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Problem of Truth-Herbert Wildon Carr · Bhagavad Gita

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  Speaker 1: Chapter one of the Problem of Truth. This is a
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  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 1: The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wilden Carr Physics and Metaphysics.
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  Speaker 1: The progress of physical science leads to the continual discovery
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  Speaker 1: of complexity in what is first apprehended as simple. The
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  Speaker 1: atom of hydrogen, so long accepted as the ideal limit
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  Speaker 1: of simplicity, is now suspected to be not the lowest
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  Speaker 1: unit in the scale of elements, and it is no
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  Speaker 1: longer conceived as it used to be, as structuraliss but
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  Speaker 1: as an individual system comparable to a solar system of
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  Speaker 1: electrical components, preserving an equilibrium probably only temporary. The same
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  Speaker 1: tendency to discover complexity in what is first apprehended as
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  Speaker 1: simple is evident in the study of philosophy. The more
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  Speaker 1: our simple and ordinary notions are submitted to analysis, the
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  Speaker 1: more our profound problems brought to consciousness. It is impossible
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  Speaker 1: to think that we do not know what such an ordinary,
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  Speaker 1: simple notion as that of truth is. Yet the attempt
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  Speaker 1: to give a definition of its meaning brings quite unexpected
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  Speaker 1: difficulties to light. And the widest divergence at the present
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  Speaker 1: time between rival principles of philosophical interpretation is in regard
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  Speaker 1: to a theory of the nature of truth. It is
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  Speaker 1: not a problem that is pressed on us by any
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  Speaker 1: felt need, nor is anyone who does not feel its
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  Speaker 1: interest called upon to occupy himself with it. We speak
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  Speaker 1: our language before we know its grammar, and we reason
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  Speaker 1: just as well whether we have learnt the science of
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  Speaker 1: logic or not. The science of logic, or as it
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  Speaker 1: is sometimes called, of formal logic, was until modern times
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  Speaker 1: regarded as a quite simple account of the principles that
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  Speaker 1: govern the exercise of our reasoning faculty, and of the
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  Speaker 1: rules founded on those principles by following which truth was
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  Speaker 1: attained and false opinion or error avoided. It was called
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  Speaker 1: formal because it was supposed to have no relation to
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  Speaker 1: the matter of the subject reasoned about, but only to
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  Speaker 1: the form which the reasoning must take. A complete account
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  Speaker 1: of this formal science, as it was recognized and accepted
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  Speaker 1: for many ages, might easily have been set forth within
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  Speaker 1: the limits of a small volume such as this, But
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  Speaker 1: the development of modern philosophy has wrought an extraordinary change.
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  Speaker 1: Anyone now who will set himself the task of mastering
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  Speaker 1: all the problems that have been raised around the question
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  Speaker 1: of the nature of logical process will find himself confronted
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  Speaker 1: with a vast library of special treatises and involved in
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  Speaker 1: discussions that embrace the whole of philosophy. The special problem
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  Speaker 1: of truth, that it is the object of this little
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  Speaker 1: volume to explain, is a quite modern question. It has
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  Speaker 1: been raised within the present generation of philosophical writers, and
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  Speaker 1: is today perhaps the chief controversy in which philosophers are engaged.
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  Speaker 1: But although it is only in the last few years
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  Speaker 1: that controversy has been aroused on this question, the problem
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  Speaker 1: is not new. It is indeed as old as philosophy itself.
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  Speaker 1: In the fifth century before Christ, and in the generation
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  Speaker 1: that immediately preceded Socrates, a famous philosopher, Protagoras four eighty
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  Speaker 1: one to four eleven BC, published a book with the
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  Speaker 1: title The Truth. He had the misfortune common at that
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  Speaker 1: time to offend the religious Athenians, for he spoke slightingly
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  Speaker 1: of the gods, proposing to banish their existence or non
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  Speaker 1: existence distance from writing and speech. He was convicted of atheism,
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  Speaker 1: and his books were publicly burnt, and he himself, then
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  Speaker 1: seventy years of age, was either banished or at least
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  Speaker 1: was obliged to flee from Athens, and on his way
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  Speaker 1: to Sicily he lost his life in a shipwreck. Our
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  Speaker 1: knowledge of this book of Protagoras is due to the
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  Speaker 1: preservation of its argument by Plato in the dialogue the
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  Speaker 1: Teitas Protagoras. We are there told taught that man is
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  Speaker 1: the measure of all things, of the existence of things
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  Speaker 1: that are, and of the non existence of things that
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  Speaker 1: are not. You have read him, asks Socrates, addressing the Titis.
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  Speaker 1: Oh yes, again and again is the Titis's reply. Plato
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  Speaker 1: was entirely opposed to the doctrine that Protagoras taught. It
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  Speaker 1: seemed to him to bring gods and men and tadpoles
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  Speaker 1: to one level as far as truth was concerned, For
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  Speaker 1: he drew the deduction that if man is the measure
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  Speaker 1: of all things, then to each man his own opinion
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  Speaker 1: is right. Plato opposed to it the theory that truth
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  Speaker 1: is the vision of a pure objective reality. The same
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  Speaker 1: problem that exercised the ancient world is now again a
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  Speaker 1: chief center of philosophical interest, and the aim of this
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  Speaker 1: little book is not to decide that question, but to
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  Speaker 1: serve as a guide and introduction to those who desire
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  Speaker 1: to know what the question is that divides philosophers to
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  Speaker 1: into the hostile camps of pragmatism and intellectualism. The subject
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  Speaker 1: is not likely to interest anyone who does not care
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  Speaker 1: for the study of the exact definitions and abstract principles
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  Speaker 1: that lie at the basis of science and philosophy. There
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  Speaker 1: are many who are engaged in the study of the
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  Speaker 1: physical and natural sciences, and also many who devote themselves
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  Speaker 1: to the social and political sciences, who hold in profound
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  Speaker 1: contempt the fine distinctions and intellectual subtleties that seem to
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  Speaker 1: them the whole content of logic and metaphysic. The attitude
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  Speaker 1: of the scientific mind is not difficult to understand. It
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  Speaker 1: has recently been rather graphically expressed by a distinguished and
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  Speaker 1: popular exponent of the principles of natural science. One may
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  Speaker 1: regard the utmost possibilities of the results of human knowledge
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  Speaker 1: as the contents of a bracket, and place outside the
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  Speaker 1: bracket the factor X to represent those unknown and unknowable
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  Speaker 1: possibilities which the imagination of man is never wearied of.
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  Speaker 1: Suggesting this factor X is the plaything of the metaphysician.
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  Speaker 1: This mathematical symbol of the bracket, multiplied by x to
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  Speaker 1: represent the unknown and unknowable possibilities beyond it will serve
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  Speaker 1: me to indicate with some exactness the problem with which
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  Speaker 1: I am going to deal. The symbol is an expression
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  Speaker 1: of the agnostic position. The popular caricature of the meta
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  Speaker 1: physician and his plaything we may disregard as a pure fiction.
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  Speaker 1: The unknowable X of the agnostic is not the meta
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  Speaker 1: or beyond of physics, which the metaphysician vainly seeks to know.
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  Speaker 1: The only beyond of physics is consciousness or experience itself,
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  Speaker 1: and this is the subject matter of metaphysics. Our present
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  Speaker 1: problem is that of the bracket, not that of the
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  Speaker 1: factor outside, if there is any such factor, nor yet
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  Speaker 1: the particular nature of the contents within. There are, as
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  Speaker 1: we shall see, three views that are possible of the
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  Speaker 1: nature of the bracket. In one view, it is merely
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  Speaker 1: the conception of the extent which knowledge has attained or
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  Speaker 1: can attain. It has no intimate relation to the knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: but marks externally its limit. This is the view of
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  Speaker 1: the realist. In another, view, the whole of knowledge is
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  Speaker 1: intimately related to its particular parts. The things we know
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  Speaker 1: are not a mere collection or aggregate of independent facts
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  Speaker 1: that we have discovered. The bracket which contains our knowledge,
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  Speaker 1: gives form to it, and relates organically the dependent parts
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  Speaker 1: to the whole in one comprehensive, individual system. This is
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  Speaker 1: the view of the idealist. There is yet another view.
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  Speaker 1: Human knowledge is relative to human activity and its needs.
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  Speaker 1: The bracket is the ever changing limit of that activity.
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  Speaker 1: With in it is all that is relevant to human
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  Speaker 1: purpose and personality. Without it is all that is irrelevant.
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  Speaker 1: This is the view of the pragmatist. It is not
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  Speaker 1: only the scientific mind, but also the ethical and religious
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  Speaker 1: mind that is likely to be at least impatient, if
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  Speaker 1: not contemptuous, of this inquiry. The question what is truth
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  Speaker 1: will probably bring to everyone's mind the words uttered by
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  Speaker 1: a Roman procurator at the supreme moment of a great
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  Speaker 1: world tragedy. Pilot's question is usually interpreted as the cynical
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  Speaker 1: jest of a judge indifferent to the significance of the
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  Speaker 1: great cause. He was trying the expression of the belief
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  Speaker 1: that there is no revelation of spiritual truth of the
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  Speaker 1: highest importance for our human nature, or at least that
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  Speaker 1: there is no infallible test by which it can be known.
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  Speaker 1: It is not this problem of truth that we are
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  Speaker 1: now to discuss. There are, on the other hand, many
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  Speaker 1: minds that can never rest satisfied. While they have accepted
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  Speaker 1: only and not examined the assumptions of science and the
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  Speaker 1: values of social and political and religious ideals. Their quest
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  Speaker 1: of first principles may appear to more practical natures a
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  Speaker 1: harmless amusement or a useless waste of intellectual energy. But
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  Speaker 1: they are responding to a deep need of our human nature,
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  Speaker 1: a need that, it may be, is in its very
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  Speaker 1: nature insatiable, the need of intellectual satisfaction. It is the
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  Speaker 1: nature of this intellectual satisfaction itself that is our problem
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  Speaker 1: of truth. There are therefore two attitudes towards the problem
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  Speaker 1: of truth and reality. That of the mind, which brings
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  Speaker 1: a practical test to every question, and that of the
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  Speaker 1: mind restless to gain by insight or by speculation a
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  Speaker 1: clue to the mystery that enshrouds the meaning of existence.
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  Speaker 1: The first attitude seems peculiarly to characterize the man of
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  Speaker 1: science who delights to think that the problem of reality
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  Speaker 1: is simple and open to the meanest understanding. Between the
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  Speaker 1: plain man's view and that of the man of high
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  Speaker 1: attainment in scientific research, there is for him only a
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  Speaker 1: difference of degree, and science seems almost to require an
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  Speaker 1: apology if it does not direct and large are command
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  Speaker 1: over nature. It would explain life and consciousness as the
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  Speaker 1: result of chemical combination of material elements. Philosophy, on the
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  Speaker 1: other hand, is the instinctive feeling that the secret of
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  Speaker 1: the universe is not open and revealed to the plain man,
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  Speaker 1: guided by common sense experience alone, even if to this
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  Speaker 1: experience be added the highest attainments of scientific research. Either
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  Speaker 1: there is far more in matter than is contained in
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  Speaker 1: the three dimensional space it occupies, or else the universe
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  Speaker 1: must owe its development to something beyond matter. The universe
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  Speaker 1: must seem a poor thing. Indeed, to a man who
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  Speaker 1: can think that physical science does or can lay bear
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  Speaker 1: its meaning. It is hence desire to catch some glimpse
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  Speaker 1: of its meaning that leads the philosopher to strive to
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  Speaker 1: transcend the actual world by following the speculative bent of
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  Speaker 1: the reasoning power that his intellectual nature makes possible. End
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  Speaker 1: of Chapter one.
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  Speaker 2: Chapter two of The Problem of Truth. This is a
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  Speaker 2: LibriVox recording. While LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
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  Speaker 2: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
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  Speaker 2: The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wildenkarr, Chapter two, Appearance
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  Speaker 2: and Reality. Our conscious life is one unceasing change, from
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  Speaker 2: the first awakening of consciousness to the actual present. No
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  Speaker 2: one moment has been the mere repetition of another, and
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  Speaker 2: the moments which, as we look back, seem to have
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  Speaker 2: made up our life are not separable elements of it,
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  Speaker 2: but our own divisions of a change that has been continuous,
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  Speaker 2: and as it has been so we know it will
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  Speaker 2: be until consciousness ceases with death. Consciousness and life are
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  Speaker 2: in this respect one and the same. Although when we
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  Speaker 2: speak of our consciousness we think chiefly of a passive receptivity,
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  Speaker 2: and when we think of our life we think of
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  Speaker 2: an activity, consciousness as the unity of knowing and acting,
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  Speaker 2: is a becoming. The past is not left behind, It's
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  Speaker 2: with us in the form of memory. The future is
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  Speaker 2: not a predetermined order which only a natural disability prevents
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  Speaker 2: us from knowing. It is yet uncreated. Conscious life is
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  Speaker 2: the enduring present, which grows with the past and makes
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  Speaker 2: the future. The reality of consciousness is our continually changing experience.
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  Speaker 2: But there is also another reality with which it seems
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  Speaker 2: to be a necessary relation and also in complete contrast.
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  Speaker 2: This is the reality of the material or physical universe.
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  Speaker 2: The world of physical reality seems to be composed of
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  Speaker 2: a matter that cannot change in space that is absolutely unchangeable.
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  Speaker 2: This physical world seems made up of solid things formed
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  Speaker 2: out of matter. Change in physical science is only a
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  Speaker 2: rearrangement of matter or an alteration of position in space.
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  Speaker 2: This physical reality is not as psychical reality is known
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  Speaker 2: to us directly. It's an interpretation of our sense experience.
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  Speaker 2: Immediate experience has objects generally called sense data. These objects
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  Speaker 2: are what we actually see in sensations of sight, what
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  Speaker 2: we actually hear in sensations of sound, and so on,
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  Speaker 2: and they lead us to suppose or infer physical objects,
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  Speaker 2: that is, objects that do not depend upon our experience
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  Speaker 2: for their existence, but whose existence is the cause of
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  Speaker 2: our having the experience. The process by which we infer
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  Speaker 2: the nature of the external world from our felt experience
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  Speaker 2: is logical. It includes perceiving, conceiving, thinking, or reasoning. The
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  Speaker 2: object of a logical process the aim or ideal which
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  Speaker 2: it seeks to attain is truth. Knowledge of reality is truth.
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  Speaker 2: There are therefore two realities, the reality of our felt experience,
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  Speaker 2: from which all thinking sets out, and the reality which
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  Speaker 2: in thinking we seek to know. The one reality is immediate,
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  Speaker 2: It is conscious experience itself. The other reality is that
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  Speaker 2: which we infer from the fact of experience, that by
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  Speaker 2: which we seek to explain our existence. The one we feel,
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  Speaker 2: the other we think. If the difference between immediate knowledge
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  Speaker 2: and mediate knowledge or inference lay in the feeling of
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  Speaker 2: certainty alone, or in the nature of belief, the distinction
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  Speaker 2: would not be the difficult one that it is. The
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  Speaker 2: theories of idealism and realism show how widely philosophers are
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  Speaker 2: divided on the subject. We are quite as certain of
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  Speaker 2: some of the things that we can only yet infer
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  Speaker 2: as we are of the things which we are immediately aware.
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  Speaker 2: We cannot doubt, for instance, that there are other persons
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  Speaker 2: besides ourselves. Yet we can have no distinct knowledge of
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  Speaker 2: any consciousness but one our own. Our knowledge that there
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  Speaker 2: are other minds is an inference from our observation of
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  Speaker 2: the behavior of some of the things we directly experience,
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  Speaker 2: and from the experience of our own consciousness, and even
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  Speaker 2: those things which seem in direct relation to us. The
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  Speaker 2: things we see or hear or touch are immediately present
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  Speaker 2: only in a very small, perhaps an infinitesimal part of
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  Speaker 2: what we know and think of as their full reality.
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  Speaker 2: All but this small part is inferred from a momentary
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  Speaker 2: sensation of sight or sound or touch. We infer reality
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  Speaker 2: that far exceeds anything actually given to us by the sensation.
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  Speaker 2: Thinking is questioning experience. When our attention is suddenly attracted
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  Speaker 2: by something a flash of light or a sound, or
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  Speaker 2: a twinge of pain, consciously or unconsciously, we say to ourselves,
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  Speaker 2: what is that? The that a simple felt experience contains
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  Speaker 2: a meaning brings a message, and we ask what. We
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  Speaker 2: distinguish the existence as an appearance, and we seek to
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  Speaker 2: know the reality. The quest of the reality, which is
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  Speaker 2: made known to us by the appearance is the logical
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  Speaker 2: process of the thought. The end or purpose of this
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  Speaker 2: logical process is to replace the immediate reality of the
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  Speaker 2: felt experience with a mediated reality, that is, a reality
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  Speaker 2: made known to us directly. Therefore, that we begin to think,
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  Speaker 2: the immediately present existence becomes an appearance, and throughout the
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  Speaker 2: development of our thought. It is taken to be something
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  Speaker 2: that requires explanation. We seek to discover the reality which
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  Speaker 2: will explain it. It is in this distinction of appearance
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  Speaker 2: and reality that the problem of truth arises. It does
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  Speaker 2: not depend on any particular theory of knowledge. The same
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  Speaker 2: effect is recognized by idealists and realists. Idealism may deny
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  Speaker 2: that the knowledge of independent reality is possible. Realism may
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  Speaker 2: insist that it's implied in the very fact of consciousness itself.
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  Speaker 2: Whichever is right. The reality which thinking brings before the
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  Speaker 2: mind is quite unlike and of a different order to
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  Speaker 2: that which we immediately experience in feeling. And even if
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  Speaker 2: we know nothing of philosophy, if we're ignorant of all
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  Speaker 2: theories of knowledge and think of the nature of knowledge
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  Speaker 2: simply from the standpoint of the natural man, the fact
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  Speaker 2: is essentially the same. The true reality of things is
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  Speaker 2: something sealed from outward view, something to be found out
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  Speaker 2: by science or by practical wisdom. Our knowledge of reality
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  Speaker 2: may be true in this case only is it knowledge,
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  Speaker 2: or it may be false, in which case it is
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  Speaker 2: not knowledge but opinion or error. The reality, then, the
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  Speaker 2: knowledge of which is truth, is not the immediate reality
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  Speaker 2: of feeling, but the inferred reality of thought to have
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  Speaker 2: any intelligible meaning. The affirmation that knowledge is true supposes
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  Speaker 2: that there already exists a distinction between knowledge and the
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  Speaker 2: reality known, between a being and the knowing of that
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  Speaker 2: which is known in immediate knowledge an actual conscience, felt experience.
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  Speaker 2: There is no such distinction, and therefore to affirm truth
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  Speaker 2: or error of such knowledge is unmeaning. I cannot have
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  Speaker 2: a toothache without knowing that I have it in the
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  Speaker 2: actual felt toothache. Knowing and being are not only inseparable,
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  Speaker 2: they're indistinguishable. If, however, I think of my toothache as
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  Speaker 2: part of an independent order of reality, my knowledge of
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  Speaker 2: it may be true or false. I am then thinking
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  Speaker 2: of it as the effect of an exposed nerve, or
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  Speaker 2: of an absess or of an inflammation, as something, that
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  Speaker 2: is to say, that is conditioned independently of my consciousness,
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  Speaker 2: and that will cease to exist when the conditions are altered.
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  Speaker 2: In the same way, when I behold a landscape, the
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  Speaker 2: blue expanse of sky and variegated color of the land
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  Speaker 2: which I actually experience are not either true or false.
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  Speaker 2: They are immediate experience, and which knowing is being, and
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  Speaker 2: being is knowing. Truth and error only apply to the
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  Speaker 2: interpretation of that experience, to the independent reality that I
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  Speaker 2: infer from it. We can then distinguish two kinds of knowledge,
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  Speaker 2: which we may call immediate and immediate, or better still,
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  Speaker 2: acquaintance and description. Accordingly, when we say that something is,
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  Speaker 2: or when we say of anything that if real, we
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  Speaker 2: may mean either of two things. We may mean that
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  Speaker 2: it's part of the changing existence that we actually feel
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  Speaker 2: and that we call consciousness or life, or we may
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  Speaker 2: mean that it's part of an independent order of things
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  Speaker 2: whose existence we think about in order to explain not
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  Speaker 2: what our feeling is. There can be no explanation of this,
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  Speaker 2: but how it comes to exist. We know by description
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  Speaker 2: a vast number of things with which we can never
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  Speaker 2: actually be acquainted. Such, indeed is the case with all
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  Speaker 2: the knowledge by which we rule our lives and conceive
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  Speaker 2: the reality which environs us. Yet we're absolutely dependent on
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  Speaker 2: the reality we know by acquaintance for all our knowledge
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  Speaker 2: of these things. Not only is immediate sense experience and
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  Speaker 2: the knowledge it gives us by acquaintance the only evidence
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  Speaker 2: we have of the greater and wider reality, but we're
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  Speaker 2: dependent on it for the terms wherewith to describe it,
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  Speaker 2: for the form in which to present it, for the
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  Speaker 2: matter with which to compose it. And this is the
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  Speaker 2: real ground of the study of philosophy, the justification of
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  Speaker 2: its standpoint. It is this fact, this ultimate, undeniable fact,
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  Speaker 2: that all reality, of whatever kind, and in whatever way, known,
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  Speaker 2: whether by thought or feeling, whether it is perceived or conceived,
• 23:53
  Speaker 2: remembered or imagined, is in the end composed of sense experience.
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: It is this fact from which all the problems of
• 23:59
  Speaker 2: fallowlosophy arise. It is this fact that our utilitarian men
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: of science find themselves forced to recognize, however scornful they
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: may be, of metaphysical methods and results. The special problem
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: of the nature of truth is concerned, then, with the
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: reality that we have distinguished, as known by description and
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: conceived by us, as independent in its existence of the
• 24:20
  Speaker 2: consciousness by which we know it. What is the nature
• 24:23
  Speaker 2: of the seal by which we stamp this knowledge true?
