[43] This view has been
recently
advocated by Miss E.
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays by Bertrand Russell
Such reference is involved in
any mention of past, present, and future (as opposed to definite
dates), or of here and there, or of what others have told us. Thus it
would seem that, in some way or other, a description known to be
applicable to a particular must involve some reference to a particular
with which we are acquainted, if our knowledge about the thing
described is not to be merely what follows logically from the
description. For example, "the most long-lived of men" is a
description which must apply to some man, but we can make no judgments
concerning this man which involve knowledge about him beyond what the
description gives. If, however, we say, "the first Chancellor of the
German Empire was an astute diplomatist," we can only be assured of
the truth of our judgment in virtue of something with which we are
acquainted--usually a testimony heard or read. Considered
psychologically, apart from the information we convey to others, apart
from the fact about the actual Bismarck, which gives importance to
our judgment, the thought we really have contains the one or more
particulars involved, and otherwise consists wholly of concepts. All
names of places--London, England, Europe, the earth, the Solar
System--similarly involve, when used, descriptions which start from
some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect
that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a
connection with particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are
concerned not merely with what does exist, but with whatever might or
could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved.
It would seem that, when we make a statement about something only
known by description, we often _intend_ to make our statement, not in
the form involving the description, but about the actual thing
described. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we
should like, if we could, to make the judgment which Bismarck alone
can make, namely, the judgment of which he himself is a constituent.
In this we are necessarily defeated, since the actual Bismarck is
unknown to us. But we know that there is an object B called Bismarck,
and that B was an astute diplomatist. We can thus _describe_ the
proposition we should like to affirm, namely, "B was an astute
diplomatist," where B is the object which was Bismarck. What enables
us to communicate in spite of the varying descriptions we employ is
that we know there is a true proposition concerning the actual
Bismarck, and that, however we may vary the description (so long as
the description is correct), the proposition described is still the
same. This proposition, which is described and is known to be true, is
what interests us; but we are not acquainted with the proposition
itself, and do not know _it_, though we know it is true.
It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from
acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew
him, Bismarck to those who only know of him through history, the man
with the iron mask, the longest-lived of men. These are progressively
further removed from acquaintance with particulars, and there is a
similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like
many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in
the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by
description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is
known by acquaintance.
The fundamental epistemological principle in the analysis of
propositions containing descriptions is this: _Every proposition which
we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which
we are acquainted. _ From what has been said already, it will be plain
why I advocate this principle, and how I propose to meet the case of
propositions which at first sight contravene it. Let us begin with the
reasons for supposing the principle true.
The chief reason for supposing the principle true is that it seems
scarcely possible to believe that we can make a judgment or entertain
a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or
supposing about. If we make a judgment about (say) Julius Caesar, it is
plain that the actual person who was Julius Caesar is not a constituent
of the judgment. But before going further, it may be well to explain
what I mean when I say that this or that is a constituent of a
judgment, or of a proposition which we understand. To begin with
judgments: a judgment, as an occurrence, I take to be a relation of a
mind to several entities, namely, the entities which compose what is
judged. If, e. g. I judge that A loves B, the judgment as an event
consists in the existence, at a certain moment, of a specific
four-term relation, called _judging_, between me and A and love and B.
That is to say, at the time when I judge, there is a certain complex
whose terms are myself and A and love and B, and whose relating
relation is _judging_. My reasons for this view have been set forth
elsewhere,[41] and I shall not repeat them here. Assuming this view of
judgment, the constituents of the judgment are simply the constituents
of the complex which is the judgment. Thus, in the above case, the
constituents are myself and A and love and B and judging. But myself
and judging are constituents shared by all my judgments; thus the
_distinctive_ constituents of the particular judgment in question are
A and love and B. Coming now to what is meant by "understanding a
proposition," I should say that there is another relation possible
between me and A and love and B, which is called my _supposing_ that A
loves B. [42] When we can _suppose_ that A loves B, we "understand the
proposition" _A loves B_. Thus we often understand a proposition in
cases where we have not enough knowledge to make a judgment.
Supposing, like judging, is a many-term relation, of which a mind is
one term. The other terms of the relation are called the constituents
of the proposition supposed. Thus the principle which I enunciated may
be re-stated as follows: _Whenever a relation of supposing or judging
occurs, the terms to which the supposing or judging mind is related by
the relation of supposing or judging must be terms with which the mind
in question is acquainted. _ This is merely to say that we cannot make
a judgment or a supposition without knowing what it is that we are
making our judgment or supposition about. It seems to me that the
truth of this principle is evident as soon as the principle is
understood; I shall, therefore, in what follows, assume the principle,
and use it as a guide in analysing judgments that contain
descriptions.
Returning now to Julius Caesar, I assume that it will be admitted that
he himself is not a constituent of any judgment which I can make. But
at this point it is necessary to examine the view that judgments are
composed of something called "ideas," and that it is the "idea" of
Julius Caesar that is a constituent of my judgment. I believe the
plausibility of this view rests upon a failure to form a right theory
of descriptions. We may mean by my "idea" of Julius Caesar the things
that I know about him, e. g. that he conquered Gaul, was assassinated
on the Ides of March, and is a plague to schoolboys. Now I am
admitting, and indeed contending, that in order to discover what is
actually in my mind when I judge about Julius Caesar, we must
substitute for the proper name a description made up of some of the
things I know about him. (A description which will often serve to
express my thought is "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_. " For
whatever else I may have forgotten about him, it is plain that when I
mention him I have not forgotten that that was his name. ) But although
I think the theory that judgments consist of ideas may have been
suggested in some such way, yet I think the theory itself is
fundamentally mistaken. The view seems to be that there is some
mental existent which may be called the "idea" of something outside
the mind of the person who has the idea, and that, since judgment is a
mental event, its constituents must be constituents of the mind of the
person judging. But in this view ideas become a veil between us and
outside things--we never really, in knowledge, attain to the things we
are supposed to be knowing about, but only to the ideas of those
things. The relation of mind, idea, and object, on this view, is
utterly obscure, and, so far as I can see, nothing discoverable by
inspection warrants the intrusion of the idea between the mind and the
object. I suspect that the view is fostered by the dislike of
relations, and that it is felt the mind could not know objects unless
there were something "in" the mind which could be called the state of
knowing the object. Such a view, however, leads at once to a vicious
endless regress, since the relation of idea to object will have to be
explained by supposing that the idea itself has an idea of the object,
and so on _ad infinitum_. I therefore see no reason to believe that,
when we are acquainted with an object, there is in us something which
can be called the "idea" of the object. On the contrary, I hold that
acquaintance is wholly a relation, not demanding any such constituent
of the mind as is supposed by advocates of "ideas. " This is, of
course, a large question, and one which would take us far from our
subject if it were adequately discussed. I therefore content myself
with the above indications, and with the corollary that, in judging,
the actual objects concerning which we judge, rather than any supposed
purely mental entities, are constituents of the complex which is the
judgment.
When, therefore, I say that we must substitute for "Julius Caesar" some
description of Julius Caesar, in order to discover the meaning of a
judgment nominally about him, I am not saying that we must substitute
an idea. Suppose our description is "the man whose name was _Julius
Caesar_. " Let our judgment be "Julius Caesar was assassinated. " Then it
becomes "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_ was assassinated. " Here
_Julius Caesar_ is a noise or shape with which we are acquainted, and
all the other constituents of the judgment (neglecting the tense in
"was") are _concepts_ with which we are acquainted. Thus our judgment
is wholly reduced to constituents with which we are acquainted, but
Julius Caesar himself has ceased to be a constituent of our judgment.
