AN INQUIRY INTO MEANING AND TRUTH ‘THE WILLIAM JAMES LECTURES FOR 1940 DELIVERED AT HARVARD UNIVERSITY fn Carn Spr) dK, SL, bes (463BY BERTRAND RUSSELL ‘THE ANALYSIS OF MATTER HUMAN SOCIETY IN ETHICS AND POLITICS ‘THE IMPACT OF SCIENCE ON SOCIETY NEW HOPES FOR A. CHANGING WORLD AUTHORITY AND THE INDIVIDTAL HUMAN KNOWLEDGE: ITS SCOPE AN}? LIMITS HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSO¥iY ‘THE PRINCIPLES OF MATHEMATICS INTRODUCTION TO MATHEMATICAL PHILOSOPHY THE ANALYSIS OF MIND OUR KNOWLEDGE OF THE EXTERNAL WORLD AN OUTLINE OF PHILOSOPHY THE PHILOSOPHY OF LEIBNIZ AN INQUIRY INTO MEANING AND TRUTH LOGIC AND KNOWLEDGE ‘THE PROBLEMS OF PHILOSOPHY PRINCIPIA MATHEMATICA (with A.N. Whitehead) UNPOPULAR ESSAYS PORTRAITS FROM MEMORY POWER IN PRAISE OF IDLENESS THE CONQUEST OF HAPPINESS SCEPTICAL ESSAYS MYSTICISM AND LOGIC THE SCIENTIFIC OUTLOOK MARRIAGE AND MORALS EDUCATION AND THE SOCIAL ORDER ON EDUCATION FREEDOM AND ORGANIZATION, 1814-1914 PRINCIPLES OF SOCIAL RECONSTRUCTION ROADS TO FREEDOM THE PRACTICE AND THEORY OF BOLSHEVISM (George Allen & Unwin) SATAN IN THE SUBURBS NIGHTMARES OF EMINENT PERSONS ‘Jolin Lane)2296- AN INQUIRY INTO MEANING AND TRUTH BERTRAND RUSSELL LONDON GEORGE ALLEN AND UNWIN LTDFIRST PUBLISHED IN 1940 SECOND IMPRESSION 1942 THIRD IMPRESSION 1948 FOURTH IMPRESSION 1951 FIFTH IMPRESSION 1956 This book is copyright under the Berne Convention. "Apart from any fair dealing for she purposes of private study, research, ‘criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1922, no portion may be re~ ‘any process. without written iry should be made to the ‘publishers. produced by ission. O/ HyOERAERS > oN SECBAU. Oy, oat” PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN in 12-Point Fournier Type BY BISHOP AND SONS LIMITED EDINBURGHPREFACE This book has developed gradually over a period of years, culminating in a series of academic appointments. In 1938 I treated part of the subject in a course of lectures on “Language and Fact” at the University of Oxford. These lectures formed the basis for seminar courses at the University of Chicago in 1938-9 and the University of California at Los Angeles in 1939-40. The discussions at the two seminars did much to widen my conception of the problems involved and to diminish the emphasis which I originally placed on the linguistic aspects of the subject. I have to express a collective obligation to those, both Professors and pupils, who, by detailed friendly criticism, helped (I hope) in the avoidance of errors and fallacies. More especially at Chicago, where the seminar was often attended by Professors Carnap and Morris, and where some of the graduate students showed great philosophic ability, the discussions were models of fruitful argumentative cooperation. Mr. Norman Dalkey, who attended both seminars, has since read the whole book in manuscript, and I am greatly indebted to him for his careful and stimulating criticism. Finally, during the summer of 1940, I prepared these William James Lectures partly from accumulated material, and partly from a re-consideration of the - whole subject. As will be evident to the reader, I am, as regards method, more in sympathy with the logical,positivists than with any other existing school. I differ from them, however, in attaching more importance than they do to the work of Berkeley and Hume. The book results from an attempt to combine a genéral outlook akin to Hume’s with the methods that have grown out of modern logic. > iw 7 eA SEOBAD. 23CONTENTS CHAPTER Preface Introduction I. What is a Word? If, Sentences, Syntax, and Parts of Speech Sentences Describing Experiences The Object-Language Logical Words Proper Names Egocentric Particulars Perception and Knowledge Epistemological Premisses Basic Propositions Factual Premisses AI. An Analysis of Problems Concerning Propositions The Significance of Sentences: A. General. B. Psychological. C. Syntactical XIV. Language as Expression XV. What Sentences “Indicate” XVI. Truth and Falsehood, Preliminary Discussion XVIL Truth and Experience XVII General Beliefs XIX. Extensionality and Atomicity XX. The Law of Excluded Middle XXL. Truth and Verification