The Concept of Mind

 

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THE CONCEPT OF MIND



THE

CONCEPT OF MIND



by
GILBERT RYLE

Waynflcte Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy
in the University of Oxford



HUTCHIN SON'S UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

Hutchirfton House, London, W.i
New Yo i 'k Melbourne Sydney Cape Town



First Published - October, 7949

Reprinted - - January, 7950

Reprinted - - Alaich, 1950

Reprinted - - Apiil, 195 /



Punted ni Great Britain by

William Brcndon and Son^ Ltd.

The Maijfloiccr Press (late of Plymouth)

at Butihcy Mill Lane

Watford, Herts.



CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 7

Chapter page

I. DESCARTES' MYTH n

i) The Official Doctrine n

2\ The Absurdity of the Official Doctrine 15

3) The Origin of the Category Mistake 18

(4) Historical Note 23



II. KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 25

v (i) Foreword 25

* (2) Intelligence and Intellect 25

J($) Knowing How and Knowing That 27

(4) The Motives of the Intellectualist Legend 32

(5) 'In My Head* 35

(6) The Positive Account of Knowing How 40

(7) Intelligent Capacities versus Habits 42

(8) The Exercise of Intelligence 45

(9) Understanding and Misunderstanding 51
(10) Solipsism 60



III. THE WILL 62

(1) Foreword 62

(2) The Myth of Volitions 62
3) The Distinction Between Voluntary and Involuntary 69
'4) Freedom of the Will 75

(5) The Bogy of Mechanism 76



IV. EMOTION 83

(i) Foreword 83

2) Feelings versus Inclinations 83

3) Inclinations versus Agitations 93

(4) Moods 9#

(5) Agitations and Feelings 104

(6) Enjoying and Wanting 107

(7) The Criteria of Motives no

(8) The Reasons and the Causes of Actions 113

(9) Conclusion 114



VI CONTENTS

V. DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES Il6

(1) Foreword 116

(2) The Logic of Dispositional Statements 117

(3) Mental Capacities and Tendencies 125

(4) Mental Occurrences 135

(5) Achievements 149

VI. SELF-KNOWLEDGE 154

(1) Foreword 154

(2) Consciousness 156

(3) Introspection 163

(4) Self-Knowledge Without Privileged Access 167

(5) Disclosure by Unstudied Talk t8r

(6) The Self ' 186

(7) The Systematic Elusiveness of T 195

VII. SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 199

(1) Foreword 199

(2) Sensations 201

(3) The Sense Datum Theory 210

(4) Sensation and Observation 222

(5) Phenomenalism 234

(6) Afterthoughts 239

VIII. IMAGINATION 245

(1) Foreword 245

(2) Picturing and Seeing 246

(3) The Theory of Special Status Pictures 248

(4) Imagining 256

(5) Pretending 258

(6) Pretending, Fancying and Imagining 264

(7) Memory 272

IX. THE INTELLECT 280

(1) Foreword 280

(2) The Demarcation of the Intellect 280

(3) The Construction, Possession and Utilisation of Theories 286

(4) The Application and Misapplication of Epistemological Terms 292

(5) Saying and Teaching 309

(6) The Primacy of the Intellect 314

(7) Epistemology 317

X. PSYCHOLOGY 319

(1) The Programme of Psychology 319

(2) Behaviourism 327



INTRODUCTION

Tins book offers what may with reservations be described as a
theory of the mind. But it does not give new information about
minds. We possess already a wealth of information about minds,
information which is neither derived from, nor upset by, the argu-
ments of philosophers. The philosophical arguments which
constitute this book are intended not to increase what we know
about minds, but to rectify the logical geography of the knowledge
which we already possess.

Teachers and examiners, magistrates and critics, historians and
novelists, confessors and non-commissioned officers, employers,
employees and partners, parents, lovers, friends and enemies all
know well enough how to settle their daily questions about the
qualities of character and intellect of the individual with whom they
have to do. They can appraise his performances, assess his progress,
understand his words and actions, discern his motives and see his
jokes. If they go wrong, they know how to correct their mistakes.
More, they can deliberately influence the minds of those with whom
they deal by criticism, example, teaching, punishment, bribery,
mockery and persuasion, and then modify their treatments in the
light of the results produced.

Both in describing the minds of others and in prescribing for
them, they arc wielding with greater or less efficiency concepts of
mental powers and operations. They have learned how to apply in
concrete, situations such mental-conduct epithets as 'careful',
'stupid', 'logical', 'unobservant', 'ingenious', Vain', 'methodical',
'credulous', 'witty', 'self-controlled' and a thousand others.

It is, however, one thing to know how to apply such concepts,
quite another to know how to correlate them with one another
and with concepts of other sorts. Many people can talk sense with
concepts but cannot talk sense about them; they know by practice
how to operate with concepts, anyhow inside familiar fields, but
they cannot state the logical regulations governing their use. They



8 INTRODUCTION

are like people who know their way about their own parish, but
cannot construct or read a map of it, much less a map of the region
or continent in which their parish lies.

For certain purposes it is necessary to determine the logical
cross-bearings of the concepts which we know quite well how to
apply. The attempt to perform this operation upon the concepts
of the powers, operations and states of minds has always teen a big
part of the task of philosophers. Theories of knowledge, logic,
ethics, political theory and aesthetics are the products of their
inquiries in this field. Some of these inquiries have made con-
siderable regional progress, but it is part of the thesis of this book
that during the three centuries of the epoch of natural science the
logical categories in terms of which the concepts of mental powers
and operations have been co-ordinated have been wrongly selected.
Descartes left as one of his main philosophical legacies a myth
which continues to distort the continental geography of the subject.

A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of
facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another.
To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to
re-allocate them. And this is what I am trying to do.

To determine the logical geography of concepts is to reveal the
logic of the propositions in which they are wielded, that is to say,
to show with what other propositions they are consistent and
inconsistent, what propositions follow from them and from what
propositions they follow. The logical type or category to which a
concept belongs is the set of ways in which it is logically legitimate
to operate with it. The key arguments employed in this book are
therefore intended to show why certain sorts of operations with the
concepts of mental powers and processes are breaches of logical
rules. I try to use reductio ad absurdum arguments both to disallow
operations implicitly recommended by the Cartesian mytja and to
indicate to what logical types the concepts under investigation
ought to be allocated. I do not, however, think it improper to use
from time to time arguments of a less rigorous sort, especially when
it seems expedient to mollify or acclimatise. Philosophy is the
replacement of category-habits by category-disciplines, and if
persuasions of conciliatory kinds ease the pains of relinquishing
inveterate intellectual habits, they d<$ not indeed reinforce the
rigorous arguments, but they do weaken resistances to them.



INTRODUCTION 9

Some readers may think that my tone of voice in this book is
excessively polemical. It may comfort them to know that the
assumptions against which I exhibit most heat are assumptions of
which I myself have been a victim. Primarily I am trying to get
some disorders out of my own system. only secondarily do I hope
to help other theorists to recognise our malady and to benefit
from my medicine.



CHAPTER I

DESCARTES' MYTH

(i) The Official Doctrine.

THERE is a doctrine about the nature and place of minds which is
so prevalent among theorists and even among laymen that it
deserves to be described as the official theory. Most philosophers,
psychologists and religious teachers subscribe, with minor reserva-
tions, to its main articles and, although they admit certain theoretical
difficulties in it, they tend to assume that these can be overcome
without serious modifications being made to the architecture of the
theory. It will be argued here that the central principles of the
doctrine are unsound and conflict with the whole body of what we
know about minds when we are not speculating about them.

The official doctrine, which hails chiefly from Descartes, is
something like this. With the doubtful exceptions of idiots and
infants in arms every human being has both a body and a mind.
Some would prefer to say that every human being is both a body
and a mind. His body and his mind are ordinarily harnessed together,
but after the death of the body his mind may continue to exist and
function.

Human bodies are in space and are subject to the mechanical
laws whicfh govern all other bodies in space. Bodily processes and
states can be inspected by external observers. So a man's bodily
life is as mtich a publicTaffair as are the lives of animals and reptiles
and even as the careers of trees, crystals and planets.

But minds are not in space, nor are their operations subject to
mechanical laws. The workings of one mind are not witnessable by
other observers ; its career is private. only I can take direct cognisance
of the states and processes of my own mind. A person therefore
lives through two collateral* histories, one consisting of what
happens in and to his bodyTthe other consisting of what happens in
and to his mind. The first is public, the second private. The events

11



12 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

in the first history are events in the physical world, those in the
second are events in the mental world.

It has been disputed whether a person does or can directly
monitor all or only some of the episodes of his own private history;
but, according to the official doctrine, of at least some of these
episodes he has direct and unchallengeable cognisance. In con-
sciousness, self-consciousness and introspection he is directly and
authentically apprised of the present states and operations of his
mind. He may have great or small uncertainties about concurrent
and adjacent episodes in the physical world, but he can have
none about at least part of what Js- momentarily occupying his
mind.

It is customary to express this bifurcation of his two lives and
of his two worlds by saying that the things and events which belong
to the physical world, including his own body, are external, while
the workings of his own mind are internal. This antithesis of outer
and inner is of course meant to be construed as a metaphor, since
minds, not being in space, could not be described as being spatially
inside anything else, or as having things going on spatially inside
themselves. But relapses from this good intention are common and
theorists are found speculating how stimuli, the physical sources of
which are yards or miles outside a person's skin, can generate mental
responses inside his skull, or how decisions framed inside his
cranium can set going movements of his extremities.

^ Even when 'inner' and 'outer* are construed as metaphors, the
problem how a person's mind and body influence one another is
notoriously charged with theoretical difficulties. What the mind
wills, die legs, arms and the tongue execute] what affects the ear and
the eye has something to do with what the mind perceives;
grimaces and smiles betray the mind's moods and bodily castigations
lead, it is hoped, to moral improvement. But the actual transactions
between the episodes of the private history ancTthose of the public
history remain mysterious, since by definition they can belong to
neither series. They could not be reported among the happenings
described in a person's autobiography of his inner life, but nor
could they be reported among those described in some one else's
biography of that person's overt career. They can be inspected
neither by introspection nor by laboratory experiment. They are
theoretical shuttlecocks which are forever being bandied from the



DESCARTES' MYTH 13



physiologist back to the psychologist and from the psychologist
back to the physiologist.

Underlying this partly metaphorical representation of the
bifurcation of a person's two lives there is a seemingly more profound
and philosophical assumption. It is assumed that there are two
different kinds of existence or status. What exists or happens may
have the status of physical existence, or it may have the status of
mental existence. Somewhat as the faces of coins are either heads
or tails, or somewhat as living creatures are either male or female,
so, it is supposed, some existing is physical existing, other existing
is mental existing. It is a necessary feature of what has physical
existence that it is in space and time; it is a necessary feature of what
has mental existence that it is in time but not in space. What has
physical existence is composed of matter, or else is a function of
matter; what has mental existence consists of consciousness, or else
is a function of consciousness.

There is thus a polar opposition between mind and matter, an
opposition which is often brought out as follows. Material objects
are situated in a common field, known as 'space', and what happens
to one body in one part of space is mechanically connected with
what happens to other bodies in other parts of space. But mental
happenings occur in insulated fields, known as 'minds', and there is,
apart maybe from telepathy, no direct causal connection between
what happens in one mind and what happens in another. only
through the medium of the public physical world can the mind of
one person make a difference to the mind of another. The mind is
its own place and in his inner life each of us lives the life of a ghostly
Robinson ^Crusoe^ People can seeTTKatT^an?' jolt one another's
Bodies, but they are irremediably blind and deaf to the workings
of one another's minds and inoperative upon them.

What sort of knowledge can be secured of the workings of a
mind? on the one side, according to the official theory, a person
has direct knowledge of the best imaginable kind of the workings
of his own mind. Mental states and processes are (or are normally)
conscious stateifahd processes, and the consciousness which irradiates
thenrtanT engender ncT illusions and leaves the door open for no
doubts. A person's present tjiinkings, feelings and willings, his
perceivings, rememberings and imaginings are intrinsically 'phos-
phorescent'; their existence and their nature are inevitably betrayed



16 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

Machine 5 . I hope to prove that it is entirely false, and false not in
detail but in principle. It is not merely an assemblage of particular
mistakes. It is one big mistake and a mistake of a special kind. It is,
namely, a category-mistake. It represents the facts of mental life
as if they belonged to one logical type or category (or range of
types or categories), when they actually belong to another r)The
dogma is therefore a philosopher's myth. In attempting to-explode
the myth I shall probably be taken to be denying well-known facts
about the mental life of human beings, and my plea that I aim at
doing nothing more than rectify the logic of mental-conduct
concepts will probably be disallowed as mere subterfuge.

I must first indicate what is meant by the phrase 'Category-
mistake'. This I do in a series of illustrations.

A foreigner visiting Oxford or Cambridge for the first time is
shown a number of colleges, libraries, playing fields, museums,
scientific departments and administrative offices. He then asks 'But
where is the University? I have seen where the members of the
Colleges live, where the Registrar works, where the scientists
experiment and the rest. But I have not yet seen the University in
which reside and work the members of your University.' It has
then to be explained to him that the University is not another
collateral institution, some ulterior counterpart to the colleges,
laboratories and offices which he has seen. The University is just
the way in which all that he has already seen is organized. When
they are seen and when their co-ordination is understood, the
University has been seen. His mistake lay in his innocent assumption
that it was correct to speak of Christ Church, the Bodleian Library,
the Ashmolean Museum and the University, to speak, that is, as if
'the University' stood for an extra member of the class of which
these other units are members, (tie was mistakenly allocating the
University to the same category as that to which 4 the other
institutions belong.

-The same mistake would be made by a child witnessing the
march-past of a division, who, having had pointed out to him such
and such battalions, batteries, squadrons, etc., asked when the
division was going to appear. He would be supposing that a division
was a counterpart to the units alrea4y seen, partly similar to them
and partly unlike them. He would be shown his mistake by being
told that in watching the battalions, batteries and squadrons



DESCARTES' MYTH 17



marching past he had been watching the division marching past.
The march-past was not a parade of battalions, batteries, squadrons
and a division; it was a parade of the battalions, batteries and
squadrons o/a division.

One more illustration. A foreigner watching his first game of
cricket learns what are the functions of the bowlers, the batsmen,
the fielders, the umpires and the scorers. He then says 'But there is
no one left on the field to contribute the famous element of team-
spirit. I see who does the bowling, the batting and the wicket-
keeping; but I do not see whose role it is to exercise esprit de corps. 9
Once more, it would have to be explained that he was looking for
the wrong type of thing. Team-spirit is not another cricketing-
operation supplementary to all of the other special tasks. It is,
roughly, the keenness with which each of the special tasks is
performed, and performing a task keenly is not performing two
tasks. Certainly exhibiting team-spirit is not the same thing as
bowling or catching, but nor is it a third thing such that we can
say that the bowler first bowls and then exhibits team-spirit or
that a fielder is at a given moment either catching or displaying
esprit de corps.

These illustrations of category-mistakes have a common feature
which must be noticed. The mistakes were made by people who
did not know how to wield the concepts University, division and
team-spirit. Their puzzles arose from inability to use certain items
in the English vocabulary.

The theoretically interesting category-mistakes are those made
by people who are perfectly competent to apply concepts, at least
in the situations with which they are familiar, but are still liable in
their abstract thinking to allocate those concepts to logical types
to which they do not belong) An instance of a mistake of this sort
would be*the following story. A student of politics has learned
the main differences between the British, the French and the
American Constitutions, and has learned also the differences
and connections between the Cabinet, Parliament, the various
Ministries, the Judicature and the Church of England. But he
still becomes embarrassed when asked questions about the con-
nections between the Churcjj of England, the Home Office and
the British Constitution. For while the Church and the Home
Office are institutions, the British Constitution is not another



18 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

institution in the same sense of that noun. So inter-institutional
relations which can be asserted or denied to hold between the
Church and the Home Office cannot be asserted or denied to hold
between either of them and the British Constitution. 'The British
Constitution' is not a term of the same logical type as 'the
Home Office and 'the Church of England'. In a partially similar
way, John Doe may be a relative, a friend, an enemy or a stranger
to Richard Roe; but he cannot be any of these things to the Average
^axpayer. He knows how to talk sense in certain sorts of dis-
cussions about the Average Taxpayer, but he is baffled to say why
ne could not come across him in the street as he can come across
Richard Roe.

It is pertinent to our main subject to notice that, so long as the
student of politics continues to think of the British Constitution as a
counterpart to the other institutions, Jie will tend to describe it as a
mysteriously occult institution; and (so long as John Doe continues
to tliink of the Average Taxpayer as IT Fellow-citizen, he will tend
to think of him as an elusive insubstantial man, a ghost who is
everywhere yet nowhere. *\ ^ s'

My destructive purpose is to show that a family of radical
category-mistakes is the source of the double-life theory. The
representation of a person as a ghost mysteriously ensconced in a
machine derives from this argument. Because, as is true, a person's
thinking, feeling and purposive doing cannot be described
solely in the idioms of physics, chemistry and physiology, therefore
they must be described in counterpart idioms. As the human body is
a complex organised unit, so the human mind must be another
complex organised unit, though one made of a different sort of
stuff and with a different sort of structure. Or, again, as the human
body, like any other parcel of matter, is a field of causes and
effects, so the mind must be another field of causes and effects,
though not (Heaven be praised) mechanical causes and effects.

(3) The Origin of the Category-mistake.

One of the chief intellectual origins of what I have yet to prove
to be the Cartesian category-mistake seems to be this. When
Galileo showed that his methods of scientific discovery were
competent to provide a mechanical theory which should cover every
occupant of space, Descartes found in himself two conflicting



DESCARTES MYTH 19

motives. As a man of scientific genius he could not but endorse the
claims of mechanics, yet as a religious and moral man he could not
accept, as Hobbes accepted, the discouraging rider to those claims,
namely that human nature differs only in degree of complexity from
clockwork. Thgjnental could not be just a variety of the mechanical.

He and subsequent philosophers naturally but erroneolusly
availed themselves of the following escape-route. Since mental-
conduct words are not to be construed as signifying the occurrence
of mechanical processes, they must be construed as signifying the
occurrence of non-mechanical processes; since mechanical laws
explain movements in space as the effects of other movements in
space, other laws must explain some of the non-spatial workings
of minds as the effects of other non-spatial workings of minds. The
difference between the human behaviours which we describe as
intelligent and those which we describe as unintelligent must be a
difference in their causation; so, while some movements of human
tongues and limbs are the effects of mechanical causes, others must
be the effects of non-mechanical causes, i.e. some issue from move-
ments of particles of matter, others from workings of the mind.

The differences between the physical and the mental were thus
represented as differences inside the common framework of the
categories of 'thing', 'stuff', 'attribute', 'state', 'process', 'change',
'cause' and 'effect*. Minds are things, but different sorts of things from
bodies; mental processes are causes and effects, but different sorts of
causes and effects from bodily movements. And so on. Somewhat as
the foreigner expected the University to be an extra edifice, rather
like a college but also considerably different, so the repudiators of
mechanism represented minds as extra centres of causal processes,
rather like machines but also considerably different from them.
Their theory was a para-mechanical hypothesis.

That this assumption was at the heart of the doctrine is shown
by the fact that there was from the beginning felt to l>ej^major
theoretical difficulty in explaining how minds can influence ana te
influenced by bodies. How can a mental process, such as willing, cause
spatial movements likejhejnovenients of the tongue? How can a
physical change in tEe^optic nerve have among its effects a mind's
perception of a flash of lightj This notorious crux by itself shows
the logical mould into which Descartes pressed his theory of
the mind. It was the self-same mould into which he and Galileo



20 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

set their mechanics. Still unwittingly adhering to the grammar
of mechanics, he tried to avert disaster by describing minds in what
was merely an obverse vocabulary. ^he workings of minds had to be
described by the mere negatives oFffer specific descriptions given
to bodies; they are not in space, they are not motions, they are not
modifications of matter, they are not accessible to public observation.^)
Minds are not bits of clockwork, they are just bits of not-
clockwork.

As thus represented, minds are not merely ghosts harnessed to
machines, they are themselves just spectral machines. Though
the human body is an engine, it it not quite an ordinary engine,
since some of its workings are governed by another engine inside
it this interior governor-engine being one of a very special
sort. It is invisible, inaudible and it has no size or weight/ It
cannot be taken to bits and the laws it obeys are not those known to
ordinary engineers^ Nothing is known of how it governs the bodily
engine.

A second major crux points the same moral. Since, according
to the doctrine, minds belong to the same category as bodies and
since bodies are rigidly governed by mechanical laws, it seemed to
many theorists to follow that jninds must be similarly governed by
rigid non-mechanical laws/ The physical world is a deterministic
system, so the mental world must be a deterministic systeifcLBodies
cannot help the modifications that they undergo, so mirros cannot
help pursuing the careers fixed for them. Responsibility, choice, merit
and demerit are therefore inapplicable concepts unless the com-
promise solution is adopted of saying that the laws governing
mental processes, unlike those governing physical processes, have
the congenial attribute of being only rather rigid. The problem
of the Freedom of the Will was the problem how to reconcile the
hypothesis that minds are to be described in terms drawrffrom the
categories of mechanics with the knowledge that higher-grade
human conduct is not of a piece with the behaviour of machines.

It is an historical curiosity that it was not noticed that the entire
argument was broken-backed. Theorists correctly assumed that any
sane man could already recognise the differences between, say,
rational and non-rational utterances or between purposive and
automatic behaviour. Else there would have been nothing requiring
to be salved from mechanism. Yet the explanation given presupposed



DESCARTES 1 MYTH 21

that one person could in principle never recognise the difference
between the rational and the irrational utterances issuing from other
human bodies, since he could never get access to the postulated
ynmaterial causes of some of their utterances. Save for the doubtful
exception of himself, he could never tell the difference between a
man and a Robot. It woyld have to be conceded, for example, that,
for' all that we can teU,(the inner lives of persons who are classed as
idiots or lunatics are as ratioiM'as those of anyone else. Perhaps
only their overt behaviour is disappointing; that is to say, perhaps
Idiots' are not really idiotic, or lunatics' lunatic. Perhaps, too,
some of those who are classed as sane are really idiots. According
to the theory, external observers could never know How the overt
behaviour of others is correlated with their mental powers and
processes and so they could never know or even plausibly con-
jecture whether their applications of mental-conduct concepts to
these other people were correct or incorrect. It would then be
hazardous or impossible for a man to claim sanity or logical
consistency even for himself, since he would be debarred from
comparing his own performances with those of others./ In short,
our characterisations of persons and their performances as intelligent,
prudent and virtuous or as stupid, hypocritical and cowardly could
never have been made, so the problem of providing a special causal
hypothesis to serve as the basis of such diagnoses would never have
arisen. (The question, 'How do persons differ from machines ?' arose
just because everyone already knew how to apply mental-conduct
concepts before the new causal hypothesis was introduced.) This
causal hypothesis could not therefore be the source of the criteria
used in those applications. Nor, of course, has the causal hypothesis
in any degree improved our handling of those criteria. We still
distinguish good from bad arithmetic, politic from impolitic conduct
and fertile from infertile imaginations in the ways in which Descartes
himself distinguished them before and after he speculated how the
applicability of these criteria was compatible with the principle of
mechanical causation.

He had mistaken the logic of his problem. Instead of asking by
what criteria intelligent behaviour is actually distinguished from
non-intelligent behaviour, h$ asked 'Given that the principle of
mechanical causation does not tell us the difference, what other
causal principle will tell it us?' He realised that the problem was



22 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

not one of mechanics and assumed that it must therefore be one of
some counterpart to mechanics. Not unnaturally psychology is
often cast for just this role.

When two terms belong to the same category, it is proper to
construct conjunctive propositions embodying them. Thus a
purchaser may say that he bought a left-hand glove and a right-hand
glove, but not that he bought a left-hand glove, a right-hand glove
and a pair of gloves. 'She came home in a flood of tears and a
sedan-chair* is a well-known joke based on the absurdity of con-
joining terms of different types. It would have been equally ridiculous
to construct the disjunction 'She came home either in a flood of
tears or else in a sedan-chair . \Now the dogma of the Ghost
in the Machine does just this. Jt maintains that there exist both
bodies and minds; that there occur physical processes and mental
processes; that there are mechanical causes of corporeal move-
ments and mental causes of corporeal movement^. I shall argue
that these and other analogous conjunctions are absurd; but,
it must be noticed, the argument will not show that either of the
illegitimately conjoined propositions is absurd in itself. I am not,
for example, denying that there occur mental processes. Doing
long division is a mental process and so is making a joke. But I am
saying that the phrase 'there occur mental processes' does not mean
the same sort of thing as 'there occur physical processes', and,
therefore, that it makes no sense to conjoin or disjoin the two. ^

If my argument is successful, there will follow some interesting
consequences. First, the hallowed contrast between Mind and Matter
will be dissipated, but dissipated not by either of the equally hallowed
absorptions of Mind by Matter or of Matter by Mind, but in quite
a different way. For the seeming contrast of the two will be shown
to be as illegitimate as would be the contrast of 'she came home in
a flood of tears' and 'she came home in a sedan-chair'. The belief
that there is a polar opposition between Mind and MaTfgr is the
belief that they are terms of the same logical type. )

It will also follow that both Idealism 3ird Materialism arc
answers to an improper question. The 'reduction' of the material
world to mental states and processes, as well as the 'reduction' of
mental states and processes to physical states and processes, pre-
suppose the legitimacy of the disjunction /Either there exist minds
or there exist bodies (but not both) 'Alt would be like saying,



DESCARTES MYTH 23

Either she bought a left-hand and a right-hand glove or she bought
a pair of gloves (but not both)'.

It is perfectly proper to say, in one logical tone of voice, that
there exist minds and to say, in another logical tone of voice, that
there exist bodies. But these ｅxpressions do not indicate two different
species of existence, for 'existence' is not a generic word like
'coloured' or 'sexed'. They indicate two different senses of 'exist',
somewhat as 'rising' has different senses in 'the tide is rising', 'hopes
are rising', and 'the average age of death is rising'. A man would be
thought to be making a poor joke who said that three things are
now rising, namely the tide, hopes and the average age of death.
It would be just as good or bad a joke to say that there exist prime
numbers and Wednesdays and public opinions and navies; or that
there exist both minds and bodies*. In the succeeding chapters I
try to prove that the official theory does rest on a batch of category-
mistakes by showing that logically absurd corollaries follow from it.
The exhibition of these absurdities will have the constructive effect
of bringing out part of the correct logic of mental-conduct concepts.

(4) Historical Note.

It would not be true to say that the official theory derives solely
from Descartes' theories, or even from a more widespread anxiety
about the implications of seventeenth century mechanics. Scholastic
and Reformation theology had schooled the intellects of the scientists
as well as of the laymen, philosophers and clerics of that age.
Stoic-Augustinian theories of the will were embedded in the
Calvinist doctrines of sin and grace; Platonic and Aristotelian
theories of the intellect shaped the orthodox doctrines of the
immortality of the soul, Descartes was reformulating already
prevalent theological doctrines of the soul in the new syntax of
Galileo. The theologian's privacy of conscience became the
philosopher's privacy of consciousness, and what had been the
bogy of Predestination reappeared as the bogy of Determinism.

It would also not be true to say that the two-worlds myth
did no theoretical good. Myths often do a lot of theoretical good,
while they are still new. one benefit bestowed by the para-
mechanical myth was that it j^rtly superannuated the then prevalent
para-political myth. Minds and their Faculties had previously
been described by analogies with political superiors and political



24 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

subordinates. The idioms used were those of ruling, obeying,
collaborating and rebelling. They survived and still survive in
many ethical and some epistemological discussions. As, in physics,
the new myth of occult Forces was a scientific improvement on
the old myth of Final Causes, so, in anthropological and psychological
theory, the new myth of hidden operations, impulses and agencies
was an improvement on the old myth of dictations, deferences and
disobediences.



CHAPTER 11

KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT

(1) Foreword.

IN this chapter I try to show that when we describe people as
exercising qualities of mind, we are not referring to occult episodes
of which their overt acts and utterances are effects; we are referring
to those overt acts and utterances themselves. There are, of course,
differences, crucial for our inquiry, between describing an action as
performed absent-mindedly and describing a physiologically
similar action as done on purpose, with care or with cunning. But
such differences of description do not consist in the absence or
presence of an implicit reference to some shadow-action covertly
prefacing the overt action. They consist, on the contrary, in the
absence or presence of certain sorts of testable explanatory-cum-
predictive assertions.

(2) Intelligence and Intellect.

The mental-conduct concepts that I choose to examine first arc
those which belong to that family of concepts ordinarily surnamed
'intelligence'. Here are a few of the more determinate adjectives of
this family: 'clever', 'sensible', 'careful', 'methodical', 'inventive',
'prudent', 'acute', 'logical', 'witty', 'observant', 'critical', 'experi-
mental', 'quick-witted', 'cunning', 'wise', judicious' and 'scrupulous'.
When a person is deficient in intelligence he is described as 'stupid'
or else by more determinate epithets such as 'dull', 'silly', 'careless',
'unmethodical', 'uninventive', 'rash', 'dense', 'illogical', 'humour-
less', 'unobservant', 'uncritical', 'unexperimentaT, 'slow,' 'simple',
'unwise' and 'injudicious'.

It is of first-rate importance to notice from the start that
stupidity is not the same thing, or the same sort of thing, as ignorance.
There is no incompatibility between being well-informed and being

25



26 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

silly, and a person who has a good nose for arguments or jokes may
have a bad head for facts.

Part of the importance of this distinction between being
intelligent and possessing knowledge lies in the fact that both
philosophers and laymen tend to treat intellectual operations as the
core of mental conduct; that is to say, they tend to define all other
mental-conduct concepts in terms of concepts of cognition. They
suppose that the primary exercise of minds consists in finding the
answers to questions and that their other occupations are merely
applications of considered truths or even regrettable distractions
from their consideration. The Greek idea that immortality is
reserved for the theorising part of the soul was discredited, but not
dispelled, by Christianity.

When we speak of the intellect or, better, of the intellectual
powers and performances of persons, we are referring primarily to
that special class of operations which constitute theorising. Thejjoal
of these operations is the knowledge of true propositions oflacts.
Mathematics and the established natural sciences are the mtfdel
accomplishments of human intellects. The early theorists naturally
speculated upon what constituted the peculiar excellences of the
theoretical sciences and disciplines, the growth of which they
had witnessed and assisted. They jvyere predisposed to find
that it was in the capacity for rigorous theory that lay the superior-
ity of men over animals, of civilised men over barbarians and
even of the divine mind over human minds. They thus be-
queathed the idea that /the capacity to attain knowledge of truths
was the defining property of a mind. Other human pQwers
could be classed as mental only if they could be shown ^to, be
somehow piloted by the intellectual grasp of true propositions^ To
be rational was to be able to recognise truths and the connections
between them. To act rationally was, therefore, to nave one's
non-theoretical propensities controlled by one's apprehension of
truths about the conduct of life.

The main object of this chapter is to show that here are many
activities which directly display qualities of mind, yet are neither
themselves intellectual operations nor yet effects of intellectual
operations. Intelligent practice is ncjt a step-child of theory. on
the contrary theorising is one practice amongst others and is itself
intelligently or stupidly conducted.



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 27

iere is another reason why it is important to correct from the
start the intellectualist doctrine which tries to define intelligence in
terms of the apprehension of truths, instead of the apprehension of
truths in terms of intelligence. Theorising is an activity which
most people can and normally do conduct in silence. They articulate
in sentences the theories that they construct, but they do not most
of the time speak these sentences out loud. They say them to
themselves. Or /they formulate their thoughts in diagrams and
pictures, but they' do not always set these out on paper. T^y 'see
them in their minds' eyes'. Much of our ordinary thinking is
conducted in internal ilibnologue or silent soliloquy, usually
accompanied by an internal cinematograph-show of visual imagery.

Thisjtrick of talking to oneself in silence is acquired neither
quickly nor without effort; and it is a necessary condition of our
acquiring it that we should have previously learned to talk intelli-
gently aloud and have heard~and understood other people doing so.
Keeping our thoughts to ourselves is a sophisticated accomplishment.
It was notfuntil the Middle Ages that people learned to read without
reading aloud. Similarly a boy has to learn to read aloud before he
learns to read under his breath, and to prattle aloud before he prattles
to himself. Yet many theorists have supposed thajt^the silence in
which most of us have learned to think is a defining property of
thought. Plato said that in thinking the soul is talking to itself.
But silence, though often convenient, is inessential, as is the
restriction of the audience to one recipient.

JPlie combination of the two assumptions that theorising is the
primary activity of minds and that theorising is intrinsically a
private, silent or internal operation remains one of the main supports
of the dogma of the ghost in the machine. People tend to identify
their miners with the 'place' where they conduct their secret
thoughts. They even come to suppose that there is a special mystery
about how we publish our thoughts instead of realising that we
employ a special artifice to keep them to ourselves.

(3) Knotting How and Knowing That.

When a person is described by one or other of the intelligence-
epithets such as 'shrewd' or silly', 'prudent' or 'imprudent', the
description imputes to him not the knowledge, or ignorance, of this or
that truth, but the ability, or inability, to do certain sorts of things.



28 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

Tttieorists have been so preoccupied with the task of investigating
tiife nature, the source and the credentials of the theories that we
adopt that they have for the most part ignored the question what
it is for someone to know how to perform tasks, fin prdinary life,
on the contrary, as well as in the special business of teaching, we
are much more concerned with people's competences than with
their cognitive repertoires, with the operations than with the truths
that they learn. Indeed even when we are concerned with their
intellectual ~ excellences and deficiencies, we are interested less in
the stocks of truths that they acquire and retain than in their capacities
to find out truths for themselves and their ability to organise and
exploit them, when discovered. Often we deplore a person's ignor-
ance of some fact only because we deplore the stupidity of which
his ignorance is a consequence.

There are certain parallelisms between knowing how and
knowing that, as well as certain divergences. We speak of learning
how to play an instrument as well as of learning that something is
the case; of finding out how to prune trees as well as of finding out
that the Romans had a camp in a certain place; of forgetting how to
tie a reef-knot as well as of forgetting that the German for 'knife'
is 'Messer . We can wonder how as well as wonder whether.

On the other hand we never speak of a person believing or
opining how, and though it is proper to ask for the grounds or
reasons for someone's acceptance of a proposition, this question
cannot be asked of someone's skill at cards or prudence in
investments.

What is involved in our descriptions of people as knowing how
to make and appreciate jokes, to talk grammatically, to play chess,
to fish, or to argue? Part of what is meant is that, when they perform
these operations, they tend to perform them well, i.e. Correctly or
efficiently or successfully. Their performances come up to certain
standards, or satisfy certain criteria. But this is ncjf enough. The
well-regulated clock keeps good time and the well-drilled circus
seal performs its tricks flawlessly, yet we do not call them
'intelligent'. We reserve this title for the persons responsible for
their performances. <TTo be intelligent is not merely to satisfy
criteria, but to applv them; to regulate one's actions and not merely
to be well-regulat^dL)A person's performance is described as careful
or skilful, if in his operations he is ready to detect and correct lapses,



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 29

to repeat and improve upon successes, to profit from the examples of
others and so forth. He applies criteria in performing critically, that
is, in trying to get things right.

JThis point is commonly expressed in the vernacular by saying
that an action exhibits intelligence, if, and only if, .the agent is
thinking what he is doing while he is doing it,-and thinking what
he is doing in such a manner that he would not do the action so
well if he were not thinking what he is doing. This popular idiom
is sometimes appealed to as evidence in favour of the intellectualist
legend. Champions of this legend are apt to try to reassimilate
knowing how to knowing that by arguing that intelligent
performance involves the observance of rules, or the application of
criteria. It follows that the operation which is characterised as
intelligent must be preceded by an intellectual acknowledgment
of these rules or criteria; that is, the agent must first go
through the internal process of avowing to himself certain
propositions about what is to be dong ('maxims', 'imperatives'
or 'regulative propositions' as they are sometimes called);
only then can he execute his performance in accordance with
those dictates.\He must preach to himself before he can practise.
The chef must recite his recipes to himself before he can cook
according to them; the hero must lend his inner ear to some
appropriate moral imperative before swimming out to save the
drowning man;, the chess-player must run over in his head all the
relevant rules andtactical maxims of the game before he can make
correct and skilful moves. To do something thinking what one is
doing is, according to this legend, always to do two things;
namely, to consider certain appropriate propositions, or pre-
scriptions, and to put into practice what these propositions or
prescriptions enjoin. It is to do a bit of theory and then to do a bit
of practice. *

Certainly we often do not only reflect before we act but reflect
in order to act properly. The chess-player may require some time in
which to plan his moves before he makes them. Yet the general
assertion that all intelligent performance requires to be prefaced by
the consideration of appropriate propositions rings unplausibly, even
when it is apologetically conceded that(jhe required considera-
tion is often very swift and may go quite unmarked by the agent. I
shall argue that the intellectualist legend is false and that when we



30 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

describe a performance as intelligent, this does not 'entail the
double operation of considering and executing.

Fijs^there^^re many classes of performances in which intelligence
is displayed, but the rules or criteria of which are unformulatedf
The wit, when challenged to cite the maxims, or canons^ by whiclf
he constructs and appreciates jokes, is unable to answer\He knows
how to make good jokes and how to detect bad ones, but he cannot
tell us or himself any recipes for them. So the practice of humour
is not a client of its theory 1 ^ The canons of aesthetic taste, of tactful
manners and of inventive technique similarly remain unpropounded
without impediment to the intelligent exercise of those gifts.

\Rules of correct reasoning were first extracted by Aristotle,
yet then knew how to avoid and detect fallacies before they learned
his lessons, just as men sinceA(Vristotle, and including Aristotle,
ordinarily conduct their arguments without making any internal
reference to his formulae. They do not plan their arguments before
constructing them/ Indeed if they had to plan what to think before
thinking it they would never think at all; for this planning would
itself be unplanned. ^

Efficient praStic^ precedes the theory of it; methodologies
presuppose the application of the methods, of the critical investiga-
tion of which they are the products. y was because Aristotle found
himself and others reasoning now intelligently and now stupidly
and it was because Izaak Walton found himself and others angling
sometimes effectively and sometimes ineffectively that both were
able to give to their pupils the maxims and prescriptions of their arts.
It is therefore possible for people intelligently to perform some
sorts of operations when they are not yet able to consider any
propositions enjoining how they should be performed. Some
intelligent performances are not controlled by any anterior
acknowledgments of the principles applied in them.

The crucial objection to the intellectualist legend is this.
The consideration of propositions is itself an operation the execution
of which can be more or less intelligent, less or more stupid. But if,
for any operation to be intelligently executed, a prior theoretical
operation had first to be performed and performed intelligently,
it would be a logical impossibility fcjr anyone ever to break into the
circle.

Let us consider some salient points at which this regress would



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 31

arise. According to the legend, whenever an agent does anything
intelligently, his act is preceded and steered by another internal
act of considering a regulative proposition appropriate to his
practical problem. But what makes him consider the one maxim
which is appropriate rather than any of the thousands which are
not? Why does the hero not find himself calling to mind a cooking-
recipe, or a rule of Formal Logic? Perhaps he does, but then his
intellectual process is silly and not sensible. Intelligently reflecting
how to act is, among other things, considering what is pertinent
and disregarding what is inappropriate. Must we then say that for
the hero's reflections how to act to be intelligent he must first reflect
$ow best to reflect how to act? The endlessness of this implied
regress shows that the application of the criterion of appropriateness
does not entail the occurrence of a process of considering this
criterion.

Next, supposing still that to act reasonably I must first perpend
the reason for so acting, how am I led to make a suitable application
of the reason to the particular situation which my action is to meet?
For the reason, or maxim, is inevitably a proposition of some
generality. It cannot embody specifications to fit every detail of the
particular state of affairs. Clearly, once more, I must be sensible
and not stupid, and this good sense cannot itself be a product of the
intellectual acknowledgment of any general principle. ^A soldier
docs not become a shrewd general merely by endorsing the
strategic principles of Clausewitz; he must also be competent to
apply them. jCnowing how to apply maxims cannot be reduced to,
or derived from, the acceptance of those or any other maxims. 1

To put it quite generally, the absurd assumption made by 'the
intcllectualist legend is this, that a performance of any sort inherits
all its title to intelligence from some anterior internal operation of
planning what to do. Now very often we do go through such a
process of planning what to do, and, if we are silly, our planning is
silly, if shrewd, our planning is shrewd. It is also notoriously possible
for us to plan shrewdly and perform stupidly, i.e. to flout our
precepts in our practice. By the original argument, therefore, our
intellectual planning process must inherit its title to shrewdness
from yet another interior process of planning to plan, and this
process could in its turn be silly or shrewd. The regress is infinite,
and this reduces to absurdity the theory that'-for an operation to be



32 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

intelligent it must be steered by a prior intellectual operationO^hat
distinguishes sensible from silly operations is not their parentage but
their procedure, and this holds no less for intellectual than for
practical performances. 'Intelligent' cannot be defined in terms of
'intellectual' or 'knowing how 9 in terms of 'knowing that 9 ;
'thinking what I am doing' does not connote 'both thinking what to
do and doing it'. When I do something intelligently, i.e. thinking
what I am doing, I am doing one thing and not two. My per-
formance has a special procedure or manner, not special antecedents.

(4) The Motives of the Intellectualist Legend.

Why are people so strongly drawn to believe, in the face of their
own daily experience, that the intelligent execution of an operation
must embody two processes, one of doing and another of theorising ?
Part of the answer is that they are wedded to the dogma of the ghost
in the machine. Since doing is often an overt muscular affair, it
is written off as a merely physical process. on the assumption of
the antithesis between 'physical' and 'mental', it follows that muscular
doing cannot itself be a mental operation. To earn the title 'skilful',
'cunning', or 'humorous', it must therefore get it by transfer from
another counterpart act occurring not 'in the machine' but 'in the
ghost'; for 'skilful', 'cunning' and 'humorous' are certainly mental
predicates.

It is, of course, perfectly true that when we characterise as
witty or tactful some piece of overt behaviour, we are not con-
sidering only the muscular movements which we witness. A parrot
might have made the same remark in the same situation without
our crediting it with a sense of humour, or a lout might have done
precisely what the tactful man did, without our thinking him
tactful. But if one and the same vocal utterance is a stroke of humour
from the humorist, but a mere noise-response, when Issuing from
the parrot, it is tempting to say that we are ascribing wit not to
something that we hear but to something else that we do not hear.
We are accordingly tempted to say that what makes one audible
or visible action witty, while another audibly or visibly similar
action was not, is that the former was attended by another inaudible
and invisible action which was tljp real exercise of wit. But to
admit, as we must, that there may be no visible or audible difference
between a tactful or witty act and a tactless or humourless one is



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 33

not to admit that the difference is constituted by the performance or
non-performance of some extra secret acts.

The cleverness of the clown may be exhibited in his tripping and
tumbling. He trips and tumbles just as clumsy people do, except
that he trips and tumbles on purpose and after much rehearsal and at
the golden moment and where the children can see him and so as
not to hurt himself. The spectators applaud his skill at seeming
clumsy, but what they applaud is not some extra hidden performance
executed 'in his head'. It is his visible performance that they admire,
but they admire it not for being an effect of any hidden internal
causes but for being an exercise of a skill. Now a skill is not an act.
It is therefore neither a witnessable nor an unwitnessable act. To
recognise that a performance is an exercise of a skill is indeed to
appreciate it in the light of a factor which could not be separately
recorded by a camera. But the reason why the skill exercised in a
performance cannot be separately recorded by a camera is not that
it is an occult or ghostly happening, but that it is not a happening
at all. It is a disposition, or complex of dispositions, and a disposition
is a factor of the wrong logical type to be seen or unseen, recorded
or unrecorded. Just as the habit of talking loudly is not itself loud
or quiet, since it is not the sort of term of which 'loud' and 'quiet'
can be predicated, or just as a susceptibility to headaches is for the
same reason not itself unendurable or endurable, so the skills, tastes
and bents which are exercised in overt or internal operations are not
themselves overt or internal, witnessable or unwitnessable. The
traditional theory of the mind has misconstrued the type-distinction
between disposition and exercise into its mythical bifurcation of
unwitnessable mental causes and their witnessable physical
effects.

The clown's trippings and tumblings are the workings of his
mind, for they are his jokes; but the visibly similar trippings and
tumblings of a clumsy man are not the workings of that man's mind.
For he does not trip on purpose. Tripping on purpose is both a bodily
and a mental process, but it is not two processes, such as one process
of purposing to trip and, as an effect, another process of tripping.
Yet the old myth dies hard. We are still tempted to argue that if
the clown's antics exhibit carefulness, judgment, wit, and appreciation
of the moods of his spectators, there must be occurring in the
clown's head a counterpart performance to that which is taking



34 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

place on the sawdust. If he is thinking what he is doing, there must
be occurring behind his painted face a cogitative shadow-operation
which we do not witness, tallying with, and controlling, the bodily
contortions which we do witness. Surely the thinking of thoughts
is the basic activity of minds and surely, too, the process of thinking
is an invisible and inaudible process. So how can the clown's
visible and audible performance be his mind at work?

To do justice to this objection it is necessary to make a verbal
concession. There has fairly recently come into general use a certain
special sense of the words 'mental* and 'mind'. We speak of 'mental
arithmetic', of 'mind-reading' and of debates going on 'in the
mind', and it certainly is the case that what is in this sense mental
is unwitnessable. A boy is said to be doing 'mental arithmetic' when
instead of writing down, or reciting aloud, the numerical symbols
with which he is operating, he says them to himself, performing his
calculations in silent soliloquy. Similarly a person is said to be
reading the mind of another when he describes truly what the other
is saying or picturing to himself in auditory or visual images. That
these are special uses of 'mental' and 'mind' is easily shown. For a
boy who does his calculating aloud, or on paper, may be reasoning
correctly and organising his steps methodically; his reckoning is
not the less a careful intellectual operation for being conducted hi
public instead of in private. His performance is therefore an exercise
of a mental faculty in the normal sense of 'mental'.

Now calculating does not first acquire the rank of proper
thinking when its author begins to do it with his lips closed and
his hands in his pockets. The sealing of the lips is no part of the
definition of thinking. A man may think aloud or half under his
breath; he may think silently, yet with lip-movements conspicuous
enough to be read by a lip-reader; or he may, as most of us have
done since nursery-days, think in silence and with motionless lips.
The differences are differences of social and personal convenience,
of celerity and of facility. They need import no more differences
into the coherence, cogency or appropriateness of the intellectual
operations performed than is imported into them by a writer's
preference for pencils over pens, or for invisible ink over ordinary
ink. A deaf and dumb person talks inpaanual signs. Perhaps, when he
wants to keep his thoughts to himself, he makes these signs with his
hands kept behind his back or under the table. The fact that these



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 35

signs might happen to be observed by a Paul Pry would not lead
us or their maker to say that he was not thinking.

This special use of 'mental' and 'mind' in which they signify
what is done 'in one's head' cannot be used as evidence for the
dogma of the ghost in the machine. It is nothing but a contagion
from that dogma. The technical trick of conducting our thinking
in auditory word-images, instead of in spoken words, does indeed
secure secrecy for our thinking, since the auditory imaginings
of one person are not seen or heard by another (or, as we shall see,
by their owner either). But this secrecy is not the secrecy ascribed
to the postulated episodes of the ghostly shadow-world. It is merely
the convenient privacy which characterises the tunes that run in
my head and the things that I see in my mind's eye.

Moreover the fact that a person says things to himself in his
head does not entail that he is thinking.He can babble deliriously,
or repeat jingles in inner speech, just as he can in talking aloud.
The distinction between talking sense and babbling, or between
thinking what one is saying and merely saying, cuts across the
distinction between talking aloud and talking to oneself. What
makes a verbal operation an exercise of intellect is independent
of what makes it public or private. Arithmetic done with pencil
and paper may be more intelligent than mental arithmetic, and the
public tumblings of the clown may be more intelligent than the
tumblings which he merely 'sees' in his mind's eye or 'feels' in his
mind's legs, if, as may or may not be the case, any such imaginings
of antics occur.

(5) 'In my head'.

It is convenient to say something here about our everyday use
of the phrase 'in my head'. When I do mental arithmetic, I am likely
to say that I have had the numbers with which I have been working
'in my head' and not on paper; and if I have been listening to a
catchy air or a verbal jingle, I am likely to describe myself later
on as still having the tune or jingle 'running in my head'. It is 'in
my head' that I go over the Kings of England, solve anagrams and
compose limericks. Why is this felt to be an appropriate
and expressive metaphor? Fo* a metaphor it certainly is. No
one thinks that when a tune is running in my head, a surgeon
could unearth a little orchestra buried inside my skull or that a



36 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

doctor by applying a stethoscope to my cranium could hear a
muffled tune, in the way in which I hear the muffled whistling of
my neighbour when I put my ear to the wall between our rooms.

It is sometimes suggested that the phrase derives from theories
about the relations between brains and intellectual processes. It
probably is from such theories that we derive such ｅxpressions as
'racking one's brains to solve a problem'; yet no one boasts of
having solved an anagram 'in his brains'. A schoolboy would
sometimes be ready to say that he had done an easy piece of
arithmetic in his head, though he did not have to use his brains
over it; and no intellectual effort or acumen is required in order to
have a tune running in one's head. Conversely, arithmetic done
with paper and pencil may tax one's brains, although it is not done
'in the head'.

It appears to be primarily of imagined noises that we find it
natural to say that they take place 'inside our heads' ; and of these
imagined noises it is primarily those that we imagine ourselves both
uttering and hearing. It is the words which I fancy myself saying
to myself and the tunes which I fancy myself humming or whistling
to myself which are first thought of as droning through this
corporeal studio. With a little violence the phrase 'in my head' is
then sometimes, by some people, extended to all fancied noises
and even transferred to the description of the things that I fancy
I see; but we shall come back to this extension later on.

What then tempts us to describe our imaginations of ourselves
saying or humming things to ourselves by saying that the tilings
are said or hummed in our heads? First, the idiom has an indis-
pensable negative function. When the wheel-noises of the train
make 'Rule Britannia' run in my head, the wheel-noises are audible
to my fellow-passengers, but my 'Rule Britannia' is not. The
rhythmic rattle fills the whole carriage; my 'Rule Britannia' does
not fill that compartment or any part of it, so it is tempting to say
that it fills instead another compartment, namely one that is a part
of me. The rattle-noises have their source in the wheels and the
rails; my 'Rule Britannia' does not have its source in any orchestra
outside me, so it is tempting to state this negative fact by saying
that it has its source inside me. But $iis by itself would not explain
why I find it a natural metaphor to say that 'Rule Britannia' is
running in my head rather than in my throat, chest or stomach.



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 37

When I hear the words that you utter or the tunes that the
band plays, I ordinarily have an idea, sometimes a wrong one,
from which direction the noises come and at what distance from
me their source is. But when I hear the words that I myself utter
aloud, the tunes that I myself hum, the sounds of my own chewing,
breathing and coughing, the situation is quite different, since here
there is no question of the noises coming from a source which is
in any direction or at any distance from me. I do not have to turn
my head about in order to hear better, nor can I advance my ear
nearer to the source of the noise. Furthermore, though I can shut
out, or. muffle, your voice and the band's tunes by stopping up my
ears, this action, so far from decreasing, increases the loudness and
resonance of my own voice. My own utterances, as well as other
head-noises like throbbings, sneezes, sniffs and the rest, are not
airborne noises coming from a more or less remote source; they are
made in the head and are heard through the head, though some of
them are also heard as airborne noises. If I make noises of a very
resonant or hacking kind, I can feel the vibrations or jerks in my
head in the same sense of 'feel in' as I feel the vibrations of the tuning-
fork in my hand.

Now these noises are literally and not metaphorically in the
head. They are real head-borne noises, which the doctor could hear
through his stethoscope. But the sense in which we say that the
schoolboy doing mental arithmetic has his numbers not on paper
but in his head is not this literal sense but a metaphorical sense
borrowed from it. That his numbers are not really being heard in
his head in the way in which he really hears his own coughing in
his head is easily shown. For if he whistles or yells loudly with his
ears stopped up, he can half-deafen himself or set his ears singing.
But if in ^oing his mental arithmetic, he 'sings' his numbers to
himself as if in a very shrill voice, nothing half-deafening occurs.
He makes and hears no shrill noises, for he is merely imagining
himself making and hearing shrill noises, and an imagined shriek
is not a shriek, and it is not a whisper either. But he describes his
numbers as being in his head, just as I describe my 'Rule Britannia'
as running in my head, because this is a lively way of expressing
the fact that the imagination t>f the production-cum-audition is a
vivid one. Our phrase 'in my head' is meant to be understood as
inside inverted commas, like the verb 'see* in such ｅxpressions



38 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

as "I 'see' the incident now, though it took place forty years ago".
If we were really doing what we imagine ourselves doing, namely
hearing ourselves saying or humming things, then these noises
would be in our heads in the literal usage of the phrase. However,
since we are not producing or hearing noises, but only fancying
ourselves doing so, when we say that the numbers and the tunes
that we imagine ourselves droning to ourselves are 'in our heads',
we say it in the knowing tone of voice reserved for expressing
things which are not to be taken literally.

I have said that there is some inclination to expand the employ-
ment of the idiom 'in my head', to cover not only imagined
self-made and head-borne noises but also imagined noises in
general and, even wider, imagined sights as well. I suspect that this
inclination, if I am right in thinking that it exists, derives from the
following familiar set of facts. In the case of all the specifically
head-senses, either we are endowed with a natural set of shutters
or we can easily provide an artificial set. We can shut out the view
with our eyelids or with our hands; our lips shield our tongues;
our fingers can be used to stop our ears and nostrils. So what is
there for you and me to see, hear, taste and smell can be excluded
by putting up these shutters. But the things that I sec in my mind's
eye are not excluded when I close my eyes. Indeed sometimes I
'see' them more vividly than ever when I do so. To dismiss the
ghastly vision of yesterday's road-accident, I may even have to
open my eyes. This makes it tempting to describe the difference
between imaginary and real views by saying that while the objects
of the latter are on the far side of the shutters, the objects of the
former are on the near side of them; the latter are well outside my
head, so the former are well inside it. But this point needs a certain
elaboration.

Sight and hearing are distance-senses, while touch, taste and
smell are not; that is to say, when we make our ordinary
uses of the verbs 'see', 'hear', 'watch', 'listen', 'espy', 'overhear'
and the rest, the things we speak of as 'seen' and 'listened to' are
things at a distance from us. We hear a train far away to the south
and we get a peep at a planet up in the sky. Hence we find a diffi-
culty in talking about the whereabouts of the spots that float
'before the eye'. For though seen they are not out there. But
we do not speak of feeling or tasting things in the distance, and if



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 39

asked how far off and in which direction a tiling lies, we do not
reply 'Let me have a sniff or a taste'. Of course we may explore
tactually and kinaesthetically, but when we find out in these ways
where the electric light switch is, we are finding that it is where
the finger-tips are. An object handled is where the hand is, but
an object seen or heard is not, usually, anywhere near where the
eye or ear is.