This, however, requires a proviso, to be further explained shortly,
namely that "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_" must not, as a
whole, be a constituent of our judgment, that is to say, this phrase
must not, as a whole, have a meaning which enters into the judgment.
Any right analysis of the judgment, therefore, must break up this
phrase, and not treat it as a subordinate complex which is part of the
judgment. The judgment "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_ was
assassinated" may be interpreted as meaning "one and only one man was
called _Julius Caesar_, and that one was assassinated. " Here it is
plain that there is no constituent corresponding to the phrase "the
man whose name was _Julius Caesar_. " Thus there is no reason to regard
this phrase as expressing a constituent of the judgment, and we have
seen that this phrase must be broken up if we are to be acquainted
with all the constituents of the judgment. This conclusion, which we
have reached from considerations concerned with the theory of
knowledge, is also forced upon us by logical considerations, which
must now be briefly reviewed.
It is common to distinguish two aspects, _meaning_ and _denotation_,
such phrases as "the author of Waverley. " The meaning will be a
certain complex, consisting (at least) of authorship and Waverley with
some relation; the denotation will be Scott. Similarly "featherless
bipeds" will have a complex meaning, containing as constituents the
presence of two feet and the absence of feathers, while its denotation
will be the class of men. Thus when we say "Scott is the author of
Waverley" or "men are the same as featherless bipeds," we are
asserting an identity of denotation, and this assertion is worth
making because of the diversity of meaning. [43] I believe that the
duality of meaning and denotation, though capable of a true
interpretation, is misleading if taken as fundamental. The denotation,
I believe, is not a constituent of the proposition, except in the case
of proper names, i. e. of words which do not assign a property to an
object, but merely and solely name it. And I should hold further that,
in this sense, there are only two words which are strictly proper
names of particulars, namely, "I" and "this. "[44]
One reason for not believing the denotation to be a constituent of the
proposition is that we may know the proposition even when we are not
acquainted with the denotation. The proposition "the author of
Waverley is a novelist" was known to people who did not know that "the
author of Waverley" denoted Scott. This reason has been already
sufficiently emphasised.
A second reason is that propositions concerning "the so-and-so" are
possible even when "the so-and-so" has no denotation. Take, e. g. "the
golden mountain does not exist" or "the round square is
self-contradictory. " If we are to preserve the duality of meaning and
denotation, we have to say, with Meinong, that there are such objects
as the golden mountain and the round square, although these objects do
not have being. We even have to admit that the existent round square
is existent, but does not exist. [45] Meinong does not regard this as a
contradiction, but I fail to see that it is not one. Indeed, it seems
to me evident that the judgment "there is no such object as the round
square" does not presuppose that there is such an object. If this is
admitted, however, we are led to the conclusion that, by parity of
form, no judgment concerning "the so-and-so" actually involves the
so-and-so as a constituent.
Miss Jones[46] contends that there is no difficulty in admitting
contradictory predicates concerning such an object as "the present
King of France," on the ground that this object is in itself
contradictory. Now it might, of course, be argued that this object,
unlike the round square, is not self-contradictory, but merely
non-existent. This, however, would not go to the root of the matter.
The real objection to such an argument is that the law of
contradiction ought not to be stated in the traditional form "A is not
both B and not B," but in the form "no proposition is both true and
false. " The traditional form only applies to certain propositions,
namely, to those which attribute a predicate to a subject. When the
law is stated of propositions, instead of being stated concerning
subjects and predicates, it is at once evident that propositions about
the present King of France or the round square can form no exception,
but are just as incapable of being both true and false as other
propositions. Miss Jones[47] argues that "Scott is the author of
Waverley" asserts identity of denotation between _Scott_ and _the
author of Waverley_. But there is some difficulty in choosing among
alternative meanings of this contention. In the first place, it should
be observed that _the author of Waverley_ is not a _mere_ name, like
_Scott_. _Scott_ is merely a noise or shape conventionally used to
designate a certain person; it gives us no information about that
person, and has nothing that can be called meaning as opposed to
denotation. (I neglect the fact, considered above, that even proper
names, as a rule, really stand for descriptions. ) But _the author of
Waverley_ is not merely conventionally a name for Scott; the element
of mere convention belongs here to the separate words, _the_ and
_author_ and _of_ and _Waverley_. Given what these words stand for,
_the author of Waverley_ is no longer arbitrary. When it is said that
Scott is the author of Waverley, we are not stating that these are two
_names_ for one man, as we should be if we said "Scott is Sir Walter. "
A man's name is what he is called, but however much Scott had been
called the author of Waverley, that would not have made him be the
author; it was necessary for him actually to write Waverley, which was
a fact having nothing to do with names.
If, then, we are asserting identity of denotation, we must not mean by
_denotation_ the mere relation of a name to the thing named. In fact,
it would be nearer to the truth to say that the _meaning_ of "Scott"
is the _denotation_ of "the author of Waverley. " The relation of
"Scott" to Scott is that "Scott" means Scott, just as the relation of
"author" to the concept which is so called is that "author" means this
concept. Thus if we distinguish meaning and denotation in "the author
of Waverley," we shall have to say that "Scott" has meaning but not
denotation. Also when we say "Scott is the author of Waverley," the
_meaning_ of "the author of Waverley" is relevant to our assertion.
For if the denotation alone were relevant, any other phrase with the
same denotation would give the same proposition. Thus "Scott is the
author of Marmion" would be the same proposition as "Scott is the
author of Waverley. " But this is plainly not the case, since from the
first we learn that Scott wrote Marmion and from the second we learn
that he wrote Waverley, but the first tells us nothing about Waverley
and the second nothing about Marmion. Hence the meaning of "the author
of Waverley," as opposed to the denotation, is certainly relevant to
"Scott is the author of Waverley. "
We have thus agreed that "the author of Waverley" is not a mere name,
and that its meaning is relevant in propositions in which it occurs.
Thus if we are to say, as Miss Jones does, that "Scott is the author
of Waverley" asserts an identity of denotation, we must regard the
denotation of "the author of Waverley" as the denotation of what is
_meant_ by "the author of Waverley. " Let us call the meaning of "the
author of Waverley" M. Thus M is what "the author of Waverley" means.
Then we are to suppose that "Scott is the author of Waverley" means
"Scott is the denotation of M. " But here we are explaining our
proposition by another of the same form, and thus we have made no
progress towards a real explanation. "The denotation of M," like "the
author of Waverley," has both meaning and denotation, on the theory we
are examining. If we call its meaning M', our proposition becomes
"Scott is the denotation of M'. " But this leads at once to an endless
regress. Thus the attempt to regard our proposition as asserting
identity of denotation breaks down, and it becomes imperative to find
some other analysis. When this analysis has been completed, we shall
be able to reinterpret the phrase "identity of denotation," which
remains obscure so long as it is taken as fundamental.
