Studies in Empirical Philosophy

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STUDIES IN ElVIPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY

STUDIES IN EMPIRICAL PHILOSOPHY by JOHN ANDERSON Challis Professor of Philosophy in the University of Sydney 1927-1958

ANGUS AND ROBERTSON

First published in Australia and New Zealand in 1962 by ANGUS & ROBERTSON LTD 89 Castlereagh Street, Sydney 54 Bartholomew Close, London 107 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne 168 Willis Street, Wellington

Reprinted 1963

Copyright

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Registered in Australia for transmission by post as a book PRINTED IN AUSTRALIA BY HALSTEAD PRESS, SYDNEY

FOREWORD Tu1s book is published as part of a commemoration of the work of John Anderson, for more than thirty years Challis Professor of Philosophy in the University of Sydney. Anderson's chief philosophical papers, hitherto printed only in journals, are now brought together and reprinted along with two newly-written papers and an introductory .essay by Professor J. A. Passmore, a former sh1dent of Anderson's. The publication of the volume has been made possible by the generosity of a number of contributors to an Anderson Testimonial Fund, and has been considerably assisted by a special grant given by the Australian Humanities Research Council. Acknowledgments for permission to reprint certain papers, noted in the Bibliography, are made to the Mind Association, the Aristotelian Society, the Australasian Association of Philosophy, and the Australian Humanities Research Council.

A. K. STOUT For the Anderson Testimonial Fund Committee. B and B > C to A >' C ) with the same validity as we can argue from BaA, AaB and CaB, BaC to the conclusions CaA, AaC. In the latter case, however, we use all the premises in arriving at the required conclusion, w �ereas in the case of inclusion, while we have to use both of the A premises, we need use only one of the O premises. We argue to the conclusion CaA from the premises CaB, BaA, but to prove AoC we may use either BaA, BoC ( OAO, third figure ) or AoB, CaB ( AOO, second figure ) . In the former case we do not use AoB as a premise and, in fact, we could use the OAO argument even if AaB-i.e., since BaA, even if A and B were equal. Similarly in the second case, where BoC is not used, we could get the required conclusion even if B and C were equal. The common way of expressing this in mathematical reasonings is to say ( first case ) that if A is greater than or equal to B ( A � B ) and B is gr eater than C, then A is greater than C; similarly ( second case) if A > B and B � C, A > C. An alternative way of expressing "greater than or equal to" is "not less than". Thus when we prove CaA, AoC from BaA, CaB, BoC, we are treating BaA as simply asserting that A is not less than B, and when we get the same conclusions from BaA, AoB, CaB, the last of these is expressible as "B is not less than C". Now it appears strange that "A is less than B" ( AaB, BoA) should be contradicted simply by the denial of the O proposition; but the point is that terms quantitatively comparable belong to a single scale or range, so that, if any two do not coincide, one must include the other ( one quantity must be higher in the scale than the other ) and thus there will always be one true A proposition having them as terms and such a position as AoB, BoA ( or again AeB) could not arise. I do not here argue the question whether there must be some scale on which any two quantities or measu rable things can be compared; but, in any argument concerning things all of which are quantitatively com­ parable, the relation "not less than', ( and similarly "not greater than,,) is conveyed by a single proposition. Thus, in the argument B aA, CaB, BoC . · . CaA, AoC, the premises leave it an open question whether AaB or AoB; indeed, the single proposition BaA does this-there is no question of this proposition's sometimes mean­ ing co-extension and sometimes meaning inclusion, no question of quali­ fying the copula in the manner suggested by such confused and confusing conceptions as "the is of identity" or "the is of inclusion in a class''. The making of such distinctions is an error of the same type as that of importing some of the material of an assertion into the formal sign of something's being asserted; and their pointlessness becomes clear when it is noted that co-extension, and similarly inclusion, can be quite directly and un­ _ a�biguously pre�ented by the assertion of a number of propositions, each with the unambiguous copula of occurrence or ''being so". Thus, while B_a� never mean� Ba� and �aB �nd never means BaA and AoB, the possi­ bil�ty of pres entmg either s_itu�tio� in two propositions leaves BaA itself _ qmte unambiguous. The pomt 1s remforced by the consideration that ''not less than" leaves "not greater than" an open question, and that to take each

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as conveyed by an A proposition leaves it possible that both propositions, BaA and AaB, are true-so that the truth of both, the co-extension or equality of A and B, is equally expressible by ·'A is not less than and not greater than B". When we understand the A proposition in this way, we get a further type of quantitative argument involving A propositions alone; A � B, B � C . · . A � C ( or A is not less than B and B is not less than C, therefore A is not less than C) takes the form of the Barbara syllogism BaA, CaB . · . CaA, where no decision is involved as to the truth or falsity of the propositions AaB, BaC, AaC, and it is perfectly possible that the argument B � A, C � B . · . C � A has true premises and thus ( being valid) establishes its conclusion, C is not less than A. One important point in connection with all this is the clear under­ standing of what a class-relation ( or a relation between the extensions of two terms, an "extensive relation") actually is. There is no question of the enumeration of "individual instances"; for, if we say that any subject is a predicate ( or has subjects) , there will be no limit to the list of instances, no question of "setting it out in full'7, any more than there will be a question of setting out in full a term's intension, of enumerating its pro­ perties, if every predicate is a subject or has further predicates. This is what gives the extension-intension rule, similarly to quantitative argu­ ments, no application to the cases of intersection and exclusion where any quantitative comparison would have to rely on the ( impossible) full count. It applies only to co-extension, where it can be said that two terms having the same subjects have the same predicates, and inclusion where the term that has more subjects has fewer predicates ( general properties) -A's "having more subjects" than B being conveyed in the two pro­ positions BaA and AoB ( there are no B that are not A, there are A that are not B) ; while, strictly, "having the same subjects" must be brought down to what is conveyed by AaB, BaA, since a term is not one of its own subjects. Arguments involving quantitative comparison, then, will take one of the syllogistic forms presented above. What I should further maintain is that any type of relational argument in which formal validity ( the only kind of validity) can be distinguished from formal invalidity can be set out in the same way as quantitative argu­ ments; and that it is not merely a question of one form of argument being "akin" or analogous to another, but that to see that some relation is tran­ sitive and symmetrical, to see that some relation is transitive and asym­ metrical, to see that some relation is transitive and "non-symmetrical" ( that B may or may not have it to A when A has it to B) , is to recognise the existence of some class-relation of co-extension or of inclusion or ( in the "non-symmetrical" case) of either co-extension or inclusion. I select for special consideration the transitive and asymmetrical relation "to the right of" which, for some reason, has been taken as an outstanding example of non-syllogistic arguments that have as great and as obvious cogency as syllogism; and my contention here will be that the relations "to the right of', "to the left of" and "level with" not only can be treated in the same way as "greater than", "less than" and "equal to", that is, as

