05/04/2023
Philosophically, what is Belief? What is Truth?
"Truth is a property of beliefs, and beliefs are psychical events. The truth that we can attain to is merely human truth, fallible and changeable like everything human. What lies outside the cycle of human occurrences is not truth, but fact (of certain kinds).
Beliefs are vague and complex, pointing not to one precise fact, but to several vague regions of fact. Beliefs, therefore, unlike the schematic propositions of logic, are not sharply opposed as true or false, but are a blur of truth and falsehood; they are of varying shades of grey, never white or black. People who speak with reverence of the ‘Truth’ would do better to speak about Fact, and to realise that the reverend qualities to which they pay homage are not to be found in human beliefs.
There are practical as well as theoretical advantages in this, since people persecute each other because they believe that they know the ‘Truth’. Speaking psycho-analytically, it may be laid down that any ‘great ideal’ which people mention with awe is really an excuse for inflicting pain on their enemies."
— Bertrand Russell, Sceptical Essays (1928), Essay V: Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, p. 48
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Background: In Sceptical Essays (1928), Russell argues we should recognise the uncertainty of our beliefs. According to Russell, truth is the accordance of the subject's belief and the actual fact. Russell was a firm champion in the scientific method, that science reaches only tentative answers, that scientific progress is piecemeal, and attempts to find organic unities were largely futile. He held the same view should be applied to philosophy.
Russell's epistemology went through many phases. Once he shed neo-Hegelianism in his early years, Russell remained a secure philosophical realist for the remainder of his life, holding that our direct experiences have primacy in the acquisition of knowledge. While some of his views have lost favour, Russell's influence remains strong in the distinction between two ways in which we can be familiar with objects: "knowledge by acquaintance" and "knowledge by description".
In his later philosophy, Russell subscribed to a kind of neutral monism, maintaining that the distinctions between the material and mental worlds, in the final analysis, were arbitrary, and that both can be reduced to a neutral property—a view similar to one held by the American philosopher/psychologist, William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910), and one that was first formulated by Dutch philosopher of Portuguese Sephardic Jewish origin, Baruch Spinoza (24 November 1632 – 21 February 1677), whom Russell greatly admired.
Image: Bertrand Russell, 1937.
