Informal essay 400-500 words

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http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/problems

Notes on The Problems of Philosophy Bertrand Russell

Chapter 1 - Appearance and Reality

Summary

Russell begins by asking his reader to consider what knowledge exists that can be known beyond

reasonable doubt. His purpose is to produce the realization that radical doubt soon brings even the

most self-evident assumptions in our everyday lives under reconsideration. In this beginning

chapter, Russell describes a scene: “I am now sitting in a chair, at a table of a certain shape, on which

I see sheets of paper with writing or print.” All of these “facts” are easily called into question.

Russell engages in his discussion to find out how knowledge of such things is possible at all.

In order to lay bare the ordinary assumptions at issue, Russell concentrates on one example, the

table before him. Walking around the table, he discerns different colors from different points of

view: in places seeming to reflect more light, a brighter shade of brown appears. In reality we assume

that there is only one color of the table, yet the appearance of many colors contradicts our

assumption. The color seems to be a relation depending on the observer, his point of view, and

conditions like “the way the light falls on the table.”

Since it seems clear that no two people could share one identical point of view, Russell registers a

doubt as to whether one real color of the table even exists. Russell continues his investigation of

color by reasoning that in ordinary language usage, when we refer to the color of an object, we

actually refer to something perceived from the usual perspective of observer. However, he

continues, there is no reason to assume that the usual perspective should be considered real and

other perspectives, under other conditions, be considered less real. Russell does not think that the

most usual brown should be considered the brown of the table, to the exclusion of other apparent

browns.

As with color, the existence of just one texture of the table is ambiguous, because “to the naked eye,

the table appears to be smooth and hard. Aided by microscope, the grain of the wood enlarges to

appear as a mountainous range of different roughnesses and textures.” Russell argues that one

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cannot consider one texture more real than another. The shape of the table, a rectangle, also changes

immediate shape as one walks around it. Sensation of pressure depends on the force we exert on the

table, as does the production of sound when we rap on the wood. Thus, the sensations of touch and

sound, like sight, are not fixed by a reality; they are apparent possibilities and each depends on the

conditions of observation. These observations lead to Russell’s first distinction between appearance

and reality, “between what things seem to be and what they are.” Russell proposes that we are not

struck with these discontinuities in our daily life because in practical experience, one learns “to

construct the ‘real’ shape from the apparent shape.” The real shape exists in so much as we infer it

from our senses.

He writes, “the real table, if there is one, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an

inference from what is immediately known.” The reality of the table, in the sense that there is a

table, depends on a process of inference based on a knowable part of reality, the part Russell calls

“sense-data.” Sense-data are not the same as our sensations. Sense-data are “the things that are

immediately known to us in sensation.” Variations in our sensations indicate that sensation does not

directly reveal the reality of an object like the table. Instead, it is probable that our sensations are

“signs of some property which perhaps causes all the sensations.” To fully grasp Russell’s

distinction, consider sensation as an act belonging to the realm of experience and consider the object

of that direct experience to be sense-data. The object, a patch of red, produces the sensation or

experience of redness. Since we have seen that certain knowledge of the table’s reality is not

available through the senses, Russell asks how we can know that a real table exists at all and what

kind of certainty we can have. It remains clear that we do have an experience of awareness where we

recognize colors and other properties as part of the table. While we may doubt the existence of a

real table, it is harder to doubt our awareness of our own sensations. Therefore, we can regard our

confidence in the sense-data of our everyday experiences as safe.

The next problem that arises is one of understanding how the real table, if there is one, relates to our

sense-data. Russell states that it is impossible to understand, in this stage of the discussion, if or how

the relation would work. The questions we must first approach are: “is there a real table at all” and

“if so, what sort of object can it be?” This relation, between sense-data and the real table, is a

substantial concern for Russell’s enquiry. Returning to his table, he admits that when we have been

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saying the “real table,” we have meant the “physical object.” Physical objects may be understood as

“matter.” The questions at issue become: “is there any such thing as matter” and “if so, what is its

nature?”

Russell considers one possible answer to the first question with the thought of British philosopher

Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753). Berkeley brought out the position that the immediate objects, which

we call physical objects, do not exist independently of us. Rather, they depend on our minds. On his

view, matter does not exist. What we call physical objects are really just ideas, mental products that

we project onto the world. The existence of objects that appear to correspond to our sensations is

dubious on this view. Russell’s contemplation of the table shares Berkeley’s spirit of enquiry

insomuch as he agrees with Berkeley that “if there are any things that exist independently of us they

cannot be the immediate objects of our sensations.” However, Berkeley’s arguments offer a more

extreme philosophical view, belief in the impossibility of a reality independent of man.

