Apertura de hoyos.

Dualism is a theory according to which mind and matter are two independent sorts of thing, neither type being reducible to the other. Such a dichotomy is mostly initiated by theologians and metaphysicians. Descartes, influenced by medieval theology and the then advancement of science, left a dualistic legacy. Descartes set forth his influential and provoking metaphysical doctrine in his Meditations on the First Philosophy and A Discourse on Method.

In his thesis Descartes dealt with two issues: (1), the nature of mind and matter and (2), the nature of the self and its relation to one’s body. These issues are closely related to each other.

According to Descartes there are two substances, mind and matter, which exist entirely independent of the other. One is mental or spiritual substance and the other is physical or material substance. "Mind stuff" and "matter stuff" differ in their nature, and the difference between the two could be characterized by their varied attributes. The distinctive attribute of physical substance is extension, and therefore it has its own shape, size, a position in space and parts. The mental substance, on the other hand, is distinctively characterized by thought and devoid of extension. It has no shape, size or location and therefore the question of divisibility does not arise. But this independence of the two substances is relative, because both depend on God,

3. I differ with Anthony Quinton who says that Russell in his The Problems o f Philosophy set forth "qualified Cartesian Dualism"("Russell's Philosophy o f Mind", p. 80).

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which is an independent being, the absolute substance. Regarding spiritual substance, Descartes held that since the whole nature of it is to think, then mind is a thing which thinks, which doubts, affirms, wills, understands, feels and imagines. Moreover, although mind is intimately conjoined to the body, they function independently of each other; and even if separated they will function uninterruptedly. Death may destroy the body but the mind will survive and continue to exist and function. But Descartes was compelled to introduce the concept of interactionism in order to distinguish what is mind from what is body. Unlike the mind, one can see and touch the body as the proof of its existence. For instance, one can see a sore in a particular area of the body, but one cannot locate the feeling of pain unless it is said where this occurs. Although mind and body are distinct Descartes tried, through interactionism to prove the existence of one by indirect reference to the other. For example, he remarked:

But there is nothing that this nature teaches me more expressly or more sensibly than that I have a body, which is ill disposed when I feel pain, which needs to eat and drink when I have feelings of hunger or thirst, etc. And therefore I must in no way doubt that there is some truth in all this. \Discourse on Method A nd the Meditations, p. 159].

Here he tried to prove the existence of the body. In a similar fashion he showed how mind exists. For Descartes, the interaction between mind and body takes place in the pineal gland of the brain. In his The Passions o f the Soul, he explains that although the soul is joined to the entire body, its principle seat is in the pineal gland which exists in the middle of the brain. From here the soul communicates through all the remainder o f the body by means of the animal spirits. Regarding how the soul and the body act on one another, Descartes says, the communication with the body takes place the moment animal spirit comes into contact with the soul and hence activates nerves, muscles, which connect all the parts of the body. In return, the body reacts with the slightest movement of the gland by the soul and pushes the spirits towards the pores of the brain by means of which it brings about movement in the organs o f the body.4 This theory of Descartes received adverse criticism from various philosophical schools. Here I am concerned with how Russell reacted and partially accepted his views.

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4.2.2. Russell’s Reaction to Descaites.

Russell in 1894 in a Cambridge est^y* claimed that Descartes’s argument that imagination, by which material things are conceived, can convince one of their existence, "gives no ground whatever for believing in a material world as distinct from the spiritual: there is no reason why extension should not been referred to the perceiving subject alone." |"Paper On Descartes", p. 153). In the next paragraph Russell argued:

Descartes’s entire rejection of sense as a source of knowledge makes his subsequent dualism even more surprising. He points out the possibility of deception by the senses, in dreams for instance, and when pains are felt in amputated limbs: from these he ought to have concluded that we have no right to affirm a world of extended objects, but he fails to take the final step and considers only the secondary qualities as due to the imagination. [Ibid.)

Russell’s theory of neutral monism did not result from a sudden change o f mind but from a long period o f contemplation. The constitutive phase began when he attempted to reduce the gap between mind and matter but failed for various reasons which I shall discuss shortly. Though less successful one should not undervalue Russell’s effort, which I think left his 1912 position to be barely dualistic. Commentators, especially Stace, Ayer and Quinton5 6 regarded Russell in 1912 as a psycho-physical dualist. As against this, I will argue that Russell was not a dualist in Cartesian style, rather that he oscillates between Descartes’ thesis of intuitive self consciousness and Hume’s thesis of no knowledge of self. This is because, as I have mentioned earlier, his main concern was to explain how one can have access to physical objects in order to have knowledge of them. He uses the word "know" in two different senses. In one of the senses it could be used in opposition to error, the sense applies to ones beliefs and convictions. The other sense of "know" applies to the knowledge of things. Russell explained the distinction between propositional knowledge and non-propositional knowledge in order to develop his technical distinction of knowledge by acquaintance versus knowledge by description, parallel to that of the French distinction, "connaitre" and "savior" or the German, "kennen" and "wissen" respectively. Thus

5. "Paper on Descartes" (unpublished), written in 1894 for Ward's course on the history o f philosophy. Now published in The Collected Papers o f Bertrand Russell, vol. I .