XXII. Significance and Verification XXII. Warranted Assertibility XXIV. Analysis XXV. _ Language and Metaphysics Index ne 9 PAGE 1 23 30 Bs 62 108 n6 131 137 150 166 170 204 214 226 236 247 239 274 289 306 318 327 341 349INTRODUCTION The present work is intended as an investigation of certain problems concerning empirical knowledge. As opposed to tradi- tional theory of knowledge, the method adopted differs chiefly in the importance attached to linguistic considerations. I propose * to consider language in relation to two main problems, which, in preliminary and not very precise terms, may be stated as follows: I. What is meant by “empirical evidence for the truth of a proposition” > II. What can be inferred from the fact that there sometimes is such evidence? Here, as usually in philosophy, the first difficulty is to see that the problem is difficult. If you say to a person untrained in philosophy, “How do you know I have two eyes?” he or she will reply, “What a silly question! I can see you have.” It is not to be supposed that, when our inquiry is finished, we shall have arrived at anything radically different from this un- » philosophical position. What will have happened will be that we shall have come to see a complicated structure where we thought everything was simple, that we shall have become aware of the penumbra of uncertainty surrounding the situations which inspire no doubt, that we shall find doubt more frequently justified than we supposed, and that even the most plausible premisses will have shown themselves capable of yielding un- plausible conclusions. The net result is to substitute articulate hesitation for inarticulate certainty. Whether this result has any value is a question which I shall not consider. As soon as we take our two questions seriously, ditticulties crowd upon us. Take the phrase “empirical evidence for the truth of a proposition”. This phrase demands that we should define the words “empirical”, “evidence”, “truth”, “‘proposition”, unless we conclude, after examination, that our question has been wrongly worded. iAN INQUIRY INTO MEANING AND TRUTH Let us begin with “proposition”. A proposition is something which may be said in any language: “Socrates is mortal” and “Socrate est mortel” express the same proposition. In a given language it may be said in various ways: the difference between “Caesar was killed on the Ides of March” and “it was on the Ides of March that Caesar was killed” is merely rhetorical. It is thus possible for two forms of words to “have the same meaning”. We may, at least for the moment, define a “pro- position” as “all the sentences which have the same meaning as some given sentence”. We must now define “sentence” and “having the same meaning”. Ignoring the latter for the moment, what is a sentence? Tt may be a single word, or, more usually, a number of words put together according to the laws of syntax; but what dis- tinguishes it is that it expresses something of the nature of an assertion, a denial, an imperative, a desire, or a question. What is more remarkable about a sentence, from our point of view, is that we can understand what it expresses if we know the meaning of its several words and the rules of syntax. Our in- vestigation must therefore begin with an examination first of words, and then of syntax. Before entering upon any detail, a few general remarks as to the nature of our problem may help us to know what is relevant. Our problem is one in the theory of knowledge. What is the theory of knowledge? Everything that we know, or think we know, belongs to some special science; what, then, is left over for theory of knowledge? There are two different inquiries, both important, and each having a right to the name “theory of knowledge”. In any given discussion, it is easy to fall into confusions through failure to determine to which of the two inquiries the discussion is intended to belong. I will therefore, at the outset, say a few words in explanation of both. In the first form of theory of knowledge, we accept the scien- tific account of the world, not as certainly true, but as the best at present available. The world, as presented by science, contains 2