On Russell's Phenomenological Constructionism Carl G. Hempel The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 63, No. 21, American Philosophical Association Eastern Division Sixty-Third Annual Meeting. (Nov. 10, 1966), pp. 668-670. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-362X%2819661110%2963%3A21%3C668%3AORPC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 The Journal of Philosophy is currently published by Journal of Philosophy, Inc..
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T H E JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
668
ON RUSSELL'S PHENOMENOLOGICAL CONSTRUCTIONISM "
N his examination of Russell's ontological development, Professor Quine comments briefly on Russell's project of constructing the external world out of sense data by means of the logical methods that had been so brilliantly employed in Prilzcipia Mathernatica to construct mathematics from a small array of logical and set-theoretical concepts and principles. Quine sees no hope for a realization of Russell's bold reductionist vision, and he suggests that the worst obstacle can be located by reference to Carnap's Der logische Aufbau der W e l t (1928), namely, at the stage where colors and other qualities are ascribed to physical space-time points; for the ascription is effected in a manner that allows for revision in the light of later experience and, hence, cannot be reduced to definition. This last inference, however, does not seem compelling. Suppose that colors were assigned to space points in the manner of this definition :
I
Point x is blue if and only if all phenomenal aspects of x are blue. Ascription of blueness to a point would then always remain ope11 to revision, and yet it would be definitionally reduced to phenomenalistic terms. Carnap's procedure is more complex than the one just considered; but the differences between the two do not, as far as I can see, affect the point at issue. Yet, serious difficulties do arise for the constructionist program precisely at the stage indicated by Quine. For colors and other qualitative and quantitative characteristics of locations or of physical bodies will have to be construed, broadly speaking, as dispositional tendencies of certain kinds of sense data to occur under suitable conditions of observation; and it seems quite clear that the concept of disposition, which is closely linked to the concepts of law and of nomic connection, cannot be expressed within the extensional framework of logic and set theory. Russell's own constructional sketches rely explicitly on laws and nomic connections to select "from a world of helter-skelter sense-data" l those subclasses whose elements are to count as as* Abstract of an APA symposium paper, commenting on W. V. Quine, Ontological Development,))this JOURNAL, 63, 2 1 (Nov. 11, 1966) :
"Russell's 657-667. 1
Our Knowledge of the External World (New Pork: Norton, 1929),
p. 114.
8Y1WPOSIU1lil: PHILOSOPHY OF BERTRAND RUXSELL 669
pects of, and to provide a constructional definition for, individual physical things. Russell proposes to base the selection on requirements of continuity and of conformity with physical laws, and he defines physical things as "those series of aspects which obey the laws of physics" (117). He uses essentially the same idea again in supplementing the class of actually observed aspects of a physical thing by what he calls "ideal appearances" of it, i.e., aspects that would be, or would have been, observed but for the lack of a suitably located observer. I n this reliancz on physical laws, however, Russell could be assumed to limit himself to the laws provided by some specified physical theory (for example, contelllporary physical theory). thus eschewiiig reference to the general concepts of law, nomic connection, and disposition. But still, any specific law invoked in a Russellian construction mould be formulated in terms of characteristics of physical things, not in terms of aspects or sense data. Hence, the application of such laws to aspects can at best be only indirect and will presuppose a clarification of the relationship between the physical characteristics of things oil one hand and aspects or appearances on the other. And here, the difficulty of accounting for dispositions and nomic connections arises again. One consideration that made the constructiollist program seein so attractive-and even philosophically imperative-to Russell was his idea that all statements about the physical world are verified by the occurrence of appropriate sense data, and that therefore, in so far as physics is verifiable at all, it should be construable in terms of actual sense data alone, rather than in terms of inferred or postulated en ti tie^.^ But a theory is stronger than the class of all actual and potential observational data that conform to i t ; and, in a somewhat similar sense, the concepts of a theory may be said to be stronger than those serving to describe the relevant observational evidence. For, first, the "meaning" of a theoretical term depends not only on the observational criteria for its application, but also on the theoretical principles in which it functions. Second, while there seems to be no clear instance of a definition for a theoretical tern1 by means of observational or phenonzennlistic terms, there are at least some plausible examples of definitions that go in the opposite direction, as witness the characterization of colors (as observable physical characteristics) in terms of the emission or reflection of light whose frequency falls -within certaiu 2 See, f o r example, op. cit., p. Physics," in Russell's Mysticis?rb 1953), especially pp. 148-151.
86, and "The Relation of Sense-data to and L o g i c (Baltimore: Penguin Boolis,
THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY
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intervals, or the definition of such terms as 'water' or 'copper' by means of theoretical expressions referring to molecular or atomic structures. But these examples, and others that could be added, all stay within the realm of physics; for the observational terms they define stand for public physical characteristics. A phenomenalistic construction of the physical world, however, would require general statements of biconditional form connecting a physical term with an expression containing phenomenalistic terms only; and currently available theories seem to offer no plausible examples of any such bridge statements. There does indeed appear to be no hope for the realizability of Russell's pro,*ram. CARLG. HEMPEL P R I N C ~ TCNIVERSITY ON
RUSSELL AND PHILOSOPHY
*
USSELL has said so many different things and is so close to most of the major trends in twentieth-century AngloAmerican philosophy, that I have chosen to speculate on the whole scene and discuss merely one technical point (on classes and ontic commitments). Elsewhere l I have written about Russell's logic and shall not repeat myself. From about 1898 on, Russell joined G. E . Moore i n a revolt against Bradley: refuting idealism and defending common sense. For both, time is real, physical objects are real, Platonic ideas are real. A preoccupation with foundations of mathematics led Russell to his theory of descriptions and to a claim that not only descriptions but also classes and relations can be handled by incomplete symbols eliminable in contexts. The belief that classes can be had at no extra expense undoubtedly lent plausibility to the principle of extensive abstraction which Russell credited to, and shared with, Whitehead. Following this principle, a physical object is, for example, said to be a class of classes of events. Concurrently with these more specific proposals, Russell and Wittgenstein were said to have founded logical atomism, although there ' are significant differences between their TTiews. The logical positivists were strongly under the influence of Mach, Russell, and the Tractatus. A deceptively simple picture of human knowledge emerged. Only very gradually did it become
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" Abstract of an APA symposium paper' commenting on W. V. Quine, ' ' Russell's Ontological Derelopment, ' ' this JOURNAL, 63, 2 1 (NOT.1 0, 1966) : 657-667. 1 lLRussell and His
Logic," Ratio, 7,
1 (June 1965) : 1-34.
