102
6 In Search of Reality
Mental activity is deeply involved in physical reality and plays a constitutive
role in the very existence of material things. As already noted, it is the collective
mind that divides up the physical primordium into individual objects. Every
object and every event—prior to being extracted from the background in
which it is immersed—is fully integrated in its physical context. Only a mind
is capable of separating it out of the primordial mix in which it is deeply
embedded, and establishing it as a separately existing thing.
In his bookThe Analysis of Matter, Bertrand Russell presents a comprehensive
theory of what can be known of external reality, and how it is possible to know
it. His account continues to be very influential in contemporary debates on
the philosophy of science and the foundations of physics. These ideas have led
to a school of thought known today as structural realism. 7
The thinking of Bertrand Russell is deeply rooted in the philosophy of
empiricism which blossomed in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries. The central ideas of empiricism are not new, but in their modern
form they were first clearly articulated by the 17th Century Scottish philosopher John Locke. Every person, according to Locke, is born as a blank slate,
or tabula rasa, and everything we know comes to us from our experiences. In
particular, he claims, there is no such thing as innate knowledge. We are born
with no preformed concepts or insights: Every item of our knowledge can be
traced back to individual experience.
In a very modern way, Locke understood that the outer world impinges
on our sense organs and produces impressions, or sensations. According to
Locke, knowledge of the world accumulates as we compare sensations with
one another, generalize from them, and unite them into larger, more elaborate
thoughts. He imagined knowledge to be hierarchical, as well as atomic in the
sense that every thought is built out of certain “elementary” thoughts.
Bertrand Russell accepts the core of Locke’s thinking, and enunciates what
he calls a causal theory of perception: Physical processes that take place in the
external world activate our sense organs and cause us to have percepts, and from
these percepts we are able to infer facts about the external world. The only way
to have knowledge of the external world is to draw conclusions based on our
perceptions. Consequently, our knowledge of the external world is indirect
and inferential: Only knowledge of our own percepts is immediate. We have
direct access to information about the nature of percepts, but not of objects,
because these can be known only by inference. Russell’s reasoning continues
as follows:
Drawing on our common experience of cause and effect, we are entitled to
assume that different causes lead to different effects, and different effects are
the results of different causes. Thus, although the nature of the external world
6 In Search of Reality
Mental activity is deeply involved in physical reality and plays a constitutive
role in the very existence of material things. As already noted, it is the collective
mind that divides up the physical primordium into individual objects. Every
object and every event—prior to being extracted from the background in
which it is immersed—is fully integrated in its physical context. Only a mind
is capable of separating it out of the primordial mix in which it is deeply
embedded, and establishing it as a separately existing thing.
In his bookThe Analysis of Matter, Bertrand Russell presents a comprehensive
theory of what can be known of external reality, and how it is possible to know
it. His account continues to be very influential in contemporary debates on
the philosophy of science and the foundations of physics. These ideas have led
to a school of thought known today as structural realism. 7
The thinking of Bertrand Russell is deeply rooted in the philosophy of
empiricism which blossomed in England in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth
Centuries. The central ideas of empiricism are not new, but in their modern
form they were first clearly articulated by the 17th Century Scottish philosopher John Locke. Every person, according to Locke, is born as a blank slate,
or tabula rasa, and everything we know comes to us from our experiences. In
particular, he claims, there is no such thing as innate knowledge. We are born
with no preformed concepts or insights: Every item of our knowledge can be
traced back to individual experience.
In a very modern way, Locke understood that the outer world impinges
on our sense organs and produces impressions, or sensations. According to
Locke, knowledge of the world accumulates as we compare sensations with
one another, generalize from them, and unite them into larger, more elaborate
thoughts. He imagined knowledge to be hierarchical, as well as atomic in the
sense that every thought is built out of certain “elementary” thoughts.
Bertrand Russell accepts the core of Locke’s thinking, and enunciates what
he calls a causal theory of perception: Physical processes that take place in the
external world activate our sense organs and cause us to have percepts, and from
these percepts we are able to infer facts about the external world. The only way
to have knowledge of the external world is to draw conclusions based on our
perceptions. Consequently, our knowledge of the external world is indirect
and inferential: Only knowledge of our own percepts is immediate. We have
direct access to information about the nature of percepts, but not of objects,
because these can be known only by inference. Russell’s reasoning continues
as follows:
Drawing on our common experience of cause and effect, we are entitled to
assume that different causes lead to different effects, and different effects are
the results of different causes. Thus, although the nature of the external world