So when we want to emphasise the fact that something is not
really being seen or heardi but is only being imagined as seen or
heard, we tend to assert its imaginariness by denying its distance,
and, by a convenient impropriety, we deny its distance by asserting
its metaphorical nearness. 'Not out there, but in here; not outside
the shutters and real, but inside the shutters and unreal', 'not an
external reality, but an internal phantasm'. We have no such
linguistic trick for describing what we imagine ourselves feeling,
smelling, or tasting. A passenger on a ship feels the deck rolling
beneath him chiefly in his feet and calves; and when he gets ashore,
he still 'feels' the pavement rolling beneath him 'in his feet and
calves' ; but as kinaesthetic feeling is not a distance-sense, he cannot
pillory his imaginary leg-feelings as illusions by saying that the
rolling is in his legs and not in the street, for the rolling that he had
felt when aboard has equally been felt in his legs. He could not
have said 'I feel the other end of the ship rolling'. Nor does he
describe the illusory rolling of the pavements as being 'felt in his
head', but only as 'felt in his legs'.

I suggest, then, that the phrase 'in the head' is felt to be an
appropriate and expressive metaphor in the first instance for vividly
imagined self-voiced noises, and secondarily for any imaginary
noises and even for imaginary sights, because in these latter cases
a denial of distance, by assertion of metaphorical nearness, is
intended to be construed as an assertion of imaginariness; and the
nearness is relative, not so much to the head-organs of sight and
hearing themselves, as to the places where their shutters are put up.
It is an interesting verbal point that people sometimes use 'mental'
and 'merely mental' as synonyms for 'imaginary'.

But it does not matter for my general argument whether this
excursus into philology is correct or not. It will serve to draw
attention to the sorts of things which we say are 'in our heads',
namely, such things as imagined words, tunes and, perhaps, vistas.



40 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

When people employ the idiom 'in the mind', they are usually
expressing over-sophisticatedly what we ordinarily express by the
less misleading metaphorical use of 'in the head'. The phrase 'in
the mind' can and should always be dispensed with. Its use habituates
its employers to the view that minds are queer 'places', the
occupants of which are special-status phantasms. It is part of the
function of this book to show that exercises of qualities of mind do
not, save per accidens, take place 'in the head', in the ordinary sense
of the phrase, and those which do so have no special priority over
those which do not.

(6) The positive account of Knowing How.

So far I hope to have shown that the exercise of intelligence in
practice cannot be analysed into a tandem operation of first
considering prescriptions and then executing them. We have also
examined some of the motives which incline theorists to adopt this
analysis.

But if to perform intelligently is to do one thing and not two
things, and if to perform intelligently is to apply criteria in the
conduct of the performance itself, it remains to show how this
factor does characterise those operations which we recognise as
skilful, prudent, tasteful or logical. For there need be no visible or
audible differences between an action done with skill and one done
from sheer habit, blind impulse, or in a fit of absence of mind. A
parrot may squawk out 'Socrates is mortal' immediately after
someone has uttered premisses from which this conclusion follows.
One boy may, while thinking about cricket, give by rote the same
correct answer to a multiplication problem which another boy gives
who is thinking what he is doing. Yet we do not call the parrot
'logical', or describe the inattentive boy as working out the problem.

Consider first a boy learning to play chess. Clearly* before he
has yet heard of the rules of the game he might by accident make
a move with his knight which the rules permit. The fact that
he makes a permitted move does not entail that he knows the rule
which permits it. Nor need the spectator be able to discover in
the way the boy makes this move any visible feature which shows
whether the move is a random one, 05. one made in knowledge of the
rules. However, the boy now begins to learn the game properly,
and this generally involves his^receiving explicit instruction in the



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 41

rules. He probably gets them by heart and is then ready to cite
them on demand. During his first few games he probably has to go
over the rules aloud or in his head, and to ask now and then how
they should be applied to this or that particular situation. But
very soon he comes to observe the rules without thinking of them.
He makes the permitted moves and avoids the forbidden ones; he
notices and protests when his opponent breaks the rules. But he no
longer cites to himself or to the room the formulae in which the
bans and permissions are declared. It has become second nature to
him to do what is allowed and to avoid what is forbidden. At this
stage he might even have lost his former ability to cite the rules. If
asked to instruct another beginner, he might have forgotten how
to state the rules and he would show the beginner how to play
only by himself making the correct moves and cancelling the
beginner's false moves.

But it would be quite possible for a boy to learn chess without
ever hearing or reading the rules at all. By watching the moves
made by others and by noticing which of his own moves were
conceded and which were rejected, he could pick up the art of
playing correctly while still quite unable to propound the regula-
tions in terms of which 'correct' and 'incorrect' are defined. We
all learned the rules of hunt-the-thimble and hide-and-seek and the
elementary rules of grammar and logic in this way. We learn how
by practice, schooled indeed by criticism and example, but often
quite unaided by any lessons in the theory.

It should be noticed that the boy is not said to know how to
play, if all that he can do is to recite the rules accurately. He must
be able to make the required moves. But he is said to know how to
play if, although he cannot cite the rules, he normally does make the
permitted moves, avoid the forbidden moves and protest if his
opponent iflakes forbidden moves. His knowledge how is exercised
primarily in the moves that he makes, or concedes, and in the moves
that he avoids or vetoes. So long as he can observe the rules, we do
not care if he cannot also formulate them. It is not what he does
in his head or with his tongue, but what he does on the board
that shows whether or not he knows the rules in the executive way
of being able to apply them. Similarly a foreign scholar might not
know how to speak grammatical English as well as an English
child, for all that he had mastered the theory of English grammar.



42 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

(7) Intelligent Capacities versus Habits.

The ability to apply rules is the product of practice. It is therefore
tempting to argue that competences and skills arc just habits. They
are certainly second natures or acquired dispositions, but it does not
follow from this that they are mere habits. Habits are one sort, but
npt the only sort, of second nature, and it will be argued later that
the common assumption that all second natures are mere habits
obliterates distinctions which are of cardinal importance for the
inquiries in which we are engaged.

The ability to give by rote the correct solutions of multiplication
problems differs in certain important respects from the ability to
solve them by calculating. When we describe someone as doing
something by pure or blind habit, we mean that he does it auto-
matically and without having to mind what he is doing. He docs
not exercise care, vigilance, or criticism. After the toddling-age we
walk on pavements without minding our steps. But a mountaineer
walking over ice-covered rocks in a high wind in the dark does
not move his limbs by blind habit; he thinks what he is doing, he
is ready for emergencies, he economises in effort, he makes tests
and experiments; in short he walks with some degree of skill and
judgment. If he makes a mistake, he is inclined not to repeat it, and
if he finds a new trick effective he is inclined to continue to use it
and to improve on it. He is concomitantly walking and teaching
himself how to walk in conditions of this sort. It is of the essence
of merely habitual practices that one performance is a replica of its
predecessors. It is of the essence of intelligent practices that one
performance is modified by its predecessors. The agent is still
learning.

This distinction between habits and intelligent capacities can
be illustrated by reference to the parallel distinction between the
methods used for inculcating the two sorts of second 'nature. We
build up habits by drill, but we build up intelligent capacities by
training. Drill (or conditioning) consists in the imposition of
repetitions. The recruit learns to slope arms by repeatedly going
through just the same motions by numbers. The child learns the
alphabet and the multiplication tables in the same way. The
practices are not learned until the pupil's responses to his cues are
automatic, until he can 'do them in his sleep', as it is revealingly
put. Training, on the other hand, though it embodies plenty of



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 43

sheer drill, does not consist of drill. It involves the stimulation by
criticism and example of the pupil's own judgment. He learns how
to do things thinking what he is doing, so that every operation
performed is itself a new lesson to him how to perform better.
The soldier who was merely drilled to slope arms correctly has to
be trained to be proficient in marksmanship and map-reading. Drill
dispenses with intelligence, training develops it. We do not expect
the soldier to be able to read maps 'in his sleep'.

There is a further important difference between habits and
intelligent capacities, to bring out which it is necessary to say a
few words about the logic of dispositional concepts in general.

When we describe glass as brittle, or sugar as soluble, we are
using dispositional concepts, the logical force of which is this.
The brittleness of glass does not consist in the fact that it is at a
given moment actually being shivered. It may be brittle without
ever being shivered. To say that it is brittle is to say that if it ever
is, or ever had been, struck or strained, it would fly, or have flown,
into fragments. To say that sugar is soluble is to say that it would
dissolve, or would have dissolved, if immersed in water.

A statement ascribing a dispositional property to a thing has
much, though not everything, in common with a statement
subsuming the thing under a law. To possess a dispositional property
is not to be in a particular state, or to undergo a particular change;
it is to be bound or liable to be in a particular state, or to undergo
a particular change, when a particular condition is realised.
The same is true about specifically human dispositions such as
qualities of character. My being an habitual smoker does not entail
that I am at this or that moment smoking; it is my permanent
proncness to smoke when I am not eating, sleeping, lecturing or
attending funerals, and have not quite recently been smoking.

In discussing dispositions it is initially helpful to fasten on the
simplest models, such as the brittleness of glass or the smoking habit
of a man. For in describing these dispositions it is easy to unpack
the hypothetical proposition implicitly conveyed in the ascription
of the dispositional properties. To be brittle is just to be bound or
likely to fly into fragments in such and such conditions; to be a
smoker is just to be bound or likely to fill, light and draw on a pipe
in such and such conditions. These are simple, single-track disposi-
tions, the actualisations of which are nearly uniform.



44 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

But the practice of considering such simple models of dispositions,
though initially helpful, leads at a later stage to erroneous assump-
tions. There are many dispositions the actualisations of which can
take a wide and perhaps unlimited variety of shapes; many disposi-
tion-concepts are determinable concepts. When an object is
described as hard, we do not mean only that it would resist
deformation; we mean also that it would, for example, give out a
sharp sound if struck, that it would cause us pain if we came into
sharp contact with it, that resilient objects would bounce off it,
and so on indefinitely. If we wished to unpack all that is conveyed
in describing an animal as gregarious, we should similarly have to
produce an infinite series of different hypothetical proposi-
tions.

Now the higher-grade dispositions of people with which this
inquiry is largely concerned are, in general, not single-track
dispositions, but dispositions the exercises of which are indefinitely
heterogeneous. When Jane Austen wished to show the specific
kind of pride which characterised the heroine of 'Pride and
Prejudice', she had to represent her actions, words, thoughts and
feelings in d, thousand different situations. There is no one standard
type of action or reaction such that Jane Austen could say 'My
heroine's kind of pride was just the tendency to do this, whenever
a situation of that sort arose'.

Epistemologists, among others, often fall into the trap or
expecting dispositions to have uniform exercises. For instance, when
they recognise that the verbs 'know' and 'believe' are ordinarily
used dispositionally, they assume that there must therefore exist
one-pattern intellectual processes in which these cognitive disposi-
tions are actualised. Flouting the testimony of experience, they
postulate that, for example, a man who believes that^the earth is
round must from time to time be going through some unique
proceeding of cognising, judging', or internally re-asserting, with a
feeling of confidence, 'The earth is round'. In fact, of course, people
do not harp on statements in this way, and even if they did do so
and even if we knew that they did, we still should not be satisfied
that they believed that the earth was round, unless we also found them
inferring, imagining, saying and dbing a great number of other
things as well. If we found them inferring, imagining, saying and
doing these other tilings, we should be satisfied that they believed



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 45

the earth to be round, even if we had the best reasons for thinking
that they never internally harped on the original statement at all.
However often and stoutly a skater avers to us or to himself, that
the ice will bear, he shows that he has his qualms, if he keeps to the
edge of the pond, calls his children away from the middle, keeps
his eye on the life-belts or continually speculates what would
happen, if the ice broke.

(8) The exercise of intelligence.

In judging that someone's performance is or is not intelligent,
we have, as has been said, in a certain manner to look beyond the
performance itself. For there is no particular overt or inner
performance which could not have been accidentally or 'mechanic-
ally' executed by an idiot, a sleepwalker, a man in panic, absence
of mind or delirium or even, sometimes, by a parrot. But in looking
beyond the performance itself, we are not trying to pry into some
hidden counterpart performance enacted on the supposed secret
stage of the agent's inner life. We are considering his abilities and
propensities of which this performance was an actualisation. Our
inquiry is not into causes (and a fortiori not into occult causes), but
into capacities, skills, habits, liabilities and bents. We observe, for
example, a soldier scoring a bull's eye. Was it luck or was it skill ?
If he has the skill, then he can get on or near the bull's eye again,
even if the wind strengthens, the range alters and the target moves.
Or if his second shot is an outer, his third, fourth and fifth shots will
probably creep nearer and nearer to the bull's eye. He generally
checks his breathing before pulling the trigger, as he did on this
occasion; he is ready to advise his neighbour what allowances to
make for refraction, wind, etc. Marksmanship is a complex of
skills, and the question whether he hit the bull's eye by luck or
from good fnarksmanship is the question whether or not he has the
skills, and, if he has, whether he used them by making his shot with
care, self-control, attention to the conditions and thought of his
instructions.

To decide whether his bull's eye was a fluke or a good shot, we
need and he himself might need to take into account more than
this one success. Namely, \ye should take into account his
subsequent shots, his past record, his explanations or excuses, the
advice he gave to his neighbour and a host of other clues of various



46 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

sorts. There is no one signal of a man's knowing how to shoot, but a
modest assemblage of heterogeneous performances generally
suffices to establish beyond reasonable doubt whether he knows how
to shoot or not. only then, if at all, can it be decided whether he
hit the bull's eye because he was lucky, or whether he hit it because
he was marksman enough to succeed when he tried.

A drunkard at the chessboard makes the one move which upsets
his opponent's plan of campaign. The spectators are satisfied that
this was due not to cleverness but to luck, if they are satisfied that
most of his moves made in this state break the rules of chess, or have
no tactical connection with the position of the game, that he would
not be likely to repeat this move if the tactical situation were to
recur, that he would not applaud such a move if made by another
player in a similar situation, that he could not explain why he had
done it or even describe the threat under which his King had been.

Their problem is not one of the occurrence or non-occurrence of
ghostly processes, but one of the truth or falsehood of certain 'could'
and 'would' propositions and certain other particular applications
of them. For, roughly, the mind is not the topic of sets of untestable
categorical propositions, but the topic of sets of testable hypo-
thetical and semi-hypothetical propositions. The difference between
a normal person and an idiot is not that the normal person is really
two persons while the idiot is only one, but that the normal person
can do a lot of things which the idiot cannot do; and 'can' and
'cannot' are not occurrence words but modal words. Of course,
in describing the moves actually made by the drunk and the sober
players, or the noises actually uttered by the idiotic and the sane
men, we have to use not only 'could' and 'would' ｅxpressions, but
also 'did' and 'did not' ｅxpressions. The drunkard's move was made
recklessly and the sane man was minding what he was saying. In
Chapter V I shall try to show that the crucial differences between
such occurrence reports as 'he did it recklessly' and 'he did it on
purpose' have to be elucidated not as differences between simple
and composite occurrence reports, but in quite another way.

Knowing how, then, is a disposition, but not a single-track
disposition like a reflex or a habit. Its exercises are observances of
rules or canons or the applications of criteria, but they are not
tandem operations of theoretically avowing maxims and then
putting them into practice. Further, its exercises can be overt or



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 47

covert, deeds performed or deeds imagined, words spoken aloud or
words heard in one's head, pictures painted on canvas or pictures
in the mind's eye. Or they can be amalgamations of the two.

These points may be jointly illustrated by describing what
happens when a person argues intelligently. There is a special point
in selecting this example, since so much has been made of the
rationality of man; and part, though only part, of what people
understand by 'rational' is 'capable of reasoning cogently'.

First, it makes no important difference whether we think of the
reasoner as arguing to himself or arguing aloud, pleading, perhaps,
before an imagined court or pleading before a real court. The
criteria by which his arguments are to be adjudged as cogent, clear,
relevant and well organised are the same for silent as for declaimed
or written ratiocinations. Silent argumentation has the practical
advantages of being relatively speedy, socially undisturbing and
secret; audible and written argumentation has the advantage of being
less slap-dash, through being subjected to the criticisms of the
audience and readers. But the same qualities of intellect are exercised
in both, save that special schooling is required to inculcate the trick
of reasoning in silent soliloquy.

Next, although there may occur a few stages in his argument
which are so trite that he can go through them by rote, much of his
argument is likely never to have been constructed before. He has
to meet new objections, interpret new evidence and make connec-
tions between elements in the situation which had not previously
been co-ordinated. In short he has to innovate, and where he
innovates he is not operating from habit. He is not repeating
hackneyed moves. That he is now thinking what he is doing is
shown not only by this fact that he is operating without precedents,
but also by the fact that he is ready to recast his ｅxpression of
obscurely put points, on guard against ambiguities or else on the
look out for chances to exploit them, taking care not to rely on
easily refutable inferences, alert in meeting objections and resolute
in steering the general course of his reasoning in the direction of
his final goal. It will be argued later that all these words 'ready',
'on guard', 'careful', 'on the look out' and 'resolute' are semi-
dispositional, semi-episodic words. They do not signify the
concomitant occurrence of extra but internal operations, nor mere
capacities and tendencies to perform further operations if the need



48 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

for them should arise, but something between the two. The careful
driver is not actually imagining or planning for all of the countless
contingencies that might crop up; nor is he merely competent to
recognise and cope with any one of them, if it should arise. He has
not foreseen the runaway donkey, yet he is not unprepared for it.
His readiness to cope with such emergencies would show itself
in the operations he would perform, if they were to occur. But it
also actually does show itself by the ways in which he converses
and handles his controls even when nothing critical is taking place.

Underlying all the other features of the operations executed by
the intelligent reasoner there is the cardinal feature that he reasons
logically, that is, that he avoids fallacies and produces valid proofs
and inferences, pertinent to the case he is making. He observes the
rules of logic, as well as those of style, forensic strategy, professional
etiquette and the rest. But he probably observes the rules of
logic without thinking about them. He does not cite Aristotle's
formulae to himself or to the court. He applies in his practice what
Aristotle abstracted in his theory of such practices. He reasons with
a correct method, but without considering the prescriptions of a
methodology. The rules that he observes have become his way of
thinking, when he is taking care; they are not external rubrics
with which he has to square his thoughts. In a word, he conducts
his operation efficiently, and to operate efficiently is not to perform
two operations. It is to perform one operation in a certain manner
or with a certain style or procedure, and the description of this
modus operandi has to be in terms of such semi-dispositional, semi-
episodic epithets as 'alert', 'careful', 'critical', 'ingenious', 'logical',
etc.

What is true of arguing intelligently is, with appropriate
modifications, true of other intelligent operations. The boxer, the
surgeon, the poet and the salesman apply their special criteria in
the performance of their special tasks, for they are trying to get
things right; and they are appraised as clever, skilful, inspired or
shrewd not for the ways in which they consider, if they consider
at all, prescriptions for conducting their special performances, but
for the ways in which they conduct those performances themselves.
Whether or not the boxer plans his manoeuvres before executing
them, his cleverness at boxing is decided in the light of how he
fights. If he is a Hamlet of the ring, he will be condemned as an



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 49

inferior fighter, though perhaps a brilliant theorist or critic.
Cleverness at fighting is exhibited in the giving and parrying of
blows, not in the acceptance or rejection of propositions about
blows, just as ability at reasoning is exhibited in the construction
of valid arguments and the detection of fallacies, not in the avowal
of logicians' formulae. Nor does the surgeon's skill function in his
tongue uttering medical truths but only in his hands making the
correct movements.

All this is meant not to deny or depreciate the value of intellectual
operations, but only to deny that the execution of intelligent
performances entails the additional execution of intellectual opera-
tions. It will be shown later (in Chapter IX), that the learning of all
but the most unsophisticated knacks requires some intellectual
capacity. The ability to do things in accordance with instructions
necessitates understanding those instructions. So some propositional
competence is a condition of acquiring any of these com-
petences. But it does not follow that exercises of these com-
petences require to be accompanied by exercises of propositional
competences. I could not have learned to swim the breast stroke,
if I had not been able to understand the lessons given me in that
stroke; but I do not have to recite those lessons, when I now swim
the breast stroke.

A man knowing little or nothing of medical science could not
be a good surgeon, but excellence at surgery is not the same thing
as knowledge of medical science; nor is it a simple product of it.
The surgeon must indeed have learned from instruction, or by his
own inductions and observations, a great number of truths; but he
must also have learned by practice a great number of aptitudes.
Even where efficient practice is the deliberate application of
considered prescriptions, the intelligence involved in putting the
prescriptions into practice is not identical with that involved in
intellectually grasping the prescriptions. There is no contradiction,
or even paradox, in describing someone as bad at practising what he
is good at preaching. There have been thoughtful and original
literary critics who have formulated admirable canons of prose style
in execrable prose. There have been others who have employed
brilliant English in the ｅxpression of the silliest theories of what
constitutes good writing.

The central point that is being laboured in this chapter is of



50 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

considerable importance. It is an attack from one flank upon
the category-mistake which underlies the dogma of the ghost in
the machine. In unconscious reliance upon this dogma theorists
and laymen alike constantly construe the adjectives by which we
characterise performances as ingenious, wise, methodical, careful,
witty, etc. as signalising the occurrence in someone's hidden
stream of consciousness of special processes functioning as ghostly
harbingers or more specifically as occult causes of the performances
so characterised. They postulate an internal shadow-performance to
be the real carrier of the intelligence ordinarily ascribed to the
overt act, and think that in this way they explain what makes the
overt act a manifestation of intelligence. They have described
the overt act as an effect of a mental happening, though they stop
short, of course, before raising the next question what makes
the postulated mental happenings manifestations of intelligence
and not mental deficiency.

In opposition to this entire dogma, I am arguing that in des-
cribing the workings of a person's mind we are not describing a
second set of shadowy operations. We are describing certain phases
of his one career; namely we arc describing the ways in which parts
of his conduct are managed. The sense in which we 'explain' his
actions is not that we infer to occult causes, but that we subsume
under hypothetical and semi-hypothetical propositions. The
explanation is not of the type 'the glass broke because a stone hit
it', but more nearly of the different type 'the glass broke when the
stone hit it, because it was brittle'. It makes no difference in theory
if the performances we are appraising are operations executed
silently in the agent's head, such as what he does, when duly schooled
to it, in theorising, composing limericks or solving anagrams. Of
course it makes a lot of difference in practice, for the examiner
cannot award marks to operations which the candidate successfully
keeps to himself.

But when a person talks sense aloud, ties knots, feints or sculpts,
the actions which we witness are themselves the things which he is
intelligently doing, though the concepts in terms of which the
physicist or physiologist would describe his actions do not exhaust
those which would be used by his pupils or his teachers in appraising
their logic, style or technique. He is bodily active and he is mentally
active, but he is not being synchronously active in two different



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 51

'places', or with two different 'engines'. There is the one activity,
but it is one susceptible of and requiring more than one kind of
explanatory description. Somewhat as there is no aerodynamical
or physiological difference between the description of one bird as
'flying south' and of another as 'migrating', though there is a big
biological difference between these descriptions, so there need be
no physical or physiological differences between the descriptions of
one man as gabbling and another talking sense, though the
rhetorical and logical differences are enormous.

The statement 'the mind is its own place', as theorists might
construe it, is not true, for the mind is not even a metaphorical
'place'. on the contrary, the chessboard, the platform, the scholar's
desk, the judge's bench, the lorry-driver's seat, the studio and the
football field are among its places. These are where people work
and play stupidly or intelligently. 'Mind' is not the name of another
person, working or frolicking behind an impenetrable screen; it
is not the name of another place where work is done or games are
played; and it is not the name of another tool with which work is
done, or another appliance with which games are played.

(9) Understanding and Misunderstanding

It is being maintained throughout this book that when we
characterise people by mental predicates, we are not making
untestable inferences to any ghostly processes occurring in streams
of consciousness which we are debarred from visiting; we are
describing the ways in which those people conduct parts of their
predominantly public behaviour. True, we go beyond what we
see them do and hear them say, but this going beyond is not a going
behind, in the sense of making inferences to occult causes; it is
going beyond in the sense of considering, in the first instance, the
powers and* propensities of which their actions are exercises. But
this point requires expansion.

A person who cannot play chess can still watch games of chess.
He sees the moves being made as clearly as does his neighbour who
knows the game. But the spectator who does not know the game
cannot do what his neighbour does appreciate the stupidity or
cleverness of the players. Wh^t is this difference between merely
witnessing a performance and understanding what is witnessed?
What, to take another example, is the difference between hearing



52 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

what a speaker says and making sense of what he is heard to say?

Advocates of the double-life legend will answer that tinder-
standing the chess-player's moves consists in inferring from the
visible moves made on the board to unwitnessable operations
taking place on the player's private stage. It is a process of inference
analogous to that by which we infer from the seen movements of
the railway-signals to the unseen manipulations of the levers in the
signal-box. Yet this answer promises something that could never
be fulfilled. For since, according to the theory, one person cannot
in principle visit another person's mind as he can visit signal-boxes,
there could be no way of establishing the necessary correlation
between the overt moves and their hidden causal counterparts. The
analogy of the signal-box breaks down in another place. The
connections between levers and signal-arms are easy to discover.
The mechanical principles of the fulcrum and the pulley, and the
behaviour of metals in tension and compression are, at least in
outline, familiar to us all. We know well enough how the machinery
inside the signal-box works, how that outside the signal-box works
and how the two are mechanically coupled. But it is admitted by
those who believe in the legend of the ghost in the machine that
no one yet knows much about the laws governing the supposed
workings of the mind, while the postulated interactions between
the workings of the mind and the movements of the hand are
acknowledged to be completely mysterious. Enjoying neither the
supposed status of the mental, nor the supposed status of the physical,
these interactions cannot be expected to obey either the known laws
of physics, or the still to be discovered laws of psychology.

It would follow that no one has ever yet had the slightest
understanding of what anyone else has ever said or done. We read
the words which Euclid wrote and we are familiar with the things
which Napoleon did, but we have not the slightest idea what they
had in their minds. Nor has any spectator of a chess tournament or a
football match ever yet had an inkling of what the players were
after.

But this is patently absurd. Anybody who can play chess already
understands a good deal of what other players do, and a brief study
of geometry enables an ordinary Jboy to follow a good deal of
Euclid's reasoning. Nor does this understanding require a prolonged
grounding in the not yet established laws of psychology. Following



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 53

the moves made by a chess-player is not doing anything remotely
resembling problematic psychological diagnosis. Indeed, supposing
that one person could understand another's words or actions only
in so far as he made causal inferences in accordance with psychological
laws, the queer consequence would follow that if any psychologist
had discovered these laws, he could never have conveyed his
discoveries to his fellow men. For ex hypothesi they could not follow
his exposition of them without inferring in accordance with them
from his words to his thoughts.

No one feels happy with the view that for one person to follow
what another person says or does is to make inferences somewhat
like those made by a water-diviner from the perceived twitching
of the twig to the subterranean flow of water. So the consolatory
amendment is sometimes made that, since a person is directly aware
of the correlations between his own private experiences and his
own overt actions, he can understand the performances of others
by imputing to them a similar correlation. Understanding is still
psychological divining, but it is divination reinforced by analogies
from the diviner's direct observation of the correlations between
his own inner and outer lives. But this amendment does not abolish
the difficulty.

It will be argued later that a person's appraisals of his own
performances do not differ in kind from his appraisals of those of
others, but for the present purpose it is enough to say that, even if
a person did enjoy a privileged illumination in the ascription of
mental-conduct concepts to his own performances, his supposed
analogical argument to the mental processes of others would be
completely fallacious.

If someone has inspected a number of railway-signals and signal-
boxes, he can then in a new case make a good probable inference
from observed signal-movements to unobserved lever-movements.
But if he had examined only one signal-box and knew nothing
about the standardisation-methods of large corporations, his
inference would be pitiably weak, for it would be a wide generalisa-
tion based on a single instance. Further, one signal-arm is closely
similar to another in appearance and movements, so the inference
to a correspondingly close similarity between the mechanisms
housed in different signal-boxes has some strength. But the observed
appearances and actions of people differ very markedly, so the



54 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

imputation to them of inner processes closely matching one another
would be actually contrary to the evidence.

Understanding a person's deeds and words is not, therefore, any
kind of problematic divination of occult processes. For this divina-
tion does not and cannot occur, whereas understanding does occur.
Of course it is part of my general thesis that the supposed occult
processes are themselves mythical; there exists nothing to be the
object of the postulated diagnoses. But for the present purpose it
is enough to prove that, if there were such inner states and operations,
one person would not be able to make probable inferences to their
occurrence in the inner life of another.

If understanding does not consist in inferring, or guessing, the
alleged inner-life precursors of overt actions, what is it? If it does
not require mastery of psychological theory together with the
ability to apply it, what knowledge does it require ? We saw that a
spectator who cannot play chess also cannot follow the play of
others; a person who cannot read or speak Swedish cannot under-
stand what is spoken or written in Swedish; and a person whose
reasoning powers are weak is bad at following and retaining the
arguments of others. Understanding is a part of knowing how. The
knowledge that is required for understanding intelligent perform-
ances of a specific kind is some degree of competence in performances
of that kind. The competent critic of prose-style, experimental
technique, or embroidery, must at least know how to write, experi-
ment or sew. Whether or not he has also learned some psychology
matters about as much as whether he has learned any chemistry,
neurology or economics. These studies may in certain circumstances
assist his appreciation of what he is criticising; but the one necessary
condition is that he has some mastery of the art or procedure,
examples of which he is to appraise. For one person to see the
jokes that another makes, the one thing he must have is a sense of
humour and even that special brand of sense of humour of which
those jokes are exercises.

Of course, to execute an operation intelligently is not exactly
the same thing as to follow its execution intelligently. The agent
is originating, the spectator is only contemplating. But the rules
which the agent observes and the criteria which he applies are one
with those which goveni the spectator's applause and jeers. The
commentator on Plato's philosophy need not possess much philo-



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 55

sophic originality, but if he cannot, as too many commentators
cannot, appreciate the force, drift or motive of a philosophical
argument, his comments will be worthless. If he can appreciate
them, then he knows how to do part of what Plato knew how to do.

If I am competent to judge your performance, then in witnessing
it I am on the alert to detect mistakes and muddles in it, but so are
you in executing it; I am ready to notice the advantages you might
take of pieces of luck, but so are you. You learn as you proceed,
and I too learn as you proceed. The intelligent performer operates
critically, the intelligent spectator follows critically. Roughly,
execution and understanding are merely different exercises of
knowledge of the tricks of the same trade. You exercise your
knowledge how to tie a clove-hitch not only in acts of tying
clove-hitches and in correcting your mistakes, but also in imagining
tying them correctly, in instructing pupils, in criticising the incorrect
or clumsy movements and applauding the correct movements that
they make, in inferring from a faulty result to the error which
produced it, in predicting the outcomes of observed lapses, and so on
indefinitely. The words 'understanding' and 'following* designate
certain of those exercises of your knowledge how, which you
execute without having, for example, any string in your hand.

It should by now be otiose to point out that this does not imply
that the spectator or reader, in following what is done or written,
is making analogical inferences from internal processes of his own to
corresponding internal processes in the author of the actions or
writings. Nor need he, though he may, imaginatively represent
himself as being in the shoes, the situation and the skin of the author.
He is merely thinking what the author is doing along the same
lines as those on which the author is thinking what he is doing,
save that the spectator is finding what the author is inventing. The
author is leading and the spectator is following, but their path is
the same. Nor, again, docs this account of understanding require
or encourage us to postulate any mysterious electric sympathies
between kindred souls. Whether or not the hearts of two chess-
players beat as one, which they will not do if they are opponents,
their ability to follow one another's play depends not on this
valvular coincidence but upo^ji their competence at chess, their
interest in this game and their acquired familiarity with one another's
methods of playing.



56 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

This point, that the capacity to appreciate a performance is
one in type with the capacity to execute it, illustrates a contention
previously argued, namely that intelligent capacities are not single-
track dispositions, but are dispositions admitting of a wide variety
of more or less dissimilar exercises. It is however necessary to make
two provisos. First, the capacity to perform and to appreciate an
operation does not necessarily involve the ability to formulate
criticisms or lessons. A well-trained sailor boy can both tie complex
knots and discern whether someone else is tying them correctly or
incorrectly, deftly or clumsily. But he is probably incapable of the
difficult task of describing in words how the knots should be tied.
And, second, the ability to appreciate a performance does not
involve the same degree of competence as the ability to execute it.
It does not take genius to recognise genius, and a good dramatic
critic may be indifferent as an actor or playwright. There would
be no teachers or pupils if the ability to understand operations
required complete ability to perform them. Pupils are taught how
to do things by people who know better than they how to do them.
Euclid's Elements are neither a sealed, nor an open, book to the
schoolboy.

One feature in this account of understanding has been grasped,
though from the wrong end, by certain philosophers who have
tried to explain how an historian, scholar or literary critic can
understand the deeds or words of his subjects. Adhering without
question to the dogma of the ghost in the machine, these philo-
sophers were naturally perplexed by the pretensions of historians
to interpret the actions and words of historic personages as
ｅxpressions of their actual thoughts, feelings and intentions. For if
minds are impenetrable to one another, how can historians penetrate
the minds of their heroes ? Yet if such penetration is impossible, the
labours of all scholars, critics and historians must be vain; they may
describe the signals, but they can never begin to interpret them as
effects of operations in the eternally sealed signal-boxes.

These philosophers have put forward the following solution of
their spurious puzzle. Though I cannot witness the workings of
your mind or Plato's mind, but only the overt actions and written
words which I take to be outwyd 'ｅxpressions' of those inner
workings, I can, with due effort and practice, deliberately enact
such operations in my own private theatre as would naturally



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 57

originate just such actions and words. I can think private thoughts
of my own which would be well expressed by the sentences ascribed
to Plato's hand, and I can, in fact or in fancy, execute volitions of
my own which originate or would originate actions like those which
I have witnessed you performing. Having put myself into a frame
of mind in which I act like you, or write like Plato, I can then
impute to you and to him similar frames of mind. If this imputation
is correct, then, from knowing what it is like for me to be in the
frame of mind which issues in these actions and words, I can also
know what it was like to be Plato writing his Dialogues and what it
is like to be you, tying, perhaps, a clove-hitch. By re-enacting your
overt actions I re-live your private experiences. In a fashion, the
student of Plato makes himself a second Plato, a sort of re-author
of his Dialogues, and thus and only thus he understands those
Dialogues.

Unfortunately this programme of mimicking Plato's mental
processes can never be wholly successful. I am, after all, a twentieth-
century English student of Plato, a tiling which Plato never was.
My culture, schooling, language, habits and interests are different
from his and this must impair the fidelity of my mimicry of his
frame of mind and therefore the success of my attempts to under-
stand him. Still, it is argued, this is, in the nature of the case, the
best that I can do. Understanding must be imperfect. only by really
being Plato could I really understand him.

Some holders of theories of this type add extra comforts to it.
Though minds are inaccessible to one another, they may be said to
resonate, like tuning-forks, in harmony with one another, though
unfortunately they would never know it. I cannot literally share
your experiences, but some of our experiences may somehow chime
together, though we cannot be aware of their doing so, in a manner
which almost amounts to genuine communion. In the- most
fortunate cases we may resemble two incurably deaf men singing
in tune and in time with one another. But we need not dwell on
such embellishments to a theory which is radically false.

For this theory is just another unsuccessful attempt to wriggle
out of a perfectly mythical dilemma. It assumes that understanding
would have to consist in contemplating the unknowable workings
of insulated ghosts and tries to remedy this trouble by saying that,
in default of such knowledge, I can do nearly as well by con-



58 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

templating such ghostly operations of my own as would naturally
issue in overt 'ｅxpressions' similar to those of the persons whom I
wish to understand. But this involves a further unwarrantable but
interesting assumption, namely that to similar overt deeds and
words there always correspond similar internal processes, an
assumption which is, according to the theory itself, completely
untestable. It assumes, also quite improperly, that it follows from
the fact that I go through certain internal processes that I must
perfectly appreciate them for what they are, i.e. that I cannot mis-
construe, or be puzzled by, anything that goes on in my own stream
of consciousness. In short, this whole theory is a variant of the
doctrine that understanding consists in problematic causal divination,
reinforced by a weak analogical argument.

What makes the theory worth discussing is that it partly avoids
equating understanding with psychological diagnosis, i.e. with
causal inferences from overt behaviour to mental process in
accordance with laws yet to be discovered by psychologists; and
it avoids this equation by making an assumption to which it is not
entitled but which is on the edge of the truth. It assumes that
the qualities of people's minds are reflected in the tilings that they
overtly say and do. So historians and scholars in studying the
styles and procedures of literary and practical activities are on the
right track; it is, according to the theory, just their inescapable
misfortune that this track terminates in the chasm separating the
'physical* from the 'mental', the 'overt' from the 'inner'. Now, had
the holders of this theory seen that the styles and procedures of
people's activities are the way their minds work and are not merely
imperfect reflections of the postulated secret processes which were
supposed to be the workings of minds, their dilemma would have
evaporated. The claims of historians and scholars to be able in
principle to understand what their subjects did and wrote would
have been automatically vindicated. It is not they who have been
studying shadows.

Overt intelligent performances are not clues to the workings of
minds; they are those workings. Boswell described Johnson's mind
when he described how he wrote, talked, ate, fidgeted and fumed. His
description was, of course, incomplete, since there were notoriously
some thoughts which Johnson kepi carefully to himself and there
must have been many dreams, daydreams and silent babblings



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 59

which only Johnson could have recorded and only a James Joyce
would wish him to have recorded.

Before we conclude this inquiry into understanding, something
must be said about partial understanding and misunderstanding.

Attention has already been drawn to certain parallelisms and
certain non-parallelisms between the concept of knowing that and
the concept of knowing how. A further non-parallelism must now
be noticed. We never speak of a person having partial knowledge
of a fact or truth, save in the special sense of his having knowledge
of a part of a body of facts or truths. A boy can be said to have
partial knowledge of the counties of England, if he knows some of
them and does not know others. But he could not be said to have
incomplete knowledge of Sussex being an English county. Either
he knows this fact or he does not know it. on the other hand, it
is proper and normal to speak of a person knowing in part how
to do something, i.e. of his having a particular capacity in a
limited degree. An ordinary chess-player knows the game pretty
well but a champion knows it better, and even the champion has
still much to learn.

This holds too, as we should now expect, of understanding. An
ordinary chess-player can partly follow the tactics and strategy of a
champion; perhaps after much study he will completely understand
the methods used by the champion in certain particular matches.
But he can never wholly anticipate how the champion will fight
his next contest and he is never as quick or sure in his interpretations
of the champion's moves as the champion is in making or, perhaps,
in explaining them.

Learning how or improving in ability is not like learning that
or acquiring information. Truths can be imparted, procedures can
only be inculcated, and while inculcation is a gradual process,
imparting is relatively sudden. It makes sense to ask at what moment
someone became apprised of a truth, but not to ask at what moment
someone acquired a skill. 'Part-trained' is a significant phrase,
'part-informed' is not. Training is the art of setting tasks which
the pupils have not yet accomplished but arc not any longer quite
incapable of accomplishing.

The notion of misunderstanding raises no general theoretical
difficulties. When the card-player's tactics are misconstrued by his
opponents, the manoeuvre they think they discern is indeed a



60 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

possible manoeuvre of the game, though it happens not to be his
manoeuvre. only someone who knew the game could interpret the
play as part of the execution of the supposed manoeuvre. Mis-
understanding is a by-product of knowing how. only a person
who is at least a partial master of the Russian tongue can make the
wrong sense of a Russian ｅxpression. Mistakes are exercises of
competences.

Misinterpretations are not always due to the inexpertness or
carelessness of the spectator; they are due sometimes to the careless-
ness and sometimes to the cunning of the agent or speaker.
Sometimes, again, both are exercising all due skill and care, but it
happens that the operations performed, or the words spoken, could
actually be constituents of two or more different undertakings. The
first ten motions made in tying one knot might be identical with
the first ten motions required for tying another, or a set of premisses
suitable for establishing one conclusion might be equally suitable
for establishing another. The onlooker's misinterpretation may then
be acute and well-grounded. It is careless only in being premature.
Feinting is the art of exploiting this possibility.

It is obvious that where misunderstanding is possible, under-
standing is possible. It would be absurd to suggest that perhaps we
always misconstrue the performances that we witness, for we could
not even learn to misconstrue save in learning to construe, a
learning process which involves learning not to misconstrue.
Misinterpretations are in principle corrigible, which is part of the
value of controversy.

(10) Solipsism

Contemporary philosophers have exercised themselves with the
problem of our knowledge of other minds. Enmeshed in the dogma
of the ghost in the machine, they have found it impossible to
discover any logically satisfactory evidence warranting one person
in believing that there exist minds other than his own. I can witness
what your body does, but I cannot witness what your mind docs,
and my pretensions to infer from what your body does to what
your mind does all collapse, since the premisses for such inferences
are either inadequate or unknowable.

We can now see our way out of the supposed difficulty. I
discover that there are other minds in understanding what other



KNOWING HOW AND KNOWING THAT 61

people say and do. In making sense of what you say, in appreciating
your jokes, in unmasking your chess-stratagems, in following your
arguments and in hearing you pick holes in my arguments, I am
not inferring to the workings of your mind, I am following them.
Of course, I am not merely hearing the noises that you make, or
merely seeing the movements that you perform. I am under-
standing what I hear and see. But this understanding is not inferring
to occult causes. It is appreciating how the operations are conducted,
To find that most people have minds (though idiots and infants
in arms do not) is simply to find that they are able and prone to do
certain sorts of things, and this we do by witnessing the sorts of
things they do. Indeed we do not merely discover that there are
other minds; we discover what specific qualities of intellect and
character particular people have. In fact we are familiar with such
specific matters long before we can comprehend such general
propositions as that John Doe has a mind, or that there exist minds
other than our own; just as we know that stones are hard and
sponges are soft, kittens are warm and active, potatoes are cold and
inert, long before we can grasp the proposition that kittens are
material objects, or that matter exists.

Certainly there are some things which I can find out about you
only, or best, through being told of them by you. The oculist has
to ask his client what letters he sees with his right and left eyes
and how clearly he sees them; the doctor has to ask the sufferer
where the pain is and what sort of a pain it is; and the psycho-
analyst has to ask his patient about his dreams and daydreams. If
you do not divulge the contents of your silent soliloquies and other
imaginings, I have no other sure way of finding out what you have
been saying or picturing to yourself. But the sequence of your
sensations and imaginings is not the sole field in which your wits and
character are shown; perhaps only for lunatics is it more than a small
corner of that field. I find out most of what I want to know about
your capacities, interests, likes, dislikes, methods and convictions by
observing how you conduct your overt doings, of which by far
the most important are your sayings and writings. It is a subsidiary
question how you conduct your imaginings, including your
imagined monologues.



CHAPTER III

THE WILL

(1) Foreword.

MOST of the mental-conduct concepts whose logical behaviour
we examine in this book, are familiar and everyday concepts. We
all know how to apply them and we understand other people when
they apply them. What is in dispute is not how to apply them,
but how to classify them, or in what categories to put them.

The concept of volition is in a different case. We do not know
in daily life how to use it, for we do not use it in daily life and do
not, consequently, learn by practice how to apply it, atnd how not to
misapply it. It is an artificial concept. We have to study certain
specialist theories in order to find out how it is to be manipulated.
It does not, of course, follow from its being a technical concept
that it is an illegitimate or useless concept. 'lonisation' and 'off-side
are technical concepts, but both are legitimate and useful. 'Phlogiston"
and 'animal spirits' were technical concepts, though they have now
no utility.

I hope to show that the concept of volition belongs to the latter
tribe.

(2) The Myth of Volitions.

It has for a long time been taken for an indisputable axiom that
the Mind is in some important sense tripartite, that is, that there
are just three ultimate classes of mental processes. The Mind or
Soul, we are often told, has three parts, namely, Thought, Feeling
and Will; or, more solemnly, the Mind or Soul functions in three
irreducibly different modes, the Cognitive mode, the Emotional
mode and the Conative mode. This traditional dogma is not only
not self-evident, it is such a welter of confusions and false inferences
that it is best to give up any attenfpt to re-fashion it. It should be
treated as one of the curios of theory.

62



THE WILL 63

The main object of this chapter is not, however, to discuss the
whole trinitarian theory of mind but to discuss, and discuss
destructively, one of its ingredients. I hope to refute the doctrine
that there exists a Faculty, immaterial Organ, or Ministry, corres-
ponding to the theory's description of the 'Will' and, accordingly,
that there occur processes, or operations, corresponding to what it
describes as Volitions'. I must however make it clear from the start
that this refutation will not invalidate the distinctions which we all
quite properly draw between voluntary and involuntary actions and
between strong-willed and weak-willed persons. It will, on the
contrary, make clearer what is meant by Voluntary' and 'involun-
tary', by 'strong-willed' and 'weak-willed', by emancipating these
ideas from bondage to an absurd hypothesis.

Volitions have been postulated as special acts, or operations, 'in
the mind', by means of which a mind gets its ideas translated into
facts. I think of some state of affairs which I wish to come into
existence in the physical world, but, as my thinking and wishing are
unexecutive, they require the mediation of a further executive
mental process. So I perform a volition which somehow puts my
muscles into action. only when a bodily movement has issued from
such a volition can I merit praise or blame for what my hand or
tongue has done.

It will be clear why I reject this story. It is just an inevitable
extension of the myth of the ghost in the machine. It assumes that
there are mental states and processes enjoying one sort of existence,
and bodily states and processes enjoying another. An occurrence
on the one stage is never numerically identical with an occurrence
on the other. So, to say that a person pulled the trigger intentionally
is to express at least a conjunctive proposition, asserting the
occurrence of one act on the physical stage and another on the
mental stage; and, according to most versions of the myth, it is to
express a causal proposition, asserting that the bodily act of pulling
the trigger was the effect of a mental act of willing to pull the
trigger.

According to the theory, the workings of the body are motions
of matter in space. The causes of these motions must then be either
other motions of matter in space ftr, in the privileged case of human
beings, thrusts of another kind. In some way which must forever
remain a mystery, mental thrusts, which are not movements of



64 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

matter in space, can cause muscles to contract. To describe a man as
intentionally pulling the trigger is to state that such a mental thrust
did cause the contraction of the muscles of his finger. So the language
of Volitions' is the language of the para-mechanical theory of the
mind. If a theorist speaks without qualms of Volitions', or 'acts of
will', no further evidence is needed to show that he swallows whole
the dogma that a mind is a secondary field of special causes. It
can be predicted that he will correspondingly speak of bodily
actions as 'ｅxpressions' of mental processes. He is likely also to
speak glibly of 'experiences', a plural noun commonly used to
denote the postulated non-physical episodes which constitute the
shadow-drama on the ghostly boards of the mental stage.

The first objection to the doctrine that overt actions, to which
we ascribe intelligence-predicates, are results of counterpart hidden
operations of willing is this. Despite the fact that theorists have,
since the Stoics and Saint Augustine, recommended us to describe
our conduct in this way, no one, save to endorse the theory, ever
describes his own conduct, or that of his acquaintances, in the
recommended idioms. No one ever says such things as that at
10 a.m. he was occupied in willing this or that, or that he performed
five quick and easy volitions and two slow and difficult volitions
between midday and lunch-time. An accused person may admit or
deny that he did something, or that he did it on purpose, but he
never admits or denies having willed. Nor do the judge and jury
require to be satisfied by evidence, which in the nature of the case
could never be adduced, that a volition preceded the pulling of the
trigger. Novelists describe the actions, remarks, gestures and
grimaces, the daydreams, deliberations, qualms and embarrassments
of their characters; but they never mention their volitions. They
would not know what to say about them.

By what sorts of predicates should they be described? Can they
be sudden or gradual, strong or weak, difficult or easy, enjoyable
or disagreeable? Can they be accelerated, decelerated, interrupted,
or suspended? Can people be efficient or inefficient at them? Can
we take lessons in executing them ? Are they fatiguing or distracting ?
Can I do two or seven of them synchronously? Can I remember
executing them? Can I execute them, while thinking of other
things, or while dreaming? Can they become habitual? Can
I forget how to do them? Can I mistakenly believe that I have



THE WILL 65

executed one, when I have not, or that I have not executed one, when
I have? At which moment was the boy going through a volition
to take the high dive? When he set foot on the ladder? When he
took his first deep breath? When he counted off 'one, two, three
Go', but did not go? Very, very shortly before he sprang? What
would his own answer be to those questions ?

Champions of the doctrine maintain, of course, that the
enactment of volitions is asserted by implication, whenever an overt
act is described as intentional, voluntary, culpable or meritorious;
they assert too that any person is not merely able but bound to
know that he is willing when he is doing so, since volitions are
defined as a species of conscious process. So if ordinary men and
women fail to mention their volitions in their descriptions of their
own behaviour, this must be due to their being untrained in the
dictions appropriate to the description of their inner, as distinct from
their overt, behaviour. However, when a champion of the doctrine
is himself asked how long ago he executed his last volition, or how
many acts of will he executes in, say, reciting 'Little Miss Muffet'
backwards, he is apt to confess to finding difficulties in giving the
answer, though these difficulties should not, according to his own
theory, exist.

If ordinary men never report the occurrence of these acts, for
all that, according to the theory, they should be encountered vastly
more frequently than headaches, or feelings of boredom; if ordinary
vocabulary has no non-academic names for them; if we do not know
how to settle simple questions about their frequency, duration or
strength, then it is fair to conclude that their existence is not asserted
on empirical grounds. The fact that Plato and Aristotle never
mentioned them in their frequent and elaborate discussions of the
nature of the soul and the springs of conduct is due not to any
perverse neglect by them of notorious ingredients of daily life but
to the historical circumstance that they were not acquainted with a
special hypothesis the acceptance of which rests not on the discovery,
but on the postulation, of these ghostly thrusts.

The second objection is this. It is admitted that one person can
never witness the volitions of another; he can only infer from an
observed overt action to the \jolition from which it resulted, and
then only if he has any good reason to believe that the overt action
was a voluntary action, and not a reflex or habitual action, or one



66 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

resulting from some external cause. It follows that no judge,
schoolmaster, or parent ever knows that the actions which he
judges merit praise or blame; for he cannot do better than guess
that the action was willed. Even a confession by the agent, if such
confessions were ever made, that he had executed a! volition before
his hand did the deed would not settle the question. The
pronouncement of the confession is only another overt muscular
action. The curious conclusion results that though volitions were
called in to explain our appraisals of actions, this explanation is
just what they fail to provide. If we had no other antecedent
grounds for applying appraisal-concepts to the actions of others,
we should have no reasons at all for inferring from those actions
to the volitions alleged to give rise to them.

Nor could it be maintained that the agent himself can know that
any overt action of his own is the effect of a given volition.
Supposing, what is not the case, that he could know for certain,
either from the alleged direct deliverances of consciousness, or from
the alleged direct findings of introspection, that he had executed an
act of will to pull the trigger just before he pulled it, this would
not prove that the pulling was the effect of that willing. The
connection between volitions and movements is allowed to be
mysterious, so, for all he knows, his volition may have had some
other movement as its effect and the pulling of the trigger may have
had some other event for its cause.

Thirdly, it would be improper to burke the point that the
connection between volition and movement is admitted to be a
mystery. It is a mystery not of the unsolved but soluble type, like
the problem of the cause of cancer, but of quite another type.
The episodes supposed to constitute the careers of minds are assumed
to have one sort of existence, while those constituting the careers
of bodies have another sort; and no bridge-status is allowed.
Transactions between minds and bodies involve links where no
links can be. That there should be any causal transactions between
minds and matter conflicts with one part, that there should be none
conflicts with another part of the theory. Minds, as the whole legend
describes them, are what must exist if there is to be a causal
explanation of the intelligent behaviour of human bodies; and
minds, as the legend describes them, live on a floor of existence
defined as being outside the causal system to which bodies belong.



THE WILL 67

Fourthly, although the prime function of volitions, the task
for the performance of which they were postulated, is to originate
bodily movements, the argument, such as it is, for their existence
entails that some mental happenings also must result from acts of
will. Volitions were postulated to be that which makes actions
voluntary, resolute, meritorious and wicked. But predicates of
these sorts are ascribed not only to bodily movements but also to
operations which, according to the theory, are mental and not
physical operations. A thinker may ratiocinate resolutely, or imagine
wickedly; he may try to compose a limerick and he may
meritoriously concentrate on his algebra. Some mental processes
then can, according to the theory, issue from volitions. So what of
volitions themselves? Are they voluntary or involuntary acts of
mind? Clearly either answer leads to absurdities. If I cannot help
willing to pull the trigger, it would be absurd to describe my
pulling it as Voluntary'. But if my volition to pull the trigger is
voluntary, in the sense assumed by the theory, then it must issue
from a prior volition and that from another ad itifinitum. It has been
suggested, to avoid this difficulty, that volitions cannot be described
as cither voluntary or involuntary. 'Volition' is a term of the wrong
type to accept cither predicate. If so, it would seem to follow that
it is also of the wrong type to accept such predicates as Virtuous'
and 'wicked', 'good' and 'bad', a conclusion which might embarrass
those moralists who use volitions as the sheet-anchor of their
systems.

In short, then, the doctrine of volitions is a causal hypothesis,
adopted because it was wrongly supposed that the question, 'What
makes a bodily movement voluntary?' was a causal question. This
supposition is, in fact, only a special twist of the general supposition
that the question, 'How are mental-conduct concepts applicable to
human behaviour?' is a question about the causation of that
behaviour.

Champions of the doctrine should have noticed the simple
fact that they and all other sensible persons knew how to decide
questions about the voluntariness and involuntariness of actions
and about the resoluteness and irresoluteness of agents before they
had ever heard of the hypothesis of the occult inner thrusts of actions.
They might then have realised that they were not elucidating the
criteria already in efficient use, but, tacitly assuming their validity,



68 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

were trying to correlate them with hypothetical occurrences of a
para-mechanical pattern. Yet this correlation could, on the one
hand, never be scientifically established, since the thrusts postulated
were screened from scientific observation; and, on the other hand,
it would be of no practical or theoretical use, since it would not
assist our appraisals of actions, depending as it would on the
presupposed validity of those appraisals. Nor would it elucidate
the logic of those appraisal-concepts, the intelligent employment of
which antedated the invention of this causal hypothesis.

Before we bid farewell to the doctrine of volitions, it
is expedient to consider certain quite familiar and authentic
processes with which volitions are sometimes wrongly identified.

People are frequently in doubt what to do; having considered
alternative courses of action, they then, sometimes, select or choose
one of these courses. This process of opting for one of a set of
alternative courses of action is sometimes said to be what is signified
by Volition'. But this identification will not do, for most voluntary
actions do not issue out of conditions of indecision and are not
therefore results of settlements of indecisions. Moreover it is
notorious that a person may choose to do something but fail,
from weakness of will, to do it; or he may fail to do it because
some circumstance arises after the choice is made, preventing the
execution of the act chosen. But the theory could not allow that
volitions ever fail to result in action, else further executive operations
would have to be postulated to account for the fact that sometimes
voluntary actions are performed. And finally the process of
deliberating between alternatives and opting for one of them is
itself subject to appraisal-predicates. But if, for example, an act of
choosing is describable as voluntary, then, on this suggested
showing, it would have in its turn to be the result of a prior choice
to choose, and that from a choice to choose to choose. . . .

