1ve realism has been relatively simple. In his introduction to his volume, An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, Russell has characterized this process in a marvellously pregnant fashion:

We all start from "naive realism," i.e., the doctrine that things are what they seem. We think that grass is green, that stones are hard, and that snow is cold. But physics assures us that the greenness of grass, the hardness of stones, and the coldness of snow, are not the greenness, hardness, and coldness that we know in our own experience, but something very different. The observer, when he seems to himself to be observing a stone, is really, if physics is to be believed, observing the effects of the stone upon himself. Thus science seems to be at war with itself: when it most means to be objective, it finds itself plunged into subjectivity against its will. Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows that naive realism is false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false. 

Apart from their masterful formulation these lines say something which had never previously occurred to me. For, superficially considered, the mode of thought in Berkeley and Hume seems to stand in contrast to the mode of thought in the natural sciences. However, Russell's just cited remark uncovers a connection: If Berkeley relies upon the fact that we do not directly grasp the "things" of the external world through our senses, but that only events causally connected with the presence of "things" reach our sense-organs, then this is a consideration which gets its persuasive character from our confidence in the physical mode of thought. For, if one doubts the physical mode of thought in even its most general features, there is no necessity to interpolate between the object and the act of vision anything which separates the object from the subject and makes the "existence of the object" problematical.

It was, however, the very same physical mode of thought and its practical successes which have shaken the confidence in the possibility of understanding things and their relations by means of purely speculative thought. Gradually the conviction gained recognition that all knowledge about things is exclusively a working-over of the raw-material furnished by the senses. In this general (and intentionally somewhat vaguely stated) form this sentence is probably today commonly accepted. But this conviction does not rest on the supposition that anyone haactually proved the impossibility of gaining knowledge of reality by means of pure speculation, but rather upon the fact that the empirical (in the above mentioned sense) procedure alone has shown its capacity to be the source of knowledge. Galileo and Hume first upheld this principle with full clarity and decisiveness. 

Hume saw that concepts which we must regard as essential, such as, for example, causal connection, cannot be gained from material given to us by the senses. This insight led him to a sceptical attitude as concerns knowledge of any kind. If one reads Hume's books, one is amazed that many and sometimes even highly esteemed philosophers after him have been able to write so much obscure stuff and even find grateful readers for it. Hume has permanently influenced the development of the best of philosophers who came after him. One senses him in the reading of Russell's philosophical analyses, whose acumen and simplicity of expression have often reminded me of Hume.

Man has an intense desire for assured knowledge. That is why Hume's clear message seemed crushing: The sensory raw material, the only source of our knowledge, through habit may lead us to belief and expectation but not to the knowledge and still less to the understanding of law-abiding relations. Then Kant took the stage with an idea which, though certainly untenable in the form in which he put it, signified a step towards the solution of Hume's dilemma: Whatever in knowledge is of empirical origin is never certain (Hume). If, therefore, we have definitely assured knowledge, it must be grounded in reason itself. This is held to be the case, for example, in the propositions of geometry and in the principle of causality. These and certain other types of knowledge are, so to speak, a part of the. instrumentality of thinking and therefore do not previously have to be gained from sense data (i.e., they are a priori knowledge). Today everyone knows of course that the mentioned concepts contain nothing of the certainty, of the inherent necessity, which Kant had attributed to them. The following, however, appears to me to be correct in Kant's statement of the problem: in thinking we use, with a certain "right," concepts to which there is no access from the materials of sensory experience, if the situation is viewed from the logical point of view.

As a matter of fact, I am convinced that even much more is to be asserted: the concepts which arise in our thought and in our linguistic expressions are all-when viewed logically-the free creations of thought which cannot inductively be gained from sense-experiences. This is not so easily noticed only because we have the habit of combining certain concepts and conceptual relations (propositions) so definitely with certain sense-experiences that we do not become conscious of the gulf-logically unbridgeable--which separates the world of sensory experiences from the world of concepts and propositions.