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indicating relations of inclusion and co-extension so that arguments in­ volving them will appear in syllogistic form, but that only in this treatment is their cogency, their formal character, definitely brought out-in other words, that syllogistic. argument is their strict logical form. The first point to be noted with regard to the relation "to the right of" ( and similarly with any other relation of spatial direction ) is that it is meaningless except with reference to ( a ) some field which the things related occupy ( most commonly, some field of vision ) and ( b ) some point from which the field is to be taken or before which the field is spread out, so that rotations or turnings round the point in one or other direction can be considered. If that point is not kept constant, if some other point before which the field is spread out could be taken instead, then A, which was first of all said to be to the right of B, could just as easily be said to be to the left of B. The question, then, when the relation is spoken of with any settled meaning, is of comparisons between turnings round a point O ( "origin" or observer ) , within a field "in front of" it, in a rightward ( or, similarly, in a leftward ) direction; and A is to the right of B when and only when the turning to the direction of A, perhaps from a postulated "extreme left" position or simply "from the left" if it were maintained that the extremities of such a field could never be precisely marked, is greater than the turning to the direction of B. Thus we are back at the question of unequal quantities and hence at the question of class-inclusion, and we can have exactly the same sorts of syllogisms conveying the transitiveness of "to the right of' as we have in the case of the transitiveness of "greater than", with the very same complications, or special arguments, involving "not to the left of' as we have in the case of "not less than". We say that A is further to the right than B ( that, as it might be put, A has "greater rightwardness" ) in the given field and from the given origin or point of view in the same way as we say that A is of greater quantity than B, and we can have arguments concerning the interrelation of several things in different directions from 0 in the sa�� forms as the arguments concerning several things of dif­ ferent quantities or amounts. The position is roughly illustrated in the following diagram-

s

A C

L

0

R

where the upward direction from the line LOR represents the outwa rd direction ( towards the field ) from the origin.

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Leaving aside for the moment the question of the precise terms to be used in the relevant syllogisms, we see that the relation "to the right of'' involves a relation of greater and less, and that in this special case we shall be able as before ( a) to exhibit the transitiveness of the relation ( to bring out the validity of the argument "A is to the right of B, B is to the right of C . · . A is to the right of C") in the form of two valid syllogisms, one in the AAA form and one with an O premise and an 0 conclusion, ( b) to distinguish the cases in which the two different 0 premises are used and thus to distinguish the arguments ( equally valid) "A is not to the left of B ( it is either to the right of it or level with it, i.e. , in the same direction from the origin ) , B is to the right of C . · . A is to the right of C" and "A is to the right of B, B is not to the left of C . · . A is to the right of G', ( c ) to recognise the valid AAA syllogism expressed more loosely in the argument "A is not to the left of B, B is not to the left of C : . A is not to the left of C", ( d) to recognise that the tmth of the premises here is quite compatible with the truth of "A is not to the right of B, B is not to the right of C", and thus recognise a possible argument of the same form as that of "A B, B C .·. A C"-an argument roughly expressible as "A is level with ( or in the same direction as) B, B is level with C . · . A is level with C"; where "in the same direction as" is a particular example of being of the same qua11tity as, the quantities in this case being turnings. Thus we find, in addition to the transitivenes of "to the right of' ( and "to the left of") , that of "not to the left of" ( and "not to the right of") and that of "neither to the right of nor to the left of" ( or ..level with") ; so that the argument involving the transitiveness of "to the right of" is only one example of a whole class of "angular" argu­ ments, the distinction and the interconnection of which are brought out by their presentation in syllogistic form. To see in what terms these arguments may be set out syllogistically ( or in strict form) we can consider swings or turnings from the left and observe that any such swings which pass through A must pass through B, whereas those that pass through B need not pass through A; or we can say, in terms of positions and directions, that to be beyond A in a right­ ward swing is to be beyond B, while to be beyond B is not necessarily to be beyond A. Putting this more concretely in terms of things beyond or not beyond a given thing in a rightward swing, we come to the pair of assertions ''All things to the right of A are ( things) to the right of B" and "Some things to the right of B are not ( things) to the right of A"; that is to say, to a relation of inclusion. Adopting for brevity the notation RA for "things to the right of A", etc., we can present the types of argument above referred to in the form of syllogisms with the following premises and conclusions :-