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: End of Chapter two, Chapter.
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: Three of the Problem of Truth. This is a LibriVox recording.
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org. Recording
• 24:52
  Speaker 3: by Johnny Wong sam Bruno, California. The Problem of Truth
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: by Herbert Wilden Carr, Chapter three, Chapter three The Logical Theories.
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: Whoever cares to become acquainted with the difficulty of the
• 25:10
  Speaker 3: problem of truth must not be impatient of dialectical subtleties.
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: There is a well known story in Boswell's Life of
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: Doctor Johnson which relates how the doctor refuted Berkeley's philosophy,
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: which affirmed the nonexistence of matter. I observed, says Boswell,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: that though we are satisfied his doctrine is not true,
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: it is impossible to refute it. I shall never forget
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: the alacrity with which Johnson answered, striking his foot with
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: mighty force against a large stone till he rebounded from it.
• 25:46
  Speaker 3: I refute it. Thus, doctor Johnson is the representative of
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: robust common sense. It has very often turned out in
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: metaphysical disputes that the common sense answer is the one
• 26:00
  Speaker 3: that has been justified in the end. Those who are
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: impatient of metaphysics are therefore not without reasonable ground, and
• 26:09
  Speaker 3: indeed the strong belief that the common sense view will
• 26:13
  Speaker 3: be justified in the end. However powerful, the skeptical doubt
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: that seems to contradict it. However, startling the paradox that
• 26:22
  Speaker 3: seems to be involved in it is a possession of
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: the human mind, without which the ordinary practical conduct of
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: life would be impossible. When then we ask ourselves what
• 26:35
  Speaker 3: is truth, the answer seems to be simple and obvious. Truth,
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: we reply, is a property of certain of our ideas.
• 26:45
  Speaker 3: It means their agreement, as falsity means their disagreement with reality.
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: If I say of anything that it is so, then
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: if it is so, what I say is true. If
• 26:58
  Speaker 3: it is not so, then what I say is false.
• 27:03
  Speaker 3: This simple definition of truth is one that is universally accepted.
• 27:08
  Speaker 3: No one really can deny it, for if he did,
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: he would have nothing to appeal to to justify his
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: own theory or condemn another. The problem of truth is
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: only raised when we ask what does the agreement of
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: an idea what reality mean? If the reader will ask
• 27:27
  Speaker 3: himself that question and carefully ponder it, he will see
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: that there is some difficulty in the answer to the
• 27:35
  Speaker 3: simple question what is truth. The answer that will probably
• 27:39
  Speaker 3: first of all suggest itself is that the idea is
• 27:43
  Speaker 3: a copy of the reality, and at once many experiences
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: will seem to confirm this view. Thus, when we look
• 27:51
  Speaker 3: at a landscape, we know that the lines of light
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: which radiate from every point of it, pass through the
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: lens of each of our eyes to be focused on
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: the retina, forming there a small picture, which is the
• 28:04
  Speaker 3: exact counterpart of the reality. If we look into another
• 28:08
  Speaker 3: person's eye, we may see there a picture of the
• 28:11
  Speaker 3: whole field of his vision reflected from his lens. It
• 28:15
  Speaker 3: is true that what we see is not what he sees,
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: for that is on his retina. But the analogy of
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: this with a photographic camera, where we see the picture
• 28:26
  Speaker 3: on the ground glass, seems obvious and natural. And so
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: we think of knowledge so far as it depends on
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: the sense of vision as consisting in more or less vivid,
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: more or less faded copies of real things stored up
• 28:43
  Speaker 3: by the memory. But a very little reflection will convince
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: us that the truth of our ideas cannot consist in
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: the fact that they are copies of realities, For clearly
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: they are not copies in any possible meaning of the term.
• 28:59
  Speaker 3: Take for example, this very illustration of seeing a landscape.
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: What we see is not a picture or copy of
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: the landscape, but the real landscape itself. We feel quite
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: sure of this. And with regard to the other sensations,
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: those that come to us by hearing, taste, smell, touch,
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: it would seem highly absurd to suppose that the ideas
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: these sensations produced in us are copies of real things.
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: The pain of burning is not a copy of real fire,
• 29:35
  Speaker 3: and the truth of the judgment fire burns does not
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: consist in the fact that the ideas denoted by the
• 29:43
  Speaker 3: words fire burns faithfully copy certain real things which are
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: not ideas, And the whole notion is seen to be
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: absurd if we consider that were at a fact that
• 29:56
  Speaker 3: real things produce copies of themselves in our mind, we
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: could never know it was so. All that we should
• 30:04
  Speaker 3: have any knowledge of would be the copies, And whether
• 30:07
  Speaker 3: these were like or unlike the reality, or indeed, whether
• 30:11
  Speaker 3: there was any reality for them to be like, would
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: in the nature of the case be unknowable, and we
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: could never ask the question. If then our ideas are
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: not copies of things, and if there are things as
• 30:27
  Speaker 3: well as ideas about things, it is quite clear that
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: the copies must correspond to the things in some way
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: that does not make them copies of the things. The
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: most familiar instance of correspondence is the symbolism we use
• 30:44
  Speaker 3: in mathematics. Are our ideas of this nature, and is
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: their truth Their correspondence is a perfectly true idea, one
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: in which there exists a point to point correspondence to
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: the reality it represents. At once. There will occur to
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: the mind a great number of instances where this seems
• 31:06
  Speaker 3: to be the case. A map of England is not
• 31:09
  Speaker 3: a copy of England, such as, for example, a photograph
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: might be if we were to imagine it taken from
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: the moon. The correctness or the truth of a map
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: consists in the correspondence between the reality and the diagram,
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: which is an arbitrary sign of it. Throughout the whole
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: of our ordinary life, we find that we make use
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: of symbols and signs that are not themselves either parts
• 31:36
  Speaker 3: of or copies of the things for which they stand.
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: Language itself is of this nature, and there may be
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: symbols of symbols of symbols of real things. Written language
• 31:49
  Speaker 3: is the arbitrary visual sign of spoken language, and spoken
• 31:53
  Speaker 3: language is the arbitrary sign it may be of an
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: experienced thing or of an abstract idea. Is then this
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: property of our ideas, which we call truth, the correspondence
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: of ideas with their objects, and is falsity the absence
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: of this correspondence, It cannot be so. To imagine that
• 32:17
  Speaker 3: ideas can correspond with realities is to forget that ideas
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: simply are the knowledge of realities. It is to slip
• 32:27
  Speaker 3: into the notion that we know two kinds of different things,
• 32:31
  Speaker 3: first realities and secondly ideas, and that we can compare
• 32:36
  Speaker 3: together these two sorts of things. But it is at
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: once evident that if we could know realities without ideas,
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: we should never need to have recourse to ideas. It
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: is simply ridiculous to suppose that the relation between consciousness
• 32:54
  Speaker 3: and reality, which we call knowing, is the discovery of
• 32:58
  Speaker 3: a correspondence between men ideas and real things. The two
• 33:03
  Speaker 3: things that are related together in knowledge are not the
• 33:07
  Speaker 3: idea and its object, but the mind and its object.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: The idea of the object is the knowledge of the object.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: There may be correspondence between ideas, but not between ideas
• 33:20
  Speaker 3: and independent things. For that supposes that the mind knows
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: the ideas and also knows the things, and observes the
• 33:30
  Speaker 3: correspondence between them. And if we suppose that ideas are
• 33:34
  Speaker 3: an independent kind of entity, distinguishable and separable from another
• 33:39
  Speaker 3: kind of entity that forms the real world. How could
• 33:43
  Speaker 3: we know that the two correspondent for the one would
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: only be inferred from the other. There is, however, a
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: form of the correspondence theory of truth that is presented
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: in a way which avoids this difficulty. Truth, it is said,
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: is concerned not with the nature of things themselves, but
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: with our judgments about them. Judgment is not concerned with
• 34:07
  Speaker 3: the terms that enter into relations these are immediately experienced
• 34:12
  Speaker 3: and ultimate, but with the relations in which they stand
• 34:16
  Speaker 3: to one another. Thus, when we say John is the
• 34:20
  Speaker 3: father of James, the truth of our judgment does not
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: consist in the adequacy of our ideas of John and James,
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: nor in the correspondence of our ideas with the realities,
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: but is concerned only with the relation that is affirmed
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: to exist between them. This relation is declared to be
• 34:40
  Speaker 3: independent of, or at least external to, the terms, and
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: so far as it is expressed in a judgment, truth
• 34:49
  Speaker 3: consists in its actual correspondence with fact. So if I
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: say John is the father of James, then if John
• 34:58
  Speaker 3: is the father of James, the judgment is true, the
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: affirmation is a truth. If he is not, it is false.
• 35:07
  Speaker 3: The affirmation is a falsehood. This view has the merit
• 35:11
  Speaker 3: of simplicity and is sufficiently obvious almost to disarm criticism.
• 35:17
  Speaker 3: There is indeed little difficulty in accepting it if we
• 35:21
  Speaker 3: are able to take the view of the nature of
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: the real universe which it assumes. The theory is best
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: described as pluralistic realism. It is the view that the
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: universe consists of, or is composed of, an aggregate of
• 35:37
  Speaker 3: an infinite number of entities. Some of these have a
• 35:41
  Speaker 3: place in the space and time series, and these exist. Some,
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: on the other hand, are possibilities which have not and
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: may never have any actual existence. Entities that have their
• 35:54
  Speaker 3: place in the perceptual order of experience exist or have existed,
• 36:00
  Speaker 3: or will exist. But entities that are concepts such as goodness, beauty, truth,
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: or that are abstract symbols like numbers, geometrical figures, pure forms,
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: do not exist, but are nonetheless just as real as
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: the entities that do exist. These entities are the subject
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: matter of our judgments, and knowing is discovering the relations
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: in which they stand to one another. The whole significance
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: of this view lies in the doctrine that relations are
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: external to the entities that are related. They do not
• 36:40
  Speaker 3: enter into and form part of the nature of the entities.
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: The difficulty of this view is just this externality of
• 36:49
  Speaker 3: the relation. It seems difficult to conceive what nature is
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: left in any entity deprived of all its relations. The
• 36:59
  Speaker 3: relation of fo Son in the judgment John is the
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: Father of James is so far a part of the
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: nature of the persons John and James that if the
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: judgment is false, then to that extent, John and James
• 37:14
  Speaker 3: are not the actual persons John and James that they
• 37:18
  Speaker 3: are thought to be. And this is the case even
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: in so purely external a relation, as is expressed, say,
• 37:25
  Speaker 3: in the judgment Edinburgh is east of Glasgow. It is
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: difficult to discuss any relation which can be said to
• 37:34
  Speaker 3: be entirely indifferent to the nature of its terms. And
• 37:38
  Speaker 3: it is doubtful if anything whatever would be left of
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: a term abstracted from all its relations. These difficulties have
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: led to the formulation of an altogether different theory, namely,
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: the theory that truth does not consist in correspondence between
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: ideas and their real counterparts, but in the conceit and
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: internal harmony of the ideas themselves. It is named the
• 38:06
  Speaker 3: coherence theory. It will be recognized at once that there
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: is very much in common experience to support it. It
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: is by the test of consistency and coherence that we
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: invariably judge the truth of evidence. Also, it seems a
• 38:23
  Speaker 3: very essential part of our intellectual nature to reject as
• 38:28
  Speaker 3: untrue and false any statement or any idea that is
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: self contradictory or irreconcilable with the world of living experience.
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: But then, on the other hand, we by no means
• 38:41
  Speaker 3: allow that that must be true which does not exhibit
• 38:44
  Speaker 3: logical contradiction and inconsistency. It is a common enough experience
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: that ideas prove false, though they have exhibited no inherent
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: failure to harmonize with surrounding circumstances, nor any self contradiction.
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: The theory therefore requires more than a cursory examination. Thinking
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: is the activity of our mind which discovers the order, arrangement,
• 39:13
  Speaker 3: and system in the reality that the senses reveal. Without thought,
• 39:19
  Speaker 3: our felt experience would be a chaos and not a world.
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: The philosopher can't express this by saying that the understanding
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: gives unity to the manifold of sense. The understanding, he said,
• 39:34
  Speaker 3: makes nature. It does this by giving form to the
• 39:38
  Speaker 3: matter which comes to it by the senses. The mind
• 39:42
  Speaker 3: is not a tabula rasa upon which the external world
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: makes and leaves impressions. It is a relating activity which
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: arranges the matter it receives informs. First of all, there
• 39:56
  Speaker 3: are space and time, which are forms in which we
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: we receive all perceptual experience. And then there are categories
• 40:04
  Speaker 3: that are conceptual frames or molds by which we think
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: of everything we experience as having definite relations and belonging
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: to a real world of existence. Substance, causality, quality, and
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: quantity are categories. They are universal forms in which the
• 40:24
  Speaker 3: mind arranges since experience, and which constitute the laws of nature,
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: the order of the world. Space and time and the
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: categories of the understanding can't declare to be transcendental, that
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: is to say, they are the elements necessary to experience
• 40:43
  Speaker 3: which are not themselves derived from experience, as for example,
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: that every event has a cause. There are he declared,
• 40:53
  Speaker 3: synthetic priori judgments, that is, judgments about experience which are
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: not themselves derived from experience, but on the contrary, the
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: conditions that make experience possible. It is from this doctrine
• 41:09
  Speaker 3: of can't that the whole of modern idealism takes its rise.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: Can't indeed held that there are things in themselves, and
• 41:19
  Speaker 3: to this extent he was not himself an idealist, but
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: he also held that things in themselves are unknowable, and
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: this is essentially the idealist position. Clearly, if we hold
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: the view that things in themselves are unknowable, truth cannot
• 41:38
  Speaker 3: be a correspondence between our ideas and these things in themselves.
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: Truth must be some quality of the ideas themselves, and
• 41:48
  Speaker 3: this can only be their logical consistency. Consistency because the
• 41:54
  Speaker 3: ideas must be in agreement with one another, and logical
• 41:59
  Speaker 3: because this consistency belongs to the thinking, and logic is
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: the science of thinking. Truth, in effect, is the ideal
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: of logical consistency we experience in thinking and activity striving
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: to attain the knowledge of reality and the belief. The
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: feeling of satisfaction that we experience when our thinking seems
• 42:25
  Speaker 3: to attain the knowledge of reality is the harmony, the
• 42:29
  Speaker 3: absence of contradiction, the coherence of our ideas themselves This
• 42:35
  Speaker 3: is the coherence theory. Let us see what it implies
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: as to the ultimate nature of truth and reality. In
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: both the theories we have now examined, truth is a
• 42:48
  Speaker 3: logical character of ideas. In the correspondence theory, there is
• 42:53
  Speaker 3: indeed supposed a non logical reality, but it is only
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: in the ideas that there is the conformity or correspondence
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: which constitutes their truth. In the coherence theory, reality is
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: itself ideal, and the ultimate ground of everything is logical.
• 43:13
  Speaker 3: This is the theory of truth that accords with the
• 43:16
  Speaker 3: idealist view, and this view finds its most perfect expression
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: in the theory of the absolute. The absolute is the
• 43:26
  Speaker 3: idea of an object that realizes perfect logical consistency. This
• 43:32
  Speaker 3: object logic itself creates. If it be a necessary existence,
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: then knowledge of it cannot be other than truth. This view,
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: on account of the supreme position that it assigns to
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: the intellect, and of the fundamental character with which it
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: invests the logical categories, has been named by those who
• 43:55
  Speaker 3: oppose it intellectualism. It is important that it's should be
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: clearly understood, and the next chapter will be devoted to
• 44:04
  Speaker 3: its exposition. End of chapter three recording by Johnny Wong,
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: San Bruno, California.
• 44:17
  Speaker 4: Chapter four of the Problem of Truth. This is a
• 44:21
  Speaker 4: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wildon Carr, Chapter four,
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: The Absolute. A comparison of the two theories of truth
• 44:41
  Speaker 4: examined in the last chapter will show that, whereas both
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: rest on a logical quality in ideas, the first depends
• 44:48
  Speaker 4: on an external view taken by the mind of an independent,
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: non mental reality, whereas the second depends on the discovery
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: of an inner meaning and experience itself. It is this
• 45:00
  Speaker 4: inner meaning of experience that we seek to know when
• 45:02
  Speaker 4: asking any question concerning reality. It is the development of
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: this view and what it implies as to the ultimate
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: nature of reality and truth, that we are now to examine.
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: When we ask questions about reality. We assume in the
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: very inquiry that reality is of a nature that experience reveals.
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: Reality in its ultimate nature may be logical, that is
• 45:25
  Speaker 4: to say, of the nature of reason, or it may
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: be non logical, that is to say, of the nature
• 45:30
  Speaker 4: of feeling or will. But in either case, it must
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: be a nature in which conscious experience can give us knowledge.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: If indeed, we hold the view in which philosophers have
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: often endeavored to formulate that reality is unknowable, then there
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: is no more to be said. For whatever the picture
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: or the blank for a picture by which the mind
• 45:50
  Speaker 4: tries to present this unknowable reality, there can be no
• 45:54
  Speaker 4: question in relation to it of the nature and meaning
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: of truth in unknowable reality, as we shall show later on,
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: is to all intents and purposes, non existent reality. On
• 46:07
  Speaker 4: the other hand, if thinking leads to the knowledge of
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: reality that we call truth, it is because being and
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: knowing are ultimately one, and this unity can only be
• 46:18
  Speaker 4: in conscious experience. This is the axiom on which the
• 46:22
  Speaker 4: idealist argument is based. The theory of the absolute is
• 46:27
  Speaker 4: a logical argument of great dialectical force. It is not
• 46:31
  Speaker 4: an exaggeration to say that it is the greatest dialectical
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: triumph of modern philosophy. It is the most successful expression
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: of idealism. That this is not an extravagant estimate is shown,
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: I think, by the fact that, widespread and determined as
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: the opposition it has to encounter, criticism has been directed
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: not so much against its logic as against the basis
• 46:54
  Speaker 4: of intellectualism on which it rests. The very boldness of
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: its claim and brilliance of a triumph lead to the
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: suspicion that the intellect cannot be the sole determining factor
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: of the ultimate nature of reality. It will be easier
• 47:10
  Speaker 4: to understand the theory of the absolute if we first
• 47:13
  Speaker 4: of all, notice for the sake of afterwards comparing it.
• 47:16
  Speaker 4: Another argument very famous in the history of philosophy, the
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: argument to prove the existence of God. Named after Saint
• 47:24
  Speaker 4: Anselm of Canterbury, it runs, thus, we have in God
• 47:29
  Speaker 4: the idea of a perfect being. The idea of a
• 47:32
  Speaker 4: perfect being includes the existence of that being, for not
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: to exist is to fall short of perfection. Therefore God exists.
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: The theological form of this argument need raise no prejudice
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: against it. It is of very great intrinsic importance, and
• 47:51
  Speaker 4: if it is wrong, it is not easy to point
• 47:53
  Speaker 4: out wherein the fallacy lies. It may of course be
• 47:57
  Speaker 4: denied that we have or can have the idea of
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: a perfect being. That is to say, that we can
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: present that idea to the mind with a positive content
• 48:06
  Speaker 4: or meaning, as distinct from a merely negative or limiting idea.
• 48:10
  Speaker 4: But this is practically to admit the driving force of
• 48:13
  Speaker 4: the argument, namely that there may be an idea of
• 48:17
  Speaker 4: whose content or meaning existence forms part with regard to
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: everything else, The idea of existing is not existence. There
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: is absolutely no difference between the idea of one hundred
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: dollars and the idea of one hundred dollars existing. But
• 48:34
  Speaker 4: there is the whole difference between thought and reality in
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: the idea of the one hundred dollars existing and the
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: existence of one hundred dollars. Their actual existence in no
• 48:44
  Speaker 4: way depends on the perfection or imperfection of my idea,
• 48:48
  Speaker 4: nor in the inclusion of their existence in my idea.
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: This is sufficiently obvious in every case in which we
• 48:55
  Speaker 4: are dealing with perceptual reality, and in which we can,
• 48:59
  Speaker 4: in the words of the philosopher Hume, produce the impression
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: which gives rise.
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: To the idea.
• 49:04
  Speaker 4: But there are some objects which by their very nature
• 49:07
  Speaker 4: will not submit to this test. No man hath seen
• 49:11
  Speaker 4: God at any time, not because God is an object
• 49:15
  Speaker 4: existing under conditions and circumstances of place and time, impossible
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: for us to realize by reason of the limitations of
• 49:23
  Speaker 4: our finite existence. But because God is an object in
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: a different sense from that which has a place in
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: the perceptual order, and therefore it is affirmed of God
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: that the idea involves existence. God is not an object
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: of perception, either actual or possible, nor in the strict
• 49:42
  Speaker 4: sense is God a concept, that is to say, a
• 49:45
  Speaker 4: universal of which there may be particulars. He is, in
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: a special sense, the object of reason. If we believe
• 49:53
  Speaker 4: that there is a God, it is because our reason
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: tells us that there must be. God in philosophy, is
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: the idea of necessary existence, and the argument runs God
• 50:05
  Speaker 4: must be therefore is if then we exclude from the
• 50:10
  Speaker 4: idea of God every mythological and theological element, if we
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: mean not Zeus, nor Jehovah, nor Brahma, but the first
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: principle of existence, then we may find in the Saint
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: Anselm argument the very ground of theism. I have explained
• 50:27
  Speaker 4: this argument, which is of the class called ontological, because
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: it is concerned with the fundamental question of being, in
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: order to give an instance of the kind of argument
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: that has given us the theory of the absolute, I
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: will now try to set that theory before the reader,
• 50:42
  Speaker 4: asking only that he put himself into the position of
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: a plain man with no special acquaintance with philosophy, but
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: reflective and anxious to interpret the meaning of his ordinary experience.
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: We have already seen that thinking is the questioning of experience,
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: and that the moment it begins gives rise to a
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: distinction between appearance and reality. It is the asking what
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: of every that of felt experience to which the mind attends.
