Project Gutenberg #2529
The Analysis of Mind
Bertrand Russell
1921Russell's study of mind and psychology, split into readable sections from Project Gutenberg HTML.
Project Gutenberg #2529 Public domain in the United States Cover source Local typographic cover created for MojiMori from public-domain source metadata
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AI Summary
Lecture V — Psychological and Physical Causal Laws Central question Are mental events governed by the same causal laws as physical events? Main argument Russell argues that psychology and physics differ less in...
hypothetically a certain system of appearances to which the appearance in question would belong if the laws of perspective alone were concerned. If we construct this hypothetical system for each appearance of the object in turn, the system corresponding to a given appearance x will be independent of any distortion due to the medium beyond x, and will only embody such distortion as is due to the medium between x and the object. Thus, as the appearance by which our hypothetical system is defined is moved nearer and nearer to the object, the hypothetical system of appearances defined by its means embodies less and less of the effect of the medium. The different sets of appearances resulting from moving x nearer and nearer to the object will approach to a limiting set, and this limiting set will be that system of appearances which the object would present if the laws of perspective alone were operative and the medium exercised no distorting effect. This limiting set of appearances may be defined, for purposes of physics, as the piece of matter concerned.