==

==

==

( a) RAaRB , RB oRA ; RnaRc, Rc oR H . · . RAaRc, RcoRA ( the transitive­ ness of "to the right of') ; ( b) RAaR B , RcoRB R B aRc, . · . RAaRc, RcoRA ( the case where A is given as "not to the left of" B) ; and RAaRn, R B oRA , RnaR 0 • • •

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R A aRc, H 0 oR A ( the case where B is given as "not to the left of'' C ) ; ( c ) RAaRB, RB aRc . · . RA aRc ( the transitiveness of "not to the left of" ) ; ( d ) RAaRn, RBaRc . · . RAaRo and RnaRA , RcaRn . · . RcaRA ( the trans­ itiveness of "neither to the right of nor to the left of' ) . I n cases ( a ) , ( b ) and ( c ) we can get similar syllogistic arguments for leftward as contrasted with rightward turnings by simply substituting left for right and right for left; but it should be noticed that there is no need to introduce an L A notation, since the formal statement of "A is to the right of B'' ( RA aR B , RnoRA ) will also serve for "B is to the left of A'', and the same form serves for "B is not to the right of A" as for "A is not to the left of B." The fact that we can argue on leftward turnings by using "rightward" symbols raises the question whether we can treat the two assertions, "A is to the right of B" and "B is to the left of A", as saying exactly the same thing-as asserting the very same proposition in different words. We can certainly treat them as equivalent ( so that whatever, other than the two themselves, is a consequence of one is a consequence of the other, and either is a consequence of whatever, with the same proviso, the other is a consequence of ) and thus substituting either for the other in an argument will not affect its validity though it might affect the rapidity with which the implication could be grasped. The point of this equiva­ lence is that the relation in question is a relation of "right and left" ( com­ parable to "north and south", "above and below", "before and after" ) , that i t is impossible t o recognise either "rightward" or "leftward" without recognising both. But if these considerations justified the denial of any difference between the two assertions, the same would apply to any pair of "equivalent" assertions; and this, in the case of XeY and YeX ( which, on certain views, would each be rendered by "XY do not exist" ) , would lead to the rejection of the distinction between subject and predi­ cate ( between location and description) which is essential to logical form, even with the recognition of the "convertibility" of terms, and which would still be required by the "existence, non-existence" theorists if there was to be any sense in asserting or denying "existent" of this or that subject, or, for that matter, if there was to be any meaning in XY ( things which are X and are Y-a conjunctive term giving two descrip­ tions of something, or being a combination of predicates, even when it is used as a subject, just as a disjunctive term gives two locations or is a combination of subjects ) . Thus the necessary distinction of subject and predicate shows that "No cows are horses,, and "No horses are cows" are different assertions even though they imply one another; the assertion that cows lack the equine character can be put in conjunction with the recognition of the characters cows do possess, as well as raising the ques­ tion of how they are connected with and distinguished from other non­ equine things, and thus has a quite different place in discourse and in­ vestigation from that of the assertion that horses lack the bovine character.

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Equivalence, then, does not mean identity; and the necessity of think­ ing right and left together, of seeing their interconnection, is nothing against seeing their opposition but indeed depends on this. The irrevers­ ibilUy of each of the relations "to the right of' and "to the left of' reinforces the point that, in spite of the equivalence referred to, quite different questions arise concerning things to the left of A from those concerning things to the right of B. Alexander ( Space, Time ancl Deity, Vol. I; first edition, p. 243), discussing, with special reference to north and south, such differences in the 'sense' or direction of relations, says that when "the same situation is expressed in two different senses by interchanging the terms ( Edinburgh is north of London, London is south of Edinburgh) , the difference is not indeed a merely verbal one, though perilously near to it, but a difference of aspect or description, what Aristotle expressed by saying that the two things are the same but not in their being" ( italics in text) . It is not at all clear what would be meant by being "perilously near to" a merely verbal difference without being precisely there, nor what, in the Aristotelian reference, is being attributed to the two things other than their being and not being the same. The point is that, taking it that we have two different assertions, we can indicate the difference quite clearly on the predicative view ( any assertion having subject and predicate with different "functions"); in the one case, the subject is Edinburgh, and the predicate applied to it, in spite of being only a "'relational description", enables us to classify it with other things north of London, to say "All ( E. or A or B . . . ) are north of L.", while in the other case the subject is London and we can similarly proceed to the assertion that "All ( L. or X or Y . . . ) are south of E."; and here it might incidentally be noted that some things north of London are not south of Edinburgh and some things south of Edinburgh are not north of London. Thus the two assertions Alexander has difficulty in differentiating not only have different subjects ( in fact, they have no common terms) but raise the quite distinct questions of what is north of London and what is south of Edinburgh. Understanding of the north-south range still shows the two assertions to be equivalent; but, to see how this is so, we have to see that, if a "relational assertion" has a subject, it must have a predi­ cate--that, unless this is so, we can give no account of the possibility of contradicting such an assertion or of the form of the arguments ( im­ plications) in which it is involved. It might be contended that if we identify "A is to the right of B" with "All things to the right of A are to the right of B" and ''Some things to the right of B are not to the right of A'\ and particularly if we take the former of these propositions to be part of what it sig­ nifies, we are assuming, not demonstrating, the transitiveness of "to the right of', and that it is pointless to go on to any syllogistic argument in which this is brought out. And a similar point might be made about the interpretation of A > B as the inclusion of the class of things "measurable by" B in the class of things "measurable by'' A: viz., that "measurable by" has to be understood as ·'not greater than", in that any-