At this point, Russell integrates an important distinction between meanings packed in the word

“matter.” A common conception of matter is something opposed to mind, something that takes up

space in the physical world and is absolutely incapable of consciousness. Berkeley denies this sense

of matter. He does not deny matter in the sense of things like sense-data, which signify an existence

of something independent of ourselves. According to Berkeley, this independence is possible; he

believes that there is something that persists when we close our eyes or walk out of a room.

However, he believes that this something depends for its existence on a mind, that it may be

independent but must be mental. It must not be “independent of seeing altogether, though it must

be independent of our seeing.” Thus, Berkeley regards the reality of the table and other such

physical objects as ideas in the mind of God. Things can exist independently as long as they are not

things essentially unknowable.

Berkeley’s view is just one example of idealism, the view that there is “nothing acceptable as real

except minds and their ideas.” Argument supporting this view maintains that “whatever can be

thought of is an idea in the mind of the person thinking it; therefore nothing can be thought of

except ideas in minds; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is inconceivable cannot

exist.” Other philosophers held that the physical objects of the world merely depend on being

observed by some entity, not necessarily God. Leibniz (1646–1716) thought that physical objects

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existed because they were observed by some conceptually collective mind, like the universe itself.

These philosophers denied matter “as opposed to mind.”

Russell also accepts the version of matter that they do not deny. By reiterating his initial question:

“Is there a real table at all?” Russell points out his agreement with Berkeley and Leibniz in believing

that there is a real table. However, Russell disagrees with the idealists over the question of the nature

of the real table, the latter question “what sort of object can it be?” Russell continues that “almost all

philosophers agree that there is a real table” and that our sense-data are signs of something that

exists independent of us, something that may be said to cause the “sense-data whenever we are in a

suitable relation to the real table.” Before going on to an analysis of matter, Russell recognizes the

positive agreement to his first question as conspicuously important and plans, in the next chapter, to

investigate the reasons why anyone should believe thus. Russell concludes by reemphasizing that

what we gather from our senses directly in terms of “appearance” are but signs from which we infer

“reality.”

Analysis

Russell’s method of approaching his subject embraces the Cartesian technique of radical doubt.

Rene Descartes (1596–1650) first employed it in his Meditations on First Philosophy. Upon discovering

his philosophical confusion about ordinary things, Descartes decided to believe in nothing that he

did not discern as clearly and distinctly true. Descartes imagined the possibility of a mischievous

demon, who disordered reality in order to deceive humans; anything was possible if he could not

prove that it wasn’t the case. Russell acknowledges his debt to Descartes in his second chapter when

he makes explicit use of Cartesian philosophy to support the idea that “subjective things are the

most certain.” Russell’s first chapter uses radical doubt to separate reality from illusory appearance, a

distinction not motivated by a demon, but by the suggestion that reality is simply ordered in a way

that is not immediately present to our senses.

Russell takes issue with the authority of common sense by showing that the appearances of the table

are numerous and contradictory and cannot be said to suffice as a description of one reality.

Confusion about the table’s color, texture, and shape, are sufficient to prompt doubt as to whether

or not the table exists at all. Belief in the table remains dubious until Russell creates a distinction

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between the table and sense-data representing the table. Engaging Russell’s language allows us to

separate our experience of the table, which becomes confusing, from an idea of a real table removed

from our perception.

At the end of chapter 1, Russell writes, “Philosophy, if it cannot answer so many questions as we

could wish, has at least the power of asking questions which increase the interest of the world, and

show the strangeness and wonder lying just below the surface even in the commonest things of daily

life.” This philosophic capacity to ask questions finds thematic expression throughout the work.

Here, the sudden way that reflective questioning can contradict our ordinary view of the world

makes clear the necessity of Russell’s project. He identifies a need for a theory of knowledge that

will reconcile what appears to be from what really is. Russell also appeals to an urge to practice

knowledge responsibly, that in order to make statements or hold beliefs about knowledge, we must

be able to substantiate that our knowledge is faithful to reality.

Russell’s sense-data terminology endures as a helpful reference throughout the work and also as a

touchstone of modern philosophy. His table is the illustrative case of sense-data, famous from this

popular work, and used as a staple of contemporary philosophical discussion. Among the

philosophers who have responded to it in their own works, Hilary Putnam notably identifies

Russell’s table in his most recent work The Threefold Cord. Putnam discusses the notion of sense-data

as a mistaken conceptualization of reality, which Russell developed as a result of the limitations of

his scientific age. The mistake does not necessarily rest on an issue of perspective, because the table

still might be one color, just affected by a force of nature not identified, not taken into account; if it

were, then the table’s color would be constant, and still independent of the observer.