The same objections forbid the identification with volitions of
such other familiar processes as that of resolving or making up our
minds to do something and that of nerving or bracing ourselves
to do something. I may resolve to get out of bed or go to the
dentist, and I may, clenching my fists and gritting my teeth, brace
myself to do so, but I may still backslide. If the action is not done,
then, according to the doctrine, the volition to do it is also
unexecuted. Again, the operations of resolving and nerving



THE WILL 69

ourselves are themselves members of the class of creditable or dis-
creditable actions, so they cannot constitute the peculiar ingredient
which, according to the doctrine, is the common condition of any
performance being creditable or discreditable.

(3) The Distinction between Voluntary and Involuntary.

It should be noticed that while ordinary folk, magistrates,
parents and teachers, generally apply the words Voluntary' and
'involuntary' to actions in one way, philosophers often apply them
in quite another way.

In their most ordinary employment Voluntary' and 'involuntary'
are used, with a few minor elasticities, as adjectives applying to actions
which ought not to be done. We discuss whether someone's action
was voluntary or not only when the action seems to have been his
fault. He is accused of making a noise, and the guilt is his, if the action
was voluntary, like laughing; he has successfully excused himself, if
he satisfies us that it was involuntary, like a sneeze. In the same
way in ordinary life we raise questions of responsibility only when
someone is charged, justly or unjustly, with an offence. It makes
sense, in this use, to ask whether a boy was responsible for breaking
a window, but not whether he was responsible for finishing his
homework in good time. We do not ask whether it was his fault
that he got a long-division sum right, for to get a sum right is not
a fault. If he gets it wrong, he may satisfy us that his failure was not
his fault, perhaps because he had not yet been shown how to do such
calculations.

In this ordinary use, then, it is absurd to discuss whether
satisfactory, correct or admirable performances are voluntary or
involuntary. Neither inculpation nor exculpation is in point. We
neither confess to authorship nor adduce extenuating circumstances;
neither plead 'guilty' nor plead 'not guilty'; for we are not
accused.

But philosophers, in discussing what constitutes acts voluntary
or involuntary, tend to describe as voluntary not only repre-
hensible but also meritorious actions, not only things that are
someone's fault but also things that are to his credit. The motives
underlying their unwitting extension of the ordinary sense of
Voluntary', 'involuntary' and 'responsible' will be considered later.
For the moment it is worth while to consider certain consequences



70 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

which follow from it. In the ordinary use, to say that a sneeze was
involuntary is to say that the agent could not help doing it, and to
say that a laugh was voluntary is to say that the agent could have
helped doing it. (This is not to say that the laugh was intentional.
We do not laugh on purpose.) The boy could have got the sum
right which he actually got wrong; he knew how to behave, but he
misbehaved; he was competent to tie a reef-knot, though what he
unintentionally produced was a granny-knot. His failure or lapse
was his fault. But when the word Voluntary' is given its philoso-
phically stretched use, so that correct as well as incorrect, admirable as
well as contemptible acts are described as voluntary, it seems to follow
by analogy with the ordinary use, that a boy who gets his sum right
can also be described as having been 'able to help it'. It would
then be proper to ask: Could you have helped solving the
riddle? Could you have helped drawing the proper conclusion?
Could you have helped tying a proper reef-knot? Could you have
helped seeing the point of that joke? Could you have helped being
kind to that child? In fact, however, no one could answer these
questions, though it is not at first obvious why, if it is correct to say
that someone could have avoided getting a sum wrong, it is incorrect
to say that he could have avoided getting it right.

The solution is simple. When we say that someone could have
avoided committing a lapse or error, or that it was his fault that
he committed it, we mean that he knew how to do the right thing,
or was competent to do so, but did not exercise his knowledge or
competence. He was not trying, or not trying hard enough. But
when a person has done the right thing, we cannot then say that
he knew how to do the wrong thing, or that he was competent to
make mistakes. For making mistakes is not an exercise of com-
petence, nor is the commission of slips an exercise of knowledge
how\ it is a failure to exercise knowledge how. It is true in one
sense of 'could' that a person who had done a sum correctly could
have got it wrong; in the sense, namely, that he is not exempt
from the liability to be careless. But in another sense of 'could', to
ask, 'Could you have got it wrong?' means 'Were you sufficiently
intelligent and well-trained and were you concentrating hard
enough to make a miscalculation ?* and this is as silly a question
as to ask whether someone's teeth are strong enough to be broken
by cracking nuts.



THE WILL 71

The tangle of largely spurious problems, known as the problem
of the Freedom of the Will, partly derives from this unconsciously
stretched use of Voluntary' and these consequential misapplications
of different senses of 'could' and 'could have helped'.

The first task is to elucidate what is meant in their ordinary,
undistorted use by Voluntary', 'involuntary', 'responsible', 'could
not have helped' and 'his fault', as these ｅxpressions are used
in deciding concrete questions of guilt and innocence.

If a boy has tied a granny-knot instead of a reef-knot, we
satisfy ourselves that it was his fault by first establishing that he
knew how to tie a reef-knot, and then by establishing that his
hand was not forced by external coercion and that there were no
other agencies at work preventing him from tying the correct knot.
We establish that he could tie reef-knots by finding out that he had
been taught, had had practice, usually got them right, or by finding
that he could detect and correct knots tied by others, or by finding
that he was ashamed of what he had done and, without help from
others, put it right himself. That he was not acting under duress
or in panic or high fever or with numb fingers, is discovered
in the way in which we ordinarily discover that highly exceptional
incidents have not taken place; for such incidents would have been
too remarkable to have gone unremarked, at least by the boy
hinrcl f

The first question which we had to decide had nothing to
do with the occurrence or non-occurrence of any occult episode
in the boy's stream of consciousness ; it was the question whether
or not he had the required higher-level competence, that of
knowing how to tie reef-knots. We were not, at this stage,
inquiring whether he committed, or omitted, an extra public
or private operation, but only whether he possessed or lacked a
certain intelligent capacity. What satisfied us was not the
(unattainable) knowledge of the truth or falsity of a particular
covert cause-overt effect proposition, but the (attainable) knowledge
of the truth or falsity of a complex and partially general hypothetical
proposition not, in short, that he did tie a shadowy reef- or
granny-knot behind the scenes, but that he could have tied a real
one with this rope and would kave done so on this occasion, if he
had paid more heed to what he was doing. The lapse was his fault
because, knowing how to tie the knot, he still did not tie it correctly.



72 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

Consider next the case of an act which everyone would decide
was not the agent's fault. A boy arrives late for school and on
inquiry it turns out that he left home at the usual time, did not
dally on his way to the omnibus halt and caught the usual omnibus.
But the vehicle broke down and could not complete the journey.
The boy ran as fast as he could the rest of the way, but was still
late. Clearly all the steps taken by the boy were either the same as
those which normally bring him to school in time, or were the only
steps open to him for remedying the effects of the breakdown.
There was nothing else that he could have done and his teacher
properly recommends him to follow the same routine on future
occasions. His late arrival was not the result of a failure to do what
he was capable of doing. He was prevented by a circumstance which
was not in his power to modify. Here again the teacher is judging
an action with reference to the capacities and opportunities of the
agent; his excuse is accepted that he could not have done better
than he did. The whole question of the involuntariness of his late
arrival is decided without the boy being asked to report any
deliverances of consciousness or introspection about the execution or
non-execution of any volitions.

It makes no difference if the actions with which an agent is
charged either are or embody operations of silent soliloquy or other
operations with verbal or non-verbal images. A slip in mental
arithmetic is the pupil's fault on the same grounds as a slip made in
written arithmetic; and an error committed in matching colours in
the mind's eye may merit the reproach of carelessness in the same
way as an error committed in matching colours on the draper's
counter. If the agent could have done better than he did, then he
could have helped doing it as badly as he did.

Besides considering the ordinary senses of Voluntary', 'in-
voluntary', 'responsible', 'my fault' and 'could' or 'could not help',
we should notice as well the ordinary uses of such ｅxpressions as
'effort of will', 'strength of will' and 'irresolute'. A person is
described as behaving resolutely when in the execution of diffi-
cult, protracted or disagreeable tasks he tends not to relax his
efforts, not to let his attention be diverted, not to grumble and not to
think much or often about his fatigue or fears. He does not shirk
or drop things to which he has set his hand. A weak-willed person
is one who is easily distracted or disheartened, apt to convince



THE WILL 73

himself that another time will be more suitable or that the reasons
for undertaking the task were not after all very strong. Note that
it is no part of the definition of resoluteness or of irresoluteness that
a resolution should actually have been formed. A resolute man may
firmly resist temptations to abandon or postpone his task, though
he never went through a prefatory ritual-process of making up his
mind to complete it. But naturally such a man will also be disposed
to perform any vows which he has made to others or to himself.
Correspondingly the irresolute man will be likely to fail to carry
out his often numerous good resolutions, but his lack of tenacity
of purpose will be exhibited also in surrenders and slacknesses in
courses of action which were unprefaced by any private or public
undertakings to accomplish them.

Strength of will is a propensity the exercises of which con-
sist in sticking to tasks; that is, in not being deterred or diverted.
Weakness of will is having too little of this propensity. The
performances in which strength of will is exerted may be perform-
ances of almost any sort, intellectual or manual, imaginative or
administrative. It is not a single-track disposition or, for that and
other reasons, a disposition to execute occult operations of one
special kind.

By 'an effort of will' is meant a particular exercise of tenacity
of purpose, occurring when the obstacles are notably great, or the
counter-temptations notably strong. Such efforts may, but need
not, be accompanied by special processes, often of a ritual
character, of nerving or adjuring oneself to do what is required;
but these processes are not so much ways in which resolute-
ness is shown as ways in which fear of irresoluteness manifests
itself.

Before we leave the concept or concepts of voluntariness, two
further points need to be made, (i) Very often we oppose things
done voluntarily to things suffered under compulsion. Some soldiers
are volunteers, others are conscripts; some yachtsmen go out to sea
voluntarily, others are carried out to sea by the wind and tide.
Here questions of inculpation and exculpation need not arise. In
asking whether the soldier volunteered or was conscripted, we are
asking whether he joined up because he wanted to do so, or whether
he joined up because he had to do so, where 'had to' entails 'no
matter what he wanted'. In asking whether the yachtsman went out



74 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

to sea of his own accord or whether he was carried out, we are
asking whether he went out on purpose, or whether he would
still have gone out as he did, even if he had meant not to do so.
Would bad news from home, or a warning from the coastguard,
have stopped him ?

What is involuntary, in this use, is not describable as an act.
Being carried out to sea, or being called up, is something that happens
to a person, not something which he does. In this respect, this
antithesis between voluntary and involuntary differs from the
antithesis we have in mind when we ask whether someone's tying
of a granny-knot, or his knitting of his brows, is voluntary or
involuntary. A person who frowns involuntarily is not forced to
frown, as a yachtsman may be forced out to sea; nor is the careless
boy forced to tie a granny-knot, as the conscript is forced to join
the army. Even frowning is something that a person does. It is not
done to him. So sometimes the question 'Voluntary or involuntary?'
means 'Did the person do it, or was it done to him?'; sometimes it
presupposes that he did it, but means 'Did he do it with or without
heeding what he was doing?' or 'Did he do it on purpose or
inadvertently, mechanically, or instinctively, etc. ?'

(2) When a person does something voluntarily, in the sense that
he does it on purpose or is trying to do it, his action certainly reflects
some quality or qualities of mind, since (it is more than a verbal
point to say) he is in some degree and in one fashion or another
minding what he is doing. It follows also that, if linguistically
equipped, he can then tell, without research or conjecture, what
he has been trying to accomplish. But, as will be argued in
Chapter V, these implications of voluntariness do not carry
with them the double-life corollaries often assumed. To frown
intentionally is not to do one thing on one's forehead and another
thing in a second metaphorical place; nor is it to do one thing
with one's brow-muscles and another thing with some non-bodily
organ. In particular, it is not to bring about a frown on one's
forehead by first bringing about a frown-causing exertion of some
occult non-muscle. 'He frowned intentionally' does not report the
occurrence of two episodes. It reports the occurrence of one episode,
but one of a very different character from that reported by 'he
frowned involuntarily', though the frowns might be photo-
graphically as similar as you please.



THE WILL 75

(4) Freedom of the Will.

It has been pointed out that in some philosophers' discussions of
the voluntariness of actions, the words Voluntary', 'involuntary'
and 'responsible' are used, not with their ordinary restriction to
lapses or apparent lapses, but with a wider scope covering all
performances which are to be adjudged favourably or unfavourably
by any criteria of excellence or admissibility. In their use, a person
is described as voluntarily doing the right thing and as voluntarily
doing the wrong thing, or as being responsible not only for actions
for which he is subject to accusation, but also for actions entitling
him to kudos. It is used, that is, as a synonym of 'intentional'.

Now the philosophers who have worked with this stretched
usage have had a strong intellectual motive for doing so. They felt
the need for an apparatus of terms by which to demarcate those
things and occurrences to which either plaudits or strictures are
appropriate from those to which neither are appropriate. Without
such an apparatus it would, they felt, be impossible to state what
are the qualifications for membersliip of the realm of Spirit, the
lack of which entails relegation to the realm of brute Nature.

The main source of this concern to discover some peculiar
element present, wherever Spirit is present, and absent, where it is
absent, was alarm at the bogy of Mechanism. It was believed that
the physical sciences had established, or were on the way to
establishing, that the things and events of the external world are
rigidly governed by discoverable laws, laws the formulations of
which admit no appraisal-words. It was felt that all external
happenings are confined within the iron grooves of mechanical
causation. The genesis, the properties and the courses of these
happenings were, or would be, totally explained in terms of
measurable and, it was supposed, therefore purposeless forces.

To salve our right to employ appraisal-concepts, the field of
their proper application had to be shown to lie somewhere else than
this external world, and an internal world of unmeasurable but
purposeful forces was thought to do the trick. 'Volitions' being
already nominated as the required outputs of internal forces, it was
then natural to suppose that voluntariness, defined in terms of
propagation by volitions, was the common and peculiar element
which makes occurrences spiritual. Scientific propositions and
appraisal-propositions were accordingly distinguished as being



76 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

respectively descriptions of what takes place in the external world
and descriptions of what takes place in the internal world at least
until psychologists claimed that their assertions were scientific
descriptions of what takes place in the inner world.

The question whether human beings can merit praise or
blame was consequently construed as the question whether volitions
are effects.

(5) The Bogy of Mechanism.

Whenever a new science achieves its first big successes, its
enthusiastic acolytes always fancy that all questions are now soluble
by extension of its methods of solving its questions. At one time
theorists imagined that the whole world was nothing more than a
complex of geometrical figures, at another that the whole world
was describable and explicable in the propositions of pure arithmetic.
Chemical, electrical, Darwinian and Freudian cosmogonies have
also enjoyed their bright but brief days. 'At long last', the zealots
always say, 'we can give, or at least indicate, a solution of all
difficulties and one which is unquestionably a scientific solution'.

The physical sciences launched by Copernicus, Galileo, Newton
and Boyle secured a longer and a stronger hold upon the cosmogony-
builders than did either their forerunners or their successors. People
still tend to treat laws of Mechanics not merely as the ideal type of
scientific laws, but as, in some sense, the ultimate laws of Nature.
They tend to hope or fear that biological, psychological and
sociological laws will one day be 'reduced' to mechanical laws
though it is left unclear what sort of a transaction this 'reduction'
would be.

I have spoken of Mechanism as a bogy. The fear that
theoretically minded persons have felt lest everything should turn
out to be explicable by mechanical laws is a baseless fear. And it is
baseless not because the contingency which they dread happens not
to be impending, but because it makes no sense to speak of such a
contingency. Physicists may one day have found the answers to all
physical questions, but not all questions are physical questions. The
laws that they have found and will find may, in one sense of the
metaphorical verb, govern everything that happens, but they do
not ordain everything that happens. Indeed they do not ordain
anything that happens. Laws of nature are not fiats.



THE WILL 77

An illustration may elucidate this point. A scientifically trained
spectator, who is not acquainted with chess or any other game, is
permitted to look at a chessboard in the intervals between the
moves. He does not yet see the players making the moves. After a
time he begins to notice certain regularities. The pieces known to us
as 'pawns', normally move only one square at a time and then only
forwards, save in certain special circumstances when they move
diagonally. The pieces known to us as 'bishops' only move
diagonally, though they can move any number of squares at a time.
Knights always make dog-legged moves. And so on. After much
research this spectator will have worked out all the rules of chess,
and he is then allowed to see that the moves of the pieces are made
by people whom we know as 'players'. He commiserates with them
upon their bondage. "Every move that you make", he says, "is
governed by unbreakable rules; from the moment that one of you
puts his hand on a pawn, the move that he will make with it is,
in most cases, accurately predictable. The whole course of what you
tragically dub your 'game' is remorselessly pre-ordained; nothing
in it takes place which cannot be shown to be governed by one or
other of the iron rules. Heartless necessity dictates the play, leaving
no room in it for intelligence or purpose. True, I am not yet
competent to explain every move that I witness by the rules that I
have so far discovered. But it would be unscientific to suppose that
there are inexplicable moves. There must therefore be further rules,
which I hope to discover and which will satisfactorily complete
the explanations which I have inaugurated." The players, of
course, laugh and explain to him that though every move is
governed, not one of them is ordained by the rules. "True, given that
I start to move my bishop, you can predict with certainty that it
will end on a square of the same colour as that from which it
started. That can be deduced from the rules. But that, or how far, I
shall move my bishop at this or that stage of the game is not stated
in, or deducible from, the rules. There is plenty of room for us to
display cleverness and stupidity and to exercise deliberation and
choice. Though nothing happens that is irregular, plenty happens
that is surprising, ingenious and silly. The rules are the same for all
the games of chess that have dVer been played, yet nearly every
game that has ever been played has taken a course for which the
players can recall no close parallels. The rules are unalterable, but



78 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

the games are not uniform. The rules prescribe what the players
may not do; everything else is permitted, though many moves
that are permitted would be bad tactics.

"There are no further rules of the game for you to discover and
the 'explanations' which you hope to find for the particular moves
that we make can, of course, be discovered, but they are not
explanations in terms of rules but in terms of some quite different
things, namely, such tilings as the player's consideration and
application of tactical principles. Your notion of what constitutes
an explanation was too narrow. The sense in which a rule 'explains'
a move made in conformity with it is not the same as the sense in
which a tactical principle explains a move, for all that every move
that obeys a tactical principle also obeys a rule. Knowing how to
apply tactical principles involves knowing the rules of the game, but
there is no question of these principles being 'reducible' to rules of
the game."

This illustration is not intended to suggest that the laws of
physics are very much like the rules of chess; for the course of
Nature is not a game and its laws are not human inventions or
conventions. What the illustration is meant to bring out is the fact
there is no contradiction in saying that one and the same process,
such as the move of a bishop, is in accordance with two principles of
completely different types and such that neither is 'reducible' to
the other, though one of them presupposes the other.

Hence there derive two quite different sorts of 'explanation' of
the moves, neither of which is incompatible with the other. Indeed
the explanation in terms of tactical canons presupposes that in
terms of the rules of chess, but it is not deducible from those rules.
This point can be expressed in another way. A spectator might ask,
in one sense of 'why', why the bishop always ends a move on a
square of the same colour as that on which it began the game; he
would be answered by being referred to the rules of chess, including
those prescribing the design of the board. He might then ask, in
another sense of 'why', why a player at a certain stage of the game
moved one of his bishops (and not some other piece) to one square
(and not to another); he might be answered that it was to force
the opposing Queen to cease to threaten the player's King.

Words like 'explanation', 'law', 'rule', 'principle', 'why',
'because', 'cause', 'reason', 'govern', 'necessitate', etc., have a range



THE WILL 79

of typically different senses. Mechanism seemed to be a menace
because it was assumed that the use of these terms in mechanical
theories is their sole use; that all 'why' questions are answerable in
terms of laws of motion. In fact all 'why' questions of one type are
perhaps answerable in those terms and no 'why' questions of other
types are answerable merely in those terms.

It may well be that throughout the whole length of The Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire Gibbon never once infringes the rules
of English grammar. They governed his entire writing, yet they
did not ordain what he should write, or even the style in which he
should write; they merely forbade certain ways of conjoining words.
Knowing these rules and Gibbon's obedience to them, a reader can
predict from the fact that a particular sentence has for its subject a
plural noun that its verb will be a plural verb. His predictions will be
uniformly correct, yet we feel no inclination to lament that Gibbon's
pen ran in a fatal groove. Grammar tells the reader that the verb
must be a plural verb, but not which verb it will be.

An argumentative passage from The Decline and Fall might be
examined for the grammatical rules which its word-arrangements
observe, the stylistic canons which its word-arrangements observe,
and the logical rules which its word-arrangements observe. There
is no conflict or competition between these different types of
principles; all alike are applied in the same material; all alike can
supply licenses for correct predictions; all alike may be referred to
for answers to questions of the same verbal pattern 'Why did
Gibbon write this and not something else?'

The discoveries of the physical sciences no more rule out life,
sentience, purpose or intelligence from presence in the world
than do the rules of grammar extrude style or logic from prose.
Certainly the discoveries of the physical sciences say nothing of
life, sentience, or purpose, but nor do the rules of grammar say
anything about style or logic. For the laws of physics apply to
what is animate as well as to what is inanimate, to intelligent people
as well as to idiots, just as the rules of grammar apply to Whitakers
Almanac as well as to The Decline and Fall, to Mrs. Eddy's as well
as to Hume's reasonings.

The favourite model to which the fancied mechanistic world is
assimilated is that of billiard balls imparting their motion to one
another by impact. Yet a game of billiards provides one of the



80 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

simplest examples of a course of events for the description of which
mechanical terms are necessary without being sufficient. Certainly
from accurate knowledge of the weight, shape, elasticity and
movements of the balls, the constitution of the table and the
conditions of the atmosphere it is in principle possible, in accordance
with k$own laws, to deduce from a momentary state of the balls
what will be their later state. But it does not follow from this that
the course of the game is predictable in accordance with those laws
alone. A scientific forecaster, who was ignorant of the rules and tactics
of the game and of the skill and plans of the players, could predict,
perhaps, from the beginning of a single stroke, the positions in which
the balls will come to rest before the next stroke is made; but he
could predict no further. The player himself may be able to foresee
with modest probability the sort of break that he will make, for
he knows, perhaps, the best tactics to apply to situations like this
and he knows a good deal about his own skill, endurance, patience,
keenness and intentions.

' It must be noticed that in so far as the player has any skill in
getting the balls where he wishes, he must have knowledge, of a
rule-of-thumb sort, of the mechanical principles which govern the
accelerations and decelerations of the balls. His knowledge how to
execute his intentions is not at loggerheads with his knowledge of
mechanical laws; it depends on that knowledge. In applying
appraisal-concepts to his play we are not worried by the fact that
the motions imparted by him to the balls are governed by mechanical
laws ; for there could not be a game of skill at all if, per impossible,
the instruments of the game behaved randomly.

The modem interpretation of natural laws as statements not of
necessities but of very, very long odds is sometimes acclaimed as
providing a desiderated clement of non-rigorousness in Nature.
Now at last, it is sometimes felt, we can be scientific while reserving
just a very few occasions in which appraisal-concepts can be properly
applied. This silly view assumes that an action could not merit
favourable or unfavourable criticism, unless it were an exception to
scientific generalisations. But the billiards player asks for no special
indulgences from the laws of physics any more than he does from
the rules of billiards. Why should <he? They do not force his hand.
The fears expressed by some moral philosophers that the advance
of the natural sciences diminishes the field within which the moral



THE WILL 81

virtues can be exercised rests on the assumption that there is some
contradiction in saying that one and the same occurrence is governed
both by mechanical laws and by moral principles, an assumption as
baseless as the assumption that a golfer caiinot at once conform to
the laws of ballistics and obey the rules of golf and play with elegance
and skill. Not only is there plenty of room for purpose where every-
thing is governed by mechanical laws, but there would be no place
for purpose if things were not so governed. Predictability is a neces-
sary condition of planning.

Mechanism then is a mere bogy and while there is much to be
elucidated in the special concepts of biology, anthropology,
sociology, ethics, logic, aesthetics, politics, economics, historio-
graphy, etc., there is no need for the desperate salvage-operation of
withdrawing the applications of them out of the ordinary world to
some postulated other world, or of setting up a partition between
things that exist in Nature and things that exist in non-Nature.
No occult precursors of overt acts are required to preserve for
their agent his title to plaudits or strictures for perform-
ing them, nor would they be effective preservatives if they did
exist.

Men are not machines, not even ghost-ridden machines. They
arc men a tautology which is sometimes worth remembering.
People often pose such questions as 'How does my mind get my
hand to make the required movements ?' and even * What makes my
hand do what my mind tells it to do?' Questions of these patterns
arc properly asked of certain chain-processes. The question 'What
makes the bullet fly out of the barrel?' is properly answered by
'The expansion of gases in the cartridge'; the question 'What makes
the cartridge explode?' is answered by reference to the percussion
of the detonator; and the question 'How does my squeezing the
trigger make the pin strike the detonator ?' is answered by describing
the mechanism of springs, levers and catches between the trigger
and the pin. So when it is asked 'How does my mind get my finger to
squeeze the trigger?' the form of the question presupposes that a
further chain-process is involved, embodying still earlier tensions,
releases and discharges, though this time 'mental' ones. But what-
ever is the act or operation adduced as the first step of this postulated
chain-process, the performance of it has to be described in just the
same way as in ordinary life we describe the squeezing of the trigger



82 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

by the marksman. Namely we say simply 'He did it* and not 'He did
or underwent something else which caused it*.

In conclusion, it is perhaps worth while giving a warning against
a very popular fallacy. The hearsay knowledge that everything in
Nature is subject to mechanical laws often tempts people to say
that Nature is either one big machine, or else a conglomeration of
machines. But in fact there are very few machines in Nature. The
only machines that we find are the machines that human beings
make, such as clocks, windmills and turbines. There are a very few
natural systems which somewhat resemble such machines, namely,
such things as solar systems. These do go on by themselves and
repeat indefinitely the same series of movements. The do go, as
few unmanufactured things go, 'like clock-work'. True, to make
machines we have to know and apply Mechanics. But inventing
machines is not copying things found in inanimate Nature.

Paradoxical though it may seem, we have to look rather
to living organisms for examples in Nature of self-maintaining,
routine-observing systems. The movements of the heavenly bodies
provided one kind of 'clock'. It was the human pulse that provided
the next. Nor is it merely primitive animism which makes native
children think of engines as iron horses. There is very little else in
Nature to which they are so closely analogous. Avalanches and
games of billiards are subject to mechanical laws; but they are not
at all like the workings of machines.



CHAPTER IV

EMOTION

(1) Foreword.

IN this chapter I discuss certain of the concepts of emotion and
feeling.

This scrutiny is necessary because adherents of the dogma of
the ghost in the machine can adduce in support of it the consent of
most philosophers and psychologists to the view that emotions are
internal or private experiences. Emotions are described as turbulences
in the stream of consciousness, the owner of which cannot help
directly registering them; to external witnesses they are, in conse-
quence, necessarily occult. They are occurrences which take place
not in the public, physical world but in your or my secret, mental
world.

I shall argue that the word 'emotion' is used to designate at
least three or four different kinds of things, which I shall call
'inclinations' (or 'motives'), 'moods', 'agitations' (or 'commotions')
and 'feelings'. Inclinations and moods, including agitations, are not
occurrences and do not therefore take place either publicly or
privately. They are propensities, not acts or states. They arc,
however, propensities of different kinds, and their differences are
important. Feelings, on the other hand, are occurrences, but the
place that mention of them should take in descriptions of human
behaviour is very different from that which the standard theories
accord to it. Moods or frames of mind are, unlike motives, but
like maladies and states of the weather, temporary conditions which
in a certain way collect occurrences, but they are not themselves extra
occurrences.

(2) Feelings versus Inclinations.

By 'feelings* I refer to the sorts of tilings which people often
describe as thrills, twinges, pangs, throbs, wrenches, itches, prickings,

83



84 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

chills, glows, loads, qualms, hankerings, curdlings, sinkings, tensions,
gnawings and shocks. Ordinarily, when people report the
occurrence of a feeling, they do so in a phrase like 'a throb of
compassion/ 'a shock of surprise* or 'a thrill of anticipation*.

It is an important linguistic fact that these names for specific
feelings, such as 'itch', 'qualm' and 'pang' are also used as names of
specific bodily sensations. If someone says that he has just felt a
twinge, it is proper to ask whether it was a twinge of remorse or
of rheumatism, though the word 'twinge' is not necessarily being
used in quite the same sense in the alternative contexts.

There are further respects in which the ways in which we speak
of, say, qualms of apprehension are analogous to the ways in which
we speak of, say, qualms of sea-sickness. We are ready to charac-
terise either as acute or faint, sudden or lingering, intermittent or
steady. A man may wince from a pricking of his conscience or
from a pricking in his finger. Moreover, we are in some cases ready
to locate, say, the sinking feeling of despair in the pit of the
stomach or the tense feeling of anger in the muscles of the jaw
and fist. Other feelings which we are not prepared to locate in any
particular part of the body, like glows of pride, seem to pervade
the whole body in much the same way as do glows of warmth.

James boldly identified feelings with bodily sensations, but for
our purposes it is enough to show that we talk of feelings very much
as we talk of bodily sensations, though it is possible that there is a
tinge of metaphor in our talk of the former which is absent from our
talk of the latter.

On the other hand, it is necessary to do justice to the crucial fact
that we do report feelings in such idioms as 'qualms of apprehension'
and 'glows of pride' ; we do, that is, distinguish a glow of pride
from a glow of warmth, and I shall have to try to bring out the
force of such distinctions. I hope to show that though it is quite
proper to describe someone as feeling a throb of compassion, his
compassion is not to be equated with a throb or a series of throbs,
any more than his fatigue is his gasps; so no disillusioning
consequences would follow from acknowledging that throbs,
twinges and other feelings are bodily sensations.

In one sense, then, of 'emotion* the feelings are emotions. But
there is quite another sense of 'emotion' in which theorists classify
as emotions the motives by which people's higher-level behaviour



EMOTION 85

is explained. When a man is described as vain, considerate,
avaricious, patriotic or indolent, an explanation is being given of
why he conducts his actions, daydreams and thoughts in the way
he does, and, according to the standard terminology, vanity,
kindliness, avarice, patriotism and laziness rank as species of emotion;
they come thence to be spoken of as feelings.

But there is a great verbal muddle here, associated with a great
logical muddle. To begin with, when someone is described as a
vain or indolent man, the words Vain' and 'indolent' are used to
signify more or less lasting traits in his character. In this use he
might be said to have been vain since childhood, or indolent during
his entire half-holiday. His vanity and indolence are dispositional
properties, which could be unpacked in such ｅxpressions as
'Whenever situations of certain sorts have arisen, he has always or
usually tried to make himself prominent' or 'Whenever he was
faced by an option between doing something difficult and not
doing it, he shirked doing the difficult thing'. Sentences beginning
with 'Whenever' are not singular occurrence reports. Motive words
used in this way signify tendencies or propensities and therefore
cannot signify the occurrence of feelings. They are elliptical ex-
pressions of general hypothetical propositions of a certain sort,
and cannot be construed as expressing categorical narratives of
episodes.

It will however be objected that, besides this dispositional use
of motive words, there must also be a corresponding active use of
them. For a man to be punctual in the dispositional sense of the
adjective, he must tend to be punctual on particular occasions; and
the sense in which he is said to be punctual for a particular
rendezvous is not the dispositional but the active sense of 'punctual'.
'He tends to be at his rendezvous on time' expresses a general
hypothetical proposition, the truth of which requires that there
should also be corresponding true categorical propositions of the
pattern 'he was at today's rendezvous in good time'. So, it will be
argued, for a man to be a vain or indolent man there must be
particular exercises of vanity and indolence occurring at particular
moments, and these will be actual emotions or feelings.

This argument certainly establishes something, but it does not
establish the point desired. While it is true that to describe a
man as vain is to say that he is subject to a specific tendency, it



86 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

is not true that the particular exercises of this tendency consist
in his registering particular thrills or twinges. on the contrary, on
hearing that a man is vain we expect him, in the first instance, to
behave in certain ways, namely to talk a lot about himself, to cleave
to the society of the eminent, to reject criticisms, to seek the foot-
lights and to disengage himself from conversations about the merits
of others. We expect him also to indulge in roseate daydreams
about his own successes, to avoid recalling past failures and to
plan for his own advancement. To be vain is to tend to
act in these and innumerable other kindred ways. Certainly
we also expect the vain man to feel certain pangs and flutters
in certain situations; we expect him to have an acute sinking
feeling, when an eminent person forgets his name, and to
feel buoyant of heart and light of toe on hearing of the misfortunes
of his rivals. But feelings of pique and buoyancy are not more
directly indicative of vanity than are public acts of boasting or
private acts of daydreaming. Indeed they arc less directly indicative,
for reasons which will shortly appear.

Some theorists will object that to speak of an act of
boasting as one of the direct exercises of vanity is to leave out the
cardinal factor in the situation. When we explain why a man
boasts by saying that it is because he is vain, we are forgetting that a
disposition is not an event and so cannot be a cause. The cause of
his boasting must be an event antecedent to his beginning to boast.
He must be moved to boast by some actual 'impulse', namely an
impulse of vanity. So the immediate or direct actualisations of
vanity are particular vanity impulses, and these are feelings. The
vain man is a man who tends to register particular feelings of vanity;
these cause or impel him to boast, or perhaps to will to boast, and
to do all the other things which we say are done from vanity.

It should be noticed that this argument takes it for granted
that to explain an act as done from a certain motive, in this case
from vanity, is to give a causal explanation. This means that it
assumes that a mind, in this case the boaster's mind, is a field of
special causes; that is why a vanity feeling has been called in to be
the inner cause of the overt boasting. I shall shortly argue that to
explain an act as done from a ceftrtain motive is not analogous to
saying that the glass broke, because a stone hit it, but to the quite
different type of statement that the glass broke, when the stone hit



EMOTION 87

it, because the glass was brittle. Just as there are no other momentary
actualisations of brittleness than, for example, flying into fragments
when struck, so no other momentary actualisations of chronic
vanity need to be postulated than such things as boasting, day-
dreaming about triumphs and avoiding conversations about the
merits of others.

But before expanding this argument I want to show how
intrinsically unplausible the view is that, on each occasion that a
vain man behaves vaingloriously, he experiences a particular
palpitation or pricking of vanity. To put it quite dogmatically,
the vain man never feels vain. Certainly, when thwarted, he feels
acute dudgeon and when unexpectedly successful, he feels buoyant.
But there is no special thrill or pang which we call a 'feeling of
vanity'. Indeed, if there were such a recognisable specific feeling, and
the vain man was constantly experiencing it, he would be the first
instead of the last person to recognise how vain he was.

Take another example. A man is interested in Symbolic
Logic. He regularly reads books and articles on the subject, discusses
it, works out problems in it and neglects lectures on other subjects.
According to the view which is here contested, he must therefore
constantly experience impulses of a peculiar kind, namely feelings
of interest in Symbolic Logic, and if his interest is very strong these
feelings must be very acute and very frequent. He must therefore
be able to tell us whether these feelings are sudden, like twinges,
or lasting, like aches; whether they succeed one another several
times a minute or only a few times an hour; and whether he feels
them in the small of his back or in his forehead. But clearly his
only reply to such specific questions would be that he catches himself
experiencing no peculiar throbs or qualms while he is attending to
his hobby. He may report a feeling of vexation, when his studies are
interrupted, and the feeling of a load off his chest, when distractions
are removed; but there are no peculiar feelings of interest in
Symbolic Logic for him to report. While undisturbedly pursuing
his hobby, he feels no perturbations at all.

Suppose, however, that there were such feelings cropping up,
maybe, about every two or twenty minutes. We should still expect
to find him discussing and studying the subject in the intervals
between these occurrences, and we should correctly say that he
was still discussing and studying the subject from interest in it.



88 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

This point by itself establishes the conclusion that to do something
from a motive is compatible with being free from any particular
feelings while doing it.

Of course, the standard theories of motives do not speak so
crudely of qualms, pangs and flutters. They speak more sedately
of desires, impulses or promptings. Now there are feelings
of wanting, namely those we call 'hankerings', 'cravings' and
Ditchings' . So let us put our question in this way. Is being interested
in Symbolic Logic equivalent to being liable or prone to feel certain
special hankerings, gnawings or cravings? And does working at
Symbolic Logic from interest in it involve feeling one such itching
before each bit of the work is begun ? If the affirmative answer is given,
then there can be no answer to the question, 'From what motive
does the student work at the subject in the intervals between the
itchings ?' And if to say that his interest was strong meant that the
supposed feelings were frequent and acute, the absurd consequence
would follow that the more strongly a man was interested in a
subject, the more his attention would be distracted from it. To
call a feeling or sensation 'acute' is to say that it is difficult not to
attend to it, and to attend to a feeling is not the same thing as to
attend to a problem in Symbolic Logic.

We must reject, then, the conclusion of the argument which
tried to prove that motive words are the names of feelings or else
of tendencies to have feelings. But what was wrong with the
argument for this conclusion?

There are at least two quite different senses in which an
occurrence is said to be 'explained'; and there are correspondingly
at least two quite different senses in which we ask 'why' it occurred
and two quite different senses in which we say that it happened
'because' so and so was the case. The first sense is the causal sense.
To ask why the glass broke is to ask what caused it to break, and
we explain, in this sense, the fracture of the glass when we report
that a stone hit it. The 'because' clause in the explanation reports
an event, namely the event which stood to the fracture of the glass
as cause to effect.

But very frequently we look for and get explanations of
occurrences in another sense of 'explanation'. We ask why the glass
shivered when struck by the stone and we get the answer that it was
because the glass was brittle. Now 'brittle' is a dispositional adjective;



EMOTION 89

that is to say, to describe the glass as brittle is to assert a general
hypothetical proposition about the glass. So when we say that the
glass broke when struck because it was brittle, the 'because' clause
does not report a happening or a cause; it states a law-like proposi-
tion. People commonly say of explanations of this second kind
that they give the 'reason' for the glass breaking when struck.

How does the law-like general hypothetical proposition work?
It says, roughly, that the glass, if sharply struck or twisted, etc.
would not dissolve or stretch or evaporate but fly into fragments.
The matter of fact that the glass did at a particular moment fly into
fragments, when struck by a particular stone, is explained, in this
sense of 'explain', when the first happening, namely the impact of
the stone, satisfies the protasis of the general hypothetical proposi-
tion, and when the second happening, namely the fragmentation
of the glass, satisfies its apodosis.

This can now be applied to the explanation of actions as issuing
from specified motives. When we ask 'Why did someone act in a
certain way?' this question might, so far as its language goes, either
be an inquiry into the cause of his acting in that way, or be an
inquiry into the character of the agent which accounts for his
having acted in that way on that occasion. I suggest, what I shall
now try to prove, that explanations by motives are explanations of
the second type and not of the first type. It is perhaps more than
a merely linguistic fact that a man who reports the motive from
which something is done is, in common parlance, said to be giving
the 'reason' for the action. It should be also noticed that there are
lots of different kinds of such explanations of human actions. A twitch
may be explained by a reflex, the filling of a pipe by an inveterate
habit; the answering of a letter by a motive. Some of the differences
between reflexes, habits and motives will have to be described at a
later stage.

The present issue is this. The statement 'he boasted from
vanity' ought, on one view, to be construed as saying that 'he
boasted and the cause of his boasting was the occurrence in him of
?L particular feeling or impulse of vanity'. on the other view, it is to
be construed as saying 'he boasted on meeting the stranger and
his doing so satisfies the law*like proposition that whenever he
finds a chance of securing the admiration and envy of others, he
does whatever he thinks will produce this admiration and envy'.



90 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

My first argument in favour of the second way of construing
such statements is that no one could ever know or even, usually,
reasonably conjecture that the cause of someone else's overt action
was the occurrence in him of a feeling. Even if the agent reported,
what people never do report, that he had experienced a vanity itch
just before he boasted, this would be very weak evidence that the
itch caused the action, since for all we know, the cause was any
one of a thousand other synchronous happenings. on this view the
imputation of motives would be incapable of any direct testing and
no reasonable person would put any reliance on any such imputation.
It would be like water-divining in places where well-sinking was
forbidden.

In fact, however, we do discover the motives of other people.
The process of discovering them is not immune from error, but nor
are the errors incorrigible. It is or is like an inductive process,
which results in the establishment of law-like propositions and the
applications of them as the 'reasons' for particular actions. What is
established in each case is or includes a general hypothetical proposi-
tion of a certain sort. The imputation of a motive for a particular
action is not a causal inference to an unwitnessed event but the
subsumption of an episode proposition under a law-like proposition.
It is therefore analogous to the explanation of reactions and actions
by reflexes and habits, or to the explanation of the fracture of the
glass by reference to its brittleness.

The way in which a person discovers his own long-term motives
is the same as the way in which he discovers those of others. The
quantity and quality of the information accessible to him differ in the
two inquiries, but its items are in general of the same sort. He has, it is
true, a fund of recollections of his own past deeds, thoughts, fancies
and feelings; and he can perform the experiments of fancying
himself confronted by tasks and opportunities which have not
actually occurred. He can thus base his appreciations of his own
lasting inclinations on data which he lacks for his appreciations of
the inclinations of others. on the other side, his appreciations of
his own inclinations are unlikely to be unbiased and he is not in a
favourable position to compare his own actions and reactions with
those of others. In general we think that an impartial and discerning
spectator is a better judge of a person's prevailing motives, as well
as of his habits, abilities and weaknesses, than is that person himself,



EMOTION 91

a view which is directly contrary to the theory which holds that
an agent possesses a Privileged Access to the so-called springs of
his own actions and is, because of that access, able and bound to
discover, without inference or research, from what motives he
tends to act and from what motive he acted on a particular occasion.

We shall see later on (Chapter V) that a person who does or
undergoes something, heeding what he is doing or undergoing,
can, commonly, answer questions about the incident without
inference or research. But what gives him those ready-made
answers can and often does give his companions also those same
ready-made answers. He does not have to be a detective, but nor
do they.

Another argument supports this thesis. A person replying to
an interrogation might say that he was delving into a ditch in order
to find the larvae of a certain species of insect; that he was looking
for these larvae in order to find out on what fauna or flora they
were parasitic; that he was trying to find out on what they were
parasitic in order to test a certain ecological hypothesis ; and that he
wanted to test this hypothesis in order to test a certain hypothesis
about Natural Selection. At each stage he declares his motive or
reason for pursuing certain investigations. And each successive
reason that he gives is of a higher level of generality than its
predecessor. He is subsuming one interest under another, somewhat
as more special laws are subsumed under more general laws. He is
not recording a chronological series of earlier and earlier stages,
though of course he could do this if asked the quite different
questions What first aroused your interest in this problem ? and in
that?

In the case of every action, taken by itself, for which it is natural
to ask 'From what motive was it done?' it is always possible that it
was not done from a motive but from force of habit. Whatever I
do or say, it is always conceivable, though nearly always false, that
I did it, or said it, in complete absence of mind. The performance
of an action from a motive is different from its performance out
of habit; but the sorts of things which belong to the one class
also belong to the other. Now to say that an action was done from
force of habit is patently to say that a specific disposition explains
the action. No one, I trust, thinks that 'habit' is the name of a
peculiar internal event or class of events. To ask whether an action



92 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

was done from force of habit or from kindliness of heart is therefore
to ask which of two specified dispositions is the explanation of the
action.

Finally, we should consider by what tests we should try to decide
a dispute about the motive from which a person had done some-
tiling; did he, for example, throw up a well-paid post for a relatively
humble Government job from patriotism or from a desire to be
exempt from military service? We begin, perhaps, by asking him;
but on this sort of matter his avowals, to us or to himself, would
very likely not be frank. We next try, not necessarily unsuccess-
fully, to settle the dispute by considering whether his words,
actions, embarrassments, etc., on this and other occasions square
with the hypothesis that he is physically timorous and averse from
regimentation, or whether they square with the hypothesis that he
is relatively indifferent to money and would sacrifice anything to
help win the war. We try, that is, to settle by induction the relevant
traits in his character. In applying, then, the results of our induction
to his particular decision, i.e. in explaining why he came to it, we
do not press him to recall the itches, pangs and throbs that he
registered in making it; nor, probably, do we trouble to infer to
their occurrence. And there is a special reason for not paying much
heed to the feelings had by a person whose motives are under
investigation, namely that we know that lively and frequent feelings
are felt by sentimentalists whose positive actions show quite
clearly that their patriotism, e.g. is a self-indulgent make-believe.
Their hearts duly sink wheu they hear that their country's plight is
desperate, but their appetites are unaffected and the routines of
their lives are unmodified. Their bosoms swell at a march-past, but
they avoid marching themselves. They are rather like theatregoers
and novel readers, who also feel genuine pangs, glows, flutters and
twinges of despair, indignation, exhilaration and disgust, with the
difference that the theatregoers and novel readers realise that they
are making-believe.

To say, then, that a certain motive is a trait in someone's
character is to say that he is inclined to do certain sorts of things,
make certain sorts of plans, indulge in certain sorts of daydreams
and also, of course, in certain situations to feel certain sorts of
feelings. To say that he did something from that motive is to say
that this action, done in its particular circumstances, was just the



EMOTION 93

sort of thing that that was an inclination to do. It is to say 'he would
do that'.

(3) Inclinations versus Agitations.

Quite different from inclinations are the states of mind or moods,
persons in which are described as agitated, disturbed, distracted or
upset. To be anxious, startled, shocked, excited, convulsed, flabber-
gasted, in suspense, flurried and irritated, are familiar kinds of
agitation. They are commotions, the degrees of upsettingness
of which are ordinarily characterised as degrees of violence.
In respect of any one of them it makes sense to say that a person is
too much disturbed to think or act coherently, too much startled
to utter a word, or too excited to be able to concentrate. When
people are said to be speechless with amazement, or paralysed by
horror, the specific agitation is, in effect, being described as extremely
violent.

This point already indicates part of the difference between
inclinations and agitations. It would be absurd to say that a person's
interest in Symbolic Logic was so violent that he could not
concentrate on Symbolic Logic, or that someone was too
patriotic to be able to work for his country. Inclinations are not
disturbances and so cannot be violent or mild disturbances. A man
whose dominant motive is philanthropy or vanity cannot be
described as distracted or upset by philanthropy or vanity; for he
is not distracted or upset at all. He is entirely single-minded.
Philanthropy and vanity are not gusts or storms.

As the words 'distraction' and 'agitation' themselves indicate,
people in these conditions are, to use a hazardous metaphor, subject
to opposing forces. The two radical kinds of such conflicts are these,
namely when one inclination runs counter to another, and when an
inclination is thwarted by the hard facts of the world. A man who
wants a country life and wants to hold a position which requires
his living in a town is inclined in opposing directions. A man who
wants to live and is dying is precluded by the facts from doing what
he wants. These instances show an important feature of agitations,
namely that they presuppose the existence of inclinations which are
not themselves agitations, mucH as eddies presuppose the existence
of currents which are not themselves eddies. An eddy is an
interference-condition which requires that there exist, say, two



94 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

currents, or a current and a rock; an agitation requires that there
exist two inclinations or an inclination and a factual impedi-
ment. Grief, of one sort, is affection blocked by death; suspense, of
one sort, is hope interfered with by fear. To be torn between
patriotism and ambition the victim must be both patriotic and
ambitious.

Hume, following Hutchcson, was partially alive to this distinc-
tion between inclinations and agitations, when he noticed that some
'passions' are intrinsically calm, while others are violent. He noticed
too that a calm passion might Vanquish' a violent passion. But his
antithesis of 'calm' and Violent' suggests a mere difference of degree
between two things of the same kind. In fact, inclinations and
agitations are things of different kinds. Agitations can be violent
or mild, inclinations cannot be cither. Inclinations can be relatively
strong or relatively weak, but this difference is not a difference of
degree of upsettingness; it is a difference of degree of operativeness,
which is quite a different sort of difference. Hume's word 'passion'
was being used to signify things of at least two disparate
types.

When a man is described as being both very avaricious and
rather fond of gardening, part of what is being said is that the
former motive is stronger than the latter, in the sense that much
more of his internal and external conduct is directed towards self-
enrichment than is directed towards horticulture. Moreover, when
situations arise in which a slight financial loss would be accompanied
by a major improvement to his garden, he is likely to give up the
orchids and to keep the cash. But more is being said than this. For
a man to be describable as very avaricious, this propensity must in
the same way be dominant over all or nearly all his other inclin-
ations. Even to be described as rather fond of gardening indicates
that this motive dominates a lot of other inclinations. The strengths
of motives are their relative strengths vis-h-vis either some other
specified motive, or every other motive, or most other motives.
They are determined partly by the way in which the agent
distributes his internal and external activities and, what is only a
special case of this, partly by the outcomes of competitions between
his inclinations, when circumstance? bring about such competitions,
i.e. when he cannot do two things, to both of which he is inclined.
Indeed, to say that his motives have such and such strengths is



EMOTION 95

simply to say that he tends to distribute his activities in such and
such ways.

Sometimes a particular motive is so strong that it always, or
nearly always, dominates every other motive. The miser or the saint
would perhaps sacrifice everything, even life itself, rather than lose
what he most prizes. Such a man would, if the world were kind,
never be seriously agitated or distracted, since no other inclination
is strong enough seriously to compete or conflict with his heart's
desire. He could not be set at loggerheads with himself.

Now one of the most popular uses of 'emotion', 'emotional',
'moved', etc., is to describe the agitations, or other moods, in which
people from time to time are, or to which they are liable. By a
* highly emotional person' is commonly meant a person who is
frequently and violently distraught, thrilled or flustered. If, for any
reason, this is chosen as the standard, or proper sense, of 'emotion',
then motives or inclinations are not emotions at all. Vanity would
not be an emotion, though chagrin would; being interested in
Symbolic Logic would not be an emotion, though being bored by
other topics would. But there is no point in trying to prune the
ambiguities of the word 'emotion', so it is better to say that motives
are, if you like, emotions, but not in the sense in which agitations
arc emotions.

We must distinguish between two different ways in which
we use words like 'worried', 'excited' and 'embarrassed'.
Sometimes we use them to signify temporary moods, as when we
say that someone was embarrassed for some minutes, or worried for
an hour. Sometimes we use them for susceptibilities to moods, as
when we say that someone is embarrassed by praise, i.e. is regularly
embarrassed, whenever he is praised. Similarly 'rheumatic' sometimes
means 'having a bout of rheumatism', sometimes 'prone to have
bouts of rheumatism' ; and 'Ireland is rainy' may mean that there
is a good deal of rain there now, or that there usually is a good deal
of rain there. Clearly, susceptibilities to specific agitations are on the
same general footing with inclinations, namely that both are general
propensities and not occurrences. Anxiety about the issue of a war,
or grief for a dead friend, may characterise a person for months or
years. He keeps on relapsing iryto anxiety, or he keeps on grieving.

To say that a person has for days or weeks been vexed by
someone's criticisms of him is not to say that at every moment of



96 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

that time he has been in the mood to do pettish things, think
resentful thoughts or register feelings of dudgeon. For he is also
from time to time in the mood to eat, conduct his business and
play his games. What it does mean is that he is prone to relapse into
this mood; he keeps on getting into the frame of mind in which he
cannot help harping on the injustice which he has suffered; cannot
help intermittently daydreaming of self-vindications and retalia-
tions; cannot even seriously try to impute creditable motives to his
critic, or to recognise any substance in his criticisms. And to say
that he keeps on relapsing into this mood is to describe him in
dispositional terms. When susceptibilities to specific moods are
chronic, they are traits of character.

But what sort of a description are we giving, when we say
of someone that he is at a particular time and for a shortish
or longish period in a particular mood? Part of the answer
will be given in Section (4) of this chapter. Here it is enough to
show that though moods, like maladies and states of the weather,
are relatively short-term conditions; they are not determinate
incidents, though they issue in determinate incidents.

From the fact that a person has been having indigestion for an
hour it does not follow that he has had one long pain or a series
of short pains during that hour; perhaps he had no pains at all. Nor
does it follow that he has been feeling sick, or that he spurned his
food, or that he looked pale. It is enough if some or other
of these and further appropriate occurrences have taken place.
There is no unique episode, the occurrence of which is a
necessary or sufficient condition of having indigestion. 'In-
digestion' does not, therefore, stand for any such unique
episode. In the same way a sulky or hilarious person may
or may not say certain things, talk in a certain tone of voice, grimace
or gesticulate in certain ways, have certain daydreams or register
certain feelings. Being sulky or hilarious requires some or other of
these and further appropriate actions and reactions, but there is no
one of them which is a necessary or sufficient condition of being
sulky or hilarious. 'Sulkiness' and 'hilarity' do not, therefore, stand
for any one specific action or reaction.

To be sulky is to be in the mood to act or react in some or
other of certain vaguely describable, though easily recognisable,
ways, whenever junctures of certain sorts arise. This shows that



EMOTION 97

mood words like 'tranquil', and jovial', including words for agita-
tions, like 'harassed' and 'homesick', stand for liabilities. Even to
be for a brief moment scandalised or in a panic is, for that moment,
to be liable to do some such things as stiffen or shriek, or to be
unable to finish one's sentence, or to remember where the fire-escape
is to be found.

Certainly a person is not to be described as being in a particular
mood unless an adequate number of appropriate episodes actually
occur. 'He is in a cynical mood', like 'he is nervous', does not
merely say 'He would . . .' or 'He could not. . . .' It alludes to actual
behaviour as well as mentioning liabilities; or, rather, it alludes to
actual behaviour as realising these liabilities. It conjointly explains
what is actually going on and authorises predictions of what will
go on, if ... or of what would have gone on, if. ... It is rather
like saying 'the glass was brittle enough to crack, when that pebble
struck it.'

But though agitations, like other moods, are liability conditions,
they are not propensities to act intentionally in certain ways.
A woman wrings her hands in anguish, but we do not say that
anguish is the motive from which she wrings her hands. Nor do we
inquire with what object an embarrassed man blushes, stammers,
squirms or fidgets. A keen walker walks because he wants to walk,
but a perplexed man does not wrinkle his brows because he wants
or means to wrinkle them, though the actor or hypocrite may
wrinkle his brows because he wants or means to appear perplexed.
The reason for these differences is simple. To be distracted is not
like being thirsty in the presence of drinking-water; it is like being
thirsty in the absence of water, or in the presence of foul water.
It is wanting to do something while not being able to do it, or
wanting to do something and at the same time wanting not to
do it. It is the conjunction of an inclination to behave in a certain
way with an inhibition upon behaving in that way. The agitated
person cannot think what to do, or what to think. Aimless and
vacillating behaviour, as well as paralysis of behaviour, are symptoms
of agitations in a way in which making a joke is not a symptom
but an exercise of a sense of humour.