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thing not greater than A can be marked off on A, if it is not preci� ely equal to A which would thus still give its measure; so that the assertions in which A > B was presented in syllogistic argument would have !o be understood as "All things not-greater-than B are not-greater-than A, and "Some things not-greater-than A are not not-greater-than B" or, taking the equivalent cont rapositives, "All things greater than A are gre��er than B" and "Some things greater than B are not greater than A where, as before, it co·-1ld be contended that the former of these proposi­ tions conveyed the transitiveness of "greater than" and that nothing was contributed to the understanding of the relation by the syllogistic ar gu­ ments in which this proposition was a premise. ( The same types of relation would hold and the same problems would arise if "measurable by" were taken as meaning "not less than"-i.e., if a thing were taken to be "measured" as so many unit measures, together with a mar ked off part of a unit if the units did not fit exactly. The question would still be one of class-inclusion and its transitiveness, etc. ) But such considerations would be an objection to the view here taken of the way in which the arguments can be pr ecisely formulated only if, e.g., the two propositions which, in such arguments, represent "A is to the right of B" were taken as explaining what is meant by "to the right of"-which, since "to the right of'' is contained in them, would be ob­ viously circular. What can be said, in the first place, is that the two propositions ( RAaRn, RnoRA) are tr ue wh en and only when A is to the right of B, so that, in using them as syllogistic premises, we can formally exhibit what does follow fr om ''A is to the right of B". But we are aware of this "when and only when" relationship, we can carry out the "trans­ formation" in question, we can understand and recognise its justification, only in being awar e of a continuous range, a field of things in various "angular" relations, apart from which "to the right of" would have no meaning and, incidentally, in recognising which we recognise what ex­ tends beyond as well as what falls between the things compared; in order to speak of A's being to the right of B , we have to be aware of a greater stretch to A than to B from the le£t and a smaller stretch from A than from B to the right, and thus there is no impropriety, no deviating from or passing beyond what we are observing from the outset, in speaking of "things to the right of N'. Being acquainted, then, with such a range ( field of vision or what­ ever it may be ) we can see how to present "angular relations" ( involving greater and smaller turnings) as examples of inclusion and co-extension, and we can make clear in syllogistic argument the inter-connection of � set of such r elations. As we saw, the transitiveness of "to the right of" 1s only one member of a whole class of connections which are formally pr esented in syllogisms and which are all involved in the recognition of a range of directions from an origin. It should still be noted that what we are ?oing in su �h arguments is not to estabUsh transitiveness ( even _ _ though m estabhshmg the particular conclusion we come to-say, A is _ to the nght of C-we exhibit the transitiveness of "to the right of'; and

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similarly with the rest of the class referred to) and that, unless we could observe this transitiveness as a feature of the situation in which A, B, C, etc., are ( of the whole field or range) , we could never argue in the way we do; our distinction between transitive and non-transitive relations, between valid and invalid arguments, would be quite arbitrary unless we were able to see, to take in a single view, the validity of the whole process and unless we had some way of setting it out so that formal criteria for determining the distinction were apparent. The syllogistic form sho,vs us more clearly not only how a given conclusion is established but what relations are transitive and what are not. These considerations, of course, apply to syllogism in general and not just to the cases ( "angular arguments") we have been specially con­ sidering; unless we can observe in one situation the whole "syllogistic principle", unless we can see as a fact the force of the syllogistic argu­ ment, i.e., the implication of the conclusion by the two premises, any assertion we make of the validity of some forms and the invalidity of others will be quite arbitrary. If we obtained our belief in the validity of the Barbara syllogism, for example, from something other than ob­ servation, we could never apply this belief to what we observe; we could never say "This is an example of that sort of interrelation of propositions ( situations) " unless we could observe that interrelation as a single situa­ tion, observe, that is to say, the implication which holds in any Barbara syllogism. vVe could still say that the syllogism BaC, AaB . · . AaC assumes and does not demonstrate what we may roughly call "the transitiveness of the relation a" ( having as a property) ; what it demonstrates is AaC. But we could not see that it does, unless we could see BaC and AaB im­ plying AaC, just as much as we can see the truth of any of these three propositions. The position is similar, then, with any argument, like the "angular" arguments, which involves a continuous range; it is no objection to a particular way of setting out such an argument that it implies that we can see transitiveness, that we can observe it within the observed complex situation, since, if we could not, we could not see the force of the argument or set it out in any way. Since the treatment I have given of "angulal' arguments depends simply on the recognition of a continuous range, it would appear that the same treatment would be applicable to any transitive relation, with the same complications when it is asymmetrical-that arguments involving it would start from clas s-relations of co-extension and inclusion and would take the same syllogistic forms, supplemented in some cases perhaps by conjunctive and disjunctive arguments. In the simplest case of transitive asymmetrical relation, that of before and after-simplest because the question is just of continuity, because there is no range more special than Time itse1f and no peculiar "origin" or point of view-the main type of relation, "A is before B ,,, will again be presented formally as inclusion, f i.e., by the two propositions ''All things before A are before f ' and "Some things before B are not before N', while "B is not after C'' ( B is either before or simultaneous with C) will take the form of a single A pro-

