VALUES, VALUE JUDGMENTS AND FACTS — PART 2

Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to Facts, sir!

Hard Times — Charles Dickens.


THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE EARL RUSSELL

Sceptical Essays ─ Bertrand Russell

But there is another ingredient, equally essential, but absent in the  Middle Ages, and not common in antiquity—namely, an interest in ‘irreducible  and stubborn facts’ Curiosity about facts is found before the Renaissance in individuals—for example, the Emperor Frederick II and Roger Bacon; but at the Renaissance it suddenly becomes common among intelligent  people. In Montaigne one finds it without the interest in Natural Law; consequently Montaigne was not a man of science. A peculiar blend of general and particular interests is involved in the pursuit of science; the particular is studied in the hope that it may throw light upon the general. In the Middle Ages it was thought that, theoretically, the particular could be reduced from the general principles; in the Renaissance these general principles fell into disrepute and the passion for historical antiquity produced a strong interest in particular occurrences This interest, operating upon minds trained by the Greek, Roman and scholastic traditions, produced at last the mental atmosphere which made Kepler and Galileo possible. But naturally something of this atmosphere surrounds their work and has travelled with it down to their present-day successors. ‘Science has never shaken off its origin in historical revolt of the later Renaissance. It has remained predominantly an anti-rationalistic movement, based upon naïve  faith. What reasoning it has wanted has been borrowed from mathematics, which is a surviving relic of Greek rationalism, following the deductive method. Science repudiates philosophy. In other words, it has never cared to justify its faith or to explain its meaning, and has remained blandly indifferent to its refutation by Hume.’

    Can science survive when we separate it from the superstitions which nourished its infancy? The indifference of science to philosophy has been due, of course, to its amazing success; it has increased the sense of human power, and has therefore been on the whole agreeable, in spite of its occasional conflicts with theological orthodoxy. But in quite recent times science has been driven by its own problems to take an interest in philosophy. This is especially true of the theory of relativity, with its merging of space and time into the single space-time order of events. But it is true also of the theory of quanta, with its apparent need of discontinuous motion. Also, in another sphere, physiology and bio-chemistry are making inroads on psychology which threaten philosophy in a vital spot; Dr Watson's Behaviourism is the spear-head of this attack, which, while it involves the opposite of respect for philosophic tradition, nevertheless necessarily rests upon a new philosophy of its own. For such reasons science and philosophy can no longer preserve an armed neutrality, but  must be either friends or foes. They cannot be friends, they be friends unless science can pass the examination which philosophy must set as to its premisses. If they cannot be friends, they can only destroy each other; it is no longer possible that either alone can remain master of the field.

    Dr Whitehead offers two things, with a view to the philosophical justification of science. On the one hand, he presents certain new concepts, by means of which the physics of relativity and quanta can be built up in a way which is more satisfying intellectually than any that results from piecemeal amendments to the old conception of solid matter. This part of his work, though not yet developed with the fullness that we may hope to see, lies within science as broadly conceived, and is capable of justification by the usual methods which lead us to prefer one theoretical interpretation of a set of facts to another. It is technically difficult, and I shall say no more about it. From our present point of view, the important aspect of Dr Whitehead's work is its more philosophical portion. He not only offers us a better science, but a philosophy which is to make that science rational, in a sense in which traditional science has not been rational since the time of Hume. This philosophy is, in the main, very similar to that of Bergson. The difficulty which I feel here is that, in so far as Dr Whitehead's new concepts can be embodied in formulae which can be submitted to the ordinary scientific or logical tests, they do not seem to involve his philosophy; his philosophy, therefore, must be accepted on its intrinsic merits. We must not accept it merely on the ground that, if true, it justifies science, for the question at issue is whether science can be justified. We must examine directly whether it seems to us to be true in fact; and here we find ourselves beset with all the old perplexities.

Sceptical Essays ─ Bertrand Russell

In spite of the pragmatist's definition of 'truth', however, he has always, in ordinary life, a quite different standard for the less refined questions which arise in practical affairs. A pragmatist on a jury in a murder case will weigh the evidence exactly as any other man will, whereas if he adopted his professed criterion he ought to consider whom among the population it would be most profitable to hang. That man would be, by definition, guilty of the murder, since belief in his guilt would be more useful, and therefore more' true', than belief in the guilt of anyone else. I am afraid such practical pragmatism does sometimes occur; I have heard of 'frame-ups' in America and Russia which answered this description. But in such cases all possible efforts after concealment are made, and if they fail there is a scandal. This effort after concealment shows that even policemen believe in objective truth in the case of a criminal trial. It is this kind of objective truth—a very mundane and pedestrian affair—that is sought in science. It is this kind also that is sought in religion so long as people hope to find it. It is only when people have given up the hope of proving that religion is true in a straightforward sense that they set to work to prove that it is 'true' in some new­fangled sense. It may be laid down broadly that irrationalism, i.e., disbelief in objective fact, arises almost always from the desire to assert something for which there is no evidence, or to deny something for which there is very good evidence. But the belief in objective fact always persists as regards particular practical questions, such as investments or engaging servants. And if fact can be made the test of the truth of our beliefs anywhere, it should be the test everywhere, leading to agnosticism wherever it cannot be applied.

    The above considerations are, of course, very inadequate to their theme. The question of the objectivity of fact has been rendered difficult by the obfuscations of philosophers, with which I have attempted to deal elsewhere in a more thorough­going fashion. For the present I shall assume that there are facts, that some facts can be known, and that in regard to certain others a degree probability can be ascertained in relation to facts which can be known. Our beliefs are, however, often contrary to fact; even when we only hold that something is probable on the evidence, it may be that we ought to hold it to be improbable on the same evidence. The theoretical part of rationality, then, will consist in basing our beliefs as regards matters of fact upon evidence rather than upon wishes, prejudices, or traditions. According to the subject-matter, a rational man will be the same as one who is judicial or one who is scientific.

     There are some who think that psycho-analysis has shown the impossibility of being rational in our beliefs, by pointing out the strange and almost lunatic origin of many people's cherished convictions. I have a very high respect for psycho-analysis, and I believe that it can be enormously useful. But the popular mind has somewhat lost sight of the purpose which has mainly inspired Freud and his followers. Their method is primarily one of therapeutics, a way of curing hysteria and various kinds of insanity. During the war psycho-analysis proved to be far the most potent treatment for war-neuroses.