The first point to observe is that, in any proposition about "the
author of Waverley," provided Scott is not explicitly mentioned, the
denotation itself, i. e. Scott, does not occur, but only the concept of
denotation, which will be represented by a variable. Suppose we say
"the author of Waverley was the author of Marmion," we are certainly
not saying that both were Scott--we may have forgotten that there was
such a person as Scott. We are saying that there is some man who was
the author of Waverley and the author of Marmion. That is to say,
there is some one who wrote Waverley and Marmion, and no one else
wrote them. Thus the identity is that of a variable, i. e. of an
indefinite subject, "some one. " This is why we can understand
propositions about "the author of Waverley," without knowing who he
was. When we say "the author of Waverley was a poet," we mean "one and
only one man wrote Waverley, and he was a poet"; when we say "the
author of Waverley was Scott" we mean "one and only one man wrote
Waverley, and he was Scott. " Here the identity is between a variable,
i. e. an indeterminate subject ("he"), and Scott; "the author of
Waverley" has been analysed away, and no longer appears as a
constituent of the proposition. [48]
The reason why it is imperative to analyse away the phrase "the author
of Waverley" may be stated as follows. It is plain that when we say
"the author of Waverley is the author of Marmion," the _is_ expresses
identity. We have seen also that the common _denotation_, namely
Scott, is not a constituent of this proposition, while the _meanings_
(if any) of "the author of Waverley" and "the author of Marmion" are
not identical. We have seen also that, in any sense in which the
meaning of a word is a constituent of a proposition in whose verbal
expression the word occurs, "Scott" means the actual man Scott, in the
same sense (so far as concerns our present discussion) in which
"author" means a certain universal. Thus, if "the author of Waverley"
were a subordinate complex in the above proposition, its _meaning_
would have to be what was said to be identical with the _meaning_ of
"the author of Marmion. " This is plainly not the case; and the only
escape is to say that "the author of Waverley" does not, by itself,
have a meaning, though phrases of which it is part do have a meaning.
That is, in a right analysis of the above proposition, "the author of
Waverley" must disappear. This is effected when the above proposition
is analysed as meaning: "Some one wrote Waverley and no one else did,
and that some one also wrote Marmion and no one else did. " This may be
more simply expressed by saying that the propositional function "_x_
wrote Waverley and Marmion, and no one else did" is capable of truth,
i. e. some value of _x_ makes it true, but no other value does. Thus
the true subject of our judgment is a propositional function, i. e. a
complex containing an undetermined constituent, and becoming a
proposition as soon as this constituent is determined.
We may now define the denotation of a phrase. If we know that the
proposition "_a_ is the so-and-so" is true, i. e. that _a_ is so-and-so
and nothing else is, we call _a_ the denotation of the phrase "the
so-and-so. " A very great many of the propositions we naturally make
about "the so-and-so" will remain true or remain false if we
substitute _a_ for "the so-and-so," where _a_ is the denotation of
"the so-and-so. " Such propositions will also remain true or remain
false if we substitute for "the so-and-so" any other phrase having the
same denotation. Hence, as practical men, we become interested in the
denotation more than in the description, since the denotation decides
as to the truth or falsehood of so many statements in which the
description occurs. Moreover, as we saw earlier in considering the
relations of description and acquaintance, we often wish to reach the
denotation, and are only hindered by lack of acquaintance: in such
cases the description is merely the means we employ to get as near as
possible to the denotation. Hence it naturally comes to be supposed
that the denotation is part of the proposition in which the
description occurs. But we have seen, both on logical and on
epistemological grounds, that this is an error. The actual object (if
any) which is the denotation is not (unless it is explicitly
mentioned) a constituent of propositions in which descriptions occur;
and this is the reason why, in order to understand such propositions,
we need acquaintance with the constituents of the description, but do
not need acquaintance with its denotation. The first result of
analysis, when applied to propositions whose grammatical subject is
"the so-and-so," is to substitute a variable as subject; i. e. we
obtain a proposition of the form: "There is _something_ which alone is
so-and-so, and that _something_ is such-and-such. " The further
analysis of propositions concerning "the so-and-so" is thus merged in
the problem of the nature of the variable, i. e. of the meanings of
_some_, _any_, and _all_. This is a difficult problem, concerning
which I do not intend to say anything at present.
To sum up our whole discussion. We began by distinguishing two sorts
of knowledge of objects, namely, knowledge by _acquaintance_ and
knowledge by _description_. Of these it is only the former that brings
the object itself before the mind. We have acquaintance with
sense-data, with many universals, and possibly with ourselves, but not
with physical objects or other minds. We have _descriptive_ knowledge
of an object when we know that it is _the_ object having some property
or properties with which we are acquainted; that is to say, when we
know that the property or properties in question belong to one object
and no more, we are said to have knowledge of that one object by
description, whether or not we are acquainted with the object. Our
knowledge of physical objects and of other minds is only knowledge by
description, the descriptions involved being usually such as involve
sense-data. All propositions intelligible to us, whether or not they
primarily concern things only known to us by description, are composed
wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted, for a constituent
with which we are not acquainted is unintelligible to us. A judgment,
we found, is not composed of mental constituents called "ideas," but
consists of an occurrence whose constituents are a mind[49] and
certain objects, particulars or universals. (One at least must be a
universal. ) When a judgment is rightly analysed, the objects which are
constituents of it must all be objects with which the mind which is a
constituent of it is acquainted. This conclusion forces us to analyse
descriptive phrases occurring in propositions, and to say that the
objects denoted by such phrases are not constituents of judgments in
which such phrases occur (unless these objects are explicitly
mentioned). This leads us to the view (recommended also on purely
logical grounds) that when we say "the author of Marmion was the
author of Waverley," Scott himself is not a constituent of our
judgment, and that the judgment cannot be explained by saying that it
affirms identity of denotation with diversity of meaning. It also,
plainly, does not assert identity of meaning. Such judgments,
therefore, can only be analysed by breaking up the descriptive
phrases, introducing a variable, and making propositional functions
the ultimate subjects. In fact, "the so-and-so is such-and-such" will
mean that "_x_ is so-and-so and nothing else is, and _x_ is
such-and-such" is capable of truth. The analysis of such judgments
involves many fresh problems, but the discussion of these problems is
not undertaken in the present paper.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] See references later.
[41] _Philosophical Essays_, "The Nature of Truth. " I have been
persuaded by Mr. Wittgenstein that this theory is somewhat unduly
simple, but the modification which I believe it to require does not
affect the above argument [1917].
[42] Cf. Meinong, _Ueber Annahmen_, _passim_. I formerly supposed,
contrary to Meinong's view, that the relationship of supposing might
be merely that of presentation. In this view I now think I was
mistaken, and Meinong is right. But my present view depends upon the
theory that both in judgment and in assumption there is no single
Objective, but the several constituents of the judgment or assumption
are in a many-term relation to the mind.
[43] This view has been recently advocated by Miss E. E. C. Jones. "A
New Law of Thought and its Implications," _Mind_, January, 1911.
[44] I should now exclude "I" from proper names in the strict sense,
and retain only "this" [1917].
[45] Meinong, _Ueber Annahmen_, 2nd ed. , Leipzig, 1910, p. 141.
[46] _Mind_, July, 1910, p. 380.
[47] _Mind_, July, 1910, p. 379.
[48] The theory which I am advocating is set forth fully, with the
logical grounds in its favour, in _Principia Mathematica_, Vol. I.
Introduction, Chap. III; also, less fully, in _Mind_, October, 1905.