Motives then are not agitations, not even mild agitations, nor
are agitations motives. But agitations presuppose motives, or rather
they presuppose behaviour trends of which motives are for us the



98 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

most interesting sort. Conflicts of habits with habits, or habits
with unkind facts, or habits with motives are also commotion-
conditions. An inveterate smoker on parade, or without any matches,
or in Lent, is in this plight. There is however a linguistic matter
which is the source of some confusion. There are some words which
signify both inclinations and agitations, besides some which never
signify anything but agitations, and others again which never signify
anything but inclinations. Words like 'uneasy', 'anxious', 'dis-
tressed', 'excited', 'startled' always signify agitations. Phrases like
'fond of fishing', 'keen on gardening', 'bent on becoming a bishop'
never signify agitations. But words like 'love', 'want', 'desire',
'proud', 'eager' and many others stand sometimes for simple
inclinations and sometimes for agitations which are resultant
upon those inclinations and interferences with the exercise
of them. Thus 'hungry' in the sense of 'having a good appetite'
means roughly 'is eating or would cat heartily and without
sauces, etc.'; but this is different from the sense in winch a person
might be said to be 'too hungry to concentrate on his work*.
Hunger in this second sense is a distress, and requires for its existence
the conjunction of an appetite with the inability to eat. Similarly
the sense in which a boy is proud of his school is different from the
sense in which he is speechless with pride on being unexpectedly
given a place in a school team.

To remove a possible misapprehension, it must be pointed out
that not all agitations are disagreeable. People voluntarily subject
themselves to suspense, fatigue, uncertainty, perplexity, fear and
surprise in such practices as angling, rowing, travelling, crossword
puzzles, rock-climbing and joking. That thrills, raptures, surprise,
amusement and relief are agitations is shown by the fact that we can
say that someone is too much thrilled, amused or relieved to act,
think or talk coherently. We are then describing him as being moved
in the sense of 'stirred' and not as being motivated in the sense of
'keen to do or get something'.

(4) Moods.

We commonly describe people as being at particular times for
shorter or longer periods in certain moods. We say, for example,
that a person is depressed, happy, uncommunicative or restless, and
has been so for minutes or for days. only when a mood is chronic



EMOTION 99

do we use such mood words as descriptions of character. A person
may be melancholy today, though he is not a melancholic person.

In saying that he is in a certain mood we are saying sometliing
fairly general; not that he is all the time or frequently doing one
unique thing, or having one unique feeling, but that he is in the
frame of mind to say, do and feel a wide variety of loosely affiliated
things. A person in a frivolous vein is in the mood to make more
jokes than usual, to be more tickled than usual by the jokes of
others, to polish off important matters of business without anxious
consideration, to put heart and soul into childish games, and so on
indefinitely.

A person's momentary mood is a different sort of tiling from
the motives which actuate him. We can say of a person that he is
ambitious, loyal to his party, humane and interested in entomology,
and that he is all of these tilings, in a certain sense, at the same time.
Not that such inclinations are synchronous occurrences or states,
sinct they are not occurrences or states at all. But if a situation were
to arise in which he could both advance his career and help his
party, he would do both rather than do either without the other.

Moods, on the contrary, monopolise. To say that he is in one
mood is, with reservations for complex moods, to say that he is
not in any other. To be in the mood to act and react in certain
ways is also not to be in the mood to act or react in a lot of other
ways. To be in a conversational mood is not to be in a reading,
writing or lawn-mowing mood. We talk about moods in terms
like those, and sometimes borrowed from those, in which we talk
about the weather, and we sometimes talk about the weather in
terms borrowed from the language of moods. We do not mention
moods or the weather, unless they are changeable. If it is showery
here today, then it is not a settled drizzle here today. If John Doe
was sullen yesterday evening, then he was not hilarious, sad, serene
or companionable yesterday evening. Further, somewhat as this
morning's weather in a given locality made the same sort of
difference to every section of that neighbourhood, so a person's
mood during a given period colours all or most of his actions and
reactions during that period. His work and his play, his talk and
his grimaces, his appetite and hi? daydreams, all reflect his touchi-
ness, his joviality or his depression. Any one of them may serve
as a barometer for all the others.



100 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

Mood words are short-term tendency words, but they
differ from motive words, not only in the short term of their
application, but in their use in characterizing the total 'set' of a
person during that short term. Somewhat as the entire ship is
cruising south-east, rolling, or vibrating, so the entire person is
nervous, serene or gloomy. His own corresponding inclination will
be to describe the whole world as menacing, congenial, or grey.
If he is jovial, he finds everything jollier than usual; and if he is
sulky, not only his employer's tone of voice and his own knotted
shoe-lace seem unjust to him, but everything seems to be doing him
injustices.

Mood words are commonly classified as the names of feelings.
But if the word 'feeling' is used with any strictness, this classification
is quite erroneous. To say that a person is happy or discontented is
not merely to say that he has frequent or continuous tingles or
gnawings; indeed, it is not to say even this, for we should not
withdraw our statement on hearing that the person had had no
such feelings, and we should not be satisfied that he was happy or
discontented merely by his avowal that he had them frequently
and acutely. They might be symptoms of indigestion or intoxication.

Feelings, in any strict sense, are things that come and go or
wax and wane in a few seconds; they stab or they grumble; we
feel them all over us or else in a particular part. The victim may
say that he keeps on having tweaks, or that they come only at fairly
long intervals. No one would describe his happiness or discontent-
ment in any such terms. He says that he feels happy or discontented,
but not that he keeps on feeling, or that he steadily feels happy or
discontented. If a person is too gay to brood over a rebuff, he is not
undergoing so violent a feeling that he can think of nothing else,
and therefore not of the rebuff; on the contrary, he enjoys much
more than usual all the things he does and all the thoughts he
thinks, including thoughts of the rebuff. He does not mind thinking
of it as much as he would usually do.

The main motives for classifying moods as feelings seem to be
twofold, (i) Theorists have felt constrained to put them into one of
their three permitted pigeon-holes, Thought, Will and Feeling; and
as moods will not fit either of the first two holes, they must be made
to fit the third. We need not spend time on this motive. (2) A person
in a lazy, frivolous or depressed mood may, with perfect idiomatic



EMOTION 101

correctness, avow his frame of mind by saying 'I feel lazy', or 'I am
beginning to feel frivolous', or 1 still feel depressed'. How can such
ｅxpressions be idiomatically correct unless they report the occurrence
of feelings? If 1 feel a tingle' announces a tingling feeling, how can
'I feel energetic' help announcing an energy feeling?

But this instance begins to make the argument ring unplausibly.
Energy is obviously not a feeling. Similarly, if the patient says, 1
feel ill', or 'I feel better', no one will therefore classify illness or con-
valescence as feelings. 'He felt stupid', 'capable of climbing the tree',
'about to faint' are other uses of the verb 'to feel', where the accusatives
to the verb are not the names of feelings.

Before coming back to the association of 'feel' with mood words,
we should consider some differences between such avowals as 'I
feel a tickle' and 'I feel ill'. If a person feels a tickle, he has a tickle,
and if he has a tickle, he feels it. But if he feels ill, he may not be
ill, and if he is ill, he may not feel ill. Doubtless a person's feeling
ill is some evidence for his being ill; but feeling a tickle is not
evidence for his having a tickle, any more than striking a blow is
evidence for the occurrence of a blow. In 'feel a tickle' and 'strike a
blow', 'tickle' and 'blow' are cognate accusatives to the verbs 'feel'
and 'strike'. The verb and its accusative are two ｅxpressions for the
same thing, as are the verbs and their accusatives in 'I dreamt a
dream' and 'I asked a question'.

But 'ill' and 'capable of climbing the tree' are not cognate
accusatives to the verb 'to feel' ; so they are not in grammar bound
to signify feelings, as 'tickle' is in grammar bound to signify a
feeling. Another purely grammatical point shows the same thing.
It is indifferent whether I say 'I feel a tickle' or 'I have a tickle';
but 'I have . . .' cannot be completed by '. . . ill', '. . . capable of
climbing the tree', '. . . happy' or '. . . discontented'. If we try to
restore the verbal parallel by bringing in the appropriate abstract
nouns, we find a further incongruity; 'I feel happiness', 'I feel
illness' or 'I feel ability to climb the tree', if they mean anything,
do not mean at all what is meant by 'I feel happy, ill, or capable of
climbing the tree'.

On the other hand, besides these differences between the different
uses of 'I feel . . .' there are impfirtant analogies as well. If a person
says that he has a tickle, we do not ask for his evidence, or require
him to make quite sure. Announcing a tickle is not proclaiming



102 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

the results of ail investigation. A tickle is not something established
by careful witnessing, or something inferred from clues, nor do
we praise for their powers of observation or reasoning people who
let us know that they feel tickles, tweaks and flutters. Just
the same is true of avowals of moods. If a person says 'I feel bored',
or 1 feel depressed', we do not ask him for his evidence, or request
him to make sure. We may accuse him of shamming to us or to
himself, but we do not accuse him of having been careless in his
observations or rash in his inferences, since we do not think that his
avowal was a report of observations or conclusions. He has not
been a good or a bad detective; he has not been a detective at
all. Nothing would surprise us more than to hear him say 'I feel
depressed' in the alert and judicious tone of voice of a detective,
a microscopist, or a diagnostician, though this tone of voice is
perfectly congruous with 'I was feeling depressed' and 'he feels
depressed'. If the avowal is to do its job, it must be said in a depressed
tone of voice; it must be blurted out to a sympathizer, not reported
to an investigator. Avowing 'I feel depressed' is doing one of
the things, namely one of the conversational things, that depression
is the mood to do. It is not a piece of scientific premiss-providing,
but a piece of conversational moping. That is why, if we are
suspicious, we do not ask 'Fact or fiction?', 'True or false?', 'Reliable
or unreliable?', but 'Sincere or shammed?' The conversational
avowal of moods requires not acumen, but openness. It comes from
the heart, not from the head. It is not discovery, but voluntary
non-concealment.

Of course people have to learn how to use avowal ｅxpressions
appropriately and they may not learn these lessons very well. They
learn them from ordinary discussions of the moods of others and from
such more fruitful sources as novels and the theatre. They learn from
the same sources how to cheat both other people and themselves by
making sham avowals in the proper tones of voice and with the
other proper histrionic accompaniments.

If we now raise the epistemologist's question 'How does a
person find out what mood he is in?' we can answer that if, as
may not be the case, he finds it out at all, he finds it out very much
as we find it out. As we have seen* he does not groan 'I feel bored'
because he has found out that he is bored, any more than the
sleepy man yawns because he has found out that he is sleepy.



EMOTION 103

Rather, somewhat as the sleepy man finds out that he is sleepy
by finding, among other tilings, that he keeps on yawning, so the
bored man finds out that he is bored, if he does find this out, by
finding that among other things he glumly says to others and to
himself 1 feel bored' and 'How bored I feel'. Such a blurted avowal
is not merely one fairly reliable index among others. It is the
first and the best index, since being worded and voluntarily
uttered, it is meant to be heard and it is meant to be understood.
It calls for no sleuth-work.

In some respects avowals of moods like 'I feel cheerful' more
closely resemble announcements of sensations like 'I feel a tickle' than
they resemble utterances like 'I feel better' or C I feel capable of
climbing the tree'. Just as it would be absurd to say 'I feel a
tickle but maybe I haven't one', so, in ordinary cases, it would be
absurd to say 1 feel cheerful but maybe I am not'. But there would
be no absurdity in saying 1 feel better but perhaps I am worse',
or 'I feel capable of climbing the tree but maybe I could not'.

This difference can be brought out in another way. Sometimes
it is natural to say *I feel as if I could eat a horse', or 'I feel as if my
temperature has returned to normal'. But it would seldom if ever
be natural to say 'I feel as if I were in the dumps', or 1 feel as if I
were bored', any more than it would be natural to say 'I feel as
if I had a pain'. Not much would be gained by discussing at length
why we use the English verb 'to feel' in these different ways.
There are hosts of other ways in which it is also used. I can say *I
felt a lump in the mattress', 'I felt cold', 1 felt queer', 'I felt my jaw-
muscles stiffen', 'I felt my gorge rise', 'I felt my chin with my thumb',
'I felt in vain for the lever', 'I felt as if something important was
about to happen', 'I felt that there was a flaw somewhere in the
argument', 'I felt quite at home', 'I felt that he was angry'. A feature
common to most of these uses is that the speaker does not want
further questions to be put. They would be either unanswerable
questions, or unaskable questions. That he felt it is enough to settle
some debates ; that he merely felt it is enough to show that debates
should not even begin.

Names of moods, then, are not the names of feelings. But to be
in a particular mood is to be in'the mood, among other things, to
feel certain sorts of feelings in certain sorts of situations. To be in a lazy
mood, is. among other things, to tend to have sensations of lassitude



104 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

in the limbs when jobs have to be done, to have cosy feelings of
relaxation when the deck-chair is resumed, not to have electricity
feelings when the game begins, and so forth. But we are not thinking
primarily of these feelings when we say that we feel lazy; in fact,
we seldom pay much heed to sensations of these kinds, save when
they are abnormally acute.

Are names of moods names of emotions ? The only tolerable
reply is that of course they are, in the sense that some people some of
the time use the word 'emotion'. But then we must add that in this
sense an emotion is not something that can be segregated from think-
ing, daydreaming, voluntarily doing things, grimacing or feeling
pangs and itches. To have the emotion, in this sense, which we
ordinarily refer to as 'being bored', is to be in the mood to think
certain sorts of thoughts, and not to think other sorts, to yawn and
not to chuckle, to converse with stilted politeness, and not to talk with
animation, to feel flaccid and not to feel resilient. Boredom is not
some unique distinguishable ingredient, scene or feature of all that its
victim is doing and undergoing; rather it is the temporary
complexion of that totality. It is not like a gust, a sunbeam, a
shower or the temperature; it is like the morning's weather.

(5) Agitations and Feelings.

In an early part of this chapter, I undertook to try to bring out
what is meant by describing, for example, a certain glow as a
glow of pride, or a qualm as a qualm of anxiety. It is helpful, to
begin with, to notice that, anyhow commonly, the word which
completes the phrase 'pang of . . .' or 'chill of . . .' is the name of an
agitation. I shall now argue that feelings are intrinsically connected
with agitations and are not intrinsically connected with inclinations,
save in so far as inclinations are factors in agitations. But I am not
trying to establish a novel psychological hypothesis; I am trying
to show only that it is part of the logic of our descriptions of
feelings that they are signs of agitations and are not exercises of
inclinations.

We have seen that anyhow many of the words used to designate
feelings are also used to designate bodily sensations. A flutter may
be a flutter of anticipation or \t may be a flutter of bodily
exhaustion; a man may squirm either with embarrassment or
with stomach-ache. A child sometimes does not know whether the



EMOTION 105

lump he feels in his throat is a sign of misery, or a sign that he is
sickening for something.

Before considering our special problem, 'By what criteria do we
come to mark off some feelings as feelings 'of surprise* or 'of
disgust' ?', let us consider the prior question, 'By what criteria do we
come to class certain bodily sensations as, for example, twinges of
toothache or qualms of mal de mer? Indeed, by what criteria do we
come to locate or mis-locate sensations as being, in some sense
of 'in', in the right knee or in the pit of the stomach? The answer
is that we learn both to locate sensations and to give their crude
physiological diagnoses from a rule-of-thumb experimental process,
reinforced, normally, by lessons taught by others. The pain is in
the finger in which I see the needle; it is in that finger by the sucking
of which alone the pain is alleviated. Similarly the dull load which
I feel, and locate in the stomach, comes to be recognised as a sign of
indigestion, because it is correlated with loss of appetite, a liability
to subsequent nausea, alleviation by certain medicines and hot-water
bottles. Phrases like 'a twinge of toothache' already embody causal
hypotheses, and the embodied hypotheses are sometimes wrong. A
wounded soldier may say that he feels a twinge of rheumatism in
his right leg, when he has no right leg, and when 'rheumatism' is the
wrong diagnosis of the pain he feels.

Similarly, when a person reports a chill of disquiet or a tug of
commiseration, he is not merely reporting a feeling; he is giving
a diagnosis of it, but a diagnosis which is not in terms of a physio-
logical disturbance. In some cases his diagnosis may be erroneous;
he may diagnose as a twinge of remorse what is really a twinge of
fear, and what he takes to be a sinking feeling of boredom may
actually be a sinking feeling of inferiority. He may even ascribe to
dyspepsia a feeling which is really a sign of anxiety, or ascribe to ex-
citement fluttering sensations caused by over-smoking. Naturally
such mis-diagnoses are more common in children than in grown-ups,
and in persons in untried situations than in persons living their
charted lives. But the point here being made is that whether we are
attaching a sensation to a physiological condition or attaching a
feeling to an emotional condition, we are applying a causal hypoth-
esis. Pains do not arrive already hall-marked 'rheumatic', nor do
throbs arrive already hall-marked 'compassionate'.

Next, it would be absurd to speak of someone having a sensation,



106 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

or a feeling, on purpose; or to ask someone what he had a twinge
for. Rather, the occurrence of a sensation or of a feeling is accounted
for by saying, for example, that the electric current gave me a
tingling sensation, or that the sound of the siren gave me a squirming
feeling in my stomach, where no one would adduce a motive for
feeling this tingle or that squirm. Feelings, in other words, are not
among the sorts of things of which it makes sense to ask from what
motives they issue. The same is true, for the same reasons, of the
other signs of agitations. Neither my twinges nor my winces,
neither my squirming feelings nor my bodily squirmings, neither
my feelings of relief nor my sighs of relief, are things which I do
for a reason; nor, in consequence, are they things which I can be
said to do cleverly or stupidly, successfully or unsuccessfully,
carefully or carelessly or indeed do at all. They are neither
well managed nor ill managed; they are not managed at all,
though the actor's winces and the hypocrite's sighs are well
or ill managed. It would be nonsense to say that someone
tried to have a twinge, though not nonsense to say that he tried to
induce one.

This point shows why we were right to suggest above that
feelings do not belong directly to simple inclinations. An
inclination is a certain sort of proneness or readiness to do certain
sorts of things on purpose. These things are therefore describable
as being done from that motive. They are the exercises of the
disposition that we call 'a motive'. Feelings arc not from motives
and arc therefore not among the possible exercises of such pro-
pensities. The widespread theory that a motive such as vanity, or
affection, is in the first instance a disposition to experience certain
specific feelings is therefore absurd. There are, of course, tendencies
to have feelings; being vertiginous and rheumatic are such
tendencies. But we do not try to modify tendencies of these kinds
by sermons.

What feelings do causally belong to are agitations; they are
signs of agitations in the same sort of way as stomach-aches are
signs of indigestion. Roughly, we do not, as the prevalent theory
holds, act purposively because we experience feelings; we experience
feelings, as we wince and shudder* because we are inhibited from
acting purposively.

It is worth remarking, before we leave this part of the subject



EMOTION 107

that we can induce in ourselves genuine and acute feelings
by merely imagining ourselves in agitating circumstances. Novel-
readers and theatregoers feel real pangs and real liftings of the heart,
just as they may shed real tears and scowl unfeigned scowls. But
their distresses and indignations are feigned. They do not affect
their owners' appetites for chocolates, or change the tones of voice
of their conversations. Sentimentalists are people who indulge in
induced feelings without acknowledging the fictitiousness of their
agitations.

(6) Enjoying and Wanting.

The words 'pleasure' and 'desire' play a large role in the
terminology of moral philosophers and of some schools of
psychology. It is important briefly to indicate some of the differences
between the supposed logic of their use and its actual logic.

First, it seems to be generally supposed that 'pleasure' and
'desire' are always used to signify feelings. And there certainly are
feelings which can be described as feelings of pleasure and desire.
Some thrills, shocks, glows and ticklings are feelings of delight,
surprise, relief and amusement; and hankerings, itches, gna wings
and yearnings are signs that something is both wanted and missed.
But the transports, surprises, reliefs and distresses of which such
feelings arc diagnosed, or mis-diagnosed, as signs are not themselves
feelings; they are agitations or moods, just as arc the
transports and distresses which a child betrays by his skips and his
whimpers. Nostalgia is an agitation and one which can be
called in one sense a 'desire' ; but it is not merely a feeling or series
of feelings. Besides experiencing these, the homesick person
also cannot help thinking and dreaming of home, resisting sugges-
tions that he should prolong his absence and being half-hearted
about recreations of which he is ordinarily fond. If these and similar
trends were not present, we should not call him homesick, whatever
feelings were reported.

'Pleasure', then, is sometimes used to denote special kinds of
moods, such as elation, joy and amusement. It is accordingly used
to complete the descriptions of certain feelings, such as flutters, glows
and thrills. But there is another ^ense in which we say that a person
who is so absorbed in some activity, such as golf or argument, that
he is reluctant to stop, or even to think of anything else, is 'taking



108 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

pleasure in' or 'enjoying' doing what he is doing, though he is in no
degree convulsed or beside himself, and though he is not, therefore,
experiencing any particular feelings.

Doubtless the absorbed golfer experiences numerous flutters and
glows of rapture, excitement and self-approbation in the course
of his game. But when asked whether or not he had enjoyed the
periods of the game between the occurrences of such feelings, he
would obviously reply that he had, for he had enjoyed the whole
game. He would at no moment of it have welcomed an interruption ;
he was never inclined to turn his thoughts or conversation from the
circumstances of the game to other matters. He did not have to
try to concentrate on the game. He concentrated on it without
lecturing or adjuring himself to do so. It would have been, and
perhaps was, an effort to concentrate on anything else.

In this sense, to enjoy doing something, to want to do it and not
to want to do anything else are different ways of phrasing the
same tiling. And just this linguistic fact illustrates an important
point. A hankering is not the same as, or at all similar to,
a flutter or a glow. But that someone has an inclination to do
something that he is doing and no inclination not to do it can be
signified indifferently by 'he enjoys doing it' and by 'he is doing
what he wants to do' and by 'he does not want to stop'. It is a
fulfilled propensity to act or react, where these are heeded actions
and reactions.

We see then that 'pleasure' can be used to signify at least two
quite different types of things.

(1) There is the sense in which it is commonly replaced by the
verbs 'enjoy' and 'like'. To say that a person has been enjoying
digging is not to say that he has been both digging and doing or
experiencing something else as a concomitant or effect of the
digging; it is to say that he dug with his whole heart in his
task, i.e. that he dug, wanting to dig and not wanting to do
anything else (or nothing) instead. His digging was a propensity-
fulfilment. His digging was his pleasure, and not a vehicle of his
pleasure.

(2) There is the sense of 'pleasure' in which it is commonly
replaced by such words as 'delight^, 'transport', 'rapture', 'exulta-
tion' and joy'. These are names of moods signifying agita-
tions. 'Too delighted to talk coherently' and 'crazy with joy' are



EMOTION 109

legitimate ｅxpressions. Connected with such moods, there exist cer-
tain feelings which are commonly described as 'thrills of
pleasure', 'glows of pleasure' and so forth. It should be noticed that
though we speak of thrills of pleasure coursing through us, or of
glows of pleasure warming our hearts, we do not ordinarily speak
of pleasures or of pleasure coursing through us or warming our
hearts. only theorists are misguided enough to classify either delight
or enjoyment with feelings. That this classification is misguided is
shown by the facts (i) that enjoying digging is not both digging and
having a (pleasant) feeling; and (2) that delight, amusement, etc. are
moods, and that moods are not feelings. It is also shown by the
following considerations. It always makes sense to ask about
any sensation or feeling whether its owner enjoyed having
it, disliked having it or did not care one way or the other
about it. Most sensations and feelings are neither enjoyed nor
disliked. It is exceptional to heed them at all. Now this applies
to thrills, flutters and glows just as much as to tingles. So, even
though what a person has felt is properly described as a thrill of
pleasure or, more specifically, as a tickle of amusement, it is still a
proper question whether he not only enjoyed the joke but also
enjoyed the tickled feeling that it gave him. Nor should we be
mucla surprised to hear him reply that he was so much delighted
by the joke that the 'tickled' feeling was quite uncomfortable; or
to hear someone else, who has been crying from grief, admit that
the crying itself had been slightly agreeable. I discuss in
Section (4) of this chapter the two main motives for misclassifying
moods as feelings. The motives for ranking 'enjoy' as a word for a
feeling are parallel, though not identical, since enjoying is not a mood.
One can be in the mood, or not in the mood, to enjoy something.

Similar considerations, which need not be developed, would
show that 'dislike', 'want' and 'desire' do not denote pangs, itchings
or gnawings. (It should be mentioned that 'pain', in the sense in
which I have pains in my stomach, is not the opposite of 'pleasure'.
In this sense, a pain is a sensation of a special sort, which we ordinarily
dislike having).

Liking and disliking, joy and grief, desire and aversion are, then,
not 'internal' episodes which* their owner witnesses, but his
associates do not witness. They are not episodes and so are not
the sorts of things which can be witnessed or unwitnessed. Certainly



110 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

a person can usually, but not always, tell without research whether he
enjoys something or not, and what his present mood is. But so can
his associates, provided that he is conversationally open with them
and does not wear a mask. If he is conversationally open neither
with them nor with himself, both will have to do some research
to find out these things, and they are more likely to succeed than he.

(7) The criteria of motives.

So far it has been argued that to explain an action as done from
a certain motive is not to correlate it with an occult cause, but to
subsume it under a propensity or behaviour-trend. But this is not
enough. To explain an action as due to habit, or as due to an
instinct, or a reflex, squares with this formula, yet we distinguish
actions done, say, from vanity or affection from those done auto-
matically in one of these other ways. I shall restrict myself to trying
to indicate some of the criteria by which we . would ordinarily
decide that an agent had done something not from force of habit but
from a specified motive. But it must not be supposed that the two
classes are demarcated from one another as an equatorial day from
an equatorial night. They shade into one another as an English day
shades into an English night. Kindliness shades into politeness
through the twilight of considerateness, and politeness shades into
drill through the twilight of etiquette. The drill of a keen soldier
is not quite like the drill of a merely docile soldier.

When we say that someone acts in a certain way from sheer
force of habit, part of what we have in mind is this, that in similar
circumstances he always acts in just this way; that he acts in this
way whether or not he is attending to what he is doing ; that he is
not exercising care or trying to correct or improve his performance;
and that he may, after the act is over, be quite unaware that he has
done it. Such actions are often given the metaphorical title
'automatic'. Automatic habits are often deliberately inculcated by
sheer drill, and only by some counter-drill is a formed habit
eradicated.

But when we say that someone acts in a certain way from
ambition or sense of justice, we mean by implication to deny that
the action was merely automatic. n particular we imply that the
agent was in some way thinking or heeding what he was doing,
and would not have acted in that way, if he had not been thinking



EMOTION 111

what he was doing. But the precise force of this ｅxpression
'thinking what he was doing* is somewhat elusive. I certainly
can run upstairs two stairs at a time from force of habit and
at the same time notice that I am doing so and even consider
how the act is done. I can be a spectator of my habitual and
of my reflex actions and even a diagnostician of them, without
these actions ceasing to be automatic. Notoriously such attention
sometimes upsets the automatism.

Conversely, actions done from motives can still be naive, in
the sense that the agent has not coupled, and perhaps cannot couple,
his action with a secondary operation of telling himself or the
company what he is doing, or why he is doing it. Indeed even when a
person does pass internal or spoken comments upon his current
action, this second operation of commenting is ordinarily itself
naive. He cannot also be commenting on his commentaries ad
infinitum. The sense in which a person is thinking what he is doing,
when his action is to be classed not as automatic but as done from
a motive, is that he is acting more or less carefully, critically, con-
sistently and purposefully, adverbs which do not signify the prior
or concomitant occurrence of extra operations of resolving, planning
or cogitating, but only that the action taken is itself done not
absent-mindedly but in a certain positive frame of mind. The
description of this frame of mind need not mention any episodes
other than this act itself, though it is not exhausted in that mention.

In short, the class of actions done from motives coincides with
the class of actions describable as more or less intelligent. Any
act done from a motive can be appraised as relatively sagacious or
stupid, and vice versa. Actions done from sheer force of habit are
not characterized as sensible or silly, though of course the agent
may show sense or silliness in forming, or in not eradicating, the
habit.

But this brings up a further point. Two actions done from the
same motive may exhibit different degrees of competence, and two
similar actions exhibiting the same degree of competence may be
done from different motives. To be fond of rowing does not entail
being accomplished or effective at it, and, of two people equally
effective at it, one may be rowing for the sport and the other for the
sake of health or glory. That is, the abilities with which things are
done are personal characteristics of a different kind from the motives



112 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

or inclinations which are the reasons why they are done; and
we distinguish acts done from force of habit from non-automatic
actions by the fact that the latter are exercises of both at once.
Things done quite absent-mindedly are done neither with methods
nor for reasons, though they may be efficacious and they may have
complex procedures.

In ascribing a specific motive to a person we are describing the
sorts of things that he tends to try to do or bring about, while in
ascribing to him a specific competence we are describing the
methods and the effectiveness of the methods by which he conducts
these attempts. It is the distinction between aims and techniques.
The more common idiom of 'ends and means' is often misleading.
If a man makes a sarcastic joke, his performance cannot be split up
into steps and landings, yet the judgment that it was made from
hatred is still distinguishable from the judgment that it was made
with ingenuity.

Aristotle realized that in talking about motives we are talking
about dispositions of a certain sort, a sort different from com-
petences; he realized too that any motive, unlike any competence,
is a propensity of which it makes sense to say that in a given man
in a given walk of life this motive is too strong, too weak, or neither
too strong, nor too weak. He seems to suggest that in appraising
the moral, as distinct from the technical, merits and demerits of
actions we are commenting on the excessive, proper or inadequate
strength of the inclinations of which they are the exercises. Now
we are not concerned here with ethical questions, or with questions
about the nature of ethical questions. What is relevant to our
inquiry is die fact, recognised by Aristotle as cardinal, that the
relative strengths of inclinations are alterable. Changes of environ-
ment, companionship, health and age, external criticisms and
examples can all modify the balance of power between the
inclinations which constitute one side of a person's character. But
so can his own concern about this balance modify it. A person may
find that he is too fond of gossip, or not attentive enough to other
people's comfort, and he may, though he need not, develop a
second order inclination to strengthen some of his weak, and weaken
some of his strong propensities^ He may become not merely
academically critical, but executively corrective of his own character.
Of course, his new second order motive for schooling his first order



EMOTION 113

motives may still be a prudential or economic one. An ambitious
hotel-proprietor might drill himself in equability, considerateness
and probity solely from the desire to increase his income; and his
techniques of self-regimentation might be more effective than those
employed by a person whose ideal was loftier. In the case, however,
of the hotel-proprietor there would be one inclination the relative
strength of which vis-a-vis the others had been left uncriticized
and unregulated, namely his desire to get rich. This motive might
be, though it need not be, too strong in him. If so, we might call
him 'shrewd', but we should not yet call him Vise'. To generalize
this point, a part of what is meant by saying of any inclination that
it is too strong in a given agent is that the agent tends to act from
that inclination even when he is also inclined to weaken that
inclination by deliberately acting differently. He is a slave of nicotine,
or of allegiance to a political party, if he can never bring himself
to take enough of the serious steps by which alone the strength
of these motives could be reduced, even though he has some second
order inclination to reduce it. What is here being described is
part of what is ordinarily called 'self-control', and when what is
ordinarily miscalled an 'impulse' is irresistible and therefore
uncontrollable, it is a tautology to say that it is too strong.

(8) The Reasons and the Causes of Actions.

I have argued that to explain an action as done from a specified
motive or inclination is not to describe the action as the effect of
a specified cause. Motives are not happenings and are not therefore
of the right type to be causes. The expansion of a motive-ｅxpression
is a law-like sentence and not a report of an event.

But the general fact that a person is disposed to act in such and
such ways in such and such circumstances does not by itself account
for his doing a particular thing at a particular moment; any more
than the fact that the glass was brittle accounts for its fracture at
10 p.m. As the impact of the stone at 10 p.m. caused the glass to
break, so some antecedent of an action causes or occasions the
agent to perform it when and where he does so. For example,
a man passes his neighbour the salt from politeness; but his
politeness is merely his inclination to pass the salt when it is
wanted, as well as to perform a thousand other courtesies of the
same general kind. So besides the question 'for what reason did he



H



114 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

pass the salt' ? there is the quite different question 'what made him
pass the salt at that moment to that neighbour'? This question is
probably answered by 'he heard his neighbour ask for it', or 'he
noticed his neighbour's eye wandering over the table', or something
of the sort.

We are perfectly familiar with the sorts of happenings which
induce or occasion people to do things. If we were not, we could not
get them to do what we wish, and the ordinary dealings between
people could not exist. Customers could not purchase, officers
could not command, friends could not converse, or children play,
unless they knew how to get other people and themselves to do
things at particular junctures.

The object of mentioning these important trivialities is twofold;
first, to show that an action's having a cause does not conflict with
its having a motive, but is already prescribed for in the protasis of
the hypothetical proposition which states the motive; and second,
to show that, so far from our wanting to hear of occult or ghostly
causes of actions, we already know just what sorts of familiar and
usually public happenings are the things which get people to act
in particular ways at particular times.

If the doctrine of the ghost in the machine were true, not only
would people be absolute mysteries to one another, they would
also be absolutely intractable. In fact they are relatively tractable
and relatively easy to understand.

(9) Conclusion.

There are two quite different senses of 'emotion', in which we
explain people's behaviour by reference to emotions. In the first
sense we are referring to the motives or inclinations from which
more or less intelligent actions are done. In the second sense we are
referring to moods, including the agitations or perturbations of
which some aimless movements are signs. In neither of these senses
arc we asserting or implying that the overt behaviour is the effect
of a felt turbulence in the agent's stream of consciousness. In a third
sense of 'emotion', pangs and twinges are feelings or emotions,
but they are not, save per accidens, things by reference to which we
explain behaviour. They are things,for which diagnoses are required,
not things required for the diagnoses of behaviour. Impulses,
described as feelings which impel actions, are para-mechanical



EMOTION 115

myths. This does not mean that people never act on the impulse
of the moment, but only that we should not swallow the traditional
stories about the occult antecedents of either deliberate or impulsive
actions.

Consequently, though the description of the higher-level
behaviour of people certainly requires mention of emotions in the
first two senses, this mention does not entail inferences to occult
inner states or processes. The discovery by me of your motives
and moods is not analogous to unchcckable water-divining ; it is partly
analogous to my inductions to your habits, instincts and reflexes,
partly to my inferences to your maladies and your tipsiness. But, in
favourable circumstances, I find out your inclinations and your
moods more directly than this. I hear and understand your
conversational avowals, your interjections and your tones of voice;
I see and understand your gestures and facial ｅxpressions. I say
'understand' in no metaphorical sense, for even interjections, tones
of voice, gestures and grimaces are modes of communication. We
learn to produce them, not indeed from schooling, but from imitation.
We know how to sham by putting them on and we know, in some
degree, how to avoid giving ourselves away by assuming masks.
It is not only their vocabularies that make foreigners difficult to
understand. My discovery of my own motives and moods is not
different in kind, though I am ill placed to see my own grimaces
and gestures, or to hear my own tones of voice. Motives and moods
are not the sorts of things which could be among the direct intima-
tions of consciousness, or among the objects of introspection, as these
factitious forms of Privileged Access are ordinarily described. They
arenot'experiences',anymorethanhabitsor maladies are 'experiences'.



CHAPTER V

DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES

(i) Foreword.

I HAVE already had occasion to argue that a number of the words
which we commonly use to describe and explain people's behaviour
signify dispositions and not episodes. To say that a person
knows something, or aspires to be something, is not to say that he
is at a particular moment in process of doing or undergoing
anything, but that he is able to do certain things, when the need
arises, or that he is prone to do and feel certain things in situations
of certain sorts.

This is, in itself, hardly more than a dull fact (almost) of ordinary
grammar. The verbs 'know*, 'possess' and 'aspire' do not behave
like the verbs 'run', 'wake up' or 'tingle' ; we cannot say 'he Jcnew
so and so for two minutes, then stopped and started again after a
breather', 'he gradually aspired to be a bishop', or 'he is now engaged
in possessing a bicycle'. Nor is it a peculiarity of people that we
describe them in dispositional terms. We use such terms just as
much for describing animals, insects, crystals and atoms. We are
constantly wanting to talk about what can be relied on to happen
as well as to talk about what is actually happening; we are constantly
wanting to give explanations of incidents as well as to report them;
and we are constantly wanting to tell how things can be managed
as well as to tell what is now going on in them. Moreover, merely
to classify a word as signifying a disposition is not yet to say much
more about it than to say that it is not used for an episode.
There are lots of different kinds of dispositional words. Hobbies are
not the same sort of thing as habits, and both are different from
skills, from mannerisms, from fashions, from phobias and from
trades. Nest-building is a different sort of property from being
feathered, and being a conductor of electricity is a different sort of
property from being elastic.

116



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 117

There is, however, a special point in drawing attention to the
fact that many of the cardinal concepts in terms of which we describe
specifically human behaviour are dispositional concepts, since the
vogue of the para-mechanical legend has led many people to
ignore the ways in which these concepts actually behave and to
construe them instead as items in the descriptions of occult causes
and effects. Sentences embodying these dispositional words have been
interpreted as being categorical reports of particular but unwitness-
able matters of fact instead of being testable, open hypothetical
and what I shall call 'semi-hypothetical' statements. The old error
of treating the term 'Force' as denoting an occult force-exerting
agency has been given up in the physical sciences, but its relatives
survive in many theories of mind and are perhaps only moribund
in biology.

The scope of this point must not be exaggerated. The vocabulary
we use for describing specifically human behaviour does not
consist only of dispositional words. The judge, the teacher, the
novelist, the psychologist and the man in the street are bound also
to employ a large battery of episodic words when talking about
how people do, or should, act and react. These episodic words,
no less than dispositional words, belong to a variety of types, and we
shall find that obliviousness to some of these differences of type has
both fostered, and been fostered by, the identification of the mental
with the ghostly. Later in this chapter I shall discuss two main types
of mental episodic-words. I do not suggest that there are no
others.

(2) The Logic of Dispositional Statements

When a cow is said to be a ruminant, or a man is said to be a
cigarette-smoker, it is not being said that the cow is ruminating
now or that the man is smoking a cigarette now. To be a ruminant
is to tend to ruminate from time to time, and to be a cigarette-smoker
is to be in the habit of smoking cigarettes.

The tendency to ruminate and the habit of cigarette-smoking
could not exist, unless there were such processes or episodes as
ruminating and smoking cigarettes. 'He is smoking a cigarette now*
does not say the same sort of thirfg as 'he is a cigarette-smoker', but
unless statements like the first were sometimes true, statements like
the second could not be true. The phrase 'smoke a cigarette' has



118 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

both episodic uses and, derivative from them, tendency-stating
uses. But this does not always occur. There are many tendency-
stating and capacity-stating ｅxpressions which cannot also be
employed in reports of episodes. We can say that something is
elastic, but when required to say in what actual events this
potentiality is realised, we have to change our vocabulary and say
that the object is contracting after being stretched, is just going to
expand after being compressed, or recently bounced on sudden
impact. There is no active verb corresponding to 'elastic', in the
way in which 'is ruminating' corresponds to 'is a ruminant'. Nor
is the reason for this non-parallelism far to seek. There are
several different reactions which we expect of an elastic object,
while there is, roughly, only one sort of behaviour that we expect
of a creature that is described to us as a ruminant. Similarly there is a
wide range of different actions and reactions predictable from the
description of someone as 'greedy', while there is, roughly, only
one sort of action predictable from the description of someone as
'a cigarette-smoker'. In short, some dispositional words are highly
generic or determinable, while others are highly specific or
determinate; the verbs with which we report the different exercises
of generic tendencies, capacities and liabilities are apt to differ
from the verbs with which we name the dispositions, while the
episodic verbs corresponding to the highly specific dispositional
verbs are apt to be the same. A baker can be baking now, but a
grocer is not described as 'grocing' now, but only as selling sugar
now, or weighing tea now, or wrapping up butter now. There are
halfway houses. With qualms we will speak of a doctor as engaged
now in doctoring someone, though not of a solicitor as now
solicitoring, but only as now drafting a will, or now defending a
client.

Dispositional words like 'know', 'believe', 'aspire', 'clever' and
'humorous' are determinable dispositional words. They signify
abilities, tendencies or pronenesses to do, not things of one unique
kind, but things of lots of different kinds. Theorists who recognise
that 'know' and 'believe' are commonly used as dispositional verbs
are apt not to notice this point, but to assume that there must be
corresponding acts of knowing br apprehending and states of
believing; and the fact that one person can never find another
person executing such wrongly postulated acts, or being in



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 119

such states is apt to be accounted for by locating these acts and
states inside the agent's secret grotto.

A similar assumption would lead to the conclusion that since
being a solicitor is a profession, there must occur professional
activities of solicitoring, and, as a solicitor is never found doing any
such unique tiling, but only lots of different tilings like drafting
wills, defending clients and witnessing signatures, his unique
professional activity of solicitoring must be one which he performs
behind locked doors. The temptation to construe dispositional
words as episodic words and this other temptation to postulate that
any verb that has a dispositional use must also have a corresponding
episodic use are two sources of one and the same myth. But they
are not its only sources.

It is now necessary to discuss briefly a general objection that is
sometimes made to the whole programme of talking about
capacities, tendencies, liabilities and pronenesscs. Potentialities, it
is truistically said, are nothing actual. The world does not contain,
over and above what exists and happens, some other things which
are mere would-be things and could-be happenings. To say of a
sleeping man that he can read French, or of a piece of dry sugar
that it is soluble in water, seems to be pretending at once to accord
an attribute and to put that attribute into cold storage. But an
attribute either does, or does not, characterise something. It cannot
be merely on deposit account. Or, to put it in another way, a
significant affirmative indicative sentence must be either true or
false. If it is true, it asserts that something has, or some things have,
a certain character; if it is false, then its subject lacks that character.
But there is no halfway house between a statement's being true
and its being false, so there is no way in which 7 the subject described
by a statement can shirk the disjunction by being merely able or
likely to have or lack the character. A clock can strike the hour
that it is, or strike an hour that it is not; but it cannot strike an hour
that might be the correct one but is neither the correct nor an
incorrect one.

This is a valid objection to one kind of account of such statements
as that the sugar is soluble, or the sleeper can read French, namely
an account which construes sftch statements as asserting extra
matters of fact. This was indeed the mistake of the old Faculty
theories which construed dispositional words as denoting occult



120 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

agencies or causes, i.e. things existing, or processes taking place, in a
sort oflimbo world. But the truth that sentences containing words
like 'might', 'could' and 'would ... if ' do not report limbo facts
does not entail that such sentences have not got proper jobs of
their own to perform. The job of reporting matters of fact is
only one of a wide range of sentence-jobs.

It needs no argument to show that interrogative, imperative and
optative sentences are used for other ends than that of notifying
their recipients of the existence or occurrence of things. It does,
unfortunately, need some argument to show that there are lots of
significant (affirmative and negative) indicative sentences which
have functions other than that of reporting facts. There still
survives the preposterous assumption that every true or false
statement either asserts or denies that a mentioned object or set of
objects possesses a specified attribute. In fact, some statements do
this and most do not. Books of arithmetic, algebra, geometry,
jurisprudence, philosophy, formal logic and economic theory
contain few, if any, factual statements. That is why we call such
subjects 'abstract'. Books on physics, meteorology, bacteriology
and comparative philology contain very few such statements,
though they may tell us where they are to be found. Technical
manuals, works of criticism, sermons, political speeches and even
railway-guides may be more or less instructive, and instructive in a
variety of ways, but they teach us few singular, categorical,
attributive or relational truths.

Leaving on one side most of the sorts of sentences which have
other than fact-reporting jobs, let us come straight to laws. For
though assertions that mentioned individuals have capacities,
liabilities, tendencies and the rest are not themselves statements of
laws, they have features which can best be brought out after some
peculiarities of law sentences have been discussed.

Laws are often stated in grammatically uncomplex indicative
sentences, but they can also be stated in, among other constructions,
hypothetical sentences of such patterns as 'Whatever is so and so, is
such and such' or 'If a body is left unsupported, it falls at such and
such a rate of acceleration'. We do not call a hypothetical sentence a
'law', unless it is a 'variable' or 'opAi' hypothetical statement, i.e. one
of which the protasis can embody at least one ｅxpression like 'any' or
'whenever'. It is in virtue of this feature that a law applies to



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 121

instances, though its statement does not mention them. If I know that
any pendulum that is longer by any amount than any other
pendulum will swing slower than the shorter pendulum by an
amount proportional to its excess length, then on finding a particular
pendulum three inches longer than another particular pendulum, I
can infer how much slower it will swing. Knowing the law does not
involve already having found these two pendulums; the statement
of the law does not embody a report of their existence. on the
other hand, knowing or even understanding the law does involve
knowing that there could be particular matters of fact satisfying
the protasis and therefore also satisfying the apodosis of the law.
We have to learn to use statements of particular matters of fact,
before we can learn to use the law-statements which do or might
apply to them. Law-statements belong to a different and more
sophisticated level of discourse from that, or those, to which belong
the statements of the facts that satisfy them. Algebraical statements
are in a similar way on a different level of discourse from the
arithmetical statements which satisfy them.

Law-statements are true or false but they do not state truths or
falsehoods of the same type as those asserted by the statements of
fact to which they apply or are supposed to apply. They have
different jobs. The crucial difference can be brought out in this way.
At least part of the point of trying to establish laws is to find out
how to infer from particular matters of fact to other particular
matters of fact, how to explain particular matters of fact by reference
to other matters of fact, and how to bring about or prevent particular
states of affairs. A law is used as, so to speak, an inference-ticket (a
season ticket) which licenses its possessors to move from asserting
factual statements to asserting other factual statements. It also licenses
them to provide explanations of given facts and to bring about
desired states of affairs by manipulating what is found existing or
happening. Indeed we should not admit that a student has learned a
law, if all he were prepared to do were to recite it. Just as a student,
to qualify as knowing rules of grammar, multiplication, chess or
etiquette, must be able and ready to apply these rules in concrete
operations, so, to qualify as knowing a law, he must be able and
ready to apply it in making* concrete inferences from and to
particular matters of fact, in explaining them and, perhaps also, in
bringing them about, or preventing them. Teaching a law is, at



122 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

least inter alia, teaching how to do new things, theoretical and
practical, with particular matters of fact.

It is sometimes urged that if we discover a law, which
enables us to infer from diseases of certain sorts to the
existence of bacteria of certain sorts, then we have discovered
a new existence, namely a causal connection between such
bacteria and such diseases; and that consequently we now know,
what we did not know before, that there exist not only diseased
persons and bacteria, but also an invisible and intangible bond
between them. As trains cannot travel, unless there exist rails for
them to travel on, so, it is alleged, bacteriologists cannot move
from the clinical observation of patients to the prediction of
microscopic observations of bacteria, unless there exists, though it
can never be observed, an actual tie between the objects of these
observations.

Now there is no objection to employing the familiar idiom
'causal connection'. Bacteriologists do discover causal connections
between bacteria and diseases, since this is only another way of saying
that they do establish laws and so provide themselves with inference-
tickets which enable them to infer from diseases to bacteria, explain
diseases by assertions about bacteria, prevent and cure diseases by
eliminating bacteria, and so forth. But to speak as if the discovery
of a law were the finding of a third, unobservable existence is
simply to fall back into the old habit of construing open hypo-
thetical statements as singular categorical statements. It is like saying
that a rule of grammar is a sort of extra but unspoken noun or
verb, or that a rule of chess is a sort of extra but invisible chessman.
It is to fall back into the old habit of assuming that all sorts of
sentences do the same sort of job, the job, namely, of ascribing a
predicate to a mentioned object.

The favourite metaphor 'the rails of inference' is misleading in
just this way. Railway lines exist in just the same sense that trains
exist, and we discover that rails exist in just the way that we discover
that trains exist. The assertion that trains run from one place to
another does imply that a set of observable rails exists between the
two places. So to speak of the 'rails of inference' suggests that
inferring from diseases to bacteriais really not inferring at all, but
describing a third entity; not arguing 'because so and so, therefore
such and such', but reporting 'there exists an unobserved bond



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 123

between this observed so and so and that observed such and such'.
But if we then ask 'What is this third, unobserved entity postulated
for?' the only answer given is 'to warrant us in arguing from diseases
to bacteria'. The legitimacy of the inference is assumed all the time.
What is gratuitously desiderated is a story that shall seem to reduce
'therefore' sentences and 'if any . . .' sentences to sentences of the
pattern 'Here is a . . .'; i.e. of obliterating the functional differences
between arguments and narratives. But much as railway tickets
cannot be 'reduced' to queer counterparts of the railway journeys
that they make possible; and much as railway journeys cannot be
'reduced' to queer counterparts of the railway stations at which
they start and finish, so law-statements cannot be 'reduced' to
counterparts of the inferences and explanations that they license,
and inferences and explanations cannot be 'reduced' to counterparts
of the factual statements that constitute their termini. The
sentence-job of stating facts is different from the job of stating an
argument from factual statement to factual statement, and both
are different from the job of giving warrants for such arguments.
We have to learn to use sentences for the first job before
we can learn to use them for the second, and we have to learn to
use them for the first and the second jobs before we can learn to
use them for the third. There are, of course, plenty of other
sentence-jobs, which it is not our present business to consider. For
example, the sentences which occupy these pages have not got any
of the jobs which they have been describing.

We can now come back to consider dispositional statements,
namely statements to the effect that a mentioned tiling, beast or
person, has a certain capacity, tendency or propensity, or is subject
to a certain liability. It is clear that such statements are not laws,
for they mention particular things or persons. on the other hand
they resemble laws in being partly 'variable' or 'open'. To say that
this lump of sugar is soluble is to say that it would dissolve, if
submerged anywhere, at any time and in any parcel of water. To
say that this sleeper knows French, is to say that if, for example,
he is ever addressed in French, or shown any French newspaper, he
responds pertinently in French, acts appropriately or translates it
correctly into his own tongue. fThis is, of course, too precise. We
should not withdraw our statement that he knows French on
finding that he did not respond pertinently when asleep, absent-



124 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

minded, drunk or in a panic; or on finding that he did not correctly
translate highly technical treatises. We expect no more than that he
will ordinarily cope pretty well with the majority of ordinary
French-using and French-following tasks. 'Knows French' is a
vague ｅxpression and, for most purposes, none the less useful for
being vague.

The suggestion has been made that dispositional statements about
mentioned individuals, while not themselves laws, are deductions
from laws, so that we have to learn some perhaps crude and vague
laws before we can make such dispositional statements. But in
general the learning process goes the other way. We learn to make
a number of dispositional statements about individuals before we
learn laws stating general correlations between such statements.
We find that some individuals are both oviparous and feathered,
before we learn that any individual that is feathered is oviparous.

Dispositional statements about particular things and persons are
also like law statements in the fact that we use them in a partly
similar way. They apply to, or they are satisfied by, the actions,
reactions and states of the object; they are inference-tickets,
which license us to predict, retrodict, explain and modify these
actions, reactions and states.

Naturally, the addicts of the superstition that all true indicative
sentences either describe existents or report occurrences will demand
that sentences such as 'this wire conducts electricity*, or 'John Doe
knows French', shall be construed as conveying factual information
of the same type as that conveyed by 'this wire is conducting
electricity' and ']ohn Doe is speaking French'. How could the
statements be true unless there were something now going on,
even though going on, unfortunately, behind the scenes ? Yet they
have to agree that we do often know that a wire conducts electricity
and that individuals know French, without having first discovered
any undiscoverable goings on. They have to concede, too, that
the theoretical utility of discovering these hidden goings on would
consist only in its entitling us to do just that predicting, explaining
and modifying which we already do and often know that we are
entitled to do. They would have to admit, finally, that these
postulated processes are themselves, at the best, things the
existence of which they themselves infer from the fact that we can
predict, explain and modify the observable actions and reactions



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 125

of individuals. But if they demand actual Vails* where ordinary
inferences are made, they will have to provide some further actual
'rails' to justify their own peculiar inference from the legitimacy of
ordinary inferences to the 'rails' which they postulate to carry them.
The postulation of such an endless hierarchy of 'rails' could hardly
be attractive even to those who are attracted by its first step.

Dispositional statements are neither reports of observed or
observable states of affairs, nor yet reports of unobserved or
unobservable states of affairs. They narrate no incidents. But their
jobs are intimately connected with narratives of incidents, for, if
they are true, they are satisfied by narrated incidents. 'John Doe has
just been telephoning in French' satisfies what is asserted by 'John
Doe knows French', and a person who has found out that John
Doe knows French perfectly needs no further ticket to enable him
to argue from his having read a telegram in French to his having
made sense of it. Knowing that John Doe knows French is being
in possession of that ticket, and expecting him to understand this
telegram is travelling with it.

It should be noticed that there is no incompatibility in saying
that dispositional statements narrate no incidents and allowing the
patent fact that dispositional statements can have tenses. 'He was a
cigarette-smoker for a year' and 'the rubber began to lose its
elasticity last summer' arc perfectly legitimate dispositional state-
ments; and if it were never true that an individual might be going to
know something, there could exist no teaching profession. There
can be short-term, long-term or termless inference-tickets. A rule of
cricket might be in force only for an experimental period, and
even the climate of a continent might change from epoch to epoch.

(3) Mental Capacities and Tendencies.

There is at our disposal an indefinitely wide range of dispositional
terms for talking about things, living creatures and human beings.
Some of these can be applied indifferently to all sorts of tilings; for
example, some pieces of metal, sonic fishes and some human beings
weigh 140 lb., are elastic and combustible, and all of them, if left
unsupported, fall at the same rate of acceleration. Other dispositional
terms can be applied only to certain kinds of things; 'hibernates',
for example, can be applied with truth or falsity only to living
creatures, and 'Tory' can be applied with truth or falsity only to



126 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

non-idiotic, non-infantile, non-barbarous human beings. Our
concern is with a restricted class of dispositional terms, namely
those appropriate only to the characterisation of human beings.
Indeed, the class we are concerned with is narrower than that, since
we are concerned only with those which are appropriate to the
characterisation of such stretches of human behaviour as exhibit
qualities of intellect and character. We are not, for example,
concerned with any mere reflexes which may happen to be peculiar
to men, or with any pieces of physiological equipment which
happen to be peculiar to human anatomy.

Of course, the edges of this restriction are blurred. Dogs as well
as infants are drilled to respond to words of command, to pointing
and to the ringing of dinner-bells; apes learn to use and even construct
instruments; kittens are playful and parrots are imitative. If we like
to say that the behaviour of animals is instinctive while part of the
behaviour of human beings is rational, though we are drawing
attention to an important difference or family of differences, it
is a difference the edges of which are, in their turn, blurred. Exactly
when does the instinctive imitativeness of the infant develop into
rational histrionics? By which birthday has the child ceased ever
to respond to the dinner-bell like a dog and begun always to respond
to it like an angel ? Exactly where is the boundary line between the
suburb and the country?

