{"id":10939,"date":"2011-02-11T13:43:02","date_gmt":"2011-02-11T13:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/02\/11\/a-bad-argument-of-russell-against-mental-acts\/"},"modified":"2011-02-11T13:43:02","modified_gmt":"2011-02-11T13:43:02","slug":"a-bad-argument-of-russell-against-mental-acts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/02\/11\/a-bad-argument-of-russell-against-mental-acts\/","title":{"rendered":"An Argument of Russell Against Mental Acts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bertrand Russell's (1872-1970) The Analysis of Mind<\/em> first appeared in 1921.  Lecture I contains a discussion of Brentano, Meinong, and mental acts.  He quotes the famous Brentano passage<\/a> from the 1874 Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint<\/em>, and then confesses that until very lately he believed "that mental phenomena have essential reference to objects . . .'" but that he no longer believes this. (p. 5)  One of Russell's arguments against acts is contained in the following passage:<\/span><\/p>\n

. . . the act<\/em> seems unnecessary and fictious. [. . .] Empirically, I cannot discover anything corresponding to the supposed act; and theoretically I cannot see that that it is indispensable.  We say: "I think so-and-so," and this word "I" suggests that thinking is the act of a person.  Meinong's "act" is the ghost of the subject, or what once was the full-blooded soul.  It is supposed that thoughts cannot just come and go, but need a person to think them. (p. 6)<\/span><\/p>\n

Russell is making three claims.  The first is phenomenological: acts are not given to introspection.  The second is <\/span>dialectical:  there are no arguments or considerations that make plausible the positing of acts.  The third is genetic:  the reason some believe that there are acts is because they have been bamboozled by the surface grammar of sentences like 'I want a unicorn' or 'I see at tree' into the view that when thinking takes place there is an agent who performs an act upon an object. <\/span><\/p>\n

The Phenomenology of the Situation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

What is involved in the awareness of the lamp on my desk?  Phenomenologically, as it seems to me, there is awareness of (i) the lamp and of (ii) being aware of the lamp.  At a bare minimum, then,  we need to distinguish between the object of awareness and the awareness of the object.  Both items are phenomenologically accessible.  There is straightforward awareness of the lamp if it is seen or imagined or remembered, whereas the awareness of the lamp is given to introspection.  Of course, the awareness does not appear alongside the lamp as a separate object.  Being aware of the awareness of a lamp is not like being aware of a lamp being next to a clock.  And yet, phenomenologically, there is awareness of the lamp and awareness of the awareness of the lamp. Notice that I didn't smuggle in any ego or subject of awareness in my description.  So far, then, we are on solid phenomenological ground: there are objects of awareness, there is awareness of objects, and there is awareness that the two are different.  This is the phenomenological bare minimum.<\/span><\/p>\n

But of course this does not show that there are mental acts.  For the bit of phenomenology that I have just done is consistent with the subjectlessness of awareness. If awareness is subjectless, as Sartre et al. have maintained against Husserl et al., then it cannot be articulated into individual acts of awareness  unless some individuating\/differentiating factor can be specified.  But there seems to be no phenomenological evidence of such a factor. <\/span><\/p>\n

Well, let's see.  There is awareness of the lamp; there is awareness of the clock; there is awareness of the books piled up on the desk, etc.  But awareness appears 'diaphanous,' to borrow a word from G. E. Moore's 1903 "The Refutation of Idealism."  The diaphanousness of awareness is a phenomenological feature of it.  This being so, there is no phenomenological evidence of any act-articulation on the side of awareness.  All the articulation and differentiation appear on the side of the object.  But aren't there differences among seeing a lamp, imagining a lamp, and remembering a lamp?  No doubt, but why must they be act-differences?  It is consistent with the phenomenology of the situation that these differences too fall on the side of the object.  Instead of saying that there are acts of imagination and acts of memory, one could say that there are imaginal objects and memorative objects.<\/span><\/p>\n

The point, then, is that phenomenology alone cannot justify the positing of mental acts. So Russell does have a point with respect to his first claim.   Phenomenology needs dialectical supplementation.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Dialectics of the Situation<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Being aware of a centaur and being aware of a mermaid are of course different.  This difference is phenomenologically evident.  But what differentiates them if there are no mental acts?  Not the objects, since they don't exist, and not the awarenesses since they are one and not two on the assumption that there are no mental acts.  And if there are no mental acts, then there are no subjects of mental acts.  And yet there must be something that accounts for the difference between awareness of a centaur and awareness of a unicorn.  The denier of acts seems at this point forced to embrace a Meinongian theory of beingless items.  He could say that the centaur-awareness and the mermaid-awareness are numerically different in virtue of the fact that a centaur and a mermaid are distinct denizens of Meinong's realm of Aussersein<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

To this I respond that there are no beingless items.  The realm of Aussersein<\/em> is empty.  (The arguments cannot be trotted out here.)  Hence there is no Meinongian way out.  I conclude that we are justified in positing mental acts to account for the difference.  I gave this argument already in more detail in my recent reconstruction<\/a>  of an argument from Laird Addis for mental acts.<\/span><\/p>\n

I conclude that Russell is wrong in his second claim.  If the argument I gave is sound, then acts are theoretically indispensable.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Russell's Genetic Claim<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

This is fairly weak inasmuch as Russell seems not to appreciate the distinction between a mental act and a mental action.<\/a>  An action is the action of an agent  who performs the action.  But a mental act is merely an occurrent episode of intentional awareness.  As such, it needn't be anchored in a substantial self.  One could reject substance ontologies as Bergmann does while admitting mental acts.  There is nothing in the notion of a mental act that requires that the subject of the act be a substance that exists self-same over time.  <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bertrand Russell's (1872-1970) The Analysis of Mind first appeared in 1921.  Lecture I contains a discussion of Brentano, Meinong, and mental acts.  He quotes the famous Brentano passage from the 1874 Psychology From an Empirical Standpoint, and then confesses that until very lately he believed "that mental phenomena have essential reference to objects . . .'" but … Continue reading “An Argument of Russell Against Mental Acts”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[100,54,124],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10939","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-intentionality","category-mind","category-russell"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10939"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10939\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10939"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10939"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10939"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}