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position, "All things before B are before C", which can be taken along with the previous two propositions or with other "not after'' assertions, just as in the "not to the left of" examples. . . . The case of north and south, previously referred to, 1s one m which the range has definite extremities, so that, if we were to say ''The North Pole is north of Greenland", we could not present this as "All things north of the North Pole are . . .", etc. It might be suggested, however, that, when we are comparing the latitudes of two things, we are concerned with which of them is further from the North Pole ( or, similarly, from the South Pole) , and that we treat the extremes not as things within the range but, like an "origin'\ as part of the background or the "terms of reference'' of the relation. At the very least, we have to distinguish, where there are specific limits, the recognition of differences within a continuous range from the recognition of such limits, and what confronts us, in our consideration of transitiveness or continuous transition in a range, is the shading off of a specific segment into an indefinitely extended background. This shading off, with non-specification of extremes, is also to be found, as suggested earlier, in right and left judgments, so that, even though we always recognise a 'oeyond" and could not make a specific comparison without doing so, our definite reference is always to things ( or positions) within the range. The distinction between the question of limits and that of internal comparisons is emphasised by the fact that where, as with before and after, there is no question of such limits, the types of "transitive" argument are the same as where there are Umits; and it is of some relevance to observe, in the case of north and south, that distinc­ tions and relations of this sort were recognised before there was any ques­ tion of extreme points. Such special considerations are secondary to the general contention that recognition of implication requires recognition of the formal validity which may be seen in syllogism and in other arguments ( conjunctive and disjunctive) set out in strictly predicative form. But it is interesting to note that the question of ranges and of "shading o:W' also has a certain application to syllogism in general. I have spoken of "the transitiveness of the relation a", i.e., of the A proposition-though a proposition is not strictly a relation; and the point to be observed here is that, in asserting XaY ( as, indeed, in using the terms X and Y at all) , we always have the sense of a background-of further subjects of which X is a predicate or locations of which it is a description, of further predicates of which Y is a subject or descriptions of which it is a location. We have, in other words, a sense of an indefinitely continued range of extensions and intensions; we �ave, in knowing _ any proposition, a background of possible syllogisms, of h�es of further mquiry and discovery. This is nothing against the defimt� �ess of any given proposition or of any given syllogism; though recogmtion of further possibilities may at times make us uncertain of our "grasp" of some sort of thing with which we had supposed ourselves well­ acquainted, it is only in so far as we have definite knowledge that we can take any step in inqu iry or distinguish one line of inquiry from another.

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But the recognition of such ''lines" is recognition of some range or ranges, exhibiting what may be roughly called the transitiveness of ''qualifying" and of "being qualified by"; though this does not mark off "qualitative syllogisms" from "relational syllogisms'', since it is only on the predicative view of the proposition, on the three-term view of the syllogism, that validity in syllogistic reasoning can be recognised. This assimilation of relational and qualitative arguments does not mean a breaking down of the distinction between relations and qualities. It is, I have suggested, from a qualitative starting-point, specifically from seeing that a given predicate has many subjects, that we pass to the ques­ tion of relations, by way of the observation of juxtapositions or differences of place within a certain region or range. But it should be emphasised on the other side that even the distinguishing of various predicates of a given subject proceeds by finding the place of each quality in a set of "exchanges" or interactions between it and its surroundings ( other sub­ jects) . Thus the question of ranges or lines of connection arises in regard to any issue whatever, whether it is primarily a qualitative or a relational one. The point is that we are always confronted simultaneously with questions of relations and questions of qualities, that relations and qualities are linked in the recognition, as in the existence, of any situation, any complex state of affairs, and that there is nothing less, and nothing more, than a complex ( spatio-temporal) situation that we can be con­ fronted with in dealing with any material, i.e., in any recognition of or search for connections and distinctions. The attempt to have separate relational and qualitative logics can only lead to confusion and insoluble problems; what this attempt misses is the fact that any object ( any known thing and any existing thing) is a complex situation involving both re­ lations and qualities, so that there will always be connections to be found between any object and any other object, between any and any other problem or line of investigation.

16 EMPIRICISM AND LOGIC IN my article "Empiricism" ( A.J.P.P., December, 1927 ) 1 I presented it as a mark of empiricism that it rejects any doctrine of different kinds or degrees of truth and reality and maintains that there is only one way of being ( describable as "being a matter of fact" or simply "being so" or "being the case" ) . I argued that, in the distinction between empiricism and rationalism ( with its division between facts and principles, between actual things and their "grounds" or "explanations" ) , the question of ways of knowing is a quite secondary matter, though the denial of distinct ways of knowing has still to be recognised as a feature of the empiricist position. It is, in fact, quite illuminating, of the particular question of knowledge as well as of the general question of reality, to present the matter from the side of knowledge and take empiricism as the doctrine that whatever we know we learn-in other words, that to know something is to come into active relations, to enter into "transactions", with it-a position which at once rules out any rationalist notion of ultimates or principles above the facts, any suggestion of "that wherebf' things exist, as something distinct from the things themselves, since, unless we were acquainted with it, had acquired empirical knowledge of it, we could never infer it from what we are acquainted with or assign it any way of operating on objects of our acquaintance. More broadly, it might be said that we cannot uphold any doctrine of kinds of reality, since to do so we should have to know the distinction or the relation between any two such kinds, and that is something we could not know except as a single situation-which would mean that we knew it as of a single reality, so that the doctrine of distinct kinds of reality would be automatically abandoned. It is in this way that em­ piricism is seen as a doctrine of what is real as situations, and that there­ with goes the denial that anything can be known except as situations, which is to say except as spatio-temporal and except in propositional form. I have argued at the end of the preceding paper, "Relational Argu­ ments", that, important as the distinction is between qualities and re­ f lations ( impossible as it is to regard, e.g., "A is after f ' or "A is beside B" as a description of A ) , the fact remains that to find a situation is to find a tissue of qualities and relations, a "nest" of situations or proposi­ tions. Thus there is no question of separate regions of the existent or the knowa?le, but the question is always of complex and interrelated states of affairs; and recognition of this makes it possible to have a coherent 1

v. s., p. 3 .

