156 THE LOGIC OF THE VEDANTA. statement is indeed literally true, but it is misleading, unless the logical status of the category of illusion is explained along with it. The problem before the Vedanta is not scientific, but logical and ontological. Science deals with the laws about the sequences of phenomena and not with their logical status. There may be atoms or electrons, mere sense-data or some other thing which scientists of a later age may be disposed to believe. It does not concern the Vedanta and it is indifferent to it. It maintains that whatever may be the stuff of the phenomena, it has logically the same status as illusion, it only presents phases of relativity and change, and if we look at it apart from its connexion with Brahman, there is nothing in it which can be described as the unchangeable reality. We cannot escape from the region of relativity and change, by simply taking all the phases together in one whole; it can only be done by admitting the category of the indefinite and the indefinable as a separate category of existence which appears to be invested with reality, by its association and seeming identity with the Brahman. What the Vedanta means by saying that the world-appearance is false, is that its appearance is relative, changing, and is such that it can be said to be both "is" and "is not"; it belongs to a wholly different logical category from the real. To admit the worldly phenomena as wholly relative would be to jump into absolute scepticism, and to accept them as wholly real would be to ignore the elements of change, relativity and illusion. The real and its contradictory cannot indeed be associated, but the world is not unreal, in the sense that it is contradictory to the real, it is so only in the sense that it is indefinite (i.e., neither real nor unreal), and Vedanta holds that there can thus be an association between the indefinite and the real, by virtue of which the real appears as the phenomenal and the phenomenal as the real. W.C. 1, on March 20th, 1922, at 8 p.m. IX. SOME BYWAYS OF THE THEORY OF By R. F. ALFRED HOERNLÉ. FOR the vagueness of my title I owe, perhaps, some apology to members of our Society. Frankly, I could think of no phrase, both concise and fitting, in which to sum up the topics which I wish to discuss. Hence it seemed best to select a title which, at least, gives fair warning that I shall avoid, as completely as I can, the technical problems of subject and object, of thoughts and things, of mental and non-mental, of the analysis of the "cognitive relation" and the nature of "cognitive acts," and many more like these, which meet us on the high road of current discussion. The problems to which I want to draw attention in this paper are either not examined at all, or else are disposed of with an obiter dictum. They touch the current distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description" on the one hand, and, on the other, the part played by language in knowledge. I am constantly impressed -I might almost say "worried"-by the fact that a student of philosophy, perhaps more than any other kind of theorist, lives in a world of books. And though it is a consolation to reflect that the company of great books is a company of great minds, and that the same world of which these great minds render in these books their experience and interpretation, is open also to my experience, still the fact remains that I am introduced, in the first instance, to a world of words, a world of symbols, and that the meanings which I give to the words may diverge indefinitely from the meanings which the writers sought to express. Indeed, the relation is more complicated than this. For we must distinguish between understanding what the auth d believing it, i.e., accepting it as true. And these two things may fall apart. I may misunderstand the author and therefore fail to agree with him where I should have agreed, had I understood him correctly. And I may falsely agree with him because I misunderstand him to mean what I hold to be true, though it is not what he sought to express. But apart from these complications which could be pursued into much more detail, the broad fact is that to every student the vast bulk of his knowledge comes through books or, more generally, through words and other symbols which inform him in proportion as he is able to interpret them, i.e., to fill them with meaning. In turn, the researcher or discoverer, be it a new observation that he wishes to record or a new principle that he wishes to propound, can only add it to the stock of knowledge by expressing it in words or other symbols that he himself (on a later occasion) and others can understand. Thus the situation demands to be looked at from two complementary points of view. We can (a) begin with the symbols and ask what is involved in understanding what they mean or express; and (b) we can begin with what is to be expressed and ask what is involved in translating this into a set of symbols. Somehow, these two processes must meet if self-communication and communication with others are to be possible, but in actual use these processes function imperfectly, and hence arise problems, some of which are to be briefly discussed in this paper. Let us, to begin with, go back to the terms “knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description." On their technical analysis, as attempted, e.g., by Mr. Russell, we are not to enter, nor on an examination of the criticisms of Mr. Russell's position by Professor Stout† or by Dr. Bosanquet.‡ But if we are right in taking "knowledge by description" to refer, in fact, always to knowledge conveyed by words or other *See Proc. Arist. Soc., vol. xi (1910–11). ‡ The Meeting of Extremes in Contemporary Philosophy, p. 145. symbols and consisting in the apprehension of what these words or symbols mean, then it would seem that we must agree with Mr. Russell's thesis that "knowledge concerning what is known by description is ultimately reducible to knowledge concerning what is known by acquaintance," or that "every proposition which we can understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted."* I take this to mean that wherever knowledge is to be conveyed by words or other symbols, the meaning of these words or symbols must be understood, i.e., it must be known in the way which Mr. Russell calls "acquaintance." Questions of technical analysis and technical terminology apart, is there on this point any real difference of opinion? When Dr. Bosanquet, e.g., says: "We cannot suppose that a man blind from birth can ever make [or understand] judgments involving the quality of colours," or when he illustrates the way in which a man who has never seen the Ægean Sea solves the problem of understanding a description of it as a deep-blue sea under a cloudless sky, studded with rocky islands, by using recollections of sea and sky at Torbay and of the island-studded waters of the Hebrides,† he seems to express the same view. Words are meaningless, convey nothing, unless from present or past experience we can fill them with meaning. But "experience" here is a vague term, and hardly improves on " acquaintance." Can we make somewhat clearer to ourselves what we mean by it? Perhaps, at this point, it may help if we go back to the passage in James's Principles of Psychology, through which most of us, probably, were first made acquainted with the distinction between "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge-about" (as James called it). "There are two kinds *See loc. cit., p. 117. I am taking "description " in a somewhat wider sense than Mr. Russell who analyses it technically into phrases of the form (6 the so-and-so" or "a so-and-so." But for my argument this difference is, I think, negligible. + Logic, 2nd edit., vol. i, pp. 40 and 69, 70. of knowledge broadly and practically distinguishable; we may call them respectively knowledge of acquaintance and knowledgeabout. I know the colour blue when I see it, and the flavour of a pear when I taste it; I know an inch when I move my finger through it; a second of time, when I feel it pass; an effort of attention when I make it; a difference between two things when I notice it; but about the inner nature of these facts, or what makes them what they are, I can say nothing at all. I cannot impart acquaintance with them to anyone who has not already made it himself. I cannot describe them, make a blind man guess what blue is like, define to a child a syllogism, or tell a philosopher in just what respect distance is just what it is, and differs from other forms of relation. At most, I can say to my friends, go to certain places and act in certain ways, and these objects will probably come. All the elementary natures of the world, its highest genera, the simple qualities of matter and mind, together with the kinds of relation that subsist between them, must either not be known at all, or known in this dumb way of acquaintance without knowledge-about. In minds able to speak at all there is, it is true, some knowledge about everything. Things can at least be classed, and the times of their appearance told. But, in general, the less we analyse a thing, and the fewer of its relations we perceive, the less we know about it and the more our familiarity with it is of the acquaintance type. The two kinds of knowledge are, therefore, as the human mind practically exerts them, relative terms. That is, the same thought of a thing may be called knowledge-about it in comparison with a simpler thought, or acquaintance with it in comparison with a thought of it that is more articulate and explicit still."* Now, a careful reading of this passage reveals that James is really drawing the distinction between the two kinds of knowledge in two different ways: (a) he connects it with the presence or absence of language * Vol. i, pp. 221–22. |