Chapter 19

To sum up our whole discussion. We began by distinguishing two sorts of knowledge of objects, namely, knowledge by _acquaintance_ and knowledge by _description_. Of these it is only the former that brings the object itself before the mind. We have acquaintance with sense-data, with many universals, and possibly with ourselves, but not with physical objects or other minds. We have _descriptive_ knowledge of an object when we know that it is _the_ object having some property or properties with which we are acquainted; that is to say, when we know that the property or properties in question belong to one object and no more, we are said to have knowledge of that one object by description, whether or not we are acquainted with the object. Our knowledge of physical objects and of other minds is only knowledge by description, the descriptions involved being usually such as involve sense-data. All propositions intelligible to us, whether or not they primarily concern things only known to us by description, are composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted, for a constituent with which we are not acquainted is unintelligible to us. A judgment, we found, is not composed of mental constituents called "ideas," but consists of an occurrence whose constituents are a mind[49] and certain objects, particulars or universals. (One at least must be a universal.) When a judgment is rightly analysed, the objects which are constituents of it must all be objects with which the mind which is a constituent of it is acquainted. This conclusion forces us to analyse descriptive phrases occurring in propositions, and to say that the objects denoted by such phrases are not constituents of judgments in which such phrases occur (unless these objects are explicitly mentioned). This leads us to the view (recommended also on purely logical grounds) that when we say "the author of Marmion was the author of Waverley," Scott himself is not a constituent of our judgment, and that the judgment cannot be explained by saying that it affirms identity of denotation with diversity of meaning. It also, plainly, does not assert identity of meaning. Such judgments, therefore, can only be analysed by breaking up the descriptive phrases, introducing a variable, and making propositional functions the ultimate subjects. In fact, "the so-and-so is such-and-such" will mean that "_x_ is so-and-so and nothing else is, and _x_ is such-and-such" is capable of truth. The analysis of such judgments involves many fresh problems, but the discussion of these problems is not undertaken in the present paper.

FOOTNOTES:

[40] See references later.

[41] _Philosophical Essays_, "The Nature of Truth." I have been persuaded by Mr. Wittgenstein that this theory is somewhat unduly simple, but the modification which I believe it to require does not affect the above argument [1917].

[42] Cf. Meinong, _Ueber Annahmen_, _passim_. I formerly supposed, contrary to Meinong's view, that the relationship of supposing might be merely that of presentation. In this view I now think I was mistaken, and Meinong is right. But my present view depends upon the theory that both in judgment and in assumption there is no single Objective, but the several constituents of the judgment or assumption are in a many-term relation to the mind.

[43] This view has been recently advocated by Miss E.E.C. Jones. "A New Law of Thought and its Implications," _Mind_, January, 1911.

[44] I should now exclude "I" from proper names in the strict sense, and retain only "this" [1917].

[45] Meinong, _Ueber Annahmen_, 2nd ed., Leipzig, 1910, p. 141.

[46] _Mind_, July, 1910, p. 380.

[47] _Mind_, July, 1910, p. 379.

[48] The theory which I am advocating is set forth fully, with the logical grounds in its favour, in _Principia Mathematica_, Vol. I. Introduction, Chap. III; also, less fully, in _Mind_, October, 1905.

[49] I use this phrase merely to denote the something psychological which enters into judgment, without intending to prejudge the question as to what this something is.

INDEX

Achilles and the tortoise, 80 ff, 89 ff

Acquaintance, the relation of, 209 ff

Alexander, 125

American Realists, the, 134

Aristotle, 42, 76, 97

Bacon, 41

Bergson, 14 ff, 22, 105, 128, 185 ff, 203

Berkeley, 97, 132

Blake, 1

Bosanquet, 99

Broad, 89 _n_

Calculus, the, 82

Cantor, Georg, 64, 81 ff, 85, 91

Carlyle, 50, 82

Cause, the conception of, 135 _n_, 180 ff

Christianity and renunciation, 51

Chuang Tz[)u], 106

Construction of permanent things and matter, 169 ff

Constructions, logical, 155 ff

Darwin, 15, 23, 43

Dedekind, 64, 81 ff, 85

Descartes, 97, 126

Descriptions, 175, 214 ff

Education, 37 ff

Euclid, 62, 92, 94

Evolutionism, 23 ff, 28

Fano, 93

Faraday, 34

Free will, 205 ff

Frege, 78 _n_

Galileo, 42

Gladstone, 177

Good and evil, 26 ff

Hegel, 8, 10, 18, 85, 97, 105 ff

Heine, 113

Heraclitus, 1 ff, 10

Hertz, 34

Holt, 177 _n_

Hume, 1, 97

Infinite, the mathematical, 84 ff

James, William, 100

Jones, Miss E.E.C., 224 _n_, 225

Judgment, 219 ff

Kant, 85, 96, 97, 99, 118 ff

Knowledge by acquaintance, 209 ff; by description, 214 ff

Laplace, 23

Leibniz, 76, 79, 82 ff, 97, 126, 144, 160

Locke, 97

Logic, the laws of, 68 ff

Macaulay and Taylor's theorem, 95

Malthus, 43

Mathematics, 58 ff; and the Metaphysicians, 74 ff; and logic, 75 ff; and the infinitesimal, 82 ff

Matter, the nature of, 125 ff; definition of, 164 ff

Maxwell, 34

Meaning and denotation, 223 ff

Meinong, 174, 220 _n_, 225

Militarism, 50

Mill, 185, 193 ff

Mysticism and logic, 1 ff

Necessity, the notion of, 207 ff

Nietzsche, 22, 50

Nunn, 125, 137 _n_, 153

Parmenides, 7 ff, 18, 21

Particulars, awareness of, 210 ff

Peano, 78 ff, 93 ff

Perspectives, 139 ff; the space of, 158 ff

Philosophy and logic, 111

Physics, sense-data and, 145 ff

Pierce, 76 _n_

Plato, 1 ff, 10, 30, 60, 97

Pragmatism, 22, 105

Realism and the analytic method, 120 ff

Reason and intuition, 12 ff

Relatives, the logic of, 76

Robb, 167 _n_

Santayana, 20

Sense-data, 147, 210 ff; and physics, 145 ff

Sensibilia, 148 ff

Space, 138 ff; private, 158 ff; the logical problem, 114 ff; the problem in physics, 115 ff; the epistemological problem, 118 ff

Systems, deterministic, 199; practically isolated, 198; relatively isolated, 197; mechanical, 201

Time, 10, 21 ff, 141 ff, 167 ff

Tristram Shandy, the paradox of, 90 ff

Unity and Plurality, 18 ff

Universals, awareness of, 212 ff

Ward, 180

Weierstrass, 80, 82, 95

Whitehead, 117, 157, 175

Wolf, 173

Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff

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