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view of the acquisition of knowledge of any subject-matter, in a way that cannot be done on a rationalist or "separatist" position. It is remarkable that Locke, Berkeley and Hume, so widely regarded as the founders of modern empiricism, should take their departure from just such a rationalist doctrine of simple and separate entities-the "ultimates" by reference to which any actual state of affairs is to be explained. I t is no less remarkable that these entities should be called "particulars" when, as "whole natures", as ..nothing but" yellow or a shade of yellow, etc., they would appear rather to be "universals", to be merely descriptive, and to say that their simple nature was of a non­ descriptive character would be to say that they were indescribable-and indistinguishable. But, it being on a situational or propositional view of things that such a division, or any belief in simples, would be denied, it is not remarkable that the "British empiricists" are unable to give any coherent account of complexity-of propositions or of relations. ( Of course, from an atomistic starting-point, the most that propositions could be would be relations-of juxtaposition, etc.) The position can perhaps be best illustrated from the work of Berkeley. Of the three he is the most openly committed to "natures", particularly to the treatment of the "idea" as that whose nature it is to be perceived -the logical outcome of which is the impossibility of distinguishing one idea from another. Yet he is definitely more empiricist than Locke and Hume in taking the truths of mathematics to be as "matter of fact" as .. those of any other subject, taking them as something that has to be learned just as anything else has, and in standing out the most decisively against the treatment of what we are acquainted with as "standing for" ( presenting us with knowledge of) something we are not acquainted with at all. Nevertheless, in spite of all his empiricist strivings, he gets himself into a complete impasse in his attempts to deal with situations. The failure of Berkeley's attempt to account for "the objects of human knowledge" in terms of atomic "ideas" already emerges in § 1 of the Principles when, having spoken of the ideas furnished to the mind by the various senses ( what these are being not itself explicable in terms of simple ideas ) , he goes on to say that "as several of these [ideas ] are observed to accompany each other, they come to be marked by one name, and so to be reputed as one thing. Thus, for example, a certain colour, taste, smell, figure, and consistence having been observed to go together, are accounted one distinct thing, signified by the name apple. Other col­ lections of ideas constitute a s tone, a tree, a book and the like sensible things; which, as they are pleasing or disagreeable, excite the passions of love, hatred, joy, grief, and so forth". Concomitance is only one of the relations which Berkeley "annexes" to his supposedly ultimate objects of knowledge, yet it is clear that to observe such going together is to have as an object ( cognitum) a single and at the same time complex situation, and, if an "idea" can be found in such a situation, knowing it is not the same as separating it from all that is not of its nature. If it were, "going together'' would at best be another separate object or piece of content,

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and there would be no such situation as "the going together of A, B, C and D"; but, if it is not, the knowing of various qualities in various com­ plex situations shows neither the necessity nor the possibility of any such separability ( or of any absolute "original") of any one of them-it brings out no meaning, in fact, in the notion of taking one of them by itself, taking it in any other way than in a complex situation. This, of course, would be a spatio-temporal situation, for the fact that various contents were near in time to one another ( though even that would be unintelligible on a doctrine of distinct atoms of information ) would give us no reason for regarding them as making up "one distinct thing" or total content, but spatial togetherness would also be a condition of any such "unification". Over and above that, however, it should be noted that Berkeley's concomitants are descriptive terms and their con­ comitance would be a conjunction or addition of descriptions, so that their "unification" would be not merely of a spatial and temporal but of a predicative character. This point is reinforced by the fact that Berkeley's argument gives us no suggestion of any purely "particular" idea but only of classes or kinds of ideas ( colours, tastes, smells, etc. ) so that such ideas would differ in various ways from others of the same kind and, as thus complex, would not be ultimate units but would themselves be situational or propositional. Thus our recognition of distinct complex things is not accounted for at all by "collections of ideas" ( of separate, unitary pieces of content ) but is intelligible only as a recognition of complex situations, of situations within situations ( in which terms alone "concomitance" can be understood ) , of interpenetration as well as juxtaposition-in other words, of infinite complexity ( with no least and no greatest situation ) in place of the "simplicity" which cannot be squared with any com­ plexity or combination. It may also be noted that Berkeley, in the final sentence quoted, admits situations in which collections of ideas are related, in the way of "exciting", to mental situations ( those of the passions and operations of the mind ) -something that is possible only if objects of observation are "on the same level" of reality as mental operations, instead of having the one dependent and the other independent existence. This is to say that the empiricist position in which any coherent account of observation m� st issue �as also to be a realist position, that the rejection of any doc­ trme of ulti�ates ,, and d �rivatives ca�ries with it the rejection of any . doctrme of ideas , of existence relatively to minds as much as ( or as one case of ) existence relatively to what is "self-existent". But of course Berkeley does not recognise this; and, in spite of the soundness of much of his criticism of "representationism", of any view of an observed content as deputising to our minds for an unobservable content, he himself is not free from represe�tati �nism, as no one can be who recognises the "idea" � that whose relationship to what knows it is inherent in its own content) m any shape or form. And an essential point here is that, if we find in our minds "a collection of ideas", what we find ( the combination of A B C and D ) is just as much a matter of fact, something that just is so a�d �ot