6. See, Stace, W.T., "Russell's Neutral Monism", pp. 353-384. Also Ayer, A .J., Russell and Moore: The Analytic Heritaye, and Quinton, op.cit.

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Russell distinguished between things known immediately without an inference, and those known through inference.

4.2.3. Dualism in Russell 11912-1913).

It was in 1912 that Russell made an unsuccessful attempt to narrow the gulf between mind and matter. Accordingly he picked up the term "sense-datum" and its relation to physical objects from the writing of G.E. Moore. [See "Preface", The Problems of Philosophy]. Russell thought that "sense-datum", apparently a neutral term in comparison to "ideas", "sensations" and "impressions", would solve our knowledge of physical objects and how it is possible to have access to them.

Russell maintained that one can never have acquaintance with objects, even very near to one’s sight, as tables, chairs, shoes etc. They are known only by description. What one is acquainted with are the "sense-data" which constitute the appearance of the table or the chair or the shoe. This is "knowledge by acquaintance", as Russell explained:

Thus in the presence of my table 1 am acquainted with the sense-data that make up the appearance of my table its colour, shape, hardness, smoothness, etc.; all these are things of which I am immediately conscious when I am seeing and touching my table.... Thus the sense-data which make up the appearance of my table are things with which I have acquaintance, things immediately known to me just as they are. [Ibid., p. 25].

According to Russell, the knowledge of the table was the kind which one should call "knowledge by description", i.e. inference from knowledge by acquaintance. But he argued we do have direct access to the sense-data which make up the appearance of the physical object.

As regards to this the question arises: what is the "sense-datum" and what is its status in Russell’s philosophy o f 1912? The answer to these questions are important because this will illuminate on Russell’s dichotomy of mind and matter and his understanding of dualism as being distinct from that of Descartes.

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”... that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, hardness, roughness, and so on." |P. 4).

A certain ambiguity arises by regarding "colour", for instance, as sense-data. What one is actually aware of in sensation is a particular patch o f colour, say green. The term colour is a general term which includes all types and shades of colour to form a whole class. The colour green is an attribute common to many subjects, e.g. grass, leaf etc. I take it that it is particular colour patches, etc. which Rjssell meant by sense-data. For after his discussion of sense-data he continued:

In addition to our acquaintance with particular existing things, we also have acquaintance with what we shall call universals, that is to say general ideas, such as whiteness, diversity, brotherhood, and so on. fP. 28).

Sense-data are the particular existing things with which one has acquaintance. He used "sensation" differently from sense-datum, saying that

"... the colour is that o f which we are immediately aware, and the awareness itself is the sensation." [P. 4].

Russell also distinguished sense-data from physical objects. The physical object, which is physical, is constructed out of sense-data, and therefore is purely inferential. He thus made a triple distinction between: the act o f being aware, that is the sensation; an appearance of the table, i.e. sense-datum; and the physical object, e.g. table. In making such a triple distinction Russell had, in fact, accepted Meinong's view that in sensation there are three elements. They are the act, the content, and the object. Later we will see how he eliminated these distinctions in order to accept the theory of neutral monism. [See 5.2.; 5.2.1. J.

From the above consideration we can isolate sense-data as distinct from sensation and physical object. This leaves us to investigate the status of sense-data, which are "signs of the existence of something independent of us and our perceptions" (The Problems, p. 13). But this independence is partial because sense-data depend upon two causes, namely, physical object and the eye, nerves and brain o f the person who sees it. As Russell puts it:

|S|ense-data are to be regarded as resulting from an interaction between the physical object and ourselves. (Ibid., p. 48).

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By describing them thus, the promissory tone of neutrality departs leaving the status o f sense-data to a somewhat ambivalent position. I say this because it was in 1912 that Russell first attempted to close the gap between physics and perception. |My Philosophical Development, p. 78J. The ambivalent position of sense-data is due to Russell’s over-ambitious epistemological plans. The transparency of sense-datum depends on the real presence of an observer otherwise the absence of an observer would mean the ideal presence o f sense-datum, which Russell avoided for a good reason. He had rejected the Berkleyan idealism and did not want to fall into a similar trap.