Since this book as a whole is a discussion of the logical behaviour
of some of the cardinal terms, dispositional and occurrent, in which
we talk about minds, all that is necessary in this section is to indicate
some general differences between the uses of some of our selected
dispositional terms. No attempt is made to discuss all these terms,
or even all of the types of these terms.

Many dispositional statements may be, though they need not
be, and ordinarily are not, expressed with the help of the words
'can*, 'could' and 'able'. 'He is a swimmer', when it does not
signify that he is an expert, means merely that he can swim. But
the words 'can' and 'able' are used in lots of different ways, as can
be illustrated by the following examples. 'Stones can float (for
pumice-stone floats)'; 'that fish can swim (for it is not disabled,
although it is now inert in the mud)'; 'John Doe can swim (for he
has learned and not forgotten)'; 'Richard Roe can swim (if he is
willing to learn)'; 'you can swim (when you try hard)'; 'she can



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 127

swim (for the doctor has withdrawn his veto)* and so on. The
first example states that there is no license to infer that because this
is a stone, it will not float; the second denies the existence of a
physical impediment; the last asserts the cessation of a disciplinary
impediment. The third, fourth and fifth statements are informative
about personal qualities, and they give different sorts of information.

To bring out the different forces of some of these different uses
of 'can' and 'able', it is convenient to make a brief disquisition on the
logic of what are sometimes called the 'modal words', such as 'can',
'must', 'may', 'is necessarily', 'is not necessarily' and 'is not
necessarily not'. A statement to the effect that something must be,
or is necessarily, the case functions as what I have called an 'inference-
ticket'; it licenses the inference to the thing's being the case from
something else which may or may not be specified in the statement.
When the statement is to the effect that something is necessarily
not, or cannot be, the case, it functions as a license to infer to its not
being the case. Now sometimes it is required to refuse such a license
to infer that something is not the case, and we commonly word
this refusal by saying that it can be the case, or that it is possibly
the case. To say that something can be the case does not entail that
it is the case, or that it is not the case, or, of course, that it is in
suspense between being and not being the case, but only that there
is no license to infer from something else, specified or unspecified,
to its not being the case.

This general account also covers most 'if-then' sentences. An
'if-then' sentence can nearly always be paraphrased by a sentence
containing a modal ｅxpression, and vice versa. Modal and hypo-
thetical sentences have the same force. Take any ordinary
'if-then' sentence, such as 'if I walk under that ladder, I shall meet
trouble during the day' and consider how we should colloquially
express its contradictory. It will not do to attach a 'not' to the
protasis verb, to the apodosis verb, or to both at once, for the
results of all three operations would be equally superstitious state-
ments. It would do, but it would not be convenient or colloquial
to say 'No, it is not the case that if I walk under a ladder I shall have
trouble'. We should ordinarily reject the superstition by saying
'No, I might walk under the ladder and not have trouble' or 'I
could walk under it without having trouble' or, to generalise the
rejection, 'trouble does not necessarily come to people who walk



128 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

under ladders'. Conversely the original superstitious statement
could have been worded 'I could not walk under a ladder without
experiencing trouble during the day'. There is only a stylistic
difference between the 'if-then' idiom and the modal idioms.

It must, however, not be forgotten that there are other uses of
'if', 'must' and 'can' where this equivalence does not hold. 'If
sometimes means 'even though'. It is also often used in giving
conditional undertakings, threats and wagers. 'Can' and 'must' arc
sometimes used as vehicles of non-theoretical permissions, orders
and vetoes. True, there are similarities between giving or refusing
licenses to infer and giving or refusing licenses to do other things,
but there are big differences as well. We do not, for instance,
naturally describe as true or false the doctor's ruling 'the patient
must stay in bed, can dictate letters, but must not smoke'; whereas
it is quite natural to describe as true or false such sentences as 'a
syllogism can have two universal premisses', 'whales cannot live
without surfacing from time to time', 'a freely falling body must
be accelerating' and 'people who walk under ladders need not come
to disaster during the day'. The ethical uses of 'must', 'may' and
'may not' have affinities with both. We are ready to discuss the
truth of ethical statements embodying such words, but the point of
making such statements is to regulate parts of people's conduct,
other than their inferences. In having both these features they
resemble the treatment recommendations given to doctors by their
medical text-books, rather than the regimen-instructions given by
doctors to their patients. Ethical statements, as distinct from
particular ad hominetn behests and reproaches, should be regarded
as warrants addressed to any potential givers of behests and
reproaches, and not to the actual addressees of such behests and
reproaches, i.e. not as personal action-tickets but as impersonal
injunction-tickets; not imperatives but 'laws' that only such things
as imperatives and punishments can satisfy. Like statute laws they
are to be construed not as orders, but as licences to give and enforce
orders.

We may now return from this general discussion of the sorts
of jobs performed by modal sentences to consider certain specific
differences between a few selected 'can' sentences, used for
describing personal qualities.

To say that John Doe can swim differs from saying of a puppy



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 129

that it can swim. For to say that the puppy can swim is compatible
with saying that it has never been taught to swim, or had practice
in swimming, whereas to say that a person can swim implies that
he has learned to swim and has not forgotten. The capacity to acquire
capacities by being taught is not indeed a human peculiarity. The
puppy can be taught or drilled to beg, much as infants are taught to
walk and use spoons. But some kinds of learning, including the
way in which most people learn to swim, involve the understanding
and application either of spoken instructions or at least of staged
demonstrations; and a creature that can learn things in these ways
is unhesitatingly conceded to have a mind, where the teachability
of the dog and infant leaves us hesitant whether or not to say that
they yet qualify for this certificate.

To say that Richard Roe can swim (for he can learn to swim)
is to say that he is competent to follow and apply such instructions
and demonstrations, though he may not yet have begun to do so.
It would be wrong to predict about him, what it would be right to
predict about an idiot, that since he now flounders helplessly in the
water, he will still flounder helplessly after he has been given
tuition.

To say that you can swim (if you try) is to use an interesting
intermediate sort of 'can'. Whereas John Doe does not now
have to try to swim, and Richard Roe cannot yet swim, however
hard he tries, you know what to do but only do it, when you
apply your whole mind to the task. You have understood the
instructions and demonstrations, but still have to give yourself
practice in the application of them. This learning to apply instruc-
tions by deliberate and perhaps difficult and alarming practice is
something else which we regard as peculiar to creatures with minds.
It exhibits qualities of character, though qualities of a different
order from those exhibited by the puppy that shows tenacity and
courage even in its play, since the novice is making himself do
something difficult and alarming with the intention to develop his
capacities. To say that he can swim if he tries is, therefore, to say
both that he can understand instructions and also that he can
intentionally drill himself in applying them.

It is not difficult to think of n&ny other uses of 'can* and 'abb'.
In 'John Doe has been able to swim since he was a boy, but now
he can invent new strokes' we have one such use. 'Can invent' does



130 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

not mean 'has learned and not forgotten how to invent'. Nor is it
at all like the 'can' in 'can sneeze'. Again the 'can' in 'can defeat all
but champion swimmers' does not have the same force as either
that in 'can swim' or that in 'can invent'. It is a 'can' which
applies to race-horses.

There is one further feature of 'can' which is of special pertinence
to our central theme. We often say of a person, or of a performing
animal, that he can do something, in the sense that he can do it
correctly or well. To say that a child can spell a word is to say that
he can give, not merely some collection or other of letters, but the
right collection in the right order. To say that he can tie a reef-knot
is to say not merely that when he plays with bits of string, sometimes
reef-knots and sometimes granny-knots are produced, but that
reef-knots are produced whenever, or nearly whenever, reef-knots
are required, or at least that they are nearly always produced when
required and when the child is trying. When we use, as we often
do use, the phrase 'can tell' as a paraphrase of 'know', we mean by
'tell', 'tell correctly'. We do not say that a child can tell the time,
when all that he does is deliver random time-of-day statements,
but only when he regularly reports the time of day in conformity
with the position of the hands of the clock, or with the position of
the sun, whatever these positions may be.

Many of the performance-verbs with which we describe people
and, sometimes with qualms, animals, signify the occurrence not
just of actions but of suitable or correct actions. They signify
achievements. Verbs like 'spell', 'catch', 'solve', 'find', 'win', 'cure',
'score', 'deceive', 'persuade', 'arrive' and countless others signify
not merely that some performance has been gone through, but
also that something has been brought off by the agent going
through it. They are verbs of success. Now successes are sometimes
due to luck; a cricketer may score a boundary by making a careless
stroke. But when we say of a person that he can bring off things of
a certain sort, such as solve anagrams or cure sciatica, we mean that
he can be relied on to succeed reasonably often even without the
aid of luck. He knows how to bring it off in normal situations.
We also use corresponding verbs of failure, like 'miss', 'misspell'
'drop', 'lose', 'foozle' and 'ntiscalculate'. It is an important
fact that if a person can spell or calculate, it must also be
possible for him to misspell and miscalculate; but the sense



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 131

of 'can' in 'can spell* and 'can calculate' is quite different from its
sense in 'can misspell' and 'can miscalculate'. The one is a com-
petence, the other is not another competence but a liability. For
certain purposes it is also necessary to notice the further difference
between both these senses of 'can' and the sense in which it is true
to say that a person cannot solve an anagram incorrectly, win a race
unsuccessfully, find a treasure unavailingly, or prove a theorem
invalidly. For this 'cannot' is a logical 'cannot'. It says nothing about
people's competences or limitations, but only that, for instance,
'solve incorrectly' is a self-contradictory ｅxpression. We shall see
later that the epistemologist's hankering for some incorrigible sort
of observation derives partly from his failure to notice that in one of
its senses 'observe' is a verb of success, so that in this sense, 'mistaken
observation' is as self-contradictory an ｅxpression as 'invalid proof
or 'unsuccessful cure'. But just as 'invalid argument' and 'unsuc-
cessful treatment' are logically permissible ｅxpressions, so 'inefficient'
or 'unavailing observation' is a permissible ｅxpression, when
'observe' is used not as a 'find' verb but as a 'hunt' verb.

Enough has been said to show that there is a wide variety of
types of 'can' words, and that within this class there is a wide
variety of types of capacity-ｅxpressions and liability-ｅxpressions.
Only some of these capacity-ｅxpressions and liability-ｅxpressions
are peculiar to the description of human beings, but even of these
there arc various types.

Tendencies are different from capacities and liabilities. 'Would
if . , .' differs from 'could'; and 'regularly does . . . when . . /
differs from 'can'. Roughly, to say 'can' is to say that it is not a
certainty that something will not be the case, while, to say 'tends',
'keeps on' or 'is prone', is to say that it is a good bet that it will
be, or was, the case. So 'tends to' implies 'can', but is not implied by
it. 'Fido tends to howl when the moon shines' says more than 'it
is not true that if the moon shines, Fido is silent'. It licenses the
hearer not only not to rely on his silence, but positively to expect
barking.

But there are lots of types of tendency. Fido's tendency to get
mange in the summer (unless specially dieted) is not the same sort
of thing as his tendency to bark when the moon shines (unless his
master is gruff with him). A person's blinking at fairly regular



132 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

intervals is a different sort of tendency from his way of flickering
his eyelids when embarrassed. We might call the latter, what we
should not call the former, a 'mannerism*.

We distinguish between some behaviour tendencies and some
others by calling some of them 'pure habits', others of them 'tastes',
'interests', 'bents' and 'hobbies' and yet others of them jobs' and
'occupations'. It might be a pure habit to draw on the right sock
before the left sock, a hobby to go fishing when work and weather
permit, and a job to drive lorries. It is, of course, easy to think of
borderline cases of regular behaviour which we might hesitate to
classify; some people's jobs are their hobbies and some people's
jobs and hobbies are nearly pure habits. But we are fairly clear
about the distinctions between the concepts themselves. An action
done from pure habit is one that is not done on purpose and is
one that the agent need not be able to report having done even
immediately after having done it; his mind may have been on
something else. Actions performed as parts of a person's job may
be done by pure habit; still, he does not perform them when not
on the job. The soldier does not march, when home on leave, but
only when he knows that he has got to march, or ought to march.
He resumes and drops the habit when he puts on and takes off his
uniform.

Exercises of hobbies, interests and tastes are performed, as we
say, 'for pleasure'. But this phrase can be misleading, since it suggests
that these exercises are performed as a sort of investment from which
a dividend is anticipated. The truth is the reverse, namely that we do
these things because we like doing them, or want to do them, and
not because we like or want something accessory to them. We
invest our capital reluctantly in the hope of getting dividends which
will make the outlay worth while, and if we were offered the chance
of getting the dividends without investing the capital, we should
gladly abstain from making the outlay. But the angler would not
accept or understand an offer of the pleasures without the activities
of angling. It is angling that he enjoys, not something that angling
engenders.

To say that someone is now enjoying or disliking something
entails that he is paying heed to it* There would be a contradiction
in saying that the music pleased him though he was paying no
attention to what he heard. There would, of course, be no contra-



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 133

diction in saying that he was listening to the music but neither
enjoying nor disliking it. Accordingly, to say that someone is
fond of or keen on angling entails not merely that he tends to wield
his rod by the river when he is not forced or obliged not to do so,
but that he tends to do so with liis mind on it, that he tends to
be wrapped up in daydreams and memories of angling, and to be
absorbed in conversations and books on the subject. But this is
not the whole story. A conscientious reporter tends to listen intently
to the words of public speakers, even though he would not do this,
if he were not obliged to do it. He does not do it when off duty. In
these hours he is, perhaps, wont to devote himself to angling. He
does not have to try to concentrate on fishing as he has to try to
concentrate on speeches. He concentrates without trying. This is a
large part of what 'keen on' means.

Besides pure habits, jobs and interests there are many other
types of higher level tendencies. Some behaviour regularities are
adherences to resolutions or ^policies imposed by the agent on
himself; some are adherences to codes or religions inculcated into
him by others. Addictions, ambitions, missions, loyalties, devotions
and chronic negligences are all behaviour tendencies, but they are
tendencies of very different kinds.

Two illustrations may serve to bring out some of the differences
between capacities and tendencies, or between competences and
pronenesses. (a) Both skills and inclinations can be simulated, but
we use abusive names like 'charlatan' and 'quack' for the frauds
who pretend to be able to bring things off, while we use the abusive
word 'hypocrite' for the frauds who affect motives and habits.
(b) Epistemologists are apt to perplex themselves and their
readers over the distinction between knowledge and belief. Some
of them suggest that these differ only in degree of something or
other, and some that they differ in the presence of some intro-
spectible ingredient in knowing which is absent from believing, or
vice versa. Part of this embarrassment is due to their supposing that
'know' and 'believe' signify occurrences, but even when it is seen
that both are dispositional verbs, it has still to be seen that they are
dispositional verbs of quite disparate types. 'Know' is a capacity verb,
and a capacity verb of that speftal sort that is used for signifying
that the person described can bring things off, or get things right.
'Believe', on the other hand, is a tendency verb and one which



134 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

does not connote that anything is brought off or got right. 'Belief '
can be qualified by such adjectives as 'obstinate', 'wavering',
'unswerving', 'unconquerable', 'stupid', 'fanatical', 'whole-hearted',
'intermittent', 'passionate' and 'childlike', adjectives some or all of
which are also appropriate to such nouns as 'trust', 'loyalty', 'bent',
'aversion', 'hope', 'habit', 'zeal' and 'addiction'. Beliefs, like habits,
can be inveterate, slipped into and given up; like partisanships,
devotions and hopes they can be blind and obsessing; like aversions
and phobias they can be unacknowledged; like fashions and tastes
they can be contagious; like loyalties and animosities they can be
induced by tricks. A person can be urged or entreated not to believe
things, and he may try, with or without success, to cease to do so.
Sometimes a person says truly 'I cannot help believing so and so'.
But none of these dictions, or their negatives, are applicable to
knowing, since to know is to be equipped to get something right
and not to tend to act or react in certain manners.

Roughly, 'believe' is of the same family as motive words,
where 'know' is of the same family as skill words; so we ask how a
person knows this, but only why a person believes that, as we ask
how a person ties a clove-hitch, but why he wants to tie a clove-
hitch or why he always ties granny-knots. Skills have methods,
where habits and inclinations have sources. Similarly, we ask what
makes people believe or dread tilings but not what makes them
know or achieve things.

Of course, belief and knowledge (when it is knowledge that)
operate, to put it crudely, in the same field. The sorts of things that
can be described as known or unknown can also be described as
believed or disbelieved, somewhat as the sorts of things that can be
manufactured are also the sorts of things that can be exported. A
man who believes that the ice is dangerously thin gives warnings,
skates warily and replies to pertinent questions in the same ways
as the man who knows that it is dangerously thin; and if asked
whether he knows it for a fact, he may unhesitatingly claim to
do so, until embarrassed by the question how he found it out.

Belief might be said to be like knowledge and unlike trust in
persons, zeal for causes, or addiction to smoking, in that it is
'prepositional' ; but this, though* not far wrong, is too narrow.
Certainly to believe that the ice is dangerously thin is to be
unhesitant in telling oneself and others that it is thin, in acquiescing



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 135

in other people's assertions to that effect, in objecting to statements
to the contrary, in drawing consequences from the original proposi-
tion, and so forth. But it is also to be prone to skate warily, to
shudder, to dwell in imagination on possible disasters and to warn
other skaters. It is a propensity not only to make certain theoretical
moves but also to make certain executive and imaginative moves,
as well as to have certain feelings. But these things hang together
on a common prepositional hook. The phrase 'thin ice' would
occur in the descriptions alike of the shudders, the warnings, the
wary skating, the declarations, the inferences, the acquiescences and
the objections.

A person who knows that the ice is thin, and also cares whether
it is thin or thick, will, of course, be apt to act and react in these
ways too. But to say that he keeps to the edge, because he knows
that the ice is thin, is to employ quite a different sense of 'because',
or to give quite a different sort of 'explanation', from that conveyed
by saying that he keeps to the edge because he believes that the
ice is thin.

(4) Mental Occwrences.

There are hosts of ways in which we describe people as now
engaged in this, as frequently undergoing that, as having spent
several minutes in an activity, or as being quick or slow to achieve a
result. An important sub-class of such occurrences are those which
exliibit qualities of character and intellect. It must be noticed from
the start that it is one thing to say that certain human actions and
reactions exhibit qualities of character and intellect; it is, by an
unfortunate linguistic fashion, quite another tiling to say that there
occur mental acts or mental processes. The latter ｅxpression
traditionally belongs to the two-worlds story, the story that some
tilings exist or occur 'in the physical world', while other things
exist and occur not in that world but in another, metaphorical
place. Rejection of this story is perfectly compatible with retaining
the familiar distinction between, say, babbling and talking sense,
or between twitching and signalling; nor does acceptance of the
two-worlds story in any degree clarify or consolidate this distinction.

I begin by considering a battery of concepts all of which may be
brought under the useful because vague heading of 'minding'. Or
they could all alike be described as 'heed concepts'. I refer to the



136 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

concepts of noticing, taking care, attending, applying one's mind,
concentrating, putting one's heart into something, thinking what
one is doing, alertness, interest, intentness, studying and trying.
* Absence of mind' is a phrase sometimes used to signify a condition
in which people act or react without heeding what they are doing,
or without noticing what is going on. We also have in English a
more special sense of 'minding', hi which to say that a person minds
what he eats is to say not only that he notices what he eats, but
further that he cares what he eats. Enjoying and disliking entail,
but are not entailed by, heeding. 'Enjoy' and 'dislike' belong to the
large class of verbs which already connote heeding. We cannot,
without absurdity, describe someone as absent-mindedly pondering,
searching, testing, debating, planning, listening or relishing. A
man may mutter or fidget absent-mindedly, but if he is calculating,
or scrutinising, it is redundant to say that he is paying some heed
to what he is doing.

Minding, in all its sorts, can vary in degree. A driver can drive
a car with great care, reasonable care or slight care, and a student
can concentrate hard or not very hard. A person cannot always
tell whether he has been applying his whole mind, or only a part
of it, to a task, in which he has been engaged. The child who tries
to commit a poem to memory may think that he has been
attending hard, for he glued his eyes to the page, muttered the
words, frowned and stopped up his ears. But if, without there
having been any distractions or interruptions, he still cannot recite
the poem, say what it was about, or find anything amiss with the
erroneous versions recited by his companions, his claim will be
rejected by the teacher and even, perhaps, withdrawn by himself.

Some traditional accounts given of consciousness have been, at
least in part, attempts to clarify the concepts of heed, usually by
claiming to isolate some unique ingredient common to them all.
This common ingredient has commonly been described in the idiom
of contemplation or inspection, as if part of the difference between
having a tickle and noticing it, or between reading a paragraph and
studying it, consisted in the fact that the having of the tickle and the
reading of the paragraph take place, metaphorically, in a good light
and under the eyes of the person concerned. But so far from heeding
being a sort of inspecting or monitoring, inspecting and monitoring
are themselves special exercises of heed; since whether a person is



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 137

described literally or metaphorically as a spectator, it is always signi-
ficant to ask whether he has been a careful or careless spectator, a
vigilant or a drowsy one. That someone has been carefully warching
a bird on the lawn does not entail that he has also been metaphoric-
ally 'watching' his watching; and that he has been applying his mind
to the cartoon that he has been drawing does not entail that he has
been either watching his fingers at their work or watching anything
else at work. Doing something with heed does not consist in
coupling an executive performance with a piece of theorising,
investigating, scrutinising or 'cognising'; or else doing anything with
heed would involve doing an infinite number of things with heed.

The motives for misdescribing heed in the contemplative idiom
derive partly from the general intellcctualist tradition, according
to which theorising is the essential function of minds, and meta-
phorical contemplation is the essence of theorising. But there is a
further and more reputable motive. It is quite true that if a
person has been doing or undergoing something and has been
paying heed to what he was doing or undergoing, he can then tell
what he has been doing or undergoing (provided that he has
learned the arts of telling) ; and he can tell it without rummaging
for evidence, without drawing any inferences and without even
momentarily wondering what he should say. It is already on the
tip of his tongue and he tells it without hesitation or research as
he tells anything that is familiar or obvious. And as our standard
models of obviousness are taken from the field of familiar things
seen from advantageous points of view in good lights, we naturally
like to describe all abilities to tell things without work or hesitation
as issuing from something like seeing. Hence we like to speak of
'seeing* implications and 'seeing' jokes. But though references to
seeing familiar things in favourable circumstances may illustrate,
they cannot elucidate the notions of familiarity and obviousness.

Later on we shall have to consider how the readiness to tell
what one's actions and reactions have been is involved in having
paid some heed to them. Here it is necessary to point out that
readiness to answer questions about one's actions and reactions does
not exhaust the heed we pay to them. Driving a car with care
reduces the risk of accidents as v^ell as enabling the driver to satisfy
interrogations about his operations. Applying our minds to things
does not qualify us only to give veracious reports about them, and



138 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

absence of mind is betrayed by other things than merely being
nonplussed in the witness-box. The concept of heed is not, save per
accidens, a cognitive concept. Investigations are not the only occupa-
tions in which we apply our minds.

We may now turn to a new feature in the logical behaviour
of heed concepts. When a person hums as he walks, he is doing
two things at once, either of which he might interrupt without
interrupting the other. But when we speak of a person minding
what he is saying, or what he is whistling, we are not saying
that he is doing two things at once. He could not stop his reading,
while continuing his attention to it, or hand over the controls of
his car, while continuing to exercise care; though he could, of course,
continue to read but cease to attend, or continue to drive but cease
to take care. Since the use of such pairs of active verbs as 'read' and
'attend' or 'drive* and 'take care' may suggest that there must be two
synchronous and perhaps coupled processes going on whenever
both verbs are properly used, it may be helpful to remember that
it is quite idiomatic to replace the heed verb by a heed adverb. We
commonly speak of reading attentively, driving carefully and
conning studiously, and this usage has the merit of suggesting that
what is being described is one operation with a special character
and not two operations executed in different 'places', with a
peculiar cable between them.

What then is this special character? The question is perplexing,
since the ways in which heed adverbs qualify the active verbs to
which they are attached seem quite unlike the ways in which other
adverbs qualify their verbs. A horse may be described as running
quickly or slowly, smoothly or jerkily, straight or crookedly, and
simple observation or even cinematograph films enable us to decide
in which manner the horse was running. But when a man is
described as driving carefully, whistling with concentration or
eating absent-mindedly, the special character of his activity seems
to elude the observer, the camera and the dictaphone. Perhaps
knitted brows, taciturnity and fixity of gaze may be evidence of
intentness ; but these can be simulated, or they can be purely habitual.
In any case, in describing him as applying his mind to his task, we
do not mean that this is how he looks and sounds while engaged
in it; we should not withdraw a statement to the effect that he had
been concentrating merely on being told that his ｅxpressions and



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 139

movements had been tranquil. But if this special character is
unwitnessable, we seem forced to say either that it is some hidden
concomitant of the operation to which it is ascribed, or that it is
some merely dispositional property of the agent; either that whistling
with concentration is a tandem occurrence, the members of which
occur in different 'places', or that the description of the whistling as
done with concentration mentions one overt occurrence and makes
some open hypothetical statement about its author. To accept the
former suggestion would be to relapse into the two-worlds legend.
It would also involve us in the special difficulty that since minding
would then be a different activity from the overt activity said to be
minded, it would be impossible to explain why that minding could
not go on by itself as humming can go on without walking. on the
other hand, to accept the dispositional account would apparently
involve us in saying that though a person may properly be described
as whistling now, he cannot be properly described as concentrating
or taking care now; and we know quite well that such descriptions
are legitimate. But this point must be examined more fully.

If we want to find out whether someone has been noticing what
he has been reading, we are generally content to decide the question
by cross-questioning him not long afterwards. If he cannot tell us
anything about the gist or the wording of the chapter, if he finds no
fault with other passages which contradict the original chapter, or
if he expresses surprise on being informed of something already
mentioned in it, then, unless he has suffered concussion in the
interim, or is now excited or sleepy, we are satisfied that he did not
notice what he read. To notice what one reads entails being prepared
to satisfy some such subsequent tests. In a similar way, certain kinds
of accidents or near-accidents would satisfy us that the driver had
not been taking care. To take care entails being prepared for certain
sorts of emergencies.

But this cannot be the whole story. For one thing, there are
plenty of other process verbs which carry analogous dispositional
properties with them though they cannot be ranked with heed verbs.
'He is now dying', 'coming to', 'weakening', 'he is now being
hypnotised', 'anaesthetised', 'immunised' are all occurrence reports the
truth of which requires some testable hypothetical statements about
his future to be true. And, on the other side, not only is it allowable
to describe someone as now tliinking what he is saying, as inter-



140 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

mittently noticing the hardness of his chair, or as starting and ceasing
to concentrate, but it is proper to order or request someone to
apply his mind, as it is not proper to order him to be able or likely
to do things. We know, too, that it can be more fatiguing to read
attentively than to read inattentively. So while we are certainly
saying something dispositional in applying such a heed concept
to a person, we are certainly also saying something episodic. We
are saying that he did what he did in a specific frame of mind, and
while the specification of the frame of mind requires mention of
ways in which he was able, ready or likely to act and react, his
acting in that frame of mind was itself a dockable occurrence.

To restate the problem, it is possible, if not very common, for two
or more overt actions done in quite dissimilar frames of mind to be
photographically and gramophonically as similar as you please. A
person playing a piece of music on the piano may be doing this for
his own pleasure, or to please an audience, or for practice, or for in-
struction-purposes, or under duress, or as a parody of another pianist,
or quite absent-mindedly and by sheer rote. So, since the differences
between these performances cannot always be photographically or
gramophonically recorded, we are tempted to say that they consist
either in the concomitant occurrence of some internal actions and
reactions, detectable only by the performer, or else in the satisfaction
by the overt performances of different open hypothetical statements.
In other words, the description of the player as playing 'Home
Sweet Home' as a demonstration of how it should be played has an
internal complexity, in respect of one element of which it differs
from the description of him as playing 'Home Sweet Home* in
parody of another player, though in respect of their witnessed
element they are similar. Are these complex descriptions of outwardly
similar occurrences to be construed as descriptions of conjunctions of
similar overt with dissimilar covert occurrences, or are their
differences to be construed in another way? Do they assert dual
matters of fact, or singular matters of fact, with different inference-
warrants appended?

Neither option seems acceptable, though the second provides
an indispensable part of the answer. Like most dichotomies, the
logicians' dichotomy 'either categorical or hypothetical' needs to
be taken with a pinch of salt. We have here to do with a class of
statements the job of which is to straddle just this gulf. Save to



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 141

those who are spellbound by dichotomies, there is nothing
scandalous in the notion that a statement may be in some respects
like statements of brute fact and in other respects like inference-
licences; or that it may be at once narrative, explanatory and
conditionally predictive, without being a conjunctive assemblage
of detachable sub-statements. Every statement to the effect that
something is so because something else is the case, requires, in order
to be true, both that certain matters of fact obtain, and that there is a
license to infer one from the other. Nor is such a statement one of
which an objector might say that part of it was true, but the other
part was false.

The colloquial accusation 'You would miss the last train' not
only reproaches the culprit for having missed the train, but also
declares that he could have been expected to do so. The error that
he has in fact committed is just one of the things that could have
been predicted. It was just like him to do what he did. The accusation
embodies a partially satisfied open hypothetical statement. It is not
and could not be wholly satisfied, for it could also have been predicted
that if he had gone to a telephone-booth (which perhaps he did
not), he would not have had the right change, and if he had meant
to post a letter (which perhaps he did not) he would have missed
the last collection. I shall call statements like 'You would do the
thing you did' 'semi-hypothetical' or 'mongrel categorical state-
ments'. Most of the examples ordinarily adduced of categorical
statements are mongrel categoricals.

Correspondingly, to say that someone has done something,
paying some heed to what he was doing, is not only to say that he
was, e.g. ready for any of a variety of associated tasks and tests
which might have cropped up but perhaps did not; it is also to say
that he was ready for the task with which he actually coped. He
was in the mood or frame of mind to do, if required, lots of things
which may not have been actually required; and he was, ipso facto,
in the mood or frame of mind to do at least this one thing which
was actually required. Being in that frame of mind, he would do
the thing he did, as well as, if required, lots of other things none of
which is he stated to have done. The description of him as minding
what he was doing is just as muck an explanatory report of an actual
occurrence as a conditional prediction of further occurrences.

Statements of this type are not peculiar to descriptions of the



142 THE CONCEPT OP MINt>

higher level actions and reactions of people. When a sugar-lump is
described as dissolving, something more episodic is being said than
when it is described as soluble; but something more dispositional
is being said than when it is described as moist. When a bird is
described as migrating, something more episodic is being said than
when it is described as a migrant, but something more dispositional
is being said than when it is described as flying in the direction of
Africa. The sugar-lump and the bird would, in the given situation,
do what they actually do as well as lots of other specifiable things,
if certain specifiable conditions obtained, which may not obtain.

The description of a bird as migrating has a greater complexity
than the description of it as flying in the direction of Africa, but this
greater complexity does not consist in its narrating a larger number
of incidents. only one thing need be going on, namely that the
bird be at a particular moment flying south. 'It is migrating' tells
not more stories, but a more pregnant story than that told by 'It
is flying south'. It can be wrong in more ways and it is instructive
in more ways.

This point is connected with a very common use of 'because',
one which is different from all the uses previously distinguished.
The two statements 'the bird is flying south' and 'the bird is
migrating' are both episodic reports. The question 'Why is the
bird flying south?' could be answered quite properly by saying
'Because it is migrating'. Yet the process of migrating is not a
different process from that of flying south; so it is not the cause
of the bird's flying south. Nor, since it reports an episode,
does the sentence 'because it is migrating' say the same
sort of thing as is said in 'because it is a migrant'. We must say that
*it is migrating' describes a flying process in terms which are partly
anecdotal, but are also partly predictive and explanatory. It does
not state a law, but it describes an event in terms which are law-
impregnated. The verb 'migrate' carries a biological message, as
the verb 'dissolve' carries a message from chemistry. 'It is migrating'
warrants the inference 'it is a migrant', as 'it is dissolving'
warrants the inference 'it is soluble'.

So. too, when it is asked why a person is reading a certain
book, it is often correct to reply ^because he is interested in what
he is reading'. Yet being interested in reading the book is not doing
or undergoing two things, such that the interest is the cause of the



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 143

reading. The interest explains the reading in the same general way,
though not the same specific way, as the migrating explains the
flying south.

I have pointed out a fact about heed concepts, namely that it is
proper to order or request someone to pay heed, exercise caution,
take notice, study hard and so on. It is equally proper for a
person to tell himself to do so. Now patently one cannot order a
person merely to pay heed, or merely to take notice. For the order to
be obeyed or disobeyed, it must be understood as specifying just what
is to be done with heed. A pupil, a proof-reader and an oculist's
patient might all be told, for example, to read carefully a certain
paragraph; the pupil will be disobeying his instructions, if he
notices the misprints but not the argument; the proof-reader will
be disobeying his instructions, if he attends to the arguments but
does not detect the misprints; while the oculist's patient is intended
to report neither on the argument nor on the misprints, but only on
the blurredness or sharpness, the blackness or greyness, the slanting-
ness or the uprightness of the printed letters. Clearly this is true of
heeding in general. A person cannot be described merely as taking
interest, being absorbed or trying; he must be, for example, reading
a leading article with interest, fishing absorbedly or trying to
climb this tree. 'Enjoy' and 'dislike' similarly require supplementation
by the participle of a specific active verb such as 'swimming', 'listen-
ing to Bach' and 'doing nothing'.

When a person is described as applying his mind to some such
specifiable action or reaction, it is legitimate to say that he is, in a
certain sense of the verb, 'thinking' or 'heeding' what he is doing or
experiencing or 'applying his mind' to it. This does not mean that
he is necessarily communing with himself about what he is doing
or experiencing. He need not, though he may, be murmuring to
himself comments, strictures, instructions, encouragements or
diagnoses, though if he is doing this, it is again a proper question
to ask whether or not he is thinking what he is murmuring. Some-
times an addict of discourse, like Hamlet, is thought not to be
applying his mind to a given task just because he is applying his
mind to the secondary task of discoursing to himself about his
primary task; and sometimes 3 person who should be trying to
converse in French actually distracts himself from his proper
business by conversing with himself in English about how he is



144 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

conducting it. Thinking or heeding what one is doing does not
entail constantly or recurrently making intelligent prose moves.
On the contrary, making intelligent prose moves is just one example
among others of thinking or heeding what one is doing, since it is
saying things, thinking what one is saying. It is one species, not the
causal condition of heedful performance. But certainly didactic
telling, intelligently given and intelligently received, is often an
indispensable guide to execution. There are many things which
we cannot do, or do well, unless we pay heed to appropriate and
timely instructions, even when we ourselves have to be the authors
of those instructions. In such cases, trying to do the tiling involves
both trying to give oneself the right instructions at the right time
and trying to follow them.

We should now consider a type of action which, though quite
uninventive, involves some degree of heed, as instinctive and purely
habitual or reflex actions do not involve heed. A soldier who fixes
his bayonet in obedience to an order may go through just the same
movements as one who fixes his bayonet for any other purpose.
'Obediently' docs not signify a muscularly peculiar manner of
operating. Nor does it denote, or connote, any self-communings
or self-instructings. For he has not been ordered to do these things,
and if he does them they do not explain away his bayonet-fixing,
since following self-instructions would simply be another instance
of acting obediently. Yet fixing his bayonet obediently is certainly
fixing his bayonet with, in some sense, the thought that this is what
he was told to do. He would not have done it, had the order been
different or been misheard, and if asked why he did it, he would
unhesitatingly reply by referring to the order.

Nor is he doing two things, namely both fixing his bayonet and
obeying an order, any more than the migrating bird was both
flying south and doing or undergoing something else. He obeys
the order by fixing his bayonet. The question, 'did he heed the
order?' is quite satisfactorily answered by, 'yes, he fixed his bayonet
the moment the order was given'. But, of course, he might not
have heard the order and merely fixed his bayonet for fun at what
happened to be the right moment. In that case it would be false
to say that he had fixed his bayoneV in obedience to an order.

We might say that his primary object was to obey whatever
order was given him by his sergeant. If we ask 'To what was he



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 145

applying his mind?' the answer is 'to his orders'. He was only set
to fix his bayonet, if this were to be the thing his sergeant was to
tell him to do. The description of his frame of mind contains a
direct reference to his orders and only an oblique, because
conditional reference to fixing his bayonet. His action of fixing his
bayonet is, so to speak, executed in inverted commas; he does it as
the particular thing actually ordered. He would have done something
else, had the order been different. He is in the frame of mind to do
whatever he is ordered, including fixing his bayonet. His fixing it
is conditionally retro-predictable and a value of the variable con-
dition has been fulfilled.

Similarly a mimic does, perhaps, nothing but utter some words,
or make some gesticulations, but he produces precisely these words
and gesticulations only as representing the precise words and
gesticulations of their original author. Had the original author
spoken or acted in any other way, the mimic would have done so
too. He does not have concomitantly to be telling himself or his
companions that this is how the original author spoke and gesticu-
lated. Showing how he talked and shrugged need not be prefaced
or accompanied by any descriptive commentary; sometimes it
cannot be so prefaced or accompanied, since descriptive skill is
often inferior to histrionic skill. The mimic produces his words and
shrugs as facsimiles of those of the subject mimicked, but he does not
have to be currently asserting that they are facsimiles.

But what is the force of this word 'as', when we say that an
agent does something as the action ordered or as a facsimile or as
practice or as a means to an end or as a game; or, in general, as
the execution of a specific programme? What is the difference
between going merely mechanically through certain movements
and trying to satisfy some specific requirement by going through,
perhaps, perfectly similar movements? Or what is the difference
between fixing bayonets in compliance with a command and fixing
bayonets in order to fight?

It is not enough, though it is true, to say that the soldier fixes
his bayonet on purpose, namely on purpose to do what he is told,
or on purpose to defend himself, since our present question amounts
to this: Given that 'the bird is migrating' and 'the soldier is
obediently fixing his bayonet* are both mongrel categorical
statements, what is the difference between them which we signalise

K



146 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

by saying that the soldier is, but the bird is not applying his mind or
acting on purpose ?

At least a minimal part of the answer is this. To say that a
sugar-lump is dissolving, a bird migrating, or a man blinking does
not imply that the sugar has learned to go liquid, that the bird has
learned to fly south in the autumn, or that the man has learned to
blink when startled. But to say that a soldier obediently fixed his
bayonet, or fixed it in order to defend himself, does imply that he
has learned some lessons and not forgotten them. The new recruit,
on hearing the order to fix bayonet, or on seeing an enemy soldier
approaching, does not know what to do with his bayonet, how to
do it, or when to do it and when not to do it. He may not even know
how to construe or obey orders.

Not all acquired capacities or propensities can be classed as
qualities of mind. The habit of going to sleep on one's right side
is not a quality of intellect or character; the habit of saying
'Twecdlcdce', aloud or in one's head, on hearing the word
'Tweedledum', is a trick we have picked up, though we should
hardly claim it as a trick that we have learnt. It sticks but we did
not try to get it to stick; nor do we ordinarily use or apply it.
Picking up tilings by rote without trying to do so is the vanishing-
point of learning. Even learning rhymes by heart, when done
with application, though it is a primitive form of learning, does
generate not only the trumpery capacity to recite those rhymes,
but also the more valuable capacity to learn all sorts of other things
by heart, as well as the still more valuable capacity to generate all
sorts of capacities by study. It is a primitive lesson in becoming
generally teachable.

Children, semi-literates, old-fashioned soldiers and some peda-
gogues tend to suppose that being taught and trained consist in
becoming able merely to echo the exact lessons taught. But this
is an error. We should not say that the child had done more than
begin to learn his multiplication-tables if all he could do were to
go through them correctly from beginning to end. He has not
learned them properly unless he can promptly give the right
answer to any snap multiplication problem (lower than 12x13),
and unless he can apply his tabled by telling us, e.g. how many toes
there are in a room in which there are six people. Nor is a man a
trained rock-climber who can cope only with the same nursery-



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 147

climbs over which he was taught, in conditions just like those in
which he was taught, and then only by going through the very
motions which he had been then made to perform. Learning is
becoming capable of doing some correct or suitable thing in any
situations of certain general sorts. It is becoming prepared for
variable calls within certain ranges.

To describe someone as now doing something with some degree
of some sort of heed is to say not merely that he has had some such
preparation, but that he is actually meeting a concrete call and so
meeting it that he would have met, or will meet, some of whatever
other calls of that range might have cropped up, or may crop up.
He is in a 'ready' frame of mind, for he both does what he does
with readiness to do just that in just this situation and is ready to do
some of whatever else he may be called on to do. To describe a
driver as taking care does not entail that it has occurred to him
that a donkey may bolt out of that side street. He can be ready for
such contingencies without having anticipated them. Indeed, he
might have anticipated them without being ready for them.

Earlier in this chapter I undertook to explain why it is that
though applying one's mind to a task does not consist in coupling
an inspecting or researching operation with the performance of
that task, yet we expect a person who applies his mind to anything
to be able to tell, without research, what he has been engaged in
or occupied with. Heeding is not a secondary occupation of
theorising, yet it seems to entail having at the tip of one's tongue
the answers to theoretical questions about one's primary occupation.
How can I have knowledge of what I have been non-absent-
mindedly doing or feeling, unless doing or feeling something with
my mind on it at least incorporates some study of what I am doing
or feeling? How could I now describe what I had not previously
inspected?

Part of the answer seems to be this. Not all talk, and certainly
not the most rudimentary talk, consists in imparting items of general
knowledge. We do not, for instance, begin by telling the infant
the names of things in which he is at the moment not taking an
interest. We begin by telling him the names of tilings in which
he is then and there taking an inierest.Use of the names of things is
thus injected into interest in the things. In a partially similar way
we give the child instructions, counsels, demonstrations, rebukes



148 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

and encouragements for what he is currently essaying; we do not
wait until he is unoccupied, before we teach him how things should
be done. Nor does the fact that the coaching is concurrent with
the performance necessarily render it a distraction from that per-
formance. Trying to comply with the teaching is part of trying
to do the thing, and as the child leams to do the thing, he also learns
to understand better and apply better the lessons in doing the thing.
Hence he learns, too, to double the roles of instructor and pupil;
he learns to coach himself and to heed his own coaching, i.e. to
suit his deeds to his own words.

The good referee does not blow his whistle at every moment of
the game, nor does the trained player cease to apply his mind
to the game whenever he attends to the referee's whistle; rather,
he shows that he is not applying his mind to the game unless he
does attend to the whistle. We are all trained in some degree to be
our own referees, and though we are not, all or most of the time,
blowing our whistles, we are most of the time ready or half-
ready to blow them, if the situation requires it, and to comply with
them, when they are blown.

The referee's interventions in the game are normally peremptory
rather than descriptive or informative. He is there to help the game
to go on rather than to satisfy the journalists about what is going
on. He gives rulings and rebukes rather than reports. But to be
ready to give an appropriate ruling, when the state of the game
requires it, is also to be ready to give a report, if the journalists
clamour for it. He knows what fiats to give, so he knows what
facts to report. But he does not have to study his fiats in order to
glean some facts. Roughly, he needs only to adjust his tone of voice
to tell prosaically what he might otherwise have bellowed
peremptorily, or ruled incisively. Telling things in the indicative
mood is telling them in the most sophisticated, because most dis-
passionate manner.

Similarly, we, if duly trained, can, much of the time, deliver to
ourselves the injunctions, suggestions and verdicts that are more
or less pertinent and contributory to whatever is at that moment
occupying us. When we make the transition from telling ourselves
the pertinent admonitory or judicial things to telling questioners
(who may also be ourselves) the correct descriptive things, we
have to do, not research, but re-wording. Knowing what to say



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 149

pertinently to some requirements is knowing also what to say
pertinently to other requirements. Where we cannot talk much to
ourselves as coaches or judges, as in inventing jokes, reading
characters or composing lyrics, we also cannot tell inquirers much
about what we are doing. We then speak of 'inspiration' and
'intuition', and this exempts us from having to answer questions.

(5) Achievements.

There is another class of episodic words which, for our purposes,
merit special attention, namely the class of episodic words which I
have elsewhere labelled 'achievement words', 'success words' or
'got it words', together with their antitheses the 'failure words'
or 'missed it words'. These are genuine episodic words, for it is
certainly proper to say of someone that he scored a goal at a par-
ticular moment, repeatedly solved anagrams, or was quick to
see the joke or find the thimble. Some words of this class signify
more or less sudden climaxes or denouements; others signify
more or less protracted proceedings. The thimble is found, the
opponent checkmated, or the race won, at a specifiable instant; but
the secret may be kept, the enemy held at bay, or the lead be retained,
throughout a long span of time. The sort of success which consists
in descrying the hawk differs in this way from the sort of success
which consists in keeping it in view.

The verbs with which we ordinarily express these gettings and
keepings are active verbs, such as 'win', 'unearth', 'find', 'cure',
'convince', 'prove', 'cheat', 'unlock', 'safeguard' and 'conceal'; and
this grammatical fact has tended to make people, with the exception
of Aristotle, oblivious to the differences of logical behaviour
between verbs of this class and other verbs of activity or process.
The differences, for example, between kicking and scoring, treating
and healing, hunting and finding, clutching and holding fast, listen-
ing and hearing, looking and seeing, travelling and arriving, have
been construed, if they have been noticed at all, as differences
between co-ordinate species of activity or process, when in fact the
differences are of quite another kind. It has been all the easier to
overlook these differences, since we very often borrow achievement
verbs to signify the performance'of the corresponding task activities,
where the hopes of success are good. A runner may be described as
winning his race from the start, despite the fact that he may not win



150 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

it in the end; and a doctor may boast that he is curing his patient's
pneumonia, when his treatment does not in fact result in the antici-
pated recovery. 'Hear' is sometimes used as a synonym of 'listen'
and 'mend' as a synonym of 'try to mend'.

One big difference between the logical force of a task verb and
that of a corresponding achievement verb is that in applying an
achievement verb we are asserting that some state of affairs obtains
over and above that which consists in the performance, if any, of
the subservient task activity. For a runner to win, not only must he
run but also his rivals must be at the tape later than he ; for a doctor
to effect a cure, his patient must both be treated and be well again ;
for the searcher to find the thimble, there must be a thimble in
the place he indicates at the moment when he indicates it; and for
the mathematician to prove a theorem, the theorem must be true
and follow from the premisses from which he tries to show that it
follows. An autobiographical account of the agent's exertions and
feelings does not by itself tell whether he has brought off what he
was trying to bring off. He may rashly claim the expected success,
but he will withdraw his claim if he discovers that, despite his
having done the best he could, something has still gone wrong.
I withdraw my claim to have seen a misprint, or convinced the
voter, if I find that there was no misprint, or that the voter has cast
his vote for my opponent.

It is a consequence of this general point that it is always
significant, though not, of course, always true, to ascribe a success
partly or wholly to luck. A clock may be repaired by a random
jolt and the treasure may be unearthed by the first spade-thrust.

It follows, too, that there can be achievements which are prefaced
by no task performances. We sometimes find things without
searching, secure appointments without applying and arrive at true
conclusions without having weighed the evidence. Things thus got
without work are often described as 'given'. An easy catch is
'given', a harder catch is 'offered', a difficult catch is 'made'.

When a person is described as having fought and won, or as
having journeyed and arrived, he is not being said to have done
two things, but to have done one thing with a certain upshot.
Similarly a person who has aimecf and missed has not followed up
one occupation by another; he has done one thing, which was a
failure. So, while we expect a person who has been trying to



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 151

achieve something to be able to say without research what he has
been engaged in, we do not expect him necessarily to be able to say
without research whether he has achieved it. Achievements and
failures are not occurrences of the right type to be objects of what
is often, if misleadingly, called 'immediate awareness*. They are
not acts, exertions, operations or performances, but, with reserva-
tions for purely lucky achievements, the fact that certain acts,
operations, exertions or performances have had certain results.

This is why we can significantly say that someone has aimed in
vain or successfully, but not that he has hit the target in vain or
successfully; that he has treated his patient assiduously or un-
assiduously, but not that he has cured him assiduously or
unassiduously ; that he scanned the hedgerow slowly or rapidly,
systematically or haphazardly, but not that he saw the nest slowly
or rapidly, systematically or haphazardly. Adverbs proper to task
verbs are not generally proper to achievement verbs; in particular,
heed adverbs like 'carefully', 'attentively', 'studiously', 'vigilantly',
'conscientiously' and 'pertinaciously' cannot be used to qualify such
cognitive verbs as 'discover', 'prove', 'solve', 'detect' or 'see', any
more than they can qualify such verbs as 'arrive', 'repair', 'buy' or
'conquer'.

There are many episodic verbs which are used to describe
items in the inquisitive life of human beings, and the failure to
notice that some of these verbs are achievement verbs while others
are task verbs has been the source of some gratuitous puzzles and,
accordingly, of some mystery-mongering theories. Special cognitive
acts and operations have been postulated to answer to such verbs as
'see', 'hear', 'taste', 'deduce' and 'recall' in the way in which
familiar acts and operations do answer to such verbs as 'kick', 'run',
'look', 'listen', 'wrangle' and 'tell'; as if to describe a person as look-
ing and seeing were like describing him as walking and humming
instead of being like describing him as angling and catching, or
searching and finding. But perception verbs cannot, like search
verbs, be qualified by such adverbs as 'successfully', 'in vain',
'methodically', 'inefficiently', 'laboriously', 'lazily', 'rapidly', 'care-
fully', 'reluctantly', 'zealously', 'obediently', 'deliberately' or 'con-
fidently'. They do not stand foj performances, or ways of being
occupied; a fortiori they do not stand for secret performances, or
ways of being privily occupied. To put it crudely, they belong not



152 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

to the vocabulary of the player, but to the vocabulary of the referee.
They are not tryings, but things got by trying or by luck.

Epistemologists have sometimes confessed to finding the
supposed cognitive activities of seeing, hearing and inferring oddly
elusive. If I descry a hawk, I find the hawk but I do not find my
seeing of the hawk. My seeing of the hawk seems to be a queerly
transparent sort of process, transparent in that while a hawk is
detected, nothing else is detected answering to the verb in 'see a
hawk/ But the mystery dissolves when we realise that 'see', 'descry'
and 'find' are not process words, experience words or activity
words. They do not stand for perplexingly undetectable actions or
reactions, any more than 'win' stands for a perplexingly undetectable
bit of running, or 'unlock' for an unreported bit of key-turning.
The reason why I cannot catch myself seeing or deducing is that
these verbs are of the wrong type to complete the phrase 'catch
myself. . . .' The questions 'What are you doing ?' and 'What was he
undergoing?' cannot be answered by 'seeing', 'concluding', or
'checkmating*.

The distinction between task verbs and achievement verbs or
'try' verbs and 'got it' verbs frees us from another theoretical
nuisance. It has long been realised that verbs like 'know', 'discover',
'solve', 'prove', 'perceive', 'see' and 'observe' (at least in certain
standard uses of 'observe') are in an important way incapable of
being qualified by adverbs like 'erroneously' and 'incorrectly'.
Automatically construing these and kindred verbs as standing for
special kinds of operations or experiences, some cpistemologists
have felt themselves obliged to postulate that people possess certain
special inquiry procedures in following which they are subject to
no risk of error. They need not, indeed they cannot, execute them
carefully, for they provide no scope for care. The logical impossi-
bility of a discovery being fruitless, or of a proof being invalid, has
been misconstrued as a quasi-causal impossibility of going astray.
If only the proper road were followed, or if only the proper faculty
were given its head, incorrigible observations or self-evident
intuitions could not help ensuing. So men are sometimes infallible.
Similarly if hitting the bull's eye were construed as a special kind
of aiming, or if curing were construed as a special kind of treatment,
then, since neither could, in logic, be at fault, it would follow that
there existed special fault-proof ways of aiming and doctoring.



DISPOSITIONS AND OCCURRENCES 153

There would exist some temporarily infallible marksmen and some
occasionally infallible doctors.

Other epistemologists, properly disrelishing the ascription of
even temporary infallibility to human beings, have taken up an
equally impossible position. Again automatically construing these
achievement verbs as standing for special kinds of operations or
experiences, they have asserted that the operations or experiences
for which they stand are, after all, not fault-proof. We can know
what is not the case, prove things fallaciously, solve problems
erroneously and see what is not there to be seen, which is like
saying that we can hit the bull's eye with an 'outer', cure a patient
by aggravating his complaint, or win a race without being first at
the tape. There is, of course, no incompatibility between losing a
race and lodging a claim to have won it, or between aggravating
a complaint and boasting of having cured it. Merely saying 'I see
a hawk' does not entail that there is a hawk there, though saying
truly 'I see a hawk' does entail this.

This assimilation of certain so-called cognitive verbs to the
general class of achievement verbs must not be supposed to elucidate
everything. The fact that the logical behaviour of 'deduce' is in
some respects like that of 'score', 'checkmate' or 'unlock' does not
involve that it is in every respect like that of any of them ; nor is
arriving at a conclusion in every respect like arriving in Paris. My
argument has been intended to have the predominantly negative
point of exhibiting both why it is wrong, and why it is tempting, to
postulate mysterious actions and reactions to correspond with
certain familiar biographical episodic words.



CHAPTER VI

SELF-KNOWLEDGE

(i) Foreword.

A NATURAL counterpart to the theory that minds constitute
a world other than 'the physical world' is the theory that there
exist ways of discovering the contents of this other world which are
counterparts to our ways of discovering the contents of the physical
world. In sense perception we ascertain what exists and happens in
space; so what exists or happens in the mind must also be ascertained
in perception, but perception of a different and refined sort, one
not requiring the functioning of gross bodily organs.

More than this, it has been thought necessary to show that minds
possess powers of apprehending their own states and operations
superior to those they possess of apprehending facts of the external
world. If I am to know, believe, guess or even wonder anything
about the things and happenings that are outside me, I must, it
has been supposed, enjoy constant and mistake-proof apprehension
of these selfsame cognitive operations of mine.

It is often held therefore (i) that a mind cannot help being
constantly aware of all the supposed occupants of its private stage,
and (2) that it can also deliberately scrutinise by a species of non-
sensuous perception at least some of its own states and operations.
Moreover both this constant awareness (generally called 'conscious-
ness'), and this non-sensuous inner perception (generally called
'introspection') have been supposed to be exempt from error. A
mind has a twofold Privileged Access to its own doings,
which makes its self-knowledge superior in quality, as well as
prior in genesis, to its grasp of other things. I may doubt the
evidence of my senses but not the deliverances of consciousness or
introspection.

One limitation has always been conceded to the mind's power
of finding mental states and operations, namely that while I can

154



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 155

have direct knowledge of my own states and operations, I cannot
have it of yours. I am conscious of all my own feelings, volitions,
emotions and thinkings, and I introspectively scrutinise some of
them. But I cannot introspectively observe, or be conscious of, the
workings of your mind. I can satisfy myself that you have a mind
at all only by complex and frail inferences from what your body
does.