[49] I use this phrase merely to denote the something psychological
which enters into judgment, without intending to prejudge the question
as to what this something is.
INDEX
Achilles and the tortoise, 80 ff, 89 ff
Acquaintance, the relation of, 209 ff
Alexander, 125
American Realists, the, 134
Aristotle, 42, 76, 97
Bacon, 41
Bergson, 14 ff, 22, 105, 128, 185 ff, 203
Berkeley, 97, 132
Blake, 1
Bosanquet, 99
Broad, 89 _n_
Calculus, the, 82
Cantor, Georg, 64, 81 ff, 85, 91
Carlyle, 50, 82
Cause, the conception of, 135 _n_, 180 ff
Christianity and renunciation, 51
Chuang Tz? , 106
Construction of permanent things and matter, 169 ff
Constructions, logical, 155 ff
Darwin, 15, 23, 43
Dedekind, 64, 81 ff, 85
Descartes, 97, 126
Descriptions, 175, 214 ff
Education, 37 ff
Euclid, 62, 92, 94
Evolutionism, 23 ff, 28
Fano, 93
Faraday, 34
Free will, 205 ff
Frege, 78 _n_
Galileo, 42
Gladstone, 177
Good and evil, 26 ff
Hegel, 8, 10, 18, 85, 97, 105 ff
Heine, 113
Heraclitus, 1 ff, 10
Hertz, 34
Holt, 177 _n_
Hume, 1, 97
Infinite, the mathematical, 84 ff
James, William, 100
Jones, Miss E. E. C. , 224 _n_, 225
Judgment, 219 ff
Kant, 85, 96, 97, 99, 118 ff
Knowledge by acquaintance, 209 ff;
by description, 214 ff
Laplace, 23
Leibniz, 76, 79, 82 ff, 97, 126, 144, 160
Locke, 97
Logic, the laws of, 68 ff
Macaulay and Taylor's theorem, 95
Malthus, 43
Mathematics, 58 ff;
and the Metaphysicians, 74 ff;
and logic, 75 ff;
and the infinitesimal, 82 ff
Matter, the nature of, 125 ff;
definition of, 164 ff
Maxwell, 34
Meaning and denotation, 223 ff
Meinong, 174, 220 _n_, 225
Militarism, 50
Mill, 185, 193 ff
Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
Necessity, the notion of, 207 ff
Nietzsche, 22, 50
Nunn, 125, 137 _n_, 153
Parmenides, 7 ff, 18, 21
Particulars, awareness of, 210 ff
Peano, 78 ff, 93 ff
Perspectives, 139 ff;
the space of, 158 ff
Philosophy and logic, 111
Physics, sense-data and, 145 ff
Pierce, 76 _n_
Plato, 1 ff, 10, 30, 60, 97
Pragmatism, 22, 105
Realism and the analytic method, 120 ff
Reason and intuition, 12 ff
Relatives, the logic of, 76
Robb, 167 _n_
Santayana, 20
Sense-data, 147, 210 ff;
and physics, 145 ff
Sensibilia, 148 ff
Space, 138 ff;
private, 158 ff;
the logical problem, 114 ff;
the problem in physics, 115 ff;
the epistemological problem, 118 ff
Systems, deterministic, 199;
practically isolated, 198;
relatively isolated, 197;
mechanical, 201
Time, 10, 21 ff, 141 ff, 167 ff
Tristram Shandy, the paradox of, 90 ff
Unity and Plurality, 18 ff
Universals, awareness of, 212 ff
Ward, 180
Weierstrass, 80, 82, 95
Whitehead, 117, 157, 175
Wolf, 173
Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
[Illustration]
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
_London: 40 Museum Street, W. C. 1_
_Auckland: 24 Wyndham Street_
_Bombay: 15 Graham Road, Ballard Estate, Bombay 1_
_Calcutta: 17 Chittaranjan Avenue, Calcutta 13_
_Cape Town: 109 Long Street_
_Karachi: Metherson's Estate, Wood Street, Karachi 2_
_New Delhi: 13-14 Ajmeri Gate Extension, New Delhi 1_
_Sao Paulo: Avenida 9 de Julho 1138--Ap. 51_
_Singapore, South East Asia and Far East, 36c, Prinsep Street_
_Sydney, N. S. W. : Bradbury House, 55 York Street_
_Toronto: 91 Wellington Street West_
* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Typographical errors corrected in text: |
| |
| Page 111: charateristic replaced with characteristic |
| Page 71: inexpugnable replaced with inexpungable |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, by
Bertrand Russell
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYSTICISM AND LOGIC ***
***** This file should be named 25447-0. txt or 25447-0. zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www. gutenberg. org/2/5/4/4/25447/
Produced by Jeannie Howse, Adrian Mastronardi and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you! ) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg. org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1. A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1. E. 8.
1. B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1. C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1. E below.
1. C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1. D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1. E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1. E. 1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. org
1. E. 2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1. E. 1
through 1. E. 7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1. E. 8 or
1. E. 9.
1. E. 3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1. E. 4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1. E. 5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1. E. 1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1. E. 6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www. gutenberg. org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1. E. 1.
1. E. 7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9.
1. E. 8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. "
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1. F. 3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1. E. 9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1. F.
1. F. 1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1. F. 2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1. F. 3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1. F. 3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1. F. 4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1. F. 3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1. F. 5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1. F. 6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www. pglaf. org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service.
any mention of past, present, and future (as opposed to definite
dates), or of here and there, or of what others have told us. Thus it
would seem that, in some way or other, a description known to be
applicable to a particular must involve some reference to a particular
with which we are acquainted, if our knowledge about the thing
described is not to be merely what follows logically from the
description. For example, "the most long-lived of men" is a
description which must apply to some man, but we can make no judgments
concerning this man which involve knowledge about him beyond what the
description gives. If, however, we say, "the first Chancellor of the
German Empire was an astute diplomatist," we can only be assured of
the truth of our judgment in virtue of something with which we are
acquainted--usually a testimony heard or read. Considered
psychologically, apart from the information we convey to others, apart
from the fact about the actual Bismarck, which gives importance to
our judgment, the thought we really have contains the one or more
particulars involved, and otherwise consists wholly of concepts. All
names of places--London, England, Europe, the earth, the Solar
System--similarly involve, when used, descriptions which start from
some one or more particulars with which we are acquainted. I suspect
that even the Universe, as considered by metaphysics, involves such a
connection with particulars. In logic, on the contrary, where we are
concerned not merely with what does exist, but with whatever might or
could exist or be, no reference to actual particulars is involved.
It would seem that, when we make a statement about something only
known by description, we often _intend_ to make our statement, not in
the form involving the description, but about the actual thing
described. That is to say, when we say anything about Bismarck, we
should like, if we could, to make the judgment which Bismarck alone
can make, namely, the judgment of which he himself is a constituent.
In this we are necessarily defeated, since the actual Bismarck is
unknown to us. But we know that there is an object B called Bismarck,
and that B was an astute diplomatist. We can thus _describe_ the
proposition we should like to affirm, namely, "B was an astute
diplomatist," where B is the object which was Bismarck. What enables
us to communicate in spite of the varying descriptions we employ is
that we know there is a true proposition concerning the actual
Bismarck, and that, however we may vary the description (so long as
the description is correct), the proposition described is still the
same. This proposition, which is described and is known to be true, is
what interests us; but we are not acquainted with the proposition
itself, and do not know _it_, though we know it is true.