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: The world in which we find ourselves is extended all
• 51:13
  Speaker 4: around us in space, and full of things which affect
• 51:16
  Speaker 4: us in various ways. Some give us pleasure, others give
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: us pain, And we ourselves are things that affect other things,
• 51:24
  Speaker 4: as well as being ourselves affected by them. When we
• 51:27
  Speaker 4: think about the things in the world in order to
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: discover what they really are, we very soon find that
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: we are liable to illusion and error. Things turn out
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: on examination to be very different to what we first
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: imagine them to be. Our ideas by which we try
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: to understand the reality of things are just so many
• 51:47
  Speaker 4: attempts to correct and set right our illusions and errors,
• 51:51
  Speaker 4: And so the question arises, how far are our ideas
• 51:55
  Speaker 4: about things truths about reality? It is very soon evident
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: that there are some qualities of things that give rise
• 52:02
  Speaker 4: to illusion and error much more readily than others. The
• 52:06
  Speaker 4: spatial qualities of things solidity, shape, size, seem to be
• 52:11
  Speaker 4: real in a way that does not admit of doubt.
• 52:14
  Speaker 4: We seem able to apply to these qualities a test
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: that is definite and absolute. On the other hand, there
• 52:21
  Speaker 4: seem to be effects of these things in us, such
• 52:24
  Speaker 4: as their color, taste, odor, sound, coldness, or heat, qualities
• 52:29
  Speaker 4: that are incessantly changing and a fruitful source of illusion
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: and error. We therefore distinguish the spatial qualities as primary
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: and consider that they are the real things, and different
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: from their effects, which we call their secondary qualities. And
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: this is perhaps our most ordinary test of reality. If,
• 52:50
  Speaker 4: for example, we should think that something we see is
• 52:53
  Speaker 4: an unreal phantom, or a ghost, or some kind of hallucination,
• 52:57
  Speaker 4: and on going up to it find that it does
• 52:59
  Speaker 4: actually occupy space, we correct our opinion and say the
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: thing is real. But the spatial or primary qualities of
• 53:07
  Speaker 4: a thing, although they may seem more permanent and more
• 53:10
  Speaker 4: essential to the reality of the thing than the secondary qualities,
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: are nevertheless only qualities. They are not the thing itself,
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: but ways in which it affects us. It seems to
• 53:22
  Speaker 4: us that these qualities must adhere in or belong to
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: the thing, and so we try to form the idea
• 53:28
  Speaker 4: of the real thing as a substance or substratum which
• 53:31
  Speaker 4: has the qualities. This was a generally accepted notion until
• 53:35
  Speaker 4: Berkeley sixteen eighty five to seventeen sixty three showed how
• 53:39
  Speaker 4: contradictory it is. So simple and convincing was his criticism
• 53:44
  Speaker 4: of the notion that never since has material substance been
• 53:47
  Speaker 4: put forward as an explanation of the reality of things
• 53:50
  Speaker 4: we perceive. All that he did was to show how
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: impossible and contradictory it is to think that the reality
• 53:56
  Speaker 4: of that which we perceive is something in its nature imperceptible.
• 54:01
  Speaker 4: For such must material substance be apart from its sense qualities?
• 54:05
  Speaker 4: How can that which we perceive be something imperceptible? And
• 54:09
  Speaker 4: if we reflect on it, we shall surely agree that
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: it is so. By the thing we mean its qualities,
• 54:16
  Speaker 4: And apart from the qualities there is no thing. We
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: must try, then, in some other way to reach the reality.
• 54:23
  Speaker 4: What we shall now ask, can it be that binds
• 54:26
  Speaker 4: together these sense qualities? So that we can speak of
• 54:29
  Speaker 4: them as a thing. There are two elements that seem
• 54:32
  Speaker 4: to enter into everything, whatever that comes into our experience,
• 54:36
  Speaker 4: and which it seems to us would remain if everything
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: in the universe were annihilated. These are space and time.
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: Are they reality? Here we are met with a new
• 54:47
  Speaker 4: kind of difficulty. It was possible to dismiss material substance
• 54:51
  Speaker 4: as a false idea, an idea of something whose existence
• 54:55
  Speaker 4: is impossible. But space and time are certainly not false ideas.
• 54:59
  Speaker 4: Diffficulty about them is that we cannot make our thought
• 55:02
  Speaker 4: of them consistent. They are ideas that contain a self contradiction,
• 55:08
  Speaker 4: or at least that lead to a self contradiction when
• 55:11
  Speaker 4: we affirm them. Of reality with the ideas of space
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: and time are closely linked the ideas of change, of movement,
• 55:19
  Speaker 4: of causation, of quality and quantity, And all of these
• 55:22
  Speaker 4: exhibit the same puzzling characteristic that they seem to make
• 55:26
  Speaker 4: us affirm what we deny and deny what we affirm.
• 55:30
  Speaker 4: I might fill this little book with illustrations of the
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: paradoxes that are involved in these ordinary working ideas. Everyone
• 55:37
  Speaker 4: is familiar with the difficulty involved in the idea of time.
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: We must think there was a beginning, and we cannot
• 55:44
  Speaker 4: think that there was any moment to which there.
• 55:46
  Speaker 2: Was no before.
• 55:48
  Speaker 4: So also with space, it is an infinite extension, which
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: we can only think of as a beyond to every limit.
• 55:56
  Speaker 4: This receding limit of the infinitely extensible space involves the
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: character of infinite divisibility. For if there are an infinite
• 56:04
  Speaker 4: number of points from which straight lines can be drawn
• 56:07
  Speaker 4: without intersecting one another to any fixed point, there is
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: therefore no small space that cannot be further divided. The
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: contradictions that follow from these demonstrable contents of the idea
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: of space are endless. The relation of time to space
• 56:23
  Speaker 4: is another source of contradictory ideas. I shall, perhaps, however,
• 56:28
  Speaker 4: best make the meaning of this self contradictory character of
• 56:31
  Speaker 4: our ordinary ideas clear by following out a definite illustration.
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: What is known as the antinomy of motion is probably
• 56:39
  Speaker 4: familiar to everyone from the well known paradox of the
• 56:42
  Speaker 4: Greek philosopher Zeno. The flying arrow, he said, does not move,
• 56:48
  Speaker 4: because if it did, it would be in two places
• 56:51
  Speaker 4: at once and the same time, and that is impossible.
• 56:54
  Speaker 4: I will now put this same paradox of movement in
• 56:57
  Speaker 4: a form which, as far as I know, has not
• 57:00
  Speaker 4: been presented before. My illustration will involve the idea of
• 57:04
  Speaker 4: causation as well as that of movement. If we suppose
• 57:08
  Speaker 4: a space to be fully occupied, we shall agree that
• 57:11
  Speaker 4: nothing within that space can move without thereby displacing whatever
• 57:15
  Speaker 4: occupies the position into which it moves. That is to say,
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: the movement of any occupant of one position must cause
• 57:24
  Speaker 4: the displacement of the occupant of the new position into
• 57:27
  Speaker 4: which he moves. But on the other hand, it is
• 57:30
  Speaker 4: equally clear that the displacement of the occupant of the
• 57:33
  Speaker 4: new position is a prior condition of the possibility of
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: the movement of the mover. For nothing can move unless
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: there is an unoccupied place for it to move into,
• 57:43
  Speaker 4: and there is no unoccupied place unless it has been
• 57:46
  Speaker 4: vacated by an occupant before the movement begins. We have,
• 57:50
  Speaker 4: therefore the clear contradiction that a thing can only move
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: when something else which it causes to move, has already moved. Now,
• 57:58
  Speaker 4: if we reflect on it, we shall see that this
• 58:01
  Speaker 4: is exactly the position we occupy in our three dimensional space.
• 58:06
  Speaker 4: The space that surrounds us is occupied, and therefore we
• 58:10
  Speaker 4: cannot move until a way is made clear for us,
• 58:13
  Speaker 4: and nothing makes way for us unless we move. We
• 58:17
  Speaker 4: cannot move through stone walls because we cannot displace solid matter,
• 58:21
  Speaker 4: but we can move through air and water because we
• 58:23
  Speaker 4: are able to displace these. The problem is the same.
• 58:27
  Speaker 4: My movement displaces the air, but there is no movement
• 58:30
  Speaker 4: until the air is displaced. Can we escape the contradiction
• 58:34
  Speaker 4: by supposing the displacement is the cause and the movement
• 58:37
  Speaker 4: the effect. Are we like people in a theater queue,
• 58:41
  Speaker 4: only able to move from behind forward as the place
• 58:44
  Speaker 4: is vacated for us in the front. In that case,
• 58:47
  Speaker 4: we should be driven to the incredible supposition that the
• 58:50
  Speaker 4: original cause or condition of our movement is the previous
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: movement of something at the outskirts of our occupied space,
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: That this, somewhat moving into the void, made possible the
• 59:01
  Speaker 4: movement of the occupant of the space next adjoining, and
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: so on, until after a lapse of time which may
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: be ages, which may indeed be infinite, the possibility of
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: movement is opened to us. In fact, we must believe
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: that the effect of our movement, namely the displacement of
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: the previous occupants from the positions we occupy. In moving
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: happened before it was caused. Now, it is impossible for
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: us to believe either of the only two alternatives, either
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: that we do not really move but only appear to
• 59:32
  Speaker 4: do so, or that the displacement our movement causes really
• 59:37
  Speaker 4: precedes the movement. When we meet with a direct self
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: contradiction in our thoughts about anything, we can only suppose
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: that that about which we are thinking is in its
• 59:47
  Speaker 4: nature nonsensical, or else that our ideas about it are wrong.
• 59:53
  Speaker 4: It may perhaps be thought that the whole difficulty arises
• 59:56
  Speaker 4: simply because what we are trying to think consistently about
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 4: is a reality that is external to us. Space and time, movement,
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 4: cause and effect are ideas that apply to a world
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: outside and independent of the mind that tries to think it.
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: May not this be the reason of our failure and
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 4: the whole explanation of the seeming contradiction. If we turn
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: our thoughts inward upon our own being and think of
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: the self the eye, the real subject of the experience,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: then surely, where thought is at home and its object
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: is mental, not physical, we shall know reality. It is
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 4: not so. The same self contradiction characterizes our ideas when
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: we try to present the real object of inner perception,
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: as when we try to present the real object of
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 4: external perception. Not of course, that it is possible to
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: doubt the reality of our own existence, but that we
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 4: fail altogether to express the meaning of the self we
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 4: so surely know to exist in any idea which does
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: not fall into self contradiction. As in the case of
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: the thing and its qualities. We think that there is
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 4: something distinct from the qualities in which they adhere, and
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 4: yet find ourselves unable to present to the mind any
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 4: consistent idea of such thing. So we think that there
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 4: must be some substance or basis of personal identity, some
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 4: real self that has the success of changing conscious states,
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 4: which has the character which distinguishes our actions as personal,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 4: but which nevertheless is not itself these things. The self
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: contradiction in the idea of self, or eye or subject
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: is that it both cannot change and is always changing.
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 4: As unchanging, we distinguish it from our body, which is
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 4: an external object among other objects, and is different from
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 4: the objects only in the more direct and intimate relation
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 4: in which it stands to us. The body is always changing.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 4: Never for two successive moments is it exactly the same
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 4: common nation of chemical elements. We distinguish also our self
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 4: from that consciousness which is memory, the awareness of past experience,
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 4: from present feelings, desires, thoughts, and strivings. These we say
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 4: belong to the self, but are not it. The self
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 4: must have qualities and dwell in the body, guiding, directing,
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 4: and controlling it. Yet this self we never perceive, nor
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 4: can we conceive it, for our idea of it is
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 4: of a reality that changes and is yet unchangeable. There is, however,
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 4: one idea, an idea to which we have already alluded,
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 4: that seems to offer us an escape from the whole
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 4: of this logical difficulty, the idea that reality is unknowable.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 4: May not The contradictoriness of our ideas be due to
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 4: this fact that our knowledge is entirely of the phenomena
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: of appearances of things, and not of things as they
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: are in themselves. By a thing in itself. We do
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 4: not mean a reality that dwells apart in a universe
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 4: of its own, out of any relation whatever to our universe.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 4: There may or may not be such realities, and whether
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 4: there are or not is purely irrelevant to any question
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 4: of the nature of reality in our universe. The thing
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 4: in itself is the unknowable reality of the thing we know.
• 1:03:20
  Speaker 4: We conceive it as existing in complete abstraction from every
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 4: aspect or relation of it that constitutes knowledge of it.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: In another, The self contradiction of such an idea is
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 4: not difficult to show, quite apart from any consideration of
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 4: its utter futility as an explanation, the thing in itself
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 4: either is or else it is not the reality of phenomena.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 4: If it is, then inasmuch as the phenomena reveal it,
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 4: it is neither in itself nor unknowable. If, on the
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 4: other hand, it is not. If it is unrelated in
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 4: any way to phenomena, then it is not only unknowable,
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 4: it is not exact to be known. It is an
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 4: idea without any content or meaning, and therefore indistinguishable from nothing.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 4: It is simply saying one and the same thing that
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 4: it must be, and that there is nothing that it
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 4: can be. While then there is no actual thing that
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 4: we experience, whether it be an object outside of us
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 4: or an object within us, of which we can say
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 4: this is not a phenomenon or appearance of reality, but
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 4: the actual reality itself. We cannot also say that we
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 4: do not know reality, because if we had no idea,
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 4: no criterion of reality, we could never know that anything
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 4: was only in appearance. It is this fact, the fact
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 4: that we undoubtedly possess, in the very process of thinking itself,
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 4: a criterion of reality, that the idealist argument lays hold
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 4: of as the basis of its doctrine. The mere fact
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: seems at first sight barren and unpromising enough, but the
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: idealist does not find it so. Possessed of this principle, logic,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 4: which has seemed till now purely destructive, becomes in his
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 4: hands creative, and gives form and meaning to an object
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 4: of pure reason. The criterion of reality is self consistency.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 4: We cannot think that anything is ultimately real which has
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: its ground of existence in something else. A real thing
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 4: is that which can be explained without reference to some
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 4: other thing. Reality therefore is completely self contained existence, not
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 4: merely dependent existence. Contradictions cannot be true. If we have
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: to affirm a contradiction of anything, it must be due
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 4: to an appearance, and the reality must reconcile the contradiction.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 4: The idea of reality therefore is the idea of perfect harmony.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 4: Knowing then what reality is can we say that there
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 4: is any actual object of thought that conforms to it,
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 4: and have we, in our limited experience, anything that will
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 4: guide us to the attainment of this object. The idealist
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 4: is confident that we have some things seem to us
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 4: to possess a far higher degree of reality than others,
• 1:06:08
  Speaker 4: just because they can form in a greater degree to
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 4: this ideal of harmonious existence. It is when we compare
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 4: the reality of physical things with the reality of mental
• 1:06:18
  Speaker 4: things that the contrast is most striking, and in it
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 4: we have the clue to the nature of the higher reality.
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 4: Physical reality may seem, and indeed, in a certain sense, is,
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 4: the basis of existence, But when we try to think
• 1:06:32
  Speaker 4: out the meaning of physical reality, it becomes increasingly abstract,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 4: and we seem unable to set any actual limit to
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 4: prevent it dissipating into nothing. In physical science, we never
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 4: have before us an actual element, either matter or energy,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 4: in which we can recognize, however far below the limit
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 4: of perceivability, the ultimate stuff of which the universe is composed.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 4: Science is simply to arrest the dissipation by boldly assuming
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: a matter that is the substance and foundation of reality,
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 4: and an energy that is the ultimate cause of the
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 4: evolution of the universe. On the other hand, when we
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 4: consider mental existence, the pursuit of reality is in an
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 4: exactly contrary direction. There, the more concrete, the more comprehensive,
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 4: the more individual a thing is, the greater degree of
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 4: reality it seems to have. In the spiritual realm, by
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: which we mean not some supposed super mundane sphere, but
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 4: the world of values, the world in which ideas have reality,
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: in which we live our rational life. Reality is always
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 4: sought in a higher and higher individuality. The principle of
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: individuality is that the whole is more real than the parts.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: An individual human being, for example, is a whole, an
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: indivisible organic unity, not merely an aggregation of physiological organs
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 4: with special functions. Nor are these a mere collection of
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: special cells, nor these a mere concourse of chemical elements.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: The state as a community is an individual organic unity,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 4: with a reality that is more than the mere total
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: of the reality of individual citizens who compose it. It
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 4: is this principle of individuality that is the true criterion
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 4: of reality. It is this principle that, while it leads
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: us to seek the unity in an individuality ever higher
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 4: and more complete than we ever have attained. At the
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: same time explains the discrepancy of our partial view, explains
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 4: contradictions as the necessary result of the effort to understand
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 4: the parts and independence of the whole, which gives to
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 4: them their reality. Thus, while on the one hand, the
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 4: scientific search for reality is ever towards greater simplicity and abstractness,
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 4: a simplicity whose ideal limit is zero, the philosophical search
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 4: for reality is ever towards greater concreteness, towards full comprehensiveness,
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: and its ideal limit is the whole universe as one perfect,
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 4: in completely harmonious individual. This idea of full reality is
• 1:09:05
  Speaker 4: the absolute. There are not two realities, one material and
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: the other spiritual. The material and the spiritual are two
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 4: directions in which we may seek the one reality, but
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: there is only one pathway by which we shall find it.
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 4: The Absolute is the whole universe, not in its aspect
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 4: of an aggregate of infinitely diverse, separate elements, whether these
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: are material or spiritual, but in its aspect of an
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 4: individual whole, and in its nature as a whole. This
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 4: nature of the whole is to be individual. Only in
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 4: the individual are contradictions reconciled. Is the absolute more than
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: an idea? Does it actually exist? Clearly, we cannot claim
• 1:09:49
  Speaker 4: to know it by direct experience, by a quaintinance. It
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 4: is not a that of which we can ask what
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 4: it is the object of reason itself therefore, or we
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: know that it must be. Also we know that it
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: can be. It is a possible object in the logical
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 4: meaning that it is not a self contradictory idea, like
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 4: every other idea that we can have. It is not
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 4: self contradictory, for it is itself the idea of that
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 4: which is consistent. Therefore, argues the idealist, it is for
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 4: that which must be and can be surely exists. The
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 4: reader will now understand why I introduced this account of
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 4: the absolute with a description for comparison of the Saint
• 1:10:34
  Speaker 4: Anselm proof of the existence of God. There is one
• 1:10:38
  Speaker 4: further question, whether the absolute does or does not exist?
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 4: Is it either an idea or reality of any use
• 1:10:46
  Speaker 4: to us? The reply is that its value lies in
• 1:10:50
  Speaker 4: this that it reveals to us the nature of reality
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 4: and the meaning of truth. Logic is the creative power
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 4: of thought, which leads us to the discovery of higher
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 4: and higher degrees of reality. The satyr in the fable
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 4: drove his guest from his shelter because the man blew
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 4: into his hands to warm them and into his porridge
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 4: to cool it. The satyr could not reconcile the contradiction
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 4: that one could with the same breath blow hot and cold,
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 4: nor would he reconcile it, ever, so long as he
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 4: sought truth as correspondence, truth would have shown the facts
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 4: coherent by reconciling the contradiction in a higher reality. End
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 4: of chapter four.
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 5: Chapter five of the Problem of Truth. This is a
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 5: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 5: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 5: Recording by Larry Wilson. The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wildenkarr.
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 5: Pragmatism the theory of the absolute is only one form
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 5: of idealism, but it illustrates the nature and general direction
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 5: of the development of philosophy along the line of speculation
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 5: that began with Kampt. There have been, of course, other directions.
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 5: In particular, many attempts have been made to make philosophy
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 5: and adjunct of physical science. But the theory I have
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 5: sketched is characteristic of the prevailing movement in philosophy during
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 5: the last period of the nineteenth century and until the
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 5: movement known as pragmatism directed criticism upon it. The form
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 5: the pragmatical criticism of the theory of the absolute took
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 5: was to direct attention to the logical or intellectual principle
• 1:12:46
  Speaker 5: on which it rests, in fact, to raise the problem
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 5: of the nature of truth. Pragmatism is a theory of
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 5: the meaning of truth. It is the denial of a
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 5: purely logical criterion of truth and the insistence that truth
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 5: is always dependent on psychological conditions. Pragmatism therefore rejects both
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 5: the views that we have examined, the theory that truth
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 5: is a correspondence of the idea with its object, and
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 5: the theory that it is the logical coherence and consistency
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 5: of the idea itself. It proposes instead the theory that
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 5: truth is always founded on a practical postulate and consists
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 5: in the verification of that postulate. The verification not being
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 5: the discovery is something that was waiting to be discovered,
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 5: but the discovery that the postulate that claims to be
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 5: true is useful in that it works. Truth is what works.
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 5: The absolute is reality and truth. The idealist argument which
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 5: we have followed was an attempt to determine the nature
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 5: of reality, and not an attempt to explain what we
• 1:13:54
  Speaker 5: mean when we say that an idea agrees with its object.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 5: What is true about reality was the starting point, and
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 5: not what is truth, nor even what is true about truth.
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 5: The search for reality failed to discover any object that
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 5: agreed with its idea, But at last there was found
• 1:14:13
  Speaker 5: an idea that must agree with its object, an idea
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 5: whose object cannot be This idea, the absolute, reveals the
• 1:14:21
  Speaker 5: nature of reality. The pragmatist, when he asks what his truth,
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 5: seems to dig beneath the argument, seems indeed even to
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 5: reach the bed rock. But it is only in appearance
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 5: that this is so. How indeed could he hope to
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 5: be able to answer the question he has himself asked?
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 5: If there is no way of distinguishing the true answer
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 5: from the false, we must already know what truth is
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 5: even to be able to ask what it is, a
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 5: point which many pragmatist writers appear to me to have overlooked.