This theory of the twofold Privileged Access has won so strong
a hold on the thoughts of philosophers, psychologists and many
laymen that it is now often thought to be enough to say, on behalf
of the dogma of the mind as a second theatre, that its consciousness
and introspection discover the scenes enacted in it. on the view for
which I am arguing consciousness and introspection cannot be
what they are officially described as being, since their supposed
objects are myths ; but champions of the dogma of the ghost in
the machine tend to argue that the imputed objects of consciousness
and introspection cannot be myths, since we are conscious of them
and can introspectively observe them. The reality of these objects
is guaranteed by the venerable credentials of these supposed ways of
finding them.

In this chapter, then, I try to show that the official theories of
consciousness and introspection are logical muddles. But I am not,
of course, trying to establish that we do not or cannot know what
there is to know about ourselves. on the contrary, I shall try to
show how we attain such knowledge, but only after I have proved
that this knowledge is not attained by consciousness or introspection,
as these supposed Privileged Accesses are normally described. Lest
any reader feels despondency at the thought of being deprived of
his twofold Privileged Access to his supposed inner self, I may add
the consolatory undertaking that on the account of self-knowledge
that I shall give, knowledge of what there is to be known about
other people is restored to approximate parity with self-knowledge.
The sorts of things that I can find out about myself are the same as
the sorts of things that I can find out about other people, and the
methods of finding them out are much the same. A residual difference
in the supplies of the requisite data makes some differences in degree
between what I can know about fnyself and what I can know about
you, but these differences are not all in favour of self-knowledge.
In certain quite important respects it is easier for me to find out



156 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

what I want to know about you than it is for me to find out the
same sorts of things about myself. In certain other important
respects it is harder. But in principle, as distinct from practice,
John Doe's ways of finding out about John Doe are the same as
John Doe's ways of finding out about Richard Roe. To drop the
hope of Privileged Access is also to drop the fear of epistemological
isolationism; we lose the bitters with the sweets of Solipsism.

(2) Consciousness.

Before starting to discuss the philosophers' concept or concepts
of consciousness, it is advisable to consider some ways in which
the words 'conscious' and 'consciousness' are used, when un-
committed to special theories, in ordinary life.

(a) People often speak in this way; they say, 'I was conscious
that the furniture had been rearranged', or, 'I was conscious that he
was less friendly than usual'. In such contexts the word 'conscious'
is used instead of words like 'found out', 'realised' and 'discovered'
to indicate a certain noteworthy nebulousness and consequent
inarticulateness of the apprehension. The furniture looked different
somehow, but the observer could not say what the differences
were ; or the man's attitude was unaccommodating in a number of
ways, but the speaker could not enumerate or specify them. Though
there are philosophically interesting problems about vagueness as
well as about the inexpressibility of the very nebulous, this use of
'conscious' does not entail the existence of any special faculties,
methods, or channels of apprehension. What we are conscious of,
in this sense, may be a physical fact, or a fact about someone else's
state of mind.

(b) People often use 'conscious' and 'self-conscious' in describing
the embarrassment exhibited by persons, especially youthful
persons, who are anxious about the opinions held by others of
their qualities of character or intellect. Shyness and affectation are
ways in which self-consciousness, in this sense, is commonly
exhibited.

(c) 'Self-conscious' is sometimes used in a more general sense to
indicate that someone has reached the stage of paying heed to his
own qualities of character or intellect, irrespective of whether or
not he is embarrassed about other people's estimations of them.
When a boy begins to notice that he is fonder of arithmetic, or less



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 157

homesick, than are most of his acquaintances he is beginning to be
self-conscious, in this enlarged sense.

Self-consciousness, in this enlarged sense is, of course, of primary
importance for the conduct of life, and the concept of it is therefore
of importance for Ethics; but its ingenuous use entails no special
doctrines about how a person makes and checks his estimates of his
own qualities of character and intellect, or how he compares them
with those of his acquaintances.

The Freudian idioms of the 'Unconscious' and the ' Subconscious*
are closely connected with this use of 'conscious' ; for at least part
of what is meant by describing jealousy, phobias or erotic impulses
as 'unconscious' is that the victim of them not only does not
recognise their strength, or even existence, in himself, but in a
certain way will not recognise them. He shirks a part of the task of
appreciating what sort of a person he is, or else he systematically
biases his appreciations. The epistemological question how a person
makes his estimates or mis-estimates of his own dispositions is not,
or need not be, begged by the Freudian account of the aetiology,
diagnosis, prognosis and cure of the tendencies to shirk and bias
such estimates.

(d) Quite different from the foregoing uses of 'conscious',
'self-conscious' and 'unconscious', is the use in which a numbed or
anaesthetised person is said to have lost consciousness from his feet
up to his knees. In this use 'conscious' means 'sensitive' or 'sentient'
and 'unconscious' means anaesthetised or insensitive. We say that a
person has lost consciousness when he had ceased to be sensitive to
any slaps, noises, pricks or smells.

(e) Different from, though closely connected with this last use,
there is the sense in which a person can be said to be unconscious of
a sensation, when he pays no heed to it. A walker engaged in a heated
dispute may be unconscious, in this sense, of the sensations in his
blistered heel, and the reader of these words was, when he began
this sentence, probably unconscious of the muscular and skin
sensations in the back of his neck, or in his left knee. A person may
also be unconscious or unaware that he is frowning, beating time
to the music, or muttering.

'Conscious' in this sense means 'heeding'; and it makes sense to
say that a sensation is hardly noticed even when the sensation is
moderately acute, namely when the victim's attention is fixed very



158 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

strongly on something else. Conversely, a person may pay sharp heed
to very faint sensations; when, for instance, he is scared of
appendicitis, he will be acutely conscious, in this sense, of stomachic
twinges which are not at all acute. In this sense, too, a person may
be keenly conscious, hardly conscious, or quite unconscious, of
feelings like twinges of anxiety, or qualms of doubt.

The fact that a person takes heed of his organic sensations and
feelings does not entail that he is exempt from error about them.
He can make mistakes about their causes and he can make mistakes
about their locations. Furthermore, he can make mistakes about
whether they are real or fancied, as hypochondriacs do. 'Heeding'
does not denote a peculiar conduit of cognitive certainties.

Philosophers, chiefly since Descartes, have in their theories of
knowledge and conduct operated with a concept of consciousness
which has relatively little affinity with any of the concepts described
above. Working with the notion of the mind as a second theatre,
the episodes enacted in which enjoy the supposed status of 'the
mental* and correspondingly lack the supposed status of 'the
physical', thinkers of many sorts have laid it down as the cardinal
positive property of these episodes that, when they occur, they occur
consciously. The states and operations of a mind are states and
operations of which it is necessarily aware, in some sense of 'aware',
and this awareness is incapable of being delusive. The things that
a mind does or experiences are self-intimating, and this is supposed
to be a feature which characterises these acts and feelings not just
sometimes but always. It is part of the definition of their being
mental that their occurrence entails that they are self-intimating.
If I think, hope, remember, will, regret, hear a noise, or feel a pain,
I must, ipso facto, know that I do so. Even if I dream that I see a
dragon, I must be apprised of my dragon-seeing, though, it is often
conceded, I may not know that I am dreaming.

It is naturally difficult, if one denies the existence of the second
theatre, to elucidate what is meant by describing the episodes which
are supposed to take place in it as self-intimating. But some points
are clear enough. It is not supposed that when I am wondering,
say, what is the answer to a puzzle and am ipso facto consciously
doing so, that I am synchronously performing two acts of attention,
one to the puzzle and the other to my wondering about it. Nor, to
generalise this point, is it supposed that my act of wondering and



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 159

its self-intimation to me are two distinct acts or processes indis-
solubly welded together. Rather, to relapse perforce into simile,
it is supposed that mental processes are phosphorescent, like tropical
sea-water, which makes itself visible by the light which it itself
emits. Or, to use another simile, mental processes are 'overheard*
by the mind whose processes they are, somewhat as a speaker
overhears the words he is himself uttering.

When the epistemologists' concept of consciousness first became
popular, it seems to have been in part a transformed application of
the Protestant notion of conscience. The Protestants had to hold
that a man could know the moral state of his soul and the wishes of
God without the aid of confessors and scholars; they spoke therefore
of the God-given 'light' of private conscience. When Galileo's and
Descartes' representations of the mechanical world seemed to
require that minds should be salved from mechanism by being
represented as constituting a duplicate world, the need was felt
to explain how the contents of this ghostly world could be ascer-
tained, again without the help of schooling, but also without the
help of sense perception. The metaphor of 'light' seemed peculiarly
appropriate, since Galilean science dealt so largely with the optically
discovered world. 'Consciousness' was imported to play in the
mental world the part played by light in the mechanical world. In
this metaphorical sense, the contents of the mental world were
thought of as being self-luminous or refulgent.

This model was employed again by Locke when he described
the deliberate observational scrutiny which a mind can from time
to time turn upon its current states and processes. He called this
supposed inner perception 'reflexion' (our 'introspection'), borrow-
ing the word 'reflexion' from the familiar optical phenomenon of
the reflections of faces in mirrors. The mind can 'see' or 'look at*
its own operations in the 'light' given of by themselves. The myth
of consciousness is a piece of para-optics.

These similes of 'over-hearing', 'phosphorescence' or *self-
luminousness' suggest another distinction which needs to be made.
It is certainly true that when I do, feel or witness something, I usually
could and frequently do pay swift retrospective heed to what I have
just done, felt or witnessed. I k<sep, much of the time, some sort
of log or score of what occupies me, in such a way that, if asked what
I had just been hearing or picturing or saying, I could usually give a



160 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

correct answer. Of course, I cannot always be actually harking back
to the immediate past; or else, within a few seconds of being called
in the morning, I should be recalling that I had just been recalling
that I had just been recalling . . . hearing the knock on the door;
one event would generate an endless series of recollections of
recollections ... of it, leaving no room for me to pay heed to any
subsequent happening. There is, however, a proper sense in which
I can be said generally to know what has just been engaging my
notice or half-notice, namely that I generally could give a memory
report of it, if there was occasion to do so. This does not exclude
the possibility that I might sometimes give a misreport, for even
short-term reminiscence is not exempt from carelessness or bias.

The point of mentioning this fact that we generally could, if
required, report what had just been engaging our notice is that
consciousness, as the prevalent view describes it, differs from this
log-keeping in one or two important respects. First, according to
the theory, mental processes are conscious, not in the sense that we
do or could report on them post mortem, but in the sense that their
intimations of their own occurrences are properties of those
occurrences and so are not posterior to them. The supposed
deliverances of consciousness, if verbally expressible at all, would be
expressed in the present, not in the past tense. Next, it is supposed
that in being conscious of my present mental states and acts I know
what I am experiencing and doing in a non-dispositional sense of
'know'; that is to say, it is not merely the case that I could, if
occasion demanded, tell myself or you what I am experiencing and
doing, but that I am actively cognisant of it. Though a double act
of attention does not occur, yet when I discover that my watch
has stopped, I am synchronously discovering that I am discovering
that my watch has stopped; a truth about myself is flashed or shone
upon me at the same moment as a truth about my watch is ascer-
tained by me.

I shall argue that consciousness, as so described, is a myth and
shall probably therefore be construed as arguing that mental
processes are, in some mortifying sense, unconscious, perhaps in
the sort of way in which I often cannot tell of my own habitual
and reflex movements. To safeguard against this misinterpretation
I say quite summarily first, that we do usually know what we are
about, but that no phosphorescence-story is required to explain



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 161

how we are apprised of it; second, that knowing what we are
about does not entail an incessant actual monitoring or scrutiny
of our doings and feelings, but only the propensity inter alia to
avow them, when we are in die mood to do so ; and, third, that the
fact that we generally know what we are about does not entail our
coming across any happenings of ghostly status.

The radical objection to the theory that minds must know what
they are about, because mental happenings are by definition
conscious, or metaphorically self-luminous, is that there are no such
happenings ; there are no occurrences taking place in a second-status
world, since there is no such status and no such world and conse-
quently no need for special modes of acquainting ourselves with the
denizens of such a world. But there are also other objections
which do not depend for their acceptance upon the rejection of
the dogma of the ghost in the machine.

First, and this is not intended to be more than a persuasive
argument, no one who is uncommitted to a philosophical theory
ever tries to vindicate any of his assertions of fact by saying that he
found it out 'from consciousness', or 'as a direct deliverance of
consciousness', or 'from immediate awareness'. He will back up
some of his assertions of fact by saying that he himself sees, hears,
feels, smells or tastes so and so ; he will back up other such statements,
somewhat more tentatively, by saying that he remembers seeing,
hearing, feeling, smelling or tasting it. But if asked whether he
really knows, believes, infers, fears, remembers or smells something,
he never replies 'Oh yes, certainly I do, for I am conscious and even
vividly conscious of doing so'. Yet just such a reply should, according
to the doctrine, be his final appeal.

Next, it is supposed that my being conscious of my mental
states and operations either is my knowing them, or is the necessary
and sufficient ground for my doing so. But to say this is to abuse
the logic and even the grammar of the verb 'to know'. It is nonsense
to speak of knowing, or not knowing, this clap of thunder or that
twinge of pain, this coloured surface or that act of drawing a
conclusion or seeing a joke; these are accusatives of the wrong
types to follow the verb 'to know'. To know and to
be ignorant are to know and not to know that something
is the case, for example that that rumble is a clap of thunder
or that that coloured surface is a cheese-rind. And this is just the



162 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

point where the metaphor of light is unhelpful. Good illumination
helps us to see cheese-rinds, but we could not say 'the light was too
bad for me to know the cheese-rind', since knowing is not the same
sort of thing as looking at, and what is known is not the same sort
of thing as what is illuminated. True, we can say 'owing to the
darkness I could not recognise what I saw for a cheese-rind', but
again recognising what I see is not another optical performance.
We do not ask for one torch to help us to see and another to help
us to recognise what we see. So even if there were some analogy
between a thing's being illuminated and a mental process's being
conscious, it would not follow that the owner of the process
would recognise that process for what it was. It might conceivably
explain how mental processes were discernible but it could not
possibly explain how we ascertain truths and avoid or correct
mistakes about them.

Next, there is no contradiction in asserting that someone might
fail to recognise his frame of mind for what it is; indeed, it is
notorious that people constantly do so. They mistakenly suppose
themselves to know things which are actually false; they deceive
themselves about their own motives; they are surprised to notice
the clock stopping ticking, without their having, as they think,
been aware that it had been ticking; they do not know that they
are dreaming, when they are dreaming, and sometimes they are not
sure that they are not dreaming, when they are awake; and they
deny, in good faith, that they are irritated or excited, when they are
flustered in one or other of those ways. If consciousness was what
it is described as being, it would be logically impossible for such
failures and mistakes in recognition to take place.

Finally, even though the self-intimation supposed to be inherent
in any mental state or process is not described as requiring a separate
act of attention, or as constituting a separate cognitive operation,
still what I am conscious of in a process of inferring, say, is different
from what the inferring is an apprehension of. My consciousness
is of a process of inferring, but my inferring is, perhaps, of a
geometrical conclusion from geometrical premisses. The verbal
ｅxpression of my inference might be, 'because this is an
equilateral triangle, therefore each angle is 60 degrees', but the verbal
ｅxpression of what I am conscious of might be 'Here I am deducing
such and such from so and so*. But, if so, then it would seem to make



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 163

sense to ask whether, according to the doctrine, I am not also
conscious of being conscious of inferring, that is, in a position to say
'Here I am spotting the fact that here I am deducing such and such
from so and so'. And then there would be no stopping-place; there
would have to be an infinite number of onion-skins of consciousness
embedding any mental state or process whatsoever. If this conclusion
is rejected, then it will have to be allowed that some elements in
mental processes are not themselves things we can be conscious of,
namely those elements which constitute the supposed outermost
self-intimations of mental processes; and then 'conscious' could no
longer be retained as part of the definition of 'mental'.

The argument, then, that mental events are authentic, because
the deliverances of consciousness are direct and unimpeachable
testimony to their existence, must be rejected. So must the partly
parallel argument from the findings of introspection.

(3) Introspection.

'Introspection' is a term of art and one for which little use is
found in the self-descriptions of untheoretical people. More use is
found for the adjective 'introspective', which is ordinarily used
in an innocuous sense to signify that someone pays more heed than
usual to theoretical and practical problems about his own character,
abilities, deficiencies and oddities; there is often the extra suggestion
that the person is abnormally anxious about these matters.

The technical term 'introspection' has been used to denote a
supposed species of perception. It was supposed that much as a person
may at a particular moment be listening to a flute, savouring a wine,
or regarding a waterfall, so he may be 'regarding', in a non-optical
sense, some current mental state or process of his own. The state
or process is being deliberately and attentively scrutinised and so
can be listed among the objects of his observation. on the other
hand, introspection is described as being unlike sense observation
in important respects. Things looked at, or listened to, are public
objects, in principle observable by any suitably placed observer,
whereas only the owner of a mental state or process is supposed to
be able introspectively to scrutinise it. Sense perception, again,
involves the functioning of bodily organs, such as the eyes, the
ears, or the tongue, whereas introspection involves the functioning
of no bodily organ. Lastly, sense perception is never exempt from



164 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

the possibility of dullness or even of illusion, whereas, anyhow
according to the bolder theories, a person's power of observing his
mental processes is always perfect; he may not have learned how to
exploit his power, or how to arrange or discriminate its findings,
but he is immune from any counterparts to deafness, astigmatism,
colour-blindness, dazzle or muscae volitantes. Inner perception, on
these theories, sets a standard of veridical perception, which sense
perception can never emulate.

The findings of introspection are reputed to differ in one way
at least from the supposed deliverances of consciousness; intro-
spection is an attentive operation and one which is only occasionally
performed, whereas consciousness is supposed to be a constant
element of all mental processes and one of which the revelations do
not require to be receipted in special acts of attention. Moreover
we introspect with the intention of finding the answers to particular
problems, whereas we are conscious, whether we wish it or not;
everyone is constantly conscious, while awake, but only those
people introspect who are from time to time interested in what is
going on in their minds.

It would be admitted that only people with a special training
ever speak of 'introspecting', but in such phrases as 'he caught
himself wondering how to do so and so', or 'when I catch myself
getting into a panic, I do such and such', the plain man is expressing
at least part of what is meant by the word.

Now supposing, (which it is the negative object of this book to
deny,) that there did exist events of the postulated ghostly status,
there would still be objections to the initially plausible assumption
that there also exists a species of perception capable of having any
of these events for its proprietary objects. For one thing, the
occurence of such an act of inner perception would require that the
observer could attend to two things at the same time. He would,
for example, be both resolving to get up early and concomitantly
observing his act of resolving; attending to the programme of
rising betimes and perceptually attending to his attending to this
programme. This objection is not, perhaps, logically fatal, since it
might be argued that some people can, anyhow after practice,
combine attention to the control of a car with attention to the
conversation. The fact that we speak of undivided attention suggests
that the division of attention is a possibility, though some people



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 165

would describe the division of attention as a rapid to-and-fro
switch of attention, rather than as a synchronous distribution of it.
But many people who begin by being confident that they do
introspect, as introspection is officially described, become dubious
that they do so, when they are satisfied that they would have to be
attending twice at once in order to do it. They are more sure that
they do not attend twice at once than that they do introspect.

However, even if it is claimed that in introspecting we are
attending twice at once, it will be allowed that there is some limit
to the number of possible synchronous acts of attention, and from
this it follows that there must be some mental processes which
are unintrospectible, namely those introspections which incor-
porate the maximum possible number of synchronous acts of
attention. The question would then arise for the holders of
the theory how these acts would be found occurring, since if this
knowledge was not introspectively got, it would follow that a
person's knowledge of his own mental processes could not always
be based on introspection. But if this knowledge does not always
rest on introspection, it is open to question whether it ever docs.
This objection might be countered by appeal to the other form
of Privileged Access; we know that we introspect not by
introspecting on our introspections, but from the direct deliverances
of consciousness. To the guests of Charybdis, Scylla appears the
more hospitable resort.

When psychologists were less cautious than they have since
become, they used to maintain that introspection was the main
source of empirical information about the workings of minds. They
were not unnaturally embarrassed to discover that the empirical
facts reported by one psychologist sometimes conflicted with those
reported by another. They reproached one another, often justly,
with having professed to find by introspection just those mental
phenomena which their preconceived theories had led them
to expect to find. There still occur disputes which should be
finally soluble by introspection, if the joint theories of the inner
life and inner perception were true. Theorists dispute, for example,
whether there are activities of conscience distinct from those of
intellect and distinct from habitifel deferences to taboos. Why do
they not look and see? Or, if they do so, why do their reports not
tally? Again, many people who theorise about human conduct



166 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

declare that there occur certain processes sui generis answering to the
description of Volitions'; I have argued that there are no such
processes. Why do we argue about the existence of these processes,
when the question ought to be as easily decidable as the question
whether or not there is a smell of onions in the larder?

There is one last objection to be made against the claims for
introspection, that made by Hume. There are some states of mind
which cannot be coolly scrutinised, since the fact that we are in
those states involves that we are not cool, or the fact that we are cool
involves that we are not in those states. No one could introspectively
scrutinise the state of panic or fury, since the dispassionateness
exercised in scientific observation is, by the definition of 'panic*
and 'fury', not the state of mind of the victim of those turbulences.
Similarly, since a convulsion of merriment is not the state of
mind of the sober experimentalist, the enjoyment of a joke is
also not an introspectible happening. States of mind such as
these more or less violent agitations can be examined only in
retrospect. Yet nothing disastrous follows from this restriction. We
are not shorter of information about panic or amusement than
about other states of mind. If retrospection can give us the data we
need for our knowledge of some states of mind, there is no reason
why it should not do so for all. And this is just what seems to be
suggested by the popular phrase 'to catch oneself doing so and so'.
We catch, as we pursue and overtake, what is already running
away from us. I catch myself daydreaming about a mountain walk
after, perhaps very shortly after, I have begun the daydream; or I
catch myself humming a particular air only when the first few notes
have already been hummed. Retrospection, prompt or delayed, is a
genuine process and one which is exempt from the troubles ensuing
from the assumption of multiply divided attention; it is also exempt
from the troubles ensuing from the assumption that violent agita-
tions could be the objects of cool, contemporary scrutiny.

Part, then, of what people have in mind, when they speak
familiarly of introspecting, is this authentic process of retrospection.
But there is nothing intrinsically ghostly about the objects of
retrospection. In the same way that I can catch myself daydreaming,
I can catch myself scratching; in the same way that I can catch
myself engaged in a piece of silent soliloquy, I can catch myself
saying something aloud.



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 167

It is true and important that what I recall is always something
expressible in the form 'myself doing so and so'. I recall not a
clap of thunder but hearing the 'clap of thunder; or I catch
myself swearing, but I do not, in the same sense, catch you swearing.
The objects of my retrospections are items in my autobiography.
But although personal, they need not be, though they can be,
private or silent items of that autobiography. I can recollect seeing
things just as much as I can recollect imagining things, my overt
acts just as well as my sensations. I can report the calculations that
I have been doing in my head, but I can also report the calculations
that I have been doing on the blotter.

Retrospection will carry some of the load of which introspection
has been nominated for the porter. But it will not carry all of it
and in particular it will not carry many of the philosophically
precious or fragile parcels. Aside from the fact that even prompt
recollection is subject both to evaporations and to dilutions, however
accurately I may recollect an action or feeling, I may still fail to
recognise its nature. Whether yesterday's twinge which I recall
to-day was a pang of genuine compassion or a twinge of guilt, need
not be any the more obvious to me for the fact that my memory of
it is vivid. Chronicles are not explanatory of what they record.

The fact that retrospection is autobiographical does not imply
that it gives us a Privileged Access to facts of a special status. But of
course it does give us a mass of data contributory to our apprecia-
tions of our own conduct and qualities of mind. A diary is not a
chronicle of ghostly episodes, but it is a valuable source of informa-
tion about the diarist's character, wits and career.

(4) Self-Knowledge without Privileged Access.

It has been argued from a number of directions that when we
speak of a person's mind, we are not speaking of a second theatre
of special-status incidents, but of certain ways in which some of
the incidents of his one life are ordered. His life is not a double
scries of events taking place in two different kinds of stuff; it is one
concatenation of events, the differences between some and other
classes of which largely consist in the applicability or inapplicability
to them of logically different typ* of law-propositions and law-like
propositions. Assertions about a person's mind are therefore asser-
tions of special sorts about that person. So questions about the rela-



168 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

tions between a person and his mind, like those about the relations
between a person's body and his mind are improper questions.
They are improper in much the same way as is the question, 'What
transactions go on between the House of Commons and the British
Constitution?'

It follows that it is a logical solecism to speak, as theorists often
do, of someone's mind knowing this, or choosing that. The person
himself knows this and chooses that, though the fact that he does
so can, if desired, be classified as a mental fact about that person.
In partly the same way it is improper to speak of my eyes seeing
this, or my nose smelling that; we should say, rather, that I see this,
or I smell that, and that these assertions carry with them certain
facts about my eyes and nose. But the analogy is not exact, for while
my eyes and nose are organs of sense, 'my mind' does not stand
for another organ. It signifies my ability and proneness to do
certain sorts of things and not some piece of personal apparatus
without which I could or would not do them. Similarly the British
Constitution is not another British political institution functioning
alongside of the Civil Service, the Judiciary, the Established
Church, the Houses of Parliament and the Royal Family. Nor is it
the sum of these institutions, or a liaison-staff between them. We
can say that Great Britain has gone to the polls; but we cannot say
that the British Constitution has gone to the polls, though the fact
that Great Britain has gone to the polls might be described as a
constitutional fact about Great Britain.

Actually, though it is not always convenient to avoid the practice,
there is a considerable logical hazard in using the nouns 'mind' and
'minds' at all. The idiom makes it too easy to construct logically
improper conjunctions, disjunctions and cause-effect propositions
such as 'so and so took place not in my body but in my mind',
'my mind made my hand write', 'a person's body and mind interact
upon each other' and so on.Where logical candour is required from
us, we ought to follow the example set by novelists, biographers
and diarists, who speak only of persons doing and undergoing tilings.

The questions 'What knowledge can a person get of the workings
of his own mind?' and 'How does he get it?' by their very wording
suggest absurd answers. They suggest that, for a person to know
that he is lazy, or has done a sum carefully, he must have taken a
peep into a windowless chamber, illuminated by a very peculiar



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 169

sort of light, and one to which only he has access. And when the
question is construed in this sort of way, the parallel questions,
'What knowledge can one person get of the workings of another
mind?' and 'How does he get it?' by their very wording seem to
preclude any answer at all; for they suggest that one person could
only know that another person was lazy, or had done a sum care-
fully, by peering into another secret chamber to which, ex hypothesi,
he has no access.

In fact the problem is not one of this sort. It is simply the
methodological question, how we establish, and how we apply,
certain sorts of law-like propositions about the overt and the silent
behaviour of persons. I come to appreciate the skill and tactics
of a chess-player by watching him and others playing chess, and
I learn that a certain pupil of mine is lazy, ambitious and witty
by following his work, noticing his excuses, listening to his
conversation and comparing his performances with those of others.
Nor does it make any important difference if I happen myself to be
that pupil. I can indeed then listen to more of his conversations, as I
am the addressee of his unspoken soliloquies ; I notice more of his
excuses, as I am never absent, when they are made. on the other
hand, my comparison of his performances with those of others is
more difficult, since the examiner is himself taking the examination,
which makes neutrality hard to preserve and precludes the demeanour
of the candidate, when under interrogation, from being in good view.

To repeat a point previously made, the question is not the
envelope-question 'How do I discover that I or you have a mind?'
but the range of specific questions of the pattern, 'How do I discover
that I am more unselfish than you; that I can do long division well,
but differential equations only badly; that you suffer from certain
phobias and tend to shirk facing certain sorts of facts ; that I am
more easily irritated than most people but less subject to panic,
vertigo, or morbid conscientiousness?' Besides such pure disposi-
tional questions there is also the range of particular perform-
ance questions and occurrence questions of the patterns, 'How do I
find out that I saw the joke and that you did not; that your action
took more courage than mine; that the service I rendered to you
was rendered from a sense of duty and not from expectation of
kudos; that, though I did not fully understand what was said at the
time, I did fully understand it, when I went over it in my head



170 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

afterwards, while you understood it perfectly from the start; that
I was feeling homesick yesterday?' Questions of these sorts offer
no mysteries; we know quite well how to set to work to find
out the answers to them; and though often we cannot finally
solve them and may have to stop short at mere conjecture, yet,
even so, we have no doubt what sorts of information would
satisfy our requirements, if we could get it; and we know what it
would be like to get it. For example, after listening to an argument,
you aver that you understand it perfectly; but you may be deceiving
yourself, or trying to deceive me. If we then part for a day or two,
I am no longer in a position to test whether or not you did under-
stand it perfectly. But still I know what tests would have settled
the point. If you had put the argument into your own words, or
translated it into French; if you had invented appropriate concrete
illustrations of the generalisations and abstractions in the argument;
if you had stood up to cross-questioning; if you had correctly
drawn further consequences from different stages of the argument
and indicated points where the theory was inconsistent with other
theories; if you had inferred correctly from the nature of the
argument to the qualities of intellect and character of its author
and predicted accurately the subsequent development of his theory,
then I should have required no further evidence that you understood
it perfectly. And exactly the same sorts of tests would satisfy me
that I had understood it perfectly; the sole differences would be
that I should probably not have voiced aloud the ｅxpressions of my
deductions, illustrations, etc., but told them to myself more
perfunctorily in silent soliloquy ; and I should probably have been
more easily satisfied of the completeness of my understanding than
I was of yours.

In short it is part of the meaning of 'you understood it* that you
could have done so and so and would have done it, if such and
such, and the test of whether you understood it is a range of
performances satisfying the apodoses of these general hypothetical
statements. It should be noticed, on the one hand, that there is no
single nuclear performance, overt or in your head, which would
determine that you had understood the argument. Even if you claimed
that you had experienced a flash of click of comprehension and had
actually done so, you would still withdraw your other claim to have
understood the argument, if you found that you could not para-



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 171

phrase it, illustrate, expand or recast it; and you would allow
someone else to have understood it who could meet all examination-
questions about it, but reported no click of comprehension. It
should also be noticed, on the other hand, that though there is no
way of specifying how many or what sub-tests must be satisfied
for a person to qualify as having perfectly understood the argument,
this does not imply that no finite set of sub-tests is ever enough.
To settle whether a boy can do long division, we do not require
him to try out his hand on a million, a thousand, or even a hundred
different problems in long division. We should not be quite satisfied
after one success, but we should not remain dissatisfied after twenty,
provided that they were judiciously variegated and that he had not
done them before. A good teacher, who not only recorded the boy's
correct and incorrect solutions, but also watched his procedure in
reaching them, would be satisfied much sooner, and he would be
satisfied sooner still if he got the boy to describe and justify the
constituent operations that he performed, though of course many
boys can do long division sums who cannot describe or justify the .
operations performed in doing them.

I discover my or your motives in much, though not quite the
same way as I discover my or your abilities. The big practical
difference is that I cannot put the subject through his paces in my
inquiries into his inclinations as I can in my inquiries into his
competences. To discover how conceited or patriotic you are, I
must still observe your conduct, remarks, demeanour and tones of
voice, but I cannot subject you to examination-tests or experiments
which you recognise as such. You would have a special motive
for responding to such experiments in a particular way. From mere
conceit, perhaps, you would try to behave selC-effacingly, or from
mere modesty you might try to behave conceitedly. None the less,
ordinary day to day observation normally serves swiftly to settle
such questions. To be conceited is to tend to boast of one's own
excellences, to pity or ridicule the deficiencies of others, to day-
dream about imaginary triumphs, to reminisce about actual
triumphs, to weary quickly of conversations which reflect un-
favourably upon oneself, to lavish one's society upon distinguished
persons and to economise in association with the undistinguished.
The tests of whether a person is conceited are the actions he takes
and the reactions he manifests in such circumstances. Not many



172 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

anecdotes, sneers or sycophancies are required from the subject for
the ordinary observer to make up his mind, unless the candidate
and the examiner happen to be identical.

The ascertainment of a person's mental capacities and pro-
pensities is an inductiveproccss, an induction to law-like propositions
from observed actions and reactions. Having ascertained these
long-term qualities, we explain a particular action or reaction by
applying the result of such an induction to the new specimen, save
where open avowals let us know the explanation without research.
These inductions are not, of course, carried out under laboratory
conditions, or with any statistical apparatus, any more than is the
shepherd's weather-lore, or the general practitioner's understanding
of a particular patient's constitution. But they are ordinarily reliable
enough. It is a truism to say that the appreciations of character and
the explanations of conduct given by critical, unprejudiced and
humane observers, who have had a lot of experience and take a lot
of interest, tend to be both swift and reliable; those of inferior
judges tend to be slower and less reliable. Similarly the marks
awarded by practised and keen examiners who know their subject
well and are reasonably sympathetic towards the candidates tend to
be about right; those of inferior examiners tend to scatter more
widely from the proper order. The point of these truisms is to
remind us that in real life we are quite familiar with the techniques
of assessing persons and accounting for their actions, though accord-
ing to the standard theory no such techniques could exist.

There is one class of persons whose qualities and frames of mind
are specially difficult to appreciate, namely persons who simulate
qualities which they lack and dissimulate qualities which they
possess. I refer to hypocrites and charlatans, the people who
pretend to motives and moods and the people who pretend
to abilities; that is, to most of us in some stretches of our
lives and to some of us in most stretches of our lives. It is always
possible to pretend to motives and abilities other than one's real
ones, or to pretend to strengths of motives and levels of ability
other than their real strengths and levels. The theatre could not
exist, if it was not possible to make such pretences and to make
them efficiently. It is, moreover,* always possible for a person to
take others or himself in by acting a part (as the spectators are
not taken in at the theatre, since they have paid to see people act



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 173

who advertise themselves as actors). At first sight it seems, then,
that no one can ever have proper knowledge of his own mind, or
of the minds of others, since there is no kind of observable behaviour
of which we can say, 'no one could possibly be putting that on*.
Certainly we do not ordinarily feel practically embarrassed by this
possibility, but some people feel a theoretical embarrassment,
since if any particular action or reaction might be a piece of
shamming, might not every action or reaction be a piece of sham-
ming ? Might not all our appreciations of the conduct of others
and of ourselves be uniformly deluded? People sometimes feel
an analogous embarrassment about sense perception, for since
there is nothing to prevent any particular sensible appearance from
being an illusion, there seems to be nothing to prevent all of them
from being illusions.

However, the menace of universal shamming is an empty
menace. We know what shamming is. It is deliberately behaving
in ways in which other people behave who are not shamming.
To simulate contrition is to put on gestures, accents, words and
deeds like those of people who are contrite. Both the hypocrite
and the people whom he deceives must therefore know what it is
like for someone to be contrite and not merely to be pretending
to be contrite. If we were not usually correct in sizing up contrite
people as contrite, we could not be gulled into thinking that the
hypocrite was really contrite. Furthermore, we know what it is
like to be hypocritical, namely to try to appear actuated by
a motive other than one's real motive. We know the sorts
of tricks the hypocrite must use. We possess, though we cannot
always apply, the criteria by which to judge whether these tricks
are being used or not and whether they are being used cleverly or
stupidly. So sometimes we can, and sometimes we cannot, detect
hypocrisies; but even when we cannot, we know what sorts of
extra clues, if we could secure them, would betray the hypocrite.
We should, for example, like to see how he would act if told that
the cause for which he professed devotion required half his fortune
or his life. All that we need, though we often cannot get it, is an
experimentum crucis, just as the doctor often needs but cannot get
an experimentum crucis to decide between two diagnoses. To establish
hypocrisy and charlatanry is an inductive task which differs from
the ordinary inductive tasks of assessing motives and capacities only



174 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

in being a second order induction. It is trying to discover
whether someone is trying to model his actions on what he and
we have inductively discovered to be the behaviour of people who
are not shamming. When we and the hypocrite have learned how
hypocrisy is exposed, we might have to cope with the second order
hypocrite, the double-bluffer who has learnt how not to act like a
first order hypocrite. There is no mystery about shamming, though
it is a tautology to say that skilful shamming is hard to detect and
that successful shamming is undetected.

So far we have been considering chiefly those brands of self-
knowledge and the knowledge of others which consist in the more
or less judicial assessment of long-term propensities and capacities,
together with the application of those assessments in explanations
of particular episodes. We have been considering how we interpret
or understand courses of conduct. But there remains another sense
of 'know' in which a person is commonly said to know what he is
at this moment doing, thinking, feeling, etc., a sense which is
nearer to what the phosphorescence-theory of consciousness tried,
but failed, to describe. To bring out the force of this sense of 'know',
we should consider first certain kinds of situations in which a
person admits that he did not know at the time what he was doing,
although what he was doing was not an automatism but an
intelligent operation. A person trying to solve a cross-word puzzle
is confronted by an anagram; after a short or long pause he gets the
answer, but denies that he was aware of taking any specifiable
steps, or following any specifiable method, to get it. He may even
say that he was thinking, and knew that he was thinking, about
some other part of the puzzle. He is in some degree surprised to
find that he has got the answer to the anagram, for he had not been
aware of going through any shuffling and reshuffling operations, or
considering any of the unsuccessful rearrangements of the letters.
Yet his solution is correct and he may repeat his success several
times in the course of solving the whole puzzle. Our impromptu
witticisms often take us by surprise in the same sort of way.

Now usually we are not surprised to catch ourselves having
whistled, planned or imagined something and we say, if asked, that
we are not surprised, because we knew we were doing these things,
while we were doing them. What sort of a rider are we adding
when we say 'I did so and so and knew at the time that I was doing



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 175

it* ? The tempting reply is to say * Well, while I was doing the thing,
it must have flashed or dawned upon me that I was doing it; or,
if the action was a protracted one, it must have kept on flashing
or dawning on me that I was doing the thing'. Yet these
metaphors of flashing and dawning leave us uneasy, for we do not
ordinarily recall any such occurrences, even when we are quite
sure that we knew what we were doing, while we were doing it.
Moreover, if there had occurred any such flashings or dawnings,
the same question would arise once more. Did you know that you
were getting these lightings-up, when they were on, and that you
were not getting them, when they were not on? Did it flash
on you that it was flashing on you that you were whistling ? Or is
your knowing that something is going on not always a matter of
something flashing on you?

When a person is described as not being surprised when
something takes place, he can also be described as having expected
it or having been prepared for it. But we use 'expect' in at least two
markedly different ways. Sometimes we mean that at a particular
moment he considered and accepted the proposition that the event
would, or would probably, take place; in this sense, there would be
an answer to the question, 'Exactly when did you make this forecast?'
But sometimes we mean that whether or not he ever went through
the process of making such a forecast, he was continuously prepared
or ready for the thing to happen. The gardener who, in this sense,
expects rain need not be repeatedly switching his attention from
gardening tasks to silent or vocal prognostications of rain; he just
leaves the watering-can in the tool-shed, keeps his coat handy,
beds out more seedlings, and so on. He anticipates the rain not by
delivering occasional or incessant verbal presages, but by gardening
appropriately. All the afternoon he is ready and making ready for
rain. It may be objected, 'Oh, but he must be constantly considering
the proposition that it will rain. That is what makes him keep his
coat handy and the watering-pot in the shed.' But the answer to
this is easy. 'Tell me at which particular moments he told himself
or others that it was going to rain, and then tell me whether
he was or was not expecting rain in the intervals between those
prognostications.' He prognosticated rain at this, that and the other
moment, because he was all the time expecting rain; and he kept
his coat handy and the watering-can in the shed for the same reason.



176 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

In this sense 'expect' is used to signify not an occurrence but a stand-
ing condition or frame of mind. He is all the afternoon in the frame
of mind to say certain things in the future tense in certain
contingencies, as well as to conduct his gardening-operations in
certain ways, to keep his coat handy and so on. To expect, in this
sense, is to be prepared; and the giving of warnings, private or
public, is only one sort of precautionary measure among others.
So when we say that the gardener was not taken by surprise by
the rain, or that he was sure that it was going to rain, or that he
was ready for rain, we are not referring, save per actidens, to any
internal flashes of foresight, or to any silent or vocal utterances in
the future tense. All his afternoon activities, horticultural and verbal,
were performed in a rain-expectant frame of mind.

This lesson can be applied to our problem. There are many
tasks in which we are from time to time engaged the execution of
which requires continued application; doing the second step requires
having done the first step. Sometimes the earlier steps stand to the
later as means to ends, as we lay the table in order to have a meal.
Sometimes the earlier steps stand in some other relation to the
later; we do not eat the first course in order to eat the second, or
begin to hum a tune in order to finish humming it. Very often an
undertaking, though it requires consecutive application, is only
artificially divisible into steps or stages, but it still remains significant
to say that it might be broken off short, when only about half or
about three-quarters accomplished. Now if the agent is carrying
out such a serial operation with any degree of heed, he must at
any given stage in it have in mind, in some sense, what is to be
done next and what has already been done; he must have kept
track of where he has got to and he must be expecting, or even
intending, to be getting on to the stages after the present stage.
This is sometimes expressed by saying that, in anyhow those serial
undertakings that are more or less intelligently performed, the
agent must have had from the start a plan or programme of what
he is to do and he must continuously consult this plan as he
progresses. And this does frequently happen. But it cannot always
happen, and even when it does happen, this construction and
consultation of programmes is nofrenough to explain the consecutive
and methodical prosecution of the undertaking, since constructing
and consulting plans are themselves serial operations intelligently



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 177

and consecutively prosecuted, and it would be absurd to suggest
that an infinite series of serial operations must precede the intelligent
performance of any serial operation. Nor can intermittent consulta-
tion of a plan explain how we know what to be getting on with
between the consultations, how we know which items of the plan
to consult at different stages in the task, or how we know that what
we are now doing is in accordance with the recently consulted
plan.

The prime sense in which a person engaged in a non-sudden
task has it in mind what is to be done at later stages is that he is
ready to perform step three when the occasion requires, namely
when step two is completed; and, what goes with this, that he is
ready to tell himself or the world what he would have gone on to do,
if he had not been prevented. While engaged in any given step, he
is prepared for what should or may follow, and when it does follow,
he is not surprised. In this sense he may be alive to what he is doing
all the time he is doing it, even though his attention is concentrated
on his task and is not divided between the task and any con-
templations or chroniclings of his prosecution of it.

In other cases, as when he suddenly makes an unpremeditated
witticism, he is surprised to find what he has done and would not
describe himself as having known what he was doing, while he did
it, or even as having been trying to make a joke. The same thing is
true of other sudden acts performed on the spur of the moment.
The action may well be the right action to have performed, but the
agent does not know how he came to perform it, as he was
unprepared for it. His being unprepared for it is not the effect
or the cause of his not knowing what he was doing; it is the same
thing, differently expressed.

Unlike the man who with surprise catches himself making a
good impromptu joke, the man who pursues a new argument is
ordinarily alive to what he is doing. He may be surprised by the
conclusion at which he arrives, but he is not surprised to find
himself arriving at a conclusion. His progressive operation of
reasoning was a display of his effort to reach one. So he knew
what he was then doing, not in the sense that he had to dilute his
consideration of his premisses with other acts of considering his
consideration of them he need not have had any such side-issues
flash or dawn upon him but in the sense that he was prepared not

M



178 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

only for the steps in reasoning that he was to take, but also for a
variety of other eventualities, most of which never occurred, such
as being asked what he was doing, what justification he had for
taking this rather than that line, and so forth. The phosphorescence-
theory of consciousness was in part an attempt to construe concepts
of frames of mind like 'prepared', 'ready*, 'on the qui vive ,
'bearing in mind', 'would not be surprised', 'expect', 'realise* and
'alive to' as concepts of special internal happenings.

The same sort of account holds good of not-forgetting. When
a person engaged in conversation reaches the middle of a sentence,
he has ordinarily not forgotten how his sentence began. In some
sense he keeps continuous track of what he has already said. Yet it
would be absurd to suggest that he accompanies every word that he
utters with an internal repetition of all its predecessors. Apart
from the physical impossibility of reciting the previous seventeen
words in the moment when the eighteenth word is just giving place
to the nineteenth, the process of repetition is itself a serial operation,
the execution of the later parts of which would again require that
its author had kept track of its earlier parts. Not-to-have-forgotten
cannot be described in terms of the performance of actual
reminiscences; on the contrary, reminiscences are only one kind of
exercise of the condition of not-having-forgotten. Bearing in mind
is not recalling; it is what makes recalling, among other things,
possible.

Thus the intelligent conduct of serial operations does entail
that the agent is throughout the progress of the operation au fait
both with what he has completed and with what remains to do,
but it does not entail that the performance of such operations is
backed up by any second order performance or process of
monitoring the first order performance. Of course an agent can,
from time to time, if he is prompted to do so, announce to
himself or the world "Hallo, here I am whistling 'Home Sweet
Home'. " His ability to do so is part of what is meant by saying
that he is in that particular frame of mind that we call 'being alive
to what he is doing'. But not only is his actually making such an-
nouncements not entailed by the fact that he is concentrating
on whistling this tune, but his concentration would be broken each
time he produced such a commentary.

I have so far illustrated what I mean by a serial performance by



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 179

such relatively brief operations as whistling a tune, or uttering a
sentence. But in a slightly looser and more elastic sense, an entire
conversation may be a serial performance ; and so may be the conduct
of one's work and recreation during a day or a year. Eating porridge
is a non-sudden performance, but so is eating breakfast; giving a
lecture is a serial performance, but so is giving a course of
lectures.

Now in almost the same way as a person may be, in this sense,
alive to what he is doing, he may be alive to what someone else is
doing. In the serial operation of listening to a sentence or a lecture
delivered by someone else, the listener, like the speaker, does not
altogether forget, yet nor does he have constantly to recall the earlier
parts of the talk, and he is in some degree prepared for the parts
still to come, though he does not have to tell himself how he expects
the sentence or lecture to go on. Certainly his frame of mind is
considerably different from that of the speaker, since the speaker is,
sometimes, creative or inventive, while the listener is passive and
receptive; the listener may be frequently surprised to find the
speaker saying something, while the speaker is only seldom
surprised; the listener may find it hard to keep track of the course
taken by the sentences and arguments, while the speaker can do
this quite easily. While the speaker intends to say certain fairly
specific things, his hearer can anticipate only roughly what sorts
of topics are going to be discussed.

But the differences are differences of degree, not of kind. The
superiority of the speaker's knowledge of what he is doing over
that of the listener does not indicate that he has Privileged Access
to facts of a type inevitably inaccessible to the listener, but only
that he is in a very good position to know what the listener is
often in a very poor position to know. The turns taken by a man's
conversation do not startle or perplex his wife as much as they had
surprised and puzzled his fiancee, nor do close colleagues have to
explain themselves to each other as much as they have to explain
themselves to their new pupils.

I have, for expository purposes, treated as separate things the
way in which an ordinary person is ordinarily alive to what, at a
particular moment, he is occupftd with and the ways in which
judicially minded persons assess the characters and explain the actions
of others and of themselves. There are undoubtedly many big



180 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

differences. To appraise or examine requires special gifts, interests,
training, experience, powers of comparison and generalisation, 'and
impartiality; whereas merely to be alive to what one is whistling
or where one is walking, is within the capacities of an ordinary
child. None the less, the most naive knowledge of what one is
doing shades into the most sophisticated appreciations of particular
performances, much as the child's interest in the robins on the
bird table shades into ornithology. A boy working out an arith-
metical problem is alive in the most primitive way to what he
is doing; for while he is thinking about numbers (and not about
thinking about numbers), he does not forget the earlier stages of
his reckoning, he bears in mind the rules of multiplication and he
is not surprised to find himself arriving at the solution. But he
differs only in degree of alertness, caution and sophistication from
the boy who checks his results, from the boy who tries to find out
where he has made a mistake, or from the boy who spots and explains
the mistakes in the calculations of someone else; this last boy, again,
differs only in degree from the co-operative parent, the professional
teacher, or the examiner. The boy who is just capable of working
out a simple sum is probably not yet able to state precisely what he
is doing, or why he takes the steps that he takes; the examiner can
evaluate the actual performances of the candidates in a fairly precise
and highly formalised system of majrks. But here again the
inarticulateness of the beginner's knowledge of what he is doing
shades by a series of gradations into the examiner's numerical
appraisal code.

A person's knowledge about himself and others may be distri-
buted between many roughly distinguishable grades yielding
correspondingly numerous roughly distinguishable senses of 'know-
ledge.' He may be aware that he is whistling 'Tipperary' and not
know that he is whistling it in order to give the appearance of a
sang-froid which he does not feel. Or, again, he may be aware that
he is shamming sang-froid without knowing that the tremors
which he is trying to hide derive from the agitation of a guilty
conscience. He may know that he has an uneasy conscience and
not know that this issues from some specific repression. But in none
of the senses in which we ordinarily consider whether a person
docs or does not know something about himself, is the postulate
of a Privileged Access necessary or helpful for the explanation of



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 181

how he has achieved, or might have achieved, this knowledge. There
are respects in which it is easier for me to get such knowledge about
myself than to get it about someone else; there are other respects
in which it is harder. But these differences of facility do not derive
from, or lead to, a difference in kind between a person's knowledge
about himself and his knowledge about other people. No meta-
physical Iron Curtain exists compelling us to be for ever absolute
strangers to one another, though ordinary circumstances, together
with some deliberate management, serve to maintain a reasonable
aloofness. Similarly no metaphysical looking-glass exists compelling
us to be for ever completely disclosed and explained to our-
selves, though from the everyday conduct of our sociable and
unsociable lives we learn to be reasonably conversant with ourselves.

(5) Disclosure by Unstudied Talk.

Our knowledge of other people and of ourselves depends upon
our noticing how they and we behave. But there is one tract of
human behaviour on which we pre-eminently rely. When the
person examined has learned to talk and when he talks in a language
well known to us, we use part of his talk as the primary source of
our information about him, that part, namely, which is spontaneous,
frank and unprepared. It is, of course, notorious that people are
frequently reticent and keep things back, instead of letting them
out. It is notorious, too, that people are frequently insincere and
talk in manners calculated to give false impressions. But the very
fact that utterances can be guarded and studied implies that
unguarded, unstudied utterance is possible. To be reticent is
deliberately to refrain from being open, and to be hypocritical is
deliberately to refrain from saying what comes to one's lips, while
pretending to say frankly things one does not mean. In a certain
sense of 'natural', the natural thing to do is to speak one's mind,
and the sophisticated thing to do is to refrain from doing this, or
even to pretend to do this, when one is not really doing so. Further-
more, not only is unstudied talk natural or unsophisticated, it is
also the normal way of talking. We have to take special pains to
keep things back, only because letting them out is our normal
response; and we discover the techniques of insincerity only from
familiarity with the modes of unforced conversation that are to be
simulated. To say this is not to accord ethical laurels to human



182 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

nature. Unstudied utterance is not honesty or candour. Honesty
is a highly sophisticated disposition, for it is the disposition to
abstain from insincerity, just as candour is the disposition to abstain
from reticence. A person could not be honest or candid who had
never known insincerity or reticence, any more than a person
could be insincere or reticent who had never known ingenuous and
open utterance.

There are other kinds of studied utterance, some of which will
have to be discussed at a later stage, that belong not to normal
sociable conversations but only to more serious affairs. The physician,
the judge, the preacher, the politician, the astronomer and the
geometrician may give their counsels, verdicts, homilies, theories
and formulae by word of mouth, but they are then talking not in
the sense of 'chatting' but in the sense of 'pronouncing' or 'pro-
pounding'. Perhaps they prepare, but at least they weigh, their
words. They do not say the first things that come to their lips, for
their discourse is disciplined. What they say would, unlike spon-
taneous chat, generally tolerate being written down and even
printed. It is not impromptu or spontaneous, let fall or blurted out,
but delivered. Their authors are considering what to say and how
to say it, in order to produce precisely the right effect. This sort of
talk is literally prosy.

We need to contrast normal unstudied talk both with studied
conversational talk and with studied non-conversational talk, for
it is the basis of both of them. We use unstudied, conversational
talk not only before we learn to converse guardedly and insincerely
and before we learn to discourse weightily; we also continue to
occupy a good part of our talking day in saying the first things that
come to our lips. Camouflage and gravity are only intermittent
necessities.

It is not only in our unembarrassed, uncalculated colloquies
with others that we say the first things that come to our lips; we
do so also in the easy, unbuttoned colloquies that we hold, com-
monly in silence, with ourselves.

In unstudied chat we talk about whatever we are at the moment
chiefly interested in. It is not a rival interest. We talk about the
garden from the motive that prompts us to inspect and potter in the
garden, namely interest in the garden. We chat about our dinner
not because we are not interested in our dinner, but because we



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 183

are. We may talk about our dinner because we are hungry, just as
we eat it because we are hungry; and we cannot easily help talking
about the steepness of the hill, for the same reason that we cannot
easily help our steps flagging as we climb it. Spontaneous utterance
is not a collateral, competing interest, it is an exercise auxiliary to
the taking of any interest in anything whatsoever.

A person who is annoyed with a knotted shoe-lace is, if he has
learned to talk, also in the mood to use a verbal ｅxpression of
annoyance with it. He talks about it in a fretful tone of voice.
What he says, together with his way of saying it, discloses or lets
us know his frame of mind, just because his unstudied using of that
ｅxpression is one of the things that he is in the frame of mind to do.
To tug fretfully at the shoe-lace might be another. He is sufficiently
aggravated by the knot to talk aggravatedly about it.

Unstudied utterances are not, on the one hand, effects of the
frames of mind in which they are used, since frames of mind arc not
incidents; but nor, on the other hand, are they reports about those
frames of mind. If the lorry-driver asks urgently, * Which is the road
to London?' he discloses his anxiety to find out, but he does not
make an autobiographical or psychological pronouncement about
it. He says what he says not from a desire to inform us or himself
about himself, but from a desire to get on to the right road to London.
Unstudied utterances are not self-comments, though, as we shall
shortly see, they constitute our primary evidence for making
self-comments, when we come to be interested in making
them.

Now many unstudied utterances embody explicit interest
phrases, or what I have elsewhere been calling 'avowals', like 'I
want', 'I hope', 'I intend', 'I dislike', *I am depressed', 'I wonder',
'I guess' and 'I feel hungry' ; and their grammar makes it tempting
to misconstrue all the sentences in which they occur as self-descrip-
tions. But in its primary employment 'I want . . .' is not used to
convey information, but to make a request or demand. It is no
more meant as a contribution to general knowledge than 'please'.
To respond with 'do you?' or 'how do you know?' would be
glaringly inappropriate. Nor, in their primary employment, are
'I hate . . / and 'I intend . . .' u?ed for the purpose of telling the
hearer facts about the speaker; or else we should not be surprised to
hear them uttered in the cool, informative tones of voice in which



184 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

we say 'he hates . . / and 'they intend. . . .' We expect them, on
the contrary, to be spoken in a revolted and a resolute tone of voice
respectively. They are the utterances of persons in revolted and
resolute frames of mind. They are tilings said in detestation and
resolution and not things said in order to advance biographical
knowledge about detestations and resolutions.