Thus, for example, the series of integers is obviously an invention of the human mind, a self-created tool which simplifies the ordering of certain sensory experiences. But there is no way in which this concept could be made to grow, as it were, directly out of sense experiences. It is deliberately that I choose here the concept of number, because it belongs to pre-scientific thinking and because, in spite of that fact, its constructive character is still easily recognizable. The more, however, we turn to the most primitive concepts of everyday life, the more difficult it becomes amidst the mass of inveterate habits to recognize the concept as an independent creation of thinking. It was thus that the fateful conception-fateful, that is to say, for an. understanding of the here existing conditions-could arise, according to which the concepts originate from experience by way of "abstraction," i.e., through omission of a part of its content. I want to indicate now why this conception appears to me to be so fateful. As soon as one is at home in Hume's critique one is easily led to believe that all those concepts and propositions which cannot be deduced from the sensory raw-material are, on account of their "metaphysical" character, to be removed from thinking. For all thought acquires material content only through its relationship with that sensory material. This latter proposition I take to be entirely true; but I hold the prescription for thinking which is grounded on this proposition to be false. For this claim-if only carried through consistently absolutely excludes thinking of any kind as "metaphysical."

In order that thinking might not degenerate into "metaphysics,'' or into empty talk, it is only necessary that enough propositions of the conceptual system be firmly enough connected. with sensory experiences and that the conceptual system, in view of its task of ordering and surveying sense-experience, should show as much unity and parsimony as possible. Beyond that, however, the "system" is (as regards logic) a free play with symbols according to (logical) arbitrarily given rules of the game. All this applies as much (and in the same manner) to the thinking in daily life as to the more consciously and systematically constructed thought in the sciences.

It will now be clear what is meant if I make the following statement: By his clear critique Hume did not only advance philosophy in a decisive way but also-though through no fault of his-created a danger for philosophy in that, following his critique, a fateful "fear of metaphysics" arose which has come to be a malady of contemporary empiricistic philosophizing; this malady is the counterpart to that earlier philosophizing in the clouds, which thought it could neglect and dispense with what was given by the senses.

No matter how much one may admire the acute analysis which Russell has given us in his latest book on Meaning and Truth, it still seems to me that even there the spectre of the metaphysical fear has caused some damage. For this fear seems to me, for example, to be the cause for conceiving of the "thing" as a "bundle of qualities," such that the "qualities" are to be taken from the sensory raw-material. Now the fact that two things are said to be one and the same thing, if they coincide in all qualities, forces one to consider the geometrical relations between things as belonging to their qualities. (Otherwise one is forced to look upon the Eiffel Tower in Paris and that in New York as "the same thing.") 1 Over against that I see no "metaphysical' danger in taking the thing (the object in the sense of physics) as an independent concept into the system together with the proper spatio-temporal structure.

In view of these endeavours I am particularly pleased to note that, in the last chapter of the book, it finally crops out that one can, after all, not get along without "metaphysics." The only thing to which I take exception there is the bad intellectual conscience which shines through between the lines.

ALBERT EINSTEIN 

SCHOOL OF MATHEMATICS 

THE INSTITUTE of ADVANCED STUDY

PRINCETON 

1 Compare Russell's An Inquiry Into Meaning and Truth, 119-12.01 chapter on "Proper Names."

From The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, Vol. V of "The Library of Living Philosophers," edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp, 1944. Translated from the original German by Paul Arthur Schilpp. Tudor Publishers.

Related reading: What Albert Einstein Thought of Christianity; Einstein Was Right About Education

Theories of Knowledge - Locke and Hume

"If you would be a real seeker after truth, you must at least once in your life doubt, as far as possible, all things."--René Descartes

Alice C. Linsley


Francis Bacon insisted that methodical observation and experimentation (the scientific method) can progressively increase human knowledge and benefit all of humanity. Bacon also demonstrated through his experiments that the senses can be fooled and thus raised doubt about "common sense" ideas. Bacon insisted that true knowledge must begin with doubt. He wrote, "If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties." --Francis Bacon (1605) The Advancement of Learning, Book 1, v.8

Descartes felt it necessary to one reject entirely all beliefs about which there is the slightest doubt. He wanted to build a system of belief based on certainty. Descartes' point of certainty was his own rational existence:  "I am thinking, therefore I am existing." He wrote in Discourse on Method, "But I soon noticed that while I thus wished to think everything false, it was necessarily true that I who thought so was something. Since this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so firm and assured that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were unable to shake it, I judged that II could safely accept it as the first principle of the philosophy I was seeking." (Part Four on "Proofs of the Existence of God and of the Human Soul)

