teleology. A system may be defined as "mechanical" when it has a set
of determinants that are purely material, such as the positions of
certain pieces of matter at certain times. It is an open question
whether the world of mind and matter, as we know it, is a mechanical
system or not; let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that it is a
mechanical system. This supposition--so I contend--throws no light
whatever on the question whether the universe is or is not a
"teleological" system. It is difficult to define accurately what is
meant by a "teleological" system, but the argument is not much
affected by the particular definition we adopt. Broadly, a
teleological system is one in which purposes are realised, i.e. in
which certain desires--those that are deeper or nobler or more
fundamental or more universal or what not--are followed by their
realisation. Now the fact--if it be a fact--that the universe is
mechanical has no bearing whatever on the question whether it is
teleological in the above sense. There might be a mechanical system in
which all wishes were realised, and there might be one in which all
wishes were thwarted. The question whether, or how far, our actual
world is teleological, cannot, therefore, be settled by proving that
it is mechanical, and the desire that it should be teleological is no
ground for wishing it to be not mechanical.
There is, in all these questions, a very great difficulty in avoiding
confusion between what we can infer and what is in fact determined.
Let us consider, for a moment, the various senses in which the future
may be "determined." There is one sense--and a very important one--in
which it is determined quite independently of scientific laws, namely,
the sense that it will be what it will be. We all regard the past as
determined simply by the fact that it has happened; but for the
accident that memory works backward and not forward, we should regard
the future as equally determined by the fact that it will happen.
"But," we are told, "you cannot alter the past, while you can to some
extent alter the future." This view seems to me to rest upon just
those errors in regard to causation which it has been my object to
remove. You cannot make the past other than it was--true, but this is
a mere application of the law of contradiction. If you already know
what the past was, obviously it is useless to wish it different. But
also you cannot make the future other than it will be; this again is
an application of the law of contradiction. And if you happen to know
the future--e.g. in the case of a forthcoming eclipse--it is just as
useless to wish it different as to wish the past different. "But," it
will be rejoined, "our wishes can _cause_ the future, sometimes, to be
different from what it would be if they did not exist, and they can
have no such effect upon the past." This, again, is a mere tautology.
An effect being _defined_ as something subsequent to its cause,
obviously we can have no _effect_ upon the past. But that does not
mean that the past would not have been different if our present wishes
had been different. Obviously, our present wishes are conditioned by
the past, and therefore could not have been different unless the past
had been different; therefore, if our present wishes were different,
the past would be different. Of course, the past cannot be different
from what it was, but no more can our present wishes be different from
what they are; this again is merely the law of contradiction. The
facts seem to be merely (1) that wishing generally depends upon
ignorance, and is therefore commoner in regard to the future than in
regard to the past; (2) that where a wish concerns the future, it and
its realisation very often form a "practically independent system,"
i.e. many wishes regarding the future are realised. But there seems no
doubt that the main difference in our feelings arises from the
accidental fact that the past but not the future can be known by
memory.
Although the sense of "determined" in which the future is determined
by the mere fact that it will be what it will be is sufficient (at
least so it seems to me) to refute some opponents of determinism,
notably M. Bergson and the pragmatists, yet it is not what most people
have in mind when they speak of the future as determined. What they
have in mind is a formula by means of which the future can be
exhibited, and at least theoretically calculated, as a function of the
past. But at this point we meet with a great difficulty, which besets
what has been said above about deterministic systems, as well as what
is said by others.
If formulæ of any degree of complexity, however great, are admitted,
it would seem that any system, whose state at a given moment is a
function of certain measurable quantities, must be a deterministic
system. Let us consider, in illustration, a single material particle,
whose co-ordinates at time _t_ are [Math: x_{t}, y_{t}, z_{t}]. Then,
however, the particle moves, there must be, theoretically, functions
[Math: f_{1}, f_{2}, f_{3}], such that
[Math: x_{t} = f_{t}(t), y_{t} = f_{2}(t), z_{t} = f_{3}(t).]