A person who notices the unstudied utterances of a speaker,
who may or may not be himself, is, if his interest in the speaker has
the appropriate direction and if he knows the language in which
the utterances are made, especially well situated to pass comments
upon the qualities and frames of mind of their author. While
careful observation of the subject's other behaviour, such as his
other overt actions, his hesitations and his tears and laughter, may
tell him much, this behaviour is not ex cfficio made easy to witness,
or easy to interpret. But speech is ex offitio made to be heard and
made to be construed. Learning to talk is learning to make oneself
understood. No sleuth-like powers are required for me to find out
from the words and tones of voice of your unstudied talk, or even
of my own unstudied talk, the frame of mind of the talker.

When talk is guarded and often we do not know whether it
is so or not, even in the avowals we make to ourselves sleuth-like
qualities do have to be exercised. We now have to infer from what is
said and done to what would have been said, if wariness had not
been exercised, as well as to the motives of the wariness. Finding
out what is on the pages of an open book is a matter of simple
reading; finding out what is on the pages of a sealed book requires
hypotheses and evidence. But the fact that concealments have to be
penetrated does not imply that non-concealments have to be
penetrated.

One of the tilings often signified by 'self-consciousness* is the
notice we take of our own unstudied utterances, including our
explicit avowals, whether these are spoken aloud, muttered or said
in our heads. We eavesdrop on our own voiced utterances
and our own silent monologues. In noticing these we are pre-
paring ourselves to do something new, namely to describe the
frames of mind which these utterances disclose. But there is nothing
intrinsically proprietary about this activity. I can pay heed to what
I overhear you saying as well as to what I overhear myself saying,
though I cannot overhear your silent colloquies with yourself.



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 185

Nor can I read your diary, if you write it in cipher, or keep it under
lock and key. Indeed, not only is this sort of self-study the same in
kind as the study of the unguarded and later also the guarded
utterances of others, but we learn to make this study of our own
talk from first taking part in the public discussion of anyone's
talk as well as from reading novelists' illustrative deployment of
their characters' talk, together with their explanatory descriptions
of it.

Critical readers may ask why I have refrained from using the
verb 'to think' instead of such trivial verbs as 'talk', 'chat', 'converse'
and 'let out', since clearly the utterances which I have been mentioning
are, ordinarily, pertinent utterances, the authors of which mean what
they say; I have been mentioning significant and intelligible speech
and not things like guffaws, babblings or rigmarole. My reasons are
two, and are closely connected. First, the utterances I have
been considering belong to sociable interchanges of conversation
between speakers and hearers, who may be one and the same
persons. Their point is a conversational point. Since many of the
utterances that constitute a conversation are not in the indicative
mood, but are questions, commands, complaints, quips, scoldings,
congratulations, etc., we cannot in their case speak of those
epistemological darlings the 'thoughts', judgments' or 'propositions'
expressed by them. Secondly, we tend to reserve the verb 'to think'
for the uses of those studied and severely drilled utterances which
constitute theories and policies. Now we learn to chat in the
nursery, but we have to go to school to learn even the rudiments of
theorising. The techniques of theorising are learned in set lessons,
while conversational speech is acquired almost entirely by con-
versing. So the use of sentences, and particularly of certain sorts
of indicative sentences, for the special ends of propounding, i.e.
providing premisses and delivering conclusions, is a belated and
sophisticated use, and necessarily comes later than the conversational
uses of sentences and phrases. When a theory or a bit of a theory
is voiced aloud, instead of being conveyed in its proper milieu
of print, we hesitate to call the voicing by the name of 'talk' and
we should flatly refuse to call it 'chat' or 'conversation'. It is meant
didactically, not sociably. It is a kind of work, whereas
unstudied chat is no kind of work, not even easy or agreeable
work.



186 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

(6) The Self.

Not only theorists but also quite unsophisticated people,
including young children, find perplexities in the notion of T.
Children sometimes puzzle their heads with such questions as,
'What would it be like if I became you and you became me?' and
'Where was I before I began?' Theologians have been exercised
over the question 'What is it in an individual which is saved or
damned?', and philosophers have speculated whether 'I' denotes a
peculiar and separate substance and in what consists my indivisible
and continuing identity. Not all such puzzles arise from the
unwitting adoption of the para-mechanical hypothesis, and I
propose in this section to try to do justice to one particular family
of such enigmas, the expounding and solving of which may be of
some general theoretical interest.

The enigmas that I have in mind all turn on what I shall call
the 'systematic elusiveness' of the concept of T. When a child,
like Kim, having no theoretical commitments or equipment, first
asks himself, 'Who or What am I?' he does not ask it from a desire
to know his own surname, age, sex, nationality or position in the
form. He knows all his ordinary personalia. He feels that there is
something else in the background for which his T stands, a some-
thing which has still to be described after all his ordinary
personalia have been listed. He also feels, very vaguely, that
whatever it is that his T stands for, it is something very
important and quite unique, unique in the sense that neither it, nor
anything like it, belongs to anyone else. There could only be one of
it. Pronouns like 'you', 'she' and 'we' feel quite unmystifying, while
T feels mystifying. And it feels mystifying, anyhow in part,
because the more the child tries to put his finger on what T stands
for, the less does he succeed in doing so. He can catch only its
coat-tails; it itself is always and obdurately a pace ahead of its coat-
tails. Like the shadow of one's own head, it will not wait to be
jumped on. And yet it is never very far ahead; indeed, sometimes
it seems not to be ahead of the pursuer at all. It evades
capture by lodging itself inside the very muscles of the pursuer. It
is too near even to be within arm's reach.

Theorists have found themseles mocked in a similar way by
the concept of T. Even Hume confesses that, when he has tried to
sketch all the items of his experience, he has found nothing there



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 187

to answer to the word T, and yet he is not satisfied that there does
not remain something more and something important, without
which his sketch fails to describe his experience.

Other epistemologists have felt similar qualms. Should I, or
should I not, put my knowing self down on my list of the sorts
of things that I can have knowledge of? If I say 'no', it seems to
reduce my knowing self to a theoretically infertile mystery, yet
if I say 'yes', it seems to reduce the fishing-net to one of the fishes
which it itself catches. It seems hazardous either to allow or to
deny that the judge can be put into the dock.

I shall try before long to explain this systematic elusiveness of
the notion of T and with it the apparent non-parallelism between
the notion of T and the notions of 'you' and 'he'. But it is expedient
first to consider some points which hold good of all personal
pronouns alike.

People, including philosophers, tend to raise their questions
about what constitutes a self by asking what the words 'I' and 'you'
are the names of. They are familiar with the river of which 'Thames'
is the name and with the dog called 'Fido'. They are also familiar
with the persons of whom their acquaintances' and their own
surnames are the surnames. They then feel vaguely that since T
and 'you' are not public surnames, they must be names of another
and queer sort and must in consequence be the names of some
extra individuals hidden away behind or inside the persons who are
known abroad by their ordinary surnames and Christian names As
pronouns are not registered at Somerset House, their owners must
be different, somehow, from the owners of the Christian and
surnames which are registered there. But this way of broaching the
question is mistaken from the start. Certainly T and 'you' are not
regular proper names like 'Fido' and 'Thames', but they are not
irregular proper names either. They are not proper names, or names
at all, any more than 'today' is an ephemeral name of the current
day. Gratuitous mystification begins from the moment that we
start to peer around for the beings named by our pronouns.
Sentences containing pronouns do, of course, mention identifiable
people, but the way in which the people mentioned are identified
by pronouns is quite different from the way in which they are
identified by proper names.

This difference can be provisionally indicated in the following



188 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

manner. There is a class of words (which for ease of reference may
be called 'index words') that indicate to the hearer or reader the
particular thing, episode, person, place or moment referred to. Thus
'now' is an index word which indicates to the hearer of the sentence
'the train is now going over the bridge' the particular moment of the
crossing. The word 'now' can, of course, be used at any moment of any
day or night, but it does not mean what is meant by 'at any moment
of any day or night'. It indicates that particular moment at which the
hearer is intended to hear the word 'now' being uttered. The
moment at which the train crosses the bridge is indicated by the
utterance at that moment of the word 'now'. The moment at which
'now' is breathed is the moment which it indicates. In a partly
similar way the word 'that' is often used to indicate the particular
thing at which the speaker's index finger is pointing at the moment
when he breathes out the word 'that'. 'Here' indicates, sometimes,
that particular place from which the speaker propagates the noise
'here' into the surrounding air; and the page indicated by the
phrase 'this page' is the page of which the printed word 'this'
occupies a part. Other index words indicate indirectly. 'Yesterday'
indicates the day before that on which it is uttered, or printed in a
newspaper; 'then', in certain uses, indicates a moment or period
standing in a specified relation with that in which it is heard
or read.

Now pronouns like 'I' and 'you' are, anyhow sometimes, direct
index words, while others, like 'he' and 'they' and, in some uses,
'we' are indirect index words. T can indicate the particular person
from whom the noise T, or the written mark T, issues; 'you' can
indicate the one person who hears me say 'you', or it can indicate
that person, whoever he is (and there may be several) who reads the
'you' that I write, or have printed. In all cases the physical occurrence
of an index word is bodily annexed to what the word indicates.
Hence 'you' is not a queer name that I and others sometimes give
you; it is an index word which, in its particular conversational
setting, indicates to you just who it is to whom I am addressing
my remarks. T is not an extra name for an extra being; it indicates,
when I say or write it, the same individual who can also be addressed
by the proper name 'Gilbert Rylc'. 'I' is not an alias for 'Gilbert
Ryle'; it indicates the person whom 'Gilbert Ryle' names, when
Gilbert Ryle uses 'I'.



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 189

But this is far from being the whole story. We have now to
notice that we use our pronouns, as well as our proper names, in a
wide variety of different ways. Further mystifications have arisen
from the detection, without the comprehension of contrasts between
such different uses of T and, to a lesser extent, of 'you' and 'he'.

In the sentence 'I am warming myself before the fire', the word
'myself could be replaced by 'my body' without spoiling the sense;
but the pronoun T could not be replaced by 'my body' without
making nonsense. Similarly the sentence 'Cremate me after I am
gone' says nothing self-annihilating, since the 'me' and the 'I' are
being used in different senses. So sometimes we can, and sometimes
we cannot, paraphrase the first personal pronoun by 'my body'.
There are even some cases where I can talk about a part of my body,
but cannot use 'I' or 'me' for it. If my hair were scorched in a fire,
I could say 'I was not scorched; only my hair was', though I could
never say 'I was not scorched; only my face and hands were'. A
part of the body which is insensitive and cannot be moved at will
is mine, but it is not part of me. Conversely, mechanical auxiliaries
to the body, such as motor-cars and walking-sticks, can be spoken of
with T and 'me; as in 'I collided with the pillar-box', which means
the same thing as 'the car which I was driving (or which I owned
and was having driven for me in my presence) collided with the
pillar-box'.

Let us now consider some contexts in which 'I' and 'me' can
certainly not be replaced by 'my body' or 'my leg'. If I say 'I am
annoyed that I was cut in the collision', while I might accept the
substitution of 'my leg was cut' for 'I was cut', I should not
allow 'I am annoyed' to be reconstructed in any such way. It would
be similarly absurd to speak of 'my head remembering', 'my brain
doing long division', or 'my body battling with fatigue'. Perhaps it
is because of the absurdity of such collocations that so many
people have felt driven to describe a person as an association between
a body and a non-body.

However, we are not yet at the end of our list of elasticities in
the uses of T and 'me' ; for we find further contrasts breaking out
between uses of the first personal pronoun in which none can be
paraphrased by mere references to the body. It makes perfect sense
to say that I caught myself just beginning to dream, but not that I
caught my body beginning to dream, or that my body caught me



190 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

doing so; and it makes sense to say that a child is telling himself a
fairy-story, but nonsense to make his body either narrator or
auditor.

Contrasts of these types, perhaps above all the contrasts
advertised in descriptions of exercises of self-control, have induced
many preachers and some thinkers to speak as if an ordinary person
is really some sort of committee or team of persons, all laced
together inside one skin; as if the thinking and vetoing T were one
person, and the greedy or lazy 'I' were another. But this sort of
picture is obviously of no use. Part of what we mean by 'person*
is someone who is capable of catching himself beginning to dream,
of telling himself stories and of curbing his own greed. So the
suggested reduction of a person to a team of persons would merely
multiply the number of persons without explaining how it is that
one and the same person can be both narrator and auditor, or both
vigilant and dreamy, both scorched and amazed at being scorched.
The beginning of the required explanation is that in such a
statement as 'I caught myself beginning to dream', the two
pronouns are not names of different persons, since they arc not
names at all, but that they are index words being used in different
senses in different sorts of context, just as we saw was the case with
the statement 'I am warming myself by the fire' (though this is a
different difference of sense from the other). In case it seems
implausible to say that inside one sentence the twice used first
personal pronoun can both indicate the same person and also
have two different senses, it is enough for the moment to point out
that the same thing can happen even with ordinary proper names
and personal titles. The sentence 'after her wedding Miss Jones
will no longer be Miss Jones' does not say that the particular woman
will cease to be herself, or cease to be the sort of person she now is,
but only that she will have changed her name and status; and the
sentence 'after Napoleon returned to France, he was Napoleon no
longer' might mean only that his qualities of generalship had
altered, and is obviously analogous to the familiar ｅxpression 'I am
not myself. The statements 'I was just beginning to dream' and 'I
caught myself just beginning to dream' are statements of logically
different types, and it follows fram their being of different types
that the pronoun 1' is being used with a different logical force in
the two sentences.



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 191

In considering specifically human behaviour behaviour, that is,
which is unachieved by animals, infants and idiots we should for
several reasons notice the fact that some sorts of actions are in
one way or another concerned with, or are operations upon, other
actions. When one person retaliates upon another, scoffs at him,
replies to him or plays hide-and-seek with him, his actions have to
do, in one way or another, with certain actions on the part of the
other; in a sense to be specified later, the performance of the
former involves the thought of the latter. An action on the part
of one agent could not be one of spying or applauding, unless it
had to do with the actions of another agent; nor could I behave as
a customer, unless you or someone else behaved as a seller. one
man must give evidence if another is to cross-examine him; some
people must be on the stage, if others are to be dramatic critics.
It will sometimes be convenient to use the title 'higher order
actions' to denote those the descriptions of which involve the
oblique mention of other actions.

Some, but not all, higher order actions influence the agent dealt
with. If I merely comment on your actions behind your back,
my comment has to do with your actions in the sense that my
performance of my act involves the thought of your performance
of yours; but it does not modify your actions. This is especially
clear where the commentator or critic is operating after the death
of the agent on whose doings he passes his judgments. The historian
cannot change Napoleon's conduct of the battle of Waterloo. on
the other hand, the moment and the methods of my attacking do
affect the timing and the techniques of your defence, and what I
sell has a lot to do with what you buy.

Next, when I speak of the actions of one agent having to do
with those of another, I do not exclude those actions which are
performed under the mistaken impression that the other is doing
something which he is not really doing. The child who applauds
my skill in pretending to be asleep, though I have in fact really
fallen asleep, is doing something which, in the required sense,
presupposes that I am pretending ; and Robinson Crusoe really is
having conversationally to do with his parrot, if he believes, or half
believes, that the bird follows what he says, even if this belief is
false.

Finally, there are many kinds of dealings which are concerned



192 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

with subsequent, or even merely possible, or probable, actions. When
I bribe you to vote for me, your voting has not yet taken place and
may never take place. A reference to your vote enters into the
description of my bribe, but the reference must be of the pattern
'that you shall vote for me', and not of the pattern 'because you
did vote', or 'because I thought that you did vote for me'. In the
same way my talking to you presupposes only in this way your
understanding and agreeing with me, namely that I talk in order
that you may understand and agree with me.

So when John Doe counters, detects, reports, parodies, exploits,
applauds, mocks, abets, copies or interprets something done by
Richard Roe, any description of his action would have to embody
an oblique mention of the tiling done, or supposed to be done, by
Richard Roe ; whereas no such description of John Doe's behaviour
would have to enter into the description of that of Richard Roe.
To talk about John Doe's detection or mockery would involve,
but not be involved in, talking about what he had been detecting
or mocking, and this is what is meant by saying that John Doe's
action is of a higher order than that of Richard Roe. By 'higher'
I do not mean 'loftier'. Blackmailing a deserter is of a higher order
than his desertion, and advertising is of a higher order than selling.
Recollecting the doing of a kindness is not nobler than the doing of
it, but it is of a higher order.

It may be hygienic to remember that though the actions
of reporting or commenting on the actions of others behind
their backs is one species of higher order action, it has no special
priority over the other ways of dealing with these actions. Keeping
an academic tally of what Richard Roe does is only one way in
which John Doc takes steps about Richard Roe's steps. The
construction and public or private use of sentences in the indicative
is not, as intellectualists love to think, either John Doe's indispensable
first move or his Utopian last move. But this point requires us to
consider the sense in which performing a higher order action
'involves the thought of ' the corresponding lower order action.
It does not mean that if, for example, I am to mimic your gestures,
I must do two things, namely both verbally describe your gestures
to myself and produce gestures cohiplying with the terms employed
in that description. Telling myself about your gestures would in
itself be a higher order performance, and one which would equally



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 193

involve the thought of your gestures. The phrase 'involve the
thought of 'does not signify a causal transaction, or the concomitance
of a process of one sort with a process of another sort. As
commenting on your gestures, to be commenting, must itself be
thinking in a certain way of your gestures, so mimicking them, to
be mimicry and not mere replica, must itself be thinking in a
certain way of your gestures. But of course this is a strained sense of
'thinking' ; it does not denote any sort of pondering or entail the
enunciation of any propositions. It means that I must know what I
am doing and, since what I am doing is mimicking, I must know
the gestures you made and be using that knowledge, using it in
the mimicking way and not in the reporting or commenting way.

Higher order actions are not instinctive. Any one of them can
be done efficiently or inefficiently, appropriately or inappropriately,
intelligently or stupidly. Children have to learn how to perform
them. They have to learn how to resist, parry and retaliate, how to
forestall, give way and co-operate, how to exchange and haggle,
reward and punish. They have to learn to make jokes against ochers
and to see some jokes against themselves, to obey orders and give
them, make requests and grant them, receive marks and award them.
They have to learn to compose and follow reports, descriptions
and commentaries; to understand and to give criticisms, to accept,
reject, correct and compose verdicts, catechise and be catechised.
Not least (and also not soonest) they have to learn to keep to them-
selves things which they are inclined to divulge. Reticence is of a
higher order than unreticencc.

My object in drawing attention to these truisms of the playroom
and the schoolroom can now be seen. At a certain stage the child
discovers the trick of directing higher order acts upon his own
lower order acts. Having been separately victim and author of
jokes, coercions, catechisms, criticisms and mimicries in the
inter-personal dealings between others and himself, he finds out
how to play both roles at once. He has listened to stories before,
and he has told stories before, but now he tells stories to his own
enthralled ear. He has been detected in insincerities and he has
detected the insincerities of others, but now he applies the
techniques of detection to his oVn insincerities. He finds that he
can give orders to himself with such authority that he sometimes
obeys them, even when reluctant to do so. Self-suasion and self-



N



194 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

dissuasion become more or less effective. He learns in adolescence
to apply to his own behaviour most of those higher order
methods of dealing with the young that are regularly practised
by adults. He is then said to be growing up.

Moreover, just as he had earlier acquired not only the ability,
but also the inclination to direct higher order acts upon the acts
of others, so he now becomes prone, as well as competent, to do the
same upon his own behaviour; and just as he had earlier learned to
cope not only with the particular performances of others, but also
with their dispositions to conduct such performances, so he now
becomes in some degree both able and ready to take steps, theoretical
and practical, about his own habits, motives and abilities. Nor are
his own higher order performances, or his dispositions to perform
them, in any way exempted from just the same treatment. For any
performance of any order, it is always possible that there should be
performed a variety of higher order actions about it. If I ridicule
something done by you, or by myself, I can, but usually do not
go on to pass a verbal comment on my amusement, apologise
for it, or let others into the joke; and then I can go on to applaud
or reproach myself for doing so, and make a note in my diary that
I have done this.

It will be seen that what is here under discussion covers much of
both what is ordinarily called 'self-consciousness' and what is
ordinarily called 'self-control', though it covers much more than
them. A person can, indeed, and must act sometimes as reporter
upon his own doings and sometimes as prefect regulating his own
conduct, but these higher order self-dealings are only two out of
innumerable brands, just as the corresponding inter-personal dealings
arc only two out of innumerable brands.

Nor must it be supposed that the reports which a person makes
to himself upon his own doings, or the regimes which he imposes
upon his own conduct are inevitably free from bias or carelessness.
My reports on myself are subject to the same kinds of defects as
are my reports on you, and the admonitions, corrections and
injunctions which I impose on myself may show me to be as
ineffectual or ill-advised as does my disciplining of others.
Self-consciousness, if the word is to be used at all, must not
be described on the hallowed para-optical model, as a torch
that illuminates itself by beams of its own light reflected from



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 195

a mirror in its own insides. on the contrary it is simply a
special case of an ordinary more or less efficient handling of a less
or more honest and intelligent witness. Similarly, self-control is
not to be likened to the management of a partially disciplined
subordinate by a superior of perfect wisdom and authority; it is
simply a special case of the management of an ordinary person by
an ordinary person, namely where John Doe, say, is taking both
parts. The truth is not that there occur some higher order acts
which are above criticism, but that any higher order act that occurs
can itself be criticised; not that something unimprovable does take
place, but that nothing takes place which is not improvable; not
that any operation is of the highest order, but that for any operation
of any order there can be operations of a higher order.

(7) The Systematic Elusiveness of I'.

We are now in a position to account for the systematic elusiveness
of the notion of T, and the partial non-parallelism between it and

the notion of Vou' or 'he'. To concern oneself about oneself in

/

any way, theoretical or practical, is to perform a higher order act,
just as it is to concern oneself about anybody else. To try, for
example, to describe what one has just done, or is now doing, is to
comment upon a step which is not itself, save per accidens, one of
commenting. But the operation which is the commenting is not,
and cannot be, the step on which that commentary is being made.
Nor can an act of ridiculing be its own butt. A higher order action
cannot be the action upon which it is performed. So my commentary
on my performances must always be silent about one performance,
namely itself, and this performance can be the target only of another
commentary. Self-commentary, self-ridicule and self-admonition are
logically condemned to eternal penultimacy. Yet nothing that is left
out of any particular commentary or admonition is privileged
thereby to escape comment or admonition for ever. on the contrary
it may be the target of the very next comment or rebuke.

The point may be illustrated in this way. A singing-master
might criticise the accents or notes of a pupil by mimicking with
exaggerations each word that the pupil sang; and if the pupil sang
slowly enough, the master coulxl parody each word sung by the
pupil before the next came to be uttered. But then, in a mood of
humility, the singing-master tries to criticise his own singing in the



196 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

same way, and more than that to mimic with exaggerations each
word that he utters, including those that he utters in self-parody.
It is at once clear, first, that he can never get beyond the very earliest
word of his song and, second, that at any given moment he has
uttered one noise which has yet to be mimicked and it makes no
difference how rapidly he chases his notes with mimicries of them.
He can, in principle, never catch more than the coat-tails of the
object of his pursuit, since a word cannot be a parody of itself. None
the less, there is no word that he sings which remains unparodied;
he is always a day late for the fair, but every day he reaches the place
of yesterday's fair. He never succeeds in jumping on to the shadow
of his own head, yet he is never more than one jump behind.

An ordinary reviewer may review a book, while a second order
reviewer criticises reviews of the book. But the second order
review is not a criticism of itself. It can only be criticised in a
further third order review. Given complete editorial patience, any
review of any order could be published, though at no stage would
all the reviews have received critical notices. Nor can every act
of a diarist be the topic of a record in his diary; for the last entry
made in his diary still demands that the making of it should in its
turn be chronicled.

This, I think, explains the feeling that my last year's self, or my
yesterday's self, could in principle be exhaustively described and
accounted for, and that your past or present self could be exhaustively
described and accounted for by me, but that my today's self
perpetually slips out of any hold of it that I try to take. It also
explains the apparent non-parallelism between the notion of T
and that of 'you', without construing the elusive residuum as any
kind of ultimate mystery.

There is another thing which it explains. When people consider
the problems of the Freedom of the Will and try to imagine their
own careers as analogous to those of clocks or water-courses, they
tend to boggle at the idea that their own immediate future is already
unalterably fixed and predictable. It seems absurd to suppose that
what I am just about to think, feel or do is already preappointed,
though people are apt to find no such absurdity in the supposition
that the futures of other people af e so preappointed. The so-called
'feeling of spontaneity* is closely connected with this inability to
imagine that what I am going to think or do can already be



SELF-KNOWLEDGE 197

anticipated. on the other hand, when I consider what I thought
and did yesterday, there seems to be no absurdity in supposing that
that could have been forecast, before I did it. It is only while I am
actually trying to predict my own next move that the task feels
like that of a swimmer trying to overtake the waves that he sends
ahead of himself.

The solution is as before. A prediction of a deed or a thought
is a higher order operation, the performance of which cannot be
among the things considered in making the prediction. Yet as the
state of mind in which I am just before I do something may make
some difference to what I do, it follows that I must overlook at least
one of the data relevant to my prediction. Similarly, I can give you
the fullest possible advice what to do, but I must omit one piece of
counsel, since I cannot in the same breath advise you how to take
that advice. There is therefore no paradox in saying that while
normally I am not at all surprised to find myself doing or thinking
what I do, yet when I try most carefully to anticipate what I shall
do or think, then the outcome is likely to falsify my expectation.
My process of pre-envisaging may divert the course of my ensuing
behaviour in a direction and degree of which my prognosis cannot
take account. one thing that I cannot prepare myself for is the
next thought that I am going to think.

The fact that my immediate future is in this way systematically
elusive to me has, of course, no tendency to prove that my career is
in principle unpredictable to prophets other than myself, or even
that it is inexplicable to myself after the heat of the action. I can
point to any other thing with my index-finger, and other people
can point at this finger. But it cannot be the object at which it itself is
pointing. Nor can a missile be its own target, though anything else
may be thrown at it.

This general conclusion that any performance can be the concern
of a higher order performance, but cannot be the concern of itself,
is connected with what was said earlier about the special functioning
of index words, such as 'now', 'you' and 'I*. An T sentence
indicates whom in particular it is about by being itself uttered or
written by someone in particular. T indicates the person who
utters it. So, when a person utteis an T sentence, his utterance of it
may be part of a higher order performance, namely one, perhaps of
self-reporting, self-exhortation or self-commiseration, and this



198 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

performance itself is not dealt with in the operation which it itself
is. Even if the person is, for special speculative purposes, momen-
tarily concentrating on the Problem of the Self, he has failed and
knows that he has failed to catch more than the flying coat-tails of
that which he was pursuing. His quarry was the hunter.

To conclude, there is nothing mysterious or occult about the
range of higher order acts and attitudes, which are apt to be
inadequately covered by the umbrella-title 'self-consciousness'.
They are the same in kind as the higher order acts and attitudes
exhibited in the dealings of people with one other. Indeed the
former are only a special application of the latter and are learned
first from them. If I perform the third order operation of com-
menting on a second order act of laughing at myself for a piece of
manual awkwardness, I shall indeed use the first personal pronoun
in two different ways. I say to myself, or to the company, 'I was
laughing at myself for being butter-fingered'. But so far from this
showing that there are two 'Mes' in my skin, not to speak, yet, of
the third one which is still commenting on them, it shows only
that I am applying the public two-pronoun idiom in which we talk
of her laughing at him; and I am applying this linguistic idiom,
because I am applying the method of inter-personal transaction
which the idiom is ordinarily employed to describe.

Before concluding this chapter, it is worth mentioning that
there is one influential difference between the first personal
pronoun and all the rest. T, in my use of it, always indicates me
and only indicates me. 'You', 'she' and 'they' indicate different
people at different times. 'I' is like my own shadow; I can never
get away from it, as I can get away from your shadow. There is no
mystery about this constancy, but I mention it because it seems
to endow T with a mystifying uniqueness and adhesiveness.
'Now' has something of the same besetting feeling.



CHAPTER VII

SENSATION AND OBSERVATION

(i) Foreword.

ONE of the central negative motives of this book is to show that
'mental' does not denote a status, such that one can sensibly ask
of a given thing or event whether it is mental or physical, 'in the
mind' or 'in the outside world'. To talk of a person's mind is not
to talk of a repository which is permitted to house objects that
something called 'the physical world' is forbidden to house; it is
to talk of the person's abilities, liabilities and inclinations to do
and undergo certain sorts of things, and of the doing and under-
going of these things in the ordinary world. Indeed, it makes no
sense to speak as if there could be two or eleven worlds. Nothing
but confusion is achieved by labelling worlds after particular
avocations. Even the solemn phrase 'the physical world' is as
philosophically pointless as would be the phrase 'the numismatic
world', 'the haberdashery world', or 'the botanical world/

But it will be urged in defence of the doctrine that 'mental'
does denote a status that a special footing must be provided for
sensations, feelings and images. The laboratory sciences provide
descriptions and correlations of various kinds of things and pro-
cesses, but our impressions and ideas arc unmentioned in these
descriptions. They must therefore belong somewhere else. And
as it is patent that the occurrence of a sensation, for instance, is a
fact about the person who feels the pain or suffers the dazzle, the
sensation must be in that person. But this is a special sense of 'in',
since the surgeon will not find it under the person's epidermis.
So the sensation must be in the person's mind.

Moreover sensations, feelings and images are things the owner
of which must be conscious gf them. Whatever else may be
contained in his stream of consciousness, at least his sensations,
feelings and images are parts of that stream. They help to constitute,

199



200 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

if they do not completely constitute, the stuff of which minds are
composed.

Champions of this argument tend to espouse it with special
confidence on behalf of images, such as what *I see in my mind's
eye* and what I have 'running in my head'. They feel certain
qualms in suggesting too radical a divorce between sensations and
conditions of the body. Stomach-aches, tickles and singings in the
ears have physiological attachments which threaten to sully the
purity of the brook of mental experiences. But the views which I
see, even when my eyes are shut, and the music and the voices that
I can hear, even when all is quiet, qualify admirably for membership
of the kingdom of the mind. I can, within limits, summon, dismiss
and modify them at will and the location, position and condition of
my body do not appear to be in any correlation with their
occurrences or properties.

This belief in the mental status of images carries with it a
palatable corollary. When a person has been thinking to himself,
retrospection commonly shows him that at least a part of what has
been going on has been a sequence of words heard in his head, as if
spoken by himself. So the venerable doctrine that discoursing to one-
self under one's breath is the proprietary business of minds reinforces,
and is reinforced by, the doctrine that the apparatus of pure thinking
does not belong to the gross world of physical noises, but consists
instead of the more ethereal stuff of which dreams are made.

However, before we can discuss images, there is a lot that must
be said about sensations, and this chapter is concerned entirely with
the concepts of sensation and observation. The concept of imaging
will be discussed in the next chapter.

For reasons developed in its last section, I am not satisfied with
this chapter. I have fallen in with the official story that perceiving
involves having sensations. But this is a sophisticated use of 'sensa-
tion'. It is not the way in which we ordinarily use the noun 'sensa-
tion', or the verb 'to feel'. We ordinarily use these words for a special
family of perceptions, namely, tactual and kinaesthetic perceptions
and perceptions of temperatures, as well as for localisable pains and
discomforts. Seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling do not involve
sensations, in this sense of the word, any more than seeing involves
hearing, or than feeling a cold draught involves tasting anything. In
its sophisticated use, 'sensation' seems to be a semi-physiological,



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 201

semi-psychological term, the employment of which is allied with
certain pseudo-scientific, Cartesian theories. This concept does not
occur in what novelists, biographers, diarists or nursemaids say
about people, or in what doctors, dentists or oculists say to their
patients.

In its familiar, unsophisticated use, 'sensation' does not stand for
an ingredient in perceptions, but for a kind of perception. But,
neither in its sophisticated use does it signify a notion contained in
the notion of perception. People knew how to talk about seeing,
hearing and feeling things, before they had mastered any physiological
or psychological hypotheses, or heard of any theoretical difficulties
about the communications between Minds and their Bodies.

I do not know the right idioms in which to discuss these matters,
but I hope that my discussion of them in the official idioms may
have at least some internal Fifth Column efficacy.

(2) Sensations.

For certain purposes it is convenient to divide sensations into
those which enter ex officio into sense perception, and those which
do not; that is, roughly, into those which are connected with the
special organs of sense, namely the eyes, ears, tongue, nose and skin,
and those which are connected with the other sensitive but non-
sensory organs of the body. But this division is somewhat arbitrary.
When the eye is dazzled, and when the nose stings, we incline to
rank these sensations with the organic sensations of aches and
prickings, and, conversely, when we have certain sensations in the
throat or stomach, we are apt to say that we feel the fish-bone or the
suet-pudding. A specific muscular sensation might be described
indifferently as a sensation of fatigue, or as a feeling of the weight or
resistance of the log, and a listener might report to one companion
that he heard a very distant train, while he reported to the other
that he could barely distinguish the noise from the normal throbbing
or singing in his ears.

For obvious reasons we have constantly to refer to the sensations
which are connected with the organs of sense, for we are constantly
having to mention what we see and do not see, what we hear,
smell, taste and feel. But we do not talk about these sensations
'neat'; we ordinarily mention them only in reference to the
things or events which we are observing or trying or claiming



202 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

to observe. People speak of having a glimpse, but only in such
contexts as having a glimpse of a robin, or as having a glimpse
of something moving. Nor do they break out of this habit,
when asked to describe how something looked, or sounded,
or tasted; they will normally say that it looked like a haystack, that
it sounded like something humming, or that it tasted as if it had
pepper in it.

This procedure of describing sensations by referring in a certain
way to common objects like haystacks, things that hum, and pepper
is of great theoretical importance. A haystack, for example, is
something about the description of which everyone could
agree. A haystack is something which any observers could
observe, and we should expect their accounts of it to tally
with one another, or at least to be capable of correction until they
did tally. Its position, shape, size, weight, date of construction,
composition and function are facts which anyone could establish
by ordinary methods of observation and inquiry. But more than
this. These methods would also establish how the haystack would
look, feel and smell to ordinary observers in ordinary conditions of
observation. When I say that something looks like a haystack, (though
it may actually be a blanket on a clothes-line), I am describing how
it looks in terms of what anyone might expect a haystack to look
like, when observed from a suitable angle, in a suitable light and against
a suitable background. I am, that is, comparing how the blanket
looks to me here and now, not with some other particular glimpse
had by me, or had by some other particular person in a particular
situation, but with a type of glimpse such as any ordinary observers
could expect to get in situations of certain sorts, namely in
situations where they are in the proximity of haystacks in
daylight.

Similarly, to say that something tastes peppery is to say that it
tastes to me now as any peppered viands would taste to anybody
with a normal palate. It has been suggested that I can never know
that pepper-grains do give different people similar sensations,
but for the present it is enough to point out that our ordinary ways
of imparting information about our own sensations consist in
making certain sorts of references to what we think could be
established in anyone's observations of common objects. We
describe what is personal to ourselves in neutral or impersonal terms.



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 203

Indeed, our descriptions would convey nothing unless couched in
such terms. These are, after all, the terms which we learned by being
taught them by others. We do not and cannot describe haystacks
in terms of this or that set of sensations. We describe our sensations
by certain sorts of references to observers and things like haystacks.

We follow the same practice in describing organic sensations.
When a sufferer describes a pain as a stabbing, a grinding or a
burning pain, though he does not necessarily think that his pain
is given to him by a stiletto, a drill or an ember, still he says what
sort of a pain it is by likening it to the sort of pain that would be
given to anyone by such instruments. The same account holds of
such descriptions as 'there is a singing in my ears', 'my blood ran
cold' and 'I saw stars'. Even to say that one's view is hazy is to liken
one's view to the way that common objects look to any observer
who is seeing them through an atmospheric haze.

The present point of mentioning these ways of describing our
sensations is to show how and why there exists a linguistic difficulty
in discussing the logic of concepts of sensation. We do not
employ a 'neat' sensation vocabulary. We describe particular
sensations by referring to how common objects regularly look,
sound and feel to any normal person.

Epistemologists are fond of using words like 'pains', 'itches',
'stabs', 'glows' and 'dazzles' as if they were 'neat' sensation names.
But this practice is doubly misleading. Not only do most of
these words draw their significance from situations involving
common objects like fleas, daggers and radiators, but they also
connote that the person who has the sensations likes or dislikes, or
might well like or dislike, having them. A pain in my knee is a
sensation that I mind having; so 'unnoticed pain' is an absurd
ｅxpression, where 'unnoticed sensation' has no absurdity.

This point can serve to introduce a conceptual distinction which
will shortly turn out to be of cardinal importance, namely, that be-
tween having a sensation and observing. When a person is said to be
watching, scanning or looking at something, listening to it or
savouring it, a part, but only a part, of what is meant is that he is
having visual, auditory or gustatory sensations. But to be observing
something the observer must also it least be trying to find something
out. His scrutiny is accordingly describablc as careful or careless,
cursory or sustained, methodical or haphazard, accurate or



204 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

inaccurate, expert or amateurish. Observing is a task which can be
one of some arduousness, and we can be more or less successful
in it and more or less good at it. But none of these ways of
characterising the exercises of one's powers of observation can be
applied to the having of visual, auditory or gustatory sensations.
One can listen carefully, but not have a singing in one's ears
carefully; one can look systematically, but one cannot have a
dazzle-sensation systematically; one can try to discriminate flavours,
but one cannot try to have sensations of taste. Again we observe, very
often, from inquisitiveness or obedience, but we do not have
tickles from this or any other motive. We observe on purpose, but
we do not have sensations on purpose, though we can induce them
on purpose. We can make mistakes of observation, but it is nonsense
to speak of cither making or avoiding mistakes in sensation; sensa-
tions can be neither correct nor incorrect, veridical nor non-veridical.
They are neither apprehensions nor misapprehensions. Observing
is finding out, or trying to find out, something, but having a sensation
is neither finding out, nor trying to find out, nor failing to find out,
anything.

This set of contrasts enables us to say that though mention of
the degree to which, the ways in which and the objects of which a
person is observant or unobservant is a part of the description of
his wits and character, mention of his sensory capacities and actual
sensations is no part of that description. To use an objectionable
phrase, there is nothing 'mental' about sensations. Deafness is not a
species of stupidity, nor is a squint any sort of turpitude; the
retriever's keenness of scent does not prove him intelligent; and
we do not try to train or shame children out of colour-blindness
or think of them as mentally defective. It is not for the moralist
or the alienist, but for the oculist, to diagnose and prescribe for
imperfect vision. Having a sensation is not an exercise of a quality
of intellect or character. Hence we are not too proud to concede
sensations to reptiles.

Whatever series of sensations an intelligent person may have,
it is always conceivable that a merely sentient creature might have
had a precisely similar series; and if by 'stream of consciousness'
were meant 'series of sensations',*then from a mere inventory of the
contents of such a stream there would be no possibility of deciding
whether the creature that had these sensations was an animal or a



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 205

human being; an idiot, a lunatic or a sane man; much less whether
he was an ambitious and argumentative philologist or a slow-witted
but industrious magistrates' clerk.

However, these considerations will not satisfy the theorists who
want to make the stream of a person's sensations, feelings and
images the stuff of his mind, and thus to back up the dogma that
minds are special-status things composed of a special stuff. They
will urge, quite correctly, that though the oculist and the dentist
can modify the patient's sensations by applying chemical or
mechanical treatments to his bodily organs, yet they are debarred
from observing the sensations themselves. They may observe what
is physiologically amiss with the patient's eyes and gums, but they
must rely on the patient's testimony for knowledge of what he sees
and feels. only the wearer knows where the shoe pinches. From
this it is argued, plausibly but fallaciously, that there does indeed
exist the hallowed antithesis between the public, physical world
and the private, mental world, between the things and events
which anyone may witness and the things or events which only their
possessor may witness. Planets, microbes, nerves and eardrums are
publicly observable things in the outside world; sensations, feelings
and images are privately observable constituents of our several
mental worlds.

I want to show that this antithesis is spurious. It is true that the
cobbler cannot witness the tweaks that I feel when the shoe pinches.
But it is false that I witness them. The reason why my tweaks cannot
be witnessed by him is not that some Iron Curtain prevents them
from being witnessed by anyone save myself, but that they are not
the sorts of things of which it makes sense to say that they are
witnessed or unwitnessed at all, even by me. I feel or have the tweaks,
but I do not discover or peer at them; they are not things that I
find out about by watching them, listening to them, or savouring
them. In the sense in which a person may be said to have had a
robin under observation, it would be nonsense to say that he has had
a twinge under observation. There may be one or several witnesses
of a road-accident; there cannot be several witnesses, or even one
witness, of a qualm.

We know what it is like to haVe and to need observational aids
like telescopes, stethoscopes and torches for the observation of
planets, heart-beats and moths, but we cannot think what it would



206 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

be like to apply such instruments to our sensations. Similarly,
though we know well what sorts of handicaps impair or prevent our
observation of common objects, namely handicaps like fogs, tingling
fingers and singings in the ears, we cannot think of analogous
impediments getting between us and such sensations as tingles and
singings in the ears.

In saying that sensations are not the sorts of things that can be
observed, I do not mean that they are unobservable in the way in
which infra-microscopic bacteria, flying bullets, or the mountains
on the other side of the moon, are unobservable, or that they are
unobservable in the way in which the planets are unobservable to
the blind. I mean something like this. Every word that can be written
down, except words of one letter, has a spelling; some words are
more difficult to spell than others and some words have several
different spellings. Yet if we are asked how the letters of the alphabet
are spelled, we have to answer that they cannot be spelled at all. But
this 'cannot' does not mean that the task is one of insuperable
difficulty, but only that the question, 'Of what letters arranged in
what order does a given letter consist?' is an improper question. As
letters are neither easy to spell, nor insuperably hard to spell, so, I
argue, sensations are neither observable nor unobservable. Corres-
pondingly, however, just as the fact that we may not even ask how
a letter is spelled by no means precludes us from knowing perfectly
well how letters are written, so the fact that we may not talk of the
observation of sensations by no means precludes us from talking
of the notice or heed that people can pay to their sensations, or of
the avowals and reports that they can make of the sensations of
which they have taken notice. Headaches cannot be witnessed,
but they can be noticed, and while it is improper to advise a
person not to peep at his tickle, it is quite proper to advise him
not to pay any heed to it.

We have seen that observing entails having sensations; a man
could not be described as watching a robin who had not got a
single glimpse of it, or as smelling a cheese who had not caught a
whiff. (I am pretending, what is not true, that words like 'glimpse'
and 'whiff' stand for sensations. The fact that a glimpse can be
characterised as 'clear' or 'unclear* shows that it is an observation-
word and not a 'neat' sensation-word.) An object of observation,
like a robin, or a cheese, must therefore be the sort of thing of which



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 207

it is possible for observers to catch glimpses, or to get whiffs. But
many theorists ask us to look away from such common objects as
robins and cheeses towards such things as glimpses and whiffs, and
we arc asked to declare that I, though nobody else, can observe the
glimpses and the whiffs that I get, and observe them in the same
sense of 'observe' as that in which anyone can observe the robin or
the cheese. But to grant this would be to grant that if, when I catch a
glimpse of a robin, I can observe that glimpse, then, in doing so,
I must get something like a glimpse or a whiff of that glimpse of
the robin. If sensations are proper objects of observation, then
observing them must carry with it the having of sensations of
those sensations analogous to the glimpses of the robin without
which I could not be watching the robin. And this is clearly absurd.
There is nothing answering to the phrases 'a glimpse of a glimpse'
or 'a whiff of a pain* or 'the sound of a tweak' or 'the tingle of a
tingle', and if there was anything to correspond, the series would
go on for ever.

Again, when a person has been watching a horse-race, it is
proper to ask whether he had a good or a bad view of it, whether
he watched it carefully or carelessly and whether he tried to see
as much of it as he could. So, if it was correct to say that a person
observes his sensations, it would be proper to ask whether his
inspection of a tickle had been hampered or unhampered, close or
casual and whether he could have discerned more of it, if he had
tried. No one ever asks such questions, any more than anyone asks
how the first letter in 'London' is spelled. There are no such
questions to ask. This point is partially obscured by the fact that
the word 'observe', though generally used to cover such processes
as watching, listening and savouring, or else such achievements as
descrying and detecting, is sometimes used as a synonym of 'pay
heed to' and 'notice'. Watching and descrying do involve paying
heed, but paying heed does not involve watching.

It follows from this that it was wrong from the start to contrast
the common objects of anyone's observation, like robins and cheeses,
with the supposed peculiar objects of my privileged observation,
namely my sensations, since sensations are not objects of observation
at all. We do not, consequently, Have to rig up one theatre, called
'the outside world', to house the common objects of anyone's
observation, and another, called 'the mind', to house the objects of



208 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

some monopoly observations. The antithesis between 'public' and
'private' was in part a misconstruction of the antithesis between
objects which can be looked at, handled and tasted, on the one
hand, and sensations which are had but not looked at, handled or
tasted, on the other. It is true and even tautologous that the cobbler
cannot feel the shoe pinching me, unless the cobbler is myself,
but this is not because he is excluded from a peep-show open only
to me, but because it would make no sense to say that he was in
my pain, and no sense, therefore, to say that he was noticing the
tweak that I was having.

Further consequences follow. The properties which we ascertain
by observation, or not without observation, to characterise the
common objects of anyone's observation cannot be significantly
ascribed to, or denied of, sensations. Sensations do not have sizes,
shapes, positions, temperatures, colours or smells. In the sense in
which there is always an answer to the question, 'Where is ?' or
'Where was the robin?', there is no answer to the question, 'Where
is ?' or 'Where was your glimpse of the robin ?' There is indeed a
sense in which a tickle is quite properly said to be 'in my foot', or a
stinging 'in my nose', but this is a different sense from that in which
bones are in my foot, or pepper-grains are in my nose. So in the
muddled sense of 'world' in which people say that 'the outside world'
or 'the public world' contains robins and cheeses, the locations and
connections of which in that world can be found out, there is not
another world, or set of worlds, in which the locations and
connections of sensations can be found out; nor docs the reputed
problem exist of finding out what are the connections between the
occupants of the public world and those of any such private
worlds. Further, while one common object, like a needle, can
be inside or outside another, like a haystack, there is no
corresponding antithesis of 'inside' to 'outside' applying to
sensations. My tweak is not hidden from the cobbler because it is
inside me, either as being literally inside my skin, or as being,
metaphorically, in a place to which he has no access. on the
contrary, it cannot be described, as needles can, as being either
internal or external to a common object like myself, nor as being
either hidden or unhidden. Nof can letters be classified as either
nouns or verbs or adjectives, or described as either obeying or
disobeying the rules of English syntax. It is, of course, true and



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 209

important that I am the only person who can give a first-hand
account of the tweaks given me by my ill-fitting shoe, and an oculist
who cannot speak my language is without his best source of
information about my visual sensations. But the fact that I alone
can give first-hand accounts of my sensations does not entail that
I have, what others lack, the opportunity of observing those
sensations.

Two further connected points must be made. First, there is a
philosophically unexciting though important sense of 'private' in
which of course my sensations are private or proprietary to me.
Namely, just as you cannot, in logic, hold my catches, win my
races, eat my meals, frown my frowns, or dream my dreams, so you
cannot have my twinges, or my after-images. Nor can Venus have
Neptune's satellites, or Poland have Bulgaria's history. This is
simply a part of the logical force of those sentences in which the
accusative to a transitive verb is a cognate accusative. Such transitive
verbs do not signify relations. 'I held my catch' does not assert a
relation between me and a catch, such that that catch might
conceivably have been in that relation to you instead of to me. It
is not like 'I stopped my bicycle'; you might well have antici-
pated me in stopping my bicycle.

Next, in saying that 'I had a twinge' does not assert a relation,
as 'I had a hat' does, I am saying that the phrase 'my twinge' does
not stand for any sort of a thing or 'term'. It does not even stand
for an episode, though 'I had a twinge' asserts that an episode took
place. This is part of the reason why it is nonsense to speak of
observing, inspecting, witnessing or scrutinising sensations, since the
objects proper to such verbs are things and episodes.

Yet when we theorise about sensations, we are forcibly tempted
to talk of them as if they were elusive things or episodes. We
inadvertently work on such models as that of a solitary man inside
his tent who sees spots and patches of light and feels indentations in
the inside of the canvas. He then, perhaps, wishes he could see
and feel the torches and boots that made those patches of light and
indentations in the canvas. But, alas, he can never see those torches,
or feel those boots, as the canvas is always in the way. Now
illuminated and indented bits of canvas are things; and the momen-
tary illuminations and indentations of the canvas are episodes. So they
are the sorts of objects which it is proper to describe as being



210 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

watched, scrutinised and detected by a man inside his tent; and it is
also proper to speak of them being there, but being unwatched and
undetected. Moreover a man who can watch or detect illuminated
or indented canvas could watch and detect torches and boots, if
they were not screened from him. The situation of a man having
sensations is, therefore, quite out of analogy with that of the man
in the tent. Having sensations is not watching or detecting objects;
and watching and detecting things and episodes is not having them
in the sense in which one has sensations.

(3) The Sense Datum Theory.

It is apposite at this point to comment on a theory sometimes
known as the 'Sense Datum Theory'. This theory is primarily an
attempt to elucidate the concepts of sense perception, a part of
which task consists in elucidating the notions of sensations of sight,
touch, hearing, smelling and tasting.

Our everyday verbs like 'see', 'hear' and 'taste' are not used to
designate sensations 'neat', for we speak of seeing horse-races,
hearing trains and tasting vintage wines; and horse-races, trains
and wines are not sensations. Horse-races do not stop, when I shut
my eyes, and vintage wines are*not obliterated, when I have catarrh.
We therefore seem to need ways of talking about what does stop,
when I shut my eyes, and what is obliterated, when I have catarrh,
ways which shall not depend on mentions of common events or
liquids. An apparently suitable set of nouns is easily found, since it is
quite idiomatic to say that my view of the race is interrupted, when I
shut my eyes, that the look or appearance of the horses is modified
when tears flow, that the flavour of the wine is obliterated by
catarrh, and that the noise of the train is dulled, when I stop my ears.
We can, it is suggested, talk about sensations 'neat' by talking
about 'looks', 'appearances', 'sounds', 'flavours', 'whiffs" 'tingles',
'glimpses' and so oA It is suggested, too, that it is necessary to adopt
some such idioms in order to be able to distinguish the contributions
made to our observation of common objects by our sensations from
those made to it by tuition, inference, memory, conjecture, habit,
imagination and association.

^/ According to the theory, theti, having a visual sensation can
be described as getting a momentary look, or visual appearance, of
something, and having an olfactory sensation as getting a momentary



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 211

whiff of something. But what is it to get a momentary look, or a
momentary whiff? And what sort of an object is the look, or the
whiff, which is got^ First of all, the look of a horse-race is not a
sporting event on a racecourse. In the way in which everyone can
witness the horse-race/ iMis not possible for everyone to witness
the momentary look that I get of thatace. You cannot get the look
that I get, any more than you can suffer the~tweak that I suffer.
A sense datum, i.e. a momentary look, whiff, tingle or sound, is
^proprietary to one percipient; Next, (the glimpse of a horse-race
is described as a momentary patchwork of colour expanses in
somebody's field of view. But this has to be qualified by the
explanation that it is a patchwork of colour expanses only in a
special sense. Ordinarily when people talk of patchworks of
colours, they are referring to common objects of anyone's observa-
tion such as quilts, tapestries, oil paintings* stage scenery and
mildewed plaster, that is, to flattish surfaces of things in front of
their noses. But the visual appearances or looks of things, which are
described as colour patches momentarily occupying particular
fields of view, are not to be thought of as surfaces of flattish common
objects; they are simply expanses of coloufMiot expanses of coloured
canvas or plaster. They occupy their owner's private visual space,
though he is, of course, subject to the permanent temptation to
re-attach them somehow to the surfaces of common objects in
ordinary space. ^

^Jptfially, though holders of the Sense Datum Theory agree that
the looks, smells and tingles that Fget are inaccessible to anyone
else, they are not agreed that it follows from this that they are
mental in status or that they exist 'in my mind'. They seem to owe
their genesis to the physical and physiological conditions, but not
necessarily also to the psychological conditions, of their recipient.

Having, as they think, shown that there exist such momentary
and proprietary objects as looks, whiffs, sounds and the rest, holders
of the theory next face the question, fWhat is it for their recipient to
get or have them ?* And their answer to this question is simple. In
some statements of the theory, he is said to perceive or observe
them, in a sense of 'perceive' and 'observe' which makes it proper
to say that he sees colour patchesf hears sounds, smells whiffs, tastes
flavours and feels tickles. Indeed jJs often thought not only
allowable, but illuminating, to say that people do not really see



212 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

horse-races, or taste wines; they really only see colour patches and
taste flavours; >r else, as a concession to ordinary habits of speech,
it is admitte? that there is indeed a vulgar sense of 'see' and 'taste* in
which people may say that they see races and taste wines, but that for
theoretical purposes we should use these verbs in a different and
more refined sense, saying instead that we see colour patches and
taste flavours.

Recently, however, the fashion has grown up of using a new
set of verbs vSome holders of the theory now prefer to say that we
intuit colour patches, we have direct awareness of smells, we have
immediate acquaintanceship with noises, we are in direct cognitive
relations with tickles, or, generically, we sense sense data. But
what is the cash value of these formidable locutions? Their cash
value is this. There are some verbs, like 'guess', 'discover', 'conclude',
'know', 'believe' and 'wonder', which are used only with such
complements as '. . . that tomorrow is Sunday', or '. . . whether this
is red ink'. There are other verbs, like 'peep at', 'listen to', 'observe',
'espy' and 'come across', the proper complements of which are
such ｅxpressions as '. . . that robin', '. . . the roll of drums' and
'. . . John Doe'.Tf he Sense Datum Theory, according to which
looks, whiffs and so on are particular objects or events, has therefore
to employ cognition verbs of the second sort in order to construe
such verbs as 'get' and 'have' in such ｅxpressions as 'get a glimpse'
or 'have a tickle'] It has borrowed the ordinary force of verbs like
'observe', 'scan* and 'savour' for its solemnised verbs 'intuit',
'cognise' and 'sense'. The difference is that while laymen speak of
observing a robin and scanning a page of The Times, this theory
speaks instead of intuiting colour patches and having immediate
acquaintanceship with smells.