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 5: In challenging the idea of truth. The pragmatist raises the
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 5: no less important question of the nature of error. A
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 5: theory of truth must not only show in what truth consists,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 5: but must distinguish faults from true and show the nature
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 5: of error. The pragmatist claims for his theory that it
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 5: alone can give a consistent account of illusion and error. Now,
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 5: as we saw in our account of the idealist argument,
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 5: it is the fact of illusion and error that compels
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 5: us to seek reality behind the appearances that are the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 5: sense data of our conscious experience. The whole force of
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 5: the pragmatist movement in philosophy is directed to proving that
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 5: truth is a prior consideration to reality. If we understand
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 5: the nature of truth, we shall see reality in the making.
• 1:15:45
  Speaker 5: Reality can, in fact be left to look after itself.
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 5: Our business is with our conceptions alone, which are either
• 1:15:53
  Speaker 5: true or false. The distinction of appearance and reality does
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 5: not explain illusion error, because it does not distinguish between
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 5: true and false appearance. There is no principle in idealism
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 5: by which the absolute rejects the false appearance and reconciles
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 5: the true. Before I examined the pragmatist argument, I ought
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 5: first to explain the meaning and origin of the word.
• 1:16:19
  Speaker 5: The term pragmatism that has in the last few years
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 5: entered so widely into all philosophical discussion, was used first
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 5: by mister C. S. Piers, an American philosopher, in a
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 5: magazine article written as long ago as eighteen seventy eight,
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 5: but it attracted no attention for nearly twenty years, when
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 5: it was recalled by William James in the criticism of
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 5: the current philosophy in his Will to Believe, a book
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 5: which marks the beginning of the new movement. Pragmatism was
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 5: first put forward as the principle that the whole meaning
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 5: of any conception expresses itself in practical consequences. The conception
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 5: of the practical effects of a conception is the whole
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 5: conception of the object. The pragmatist maxim is, would you
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 5: know what any idea or conception means, then consider what
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 5: practical consequences are involved by its acceptance or rejection. Doctor Schiller,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 5: the leading exponent of the principle in England, prefers to
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 5: call the philosophy humanism in order still more to emphasize
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 5: the psychological and personal character of knowledge. The name is
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 5: suggested by the maxim of protagorists, man is the measure
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 5: of all things. The term intellectualism is used by pragmatist
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 5: writers to include all theories of knowledge that do not
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 5: agree with their own. Very much as the Greeks called
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 5: all who were not Greeks barbarians. It must not be
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 5: taken to mean, as its etymology would imply, a philosophy
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 5: like that of Plato, which held that only universals the ideas,
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 5: are real, or like that of Hegel, who said that
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 5: the actual is the rational, and the rational is the actual.
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 5: The pragmatists apply the term intellectualists to all philosophers who
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 5: recognize an objective character in the logical ideal of truth,
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 5: whether or not they also recognize non logical elements in reality,
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 5: and whether or not these non logical elements are physical
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 5: such as matter and energy, or purely psychical, such as will, desire, emotion, pleasure,
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 5: and pain. Pragmatism is a criticism and a theory. If
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 5: reality in its full meaning is the absolute, and if
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 5: all seeming reality is only a degree of or approximation to,
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 5: this full reality, if the knowledge of this reality only
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 5: as truth, must it not seem to us that truth
• 1:18:48
  Speaker 5: is useless knowledge useless, not in the sense that it
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 5: is without value to the mind that cares to contemplate it,
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 5: but useless in so far is the hard, every day,
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 5: working world in which we have to spend our lives.
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 5: As concerned, we who have to win our existence in
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 5: the struggle of life need truth. We need truth in
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 5: order to act. Truth that transcends our temporal needs. Truth
• 1:19:14
  Speaker 5: that is eternal, Truth that reconciles illusion and error, that
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 5: accepts them as a necessary condition of appearance in time,
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 5: is useless in practice, however it may inspire the poet
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 5: and philosopher. Truth to service must reject error and not reconcile.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 5: It must be a working criterion, and not only a
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 5: rational one. Whatever truth is, it is not useless. It
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 5: is a necessity of life, not a luxury of speculation.
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 5: Pragmatism therefore rejects the logical criterion of truth because it
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 5: is purely formal and therefore useless. It demands for us
• 1:19:52
  Speaker 5: a practical criterion, one that will serve our continual needs.
• 1:19:57
  Speaker 5: Whether our working ideas, cause use, time, space, movement, things
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 5: in their qualities, terms, in their relations, and the like,
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 5: are consistent or inconsistent in themselves, they more or less work,
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 5: and in so far as they work, they are useful
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 5: in service. And because they work, and just in so
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 5: far as they work, they are true. The pragmatist therefore
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 5: declares that utility, not logical consistency, is the criterion of truth.
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 5: Ideas are true in so far as they work. The
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 5: discovery that they service is their verification. If we discover
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 5: ideas that will service better, the old ideas that were
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 5: true become untrue, and the new ideas that we adopt
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 5: become true because they are found to work. This doctrine
• 1:20:45
  Speaker 5: of the verification or making true of ideas leads to
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 5: a theory of the origin of the ideas themselves. Each
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 5: idea has arisen or been called forth by a human need.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 5: It has been formed by human nature to meet in
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 5: need of human nature. It is a practical post claiming truth.
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 5: Even the axioms that now seem to us self evident,
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 5: such for example, as the very law of contradiction itself,
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 5: from which, as we have seen, the logical criterion of
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 5: consistency is deduced, were in their origin practical postulates called
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 5: forth by need, and because found to work true, they
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 5: inconsistencies and contradictions in our ideas do not condemn them
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 5: as appearance and compel us to construct a reality in
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 5: which they disappear or are reconciled, but are evidence of
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 5: their origin and practical need, and of their provisional character.
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 5: Truth is not eternal. It is changing. New conditions are
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 5: ever calling forth new ideas, and truths become untrue. Each
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 5: new idea comes forward with a claim to truth, and
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 5: its claim is tested by its practicability. Truth is not
• 1:21:59
  Speaker 5: something we discre cover, and which was there to be discovered.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 5: We verify ideas. To verify is not to find true,
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 5: but to make true. The pragmatist's theory, therefore, is that
• 1:22:13
  Speaker 5: truth is made. In all other theories, truth is found.
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 5: But if we make truth, we must make reality. For
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 5: it is clear that if reality is there already, the
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 5: agreement with it of man made truth would be nothing
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 5: short of a miracle. The pragmatist, or at all events,
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 5: the pragmatist who is also a humanist, finds no difficulty
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 5: in accepting this consequence of the theory, although at the
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 5: same time assisting that the whole problem of being as
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 5: well as of knowing, is concerned with truth. We shall see, however,
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 5: that it offers a serious difficulty to the acceptance of
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 5: the theory, a theory which in very many respects agrees
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 5: with ordinary practice and with scientific method. Take for example,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 5: scientific method is not all progress in science made by
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 5: suggesting a hypothesis and testing it by experiment to see
• 1:23:06
  Speaker 5: if it works. Do we not judge its claim to
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 5: truth by the practical consequences involved in accepting or rejecting it?
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 5: Is there any other verification? This is the simple pragmatist test.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 5: Does the laboratory worker add to it or find it
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 5: in any respect insufficient? If truth can be considered alone,
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 5: then we must admit that it is the attribute of
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 5: knowledge which is comprised under the term useful, the term
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 5: being used in its most comprehensive meaning to include every
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 5: kind of practical consequence. It is the question of reality
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 5: that raises the difficulty for the scientific worker. We cannot believe,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 5: or perhaps we should say, the ordinary man and the
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 5: scientific man would find it very difficult to believe that
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 5: reality changes correspondingly with our success or failure in the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 5: us the verification of our hypothesis. When the scientific worker
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 5: verifies his hypothesis, he feels not only that he has
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 5: made something true which before was not true, but that
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 5: he has discovered what always was true, although until the
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 5: discovery he did not know it. To this, the pragmatist's
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 5: reply is that this very belief is a practical consequence
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 5: involved in the verification of the hypothesis, involved in the
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 5: discovery that it works. What he denies is that truth reveals,
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 5: or ever can reveal, a reality entirely irrelevant to any
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 5: human purpose. It is also very important to add that
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 5: in declaring that truth is verification, the pragmatist does not
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 5: set up a purely practical or utilitarian standard. The working
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 5: of truth means theoretical as well as practical working. Much
• 1:24:56
  Speaker 5: of the current criticism of pragmatism has failed to take
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 5: notice of the this intention or meaning of its principle,
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 5: and hence the common misapprehension that the maxim truth is
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 5: what works must mean that whatever a man believes is
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 5: for him truth. The pragmatist doctrine and the attitude will
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 5: perhaps be easier to understand if we take it in
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 5: regard to a particular instance of truth and error in
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 5: regard to fundamental notions. In the last four or five years,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 5: a new principle has been formulated by physics, named the
• 1:25:29
  Speaker 5: principle of relativity. It revolutionizes the current conceptions of space
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 5: and time. It is so recent that probably some of
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 5: my readers now hear of it for the first time,
• 1:25:41
  Speaker 5: and therefore before I refer to its formulation by mathematicians,
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 5: and will give a simple illustration to explain what it is.
• 1:25:49
  Speaker 5: Suppose that you are walking up and down the deck
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 5: of a steamer, and let us suppose that the steamers
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 5: proceeding at the speed of four miles an hour. The
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 5: space that you cover and the interval of time that
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 5: you occupy are exactly the same for you, whether you
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 5: are moving up the deck in the direction the steamers going,
• 1:26:08
  Speaker 5: or down the deck in the direction which is the
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 5: reverse of the steamer's movement. But suppose someone on the
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 5: shore could observe you moving while the ship was invisible
• 1:26:18
  Speaker 5: to him, your movement would appear to him entirely different
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 5: to what it is to you. When you were walking
• 1:26:25
  Speaker 5: up the deck, you would seem to be going at
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 5: twice the speed you would be going, and when you
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 5: were going down the deck, you would seem not to
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 5: be moving at all. The time measurement would also seem
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 5: different to the observer on the shore for while to you,
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 5: each movement would be measured by an equal space covered
• 1:26:43
  Speaker 5: to him. One moment, you would be moving rapidly the
• 1:26:46
  Speaker 5: next to dress. This is simple and easy to understand. Now,
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 5: suppose that both you and the observer were each observing
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 5: a natural phenomenon, say a thunder storm. It would seem
• 1:26:58
  Speaker 5: that each of you ought to observe it with a difference,
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 5: a difference strictly calculable from the system of movement the
• 1:27:04
  Speaker 5: ship in which you were placed in relation to him.
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 5: The propagation of the sound and of the light would
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 5: have to undergo a correction. If each of you described
• 1:27:14
  Speaker 5: your experience to the other, If you were moving in
• 1:27:18
  Speaker 5: the direction of the light waves, they would be slower
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 5: for you than for him, and if against their direction,
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 5: they would be faster for you than him. Of course,
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 5: the immense velocity of the light waves, about two hundred
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 5: thousand miles a second, would make the difference in a
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 5: movement of four miles an hour so infinitestimal as to
• 1:27:38
  Speaker 5: be altogether inappreciable. But it would not be nothing, and
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 5: you would feel quite confident that if it could be measured,
• 1:27:45
  Speaker 5: the infinitesimal quantity would appear in the result. Now, suppose
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 5: that we could measure it with absolute accuracy, and that
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 5: the result was the discovery that the supposed difference did
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 5: not exist at all. And of course, we suppose that
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 5: there is no doubt whatever about the measurement, What, then,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 5: should we be obliged to think? We should be forced
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 5: to believe that as the velocity of light was the
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 5: same for the two observers, one moving, one at rest,
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 5: therefore the space and the time must be different for each. Now,
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 5: however strange it may seem, such a measurement has been made,
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 5: and with this surprising result, in consequence, there has been
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 5: formulated a new principle in physics, named the principle of relativity.
• 1:28:31
  Speaker 5: I take this principle of relativity for my illustration because
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 5: it is based on reasoning that practically admits of no doubt,
• 1:28:39
  Speaker 5: and because it requires us to form new conceptions of
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 5: space and time, which seem to alter fundamentally what we
• 1:28:46
  Speaker 5: have hitherto considered as the evident and unmistakable nature of
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 5: those realities. It has always seemed that the distance separating
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 5: two points and the interval of time separating two events
• 1:28:59
  Speaker 5: were each independent of the other, and each absolute. However
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 5: different the distance and the interval may appear to observers
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 5: in movement or two observers in different systems of movement,
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 5: In relation to ourselves and to one another. In themselves,
• 1:29:15
  Speaker 5: they are the same distance and the same interval for all.
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 5: They are the same for the man in the express
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 5: train as for the man standing on the station platform.
• 1:29:26
  Speaker 5: The principle of relativity requires us to think that this
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 5: is not so, but that, contrary to all our settled notions,
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 5: the actual space and time vary really undergo an alteration,
• 1:29:38
  Speaker 5: a contraction or expansion, with each different system of movement
• 1:29:42
  Speaker 5: of translation to which the observer is bound. Events that
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 5: for an observer belonging to one system of movement happen
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 5: in the same place, for another observer in a different
• 1:29:53
  Speaker 5: system of movement happen in different places. Events that for
• 1:29:57
  Speaker 5: one observer happen simultaneously for other observers are separated by
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 5: a time interval according to the movement of translation of
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 5: the system to which they belong. So that space, which
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 5: Newton described as rigid, and time, which he described is
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 5: flowing at a constant rate, and which for him was absolute,
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 5: are for the new theory relative different for an observer
• 1:30:20
  Speaker 5: in every different system of movement of translation. Or we
• 1:30:24
  Speaker 5: may state it in the opposite way and say that
• 1:30:27
  Speaker 5: the principle of relativity shows us that the reason why
• 1:30:31
  Speaker 5: natural phenomena such as the rate of propagation of light
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 5: undergo no alteration when we pass from one system of
• 1:30:38
  Speaker 5: movement of translation to another, as we are constantly doing
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 5: in the changing velocity of the Earth's movement round the Sun,
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 5: is that space and time alter with a velocity. I
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 5: cannot here give the argument or describe the experiments which
• 1:30:53
  Speaker 5: have given this result. I am simply taking it as
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 5: an illustration. Footnote. The prince of relativity is mainly the
• 1:31:02
  Speaker 5: result of the recent mathematical work of H. A. Lawrence
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 5: Einstein and the late Professor Menkowski. A very interesting and
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 5: not excessively difficult account of it is contained in De
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 5: nier Pensee by the late Henri poncarre Paris Alcan. In
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 5: the footnote, it seems to me admirably suited to compare
• 1:31:24
  Speaker 5: the pragmatist method and the pragmatist attitude with that of
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 5: scientific realism and of absolute idealism. Here, then, is a
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 5: question in which the truth of our accepted notions is
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 5: called into question, and new notions claim to be true.
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 5: The sole question involved, pragmatism assists, is the truth of conceptions,
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 5: not the reality of things. And there is but one
• 1:31:48
  Speaker 5: way of testing the truth of conceptions, and that is
• 1:31:52
  Speaker 5: by comparing the rival conceptions in respect to the practical
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 5: consequences that follow from them, and adopting those that will work.
• 1:32:00
  Speaker 5: If the old conceptions of space and time failed to
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 5: conform to a new need, then what was true before
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 5: the need was revealed is no longer true. The new
• 1:32:10
  Speaker 5: conception has become true. By verifying the new conception, we
• 1:32:14
  Speaker 5: make it true. But objects the realist an idea cannot
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 5: become true. What is now true always was true, and
• 1:32:22
  Speaker 5: what is no longer true never was true. Though we
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 5: may have worked with the false notion ignorant that it
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 5: was false. Behind truth, there is reality. The Earth was
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 5: spherical even when all mankind believed it flat, and found
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 5: the belief work. To this, the pragmatist's reply is that
• 1:32:41
  Speaker 5: reality is only our objectification of truth. It possesses no
• 1:32:45
  Speaker 5: meaning divorced from human purposes. Had any one announced that
• 1:32:49
  Speaker 5: the earth was a sphere when it was generally held
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 5: to be flat. Unless his announcement had some relevance to
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 5: a defect in the flat earth notion or claim to
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 5: revise that his announcement would have been neither a truth
• 1:33:03
  Speaker 5: nor a falsehood in any intelligible meaning of the term.
• 1:33:07
  Speaker 5: He would have been making an irrelevant remark. The notions
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 5: of space and time that Newton held worked and were
• 1:33:15
  Speaker 5: therefore true. If a new need requires us to replace
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 5: them with other notions, and these other notions will work
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 5: and are therefore true, they have become true, and Newton's
• 1:33:26
  Speaker 5: notions have become false. If it is still objected that
• 1:33:30
  Speaker 5: the new notions were also true for Newton, although he
• 1:33:34
  Speaker 5: was ignorant of them, the need for them not having arisen,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 5: the only reply is that truth or reality in complete
• 1:33:41
  Speaker 5: detachment from human purposes cannot be either affirmed or denied.
• 1:33:47
  Speaker 5: With this view, the idealist will be in agreement. His
• 1:33:50
  Speaker 5: objection is that of a different kind. He rejects, as
• 1:33:54
  Speaker 5: the pragmatist does, the notion of a reality independent of
• 1:33:58
  Speaker 5: human nature that forces upon us the changes that our
• 1:34:02
  Speaker 5: conceptions undergo. These changes, he holds, are the inner working
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 5: of the conceptions themselves, the manifestation of our intellectual nature
• 1:34:12
  Speaker 5: ever striving for an ideal of logical consistency. Truth is
• 1:34:17
  Speaker 5: this ideal. We do not make it, we move towards it.
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 5: If we compare then the idealists and the pragmatist doctrine,
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 5: it will seem that while for the idealist truth is
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 5: growing with advancing knowledge into an ever larger, because more
• 1:34:33
  Speaker 5: comprehensive system of reality, for the pragmatists it is ever narrowing,
• 1:34:38
  Speaker 5: discarding failures as useless and irrelevant to present purpose. How indeed,
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 5: the idealists will ask, if practical consequences be the meaning
• 1:34:47
  Speaker 5: of truth, is it possible to understand that knowledge has
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 5: advanced or can events? Does not the history of science
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 5: prove a continual expansion and increasing comprehension. It is within
• 1:35:00
  Speaker 5: the conception that the inconsistency is revealed, not in any
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 5: mere outward use of the conceptions, and the intellectual effort
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 5: is to reconcile the contradiction by relating the conception to
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 5: a more comprehensive whole. How then, does the idealists meet
• 1:35:16
  Speaker 5: this case, which we have specially instanced the demand for
• 1:35:20
  Speaker 5: new notions of space and time made by the principle
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 5: of relativity, He denies that the new conceptions are called
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 5: forth by human needs in the narrow sense, that is
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 5: to say, in the sense that working hypotheses or practical
• 1:35:35
  Speaker 5: postulates are required. The need is purely logical. The inconsistency
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 5: revealed in the notions that have hitherto served us can
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 5: only be reconciled by apprehending a higher unity. If the
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 5: older notions of space and time are inadequate to the
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 5: more comprehensive view of the universe as a coordination of
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 5: systems of movement, then this very negation of the older
• 1:35:59
  Speaker 5: notions is the affirmation of the new, And from the negation,
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 5: by pure logic, the content and meaning which are the
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 5: truth of the new notions are derived. To this objection,
• 1:36:10
  Speaker 5: the pragmatists reply that if this be the meaning of
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 5: the truth, there is no way shown by which it
• 1:36:16
  Speaker 5: can be distinguished from error. There is, in fact, for idealism,
• 1:36:20
  Speaker 5: no error, no illusion.
• 1:36:22
  Speaker 1: No falsehood.
• 1:36:24
  Speaker 5: As real facts, there are only degrees of truth. But
• 1:36:27
  Speaker 5: a theory of truth which ignores such stubborn realities as illusion, falsehood,
• 1:36:32
  Speaker 5: and error is, from whatever standpoint we view it, useless.
• 1:36:37
  Speaker 5: On the other hand, pragmatism offers a test by which
• 1:36:41
  Speaker 5: we can discriminate between true and false, namely the method
• 1:36:45
  Speaker 5: of judging conceptions by their practical consequences. Can we or
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 5: can we not make our conceptions work? That is the
• 1:36:53
  Speaker 5: whole meaning of asking are they true or false? And Now,
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 5: lest the reader is alarmed at the prospect of having
• 1:37:00
  Speaker 5: to revise his working ideas of space and time, I
• 1:37:04
  Speaker 5: will to reassure him. Quote the words of which Henri
• 1:37:07
  Speaker 5: Boncare concluded his account of the new conceptions, and which
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 5: admirably express and illustrate the pragmatist's attitude. What is to
• 1:37:16
  Speaker 5: be our position and view of these new conceptions? Are
• 1:37:20
  Speaker 5: we about to be forced to modify our conclusions?
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: No?
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 5: Indeed, we had adopted a convention because it seemed to
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 5: us convenient, and we declared that nothing could compel us
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 5: to abandon it. Today certain physicists wish to adopt a
• 1:37:36
  Speaker 5: new convention. It is not because they are compelled to.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 5: They judge this new convention to be more convenient, that
• 1:37:43
  Speaker 5: is all. And those who are not of this opinion
• 1:37:47
  Speaker 5: can legitimately keep the old and so leave their old
• 1:37:50
  Speaker 5: habits undisturbed. I think between ourselves that this is what
• 1:37:55
  Speaker 5: they will do for a long time to come. I
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 5: have so far to considered pragmatism rather as a criticism
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 5: than as a doctrine. I will now try and characterize
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 5: it on its positive side. It declares that there is
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 5: no such thing as pure thought, but that all thinking
• 1:38:13
  Speaker 5: is personal and propulsive, that all knowing is directed, controlled
• 1:38:18
  Speaker 5: and qualified by psychological conditions such as interest, attention, desire, emotion,
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 5: and the like, and that we cannot, as formal logic
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 5: does abstract from any of these, for logic itself is
• 1:38:31
  Speaker 5: part of a psychical process. Truth therefore depends upon belief.
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 5: Truths are matters of belief, and beliefs are rules of action.