It follows that, theoretically, the whole state of the material
universe at time _t_ must be capable of being exhibited as a function
of _t_. Hence our universe will be deterministic in the sense defined
above. But if this be true, no information is conveyed about the
universe in stating that it is deterministic. It is true that the
formulæ involved may be of strictly infinite complexity, and therefore
not practically capable of being written down or apprehended. But
except from the point of view of our knowledge, this might seem to be
a detail: in itself, if the above considerations are sound, the
material universe _must_ be deterministic, _must_ be subject to laws.
This, however, is plainly not what was intended. The difference
between this view and the view intended may be seen as follows. Given
some formula which fits the facts hitherto--say the law of
gravitation--there will be an infinite number of other formulæ, not
empirically distinguishable from it in the past, but diverging from it
more and more in the future. Hence, even assuming that there are
persistent laws, we shall have no reason for assuming that the law of
the inverse square will hold in future; it may be some other hitherto
indistinguishable law that will hold. We cannot say that _every_ law
which has held hitherto must hold in the future, because past facts
which obey one law will also obey others, hitherto indistinguishable
but diverging in future. Hence there must, at every moment, be laws
hitherto unbroken which are now broken for the first time. What
science does, in fact, is to select the _simplest_ formula that will
fit the facts. But this, quite obviously, is merely a methodological
precept, not a law of Nature. If the simplest formula ceases, after a
time, to be applicable, the simplest formula that remains applicable
is selected, and science has no sense that an axiom has been
falsified. We are thus left with the brute fact that, in many
departments of science, quite simple laws have hitherto been found to
hold. This fact cannot be regarded as having any _a priori_ ground,
nor can it be used to support inductively the opinion that the same
laws will continue; for at every moment laws hitherto true are being
falsified, though in the advanced sciences these laws are less simple
than those that have remained true. Moreover it would be fallacious to
argue inductively from the state of the advanced sciences to the
future state of the others, for it may well be that the advanced
sciences are advanced simply because, hitherto, their subject-matter
has obeyed simple and easily ascertainable laws, while the
subject-matter of other sciences has not done so.
The difficulty we have been considering seems to be met partly, if not
wholly, by the principle that the _time_ must not enter explicitly
into our formulæ. All mechanical laws exhibit acceleration as a
function of configuration, not of configuration and time jointly; and
this principle of the irrelevance of the time may be extended to all
scientific laws. In fact we might interpret the "uniformity of nature"
as meaning just this, that no scientific law involves the time as an
argument, unless, of course, it is given in an integrated form, in
which case _lapse_ of time, though not absolute time, may appear in
our formulæ. Whether this consideration suffices to overcome our
difficulty completely, I do not know; but in any case it does much to
diminish it.
It will serve to illustrate what has been said if we apply it to the
question of free will.
(1) Determinism in regard to the will is the doctrine that our
volitions belong to some deterministic system, i.e. are "determined"
in the sense defined above. Whether this doctrine is true or false, is
a mere question of fact; no _a priori_ considerations (if our previous
discussions have been correct) can exist on either side. On the one
hand, there is no _a priori_ category of causality, but merely certain
observed uniformities. As a matter of fact, there are observed
uniformities in regard to volitions; thus there is some empirical
evidence that volitions are determined. But it would be very rash to
maintain that the evidence is overwhelming, and it is quite possible
that some volitions, as well as some other things, are not determined,
except in the sense in which we found that everything must be
determined.
(2) But, on the other hand, the subjective sense of freedom, sometimes
alleged against determinism, has no bearing on the question whatever.
The view that it has a bearing rests upon the belief that causes
compel their effects, or that nature enforces obedience to its laws as
governments do. These are mere anthropomorphic superstitions, due to
assimilation of causes with volitions and of natural laws with human
edicts. We feel that our will is not compelled, but that only means
that it is not other than we choose it to be. It is one of the
demerits of the traditional theory of causality that it has created an
artificial opposition between determinism and the freedom of which we
are introspectively conscious.