It will be seen that there are various stages in the removal from
acquaintance with particulars: there is Bismarck to people who knew
him, Bismarck to those who only know of him through history, the man
with the iron mask, the longest-lived of men. These are progressively
further removed from acquaintance with particulars, and there is a
similar hierarchy in the region of universals. Many universals, like
many particulars, are only known to us by description. But here, as in
the case of particulars, knowledge concerning what is known by
description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is
known by acquaintance.
The fundamental epistemological principle in the analysis of
propositions containing descriptions is this: _Every proposition which
we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which
we are acquainted. _ From what has been said already, it will be plain
why I advocate this principle, and how I propose to meet the case of
propositions which at first sight contravene it. Let us begin with the
reasons for supposing the principle true.
The chief reason for supposing the principle true is that it seems
scarcely possible to believe that we can make a judgment or entertain
a supposition without knowing what it is that we are judging or
supposing about. If we make a judgment about (say) Julius Caesar, it is
plain that the actual person who was Julius Caesar is not a constituent
of the judgment. But before going further, it may be well to explain
what I mean when I say that this or that is a constituent of a
judgment, or of a proposition which we understand. To begin with
judgments: a judgment, as an occurrence, I take to be a relation of a
mind to several entities, namely, the entities which compose what is
judged. If, e. g. I judge that A loves B, the judgment as an event
consists in the existence, at a certain moment, of a specific
four-term relation, called _judging_, between me and A and love and B.
That is to say, at the time when I judge, there is a certain complex
whose terms are myself and A and love and B, and whose relating
relation is _judging_. My reasons for this view have been set forth
elsewhere,[41] and I shall not repeat them here. Assuming this view of
judgment, the constituents of the judgment are simply the constituents
of the complex which is the judgment. Thus, in the above case, the
constituents are myself and A and love and B and judging. But myself
and judging are constituents shared by all my judgments; thus the
_distinctive_ constituents of the particular judgment in question are
A and love and B. Coming now to what is meant by "understanding a
proposition," I should say that there is another relation possible
between me and A and love and B, which is called my _supposing_ that A
loves B. [42] When we can _suppose_ that A loves B, we "understand the
proposition" _A loves B_. Thus we often understand a proposition in
cases where we have not enough knowledge to make a judgment.
Supposing, like judging, is a many-term relation, of which a mind is
one term. The other terms of the relation are called the constituents
of the proposition supposed. Thus the principle which I enunciated may
be re-stated as follows: _Whenever a relation of supposing or judging
occurs, the terms to which the supposing or judging mind is related by
the relation of supposing or judging must be terms with which the mind
in question is acquainted. _ This is merely to say that we cannot make
a judgment or a supposition without knowing what it is that we are
making our judgment or supposition about. It seems to me that the
truth of this principle is evident as soon as the principle is
understood; I shall, therefore, in what follows, assume the principle,
and use it as a guide in analysing judgments that contain
descriptions.
Returning now to Julius Caesar, I assume that it will be admitted that
he himself is not a constituent of any judgment which I can make. But
at this point it is necessary to examine the view that judgments are
composed of something called "ideas," and that it is the "idea" of
Julius Caesar that is a constituent of my judgment. I believe the
plausibility of this view rests upon a failure to form a right theory
of descriptions. We may mean by my "idea" of Julius Caesar the things
that I know about him, e. g. that he conquered Gaul, was assassinated
on the Ides of March, and is a plague to schoolboys. Now I am
admitting, and indeed contending, that in order to discover what is
actually in my mind when I judge about Julius Caesar, we must
substitute for the proper name a description made up of some of the
things I know about him. (A description which will often serve to
express my thought is "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_. " For
whatever else I may have forgotten about him, it is plain that when I
mention him I have not forgotten that that was his name. ) But although
I think the theory that judgments consist of ideas may have been
suggested in some such way, yet I think the theory itself is
fundamentally mistaken. The view seems to be that there is some
mental existent which may be called the "idea" of something outside
the mind of the person who has the idea, and that, since judgment is a
mental event, its constituents must be constituents of the mind of the
person judging. But in this view ideas become a veil between us and
outside things--we never really, in knowledge, attain to the things we
are supposed to be knowing about, but only to the ideas of those
things. The relation of mind, idea, and object, on this view, is
utterly obscure, and, so far as I can see, nothing discoverable by
inspection warrants the intrusion of the idea between the mind and the
object. I suspect that the view is fostered by the dislike of
relations, and that it is felt the mind could not know objects unless
there were something "in" the mind which could be called the state of
knowing the object. Such a view, however, leads at once to a vicious
endless regress, since the relation of idea to object will have to be
explained by supposing that the idea itself has an idea of the object,
and so on _ad infinitum_. I therefore see no reason to believe that,
when we are acquainted with an object, there is in us something which
can be called the "idea" of the object. On the contrary, I hold that
acquaintance is wholly a relation, not demanding any such constituent
of the mind as is supposed by advocates of "ideas. " This is, of
course, a large question, and one which would take us far from our
subject if it were adequately discussed. I therefore content myself
with the above indications, and with the corollary that, in judging,
the actual objects concerning which we judge, rather than any supposed
purely mental entities, are constituents of the complex which is the
judgment.
When, therefore, I say that we must substitute for "Julius Caesar" some
description of Julius Caesar, in order to discover the meaning of a
judgment nominally about him, I am not saying that we must substitute
an idea. Suppose our description is "the man whose name was _Julius
Caesar_. " Let our judgment be "Julius Caesar was assassinated. " Then it
becomes "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_ was assassinated. " Here
_Julius Caesar_ is a noise or shape with which we are acquainted, and
all the other constituents of the judgment (neglecting the tense in
"was") are _concepts_ with which we are acquainted. Thus our judgment
is wholly reduced to constituents with which we are acquainted, but
Julius Caesar himself has ceased to be a constituent of our judgment.
This, however, requires a proviso, to be further explained shortly,
namely that "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_" must not, as a
whole, be a constituent of our judgment, that is to say, this phrase
must not, as a whole, have a meaning which enters into the judgment.
Any right analysis of the judgment, therefore, must break up this
phrase, and not treat it as a subordinate complex which is part of the
judgment. The judgment "the man whose name was _Julius Caesar_ was
assassinated" may be interpreted as meaning "one and only one man was
called _Julius Caesar_, and that one was assassinated. " Here it is
plain that there is no constituent corresponding to the phrase "the
man whose name was _Julius Caesar_. " Thus there is no reason to regard
this phrase as expressing a constituent of the judgment, and we have
seen that this phrase must be broken up if we are to be acquainted
with all the constituents of the judgment. This conclusion, which we
have reached from considerations concerned with the theory of
knowledge, is also forced upon us by logical considerations, which
must now be briefly reviewed.