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 5: It is this doctrine that gives to pragmatism its paradoxical
• 1:38:45
  Speaker 5: Some have even said its grotesque character. It seems to
• 1:38:49
  Speaker 5: say that the same proposition is both true and false,
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 5: true for the man who believes it, false for the
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 5: man who cannot. It seems to say that we can
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 5: make anything true by believing it, and we can believe
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 5: anything so long as the consequences of acting on it
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 5: are not absolutely disastrous. And the proposition all truths work
• 1:39:12
  Speaker 5: seems to involve the conclusion that all that works is
• 1:39:15
  Speaker 5: true and the proposition the true is the useful seems
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 5: to imply that whatever is useful is therefore true. No
• 1:39:24
  Speaker 5: small part of the pragmatist controversy has been directed to
• 1:39:27
  Speaker 5: the attempt to show that all in each of these
• 1:39:30
  Speaker 5: corollaries are or arise from misconceptions of the doctrine. I think,
• 1:39:36
  Speaker 5: and I shall endeavor to show that there is a
• 1:39:38
  Speaker 5: serious defect in the pragmatist's statement, and that these misconceptions
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 5: are in a great part due to it. Nevertheless, we
• 1:39:46
  Speaker 5: must accept the pragmatist's disavowal, and there is no difficulty
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 5: in doing so, for the meaning of the theory is
• 1:39:53
  Speaker 5: sufficiently clear. Truth, according to pragmatism, is a value and
• 1:39:58
  Speaker 5: not a fact. Is thus connected with the conception of
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 5: the good. In saying that truth is useful, we say
• 1:40:05
  Speaker 5: that it is a means to an end, a good.
• 1:40:09
  Speaker 5: It is not a moral end, but a cognitive end.
• 1:40:13
  Speaker 5: Just as beauty is an esthetic end. Truth, beauty, and
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 5: goodness thus stand together as judgments of value or worth.
• 1:40:22
  Speaker 5: It is only by recognizing that truth is a value
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 5: that we can possess an actual criterion to distinguish it
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 5: from error. For if truth is a judgment of fact.
• 1:40:32
  Speaker 5: If it asserts existence, so also does error. The pragmatist
• 1:40:37
  Speaker 5: principle has an important bearing on religion. It justifies the
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 5: faith attitude. It shows that the good aimed at by
• 1:40:45
  Speaker 5: the truth claim is only attainable by the exercise of
• 1:40:49
  Speaker 5: the will to believe. Thus it replaces the intellectual maxim
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 5: believe in nothing you can possibly doubt, with the practical
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 5: maxim resolved not to quench any impulse to believe, because
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 5: doubts of truth are possible. Belief may even be a
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 5: condition of the success of the truth claim.
• 1:41:09
  Speaker 6: End of chapter five, Chapter six of the Problem of Truth.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 6: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings or in
• 1:41:23
  Speaker 6: the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please
• 1:41:28
  Speaker 6: visit LibriVox dot org. Recording by Michael Knowles, round Rock, Texas.
• 1:41:34
  Speaker 6: The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wildon Carr. Chapter six Utility.
• 1:41:40
  Speaker 6: We have seen in the last chapter that pragmatism is
• 1:41:43
  Speaker 6: both a criticism and a theory. It shows us that
• 1:41:46
  Speaker 6: the notion that truth is correspondence involves the conception of
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 6: an impossible knowledge, and the notion that truth is coherence
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 6: or consistency involves the conception of the useless knowledge. The
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 6: explanation pra saetism itself offers is of the kind that
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 6: is called, in the technical language of philosophy telelogical. This
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 6: means that to explain or to give a meaning to truth,
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 6: all we can do is to point out the purpose
• 1:42:12
  Speaker 6: on account of which it exists. This is not scientific explanation.
• 1:42:17
  Speaker 6: Physical science explains a fact or an event by showing
• 1:42:21
  Speaker 6: the conditions which give rise to it, or that determine
• 1:42:24
  Speaker 6: its character. Pragmatism recognizes no conditions determining truth, such as
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 6: those which science embodies, and the conception of a natural law,
• 1:42:33
  Speaker 6: that is, the idea of a connection of natural events
• 1:42:36
  Speaker 6: with one another, which is not dependent on human thoughts
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 6: about them, nor on human purposes in regard to them.
• 1:42:43
  Speaker 6: Truth is an intimate association with human practical activity. Its
• 1:42:48
  Speaker 6: meaning lies wholly in its utility. We must therefore now
• 1:42:52
  Speaker 6: examine somewhat closely this notion of utility. There appears to
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 6: me to be a serious deficit in the practice, conception,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 6: and application of the principle of utility. It is based
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 6: on a conception altogether too narrow, a theory that condemns
• 1:43:08
  Speaker 6: any purely logical process as resulting in useless knowledge can
• 1:43:13
  Speaker 6: only justify itself by insisting on an application of the
• 1:43:16
  Speaker 6: principle of utility that will be found to exclude not
• 1:43:20
  Speaker 6: merely the absolute of philosophy, but most, if not all,
• 1:43:24
  Speaker 6: of the results of pure mathematics and physics. For these
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 6: sciences apply a method of pure logical deduction and induction
• 1:43:31
  Speaker 6: indistinguishable from that which pragmatism condemns. The intellectual nature of
• 1:43:36
  Speaker 6: man is an endowment which sharply distinguishes him from other
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 6: forms of living creatures. So supreme a position does our
• 1:43:44
  Speaker 6: intellect assign to us, So wide is the gap that
• 1:43:47
  Speaker 6: separates us from other creatures little different from ourselves in
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 6: respect to perfection of material organization and adaptation to environment,
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 6: that it seems almost natural to suppose that our intellect
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 6: is that for which we exist, and not merely a
• 1:44:02
  Speaker 6: mode of controlling, directing, and advancing our life. Now it
• 1:44:05
  Speaker 6: is possible to hold, and this is the view that
• 1:44:08
  Speaker 6: I shall endeavor in what follows, to develop that the
• 1:44:11
  Speaker 6: intellect is subservient to life, and that we can show
• 1:44:15
  Speaker 6: the manner and method of its working and the purpose
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 6: it serves. So far, we may agree with the pragmatist.
• 1:44:21
  Speaker 6: But it is not the same thing to say that
• 1:44:23
  Speaker 6: the intellect serves a useful purpose, and to say that truth,
• 1:44:27
  Speaker 6: the ideal of the intellect, the end which it strives for,
• 1:44:31
  Speaker 6: is itself only a utility. Were there no meaning in
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 6: truth except that it is what works, were there no
• 1:44:37
  Speaker 6: meaning independent and altogether distinct from the practical consequences of belief,
• 1:44:43
  Speaker 6: of what value to us would the intellect be If
• 1:44:46
  Speaker 6: the meaning the intellect assigns to truth is itself not true,
• 1:44:50
  Speaker 6: How can the intellect serve us the very essence of
• 1:44:54
  Speaker 6: its service is reduced to nought? For what else but
• 1:44:57
  Speaker 6: the conception of an objective truth, a logical reality, and
• 1:45:01
  Speaker 6: dependent of any and every psychological condition, is the utility
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 6: that the intellect puts us in possession of. It is
• 1:45:08
  Speaker 6: this conception alone that constitutes it an effective mode of activity. Therefore,
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 6: if we hold with a pragmatist that the intellect is
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 6: subservient to life, truth is indeed a utility. But it
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 6: is a utility just because it has a meaning distinct
• 1:45:24
  Speaker 6: from usefulness. On the other hand, to condemn any knowledge
• 1:45:27
  Speaker 6: as useless is to deny utility to the intellect. Before
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 6: I try to show that the logical method of the
• 1:45:33
  Speaker 6: idealist philosophy, which pragmatism condemns because it leads to useless knowledge,
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 6: is identical in every respect with the method employed in
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 6: pure mathematics and physics. I will give for comparison to
• 1:45:45
  Speaker 6: illustrations that seem to me instances of a narrow and
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 6: of a wide use of the concept of utility. A
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 6: short time ago, an orangutang escaped from its cage in
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 6: the zoological gardens under somewhat singular and very interesting circumstances.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 6: The cage was secured with meshed wire of great strength,
• 1:46:05
  Speaker 6: judged sufficient to resist the direct impact of the most
• 1:46:08
  Speaker 6: powerful of the carnivora. But the ape, by attention to
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 6: the twisting of the plied wire, had, by constant trying,
• 1:46:15
  Speaker 6: succeeded in loosening and finally unwinding a large section. It
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 6: escaped from its enclosure, and, after doing considerable damage in
• 1:46:23
  Speaker 6: the corridor, including the tearing out of a window frame,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 6: made its way into the grounds and took refuge in
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 6: a tree, twisting the branches into a platform, said to
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 6: be similar to the construction it makes in its native forests.
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 6: In taking this action as an illustration, I am not
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 6: concerned with a question of what may be the distinction
• 1:46:41
  Speaker 6: between an action that is intelligent and an action that
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 6: is instinctive. If we take intelligence and a wide and
• 1:46:48
  Speaker 6: general meaning, we may compare the intelligence shown by this
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 6: ape with the intelligence shown by man in the highest
• 1:46:54
  Speaker 6: processes of the mind. Psychologists would I think, be unanimous
• 1:46:58
  Speaker 6: in holding that in the mind of the ape there
• 1:47:00
  Speaker 6: was no conception of freedom, no kind of mental image
• 1:47:04
  Speaker 6: of unrestricted life, and of a distinct means of attaining it,
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 6: no clearly purposed end, the means of which was what
• 1:47:10
  Speaker 6: prompted the undoing of the wire, such as we should
• 1:47:13
  Speaker 6: certainly suppose in the case of a man in a
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 6: similar situation, it was the kind of intelligent action that
• 1:47:19
  Speaker 6: psychologists denote by the description trial and error. It seems
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 6: to me, however, that this exactly fulfills the conditions the
• 1:47:27
  Speaker 6: pragmatist doctrine of the meaning of truth require. We see
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 6: the intellect of the ape making true by finding out
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 6: what works, we can suppose an entire absence of the
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 6: idea of objective truth to which reality must conform, of
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 6: truth unaffected by purpose. Here, then we seem to have
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 6: the pure type of truth in its simplest conditions, a
• 1:47:48
  Speaker 6: practical activity using intelligence to discover what works. Is the
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 6: difference between this practical activity and the higher mental activities
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 6: as we employ them in abstract sciences one of degree
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 6: of complexity only? Or is it different in kind? Let
• 1:48:03
  Speaker 6: us consider now, as an illustration of the method of
• 1:48:06
  Speaker 6: the abstract sciences, the well known case of the discovery
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 6: of the planet Neptune. This planet was discovered by calculation
• 1:48:14
  Speaker 6: and deduction, and was only seen when its position had
• 1:48:17
  Speaker 6: been so accurately determined that the astronomer who searched for
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 6: it knew exactly the point of the heavens to which
• 1:48:23
  Speaker 6: to direct their telescopes. The calculation was one of extraordinary intricacy,
• 1:48:28
  Speaker 6: and was made independently by two mathematicians, Adams of Cambridge
• 1:48:32
  Speaker 6: and Levier of Paris, between the years eighteen forty three
• 1:48:35
  Speaker 6: and eighteen forty six. Each communicated his results independently, Adam
• 1:48:40
  Speaker 6: to the astronomer Chalice, the director of the Cambridge Observatory,
• 1:48:43
  Speaker 6: and Levier to doctor gal of the Berlin Observatory, within
• 1:48:47
  Speaker 6: six weeks of one another, and entirely unknown to one another.
• 1:48:51
  Speaker 6: In August and September eighteen forty six. Each of these
• 1:48:54
  Speaker 6: astronomers observed the planet where he had been told to
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 6: look for it. This is one of the romances of
• 1:49:00
  Speaker 6: modern science. It is not the discovery, but the method
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 6: that led to it, which may throw light on our
• 1:49:05
  Speaker 6: problem of the nature of truth. At first sight, this
• 1:49:08
  Speaker 6: seems exactly to accord with, and even to illustrate, the
• 1:49:11
  Speaker 6: pragmatist theory that truth is what works. The investigation is
• 1:49:16
  Speaker 6: prompted by the discrepancies between the actual and the calculated
• 1:49:19
  Speaker 6: positions of Uranus, the outermost planet, as it was then
• 1:49:22
  Speaker 6: supposed of the system. This revealed a need, and this
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 6: need was met by the practical postulate of the existence
• 1:49:29
  Speaker 6: of another planet as yet unseen. The hypothesis was found
• 1:49:33
  Speaker 6: to work even before the actual observation, put the final
• 1:49:36
  Speaker 6: seal of actuality on the discovery. What else but the
• 1:49:40
  Speaker 6: practical consequences of the truth claim and the form of
• 1:49:43
  Speaker 6: the hypothesis of an undiscovered planet were ever in question? Yes,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 6: we reply, but the actual method adopted and the knowledge
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 6: sought for by the method are precisely of the kind
• 1:49:54
  Speaker 6: that pragmatism rejects as useless knowledge. Why were not the
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 6: observed movements of uranus accepted as what they were. Why
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 6: was it felt that they must be other than they
• 1:50:04
  Speaker 6: were seen to be unless there was another planet. The
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 6: need lay in the idea of system. It was inconsistent
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 6: with the system then believed complete, and the need was
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 6: to find the complete system in which it would harmonize.
• 1:50:17
  Speaker 6: The truth that was sought for was a harmonious individual whole,
• 1:50:21
  Speaker 6: and the method employed precisely that which the absolutist theory
• 1:50:24
  Speaker 6: of reality employs. There is observed a discrepancy and inconsistency,
• 1:50:30
  Speaker 6: a contradiction within the whole conceived as a system. This
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 6: negation is treated as a defect, is calculated and accurately determined,
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 6: and is then positively affirmed of the reality. Now, what
• 1:50:41
  Speaker 6: is distinctive in this method is that reality is conceived
• 1:50:45
  Speaker 6: as a complete system. If the felt defect in this
• 1:50:47
  Speaker 6: system cannot be made good by direct discovery, its place
• 1:50:51
  Speaker 6: is supplied by a fiction using the term in its
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 6: etymological meaning to express something made, and not in its
• 1:50:57
  Speaker 6: derived meaning to express something found false. This intellectual process
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 6: of construction is purely logical. No psychological element in the
• 1:51:05
  Speaker 6: sense of the will to believe, enters into or colors
• 1:51:08
  Speaker 6: It in any way. This is not an isolated instance.
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 6: It illustrates the method of science in all theorizing. An
• 1:51:15
  Speaker 6: even more striking illustration than that which we have just
• 1:51:18
  Speaker 6: given is the case of the hypothesis of the luminiferous ether,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 6: a supposed existence, a fiction that has served a useful,
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 6: even and indispensable service in the history of modern physics.
• 1:51:29
  Speaker 6: To many physicists, even to Lord Kelvin, the hypothesis seemed
• 1:51:33
  Speaker 6: so surely established that its non existence hardly seemed thinkable.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 6: Yet all the experiments designed to detect its presence have
• 1:51:41
  Speaker 6: been uniformly negative in result, and it now seems not
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 6: even necessary as a hypothesis, and likely to disappear. The
• 1:51:48
  Speaker 6: ether was not only not discovered, it was not even
• 1:51:52
  Speaker 6: suspected to exist, as in the case of the unknown
• 1:51:55
  Speaker 6: planet Neptune. It was logically constructed. It was required to
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 6: support theory of the undulatory nature of light and to
• 1:52:02
  Speaker 6: fulfill the possibility of light propagation in space. It was
• 1:52:06
  Speaker 6: therefore a postulate called forth by a need. So far
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 6: we may adopt the pragmatist account, But what was the
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 6: nature of the need, and what was the method by
• 1:52:15
  Speaker 6: which the postulate was called forth? It is in answering
• 1:52:18
  Speaker 6: this question that the pragmatist criterion fails. The need was
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 6: intellectual in the purely logical meaning of the term, and
• 1:52:26
  Speaker 6: it was met by a purely logical construction. The need
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 6: was a practical human need only in so far as
• 1:52:32
  Speaker 6: the intellect working by logical processes is a human endowment,
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 6: but not in any personal sense, such as conveyed by
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 6: the term psychological willingness or unwillingness to believe, desire, aversion,
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 6: interest were all irrelevant given the intellect. The logical necessity
• 1:52:49
  Speaker 6: was the only need that called forth by logical processes,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 6: the truth claiming hypothesis of the ether. But even so,
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 6: the pragmatist will urge, is its truth anything else but
• 1:53:00
  Speaker 6: its usefulness, as shown in the practical consequence of believing it?
• 1:53:04
  Speaker 6: Was it not true while it was useful? And is
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 6: it not only now false if it is false if
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 6: it is actually discovered not to be useful. The reply
• 1:53:12
  Speaker 6: is that no mathematician or physicist would recognize the possibility
• 1:53:17
  Speaker 6: of working with a consumption of truth that simply identified
• 1:53:20
  Speaker 6: truth with utility, and for this reason that he can
• 1:53:23
  Speaker 6: only conceive reality as a system whose truth is symbolized
• 1:53:27
  Speaker 6: in an equation, it is the system that determines and
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 6: characterizes the postulate, and not the postulate advanced at a venture,
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 6: tried and verified, that constitutes the system. The mathematician begins
• 1:53:39
  Speaker 6: by placing symbols to represent the unknown factors in his equation,
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 6: and proceeds by means of his known factors to determine
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 6: their value. The ether is at first a pure fiction
• 1:53:49
  Speaker 6: constructed to supply an unknown existence recognized as a defect.
• 1:53:53
  Speaker 6: Its truth cannot mean that it works, for it cannot
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 6: but work, having been constructed purely for that purpose. Its
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 6: truth means that it corresponds to some actual existence, at
• 1:54:04
  Speaker 6: present unknown. To prove its truth, the physicist does not
• 1:54:07
  Speaker 6: appeal to its value as a hypothesis, but devises experiments
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 6: by which, if it does exist, its existence will be demonstrated.
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 6: In this actual case, the experiments have had a uniformly
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 6: negative result, and therefore the truth of the hypothesis is
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 6: made doubtful or denied. The hypothesis continues to work as
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 6: well as it ever did, and physicists will probably long
• 1:54:29
  Speaker 6: continue to use it, but it has failed to establish
• 1:54:32
  Speaker 6: its truth claim. The result is the modern principle of relativity. Which,
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 6: as we have already said, has produced a revolution in
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 6: modern physics. The abolition of the ether would have been
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 6: impossible if the physicist had been content with the utility
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 6: of his hypothesis and had not experimented to prove its truth.
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 6: The relation between truth and utility is thus proved to
• 1:54:53
  Speaker 6: be that it is useful to know what is true.
• 1:54:56
  Speaker 6: These two illustrations of scientific method, namely the discovery neptune
• 1:55:00
  Speaker 6: and the negative discovery that the ether is nonexistent, make
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 6: it evident that verification is the intellectual process not of
• 1:55:07
  Speaker 6: making true, but of finding true. We can indeed distinguish
• 1:55:12
  Speaker 6: quite clearly the two processes. The first process, that of
• 1:55:15
  Speaker 6: making true, is the constructing of the fiction, by which
• 1:55:18
  Speaker 6: we complete an incomplete system, and the second is the
• 1:55:22
  Speaker 6: testing of that fiction to see if it corresponds to
• 1:55:24
  Speaker 6: anything actually existing. No kind of intellectual activity will make
• 1:55:29
  Speaker 6: an idea true. And conversely, we may say that where
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 6: truth only a utility, the knowledge, instead of being systematic,
• 1:55:36
  Speaker 6: would be chaotic. Existence has its roots in reality, not
• 1:55:40
  Speaker 6: in knowledge. Reality does not depend on truth. Truth is
• 1:55:44
  Speaker 6: the intellectual apprehension of reality. If the pragmatist objects that
• 1:55:48
  Speaker 6: in this argument, I have throughout supposed him to be
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 6: urging the narrow meaning of utility, namely that it is
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 6: usefulness in the strictly practical sense, whereas he intends it
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 6: in the widest possible meaning, a meaning that includes theoretical usefulness.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 6: Then the trouble is a different one. It is to
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 6: know how and where the pragmatists stops short of the
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 6: coherence theory of truth, and wherein his method differs from
• 1:56:11
  Speaker 6: that of the idealist. This brings me to the consideration
• 1:56:14
  Speaker 6: of another theory in which the concept of utility plays
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 6: a large, indeed a predominant part. This is the theory
• 1:56:20
  Speaker 6: of the relation of knowledge to life that is given
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 6: to us in the philosophy of Bergsen. I have in
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 6: one of the volumes of this series given an account
• 1:56:28
  Speaker 6: of this philosophy. I am here only dealing with its
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 6: relation to this special problem of the nature of truth.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 6: It has been claimed that this philosophy is only a
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 6: form of pragmatism, but it is not a theory of truth,
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 6: and it has this essential difference from pragmatism, that it
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 6: is the intellect and not truth, that is a utility.
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 6: Before we consider the question that it gives rise to
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 6: in regards to truth. Let us first examine the theory
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 6: of the intellect and the nature of its utility. The
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 6: intellect is a mode of activity, an endowment acquired in
• 1:56:58
  Speaker 6: the course of evolution, and which has been retained and
• 1:57:01
  Speaker 6: perfected because of its utility. This does not mean that
• 1:57:05
  Speaker 6: the intellect directs us to what is useful and inhibits
• 1:57:08
  Speaker 6: us from courses fatal to life. Neither does it mean
• 1:57:11
  Speaker 6: that it gives us any power to make true what
• 1:57:13
  Speaker 6: is not already true. It means that the power to
• 1:57:17
  Speaker 6: acquire knowledge is useful. There is a contrast in our
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 6: own existence between our life and our intellect. To understand
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 6: the way in which the intellect serves the living creature
• 1:57:26
  Speaker 6: endowed with it, we need only regard it from the
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 6: standpoint of ordinary experience. We know in ourselves that our
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 6: life is wider than our intellect, and that our intellect
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 6: serves the activity of our life. The common expressions we employ,
• 1:57:39
  Speaker 6: such as using our wits, taking an intelligent interest, trying
• 1:57:43
  Speaker 6: to think, all imply a utility distinct from the intellect.