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something that "is dependently so", as any situation that could be found "existing absolutely'\ in minds or out of them. The untenability of any doctrine of "dependent existence", then, whether the dependence is supposed to be on the mind which is aware of the "existence" or on anything else, is a particular case of the impos­ sibility in any coherent theory of admitting realities of difterent kinds or orders. The incoherence of Berkeley's anti-realist position, which is a part of his anti-empiricist position, appears most strikingly in §§ 30 and 31 of the Principles-headed, in Lindsay's text, "Laws of Nature" and "Knowledge of them necessary for the conduct of worldly affairs". We are told ( § 30) that laws of nature are "the set rules or established methods, wherein the mind we de pend on excites in us the ideas of sense", and that we learn these laws by experience "which teaches us that such and such ideas are attended with such and such other ideas, in the ordinary course of things". And again it is said ( § 31 ) that knowledge of such laws "gives us a sort of foresight, which enables us to regulate our actions for the benefit of life. And without this we should be eternally at a loss: we could not know how to act any thing that might procure us the least pleasure, or remove the least pain of sense. That food nourishes, sleep refreshes, and fire warms us; that to sow in the seed-time is the way to reap in the harvest, and, in general, that to obtain such and such ends, such and such means are conducive, all this we know, not by discovering any necessary co nnexion between our ideas, but only by the observation of the settled laws of nature, without which we should be all in uncertaintv and con­ fusion, and a grown man no more know how to manage h�self in the » affairs of life than an infant just born ( Berkeley's italics in both the above places ) . Now Berkeley is anti-representationist in so far as he maintains that "our ideas" ( the objects of our observation or experience ) are actual things and are not merely ways in which some of the features of an un­ observable «matter" are conveyed to us, but in so far as he takes them as relative to our minds he is not treating them as actual and is forced into representationism in order that our knowledge may be taken as in any ,.vay confronting us with the actual. As ideas of ours, our successive sensations are dependent on us, but their regularities, as instituted by God for our guidance, are quite independent of us, so that our Imowledge of '1aws of nature" is knowledge of objective facts. And the only support Berkeley can give for the adhibiting of objectivity to part of what we experience is that our sensations are not under our control ( an objective fact of which it seems we are directly aware ) whereas our ''images" or reproductions of sensations are ( another fact, independent of our know­ ing it, which we can discover ) ; so that Berkeley's position is a hotch­ potch of realism and representationism, an unavoidable result so long as "ideas" ( entities of a different order of reality from minds or agents ) are retained. Further confusion is disclosed by a more thorough consideration of what can be meant by "the conduct of worldly affairs", by the regulation

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of our actions through attention to '1aws of nature" such as that food nourishes and fire warms. Such utilisation of our knowledge involves the securing of results that we desire and the avoidance of others that we object to, and this avoidance can only mean that, on having a sensation that is normally the sign of another sensation, we act so as not to get that second sensation, so as to avoid the experience which the first "signified". But that is to say that we actually falsify the supposed regularity which we were said to be using as a guide-that, e.g., we get the visual sensation of a £re and then do not get the tactual or cutaneous sensation of being warmed or perhaps burned; in other words, the conduct of life, as an avoidance of certain sensations, would mean a contravening of the "laws of nature". In fact, however, when we make such avoidances, we do not think there has been any interference with natural regularities; we believe that fire, food, etc., operate as they always did, even if some of their effects are not sensed by us. And this belief is possible only because we distinguish our perceptions or sensations of things ( the fact that on certain occasions certain things are perceived by us) from the things themselves, only because we do not identify the effects of fire, e.g., with the "sensations" which ensue upon a "sensation" of fire, only because we distinguish our knowing of a sequence ( though this knowing too is an objective fact ) from the occurrence of that sequence-only, i.e., because we take a realist view. But if we did not take that realist view, we should have to abandon the recognition of regularities that Berkeley speaks of and thus to deny any possibility of the conduct of life through knowledge of them. The conduct of life, however, does not involve only that there are ways of working of things we observe, independently of whether we observe them or not; it also involves our working on th em-our eliminat­ ing certain things and so the effects they have been producing, our in­ stituting certain things, as contrasted with merely seeing signs of their approach. Now on Berkeley's view that our sensations are not under our control and that all we can control is the reproduction of them in imagina­ tion, the conduct of life would be restricted to such imaginative exercise while the sequence of sensations proceeded regardless, and we should not be making any use of our knowledge of the laws of such sequence. But, even if it were supposed that we could do so, i.e., that we could take such action as to avoid some sensations and secure others, it is not ap­ parent how such securing and avoidance could make us any less "at a loss" than we should otherwise be. For, on the doctrine of �ctive mind and passive ideas, our sensations would merely confront us, like images on a screen, and it would not make the slightest difference to us whether one or another was there; we could have, say, the sensation of extreme �old, or again tha � of gentle warmth, or again that of burning ( even what is called the burnmg of our flesh ) , but which of these was present would not matter to our minds. Thus, :-"hen Berkeley speaks of food nourishing, sleep refreshing and fire warmmg us, he should mean only that they are signs of other ideas J