Descartes develops this as a proof for the existence of God. He continues, "After that I reflected upon the fact that I doubted, and that in consequence, my spirit was not wholly perfect, for I saw clearly that it was a greater perfection to know than to doubt. I decided to ascertain form what source I had learned to think of something more perfect than myself, and it appeared evident that it must have been from some nature which is in fact more perfect... I was not the only being in existence..., and it followed of necessity that there was someone else more perfect upon whom I depended and from whom I had acquired all that I possessed. For if I had been alone and independent of anything else, so that I had bestowed upon myself all that limited quantity of value which I shared with the perfect Being, I would have been able to get from myself, in the same way, all the surplus which I recognize as lacking in me, and so would have been myself infinite, eternal, immutable, omniscient, omnipotent, and, in sum, I would possess all the perfections that I could discover in God."

Here Descartes articulates a form of the argument from design. The reasoning goes like this:  I find imperfection in myself and I recognize it, which means that I have consciousness of something or someone more perfect than myself. That being so, I must have been designed by that greater Perfection. Descartes wrote: "The very principle which I took as a rule to start with, namely, that all those things which we conceived very clearly and very distinctly are true, is known to be true only because God exists and because he is a perfect Being, and because everything in us comes from him. From this it follows that our ideas or notions, being real things which come from God insofar as they are clear and distinct, cannot to that extent fail to be true."

Descartes contributed to the development of new theories of mind and consciousness. He defined thought "to include everything that is within us in such a way that we are immediately aware [conscii] of it. Thus all the operations of the will, the intellect, the imagination and the senses are thoughts."

John Locke (1632-1704)

The British empiricist John Locke believed that experience alone is the basis of all knowledge. He argued this against Descartes's position that the human mind holds innate ideas.

Locke contributed to the development of theories of consciousness. If a thought is something “within us" of which we are conscious, what is the nature of consciousness? Locke insists that the mind is empty at birth, a tabula rasa. All our ideas are shaped by experience; sensations, and reflections.

Locke wrote that "the little and almost insensible impressions on our tender infancies have very important and lasting consequences." He argued that the "associations of ideas" that one makes as a child are very important because they are the foundation of the self. He warned against letting "a foolish maid" convince a child that "goblins and sprites" are associated with the dark of night for "darkness shall ever afterwards bring with it those frightful ideas, and they shall be so joined, that he can no more bear the one than the other." Locke's theory of association influenced educational theory up to the nineteenth century. Educators warned parents not to allow their children to develop negative associations. 

David Hume (1711-1776)

The Scottish philosopher David Hume continues the empiricist trajectory, developing the consequences of Locke's thought. Hume held that in the search for truth, we cannot rely on the common-sense pronouncements, popular notions, or metaphysical speculation. Building on Locke's epistemology, Hume tried to describe how the mind works in acquiring what is called knowledge. He concluded that no theory of reality is possible; there can be no knowledge of anything beyond experience. He wrote, "If we take in our hands any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion." (Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding)

In Hume's view, normal human reasoning is flawed and this raises radical doubt about all claims to know something. When we give the reasons for our beliefs about the world, we find that many of the offered explanations are contradictory. For example, one person asserts that something is true for them, but another denies that it is true in their experience. How can something be said to be true for one person and not for another? After exposing a series of contradictions within the human reasoning process, Hume reaches this conclusion: "The intense view of these manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion even as more probable or likely than another." (Treatise of Human Nature)

To the epistemological conversation he adds an additional criterion: do not consent to any belief that is not found to be universally true. This is the ultimate test of truth: that it should be demonstrated mathematically as a universal truth or, following Sir Isaac Newton, as a universal physical law.

Hume conceived of philosophy as the inductive, experimental science of human nature. He sought to discover the causes of human belief. For Hume, this is the proper work of philosophy. Book I of the Treatise of Human Nature and all of the first Enquiry represent his attempts to do exactly this. He wrote, "my intention never was to penetrate into the nature of bodies, or explain the secret causes of their operations. For besides that this belongs not to my present purpose, I am afraid, that such an enterprize is beyond the reach of human understanding, and that we can never pretend to know body otherwise than by those external properties, which discover themselves to the senses." (Treatise of Human Nature, Sec. V)

Despite Hume's radical empiricism, he continued to value common sense, and apparently did not take his own skepticism, such as the problem of induction, to the extreme that others did after him. He recognized that the consequences of his radical skepticism clashed with common sense and his concern for enlightenment scholarship.  [Antony G Flew, A Dictionary of Philosophy, rev 2nd edn (New York: St Martin's Press, 1984), p 156].