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 6: So viewed, our life appears as an active principle within us,
• 1:57:51
  Speaker 6: maintaining our organism and its relations. Active and passive and
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 6: reactive to the reality outside and independent of it. Our
• 1:57:58
  Speaker 6: intellect also seems to be both active and passive. It
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 6: receives the influences that stream in upon us from reality
• 1:58:05
  Speaker 6: around us, It apprehends and interprets them, and works out
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 6: the lines of our possible action in regard to them.
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 6: The influences that flow in upon us from the outside
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 6: world are already selected before our intellect apprehends them, for
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 6: they flow in by avenues of our senses, and the
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 6: senses are natural instruments of selection. If we picture these
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 6: influences as vibrations, then we may say that a certain
• 1:58:27
  Speaker 6: group of vibrations of a very rapid frequency are selected
• 1:58:31
  Speaker 6: by the eye to give rise to vision, That another
• 1:58:33
  Speaker 6: group of very much lower frequency are selected by the
• 1:58:36
  Speaker 6: ear and give the sensation of sound, And other groups
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 6: are selected by taste, smell, and touch. Many groups are
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 6: known indirectly by means of artificial instruments, and all the
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 6: infinite series that unite these groups of the actually experienced
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 6: vibrations escape our apprehension. Altogether. We have no means of
• 1:58:54
  Speaker 6: selecting them. But all these sense data, as we may
• 1:58:57
  Speaker 6: call them, come to us without exertion or acts activity
• 1:59:00
  Speaker 6: on our part. It is the intellect which gives them meaning,
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 6: which interprets them, which makes them the apprehension or awareness
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 6: of objects or things, and the active part that the
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 6: intellect plays is also a process of selection. This is
• 1:59:13
  Speaker 6: evident if we reflect upon the universal form which our
• 1:59:16
  Speaker 6: intellectual activity takes, namely attention. It is in the act
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 6: of attention that we are conscious of mental activity, and
• 1:59:23
  Speaker 6: attention is essentially selection, the selection of an interest. Besides
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 6: the natural selection that is affected by our senses and
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 6: a conscious selection that is manifest an attention, there is
• 1:59:34
  Speaker 6: also a more or less arbitrary selection that our intellect
• 1:59:37
  Speaker 6: performs in marking out the lines of our practical interest
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 6: and possible action. In this work of selection, the intellect
• 1:59:44
  Speaker 6: makes the world conform to the necessities of our action.
• 1:59:47
  Speaker 6: So far, we have looked at our intellectual endowment from
• 1:59:50
  Speaker 6: the standpoint of ordinary common sense experience. Let us now
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 6: consider the philosophical theory based on this view, which explains
• 1:59:58
  Speaker 6: the nature of knowledge by showing its purpose. The intellect
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 6: not only selects, but in selecting, transforms the reality. It
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 6: presents us with knowledge that indeed corresponds with reality. But
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 6: it is essentially a view of reality, but also in
• 2:00:13
  Speaker 6: selecting it marks out divisions and gives to reality a
• 2:00:16
  Speaker 6: form that is determined by practical interest. The same reality
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 6: is different to different individuals and to different species, according
• 2:00:24
  Speaker 6: to their practical interests. The practical end which the human
• 2:00:27
  Speaker 6: intellect serves is to present us with a field for
• 2:00:30
  Speaker 6: our life activity. This is the real world for us
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 6: as we know it, real objects in a real space.
• 2:00:37
  Speaker 6: Had we no other way of knowing but that of
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 6: our intellect, we should not know the life which is
• 2:00:41
  Speaker 6: active within us as it is really lived. We should
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 6: be as those who standing outside watch a movement, and
• 2:00:47
  Speaker 6: not as those who are carried along in the movement
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 6: and experience it from within. In life and intellect we
• 2:00:53
  Speaker 6: have the counterpart of reality and appearance. Life is not
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 6: something that changes. It is the change of which the
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 6: something is the appearance. Life is the reality of which
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 6: all things, as we understand them, are the appearances, and
• 2:01:07
  Speaker 6: on account of which they appear. The solid things in
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 6: space and time are not in reality of what they appear.
• 2:01:13
  Speaker 6: They are views of the reality. The intellect, guided by
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 6: our practical interests, presents reality under this form of solid
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 6: spatial things clearly. Then if this view be true. The
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 6: whole world as it is presented to us and thought
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 6: of by us is an illusion. Our science is not unreal,
• 2:01:31
  Speaker 6: but it is a transformed reality. The illusions may be useful,
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 6: may indeed be necessary and indispensable, but nevertheless it is
• 2:01:39
  Speaker 6: an illusion. But here there arises a new difficulty in
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 6: regard to truth. If the usefulness of the intellect consists
• 2:01:46
  Speaker 6: in the active production of an illusion, can we say
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 6: that the intellect leads us to truth? Is it not
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 6: only if we can turn away from the intellect and
• 2:01:55
  Speaker 6: obtain a non intellectual intuition that we can know truth?
• 2:02:00
  Speaker 6: End of chapter six. Recording by Michael Knowles, round Rock, Texas.
• 2:02:12
  Speaker 5: Chapter seven of the Problem of Truth. This is a
• 2:02:15
  Speaker 5: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 5: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 2:02:27
  Speaker 5: Recording by Larry Wilson. The Problem of Truth by Herbert
• 2:02:31
  Speaker 5: Wildon Carr. Illusion, the doctrine that the world that appears
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 5: is essentially unlike the world that is, is neither new
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 5: nor peculiar to any particular theory of philosophy. It has
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 5: received a new interest and a new interpretation lately in
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 5: the theory that we are now considering that the clue
• 2:02:52
  Speaker 5: to the appearance of the world to us is to
• 2:02:55
  Speaker 5: be found in the conception of the nature of the
• 2:02:58
  Speaker 5: utility of the intellect, and in the mode of its activity.
• 2:03:02
  Speaker 5: The idea that we are perhaps disqualified by our very
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 5: nature itself from beholding reality and knowing truth is illustrated
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 5: in the well known allegory in the Republic of Plato.
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 5: Quote and now let me show in a figure how
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 5: far our nature is enlightened or unenlightened. Behold human beings
• 2:03:24
  Speaker 5: living in an underground den which has a mouth open
• 2:03:27
  Speaker 5: towards the light and reaching all along the den. Here
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 5: they have been from their childhood, and have their legs
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 5: and necks chains, so that they cannot move and can
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 5: only see before them, be prevented by the chains from
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 5: turning round their heads. Above and behind them, a fire
• 2:03:44
  Speaker 5: is blazing at a distance, and between the fire and
• 2:03:47
  Speaker 5: the prisoners there is a raised way, and you will
• 2:03:51
  Speaker 5: see if you look, a low wall built along the way,
• 2:03:55
  Speaker 5: like the screen which marionette players have in front of them,
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 5: over which they show the puppets and men are passing
• 2:04:01
  Speaker 5: along the wall carrying all sorts of vessels and statues,
• 2:04:05
  Speaker 5: and figures of animals made of wood and stone, and
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 5: various materials which appear over the wall. They are strange
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 5: prisoners like ourselves, and they see only their own shadows,
• 2:04:17
  Speaker 5: or the shadows of one another, which the fire throws
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 5: on the opposite wall of the cave, And so also
• 2:04:22
  Speaker 5: of the objects carried and of the passers by. To
• 2:04:26
  Speaker 5: the prisoners, the truth would be literally nothing but the
• 2:04:29
  Speaker 5: shadows of the images. And now look again and see
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 5: what will naturally follow if the prisoners are released and
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 5: disabused of their error. At first, when any of them
• 2:04:41
  Speaker 5: is liberated and compelled suddenly to stand up and turn
• 2:04:44
  Speaker 5: his neck round and walk and look towards the light,
• 2:04:48
  Speaker 5: he will suffer sharp pains. The glare will distress him,
• 2:04:52
  Speaker 5: and he will be unable to see the realities of
• 2:04:55
  Speaker 5: which in his former state he has seen the shadows.
• 2:04:58
  Speaker 5: And then conceive some one saying to him that what
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 5: he saw before was an illusion, but that now, when
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 5: he is approaching nearer to being, and his eyes turned
• 2:05:07
  Speaker 5: towards more real existence, he has a clearer vision. And
• 2:05:12
  Speaker 5: what will surely be his reply? Will he not fancy
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 5: that the shadows which he formerly saw are truer than
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 5: the objects which are now shown to him. And suppose
• 2:05:23
  Speaker 5: that he is forced into the presence of the sun himself,
• 2:05:26
  Speaker 5: is he not likely to be pained and irritated When
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 5: he approaches the light. His eyes will be dazzled, and
• 2:05:33
  Speaker 5: he will not be able to see anything at all
• 2:05:36
  Speaker 5: of what are now called realities. Unquote. The thought that
• 2:05:42
  Speaker 5: Plato has expressed in this wonderful allegory has entered deeply
• 2:05:46
  Speaker 5: into all philosophy. What we first take for reality is
• 2:05:51
  Speaker 5: merely a shadow world. But in Plato's view, it is
• 2:05:54
  Speaker 5: the intellect which gives us the means of escape, the
• 2:05:58
  Speaker 5: power to turn from the illusion to behold the reality.
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 5: It is not until now that philosophy has sought the
• 2:06:05
  Speaker 5: clue to the illusion. In the nature of the intellect itself,
• 2:06:10
  Speaker 5: the very instrument of truth is unfitted to reveal to
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 5: us the reality as it is, because its nature and
• 2:06:17
  Speaker 5: purpose is to transform reality, to make reality appear in
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 5: a form, which, though of paramount importance to us as
• 2:06:26
  Speaker 5: active beings, is essentially an illusion. The intellectual bent of
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 5: our mind leads us away from, and not towards, a
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 5: vision of reality in its purity. The more our intellect progresses,
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 5: and the more and more clearly we see into a
• 2:06:41
  Speaker 5: greater and ever greater number of things, the farther are
• 2:06:44
  Speaker 5: we from, and not the nearer to a grasp of reality.
• 2:06:48
  Speaker 5: As it is to obtain this vision of reality, we
• 2:06:52
  Speaker 5: have to turn away from the intellect and find ourselves
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 5: again in that wider life out of which the intellect
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 5: is formed. Life as it lives is an intuition, that
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 5: is non intellectual. Human intelligence Rizbagson quote is not at
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 5: all what Plato taught in the Allegory of the Cave.
• 2:07:12
  Speaker 5: Its function is not to look at passing shadows, nor
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 5: yet to turn it south round and contemplate the glaring sun.
• 2:07:19
  Speaker 5: It has something else to do. Harnessed, like yoked oxen
• 2:07:23
  Speaker 5: to a heavy task, we feel the play of our
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 5: muscles and joints, the weight of the plow, and the
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 5: resistance of the soil. To act, and to know that
• 2:07:32
  Speaker 5: we are acting. To come into touch with reality, and
• 2:07:35
  Speaker 5: even to live it. But only in the measure in
• 2:07:37
  Speaker 5: which it concerns the work that is being accomplished and
• 2:07:40
  Speaker 5: the furrow that is being plowed. Such is the function
• 2:07:43
  Speaker 5: of human intelligence end quote. The illusion to which our
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 5: intellectual nature subjects us is the necessity we are under
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 5: to regard the things of the universe as more ultimate,
• 2:07:56
  Speaker 5: as more fundamental, than the movement which actuates the universe.
• 2:08:02
  Speaker 5: It seems to us impossible that there should exist movement
• 2:08:06
  Speaker 5: or change unless there already existed things to be moved
• 2:08:10
  Speaker 5: or changed, things whose nature is not altered, but only
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 5: their form and their external relations when they are moved
• 2:08:18
  Speaker 5: or changed. This necessity of thought seems to have received
• 2:08:22
  Speaker 5: authoritative recognition in all attempts, religious and scientific to conceive origins.
• 2:08:29
  Speaker 5: Thus we read in the Book of Genesis quote in
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 5: the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 5: the earth was without form and void, and the darkness
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 5: was upon the face of the deep, and the spirit
• 2:08:42
  Speaker 5: of God moved upon the face of the waters. The
• 2:08:46
  Speaker 5: matter of the universe, it is felt, must be in
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 5: existence before the movement which vivifies it. The dead, inert
• 2:08:54
  Speaker 5: stuff must be created before it can receive the breath
• 2:08:57
  Speaker 5: of life. And if God the Creator, is conceived as
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 5: living before the matter which he has created, it is
• 2:09:04
  Speaker 5: as an external principle, the relation of which to the
• 2:09:08
  Speaker 5: creation is by most religious minds thought to transcend the
• 2:09:12
  Speaker 5: power of the finite understanding to conceive the same fundamental
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 5: conception of the primacy of matter over movement is evident
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 5: in the scientific theories of the nature and origin of life.
• 2:09:24
  Speaker 5: Life appears to science as a form of energy that
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 5: requires things matter occupying space to support it. According to
• 2:09:33
  Speaker 5: one view, life is the result of a certain combination
• 2:09:36
  Speaker 5: or synthesis of chemical or physical elements previously existing separately,
• 2:09:42
  Speaker 5: a combination of very great complexity, and one that may
• 2:09:46
  Speaker 5: possibly have occurred once only in the long process of nature,
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 5: but which nevertheless might be, and some think probably or
• 2:09:55
  Speaker 5: even certainly will be brought about by a chemist working
• 2:09:59
  Speaker 5: in his laboratory. This is the mechanistic or materialist view.
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 5: On the other hand, there is the theory of vitalism. Life,
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 5: it is contended, cannot be due to such a synthesis
• 2:10:11
  Speaker 5: of material elements as the mechanistic view supposes, because it
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 5: is of the nature of an intellecti that is, an
• 2:10:19
  Speaker 5: individual existence which functions as a whole in every minutest
• 2:10:24
  Speaker 5: part of the organism it vitalizes. Life has supervened upon,
• 2:10:29
  Speaker 5: and not arisen out of, the material organism which it
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 5: guides and controls, not by relating independent parts, but by
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 5: making every part subserve the activity and unity of the whole.
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 5: But the vitalist theory, as well as that mechanistic theory,
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 5: conceives the movement and change which is life has dependent
• 2:10:49
  Speaker 5: on the previous existence of matter or stuff which is
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 5: moved or changed. The philosophical conception differs, therefore, from both
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 5: these theories. It is that life is an original movement,
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 5: and that this movement is the whole reality, of which things,
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 5: inert matter, even spatial extension are appearances. True duration is change,
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 5: not the permanence of something amidst change. There are no
• 2:11:18
  Speaker 5: unchanging things. Everything changes. Reality is the flux. Things are
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 5: views of the flux, arrests or contradictions of the flowing
• 2:11:28
  Speaker 5: that the intellect makes. The appearance of the world to
• 2:11:32
  Speaker 5: us is our intellectual grasp of a reality that flows.
• 2:11:37
  Speaker 5: This original movement is the life of the universe. Briefly stated,
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 5: the argument on which the theory is based is that
• 2:11:44
  Speaker 5: it is logically impossible to explain change by changelessness movement
• 2:11:50
  Speaker 5: by immobility. Real change cannot be a succession of states
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 5: themselves fixed and changeless. Real movement cannot be the immobile position,
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 5: positions in which some thing is successively at rested. On
• 2:12:05
  Speaker 5: the other hand, if movement is original, the interruption of
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 5: movement in whatever way affected, will appear as things. The
• 2:12:14
  Speaker 5: experience which confirms this argument is the insight that everyone
• 2:12:18
  Speaker 5: may obtain of the reality of his own life as
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 5: continuous movement unceasing change, wherein all that exists exists together
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 5: in a present activity. To develop this argument would exceed
• 2:12:31
  Speaker 5: the limits of this book, and would be outside its purpose.
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 5: It is essential, however, that such a theory should be understood,
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 5: For clearly it is possible to hold not only that
• 2:12:42
  Speaker 5: we are subject to illusion, but that allusion is of
• 2:12:45
  Speaker 5: the very nature of intellectual apprehension. If then the understanding
• 2:12:50
  Speaker 5: works illusion for the sake of action, is it thereby
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 5: disqualified as an instrument for the attainment of truth. We
• 2:12:58
  Speaker 5: are brought then to the quick point of our inquiry.
• 2:13:02
  Speaker 5: If illusion is the essential condition of human activity, if
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 5: the intellect, the very instrument of truth, is itself affected,
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 5: what is to save us from universal skepticism? If the
• 2:13:14
  Speaker 5: salt have lost his savor, wherewith shall it be salted?
• 2:13:18
  Speaker 5: The intellect, with its frames and molds, shapes living change
• 2:13:22
  Speaker 5: and movement into fixed immobile states. The process of knowing
• 2:13:26
  Speaker 5: alters profoundly the reality known. Must we not conclude that knowledge,
• 2:13:31
  Speaker 5: however useful, is not true? And to what shall we
• 2:13:35
  Speaker 5: turn for truth? There is? Indeed, if this be so,
• 2:13:39
  Speaker 5: a deeper irony in the question what is truth? Then
• 2:13:43
  Speaker 5: even Pilot could have imagined we have absolutely no practical
• 2:13:48
  Speaker 5: concern with truth. We must leave it to the mystic,
• 2:13:52
  Speaker 5: to the unpractical, the contemplative man who has turned aside
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 5: from the stern task of busy life. It is not so.
• 2:14:01
  Speaker 5: The problem that seems so fundamental admits a quite simple solution.
• 2:14:06
  Speaker 5: Illusion is not error, nor is it falsehood. It is
• 2:14:10
  Speaker 5: the appearance of reality. It is the reality that appears,
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 5: and when we grasp the principle of utility, we understand
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 5: the shape that the appearances must assume. This shape may
• 2:14:23
  Speaker 5: seem to us a distortion, but in recognizing appearance, we
• 2:14:26
  Speaker 5: are in touch with reality. And practical interest is the
• 2:14:30
  Speaker 5: key that opens to us the interpretation of intellectual experience.
• 2:14:35
  Speaker 5: And it is not only by the intellect that we
• 2:14:37
  Speaker 5: interpret the nature of reality. For besides logic, there is life,
• 2:14:41
  Speaker 5: and in life we directly perceive the reality that in
• 2:14:45
  Speaker 5: logic we think about. The intellect then does not make truth,
• 2:14:50
  Speaker 5: neither does it make reality. It makes reality take the
• 2:14:53
  Speaker 5: form of spatial things, and it makes things seem to
• 2:14:57
  Speaker 5: be the ground of reality. Our nature not intellectual. If
• 2:15:02
  Speaker 5: all consciousness were intuitive, the world will not then appear
• 2:15:06
  Speaker 5: as things. There would be no things. But notwithstanding that
• 2:15:11
  Speaker 5: our world is an illusion, it is not the less
• 2:15:14
  Speaker 5: on that account, a true world, and our science is
• 2:15:17
  Speaker 5: true knowledge in the objective meaning of truth. For once
• 2:15:21
  Speaker 5: an illusion is interpreted, it becomes an integral part of
• 2:15:24
  Speaker 5: the conception of reality. It would be easy to find
• 2:15:28
  Speaker 5: abundant illustration of this fact within science itself. Thus, in
• 2:15:33
  Speaker 5: the familiar case of the straight stick, which appears bent
• 2:15:36
  Speaker 5: when partly immersed in water, as soon as the illusion
• 2:15:39
  Speaker 5: is understood is due to the different refraction of light
• 2:15:43
  Speaker 5: and media of different dignity air and water, it ceases
• 2:15:47
  Speaker 5: to be an illusion. We then recognize that if a
• 2:15:50
  Speaker 5: partly immersed stick did not appear bent, it would really
• 2:15:54
  Speaker 5: be bent again. The illusion that clings to us most
• 2:15:58
  Speaker 5: persistently throughout our experience is that which is connected with
• 2:16:02
  Speaker 5: movement and rest the system of movement in which we
• 2:16:06
  Speaker 5: are ourselves carried along appears to us stationary, while that
• 2:16:11
  Speaker 5: which is outside it seems alone to move in very
• 2:16:15
  Speaker 5: simple cases, such as viewing the landscape from a railway
• 2:16:18
  Speaker 5: carriage window. Habit has long caused the illusion to cease,
• 2:16:23
  Speaker 5: But we all remember the child's feeling that the trees
• 2:16:26
  Speaker 5: and fields were flying past us. The Earth's motion never
• 2:16:30
  Speaker 5: becomes to us a real experience of movement. We accept
• 2:16:33
  Speaker 5: the fact and never doubt the scientific evidence on which
• 2:16:37
  Speaker 5: it rests. Yet we always speak and think of sunrise
• 2:16:40
  Speaker 5: and sunset. And this is not merely due to the
• 2:16:43
  Speaker 5: accident that our language was fixed before the nature of
• 2:16:46
  Speaker 5: the celestial movement was known, but to a natural illusion,
• 2:16:51
  Speaker 5: which it is far more convenient to retain than to abandon.
• 2:16:55
  Speaker 5: The fact of illusion is not the tenet of any
• 2:16:58
  Speaker 5: particular philosophy, nor even of philosophy itself. It is a
• 2:17:03
  Speaker 5: recognized factor in common life and in physical science. But
• 2:17:07
  Speaker 5: in instancing the theory of Bergson's philosophy, I am choosing
• 2:17:12
  Speaker 5: an extreme case. Berkley held that illusion is practically universal.
• 2:17:17
  Speaker 5: Kant taught that the apparent objectivity of phenomena is the
• 2:17:20
  Speaker 5: form that the understanding imposes on things. That Bergson teaches
• 2:17:25
  Speaker 5: not only that all material reality is illusion, but also
• 2:17:29
  Speaker 5: that this very illusion is the work of the intellect,
• 2:17:33
  Speaker 5: and the intellect is formed for this purpose, intellect and
• 2:17:37
  Speaker 5: matter being correlative. Evolving paripassu to such a doctrine, there
• 2:17:42
  Speaker 5: is of necessity a positive side, for it is impossible
• 2:17:46
  Speaker 5: that it can rest on universal skepticism, skepticism both of
• 2:17:50
  Speaker 5: knowledge and of the instrument of knowledge. If the intellectual
• 2:17:54
  Speaker 5: view of reality, a solid matter in absolute space, is illusion,
• 2:17:59
  Speaker 5: it must be possible to apprehend the reality from which
• 2:18:02
  Speaker 5: the judgment that it is illusion is derived. If the
• 2:18:06
  Speaker 5: untellect distorts, there must be an intuition which is purer,
• 2:18:11
  Speaker 5: and the relation between these will be the relation between
• 2:18:15
  Speaker 5: reality and appearance. Neither then, is reality truth nor appearance error.