It is common to distinguish two aspects, _meaning_ and _denotation_,
such phrases as "the author of Waverley. " The meaning will be a
certain complex, consisting (at least) of authorship and Waverley with
some relation; the denotation will be Scott. Similarly "featherless
bipeds" will have a complex meaning, containing as constituents the
presence of two feet and the absence of feathers, while its denotation
will be the class of men. Thus when we say "Scott is the author of
Waverley" or "men are the same as featherless bipeds," we are
asserting an identity of denotation, and this assertion is worth
making because of the diversity of meaning. [43] I believe that the
duality of meaning and denotation, though capable of a true
interpretation, is misleading if taken as fundamental. The denotation,
I believe, is not a constituent of the proposition, except in the case
of proper names, i. e. of words which do not assign a property to an
object, but merely and solely name it. And I should hold further that,
in this sense, there are only two words which are strictly proper
names of particulars, namely, "I" and "this. "[44]
One reason for not believing the denotation to be a constituent of the
proposition is that we may know the proposition even when we are not
acquainted with the denotation. The proposition "the author of
Waverley is a novelist" was known to people who did not know that "the
author of Waverley" denoted Scott. This reason has been already
sufficiently emphasised.
A second reason is that propositions concerning "the so-and-so" are
possible even when "the so-and-so" has no denotation. Take, e. g. "the
golden mountain does not exist" or "the round square is
self-contradictory. " If we are to preserve the duality of meaning and
denotation, we have to say, with Meinong, that there are such objects
as the golden mountain and the round square, although these objects do
not have being. We even have to admit that the existent round square
is existent, but does not exist. [45] Meinong does not regard this as a
contradiction, but I fail to see that it is not one. Indeed, it seems
to me evident that the judgment "there is no such object as the round
square" does not presuppose that there is such an object. If this is
admitted, however, we are led to the conclusion that, by parity of
form, no judgment concerning "the so-and-so" actually involves the
so-and-so as a constituent.
Miss Jones[46] contends that there is no difficulty in admitting
contradictory predicates concerning such an object as "the present
King of France," on the ground that this object is in itself
contradictory. Now it might, of course, be argued that this object,
unlike the round square, is not self-contradictory, but merely
non-existent. This, however, would not go to the root of the matter.
The real objection to such an argument is that the law of
contradiction ought not to be stated in the traditional form "A is not
both B and not B," but in the form "no proposition is both true and
false. " The traditional form only applies to certain propositions,
namely, to those which attribute a predicate to a subject. When the
law is stated of propositions, instead of being stated concerning
subjects and predicates, it is at once evident that propositions about
the present King of France or the round square can form no exception,
but are just as incapable of being both true and false as other
propositions. Miss Jones[47] argues that "Scott is the author of
Waverley" asserts identity of denotation between _Scott_ and _the
author of Waverley_. But there is some difficulty in choosing among
alternative meanings of this contention. In the first place, it should
be observed that _the author of Waverley_ is not a _mere_ name, like
_Scott_. _Scott_ is merely a noise or shape conventionally used to
designate a certain person; it gives us no information about that
person, and has nothing that can be called meaning as opposed to
denotation. (I neglect the fact, considered above, that even proper
names, as a rule, really stand for descriptions. ) But _the author of
Waverley_ is not merely conventionally a name for Scott; the element
of mere convention belongs here to the separate words, _the_ and
_author_ and _of_ and _Waverley_. Given what these words stand for,
_the author of Waverley_ is no longer arbitrary. When it is said that
Scott is the author of Waverley, we are not stating that these are two
_names_ for one man, as we should be if we said "Scott is Sir Walter. "
A man's name is what he is called, but however much Scott had been
called the author of Waverley, that would not have made him be the
author; it was necessary for him actually to write Waverley, which was
a fact having nothing to do with names.
If, then, we are asserting identity of denotation, we must not mean by
_denotation_ the mere relation of a name to the thing named. In fact,
it would be nearer to the truth to say that the _meaning_ of "Scott"
is the _denotation_ of "the author of Waverley. " The relation of
"Scott" to Scott is that "Scott" means Scott, just as the relation of
"author" to the concept which is so called is that "author" means this
concept. Thus if we distinguish meaning and denotation in "the author
of Waverley," we shall have to say that "Scott" has meaning but not
denotation. Also when we say "Scott is the author of Waverley," the
_meaning_ of "the author of Waverley" is relevant to our assertion.
For if the denotation alone were relevant, any other phrase with the
same denotation would give the same proposition. Thus "Scott is the
author of Marmion" would be the same proposition as "Scott is the
author of Waverley. " But this is plainly not the case, since from the
first we learn that Scott wrote Marmion and from the second we learn
that he wrote Waverley, but the first tells us nothing about Waverley
and the second nothing about Marmion. Hence the meaning of "the author
of Waverley," as opposed to the denotation, is certainly relevant to
"Scott is the author of Waverley. "
We have thus agreed that "the author of Waverley" is not a mere name,
and that its meaning is relevant in propositions in which it occurs.
Thus if we are to say, as Miss Jones does, that "Scott is the author
of Waverley" asserts an identity of denotation, we must regard the
denotation of "the author of Waverley" as the denotation of what is
_meant_ by "the author of Waverley. " Let us call the meaning of "the
author of Waverley" M. Thus M is what "the author of Waverley" means.
Then we are to suppose that "Scott is the author of Waverley" means
"Scott is the denotation of M. " But here we are explaining our
proposition by another of the same form, and thus we have made no
progress towards a real explanation. "The denotation of M," like "the
author of Waverley," has both meaning and denotation, on the theory we
are examining. If we call its meaning M', our proposition becomes
"Scott is the denotation of M'. " But this leads at once to an endless
regress. Thus the attempt to regard our proposition as asserting
identity of denotation breaks down, and it becomes imperative to find
some other analysis. When this analysis has been completed, we shall
be able to reinterpret the phrase "identity of denotation," which
remains obscure so long as it is taken as fundamental.
The first point to observe is that, in any proposition about "the
author of Waverley," provided Scott is not explicitly mentioned, the
denotation itself, i. e. Scott, does not occur, but only the concept of
denotation, which will be represented by a variable. Suppose we say
"the author of Waverley was the author of Marmion," we are certainly
not saying that both were Scott--we may have forgotten that there was
such a person as Scott. We are saying that there is some man who was
the author of Waverley and the author of Marmion. That is to say,
there is some one who wrote Waverley and Marmion, and no one else
wrote them. Thus the identity is that of a variable, i. e. of an
indefinite subject, "some one. " This is why we can understand
propositions about "the author of Waverley," without knowing who he
was. When we say "the author of Waverley was a poet," we mean "one and
only one man wrote Waverley, and he was a poet"; when we say "the
author of Waverley was Scott" we mean "one and only one man wrote
Waverley, and he was Scott. " Here the identity is between a variable,
i. e. an indeterminate subject ("he"), and Scott; "the author of
Waverley" has been analysed away, and no longer appears as a
constituent of the proposition. [48]
The reason why it is imperative to analyse away the phrase "the author
of Waverley" may be stated as follows. It is plain that when we say
"the author of Waverley is the author of Marmion," the _is_ expresses
identity. We have seen also that the common _denotation_, namely
Scott, is not a constituent of this proposition, while the _meanings_
(if any) of "the author of Waverley" and "the author of Marmion" are
not identical. We have seen also that, in any sense in which the
meaning of a word is a constituent of a proposition in whose verbal
expression the word occurs, "Scott" means the actual man Scott, in the
same sense (so far as concerns our present discussion) in which
"author" means a certain universal. Thus, if "the author of Waverley"
were a subordinate complex in the above proposition, its _meaning_
would have to be what was said to be identical with the _meaning_ of
"the author of Marmion. " This is plainly not the case; and the only
escape is to say that "the author of Waverley" does not, by itself,
have a meaning, though phrases of which it is part do have a meaning.