Related reading: Theories of Knowledge - Part 1; Theories of Knowledge - Part 2; Why You Have to Love David Hume; Why Hume Was Wrong

Theories of Knowledge - Bacon and Descartes

"Knowledge is the rich storehouse for the glory of the Creator and the relief of man's estate"-- Francis Bacon

"I think, therefore I am."--Rene Descartes

"Our only hope, then is in genuine Induction... There is the same degree of licentiousness and error in forming Axioms, as in abstracting Notions: and that in the first principles, which depend in common induction. Still more is this the case in Axioms and inferior propositions derived from Syllogisms."--Francis Bacon

"A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence."--David Hume

Alice C. Linsley


Epistemology explores questions related to knowledge. It is concerned with how knowledge can be acquired and how to substantiate truth claims. Is it possible to know the true nature of something? What can be known? What are the limits of human understanding?  How can I verify that this claim is true? Does our knowledge represent reality as it really is? Does innate knowledge exist? Is it possible to understand natural phenomena solely on the basis of observation and the senses?

From the dawn of human existence, the need to know about things in nature has contributed to human survival.  It moved early humans to explore and discover new places.  It motivated them to sample berries, nuts and grains. Through trial and error they came to know which fruits were good and which would make them sick. Archaic human populations gained knowledge by interacting with their environments, by observation of patterns in nature,and by reasoning.

Plato would say that the earliest humans had some innate knowledge of Truth, assuming that they had souls. Ritual burial, symbolic markings, primitive counting devices, and stone works such as the 70,000 year old carving of a python in the side of a mountain in Botswana, indicate that archaic human populations were essentially "religious" and concerned about knowing what is beyond their day-to-day lives.

Some ideas we have about reality may have been found to be inadequate. If we are thoughtful people, we will re-evaluate these ideas. Throughout history, philosophers have shown that many ideas are not true, or at only partially true, and therefore not reliable. We are wise to exercise a certain amount of doubt, especially when it comes to following people who have shown themselves to be careless and/or pig-headed.

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) showed that the senses can be fooled and that appearances can be deceptive. Yet more than any other thinker of his time, he urged that the senses be used in a methodical way to discover the nature of heat, light, wind, motion, the tides and the stars and even the human being. The future belongs to "Those who aspire not to guess and divine," wrote Bacon, "but to discover and to know... who propose to examine and dissect the nature of this very world itself, to go to facts themselves for everything."

Sir Francis Bacon

Bacon is regarded as the father of modern empiricism. His method of investigating natural phenomena involved inductive reasoning, in contrast to deductive reasoning, which had dominated science since Aristotle.  Bacon introduced an inductive method of testing and refining hypotheses by observing, measuring, and experimenting. An Aristotelian might deduce that water is necessary for life since it is evident that organisms cannot survive without water. A Baconian would test the hypothesis by experimenting. The results of those experiments would lead to more informed conclusions about the necessity of water for organic life.

After centuries of knowledge shaped by Roman Catholic beliefs, Bacon issued a summons to feast on knowledge acquired by the senses, through experimentation and logical principles. He organized his first book the Advancement of Learning in two parts. The first was called Experientian Literata. In this section he proceeds from one experiment to another. The second part, the Interpretation of Nature, moves from experiments to general principles or axioms, and then on to new experiments. Bacon loved to innovate!

In The Advancement of Learning and in New Organon, Bacon sets forth the idea of technological and scientific progress.  He is the first to articulate the popular notion that human advancements are progressive, rather than cyclical, static or in linear decline. He held a Utopian view of the gradual acquisition of knowledge, and he advocated this progressivism with the ardor of an evangelist.