• 2:18:22
  Speaker 5: There is a truth of appearance, a truth that is
• 2:18:25
  Speaker 5: a value in itself, a truth that is more than
• 2:18:28
  Speaker 5: the mere negation that appearance is not reality. The appearance
• 2:18:33
  Speaker 5: is our hold upon the reality, our actual contact with it,
• 2:18:37
  Speaker 5: the mode and direction of our action upon it. What then,
• 2:18:41
  Speaker 5: is error? It cannot consist in the fact that we
• 2:18:44
  Speaker 5: know appearance only, not reality, for we can only know
• 2:18:48
  Speaker 5: reality by its appearance. It cannot be an appearance behind
• 2:18:53
  Speaker 5: which there is no reality, for non being cannot appear.
• 2:18:58
  Speaker 5: It cannot be nothing at all, or pure non being.
• 2:19:02
  Speaker 5: For to think of absolute nothing is not to think
• 2:19:05
  Speaker 5: in error. There is some object of thought which is
• 2:19:09
  Speaker 5: denied real being. What this is is the problem of error.
• 2:19:15
  Speaker 5: End of chapter seven.
• 2:19:22
  Speaker 7: Chapter eight of the Problem of Truth. This is a
• 2:19:26
  Speaker 7: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 2:19:30
  Speaker 7: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 2:19:35
  Speaker 7: Recording by Kyle Strand the strandsound dot com. The Problem
• 2:19:41
  Speaker 7: of Truth by Herbert Wilden Caarr. In the Theatatus of Plato,
• 2:19:46
  Speaker 7: Socrates has been discussing with Theatatus what knowledge is, and
• 2:19:50
  Speaker 7: when at last agreement seems to be reached in the
• 2:19:52
  Speaker 7: definition that knowledge is true opinion, a new difficulty occurs
• 2:19:57
  Speaker 7: to Socrates. There is a point which often troubles me,
• 2:20:01
  Speaker 7: and is a great perplexity to me, both in regard
• 2:20:04
  Speaker 7: to myself and to others. I cannot make out the
• 2:20:07
  Speaker 7: nature or origin of the mental experience to which I refer.
• 2:20:12
  Speaker 7: How there can be false opinion? That difficulty still troubles
• 2:20:15
  Speaker 7: the eye of my mind. Do we not speak of
• 2:20:18
  Speaker 7: false opinion? And say that one man holds a false
• 2:20:21
  Speaker 7: and another a true opinion, as though there were some
• 2:20:24
  Speaker 7: natural distinction between them. All things and everything are either
• 2:20:29
  Speaker 7: known or not known. He who knows cannot but know,
• 2:20:33
  Speaker 7: and he who does not know cannot know. Where then
• 2:20:37
  Speaker 7: is false opinion? For if all things are either known
• 2:20:40
  Speaker 7: or unknown, there can be no opinion which is not
• 2:20:42
  Speaker 7: comprehended under this alternative, and so false opinion is excluded.
• 2:20:47
  Speaker 7: This difficulty may appear, at first sight purely verbal, and
• 2:20:51
  Speaker 7: we shall perhaps be inclined to see the answer to it.
• 2:20:55
  Speaker 7: In the double use that we make of the word knowledge,
• 2:20:58
  Speaker 7: we use the word in two senses, in one of
• 2:21:00
  Speaker 7: which it includes all and everything that is or can
• 2:21:03
  Speaker 7: be present to the mind in thinking, and in another
• 2:21:06
  Speaker 7: and narrower sense, the word knowledge means truth. It was
• 2:21:11
  Speaker 7: in the narrow sense of the word that whatever is
• 2:21:14
  Speaker 7: not true is not knowledge, that Socrates interpreted the meaning
• 2:21:17
  Speaker 7: of the Delphic oracle that had declared him the wisest
• 2:21:20
  Speaker 7: of men. His wisdom must be. He said that, whereas
• 2:21:25
  Speaker 7: other men seemed to be wise and to know something,
• 2:21:28
  Speaker 7: he knew that he knew nothing. All men have opinion,
• 2:21:32
  Speaker 7: But opinion is not knowledge. Though easily and generally mistaken
• 2:21:36
  Speaker 7: for it. His perplexity was to understand what actually this
• 2:21:40
  Speaker 7: false opinion could be, which passed for knowledge. It could
• 2:21:44
  Speaker 7: not be nothing at all, for then it would simply
• 2:21:47
  Speaker 7: mean ignorance. But in false opinion, some object is present
• 2:21:51
  Speaker 7: to the mind. Everything that the mind thinks of as
• 2:21:54
  Speaker 7: being a thing may have being that does not exist,
• 2:21:58
  Speaker 7: if by existence is meant the particular existence of an
• 2:22:01
  Speaker 7: event in time. For most of the things we think
• 2:22:04
  Speaker 7: about are timeless. They are ideas, such as whiteness, goodness,
• 2:22:08
  Speaker 7: numbers and the properties of numbers, faith, love, and such like.
• 2:22:13
  Speaker 7: All such ideas are called universals because their reality does
• 2:22:17
  Speaker 7: not mean that they exist at one particular moment and
• 2:22:20
  Speaker 7: no other, but they are real, they have being. How then,
• 2:22:25
  Speaker 7: can there be anything intermediate between being and not being,
• 2:22:29
  Speaker 7: anything that is and also is not. For this is
• 2:22:32
  Speaker 7: what false opinion or error seems to be. There is
• 2:22:36
  Speaker 7: then a problem of error, and it is quite distinct
• 2:22:39
  Speaker 7: from the problem of truth. The problem of truth is
• 2:22:43
  Speaker 7: to know by what criterion we can test the agreement
• 2:22:46
  Speaker 7: of our ideas with reality. The problem of error is
• 2:22:50
  Speaker 7: to know how there can be false opinion. There is
• 2:22:54
  Speaker 7: false opinion of this, no one needs to be convinced.
• 2:22:57
  Speaker 7: But where its place is in the fundamental scheme of
• 2:23:00
  Speaker 7: the mental process, in what precisely it consists, whether it
• 2:23:04
  Speaker 7: is purely a negation, or whether it has a positive
• 2:23:07
  Speaker 7: nature of its own. This is the problem we have
• 2:23:09
  Speaker 7: now to consider. There is an important distinction in the
• 2:23:14
  Speaker 7: logic between what is contradictory and what is contrary. Of
• 2:23:19
  Speaker 7: two contradictory propositions, one must be true, the other must
• 2:23:23
  Speaker 7: be false. But of two contrary propositions, one must be false,
• 2:23:29
  Speaker 7: but both may be false. Of contradictory propositions, one is
• 2:23:33
  Speaker 7: always a pure negation. One declares the non existence of
• 2:23:37
  Speaker 7: what the other affirms the existence. But of contrary propositions,
• 2:23:42
  Speaker 7: each has a positive content, and both may be false.
• 2:23:47
  Speaker 7: A true proposition may be based on a false opinion,
• 2:23:50
  Speaker 7: and it is very important to have a clear idea
• 2:23:53
  Speaker 7: of what we intend by false opinion. We do not
• 2:23:57
  Speaker 7: mean by false opinion such plainly false propositions as that
• 2:24:00
  Speaker 7: two and two are five, or that there may be
• 2:24:04
  Speaker 7: no corners in a square. Such propositions are false because
• 2:24:08
  Speaker 7: they contradict propositions that are self evident. If anyone should
• 2:24:12
  Speaker 7: seriously affirm them. We should not, i think, say that
• 2:24:15
  Speaker 7: such a one had a false opinion, but that he failed,
• 2:24:18
  Speaker 7: perhaps through some illusion, to understand the meaning of the
• 2:24:21
  Speaker 7: terms he was using. An example of what would now,
• 2:24:25
  Speaker 7: I suppose, be unquestionably regarded by every one as error,
• 2:24:30
  Speaker 7: is that whole body of opinion that found expression in
• 2:24:33
  Speaker 7: the theory and practice of witchcraft. This was once almost
• 2:24:37
  Speaker 7: universally accepted, and though probably at no period, nor in
• 2:24:41
  Speaker 7: any country, was there not some one who doubted or disbelieved.
• 2:24:44
  Speaker 7: Still the reasons of such doubt or disbelief would probably
• 2:24:48
  Speaker 7: be very different from those reasons which lead us to
• 2:24:50
  Speaker 7: reject it to day. For witchcraft was grounded on a
• 2:24:54
  Speaker 7: general belief that spiritual agencies beneficent and malign with a
• 2:25:00
  Speaker 7: cause of material well being or evil. This conception has
• 2:25:05
  Speaker 7: now given place to the mechanistic or naturalistic theory on
• 2:25:08
  Speaker 7: which our modern physical science is based. We interpret all
• 2:25:13
  Speaker 7: physical occurrences as caused by material agency. But this belief,
• 2:25:18
  Speaker 7: quite as much as the belief in spiritual agencies, is opinion,
• 2:25:22
  Speaker 7: not knowledge, and it may be false. It is conceivable
• 2:25:26
  Speaker 7: that future.
• 2:25:27
  Speaker 8: Generations will reject our scientific notions self evident, though they
• 2:25:32
  Speaker 8: seem to us as completely as we reject the notions
• 2:25:35
  Speaker 8: of the dark ages. It is even conceivable that the
• 2:25:39
  Speaker 8: whole of our modern science may come to appear to
• 2:25:42
  Speaker 8: mankind as not even an approximation to knowledge. Error like illusion,
• 2:25:48
  Speaker 8: may be universal. No one whose opinion counts as a
• 2:25:52
  Speaker 8: rational belief now holds that sickness may be caused by
• 2:25:55
  Speaker 8: the malign influence of the evil eye, and that this
• 2:25:58
  Speaker 8: influence may be neutralized by making the sign of the cross. Some,
• 2:26:03
  Speaker 8: but very few, believe that a sick man may be
• 2:26:06
  Speaker 8: healed by the prayers and anointings of righteous men. Many
• 2:26:11
  Speaker 8: believe that material disease, however malignant, may be expelled from
• 2:26:15
  Speaker 8: the body by faith. While the majority of rational men,
• 2:26:18
  Speaker 8: whatever independent religious views they hold, regard sickness and disease
• 2:26:23
  Speaker 8: as material in the ordinary sense, and expect them to
• 2:26:26
  Speaker 8: yield to drugs and treatment. Now, of these various opinions,
• 2:26:32
  Speaker 8: some must be false, while all may be false. Let
• 2:26:37
  Speaker 8: us add some illustrations from philosophy. Some philosophers hold, in
• 2:26:41
  Speaker 8: common with general opinion, that sense experience is caused by
• 2:26:45
  Speaker 8: physical objects. Others hold that there are no physical objects,
• 2:26:50
  Speaker 8: but that consciousness is the one and only reality, and
• 2:26:54
  Speaker 8: there are others who think that the reality that gives
• 2:26:56
  Speaker 8: rise to our sense experience is neither physical in the
• 2:27:00
  Speaker 8: sense of a material thing, nor mental in the sense
• 2:27:03
  Speaker 8: of consciousness or thought, but is movement or change, change
• 2:27:07
  Speaker 8: that requires no support and is absolute. All these are
• 2:27:12
  Speaker 8: opinions and may be false, and our belief that any
• 2:27:16
  Speaker 8: one of them is true does not depend on immediate experience,
• 2:27:19
  Speaker 8: but on reasons. The best that can be said in
• 2:27:23
  Speaker 8: favor of any belief is that there is no reason
• 2:27:26
  Speaker 8: for supposing it false, and the worst that can be
• 2:27:29
  Speaker 8: said against any belief is that there is no reason
• 2:27:32
  Speaker 8: for supposing it true. Our problem, then, is to know
• 2:27:36
  Speaker 8: what constitutes the nature of error in any one of
• 2:27:40
  Speaker 8: these examples. If it is, as each one, may be false.
• 2:27:45
  Speaker 8: The instances we have given are all of them propositions
• 2:27:48
  Speaker 8: or judgments, or else conceptions formed out of propositions or judgments,
• 2:27:53
  Speaker 8: the purpose of which is to interpret experience. The actual
• 2:27:57
  Speaker 8: experience itself, in so far as it can consists of
• 2:28:00
  Speaker 8: the actual presence of the object to the mind aware
• 2:28:03
  Speaker 8: of it, is as we have seen, neither truth nor error.
• 2:28:07
  Speaker 8: It simply is what it is. It is the conceptions
• 2:28:11
  Speaker 8: by which we interpret this experience that are true or false.
• 2:28:15
  Speaker 8: And our problem is that the meaning or content of
• 2:28:18
  Speaker 8: a conception, that which is present to the mind when
• 2:28:21
  Speaker 8: we make a judgment, is precisely the same whether the
• 2:28:25
  Speaker 8: conception is true or false. There is no distinctive mark
• 2:28:29
  Speaker 8: or feature by which we can know that, in the
• 2:28:32
  Speaker 8: one case, the object of thought is a real or
• 2:28:35
  Speaker 8: actual fact, in the other, an opinion to which no
• 2:28:38
  Speaker 8: reality corresponds. And further, it seems exceedingly difficult to understand
• 2:28:43
  Speaker 8: in what way a non reality can be present to
• 2:28:46
  Speaker 8: the mind at all. Let us now examine some attempts
• 2:28:51
  Speaker 8: to solve this problem, and first of all, let us
• 2:28:53
  Speaker 8: take the pragmatist solution. Pragmatism claims that it has no
• 2:28:57
  Speaker 8: difficulty in explaining error, because, as we have already seen,
• 2:29:01
  Speaker 8: it acknowledges no other test or criterion of truth except
• 2:29:05
  Speaker 8: a pragmatic one. Every proposition or judgment that we make must,
• 2:29:10
  Speaker 8: in order to have any meaning whatever, be relevant to
• 2:29:13
  Speaker 8: some human purpose. Every such proposition is a truth claim,
• 2:29:18
  Speaker 8: and every truth claim is tested by its workability. Consequently,
• 2:29:23
  Speaker 8: error is simply the failure of a proposition to establish
• 2:29:26
  Speaker 8: its claim by the practical tests of working propositions marked
• 2:29:31
  Speaker 8: by such failures are errors, as there is no truth
• 2:29:35
  Speaker 8: independent of time, police, and circumstance, no irrelevant truth, no
• 2:29:40
  Speaker 8: truth independent of the conditions under which its claim is
• 2:29:42
  Speaker 8: put forward. There is no truth that may not become error.
• 2:29:47
  Speaker 8: No judgment, according to pragmatism, is an error, pure and simple.
• 2:29:52
  Speaker 8: That is to say, it cannot come into existence as error,
• 2:29:56
  Speaker 8: for it comes claiming truth and maintaining that claim until challenged.
• 2:30:01
  Speaker 8: It becomes an error in retrospect only and always in
• 2:30:05
  Speaker 8: relation to another judgment which corrects it. Error does not
• 2:30:09
  Speaker 8: characterize a class of judgments. It is something that happens
• 2:30:12
  Speaker 8: to a judgment. It is a judgment whose truth claim
• 2:30:16
  Speaker 8: is rejected in reference to another judgment which succeeds. The
• 2:30:20
  Speaker 8: essential thing in the pragmentist doctrine of error is that,
• 2:30:23
  Speaker 8: in claiming to be true, a judgment is not challenging
• 2:30:27
  Speaker 8: comparison with some independent reality, nor is it claiming to
• 2:30:30
  Speaker 8: belong to a timeless order of existence to be eternal.
• 2:30:34
  Speaker 8: It is claiming to fulfill the particular purpose for which
• 2:30:37
  Speaker 8: it has been called forth, whether that purpose be practical
• 2:30:41
  Speaker 8: or theoretical. Let us now consider the explanation of error
• 2:30:45
  Speaker 8: offered by the idealist philosophy. In this view, only the
• 2:30:49
  Speaker 8: whole truth is wholly true. The absolute, as a perfect,
• 2:30:53
  Speaker 8: concrete individual system, is the ideal, and all that falls
• 2:30:57
  Speaker 8: short of it can only possess a degree of truth,
• 2:31:00
  Speaker 8: a degree which is greater or less according as it
• 2:31:03
  Speaker 8: approximates to the ideal. The degrees of truth are not quantitative,
• 2:31:09
  Speaker 8: not a mixture of truth and error, but a nearer
• 2:31:12
  Speaker 8: or more distant approach to the ideal. There can be
• 2:31:15
  Speaker 8: no absolute error, because if truth is the whole, error,
• 2:31:19
  Speaker 8: if it exists at all, must in some way be
• 2:31:21
  Speaker 8: included in the truth. Clearly, error cannot as such be truth,
• 2:31:27
  Speaker 8: and therefore it must follow that in the whole error
• 2:31:30
  Speaker 8: loses its character of error and finds reconciliation of its
• 2:31:34
  Speaker 8: contradiction to the truth. Error, then, if it is something
• 2:31:38
  Speaker 8: and not a pure negation, is partial or incomplete truth.
• 2:31:43
  Speaker 8: The perplexity and contradiction that it gives rise to are
• 2:31:46
  Speaker 8: incidental to our partial view. Knowledge, it must seem to us,
• 2:31:50
  Speaker 8: can exist only for omniscience. Unless we know everything, we
• 2:31:54
  Speaker 8: know nothing. These two doctrines are, in a sense the
• 2:31:58
  Speaker 8: exact antithesis of one, an they agree together in this
• 2:32:02
  Speaker 8: that in each the explanation of error follows as a
• 2:32:05
  Speaker 8: consequence of the conception of the nature of truth. The
• 2:32:08
  Speaker 8: pragmatist theory implies that there is no truth in any
• 2:32:11
  Speaker 8: real sense, but only more or less successful error. The
• 2:32:15
  Speaker 8: idealist theory implies that there is no real error, but
• 2:32:19
  Speaker 8: only a variety in the degree of truth. Most people, however,
• 2:32:24
  Speaker 8: are convinced that truth and error are not related to
• 2:32:27
  Speaker 8: one another, nor to the circumstances that call forth belief
• 2:32:30
  Speaker 8: or disbelief. Let us now examine a theory that recognizes this.
• 2:32:36
  Speaker 8: There are false judgments, and they need explanation. Error has
• 2:32:39
  Speaker 8: a nature of its own. If a judgment is false,
• 2:32:43
  Speaker 8: it is absolutely and unalterably false. If it is true,
• 2:32:47
  Speaker 8: it is unconditionally true, and with no reserve, no logical process,
• 2:32:52
  Speaker 8: no psychological disposition can make what is false true. Error
• 2:32:57
  Speaker 8: must lie in the nature of knowledge, and to discover
• 2:33:00
  Speaker 8: that nature we must understand the theory of knowledge and
• 2:33:04
  Speaker 8: determine the exact nature of the mental act in knowing.
• 2:33:08
  Speaker 8: The first essential is to distinguish the kind of knowledge
• 2:33:10
  Speaker 8: to which truth and error can apply. We pointed out
• 2:33:14
  Speaker 8: in the second chapter that not all knowledge rests ultimately
• 2:33:17
  Speaker 8: on immediate experience. In immediate experience, the relation between the
• 2:33:22
  Speaker 8: mental act of knowing and the object that is known
• 2:33:25
  Speaker 8: is so simple that any question as to truth or
• 2:33:28
  Speaker 8: error in regard to it is unmeaning. To question the
• 2:33:32
  Speaker 8: truth of immediate experience is to question its existence. It
• 2:33:36
  Speaker 8: is to ask if it is what it is, And
• 2:33:39
  Speaker 8: this is plainly unmeaning. But thinking, we said, is questioning
• 2:33:43
  Speaker 8: experience in order to know its content or meaning. And
• 2:33:48
  Speaker 8: in thinking, the simplicity of the relation which unites the
• 2:33:51
  Speaker 8: mind to its object in immediate experience is left behind,
• 2:33:55
  Speaker 8: and a logical process of very great complexity takes its place.
• 2:33:59
  Speaker 8: It is in this complexity that the possibility of error lies.
• 2:34:04
  Speaker 8: Let us look at it a little more closely. Knowledge
• 2:34:08
  Speaker 8: is a relation which unites two things, one the mind
• 2:34:11
  Speaker 8: that knows, the other the thing known. In every act
• 2:34:15
  Speaker 8: of knowing, something is present to the mind. If knowing
• 2:34:19
  Speaker 8: is simply awareness of this actual, present something, we call
• 2:34:23
  Speaker 8: it immediate experience. We are acquainted with the object. But
• 2:34:27
  Speaker 8: our knowledge is not only of objects immediately present to
• 2:34:30
  Speaker 8: the mind and with which we are therefore acquainted. Knowledge
• 2:34:34
  Speaker 8: embraces the past and future, and the distant realms of space. Indeed,
• 2:34:39
  Speaker 8: were knowledge only of what is actually present to the mind.