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of the sort, no doubt, that we call "organic sensations" but having, on the doctrine of ideas, no more intimate relation to the percipient than ideas we do not so describe. But the notion of "the conduct of life" implies that these objects do affect our very selves, that they are not mere data but things that make a difference to our activities. Berkeley to some extent obscures this position by talking of our being affected by pleasure and pain; if this means only our having perceptions of pleasure and pain, this will still not bring us any nearer to the active mind ( the perceptions would still make no difference to it) , but if, as seems to be the case, pleasure and pain are to be taken as features of mental processes, then their being procured by the securing of some sensations and the avoidance of others can only mean the operation of what is sensed itself on the mental. In any case, unless the sensible has direct effects on us, there can be no conduct of life by means of recognition of its regularities. But, if there is direct interaction between minds and what they perceive, that means that minds themselves come within the range of laws of nature, that they and not just what they contemplate are parts of the natural realm, that there are regular sequences between, e.g., the provision of food and fire and various types of mental occurrence; and without this interconnection, without continuous processes between the mental and the non-mental, there would be no such thing as "affairs of life,', no relevance of "laws of nature'' to the sequence ( if such there could be) of mental activities. Even Berkeley's account of the conduct of life, then, is unintelligible except in terms of interaction between minds and things they observe ( which, of course, include minds) , i.e. except as implying the unintel­ ligibility of any assignment of different sorts of reality to the mental and the non-mental, except as recognising both ( besides the relations between them ) as equally matter-of-fact, in precisely the same sense situational or propositional-a sense which is realist, recognising independence, the existence of many distinct things in any situation, and empiricist, recog­ nising a single level, on which only situations can and situations always do connect situations. But, while consideration of his inconsistencies leads to the showing up of any attempted separation of mind and nature, Ber­ keley remains sunk in them just because of his rationalism, his doctrine of nahires or elementary entities, the discontinuity between which is set aside by the postulation of impossible leaps, such as he himself has shown Locke's representationism to be. For, in spite of all his efforts to find real connections between minds and what they contemplate, he also, as we have seen, makes the representationist leap; it is something he is forced to by the doctrine of "ideas", which must be taken as at once ''in" minds and "of' things, leaving us with the insoluble problems which arise on any doctrine of relative existence. Dualism, disconnections, ambiguities and insoluble problems, can, of course, be brought out just as readily in the theories of Locke and Hume as in that of Berkeley. The point is that on the supposition of elementary ideas it is impossible alike to have any knowledge of them

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singly and to have knowledge of any relations among them; we cannot know the absolutely separate but equally we cannot know the together­ ness of a number of separates-as argued above, we can know only the togetherness of complex and situated things ( things having situatiom within them and situations around them and themselves being situati ons) . Thus when Locke speaks of our knowledge of ''agreement" among ideas, he is ( apart from allowing the symmetrical relation "agreement" to do duty for the A proposition which is not, as such, reversible) making possible knowledge of what is in the realm of ideas by recognising the occurrence there of complex states of affairs, but, first, is thereby leaving no room for their supposed elementary constituents and, secondly, is taking all point from the notion of a realm of ideas, since what we know is that A does objectively or as a matter of fact agree with B ( assuming that agreement can have a definite meaning here) and there is no con­ ceivable point in saying that that fact further agrees with or "corresponds to" something "in reality"-it is already "in reality" in being a fact. In line with the general argument against dualism, the distinction between an "inner" and an ''outer" reality ( between mind and "the external world", as the phrase goes) is one of which no account can be given, since there will be no reality for that distinction to have. In more detail, to say that anything is external to mind is to say that it is part of a situation which includes mind, and thus to say that it does not con­ stitute a "world'' but is just such and such situations related to ( in com­ mon situations with) other situations ; again, to say that A is external to B is to say that B is external to A and thus, just as much as A, exists under conditions of externality ( and this may remind us of the fact that what is external to any mind includes minds) ; and, finally, to note ( as has been done above) that what is called "inner" reality contains complex states of affairs is to indicate that it has within itself relations of extemality and thus that there can be no "world" ( apart from the objections to that notion itself) to distinguish from an "external" one-there will be only variously qualified situations ( mental and otherwise) variously disposed spatially towards one another. But if there could be separate kinds of reality, "inner" and "outer", there could be no relations between them, and when we look closely at supposed relations like "correspondence" or "agreement", we find nothing that can consistently be meant by them. We cannot say that X "corresponds to" a fact unless, as I have in­ dicated, X is already a fact, and then how it could be regarded as "stand­ ing for" ( or being "of") some other fact is not apparent. We cannot even say that X corr�sponds t � son_iething unspecified without implying our awareness of this whole situation, but there is no suggestion in that that this object of our awareness stands for or corresponds to something else. We cannot say that knowledge of X ( something "inner" ) "claims to be" knowledge of Y ( something "outer") ; if this claim were supposed to reside in some resemblance between X and Y ( a resemblance which on the doctrine of "the external world'', we could not know-though, if' we could, our knowledge would be directly of Xs resembling Y and not of

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anything that that could be supposed to "correspond to ) , the claim could be made with much more force that knowledge of X is knowledge of Z, another "idea", the resemblance of which to X we could, on the doctrine of an "inner" reality, be aware of. Or, putting it in terms of "agreement with reality", we can say that X agrees with Y only if th€ knowing of X is the very same thing as the knowing of Y ( if X and Y are the very same state of affairs) ; we cannot maintain a dual theory of know­ ledge and say that knowledge of the situation X is "somehow" at the same time knowledge of a different situation Y. The only solution is to reject the whole doctrine of "inner" and "outer" and to maintain the realist doctrine of a direct knowledge of propositions, of mental as of non-­ mental states of affairs, which are variously related but none of which can be said to m ediate others to our minds. The force of this propositional or situational realism is commonly concealed by the treahnent of the proposition as a tertium quid or mediator, something b y which we can assert facts but which is distinct from the facts as well as from us. This, however, is as untenable a view as the doctrine of correspondence, of which indeed it is just a variety. \Vhen we assert the proposition "All men are mortal", what we are assert­ ing is the actual mortality of men, and to call the assertion of the pro­ position merely a means to the asserting of the fact is to say that we have no way of asserting the fact, just as we have no way of specifying the "reality" with which certain ideas of ours are supposed to "agree" unless those "ideas" ( what we know) are the reality. I have spoken in a mis­ leading way on this matter in "Empiricism" ( A.].P.P., December, 1927, p. 242) / i.e., as if I regarded the proposition as a tertium quid, in saying: "The empiricist, like Socrates, adopts the attitude of considering things in terms of what can be said about them, i.e., in propositions"-when I certainly