The philosopher in the trajectory of empiricism that embodies Bacon's method most fully is David Hume. In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), Hume wrote, "A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience, he expects the event with the last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event. In other cases, he proceeds with more caution: He weighs the opposite experiments: He considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments: to that side he inclines,with doubt and hesitation; and when at last he fixes his judgement,the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability. All probability, then, supposes an opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence, proportioned to the superiority. A hundred instances of experiments on one side, and fifty on another, afford a doubtful expectation of any event; though a hundred uniform experiments, with only one that is contradictory, reasonably begets a pretty strong degree of assurance." (Chapter 10, Concerning Miracles) These words could have been written by Francis Bacon himself!


René Descartes (1596-1650)

Just as Bacon is considered the first modern empiricist, so René Descartes is regarded as the father of modern philosophy. He contributed to the philosophical project in many areas:  theories of consciousness, the argument from design, and moral philosophy. He is an important figure in epistemology because he developed a method of weighing evidence that allowed for innate ideas.

Descartes' method involved setting aside his previously held views in order to begin from a point of logical certainty. He believed that most of what he "knew" was not reliable. He wrote, "All that up to the present time I have accepted as true and certain I have learned either from the senses or through the senses; but it is sometimes proved to me that these senses are deceptive, and it is wiser not to trust entirely anything by which we have once been deceived." (Meditations on First Philosophy) Here Descartes sets out a principle that guided his epistemology: If there is any reason for doubt, then the entire category should be treated as doubtful and unreliable. His method was simple: don't accept anything as true if there is the slightest possibility that it is not true. This is known as the Method of Cartesian Doubt. Modern philosophy begins with doubt.

In attempting to toss out what he had believed and later doubted, in order to construct a system of belief based on certainly, Descartes began with this: "I think, therefore I am" or "I am thinking, therefore I exist." (Cogito ergo sum.)  His awareness of his own self constituted the point of certainty from which he intended to consider and verify knowledge.

Descartes is often considered the founder of modern philosophy with its bent toward empiricism. He conceived of all the branches of science as a whole and sought a methodology that worked toward a unified science. He wrote that “philosophy is like a tree: the roots are metaphysics, the trunk is physics, and the branches that issue from the trunk are all the other sciences..." The metaphor is strange in the context of what he attempts. Descartes attempts to show that what is not mental or mind-like is extension, that is, it takes up space. However it is not possible to speak of philosophy as taking up space as a tree does. Here we recognize an inconsistency in Descartes’ thought.

Descartes

Descartes viewed mind and body as distinct entities or substances. He concluded that the basic features of material objects are geometrical. They have size, shape, volume, etc.  The mind can not be measured in the same way.  It is characterized by thinking, reasoning and imagination. For Descartes the essential property of the mind is that it thinks and the essential property of the body is that it is “extended.” Extension is the property of taking up space. In this view, action or movement is explained by the impact of one extended object upon another. How then can mental events, that are without extension, have an impact on objects that take up space? Descartes is a great nightmare for the paranormal cults!

Descartes has been criticized for separating mind and matter into two distinct substances and failing to explain how they may be said to be related and/or interactive. This Cartesian dualism gave rise to fascinating reflections on the Mind of God, which Descartes believed to be the Principle that unites the realms of Mind and Matter. George Berkeley (1685-1753) would take this to a logical extreme with his immaterialism and the idea that all things are an extension of the Mind of the Creator.

Cartesian doubt influenced many thinkers of the modern era. Soren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) is one of them. He began is operations with three theses that he came to appreciate in the conversations of many modern philosophers. They are: (1) philosophy begins with doubt; (2) in order to philosophize, one must have doubted; and (3) modern philosophy begins with doubt.

Related reading: Ontology and the Philosophical Project: Theories of Time and Eternity; INDEX of Topics at Philosophers' Corner; Descartes' Ontological Argument; Theories of Knowledge - Part 1; Theories of Knowledge - Part 3

Theories of Knowledge - Part 1

"It is owing to their wonder that men now begin, and first began, to philosophize."-- Aristotle

"This sense of wonder is the mark of the philosopher. Philosophy indeed has no other origin."-- Plato


Alice C. Linsley

In archaic communities - between 50,000 and 20,000 years ago - knowledge was gathered from observation of fixed patterns in nature. The sun's rising and setting; the facts of human and animal reproduction; the signs of coming storms; the solidity of rock, the softness of moss and rich humus, etc.