Sense-data seem to be something intermediate between physical objects and sensations. Hence, two very important questions at once arise: namely, (i) what is a physical object, if not sense-data? (ii) Does the appeal to sensations, distinct from sense-datum and the physical object suggest the existence of a separate entity? Consequently the answer to these questions will reveal how his dualism differs from that of Descartes’.

I will begin with the first question. According to Russell we do not have direct access to a physical object, but only to its appearance, i.e. sense-data. He contends that if physical objects exist, apart from sense-data, then the agglomeration of all physical objects is called "matter" (cf., The Problems, p. 4) a name given to something which is opposed to "mind" and is to be thought of as occupying space and is devoid of thought or consciousness.

The sense-data which make up the appearance of the physical object are in fact private to each separate person. At any given moment each individual has set of sense-data through his different senses. For instance the visual data can be gathered through the sights we see, the audible data from the sounds we hear etc. These data are correlated with the various data of other senses which forms the private world o f each individual. |See 6.2.1.]. Each individual thus has different sense-data. But two individauls can have sense-data with very little difference. For this there must be something neutral to different observers which gives rise to similar, but not identical, sense-data in order to characterise that particular thing, say, the table. Russell called these "public neutral objects", which are in some sense, known to many different people, and of which sense-data are appearances. These public neutral objects are physical objects which causes sensations. Russell wrote,

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"although different people may see the table slightly differently, still they all see more or less similar things when they look at the table, and the variations in what they see follow the iaws of perspective and reflection of light, so that it is easy to arrive at a permanent object underlying al! the different people’s sense-data" (The Problems, p. 9).

One thing peculiar about the quoted passage is that Russell on many occasions categorically mentioned that we cannot see a table; what we see are appearances o f the table, and the table itself is an inferential knowledge. But the above passage suggests that we can actually see the table, and this is contradictory to the notion that the table is an inferential knowledge, i.e. via sense-data. He went on to say:

I bought my table from the former occupant of my room; I could not buy his sense-data, which died when he went away, but I could and did buy the confident expectation o f more or less similar sense- data... which makes us suppose that over and above the sense-data there is a permanent public object which underlies or caused the sense-data of various people at various time.[Ibid., p. 9).

In order to strengthen his argument Russell stated that if a cat, for instance, appears at one moment in one room and in another moment in the next room, it is no mistake to suppose that the cat is passing over a series of intermediate positions. But if it were merely an agglomeration o f sense-data it would not exist at all whilst no one was present at that situation. Moreover a group of sense-data cannot explain the cat’s being hungry since no hunger but one’s own can be sense-datum to one. Russell thus contended that such a situation is bound to convince one that there are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an independent existence without being depending upon our perceiving them.7

Russell thus concluded that the only neutral object accessible to all concerned, are physical objects, which are public. These neutral objects give rise to sense-data, which are private to each person and hence cannot be shared. But one cannot have direct awareness of the physical object. The only knowledge by acquaintance we have is with our private sense-data which indirectly gives us the knowledge of the physical objects. Russell then went on to say that

|W |e are not only aware of things |sense-data|, but we are often aware of being aware of them. | The Problems, pp. 26-27|.

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With this we come to our second question: whether there is anything called "m<nd" apart from matter (a collection of physical objects)? The urgency to explain mind led Russell to introduced introspective data of thinking, feeling, willing etc. According to Russell, when one sees the sun one is aware of an object that is one’s "seeing the sun", and furthermore, one is also aware of events like feeling, thinking, pain or anger which happen in one’s mind. Russell called this "self-consciousness" (ibid., p. 27), which does not refer to consciousness of one’s "self", but merely to consciousness of particular thoughts and feelings. Before we go further we find that, from the preceding analysis, Russell was a dualist in 1912. He had clearly differentiated between physical objects, which make up matter, and one’s knowledge and experience of the physical objects, which make up mind. What Russell was doing was in fact following the Cartesian foot-steps, regarding the mind and body dichotomy. Russell entered dualism through his theory of sense-data.

1 have mentioned earlier that Russell’s dualism was different from that o f Descartes because he oscillates between Descartes and Hume in his analysis of mind. This resulted into a queer mixture o f a Humean and Cartesian analysis of mind.

We know that Hume in his A Treatise o f Human Nature contended that nothing was experienced except loose and separate "perceptions of the self". To quote Hume:

For my part, when 1 enter most intimately into what 1 call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, o f heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. 1 never can catch m yself at any time without a perception, and never can observe