• 2:34:42
  Speaker 8: It is difficult to imagine that we could, in the
• 2:34:44
  Speaker 8: ordinary meaning of the word, know anything at all. I
• 2:34:49
  Speaker 8: may be thinking, for example, of an absent friend. All
• 2:34:53
  Speaker 8: that is present to my mind is It may be
• 2:34:55
  Speaker 8: a memory image, a faint recall of his appearance on
• 2:34:58
  Speaker 8: some one occasion, or perhaps a recollection of the tone
• 2:35:02
  Speaker 8: of his voice. Or it may be the black marks
• 2:35:04
  Speaker 8: on white paper which I recognize as his handwriting. This
• 2:35:08
  Speaker 8: image is present to my mind, but the image is
• 2:35:10
  Speaker 8: not the object my friend, about whom I think can
• 2:35:13
  Speaker 8: make endless judgments true and false. So also, if what
• 2:35:18
  Speaker 8: is present to the mind is affecting me through the
• 2:35:20
  Speaker 8: external senses, if it is a sense impression, it is
• 2:35:24
  Speaker 8: clear that what is actually present is not the whole
• 2:35:26
  Speaker 8: object of which I am aware, but only a very
• 2:35:29
  Speaker 8: small part of it. Or it may be no part
• 2:35:33
  Speaker 8: of it at all, but something a sound or an
• 2:35:36
  Speaker 8: odor that represents it. The immediate data of consciousness are
• 2:35:41
  Speaker 8: named by some philosopher's sense, data by others, presentations by
• 2:35:46
  Speaker 8: others images, and there is much controversy as to their
• 2:35:49
  Speaker 8: nature and existence. But with this controversy we are not
• 2:35:53
  Speaker 8: here concerned we are seeking to make clear and obvious distinction, namely,
• 2:35:58
  Speaker 8: the distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description.
• 2:36:03
  Speaker 8: What kind of knowledge is it that we acquire by description?
• 2:36:07
  Speaker 8: Knowledge about things with which we are not first acquainted.
• 2:36:10
  Speaker 8: The most important knowledge that we possess or acquire is
• 2:36:13
  Speaker 8: knowledge of objects which we know only by the knowledge
• 2:36:15
  Speaker 8: we have about them. Objects that we know about without
• 2:36:19
  Speaker 8: knowing them. They are not direct impressions on our senses,
• 2:36:23
  Speaker 8: nor are the ideas known in actual experience. We make
• 2:36:27
  Speaker 8: judgments about them, and the subjects about which we make
• 2:36:30
  Speaker 8: these judgments are really composed of these judgments that we
• 2:36:33
  Speaker 8: make about them. To go back to our illustrations, we
• 2:36:37
  Speaker 8: may know a great deal about the evil eye, a
• 2:36:39
  Speaker 8: malignant influence, disease, faith, healing, causality, physical objects without any
• 2:36:44
  Speaker 8: acquaintance with them, without even knowing that they exist. Such
• 2:36:49
  Speaker 8: knowledge is descriptive, and the objects are descriptions. Knowledge by
• 2:36:54
  Speaker 8: description is never quite simple and is often very complex,
• 2:36:58
  Speaker 8: for besides the really of the mental act to the
• 2:37:01
  Speaker 8: object known, there are the terms and relations which are
• 2:37:04
  Speaker 8: the elements in the judgment, and the relations of the
• 2:37:07
  Speaker 8: judgments themselves. If we analyze a judgment, every word in
• 2:37:11
  Speaker 8: which it is expressed, whether it is a noun or
• 2:37:14
  Speaker 8: a verb, or a preposition or a conjunction, conveys a
• 2:37:17
  Speaker 8: distinct meaning, indicates a term, or a relation, each of
• 2:37:22
  Speaker 8: which can be made a distinct object to the mind,
• 2:37:24
  Speaker 8: and all of which are combined in the single meaning
• 2:37:27
  Speaker 8: the judgment expresses. It is in this complexity that the
• 2:37:31
  Speaker 8: possibility of error lies, and the possibility increases as the
• 2:37:35
  Speaker 8: complexity increases. All the terms and the relations which a
• 2:37:40
  Speaker 8: judgment contains depend on the knowledge we have by acquaintance.
• 2:37:44
  Speaker 8: That is to say, we are ultimately dependent on our
• 2:37:47
  Speaker 8: actual experience for all knowledge, whatever, whether it is a
• 2:37:51
  Speaker 8: quaintance or description, for we can only describe in terms
• 2:37:55
  Speaker 8: with which we are acquainted. But in the judgment these
• 2:37:59
  Speaker 8: elements are combined into new objects, or a certain relation
• 2:38:02
  Speaker 8: is declared to exist between objects, and it is this
• 2:38:06
  Speaker 8: combination of the elements of the judgment that involves its
• 2:38:09
  Speaker 8: truth or falsehood. If this view of the nature of
• 2:38:13
  Speaker 8: the mental act of knowing is accepted, we are able
• 2:38:16
  Speaker 8: to understand how false opinion is consistent with the fact
• 2:38:19
  Speaker 8: that all knowledge is truth. We escape both the alternatives
• 2:38:24
  Speaker 8: that seem to Socrates the only possible ones. When a
• 2:38:27
  Speaker 8: man has a false opinion, does he think that which
• 2:38:30
  Speaker 8: he knows to be some other thing which he knows,
• 2:38:32
  Speaker 8: and knowing both, is he at the same time ignorant
• 2:38:35
  Speaker 8: of both? Or does he think of something which he
• 2:38:37
  Speaker 8: does not know as some other thing which he does
• 2:38:40
  Speaker 8: not know?
• 2:38:41
  Speaker 3: No?
• 2:38:42
  Speaker 8: Neither, In error, he thinks that something that he knows
• 2:38:45
  Speaker 8: is in a relation that he knows to some other
• 2:38:48
  Speaker 8: thing that he knows, when in fact that relation is
• 2:38:51
  Speaker 8: not relating the two things. The false proposition is not
• 2:38:55
  Speaker 8: one in which the constituent terms and relations are unknown
• 2:38:58
  Speaker 8: and unexistent, but one in which a combination of these
• 2:39:02
  Speaker 8: terms and relations is thought to exist, when in fact
• 2:39:04
  Speaker 8: it does not exist. And the true proposition is that
• 2:39:08
  Speaker 8: in which the combination thought to exist does exist. We can, therefore,
• 2:39:13
  Speaker 8: if this account be true, at least know what false
• 2:39:15
  Speaker 8: opinion or error can be, whether or not we have
• 2:39:18
  Speaker 8: any means of deciding in regard to any particular opinion
• 2:39:21
  Speaker 8: that it is false. There is one other theory, the last.
• 2:39:25
  Speaker 8: We shall notice. It is in one respect the most
• 2:39:28
  Speaker 8: important of all, namely that it is the most direct
• 2:39:32
  Speaker 8: attempt to grapple with the problem of error. It is
• 2:39:35
  Speaker 8: founded on a theory of knowledge, which we owe mainly
• 2:39:38
  Speaker 8: to the profound and acute work of a German philosopher Minong,
• 2:39:42
  Speaker 8: and which at present time is being keenly discussed. It
• 2:39:46
  Speaker 8: is an attempt to determine more exactly than has yet
• 2:39:49
  Speaker 8: been done the fundamental schema of the mental life and development.
• 2:39:54
  Speaker 8: The brief account that I am now offering I owe
• 2:39:56
  Speaker 8: to a paper by Prof. G. F. Stout on some
• 2:39:59
  Speaker 8: fundamental points in the theory of knowledge. We have seen
• 2:40:02
  Speaker 8: that the problem of error is the difficulty there is
• 2:40:05
  Speaker 8: in conceiving how there can be any real thing, any
• 2:40:08
  Speaker 8: real object of thought, intermediate between being and non being.
• 2:40:14
  Speaker 8: Error seems to exist and yet to have a nature
• 2:40:16
  Speaker 8: which is a negation of existence, and it seems therefore
• 2:40:19
  Speaker 8: to be a downright contradiction when we affirm that error
• 2:40:23
  Speaker 8: or false opinion can be that there is a real
• 2:40:26
  Speaker 8: object of thought when we judge falsely. This theory meets
• 2:40:30
  Speaker 8: the difficulty directly by distinguishing in the mental act of
• 2:40:33
  Speaker 8: knowing a process that is neither perceiving nor thinking of things,
• 2:40:38
  Speaker 8: and that involves neither believing nor disbelieving on the one hand,
• 2:40:41
  Speaker 8: nor desiring or willing on the other. This is the
• 2:40:44
  Speaker 8: process of supposing. Corresponding to this mental act of supposing,
• 2:40:50
  Speaker 8: there is a distinct kind of object intended or meant
• 2:40:53
  Speaker 8: by the mind, an object that is neither a sense datum,
• 2:40:57
  Speaker 8: nor an idea, nor a judgment, but a supposition. Also,
• 2:41:01
  Speaker 8: and again, corresponding to this mental act of supposing and
• 2:41:04
  Speaker 8: its intended object, the supposition, there is a mode of
• 2:41:07
  Speaker 8: being which is neither existence nor non existence, but is
• 2:41:11
  Speaker 8: named subsistence. A supposition, it is said, does not exist,
• 2:41:16
  Speaker 8: it subsists. This thesis, it will be easily understood, is
• 2:41:20
  Speaker 8: based on an analysis and deals with arguments that touch
• 2:41:24
  Speaker 8: the most fundamental problems of theory of knowledge. Moreover, its
• 2:41:29
  Speaker 8: presentment is excessively technical, and only those highly trained in
• 2:41:33
  Speaker 8: the habit of psychological introspection and skilled in philosophical analysis
• 2:41:37
  Speaker 8: are really competent to discuss it. It is not possible
• 2:41:41
  Speaker 8: to offer here anything but a simple outline of the
• 2:41:43
  Speaker 8: part of the theory that concerns the present problem. The
• 2:41:47
  Speaker 8: actual experience of knowing is a relation between two things,
• 2:41:50
  Speaker 8: one of which a mental act, the act of perceiving
• 2:41:53
  Speaker 8: or thinking or having ideas, and the other is an
• 2:41:56
  Speaker 8: object that which is perceived or thought of The act
• 2:42:00
  Speaker 8: is a particular mental existence. It is the act of
• 2:42:03
  Speaker 8: a psychical individual. The object is not included within the
• 2:42:07
  Speaker 8: actual experience, which is the knowing of it. It is
• 2:42:10
  Speaker 8: that which is meant or intended by the experience. The act, then,
• 2:42:14
  Speaker 8: is the mental process of meaning or intending the object
• 2:42:18
  Speaker 8: the thing meant or intended. The mental act differs according
• 2:42:21
  Speaker 8: to the kind of object intended. The act of perceiving
• 2:42:26
  Speaker 8: is the direction of the mind towards sense, data, and ideas.
• 2:42:30
  Speaker 8: The act of judging is the direction of the mind
• 2:42:32
  Speaker 8: towards judgments or propositions about things, propositions that affirm or
• 2:42:37
  Speaker 8: deny relations between things. The act of supposing is different
• 2:42:41
  Speaker 8: from both these. It is the direction of the mind
• 2:42:44
  Speaker 8: towards suppositions. Suppositions differ from ideas in this that they
• 2:42:50
  Speaker 8: may be either positive or negative, whereas ideas are never negative.
• 2:42:56
  Speaker 8: This may seem to contradict experience. Can we not, for example,
• 2:42:59
  Speaker 8: how an idea of not read just as well as
• 2:43:02
  Speaker 8: an idea of red No, The two ideas can easily
• 2:43:06
  Speaker 8: be seen to be one and the same. In each
• 2:43:08
  Speaker 8: case it is read we are actually acquainted with, and
• 2:43:12
  Speaker 8: the difference is in affirming or denying existence to the
• 2:43:14
  Speaker 8: one idea. The difference is in our judgment, which may
• 2:43:18
  Speaker 8: be affirmative or negative. A supposition is like a judgment
• 2:43:21
  Speaker 8: in this respect, it may be either affirmative or negative.
• 2:43:25
  Speaker 8: But it differs from a judgment in another respect that
• 2:43:29
  Speaker 8: while a judgment always conveys a conviction always expresses belief
• 2:43:33
  Speaker 8: or disbelief, a supposition does not. It is neither believed
• 2:43:37
  Speaker 8: nor disbelieved. Before I show the application of this analysis
• 2:43:41
  Speaker 8: of knowledge to the problem of error, let me try
• 2:43:44
  Speaker 8: and clear up its obscurity, For undoubtedly it is difficult
• 2:43:48
  Speaker 8: to comprehend. Its difficulty lies in this that though all
• 2:43:52
  Speaker 8: the ideas with which it deals are quite familiar suppositions,
• 2:43:57
  Speaker 8: real and unreal possibilities, fulfill and non fulfilled beliefs, yet
• 2:44:02
  Speaker 8: it seems to run counter to all our notions of
• 2:44:05
  Speaker 8: the extreme simplicity of the appeal to reality. It seems
• 2:44:10
  Speaker 8: strange and paradoxical to our ordinary habit of thinking to
• 2:44:13
  Speaker 8: affirm that there are real things and real relations between things, which,
• 2:44:17
  Speaker 8: though real, yet do not exist, and also that non
• 2:44:21
  Speaker 8: existent realities are not things that once were real but
• 2:44:24
  Speaker 8: now are not. They are things that subsist yet this
• 2:44:28
  Speaker 8: is no new doctrine. The most familiar case of such
• 2:44:32
  Speaker 8: realities is that of numbers. The Greeks discovered that numbers
• 2:44:36
  Speaker 8: do not exist, that is to say, that their reality
• 2:44:39
  Speaker 8: is of another kind to that which we denote by existence.
• 2:44:43
  Speaker 8: Numbers are realities, otherwise there would be no science or mathematics.
• 2:44:47
  Speaker 8: Pythagoras about five hundred forty five hundred BC taught that
• 2:44:52
  Speaker 8: numbers are the reality from which all.
• 2:44:54
  Speaker 7: Else is derived.
• 2:44:56
  Speaker 8: And there are many other things of the mind that
• 2:44:58
  Speaker 8: seem indeed to be more real than the things of sense.
• 2:45:01
  Speaker 8: It is this very problem of error that brings into
• 2:45:03
  Speaker 8: relief this most important doctrine. Now let us apply this
• 2:45:08
  Speaker 8: theory of the supposition to the problem of error, and
• 2:45:11
  Speaker 8: we shall then see how there can be an object
• 2:45:13
  Speaker 8: present to the mind when we judge falsely, and also
• 2:45:16
  Speaker 8: that the object is the same whether we judge truly
• 2:45:19
  Speaker 8: or falsely. Suppositions are real possibilities. They are alternatives that
• 2:45:24
  Speaker 8: may be fulfilled or that may never be fulfilled. These
• 2:45:28
  Speaker 8: real possibilities or these possible alternatives, are objects of thought.
• 2:45:35
  Speaker 8: They do not belong to the mental act of thinking.
• 2:45:37
  Speaker 8: They are not in the mind, but realities present to
• 2:45:40
  Speaker 8: the mind in mere supposing they are present as alternatives.
• 2:45:46
  Speaker 8: In judging, we affirm of them or deny of them
• 2:45:48
  Speaker 8: the relation to general reality that they are fulfilled. Judgments
• 2:45:52
  Speaker 8: therefore are true or false accordingly as the fulfillment they
• 2:45:56
  Speaker 8: affirm does or does not agree with reality. In this way,
• 2:46:01
  Speaker 8: then we may answer the perplexing question, how can there
• 2:46:04
  Speaker 8: be an object of thought in a false judgment? The
• 2:46:07
  Speaker 8: answer is that the objects of thought about which we
• 2:46:10
  Speaker 8: make judgments are suppositions, and our judgments concern their fulfillment,
• 2:46:15
  Speaker 8: and their fulfillment is a relation external to them. It
• 2:46:18
  Speaker 8: is their agreement or disagreement with reality. End of chapter eight.
• 2:46:25
  Speaker 8: Recording by Kyle Strand the strandsound dot com.
• 2:46:34
  Speaker 1: Chapter nine of the Problem of Truth. This is a
• 2:46:38
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 2:46:44
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 2:46:52
  Speaker 1: The Problem of Truth by Herbert Wilden Carr. Conclusion will
• 2:47:00
  Speaker 1: now briefly sum up the argument of this book. The
• 2:47:04
  Speaker 1: problem of truth is to discover the nature of the
• 2:47:08
  Speaker 1: agreement between the things of the mind, our ideas, and
• 2:47:12
  Speaker 1: the reality of which ideas are the knowledge we call
• 2:47:17
  Speaker 1: the agreement truth, what is it? We have seen that
• 2:47:23
  Speaker 1: there are three different answers, namely, one that it is
• 2:47:29
  Speaker 1: a correspondence between the idea and the reality, two that
• 2:47:35
  Speaker 1: it is the coherence of the idea in a consistent
• 2:47:39
  Speaker 1: and harmonious whole, and three that it is a value
• 2:47:44
  Speaker 1: that we ourselves give to our ideas. The theory that
• 2:47:51
  Speaker 1: truth is correspondence we found to offer this difficulty. To
• 2:47:57
  Speaker 1: say of an idea that it corresponds with reality supposes
• 2:48:02
  Speaker 1: a knowledge of reality in addition to and distinct from
• 2:48:07
  Speaker 1: the knowledge that is the idea. And yet the knowledge
• 2:48:11
  Speaker 1: of reality is the idea of it. And if it
• 2:48:16
  Speaker 1: be said that not the idea, but the judgment is
• 2:48:20
  Speaker 1: what corresponds with reality and truth, this equally supposes a
• 2:48:26
  Speaker 1: knowledge of reality that is not a judgment. If, as
• 2:48:31
  Speaker 1: the common sense of mankind requires us to believe the
• 2:48:36
  Speaker 1: reality that is known by us exists in entire independence
• 2:48:41
  Speaker 1: of our relation of knowing to it, how can we
• 2:48:45
  Speaker 1: state this fact without falling into contradiction in the very
• 2:48:49
  Speaker 1: statement of it. This is the difficulty of a realist
• 2:48:55
  Speaker 1: theory of knowledge. We next examine the theory that truth
• 2:49:00
  Speaker 1: is coherence, and this seemed to present to us an
• 2:49:05
  Speaker 1: unattainable ideal. Only the whole truth is wholly true. We
• 2:49:12
  Speaker 1: followed the idealist argument on which it is based, and
• 2:49:17
  Speaker 1: this seemed to lead us inevitably in the doctrine of
• 2:49:21
  Speaker 1: the absolute, to the paradox that unless we know everything,
• 2:49:26
  Speaker 1: we know nothing. In pragmatism, we met a new principle,
• 2:49:33
  Speaker 1: the proposal to regard truth as a value. Truth, it
• 2:49:38
  Speaker 1: is said, is something that happens to ideas they become
• 2:49:43
  Speaker 1: true or are made true. There is no criterion, no
• 2:49:48
  Speaker 1: absolute standard independent of ideas to which they must conform
• 2:49:55
  Speaker 1: if they are judged to be true. The value of
• 2:49:59
  Speaker 1: an idea is its practical usefulness, as tested by its workability.
• 2:50:06
  Speaker 1: Truth is what works. This led us to criticize the
• 2:50:10
  Speaker 1: concept of utility. We found that it is impossible to
• 2:50:15
  Speaker 1: identify utility with truth, even if we include theoretical utility
• 2:50:22
  Speaker 1: in its widest meaning, because over and above the usefulness
• 2:50:27
  Speaker 1: and workability of an idea, there always remains the question
• 2:50:33
  Speaker 1: of its relation to reality. But we recognized in the
• 2:50:37
  Speaker 1: principle of truth value an important advance towards a theory
• 2:50:43
  Speaker 1: of knowledge, the solution of the problem of truth. It
• 2:50:48
  Speaker 1: became clear must be sought in a theory of knowledge.
• 2:50:53
  Speaker 1: Have we in the new theory of life and knowledge
• 2:50:57
  Speaker 1: of Bergson's philosophy, and on to the question what is truth? Yes,
• 2:51:04
  Speaker 1: but not in the form of a direct solution of
• 2:51:07
  Speaker 1: the dilemma which confronts us in every theory that accepts
• 2:51:12
  Speaker 1: the independence of knowledge and reality, Rather in a theory
• 2:51:17
  Speaker 1: of knowledge in which the dilemma does not and cannot arise.
• 2:51:24
  Speaker 1: The theory of Bergson is that in the intuition of
• 2:51:27
  Speaker 1: life we know reality as it is. Our knowledge is
• 2:51:32
  Speaker 1: one with our knowing, and in the intellect we possess
• 2:51:37
  Speaker 1: a mode of knowing which is equally immediate, but the
• 2:51:41
  Speaker 1: essential quality of which is that it externalizes or spatializes reality.
• 2:51:50
  Speaker 1: We understand this mode of knowing in recognizing the purpose
• 2:51:54
  Speaker 1: it serves its practical advantage to us. Therefore resembles pragmatism
• 2:52:03
  Speaker 1: in bringing the concept of utility to the aid of
• 2:52:07
  Speaker 1: its theory of knowledge. But we insisted the resemblance is
• 2:52:12
  Speaker 1: outward only, for the essential tenet of pragmatism, that truth
• 2:52:18
  Speaker 1: itself is a value is fatal to the theory. It
• 2:52:23
  Speaker 1: would mean, in fact, that not the mode of knowing
• 2:52:27
  Speaker 1: that is the intellect, But the actual knowledge itself is
• 2:52:32
  Speaker 1: a practical endowment. But the problem of truth arises in
• 2:52:37
  Speaker 1: a new form, for the practical utility of the intellect
• 2:52:42
  Speaker 1: consists in the illusion which it produces in us. It
• 2:52:47
  Speaker 1: makes the flowing reality appear as fixed states. How, then,
• 2:52:53
  Speaker 1: can universal illusion be consistent with the possession of truth.
• 2:52:59
  Speaker 1: To answer this question, we examine the nature of illusion
• 2:53:04
  Speaker 1: and its distinction from error. In the last chapter we
• 2:53:09
  Speaker 1: have dealt with the problem of error. The fact of
• 2:53:13
  Speaker 1: error presented a difficulty distinct from the question what is truth,
• 2:53:19
  Speaker 1: for it implied a real objective thought, of which it
• 2:53:23
  Speaker 1: seemed equally contradictory to say that it exists and that
• 2:53:29
  Speaker 1: it does not exist. In the solutions that have been proposed,
• 2:53:35
  Speaker 1: we saw how the problem is forcing philosophers to examine
• 2:53:39
  Speaker 1: again the fundamental processes of the mind and the nature
• 2:53:44
  Speaker 1: of the universe. They reveal end of chapter nine. End
• 2:53:52
  Speaker 1: of the Problem of Truth by Herbert Wild and Carr