Binary distinctions were observed such as male-female, night-day, and dry-wet. The observation of distinctions in the patterns of nature suggested a fixed order which archaic people attributed to the Creator. The moral law of archaic communities discouraged behaviors and practices that violate the fixed order in creation in order that the Creator might not be offended.

Blood and water were regarded as the fundamental substances of life because it was evident that all creatures needed these to survive. The shedding of blood was regarded as a serious matter and the blood guilt was mediated by priests and shamans, the two oldest religious offices. These offices served similar functions within their communities but represent distinct worldviews.

As early as 100,000 years ago, humans observed certain rituals surrounding the burial of their death. These practices included burial in red ochre and the inclusion of personal articles. An example is the double burial at Qafzeh in Israel, believed to be a double burial of a mother and child. The bones have been stained with red ochre.

From very early times, the soul has been viewed as a essential part of the human and one that has an eternal existence. There are different views as to how the soul continues to exist after the body dies: Sheol (a holding place until the Last Day); reincarnation, and transmigration of a limited number of souls. Plato held the latter view.

Plato believed that Truth is immutable and eternal and therefore considered knowledge of Truth to reside in the eternal Soul. He held that the trained mind could 'recollect' or 're-cognize' the true Forms and thereby "know' what is true and real. Aristotle built upon Plato's thought, but took it in a different direction. According to Aristotle, animate beings can move only because they have a soul. He thought that knowledge came through interaction with the external world. The soul takes on the imprint of sensations. When I press the soft tissue of my finger tip against a hard object, for example, an impression is made on my finger tip. Likewise, impressions are made on the soul and this results in knowledge. (On the Soul II 5)

For Aristotle all knowledge, even the imagination, must begin with information acquired through the senses. However, to grasp the relationships among abstract forms the soul reasons logically. (On the Soul III 4) Although experience is a key to all demonstrative knowledge for Aristotle, he also understood that the metaphysical study of "being qua being" must attempt to understand why things happen the way they do. For Plato, the soul is the reservoir of what exists truly. For Aristotle, the soul's what can only be understood by the mind's why.


Related reading: Overview of Afterlife Beliefs Through History; Theories of Knowledge - Part 2; Ethical Concerns of Archaic Communities; Early Metaphysics: Primal Substance, Theories of Knowledge - Part 3; Theories of Knowledge - Part 4; Lloyd Gerson, Goodness, Unity and Creation in the Platonic Tradition

Pragmatism and Education in America

"What the true definition of Pragmatism may be, I find it very hard to say; but in my nature it is a sort of instinctive attraction for living facts."-- Peirce in his Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism, CP 5.64, 1903

"This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism; for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever."--G.K. Chesterton, "The Suicide of Thought" from Orthodoxy.

"Upon this first...rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to believe, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry."--Charles Sanders Peirce, 1896

Alice C. Linsley

Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced "purse") is regarded as the pioneer of a uniquely American approach to knowledge called "Pragmatism." He was a scientist who believed that philosophy should be more scientific, that is, for a statement to be true there should be an experiment or observation that confirms its truth. Peirce disliked the abstraction he found in many philosophical conversations. Much of the conversation he thought was nonsense because people failed to make logical distinctions, or failed to test their assumptions. Most arguments, false ideas, and logical fallacies can be avoided by following Peirce's three rules: (1) desire to learn); (2) don't be satisfied with what you already believe; and (3) do not block the way of inquiry.

Peirce is associated with William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and John Dewey. Peirce received his M.A. from Harvard in 1862, and was a professor at Johns Hopkins, and occasional lecturer at Harvard.

Charles Sander Peirce
(1839-1914)

Peirce defined Pragmatism as a philosophical approach designed to bring clarity through the application of logic. He wrote, "The study of philosophy consists, therefore, in reflection, and pragmatism is that method of reflection which is guided by constantly holding in view its purpose and the purpose of the ideas it analyzes, whether these ends be of the nature and uses of action or of thought. It will be seen that pragmatism is not a Weltanschauung but is a method of reflection having for its purpose to render ideas clear." (From Peirce's Personal Interleaved Copy of the 'Century Dictionary', CP 5.13 n. 1, c. 1902)

In The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America, cultural historian Louis Menand explains how these men influenced each other during their months together in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1872, and how their lives were influenced by the American Civil War and by Darwin's theory of natural selection set forth, among other theories, in his "Origin of Species" in 1859. Darwin's ideas were much discussed among the members of the Metaphysical Club.