(3) Besides the general question whether volitions are determined,
there is the further question whether they are _mechanically_
determined, i.e. whether they are part of what was above defined as a
mechanical system. This is the question whether they form part of a
system with purely material determinants, i.e. whether there are laws
which, given certain material data, make all volitions functions of
those data. Here again, there is empirical evidence up to a point, but
it is not conclusive in regard to all volitions. It is important to
observe, however that even if volitions are part of a mechanical
system, this by no means implies any supremacy of matter over mind. It
may well be that the same system which is susceptible of material
determinants is also susceptible of mental determinants; thus a
mechanical system may be determined by sets of volitions, as well as
by sets of material facts. It would seem, therefore, that the reasons
which make people dislike the view that volitions are mechanically
determined are fallacious.
(4) The notion of _necessity_, which is often associated with
determinism, is a confused notion not legitimately deducible from
determinism. Three meanings are commonly confounded when necessity is
spoken of:--
([alpha]) An _action_ is necessary when it will be performed
however much the agent may wish to do otherwise. Determinism does not
imply that actions are necessary in this sense.
([beta]) A _propositional function_ is necessary when all its
values are true. This sense is not relevant to our present discussion.
([gamma]) A _proposition_ is necessary with respect to a given
constituent when it is the value, with that constituent as argument,
of a necessary propositional function, in other words, when it remains
true however that constituent may be varied. In this sense, in a
deterministic system, the connection of a volition with its
determinants is necessary, if the time at which the determinants occur
be taken as the constituent to be varied, the time-interval between
the determinants and the volition being kept constant. But this sense
of necessity is purely logical, and has no emotional importance.
We may now sum up our discussion of causality. We found first that the
law of causality, as usually stated by philosophers, is false, and is
not employed in science. We then considered the nature of scientific
laws, and found that, instead of stating that one event A is always
followed by another event B, they stated functional relations between
certain events at certain times, which we called determinants, and
other events at earlier or later times or at the same time. We were
unable to find any _a priori_ category involved: the existence of
scientific laws appeared as a purely empirical fact, not necessarily
universal, except in a trivial and scientifically useless form. We
found that a system with one set of determinants may very likely have
other sets of a quite different kind, that, for example, a
mechanically determined system may also be teleologically or
volitionally determined. Finally we considered the problem of free
will: here we found that the reasons for supposing volitions to be
determined are strong but not conclusive, and we decided that even if
volitions are mechanically determined, that is no reason for denying
freedom in the sense revealed by introspection, or for supposing that
mechanical events are not determined by volitions. The problem of free
will _versus_ determinism is therefore, if we were right, mainly
illusory, but in part not yet capable of being decisively solved.
FOOTNOTES:
[35] A propositional function is an expression containing a variable,
or undetermined constituent, and becoming a proposition as soon as a
definite value is assigned to the variable. Examples are: "A is A,"
"_x_ is a number." The variable is called the _argument_ of the
function.
[36] _Logic_, Bk. III, Chap. V, § 2.
[37] _Time and Free Will_, p. 199.
[38] _Time and Free Will._ p. 202.
[39] _Loc. cit._, § 6
X
KNOWLEDGE BY ACQUAINTANCE AND KNOWLEDGE BY DESCRIPTION
The object of the following paper is to consider what it is that we
know in cases where we know propositions about "the so-and-so" without
knowing who or what the so-and-so is. For example, I know that the
candidate who gets most votes will be elected, though I do not know
who is the candidate who will get most votes. The problem I wish to
consider is: What do we know in these cases, where the subject is
merely described? I have considered this problem elsewhere[40] from a
purely logical point of view; but in what follows I wish to consider
the question in relation to theory of knowledge as well as in relation
to logic, and in view of the above-mentioned logical discussions, I
shall in this paper make the logical portion as brief as possible.
In order to make clear the antithesis between "acquaintance" and
"description," I shall first of all try to explain what I mean by
"acquaintance." I say that I am _acquainted_ with an object when I
have a direct cognitive relation to that object, i.e. when I am
directly aware of the object itself. When I speak of a cognitive
relation here, I do not mean the sort of relation which constitutes
judgment, but the sort which constitutes presentation. In fact, I
think the relation of subject and object which I call acquaintance is
simply the converse of the relation of object and subject which
constitutes presentation. That is, to say that S has acquaintance with
O is essentially the same thing as to say that O is presented to S.