That is, in a right analysis of the above proposition, "the author of
Waverley" must disappear. This is effected when the above proposition
is analysed as meaning: "Some one wrote Waverley and no one else did,
and that some one also wrote Marmion and no one else did. " This may be
more simply expressed by saying that the propositional function "_x_
wrote Waverley and Marmion, and no one else did" is capable of truth,
i. e. some value of _x_ makes it true, but no other value does. Thus
the true subject of our judgment is a propositional function, i. e. a
complex containing an undetermined constituent, and becoming a
proposition as soon as this constituent is determined.
We may now define the denotation of a phrase. If we know that the
proposition "_a_ is the so-and-so" is true, i. e. that _a_ is so-and-so
and nothing else is, we call _a_ the denotation of the phrase "the
so-and-so. " A very great many of the propositions we naturally make
about "the so-and-so" will remain true or remain false if we
substitute _a_ for "the so-and-so," where _a_ is the denotation of
"the so-and-so. " Such propositions will also remain true or remain
false if we substitute for "the so-and-so" any other phrase having the
same denotation. Hence, as practical men, we become interested in the
denotation more than in the description, since the denotation decides
as to the truth or falsehood of so many statements in which the
description occurs. Moreover, as we saw earlier in considering the
relations of description and acquaintance, we often wish to reach the
denotation, and are only hindered by lack of acquaintance: in such
cases the description is merely the means we employ to get as near as
possible to the denotation. Hence it naturally comes to be supposed
that the denotation is part of the proposition in which the
description occurs. But we have seen, both on logical and on
epistemological grounds, that this is an error. The actual object (if
any) which is the denotation is not (unless it is explicitly
mentioned) a constituent of propositions in which descriptions occur;
and this is the reason why, in order to understand such propositions,
we need acquaintance with the constituents of the description, but do
not need acquaintance with its denotation. The first result of
analysis, when applied to propositions whose grammatical subject is
"the so-and-so," is to substitute a variable as subject; i. e. we
obtain a proposition of the form: "There is _something_ which alone is
so-and-so, and that _something_ is such-and-such. " The further
analysis of propositions concerning "the so-and-so" is thus merged in
the problem of the nature of the variable, i. e. of the meanings of
_some_, _any_, and _all_. This is a difficult problem, concerning
which I do not intend to say anything at present.
To sum up our whole discussion. We began by distinguishing two sorts
of knowledge of objects, namely, knowledge by _acquaintance_ and
knowledge by _description_. Of these it is only the former that brings
the object itself before the mind. We have acquaintance with
sense-data, with many universals, and possibly with ourselves, but not
with physical objects or other minds. We have _descriptive_ knowledge
of an object when we know that it is _the_ object having some property
or properties with which we are acquainted; that is to say, when we
know that the property or properties in question belong to one object
and no more, we are said to have knowledge of that one object by
description, whether or not we are acquainted with the object. Our
knowledge of physical objects and of other minds is only knowledge by
description, the descriptions involved being usually such as involve
sense-data. All propositions intelligible to us, whether or not they
primarily concern things only known to us by description, are composed
wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted, for a constituent
with which we are not acquainted is unintelligible to us. A judgment,
we found, is not composed of mental constituents called "ideas," but
consists of an occurrence whose constituents are a mind[49] and
certain objects, particulars or universals. (One at least must be a
universal. ) When a judgment is rightly analysed, the objects which are
constituents of it must all be objects with which the mind which is a
constituent of it is acquainted. This conclusion forces us to analyse
descriptive phrases occurring in propositions, and to say that the
objects denoted by such phrases are not constituents of judgments in
which such phrases occur (unless these objects are explicitly
mentioned). This leads us to the view (recommended also on purely
logical grounds) that when we say "the author of Marmion was the
author of Waverley," Scott himself is not a constituent of our
judgment, and that the judgment cannot be explained by saying that it
affirms identity of denotation with diversity of meaning. It also,
plainly, does not assert identity of meaning. Such judgments,
therefore, can only be analysed by breaking up the descriptive
phrases, introducing a variable, and making propositional functions
the ultimate subjects. In fact, "the so-and-so is such-and-such" will
mean that "_x_ is so-and-so and nothing else is, and _x_ is
such-and-such" is capable of truth. The analysis of such judgments
involves many fresh problems, but the discussion of these problems is
not undertaken in the present paper.
FOOTNOTES:
[40] See references later.
[41] _Philosophical Essays_, "The Nature of Truth. " I have been
persuaded by Mr. Wittgenstein that this theory is somewhat unduly
simple, but the modification which I believe it to require does not
affect the above argument [1917].
[42] Cf. Meinong, _Ueber Annahmen_, _passim_. I formerly supposed,
contrary to Meinong's view, that the relationship of supposing might
be merely that of presentation. In this view I now think I was
mistaken, and Meinong is right. But my present view depends upon the
theory that both in judgment and in assumption there is no single
Objective, but the several constituents of the judgment or assumption
are in a many-term relation to the mind.
[43] This view has been recently advocated by Miss E. E. C. Jones. "A
New Law of Thought and its Implications," _Mind_, January, 1911.
[44] I should now exclude "I" from proper names in the strict sense,
and retain only "this" [1917].
[45] Meinong, _Ueber Annahmen_, 2nd ed. , Leipzig, 1910, p. 141.
[46] _Mind_, July, 1910, p. 380.
[47] _Mind_, July, 1910, p. 379.
[48] The theory which I am advocating is set forth fully, with the
logical grounds in its favour, in _Principia Mathematica_, Vol. I.
Introduction, Chap. III; also, less fully, in _Mind_, October, 1905.
[49] I use this phrase merely to denote the something psychological
which enters into judgment, without intending to prejudge the question
as to what this something is.