The name of the club is ironic since the members had no interest in metaphysics. Metaphysics is the philosophical exploration of entities beyond matter: Goodness, Truth, Eternity, the Soul, God, etc.

William James

Among the Club's members were the philosopher-psychologist William James (1842-1910). James wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. The book comprises James' edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902.These lectures concerned the nature of religion and the neglect of science in the academic study of religion.

Another member was the future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.who said, "The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size." He also said, "Truth is tough. It will not break, like a bubble, at a touch; nay, you may kick it about all day like a football, and it will be round and full at evening."

Charles Sanders Peirce is the one who gave the club its rather ironic name because pragmatism is not interested in Metaphysics. Peirce wrote, "...pragmatism is, in itself, no doctrine of metaphysics, no attempt to determine any truth of things. It is merely a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and of abstract concepts. All pragmatists of whatsoever stripe will cordially assent to that statement."

The pragmatists asked why do we have minds? Have humans survived and evolved because organisms with minds would be naturally selected over organisms without minds? Menand maintains that "Pragmatism is Darwin's theory of natural selection applied to philosophy."

Peirce, William James and Oliver Wendell Holmes held conversations about the Civil War, logic, empiricism, and Darwin's ideas. Oliver Wendell Holmes, who later became a Supreme Court Justice, said, "The mind, once expanded to the dimensions of larger ideas, never returns to its original size.”

William James (1842-1910) wrote The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. The book comprises James' edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, which were delivered at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902. These lectures concerned the nature of religion and the neglect of science in the academic study of religion. James described religious experience in psychological terms, and believed that religions serve as social value. He even granted the possibility of supernatural experience, though he held that this is beyond the bounds of Pragmatism. Dewey rejected the idea that religious experience reflects a unique supernatural category of knowledge. He agreed that religion might serve a social benefit, but never as a vehicle for verifying facts. He believed that God and religion could be explained entirely in natural or materialist terms.

Pragmatism was not a recognized philosophical movement until 1898 when William James first used the term in a lecture. This was the beginning of a partnership between William James and John Dewey (1859-1952). Dewey was a prolific writer with an early commitment to British neo-Hegelianism. His greatest influence was on American education in the 20th century.

John Dewey

Dewey founded the Chicago School of Pragmatism at the University of Chicago (1894-1904). The original group included George H. Mead, James H. Tufts, James R. Angell, Edward Scribner Ames (Ph.D. Chicago 1895), and Addison W. Moore (Ph.D. Chicago 1898). There are half a dozen women in the group photo shown below. Dewey is at the center, just below the light fixture.

Chicago Philosophy Club, 1896

The primary influences on Dewey’s thought were Hegel and Darwin. He was both a materialist and an atheist, as evidenced from his first published article (1882) titled “The Metaphysical Assumptions of Materialism.” He believed that Man stands alone in his efforts to create the world of his dreams. Humans have finally reached the stage of evolution that makes them able to realize an ideal society.

Dewey’s pragmatism profoundly shaped American public education.  He applied the theory of natural selection to education, insisting that some were more deserving of a higher level of education than others. Likewise, these more evolved thinkers should be the only ones permitted to teach at the higher levels.

Dewey was an atheist who believed that the idea of God is the product of the human imagination and could be used to indoctrinate.  In his view, God "denotes the unity of all ideal ends arousing us to desire and actions."

As a neo-pragmatist, Dewey regarded religion as a deterrent to progress and science as the only legitimate basis for social engineering. His is writings have led to Scientism, the belief that science alone has authority to verify truth.

Dewey’s advocacy of Hegelian materialism and Darwinian evolution made him more of an ideologue than an objective voice for learning. His lack of objectivity represents a betrayal of Peirce's third rule of pragmatism. In 1896, Pierce wrote, "Upon this first...rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to believe, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy: Do not block the way of inquiry."