But the associations and natural extensions of the word _acquaintance_
are different from those of the word _presentation_. To begin with, as
in most cognitive words, it is natural to say that I am acquainted
with an object even at moments when it is not actually before my mind,
provided it has been before my mind, and will be again whenever
occasion arises. This is the same sense in which I am said to know
that 2+2=4 even when I am thinking of something else. In the second
place, the word _acquaintance_ is designed to emphasise, more than the
word _presentation_, the relational character of the fact with which
we are concerned. There is, to my mind, a danger that, in speaking of
presentation, we may so emphasise the object as to lose sight of the
subject. The result of this is either to lead to the view that there
is no subject, whence we arrive at materialism; or to lead to the view
that what is presented is part of the subject, whence we arrive at
idealism, and should arrive at solipsism but for the most desperate
contortions. Now I wish to preserve the dualism of subject and object
in my terminology, because this dualism seems to me a fundamental fact
concerning cognition. Hence I prefer the word _acquaintance_ because
it emphasises the need of a subject which is acquainted.
When we ask what are the kinds of objects with which we are
acquainted, the first and most obvious example is _sense-data_. When I
see a colour or hear a noise, I have direct acquaintance with the
colour or the noise. The sense-datum with which I am acquainted in
these cases is generally, if not always, complex. This is
particularly obvious in the case of sight. I do not mean, of course,
merely that the supposed physical object is complex, but that the
direct sensible object is complex and contains parts with spatial
relations. Whether it is possible to be aware of a complex without
being aware of its constituents is not an easy question, but on the
whole it would seem that there is no reason why it should not be
possible. This question arises in an acute form in connection with
self-consciousness, which we must now briefly consider.
In introspection, we seem to be immediately aware of varying
complexes, consisting of objects in various cognitive and conative
relations to ourselves. When I see the sun, it often happens that I
am aware of my seeing the sun, in addition to being aware of the sun;
and when I desire food, it often happens that I am aware of my desire
for food. But it is hard to discover any state of mind in which I am
aware of myself alone, as opposed to a complex of which I am a
constituent. The question of the nature of self-consciousness is too
large and too slightly connected with our subject, to be argued at
length here. It is difficult, but probably not impossible, to account
for plain facts if we assume that we do not have acquaintance with
ourselves. It is plain that we are not only _acquainted_ with the
complex "Self-acquainted-with-A," but we also _know_ the proposition
"I am acquainted with A." Now here the complex has been analysed, and
if "I" does not stand for something which is a direct object of
acquaintance, we shall have to suppose that "I" is something known by
description. If we wished to maintain the view that there is no
acquaintance with Self, we might argue as follows: We are acquainted
with _acquaintance_, and we know that it is a relation. Also we are
acquainted with a complex in which we perceive that acquaintance is
the relating relation. Hence we know that this complex must have a
constituent which is that which is acquainted, i.e. must have a
subject-term as well as an object-term. This subject-term we define
as "I." Thus "I" means "the subject-term in awarenesses of which _I_
am aware." But as a definition this cannot be regarded as a happy
effort. It would seem necessary, therefore, either to suppose that I
am acquainted with myself, and that "I," therefore, requires no
definition, being merely the proper name of a certain object, or to
find some other analysis of self-consciousness. Thus self-consciousness
cannot be regarded as throwing light on the question whether we can
know a complex without knowing its constituents. This question,
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.
There are thus at least two sorts of objects of which we are aware,
namely, particulars and universals. Among particulars I include all
existents, and all complexes of which one or more constituents are
existents, such as this-before-that, this-above-that,
the-yellowness-of-this. Among universals I include all objects of
which no particular is a constituent. Thus the disjunction
"universal-particular" includes all objects. We might also call it the
disjunction "abstract-concrete." It is not quite parallel with the
opposition "concept-percept," because things remembered or imagined
belong with particulars, but can hardly be called percepts. (On the
other hand, universals with which we are acquainted may be identified
with concepts.)
It will be seen that among the objects with which we are acquainted
are not included physical objects (as opposed to sense-data), nor
other people's minds. These things are known to us by what I call
"knowledge by description," which we must now consider.