INDEX
Achilles and the tortoise, 80 ff, 89 ff
Acquaintance, the relation of, 209 ff
Alexander, 125
American Realists, the, 134
Aristotle, 42, 76, 97
Bacon, 41
Bergson, 14 ff, 22, 105, 128, 185 ff, 203
Berkeley, 97, 132
Blake, 1
Bosanquet, 99
Broad, 89 _n_
Calculus, the, 82
Cantor, Georg, 64, 81 ff, 85, 91
Carlyle, 50, 82
Cause, the conception of, 135 _n_, 180 ff
Christianity and renunciation, 51
Chuang Tz? , 106
Construction of permanent things and matter, 169 ff
Constructions, logical, 155 ff
Darwin, 15, 23, 43
Dedekind, 64, 81 ff, 85
Descartes, 97, 126
Descriptions, 175, 214 ff
Education, 37 ff
Euclid, 62, 92, 94
Evolutionism, 23 ff, 28
Fano, 93
Faraday, 34
Free will, 205 ff
Frege, 78 _n_
Galileo, 42
Gladstone, 177
Good and evil, 26 ff
Hegel, 8, 10, 18, 85, 97, 105 ff
Heine, 113
Heraclitus, 1 ff, 10
Hertz, 34
Holt, 177 _n_
Hume, 1, 97
Infinite, the mathematical, 84 ff
James, William, 100
Jones, Miss E. E. C. , 224 _n_, 225
Judgment, 219 ff
Kant, 85, 96, 97, 99, 118 ff
Knowledge by acquaintance, 209 ff;
by description, 214 ff
Laplace, 23
Leibniz, 76, 79, 82 ff, 97, 126, 144, 160
Locke, 97
Logic, the laws of, 68 ff
Macaulay and Taylor's theorem, 95
Malthus, 43
Mathematics, 58 ff;
and the Metaphysicians, 74 ff;
and logic, 75 ff;
and the infinitesimal, 82 ff
Matter, the nature of, 125 ff;
definition of, 164 ff
Maxwell, 34
Meaning and denotation, 223 ff
Meinong, 174, 220 _n_, 225
Militarism, 50
Mill, 185, 193 ff
Mysticism and logic, 1 ff
Necessity, the notion of, 207 ff
Nietzsche, 22, 50
Nunn, 125, 137 _n_, 153
Parmenides, 7 ff, 18, 21
Particulars, awareness of, 210 ff
Peano, 78 ff, 93 ff
Perspectives, 139 ff;
the space of, 158 ff
Philosophy and logic, 111
Physics, sense-data and, 145 ff
Pierce, 76 _n_
Plato, 1 ff, 10, 30, 60, 97
Pragmatism, 22, 105
Realism and the analytic method, 120 ff
Reason and intuition, 12 ff
Relatives, the logic of, 76
Robb, 167 _n_
Santayana, 20
Sense-data, 147, 210 ff;
and physics, 145 ff
Sensibilia, 148 ff
Space, 138 ff;
private, 158 ff;
the logical problem, 114 ff;
the problem in physics, 115 ff;
the epistemological problem, 118 ff
Systems, deterministic, 199;
practically isolated, 198;
relatively isolated, 197;
mechanical, 201
Time, 10, 21 ff, 141 ff, 167 ff
Tristram Shandy, the paradox of, 90 ff
Unity and Plurality, 18 ff
Universals, awareness of, 212 ff
Ward, 180
Weierstrass, 80, 82, 95
Whitehead, 117, 157, 175
Wolf, 173
Zeno the Eleatic, 64, 80, 84, 89 ff
[Illustration]
GEORGE ALLEN & UNWIN LTD
_London: 40 Museum Street, W. C. 1_
_Auckland: 24 Wyndham Street_
_Bombay: 15 Graham Road, Ballard Estate, Bombay 1_
_Calcutta: 17 Chittaranjan Avenue, Calcutta 13_
_Cape Town: 109 Long Street_
_Karachi: Metherson's Estate, Wood Street, Karachi 2_
_New Delhi: 13-14 Ajmeri Gate Extension, New Delhi 1_
_Sao Paulo: Avenida 9 de Julho 1138--Ap. 51_
_Singapore, South East Asia and Far East, 36c, Prinsep Street_
_Sydney, N. S. W. : Bradbury House, 55 York Street_
_Toronto: 91 Wellington Street West_
* * * * *
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
| Typographical errors corrected in text: |
| |
| Page 111: charateristic replaced with characteristic |
| Page 71: inexpugnable replaced with inexpungable |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------+
* * * * *
End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays, by
Bertrand Russell
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MYSTICISM AND LOGIC ***
***** This file should be named 25447-0. txt or 25447-0. zip *****
This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
http://www. gutenberg. org/2/5/4/4/25447/
Produced by Jeannie Howse, Adrian Mastronardi and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by The Internet Archive/Canadian Libraries)
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions
will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no
one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation
(and you! ) can copy and distribute it in the United States without
permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to
copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to
protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project
Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you
charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you
do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the
rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose
such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and
research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do
practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is
subject to the trademark license, especially commercial
redistribution.
*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project
Gutenberg-tm License (available with this file or online at
http://gutenberg. org/license).
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic works
1. A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or destroy
all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your possession.
If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound by the
terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person or
entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1. E. 8.
1. B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1. C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this agreement
and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works. See paragraph 1. E below.
1. C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the Foundation"
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an
individual work is in the public domain in the United States and you are
located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative
works based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg
are removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project
Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting free access to electronic works by
freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm works in compliance with the terms of
this agreement for keeping the Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with
the work. You can easily comply with the terms of this agreement by
keeping this work in the same format with its attached full Project
Gutenberg-tm License when you share it without charge with others.
1. D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in
a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check
the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement
before downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or
creating derivative works based on this work or any other Project
Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no representations concerning
the copyright status of any work in any country outside the United
States.
1. E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1. E. 1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work on which the
phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the phrase "Project
Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed,
copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or
re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
with this eBook or online at www. gutenberg. org
1. E. 2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is derived
from the public domain (does not contain a notice indicating that it is
posted with permission of the copyright holder), the work can be copied
and distributed to anyone in the United States without paying any fees
or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a work
with the phrase "Project Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the
work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs 1. E. 1
through 1. E. 7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg-tm trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1. E. 8 or
1. E. 9.
1. E. 3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1. E. 1 through 1. E. 7 and any additional
terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked
to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works posted with the
permission of the copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.
1. E. 4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
1. E. 5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1. E. 1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg-tm License.
1. E. 6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format other than
"Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official version
posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site (www. gutenberg. org),
you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a
copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon
request, of the work in its original "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other
form. Any alternate format must include the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License as specified in paragraph 1. E. 1.
1. E. 7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
unless you comply with paragraph 1. E. 8 or 1. E. 9.
1. E. 8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works provided
that
- You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is
owed to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he
has agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the
Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments
must be paid within 60 days following each date on which you
prepare (or are legally required to prepare) your periodic tax
returns. Royalty payments should be clearly marked as such and
sent to the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the
address specified in Section 4, "Information about donations to
the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. "
- You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
License. You must require such a user to return or
destroy all copies of the works possessed in a physical medium
and discontinue all use of and all access to other copies of
Project Gutenberg-tm works.
- You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1. F. 3, a full refund of any
money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days
of receipt of the work.
- You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
1. E. 9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project Gutenberg-tm
electronic work or group of works on different terms than are set
forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing from
both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and Michael
Hart, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark. Contact the
Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
1. F.
1. F. 1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
public domain works in creating the Project Gutenberg-tm
collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm electronic
works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may contain
"Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate or
corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other intellectual
property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or other medium, a
computer virus, or computer codes that damage or cannot be read by
your equipment.
1. F. 2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1. F. 3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH F3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1. F. 3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium with
your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you with
the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in lieu of a
refund. If you received the work electronically, the person or entity
providing it to you may choose to give you a second opportunity to
receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If the second copy
is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing without further
opportunities to fix the problem.
1. F. 4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1. F. 3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS' WITH NO OTHER
WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO
WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTIBILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1. F. 5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of damages.
If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement violates the
law of the state applicable to this agreement, the agreement shall be
interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or limitation permitted by
the applicable state law. The invalidity or unenforceability of any
provision of this agreement shall not void the remaining provisions.
1. F. 6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in accordance
with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the production,
promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works,
harmless from all liability, costs and expenses, including legal fees,
that arise directly or indirectly from any of the following which you do
or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this or any Project Gutenberg-tm
work, (b) alteration, modification, or additions or deletions to any
Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of computers
including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It exists
because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations from
people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need, is critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future generations.
To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
and how your efforts and donations can help, see Sections 3 and 4
and the Foundation web page at http://www. pglaf. org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive
Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service.