According to the this corollary, Dewey's atheistic-Darwinian assumptions need to be questioned. Yet Pragmatism's strangle hold on American education makes it almost impossible to question Dewey's assumptions. This is why there is considerable academic resistance, even hostility, to approaches that are not based on Dewey's assumptions. 

Dewey was determined that American education should be based on his materialist evolutionary worldview. His approach had the effect of enshrining Darwin in the public schools and blocking metaphysical inquiry. Without metaphysics there is no means of integrating the subjects taught in schools. Students learn content in various subjects. However, there is no means of integrating learning so much that is learned is lost.

Public schools will continue to fail because they do not need to change. They receive our tax dollars regardless of their lack of success. They are supported by two powerful unions with big lobbies in Washington, and the underlying philosophy is the pragmatism of John Dewey, a Marxist and an atheist. Further, Dewey's pragmatism continues to be the dominant educational philosophy in the teacher training institutions. The effect is to eliminate all metaphysical conversation and thereby limit what students and teachers may discuss.

The English writer, Dorothy L. Sayers, noted in her 1947 speech “The Lost Tools of Learning” that the dismissal of metaphysics from modern education has resulted in students learning more, but knowing less than students under Scholasticism when metaphysics was still part of education. She showed that teaching less in more subjects prolongs intellectual childhood because students are not given the tools for mature (lifelong) learning. Sayers’ speech has had a great influence on the ever expanding classical education movement in America.

An honest assessment of American public education suggests that grades motive more than the desire to learn. Politics plays a greater role in educational policy than sound educational research. At the university level, peer review has the effect of diminishing the influence of paradigm-shifters. More honorary degrees are given to celebrities and politicians than to scholars who make authentic contributions to human knowledge. Every American university has been influenced by Pragmatism. The list of scholars and institutions appears here, but this is by no means a comprehensive list.

A critic of Dewey’s “instrumental pragmatism” was the English writer G.K. Chesterton who wrote about the “suicide of thought” in modernism. He appreciated logical thought and empirical evidence, but not the idolatry of scientism. He wrote, “This bald summary of the thought-destroying forces of our time would not be complete without some reference to pragmatism; for though I have here used and should everywhere defend the pragmatist method as a preliminary guide to truth, there is an extreme application of it which involves the absence of all truth whatever.”

Why American schools are failing

A recent article at Enthography.com calls attention to the differences between German and American universities. Germans who have studied in the United States consider American universities to be academically equivalent to German high schools. The writer of the article, Tony Waters (University of California, Chico), wonders if this is due to "dumbing down" the American curriculum. It seems more likely that Pragmatism's betrayal of Peirce's three rules of epistemology is the cause of the failure of American education. As Dorothy Sayers recognized in her 1947 lecture on "The Lost Tools of Learning" the loss of metaphysics makes it nearly impossible for students to integrate learning. They are left with blocks of information in different subjects which seem not to be related. A student may know a good amount of information in a given area but remain uneducated.

Sayers identified very early many of the problems that have arisen in education. While she is correct that none can “turn back the wheel” to the late Middle Ages when metaphysical exploration was still part of education, she nevertheless urges that we consider ways to restore the lost tools of learning. Sayers draws on her extensive knowledge of the medieval period to help us understand which tools are essential if students are to be life-long learners. She identifies the following concerns:

Irresponsible prolongation of intellectual childhood to justify teaching less in more subjects

Confusion of fact and opinion, or the proven and the plausible, in the media.

Sophistry in public debate, rather than logical rhetoric and concern for truth.

Committees addressing mostly irrelevant matters expected to form public policy.

Failure to define terms and intentional abuse of language, making words mean whatever one wants them to mean.

A society of adults who do not know how to discern legitimate expertise from popular pulp and who do not know how to research.

The tendency to become so specialized that people cannot make connections between the disciplines.

Scientists who fail to adhere to the basic principles of Aristotelian logic, thus presenting speculation as facts. Such is the case with Scientism.

Sayers’critique of the society in which she lived (mid-20th century England) is relevant today. These problems are more pronounced in our time.

Related reading: Menand brings pragmatists of the Metaphysical Club to life; Bibliography of Charles Sanders Peirce's Writings; Women and Shrine Wisdom; Response to Sayers' Lost Tools of Learning; Why I'm a Public School Teacher but a Private School Parent