It is not claimed that this account of what it is to have, e.g. a
visual sensation namely that it is to intuit or espy a proprietary
patchwork of colours by itself solves the whole problem of our
knowledge of common objects. Disputes continue about the
linkages obtaining between horse-races, which we do not 'strictly'
or 'directly' see, and the looks of them, which we do 'strictly' or
'directly' see, but which are not on racecourses. Buj^tfye holders
of the theory hope that their elucidation of what sensing is will lead
to the elucidation of what watchine^ horse-race is. )

In particular it is claimed tha( the theory resolves paradoxes



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 213

in the description of illusions, w hen the squinter reports that he
sees two candles, where there is only one, and when the dipsomaniac
says -that he sees a snake, where no snake is, their reports can now
be reconstrued in the new idiom. The squinter can now be said
really to be seeing two 'candle-looks', and the dipsomaniac really
does see one 'snake-appearance'. Their only error, if any, lies in
their supposing that there also exist two physical candles, or one
physical snake. Again, when a person, confronted by a round plate
tilted away from him, says that he sees an elliptical object, he is
in error if he supposes that the kitchen contains an elliptical piece x
of crockery, but he is quite correct in saying that he finds some-
thing elliptical; for there really is an elliptical patch of white in his
field of view, and he really does descry or 'intuit' it there. To argue
from what he finds in his field of view to what exists in the kitchen
is always hazardous, and in this instance it is wrong) But what he
finds in his field of view really is there and really is elliptical. ^
I shall try to prove that this whole theory rests upon a logical
howler, the howler, namely, of assimilating the concept of sensation
to the concept of observation; and I shall try to show that this
assimilation makes nonsense simultaneously of the concept of sensa-
tion and of the concept of observation. The theory says that
when a person has a visual sensation, on the occasion, for example,
of getting a glimpse of a horse-race, his having this sensation
consists in his finding or intuiting a sensum, namely a patchwork of
colours. ^Tbis means that having a glimpse of a horse-race is
explained in terms of fiis Faving a glimpse of something else, the
patchwork of colour^ But if having a glimpse of a horse-race"
entails having at least one sensation, then having a glimpse
of colour patches must again involve having at least one
appropriate sensation, which in its turn must be analysed into
the sensing of yet an earlier sensum, and so on for ever. At each
move having a sensation is construed as a sort of espying of a
particular something, often gravely called 'a sensible object', and
at each move this espying must involve the having of a sensation.
The use of awe-inspiring words like 'intuit' in no way exempts us
from having to say thafcjfor a person to find, watch, listen to, peep
at or savour something he musl be sensitively affected; and to be
sensitively affected is to have at least one sensation) So whether, as
we ordinarily think, we see horse-races or whether, as we are



214 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

instructed to think, we intuit colour patches, the descryijig of
whatever we descry involves our having sensations. And paving
sensations is not by itself descrying, any more than bricks are houses,
or letters are words.)

As has been shown earlier, ( there is an important logical
connection between the concept or$ensation and that oobscrving
or perceiving, a connection which by itself entails that they are
concepts of different kinds. (There is^ a contradiction in saying that
someone is watching or peeping at something, but not getting even
one glimpse of it; or in saying that someone is listening to something,
though he gets no auditory sensation^; Having at least one sensation
is part of the force of 'perceiving', 'overhearing', 'savouring' and
jthe rest It follows that having a sensation cannot itself be a species
of perceiving, finding or espying. If all clothes are concatenations
of stitches, absurdity results from saying that all stitches are
themselves very tiny clothes.

It has already been remarked earlier in this chapter that there
are several salient^ifferences between the concepts of sensations and
those of observation, scrutinising, detecting and the rest, which are
revealed by the uninterchangeability of the epithets by which the
different things are described. Thus (we can speak of the motives
from which a person listens to something, but not of the motives
from which he has an auditory sensation; he may show skill,
patience and method in peering, but not in having visual sensations.
Conversely tickles and tastes may be relatively acute, but his
inspections and detections cannot be so described. (It makes sense
to speak of someone refraining from watching a race or of his
suspending his observation of a reptile, but it makes no sense to
speak of someone refraining from feeling a pain, or suspending the
tingle in his nose. \ Yet if having a tingle were, as the theory
holds, intuiting a Special object, it is not clear why this or any
discomfort should not be dismissed by suspending the intuition
of it.

(Sensations then, are not perceivings, observings or findings;
jihey are not detectings, scannings or inspectings; they are not
apprehendings, cognisings, intuitings or knowings.y To have a
sensation is not to be in a cognitive relation to a sensible object.
There are no such objects. Nor is there any such relation.
Not only is it false, as was argued earlier, that sensations can be



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 215

objects of observation; it is also false that they are themselves
observings of objects. }

A champion of the Sense Datum Theory might admit that, for
a person to be describable as listening to a train, he must catch at least
one sound and so have at least one auditory sensation, and
still deny that, by admitting this point, he necessarily set
his foot on the suggested Gadarene slope; he need not concede
that, for a person to be describable as hearing a sound, he must
have yet a prior sensation in his sensing of that sense datum.
'Having a sensation' is merely the vulgar way of reporting tKe
simple intuiting of a special sensible object and to say that a person
intuits such an object does not entail his being in any way sensitively
affected. He might be an angelic and impassive contemplator of
sounds and colour patches, and these might be of any degree of
intensity, without anything in him being describable as more or less
acute. He may come across tickles without himself being tickled,
and the ways in which he becomes acquainted with smells or pains
need not involve his being sensitive in any way other than that he
is capable of simple detection or inspection of such things.

. Such a defence in effect explains the having of sensations as
the not having any sensations. It avoids the imputed regress by the
heroic device of suggesting that sensing is a cognitiye process
which does not require its owner to Be susceptible of stimuli, or to
be describable as either highly or slightly sensitive. By construing
sensation as the simple observation of special" objects, it first does
away with the very concept it was professing to elucidate and, in
the second stage, makes nonsense of the concept of observation
itself, since this concept entails the concept of sensations which arc
not themselves observings.

w> Alternatively, the Sense Datum Theory may be defended on a
different ground. It may be said that, whatever may be the logical
rules governing the concepts of sensation and of observation, it
remains an unchallengeable fact that in seeing I am directly presented
with patchworks of colours momentarily occupying my field of
view, in hearing I am directly presented with noises, in smelling
with smells and so forth. That sense data are sensed is beyond
question and independent of theory^NTwo-dimensional colour
patches are what I see in the strictest sense of 'seej&md these are not
horses and jockeys, but at best the looks, or visual appearances, of



216 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

horses and jockeys, hrthere are not two candles, then the squinter
does not really see two candles, but he certainly sees two bright
somethings, and these can be nothing but two proprietary 'candle-
looks' or sense data. The Sense Datum Theory is not inventing
factitious entities^ it is merely drawing our attention to the immediate
objects of sense which, from our ordinary preoccupation with
common objects, we are in the habit of cold-shouldering out of
conversation. If logical considerations seem to require that having
a sensation shall not be on all fours with descrying hawks, or gazing
at horse-races, so much the worse for those considerations, since
having a visual sensation certainly is a non-inferential discerning of a
particular sensible object.

Let us consider, then, the hackneyed instance of a person looking
^(t a round plate tilted away from him, which he may therefore
describe as looking elliptical; and let us see what, if anything,
requires us to say that he is descrying a something which really is
elliptical. It is agreed that the plate is not elliptical but round,
and for the argument's sake we may corifcede that the spectator is
veraciously reporting that it looks elliptical, (though round plates,
however steeply tilted, do not usually look elliptical). The question is
whether the truth of his report that the plate looks elliptical implies
that he is really espying, or scanning, an object of sense which is
elliptical, something which, not being the plate itself, can claim
to be entitled 'a look' or 'a visual appearance of the plate'. We may
also grant that ^f we are bound to say that he has come across an
object of sense which is really elliptical and is a visual appearance of
the plate, then this elliptical object is a two-dimensional colour
patch, momentary in existence and proprietary to one percipient,
i.e. that it is a sense datum and therefore that there are sense data.
/ Now a person without a theory feels no qualms in saying that
the round plate might look elliptical. Nor would he feel any qualms
in saying that the round plate looks as if it were elliptical. But he
would feel qualms in following the recommendation to say that
he is seeing an elliptical look of a round plate. ^Though he talks
easily enough in some contexts of the lotfks of 'things, and easily
enough in other contexts of seeing things, he does not ordinarily
talk of seeing or of scanning the looks of things, t)f gazing at views
of races, of catching glimpses of glimpses of hawks, or of descrying
the visual appearances of tree-tops. He would feel that, if he mixed



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 217

his ingredients in these fashions, he would be talking the same sort
of nonsense as he would if he moved from talking of eating biscuitsv
and talking of taking nibbles of biscuits to talking of eating nibbles
of biscuits. And he would be quite right. He cannot significantly
speak of 'eating nibbles', since 'nibble' is already a noun of eating,
and he cannot talk of 'seeing looks', since 'look' is already a noun of
seeing.

"^When he says that the tilted plate has an elliptical look, or
looks as if it were elliptical, he means that it looks as an elliptical
but untilted plate would look. Tilted round things sometimes do
look quite or exactly like untilted elliptical things; straight sticks
half immersed in water occasionally do look rather like unimmersed
bent sticks; solid but distant mountains sometimes do look rather
like flat mural decorations quite near to one's nose. In saying that
the plate looks elliptical, he is not characterising an^extra object,
namely 'a look', as being elliptical, he is likening how the tilted
round plate does look to how untilted elliptical plates do or would
look. He is not saying 'I am seeing a flat elliptical patch of White',
but 'I might be seeing an elliptical and untilted piece of white
china'. We may say that the nearer aeroplane looks faster than the
distant aeroplane, but we could not say that it has 'a faster look'.
'Looks faster' means 'looks as if it is flying faster through the air'.
Talking about the apparent speeds of aeroplanes is not talking about
the speeds of appearances of aeroplanes.

In other words, the grammatically unsophisticated sentence
'the plate has an elliptical look' does not, as the theory assumes,
express one of those basic relational truths which are so much
venerated in theory and so seldom used in daily life. It expresses
a fairly complex proposition of which one part is both general and
hypothetical. It is applying to the actual look of the plate a rule
or a recipe about the typical looks of untilted elliptical plates,
no matter whether there exist such pieces of china or not. It is
what I have elsewhere called a mongrel-categorical statement.
It is analogous to saying of someone that he is behaving judicially,
or talking like a pedagogue. The squinter, aware of his squint,
who reports that it looks just as if there were two candles on the
table, or that he might be seeing two candles, is describing how the
single candle looks by referring to how pairs of candles regularly
look to spectators who are not squinting; and if, not being aware of



218 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

his squint, he says that there are two candles on the table, he is,
in this case, misapplying just the same general recipe^JThe ｅxpressions
'it looks . . .', 'it looks as if . . .', 'it has the appearance of. . .', 'I
might be seeing . . .' and plenty of others of the same family contain
the force of a certain sort of open hypothetical prescription applied
to a case in hand. When we say that someone has a pedantic appear-
ance, we do not mean to suggest that there are two kinds of pedantic "
beings, namely some men and some appearances of men. We mean
that he looks rather like some pedantic peoplelook. Similarly /there
are not two kinds of elliptical objects, namely some platters and some '
looks; there are only some platters which are elliptical and others
which look as if they were elliptical.

In ordinary life there are certain ways in which we are quite ready
to speak of patches and splashes of colour. A housewife might say that
her sitting-room needed a splash of crimson, without specifying
crimson paper, crimson flowers, crimson rugs, or crimson curtains.
She might ask her husband to go out and buy 'an expanse of
crimson . . .', leaving it to him to fill in the lacuna with 'geraniums',
'distemper', 'cretonne', or whatever else would meet her requirements.
In a similar way an observer peering through a gap in a hedge might
say that he saw an area of yellow . . . , but be unable to specify
whether what he had seen were yellow daffodils, yellow charlock,
yellow canvas or any other specific kind of common object or
material. To complete his sentence he could say only 1 saw
something yellow*.

fin contrast with this ordinary use of lacuna-ｅxpressions like 'a
patch of yellow . . .' and 'a splash of crimson something or other',
the Sense Datum Theory recommends another idiom in which we
are to say 'I see a patch of White* (and not 'I see a patch of white . . .')
or 'he espied a two-dimensional, elliptical expanse of Blue'
(and not 'a flat-looking, elliptical-looking blue something or
other').

Now I am denying that having a visual sensation is a sort ot
observation describable as the sensing or intuiting of colour patches.
But I am not denying that a woman can properly ask her husband
to buy a splash of crimson ... ^ or that a pedestrian can properly
be said to espy an expanse of yellow something or other through
a hole in the hedge. What the Sense Datum Theory has done is
to try to skim an ethereal cream off such ordinary lacuna-descriptions



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 219

of common objects; to talk as if it had found a new class of objects,
where it has only misconstrued a familiar range of statements
mentioning how otherwise unparticularised common objects are
found to look.

Talking about looks, sounds and smells, about expanses, shapes
and colours, just as much as talking about perspectives, hazes, focuses
and twilights, is already talking about common objects, since
it is applying learned perception recipes for the typical appear-
ances of common objects to whatever one is trying to make out at
the moment. (To say that someone caught a glimpse, or heard a
sound, is already to say more than would be involved in barely
describing his visual and auditory sensations, for it is already to
range what he is attending to under fairly general perception recipes.

This point may be illustrated by reference to the historic
doctrine of Secondary Qualities. It was half-correctly observed
that when a common object is described as green, bitter, chilly,
pungent or shrill, it is being characterised as looking, tasting, feeling,
smelling or sounding so and so to a sentient observer; it was
correctly noticed, too,\^that conditions which affect his sensitivity
make a difference in how the things look, taste, feel, smell or sound
to him. How loud a train sounds depends in part upon the distance
of the observer from the train, upon his degree of hardness of
hearing, upon the direction in which his head is turned, upon
whether his ears are covered and so forth.] Whether water of
a certain thermometer-temperature feels chilly or cosy depends
on the prior thermometer-temperature of his hands. From such
facts the theoretical jump was made to the doctrine that ^to
say that an object is green is to say something about the visual
sensations of the particular observer who reports that it is greerii. It
was supposed that 'green', 'bitter', 'chilly' and the rest are adjectives
which properly apply to sensations and are only improperly
applied to common ojyscts. And then, as it is obviously absurd
to say that a sensation is a green thing, or an elliptical thing, or
a chilly thing, it seemed necessary to allot to sensations their
own peculiar objects, so that 'green' might be suitably applied not
to the having of a sensation buFto a peculiar object internally
nursed by that sensation. The *ban on characterising common
objects of anyone's observation by Secondary Quality adjectives
led to the invention of some counterpart, privy objects



220 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

to carry those adjectives. Because Secondary Quality adjectives
would not behave except as predicates in observation reports,
sensations had to be construed as being themselves observations of
special objects.

But fafaen^l describe a common object as green or bitten I am
not reporting a fact about my present sensation, though I aiflf saying
something about how it looks or tastes^t am saying that it
would look or taste so and so to anyone who was in a condition
and position to see or taste properly. )Hence I do not contradict
myself if I say that the field is green, though at the moment it looks
greyish-blue to me; or that the fruit is really bitter, though it appears
to me quite tasteless. And even when I say that the grass, though
really green, looks greyish-blue to me, I am still describing my
momentary sensation only by assimilating it to how common
objects that are really greyish-blue normally look to anyone who
can see properly. Secondary Quality adjectives are used and are
used only for the reporting of publicly ascertainable facts about
common objects; for it is a publicly ascertainable fact about a field
that it is green, i.e. that it would look so and so to anyone in a
position to see it properly. What else could the people who teach
other people to talk, teach them about the use of these adjectives?
It must be noticed that the formula 'it would look so and so to
anyone* cannot be paraphrased by 'it would look green to anyone',
for to say that something looks green is to say that it looks as it
would if it were green and conditions were normal^We cannot
say how something looks, or would look, except by mentioning
the ascertainable properties of common objects, and then saying
that this looks now as that can be expected to look.

So while it is true that to say 'the field is green' entails propositions
about observers with certain optical equipments and opportunities,
it is not true that it tells an anecdote about its author^it is analogous
to the proposition 'this bicycle costs ^ I2 '> which entails hypothetical
propositions about any actual or possible purchaser, but does not
state or entail any categorical proposition about its author. That an
article has a price is a fact about the article and about customers, but
it is not a fact about an article and about a given customer; still
less is it a fact merely about a given customer. ;
, , A person who says 'the searchlight is dazzling* need not himself
have any dazzle-discomforts; but still he is talking about dazzle-



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 221

discomforts in another way, though it is a way which involves also
talking about the searchlight(It is fallacious to argue that a searchlight
cannot be said to be dazzling, unless the speaker is being dazzled,
and that therefore dazzlingness is not a quality of the searchlight,
but is a quality of that individual's sense data\ (To say that the
searchlight is dazzling does not imply that it is now dazzling
someone; it says only that it would dazzle anyone of normal
eyesight who was looking at it from a certain distance without any
protection. My statement 'the searchlight is dazzling* no more
reports a sensation that I am having than 'the bicycle costs 12'
reports money that I am handling. In the sense of 'subjective'
usually intended, /Secondary Qualities are not subjective, though it
remains true that in the country of the blind adjectives of colour
would have no use, while adjectives of shape, size, distance, direction
of motion and so on would have the uses that they have in England.
Arguments for the subjectivity of Secondary Qualities are apt to
hinge in fact upon an interesting verbal trick. Adjectives like 'green',
'sweet' and 'cold' are assimilated to adjectives of discomfort and
their opposites, like 'dazzling', 'palatable', 'scalding' and 'chilly'.
Even so, as we have seen, the conclusion drawn does not follow.
to call the water 'painfully hot' is not to say that the author of the
;tatement or anyone else is in pain. However, it does refer in a more
indirect way to people being in pain, ^and as being in pain is a state
Df mind, namely one of distress, we can say that 'painfully hot'
alludes indirectly and inter alia to a state of mind. But it certainly
does not follow that 'the_ water is lukewarm' and 'the sky is blue'
allude even in this indirect way to states of mind. 'Lukewarm' and 'blue'
are not adjectives of discomfort or gratification. one road may be
described as more boring than a second road and as longer than a
third road; but in the way in which the first description does allude
to wayfarers feeling bored, the second does not allude to wayfarers'
moods at all.

A linguistic consequence of all this argument is that we have no
employment for such ｅxpressions as 'object of sense', 'sensible
object', 'sensum', 'sense datum', 'sense-content', 'sense field' and
'sensibilia' ; the epistemologist's transitive verb 'to sense' and his
intimidating 'direct awareness' and 'acquaintance' can be returned
to store.) They commemorate nothing more than the attempt to
give to concepts of sensation the jobs of concepts of observation,



222 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

an attempt which inexorably ended in the postulation of sense data
as counterparts to the common objects of observation.

It also follows that we need erect no private theatres to provide
stages for these postulated extra objects, nor puzzle our heads to
describe the indescribable relations between these postulated objects
and everyday things.



(4) Sensation and Observation.

It is no part of the object of this book to swell the ranks of
theories of knowledge in general, or of theories of perception in
particular. It is, rather, one of its motives to show that a lot of
the theories that go by those names are, or embody, unwanted
para-mechanical hypotheses. When theorists pose such 'wires and
pulleys' questions as, 'How are past experiences stored in the mind?',
'How does a mind reach out past its screen of sensations to grasp
the physical realities outside?', 'How do we subsume the data of sense
under concepts and categories ?', they are apt to pose these problems
as if they were problems about the existence and interconnections
of hidden bits of ghostly apparatus. They talk as if they were doing
something like speculative anatomy or even counter-espionage.

Since, however, we do not regard the fact that a person has a
sensation as a fact about his mind, whereas the fact that he observes
something and the fact that he tends not to observe things of certain
sorts do belong to the description of his mental operations and
powers, it is proper to say more about this difference.

We use the verb 'to observe' in two ways. In one use, to say that
someone is observing something is to say that he is trying, with or
without success, to find out something about it by doing at least some
looking, listening, savouring, smelling or feeling. In another use, a
person is said to have observed something, when his exploration has
been successful, i.e. that he has found something out by some such
methods. Verbs of perception such as 'see', 'hear', 'detect', 'dis-
criminate' and many others are generally used to record observational
successes, while verbs like 'watch', 'listen', 'probe', 'scan' and
'savour' are used to record observational undertakings, the success
of which may be still in questio*n. Hence it is proper to speak of
someone watching carefully and successfully, but not of his seeing
carefully or successfully, of his probing systematically, but not of



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 223

his discovering systematically, and so on. The simple-seeming
assertion 1 see a linnet* claims a success, where 'I am trying to
make out what is moving* reports only an investigation.

In our present inquiry it will sometimes be convenient to use
the ambiguous word 'observe* just because it can be used as well to
signify discovery as to signify search. The words 'perception* and
'perceive* which are often used as cardinal in these inquiries, are
too narrow since they cover only achievements, as do the specific
verbs of perception 'see*, 'hear', 'taste*, 'smell* and, in one sense,
'feel*.

It has already been remarked that observing entails having at
least one sensation, though having sensations does not entail
observing. We might now ask, 'What more is there in observing
than having at least one sensation?* But this formulation of the
question is misleading, since it suggests that visually observing a
robin consists in both having at least one visual sensation and
doing or having something else as well, i.e. in two states or processes
coupled together, as humming and walking can be coupled together;
and this need not be the case. As was argued in Chapter V (Section 4)
there is a crucial difference between doing something with heed
and doing it, e.g. in absence of mind, but this difference does not
consist in heeding being a concomitant act, occurring in another
'place*. So we should ask, not, 'What is an observer doing besides
having sensations?', but, 'What does the description of an observer
embody over and above the description of him as having those
sensations?' This point will be important before long.

We should begin by dismissing a model which in one form or
another dominates many speculations about perception. The
beloved but spurious question, 'How can a person get beyond his
sensations to apprehension of external realities ?' is often posed as if
the situation were like this. There is immured in a windowless cell
a prisoner, who has lived there in solitary confinement since birth.
All that comes to him from the outside world is flickers of light
thrown upon his cell-walls and tappings heard through the stones;
yet from these observed flashes and tappings he becomes, or
seems to become, apprised of unobserved football-matches,
flower-gardens and eclipses of tho sun. How then does he learn
the ciphers in which his signals are arranged, or even find out that
there are such things as ciphers ? How can he interpret the messages



224 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

which he somehow deciphers, given that the vocabularies of those
messages are the vocabularies of football and astronomy and not
those of flickers and tappings?

This model is of course the familiar picture of the mind as a
ghost in a machine, about the general defects of which nothing
more need be said. But certain particular defects do need to be
noticed. The use of this sort of model involves the explicit or
implicit assumption that, much as the prisoner can see flickers and
hear tappings, but cannot, unfortunately, see or hear football
matches, so we can observe our visual and other sensations, but
cannot, unfortunately, observe robins. But this is doubly to abuse
the notion of observation. As has been shown, on the one hand,
it is nonsense to speak of a person witnessing a sensation, and, on
the other, the ordinary use of verbs like 'observe', 'espy', 'peer at'
and so on is in just such contexts as 'observe a robin', 'espy a lady-
bird' and 'peer at a book'. Football matches are just the sorts of
things of which we do catch glimpses; and sensations are the sorts
of things of which it would be absurd to say that anyone caught
glimpses. In other words, the prison model suggests that, in finding
out about robins and football matches, we have to do something
like inferring from sensations, which we do observe, to birds and
games, which we never could observe; whereas in fact it is robins
and games that we observe, and it is sensations that we never could
observe. The question, 'How do we jump from descrying or
inspecting sensations to becoming apprised of robins and football
matches?' is a spurious how-question.

Now there is no unique and central problem of perception.
There is a range of partially overlapping questions, most of which
will cease to be intriguing, the moment that a few of them have
been cleared up. We can illustrate certain of the problems which
belong to this range in this way. To describe someone as finding a
thimble is to say something about his having visual, tactual or
auditory sensations, but it is to say more than that. Similarly to
describe someone as trying to make out whether what he sees is a
chaffinch or a robin, a stick or a shadow, a fly on the window or a
mote in his eye, is to say something about his visual sensations,
but it is to say more than thjt. Finally, to describe someone as
'seeing' a snake that is not there, or as 'hearing' voices, where all is
silent, seems to be saying something about his images, if not about his



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 225

sensations, but it is to say more than that. What more is being said?
Or, what is the specific force of such descriptions in respect of which
they differ both from one another and from 'neat* descriptions of
sensations, supposing that we could produce such descriptions?
The questions, that is, are not questions of the para-mechanical
form 'How do we see robins?', but questions of the form, 'How do
we use such descriptions as "he saw a robin"?'

When we describe someone as having detected a mosquito in
the room, what more are we saying than that there was a
certain sort of singing in his ears ? We begin by answering that he
not only had a singing in his ears but also recognised or identified
what he heard as the noise of a fairly adjacent mosquito; and we are
inclined to go on to say in more generic terms that he was not
only having a singing in his ears, but was also thinking certain
thoughts; perhaps that he was subsuming the singing under a
concept, or that he was coupling an intellectual process with his
sensitive state. But in saying this sort of thing, though we have one
foot on the right track, we also have one foot on the wrong track.
We are beginning to go on the wrong track, when we say that there
must have taken place such and such conceptual or discursive
processes ; since this is in effect, if not in intention, to say that detecting
a mosquito could not happen, unless some special but unobserved
ghostly wheels had gone round, wheels whose existence and functions
only epistemologists are clever enough to diagnose. on the
other hand, in saying this sort of tiling we are also on the right
track. It is certainly true that a man could not detect a mosquito
if he did not know what mosquitoes were and what they sounded
like; or if, through absent-mindedness, panic or stupidity, he failed
to apply this knowledge to the present situation; for this is part of
what 'detecting' means.

We do not, that is, want tidings or hypotheses about any other
things which the listener may have privily done or undergone.
Even if there had taken place three, or seventeen, such entr'actes,news
about them would not explain how detecting a mosquito differs
from having a shrill singing in the ears. What we want to know is
how the logical behaviour of 'he detected a mosquito' differs from
that of 'there was a singing in his cars', from that of 'he tried in vain
to make out what was making the noise', and from that of 'he
mistook it for the noise of the wind in the telephone wires'.



226 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

Let us consider a slightly different situation in which a person
would be described as not merely hearing something, and not
merely listening to something, and not merely trying to make out
what he was hearing, but as identifying or recognising what
he heard, namely the case of a person who recognises a tune.
For this situation to obtain, there must be notes played in his hearing,
so he must not be deaf, or anaesthetised, or fast asleep. Recognising
what he hears entails hearing. It also entails heeding; the absent-
minded or distracted man is not following the tune. But more than
this, he must have met this tune before; and he must not only have
met it, but also ha\ e learned it and not forgotten it. If he did not
in this sense already know the tune, he could not be said to recognise
it on listening to it now.

What then is it for a person to know a tune, that is to have
learned and not forgotten it? It certainly does not entail his being
able to tell its name, for it may have no name; and even if he gave it
the wrong name, he might still be said to know the tune. Nor
does it entail his being able to describe the tune in words, or write it
out in musical notation, for few of us could do that, though most
of us can recognise tunes. He need not even be able to hum or
whistle the tune, though if he can do so, he certainly knows the
tune; and if he can hum or whistle plenty of other tunes, but cannot
produce this one, even when prompted, we suspect that he does not
know this tune. To describe him as knowing the tune is at the least
to say that he is capable of recognising it, when he hears it; and he
will be said to recognise it, when he hears it, if he does any, some or
all of (be following tilings: if, after hearing a bar or two, he expects
those bars to follow which do follow; if he does not erroneously
expect the previous bars to be repeated; if he detects omissions or
errors in the performance; if, after the music has been switched off
for a few moments, he expects it to resume about where it does
resume; if, when several people are whistling different tunes, he
can pick out who is whistling this tune; if he can beat time correctly;
if he can accompany it by whistling or humming it in time and
tune, and so on indefinitely. And when we speak of him expecting
the notes which are due to follow and not expecting notes or bars
which are not due to follow, we do not require that he be actually
thinking ahead. Given that he is surprised, scornful or amused, if
the due notes and bars do not come at their due times, then it is



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 227

true to say that he was expecting them, even though it is false to
say that he went through any processes of anticipating them.

In short, he is now recognising or following the tune, if, knowing
how it goes, he is now using that knowledge; and he uses that
knowledge not just by hearing the tune, but by hearing it in a
special frame of mind, the frame of mind of being ready to hear
both what he is now hearing and what he will hear, or would be
about to hear, if the pianist continues playing it and is playing it
correctly. He knows how it goes and he now hears the notes as
the progress of that tune. He hears them according to the recipe of
the tune, in the sense that what he hears is what he is listening for.
Yet the complexity of this description of him as both hearing the
notes, as they come, and listening for, or being ready for, the notes
that do, and the notes that should, come does not imply that he is
going through a complex of operations. He need not, for example,
be coupling with his hearing of the notes any silent or murmured
prose-moves, or 'subsuming' what he hears 'under the concept of
the tune'. Indeed, if he were told to think the thought of 'Lillibullero',
without producing, imagining or actually listening to the tunc
itself, he would say that there was nothing left for him to think;
and if he were told that the fact that he could recognise the tune,
even though played in various ways in various situations, meant
that he had a Concept, or Abstract Idea, of the tune, he would properly
object that he could not think what it would be like to be con-
sidering or applying the Abstract Idea of 'Lillibullero', unless tliis
meant merely that he could recognise the tune, when he heard it,
detect mistakes and omissions in it, hum snatches from it and so on.

This enables us to reconsider what was said earlier, namely,
that a person who recognises what he hears is not only having
auditory sensations, but is also thinking. It is not true that a
person following a familiar tune need be thinking thoughts such
that there must be an answer to the question, 'What thoughts has
he been thinking?' or even 'What general concepts has he been
applying?' It is not true that he must have been pondering or
declaring propositions to himself, or to the company, in English or
French; and it is not true that he must have been marshalling any
visual or auditory images. Whatsis true is that he must have been
in some degree vigilant, and the notes that he heard must have fallen
as he expected them to fall, or shocked him by not doing so. He was



228 TUB CONCEPT OF MIND

neither merely listening, as one might listen to an unfamiliar air,
nor yet was he necessarily coupling his listening with some other
process; he was just listening according to the recipe.

To clarify further the senses in which following a known tune
is and is not 'thinking', let us consider the case of a person hearing
a waltz for the first time. He does not know how this tune goes,
but since he knows how some other waltz tunes go, he knows what
sorts of rhythms to expect. He is partially but not fully prepared for
the succeeding bars, and he can partially but not completely place
the notes already heard and now being heard. He is wondering just
how the tune goes, and in wondering he is trying to piece out the
arrangement of the notes. At no moment is he quite ready for
the note that is due next. That is, he is thinking in the special sense
of trying to puzzle something out.

But, in contrast with him, the person who already knows the
tune follows the tune without any business of puzzling or trying
to make out how the tune goes. It is completely obvious to him
all the time. There need be no activity, not even a very swift and
very easy activity, of trying to resolve uncertainties, for there are no
uncertainties. He is not listening in a worrying-out way; he is
just listening. Yet he is not merely hearing notes, for he is hearing
'Lillibullero'. Not only are the notes clearly audible to him (perhaps
they are not), but the tune is quite obvious to him; and the obvious-
ness of the tune is not a fact about his auditory sensitiveness, it is a
fact about what he has learned and not forgotten and his present
application of those lessons.

Finally, though following a familiar tune entails having become
familiarised with it, it does not require going through any operations
of reminiscence. Memories of past hearings of the tune need not
well up, or be called up. The sense of 'thinking' in which a person
following a familiar tune can be said to be thinking what he is
hearing, is not that thoughts of past auditions are occurring to him.
He has not forgotten how it goes, but he is not recalling how it
formerly went.

Roughly, to know how a tune goes is to have acquired
a set of auditory expectation propensities, and to recognise or
follow a tune is to be hearing expected note after expected note.
And this does not entail the occurrence of any other exercises of
expectation than listening for what is being heard and what is due to



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 229

be heard. The description of a person hearing expected notes is indeed
different from that of a person hearing unexpected notes and from
that of a person who hears notes without any expectations at all,
(like a person who is hearing but not listening) ; but this does not
mean that there is something extra going on in the first person which
is not going on in the second or the third. It means that the hearing
is going on in a different way, the description of which difference
involves, not a report of extra occurrences, but only the characterisa-
tion of his hearing as specially schooled hearing. That a person is
following a tune is, if you like, a fact both about his ears and about
his mind; but it is not a conjunction of one fact about his ears and
another fact about his mind, or a conjoint report of one incident in
his sensitive life and another incident in his intellectual life. It is what
I have called a 'semi-hypothetical', or 'mongrel-categorical', state-
ment.

We can now turn to consider some of the kinds of perceptual
episodes which are ordinarily taken as the standard models of
perceptual recognition. We shall see that they are in many important
respects of a piece with the recognition of a tune. I chose to start
with the example of someone following a familiar tune, because
this is a protracted occupation. We can see a gate-post in a flash,
but we cannot hear Xillibullero' in a flash. There is here, conse-
quently, no temptation to postulate the occurrence of lightning
intellectual processes, processes too rapid to be noticed, but
intellectual enough to execute all the Herculean labours demanded
by cpistemologists.

When a person is described as having seen the thimble, part
of what is said is that he has had at least one visual sensation, but
a good deal more is said as well. Theorists commonly construe this
as meaning that a description of a person as having seen the thimble
both says that he had at least one visual sensation and says that he
did or underwent something else as well; and they ask accordingly,
'What else did the finder of the thimble do or undergo, such that
he would not have found the thimble if he had not done or
undergone these extra things ?' Their queries are then answered by
stories about some very swift and unnoticed inferences, or some
sudden and unremembcrable intellectual leaps, or some fetching
up of concepts and clapping them upon the heads of the visual data.
They assume, that is, that because the proposition 'he espied the



230 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

thimble' has a considerable logical complexity, it therefore reports
a considerable complication of processes. And as these processes are
not witnessed going on, it is postulated that they must be going on
in a place where they cannot be witnessed, namely, in the finder's .
stream of consciousness.

Our analysis of what we have in mind, when we say that
someone recognises a tune, can be applied to the new case.
Certainly a person who espies the thimble is recognising what he
sees, and this certainly entails not only that he has a visual sensation,
but also that he has already learned and not forgotten what
thimbles look like. He has learned enough of the recipe for the
looks of thimbles to recognise thimbles, when he sees them in
ordinary lights and positions at ordinary distances and from
ordinary angles. When he espies the thimble on this occasion, he
is applying his lesson; he is actually doing what he has learned to do.
Knowing how thimbles look, he is ready to anticipate, though he
need not actually anticipate, how it will look, if he approaches it, or
moves away from it; and when, without having executed any such
anticipations, he does approach it, or move away from it, it looks
as he was prepared for it to look. When the actual glimpses of it
that he gets are got according to the thimble recipe, they satisfy his
acquired expectation-propensities; and this is his espying the thimble.

As with the tune, so with the thimble; if the recognition is
impeded by no difficulties, if, that is, the thimble is obvious to the
observer from the first glance, then no extra thinking or pondering,
no puzzlings or reminiscences need be performed. He need not
say anything in English or in French, to himself or to the world;
he need not marshal memory images or fancy images; he need not
wonder, make conjectures, or take precautions; he need not recall
past episodes; he need do nothing that would be described
as the thinking of thoughts, though, if linguistically equipped,
he can be expected to be ready to do some of these things,
if there arises any call to do so. The sense in which he is
thinking and not merely having a visual sensation, is that he is
having a visual sensation in a thimble-seeing frame of mind. Just
as a person who recognises a tune from the first few bars is prepared
both retrospectively for those alrSady heard and those now being
heard and prospectively for the bars that are to follow, though he
goes through no additional operations of preparing for them, so a



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 231

person who recognises a cow at sight is prepared for a multifarious
variety of sights, sounds and smells, of none of which need the
thought actually occur to him.

The difficulty will probably be felt that even if this sort of
account of the visual obviousness of thimbles and the auditory
obviousness of tunes is true, the real question remains unanswered.
How do we learn that there are thimbles in the first place?
How can a person who starts with mere sensations reach the stage of
finding out that there are physical objects? But this is a queer sort
of how-question, since, construing it in one way, we all know
the answer perfectly well. We know how infants come to learn
that some noises do, and others do not, belong to tunes; that some
tuneless sequences of noises, like nursery rhymes, have recognisable
rhythms; others, like clock-noises, have recognisable monotonies;
while yet others, like rattle-noises, are random and disorderly.
We know, too, the sorts of games and exercises by which mothers
and nurses teach their infants lessons of these sorts. There is no
more of an epistemological puzzle involved in describing how
infants learn perception recipes than there is in describing how
boys learn to bicycle. They learn by practice, and we can specify
the sorts of practice that expedite this learning.

Now clearly stories about learning by practice will not be felt
to give the solution of the how-question asked above. This question
was not intended as a question about the stages through which
capacities and interests develop, or about the aids and impediments
to their development. What then was intended? Perhaps its poser
might say something like this. 'There is, perhaps, no philosophical
puzzle about how children learn tunes, or recognise them, when
they have once learned them. Nor perhaps is there a puzzle about
analogous learning of recipes in respect of sights, tastes and smells.
But there is a big difference between learning a tune and finding
out that there are such things as violins, thimbles, cows and gate-
posts. Finding out that there are material objects requires, as
learning tunes does not, getting beyond noises, sights, tastes and
smells to public existents other than, and independent of, our personal
sensations. And by the metaphorical ｅxpression 'getting beyond*
is meant getting to know thaf such objects exist on the basis
of originally knowing only that these sensations exist. Our puzzle
is, therefore, in accordance with what principles, and from what



232 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

premisses, can a person validly conclude that cows and gate-posts
exist? Or, if by some lucky instinct he correctly believes such things
without inferences, by what inferences can he justify these instinctive
beliefs?' That is, the how-question is to be construed as a Sherlock
Holmes question of the type 'what evidence had the detective
ascertained which enabled him to confirm his suspicion that the
gamekeeper was the murderer?' And construing the question in
this way, we can swiftly see that it is an improper question.
When we speak of the evidence ascertained by the detective, we are
thinking of things which he or his informants had observed or
witnessed, such as fingerprints found on glasses and conversations
overheard by eavesdroppers. But a sensation is not something which
its owner observes or witnesses. It is not a clue. Listening to a
conversation entails having auditory sensations, for listening is
heedful hearing, and hearing entails getting auditory sensations.
But having sensations is not discovering clues. We discover clues
by listening to conversations and looking at fingerprints. If we could
not observe some things, we should not have clues for other things,
and conversations are just the sorts of things to which we do listen,
as fingerprints and gate-posts are just the sorts of things at which we
do look.

This improper how-question is tempting, partly because there
is a tendency mistakenly to suppose that all learning is discovery by
inference from previously ascertained evidence; and then a process of
sensing sense data is cast for the role of ascertaining the initial
evidence. In fact, of course, we learn how to make inferences from
previously ascertained facts just as we learn how to play chess, ride
bicycles, or recognise gate-posts, namely by practice, reinforced,
maybe, by some schooling. The application of rules of inference is
not a condition of learning by practice; it is just one of the countless
things learned by practice.

As has been shown, listening and looking are not merely having
sensations; nor, however, are they joint processes of observing sensa-
tions and inferring to common objects. A person listening or looking
is doing something which he would not do, if he were deaf or blind;
or, what is quite different, if he were absent-minded, distracted or
quite uninterested; or, what is qifite different again, if he had not
learned to use his ears and eyes. Observing is using one's ears and
eyes. But using one's ears and eyes does not entail using, in a different



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 233

sense, one's visual and auditory sensations as clues. It makes no
sense to speak of 'using' sensations. It will not even do to say that
in watching a cow, I am finding out about the cow 'by means of
visual sensations, since this too would suggest that sensations are
tools, objects which can be handled in the same sorts of ways as
the things seen and heard can be handled. And this would be even
more misleading than it would be to say that manipulating a hammer
involves first manipulating my fingers, or that I control the hammer
by dint of controlling my fingers.

There is another favourite model for the description of sensations.
As flour, sugar, milk, eggs and currants are among the raw materials
out of which the confectioner concocts cakes, or as bricks and
limber are among the raw materials of the builder, so sensations are
often spoken of as the raw materials out of which we construct the
world we know. As a counterblast to even more misleading stories
this story had some important merits. But the notions of collecting,
storing, sorting, unpacking, treating, assembling and arranging,
which apply to the ingredients of cakes and the materials of houses
do not apply to sensations. We can ask what a cake is made of, but
not what knowledge is made of; we can ask what those ingredients
are to be made into, but not what is going to be concocted or
constructed out of the visual and auditory sensations which the
child has recently been having.

We can conclude, then, that there is no difference of principle,
though there are plenty of differences in detail, between recognising
tunes and recognising gate-posts. one such difference may be
mentioned, before we leave the subject. At a fairly early stage
of infancy, the child learns to co-ordinate, for example, the sight
recipes, the sound recipes and the feel recipes of things like rattles
and kittens; and having begun to learn how things of particular
sorts can be expected to look, sound and feel, he then begins to
learn how they behave; when, for example, the rattle or the kitten
makes a noise and when it makes none. He now observes things
in an experimental way. But the relatively contemplative business
of learning tunes does not, by itself, involve much co-ordination of
looks with sounds, or give much room for experimentation. But
this is a difference of degree, not one of kind.

One or two residual points should receive brief notice. First,
in talking of a person learning a perception recipe, I am not talking



234 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

of his discovering any causal laws, such as those of physiology,
optics or mechanics. The observation of common objects is prior
to the discovery of general correlations between special kinds of
common objects. Next, in talking of a person knowing a perception
recipe, e.g. knowing how common objects are due to look, sound
and feel, I am not crediting him with the ability to formulate or
impart this recipe. Somewhat as most people know how to tie a
few different sorts of knots, but are quite incapable of describing
those knots, or following spoken or printed descriptions of them,
so we all know how to identify a cow at sight a very long time
before we can tell the world anything about the visible marks by
which we recognise it, and quite an appreciable time before we
can draw, paint or even recognise pictures of cows. Indeed, if we
did not learn to recognise things on sight or hearing, before we
had learnt to talk about them, we could never start at all.
Talking and understanding talk themselves involve recognising
words on saying and hearing them.

Though I have drawn most of my instances of seeing according
to perception recipes from cases of non-mistaken observation,
such as espying a gate-post, where there is a gate-post, the same
general account holds for mistaken observations such as 'espying'
a huntsman, where there is really a pillar box, 'discerning' a
stick, where there is really a shadow, or 'seeing' a snake on the
eiderdown, when there is really nothing on the eiderdown. Getting
a thing wrong entails what getting it right entails, namely, the
use of a technique. A person is not careless, if he has not learned a
method, but only if he has learned it and does not apply it properly.
Only a person who can balance can lose his balance; only a person
who can reason can commit fallacies; only a person who can
discriminate huntsmen from pillar boxes can mistake a pillar box
for a huntsman; and only a person who knows what snakes look
like can fancy he sees a snake without realising that he is only
fancying.

(5) Phenomenalism.

It is of topical interest to say a few words about a theory known
as 'Phenomenalism'. This theocy maintains that somewhat as
talking about a cricket team is talking in certain ways about the
eleven individuals who compose it, so talking about a common



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 235

object like a gate-post is talking in certain ways about the sense data
which observers do or might get in seeing, hearing and feeling it.
Just as there is nothing to report in the history of a cricket
team, save a certain selection of the actions and experiences of its
members, when playing, travelling, dining and conversing as
a team, so it is argued, there is nothing more to be said about the
gate-post than how it does or would look, sound, feel, etc. Indeed,
even to talk about how it looks, etc., is misleading; for 'it' is simply
a succinct way of collecting mentions of these looks, sounds, etc.,
which it is proper to team together. It is conceded that this
programme cannot in fact be carried out. Whereas we could,
at the cost of long-windedness, relate the fortunes of a team by
compiling accounts of the team-activities, habits and sentiments
of its several members, we could not actually say all we know about
the gate-post by describing the pertinent sensations which observers
have, or could have. We have no 'neat' sensation vocabulary.
We can in fact specify our sensations only by mention of common
objects, including persons. But it is suggested that this is an
accidental defect of language which would be obviated in a language
designed to meet the needs of complete logical candour.

One of the commendable motives of this theory was the desire
to dispense with occult agencies and principles. Its holders found
that current theories of perception postulated unobservable entities
or factors to endow things like gate-posts with properties which
sensations were debarred from revealing. A gate-post is lasting,
while sensations are fleeting; it is accessible to anyone, while
sensations are proprietary; it observes causal regularities, while
sensations are disorderly; it is unitary, while sensations arc plural.
So there had been a tendency to say that behind what is revealed to
the senses there lie some ulterior and very important properties of
the gate-post, namely that it is an Enduring Substance, a Thing-in-
Itself, a Centre of Causation, an Objective Unity and a variety of
other theorists' solemnities. Phenomenalism, accordingly, attempts
to dispense with these unavailing theorists' nostrums, though, as
I hope to show, it tries to dispense with the nostrums without
diagnosing or curing the maladies which they were vainly adduced
to remedy.

Phenomenalism also derives from another motive, this time not
a commendable motive; and it is a motive from which derived also



236 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

the theories against which Phenomenalism was a revolt. Namely
it supposed that having a sensation is itself a finding of something,
or that something is 'revealed* in sensation. It assumed the principle
of the Sense Datum Theory, that having a sensation is itself a piece
of observing, and indeed the only sort of observing which, being
proof against mistakes, merited the name 'observation'. We can
only really find out by observation facts about those objects which
are directly given in sensations, i.e. such things as colour patches,
noises, prickings and whiffs. only propositions about such objects
were observationally verifiable. It seemed to follow that we cannot
really observe gate-posts and cannot therefore find out by observa-
tion the things that we all know quite well about gate-posts.

We can now see that both Phenomenalism and the theory that
Phenomenalism was opposing were in error from the start. The
latter said that since we can observe only sensible objects, gate-posts
must be partly constituted of elements which cannot be found out
by observation. Phenomenalism said that since we can observe
only sensible objects, propositions about gate-posts must be
translatable into propositions about sensible objects. The truth is
that 'sensible object' is a nonsensical phrase, so 'propositions about
sensible objects' is a nonsensical phrase; and so far from it being
true that we cannot observe gate-posts, 'gate-posts' is a specimen
of the sorts of complements which alone can be significantly given
to such ｅxpressions as 'John Doe is looking at a so and so'. Such
facts as that gate-posts last a very long time, especially if well
creosoted, that, unlike wisps of smoke, they are hard and tough,
that, unlike shadows, anybody can find them, whether by night or
day, that they support the weight of gates, but can be consumed by
fire, can be and are found out by observation and experiment. It
can also be found out in the same way that gate-posts can look
very much like trees or men; and that in certain conditions it is
very easy to make mistakes about their sizes and distances. Certainly
such facts about gate-posts are not directly given to sense, or
immediately revealed in sensation; but nothing is so given or
revealed, since having a sensation is not a finding.

This shows, too, why language does not enable us to formulate
the propositions into which, accofding to Phenomenalism, proposi-
tions about gate-posts should be translatable. It is not because our
vocabularies are incomplete, but because there are no such objects



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 237

as those for which the extra dictions are desiderated. It is not that
we have a vocabulary for common objects and lack a vocabulary
for sensible objects, but that the notion of sensible objects is absurd.
Not only is it false, then, that ideally we should talk, not in the
vocabulary of gate-posts, but only in the vocabulary of sensations,
but we cannot describe sensations themselves without employing
the vocabulary of common objects.

The objection may be made that it is improper to give the
honorific title of 'observation' to the operations by which we and
astronomers ordinarily satisfy ourselves about robins and spiral
nebulae. Not only do we often mistake things for other things,
but we never have a certificate guaranteeing that we are not making
such a mistake. 'Observation' ought to be reserved for a mistake-
proof process.

But why? If it makes sense to call one man a careful and another
a careless observer, why should we then retract and say that neither
is genuinely observing, since no degree of cautiousness is ever
absolute? We do not say that no one ever reasons, just because no
one ever has a certificate guaranteeing that he has not committed
a fallacy, so why should it be supposed that there is a kind of
mistake-proof operation to which alone the verb 'to observe' is
consecrated? Indeed 'observing', in its task-sense, is just one of the
verbs to which adverbs like 'carefully', 'carelessly', 'successfully',
'unavailingly' are appropriate, which shows that there could not
be a sort of observing, in this sense, where there was neither need
nor room for precautions against mistakes.

One motive for demanding a guaranteed mistake-proof brand of
observation seems to be this. It would be absurd to say that there
are, or might be, matters of empirical fact which could not, in
principle, be found out by observation; so, since any ordinary
observation actually made might be mistaken, there must be a special
sort of mistake-proof observation, in order that 'empirical' may be
defined in terms of it. And then sensing is invented to play this role,
for it is certainly improper to speak of a mistaken sensation. But the
reason why sensation cannot be mistaken is not because it is a
mistake-proof observing, but because it is not an observing at all.
It is as absurd to call a sensation*' veridical' as to call it 'mistaken'.
The senses are neither honest nor deceitful. Nor does the argument
justify us in postulating any other kind of automatically veridical



238 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

observation. All it requires is what familiar facts provide, namely
that observational mistakes, like any others, are detectable and
corrigible; so no empirical fact, which has in fact been missed by a
lapse, need be missed by an endless series of lapses. What is wanted
is not any peculiar certificated process, but the ordinary careful
processes; not any incorrigible observations, but ordinary corrigible
observations; not inoculation against mistakes, but ordinary
precautions against them, ordinary tests for them and ordinary
corrections of them. Ascertaining is not a process which bases upon
a fund of certainties a superstructure of guesses; it is a process of
making sure. Certainties are what we succeed in ascertaining, not
things which we pick up by accident or benefaction. They are the
wages of work, not the gifts of revelation. When the sabbatical
notion of 'the Given* has given place to the week-day notion of 'the
ascertained', we shall have bade farewell to both Phenomenalism
and the Sense Datum Theory.

There was another motive for desiderating a mistake-proof
brand of observation, namely that it was half-realised that some
observation words, such as 'perceive', 'see', 'detect', 'hear' and
'observe' (in its 'find' sense) are what I have called 'achievement
verbs'. Just as a person cannot win a race unsuccessfully, or solve an
anagram incorrectly, since 'win' means 'race victoriously' and
'solve' means 'rearrange correctly', so a person cannot detect
mistakenly, or see incorrectly. To say that he has detected
something means that he is not mistaken, and to say that he sees, in
its dominant sense, means that he is not at fault. It is not that the
perceiver has used a procedure which prevented him from going
wrong or set a Faculty to work which is fettered to infallibility,
but that the perception verb employed itself connotes that he did
not go wrong. But when we employ the task verbs 'scan', 'listen',
'search* and the rest, it always makes sense to say that the operations
denoted by them might go wrong, or be fruitless. There is nothing
to prevent a scrutiny from being bungled or unavailing. Simple
logic 'prevents' curing, finding, solving and hitting the bull's eye
from being bungled or unavailing. The fact that doctors cannot cure
unsuccessfully does not mean that they are infallible doctors; it
only means that there is a contradiction in saying that a treatment
which has succeeded has not succeeded.

This is why a person who claims to have seen a linnet, or heard



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 239

a nightingale, and is then persuaded that there was no linnet or
nightingale, at once withdraws his claim to have seen die linnet,
or heard the nightingale. He does not say that he saw a linnet
which was not there, or that he heard an unreal nightingale.
Similarly, a person who claims to have solved an anagram and is
then persuaded that that is not the solution, withdraws his claim to
have solved it. He does not say that in a 'strict* or 'refined* sense
of the verb he solved a 'solution-object', which happened not to
coincide with the word camouflaged in the anagram.

Underlying most, if not all of the views criticised in this
chapter there seems to be one general assumption; the assumption
that whatever is known is learned either by inference from premisses,
or, in the case of the ultimate premisses, by some sort of non-
inferential confrontation. This confrontation has been traditionally
labelled 'consciousness', 'immediate awareness', 'acquaintance',
'direct inspection', 'intuition', etc., words which no one without
an epistemological theory to support ever uses for chronicling
special episodes in his daily life.

This pet dichotomy 'either by inference or by intuition' seems to
have its historical origin in the deference of epistemologists to
Euclidean geometry. The truths of geometry are either theorems or
axioms, and since geometry was, for a time, the exemplar of
scientific knowledge, all other procedures for finding out truths,
or establishing them, were piously mis-assimilated to this one
special procedure.

But the assumption of similarity is false. There are lots of different
ways of ascertaining things which are neither blank acquiescent
gazings, nor yet inferrings. Consider the replies we should expect to get
to the following 'How-do-you-know ?' questions. 'How do you know
that there are twelve chairs in the room?' 'By counting them'. 'How
do you know that 9x17 makes 153?' 'By multiplying them and
then checking the answer by subtracting 17 from 10x17'- 'How
do you know the spelling of "fuchsia"?' 'By consulting the diction-
ary'. 'How do you know the dates of the Kings of England?' 'By
learning them by heart for a strict schoolmaster'. 'How do you
know that the pain is in your leg and not in your shoulder?' 'They
are my leg and shoulder, aren't thby?' 'How do you know that the
fire is out?' 'I looked twice and felt with my hand'.

In none of these situations should we press to be told the steps



240 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

of any inferences, or the counterparts of any axioms; nor should we
grumble at the adoption of these different techniques of discovery,
but only, in cases of doubt, at the carelessness of their execution.
Nor do we require that tennis should be played as if it were, at
bottom, a variety of Halma.



(6) Afterthoughts.

As I said in the Foreword, there is something seriously amiss with
the discussions occupying this chapter. I have talked as if we know
how to use the concept or concepts of sensation; I have spoken with
almost perfunctory regret of our lack of Wat* sensation words; and
I have glibly spoken of auditory and visual sensations. But I am sure
that none of this will do.

Sometimes we use the word 'sensation' in a sophisticated tone
of voice to show that we are conversant with modern physio-
logical, neurological and psychological hypotheses. We use it in
the same breath with scientific words like 'stimulus', 'nerve-endings'
and 'rods and cones' ; and when we say that a flash of light causes
a visual sensation, we think that experimentalists are now able, or
will one day be able, to tell us what sort of a thing such a visual sensa-
tion is. But quite different from this is an unsophisticated use of
'sensation' and 'feeling'; the sense in which I say, without thinking
about theories, that the electric shock gave me a tingling feeling
up my arm, or that sensation is now returning to my numbed leg.
In this use, we are quite ready to say that a piece of grit, or a dazzling
light, gives us disagreeable sensations in our eyes; but in this use
we should never say that the tilings we ordinarily look at give us
any sensations in our eyes at all. When the grit is removed, we can
reply to the question, 'How does your eye feel now?'. But when we
switch our gaze from the fi'eld to the sky, we can give no answer
to the question, 'How has that switch modified the feelings in your
eyes?'. We can say from our own knowledge how the view has
changed; and we can say, on hearsay knowledge of special theories,
that presumably there have been a change of stimuli and a change in
the reactions of our rods and cone?. But there was nothing which we
should ordinarily call 'a feeling' ii our eyes at either stage.

Similarly, a few pungent or acrid smells give us special and
describable feelings inside our noses and throats; but most smells



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 241

give us no such sensations inside our noses. I can distinguish the
smell of roses from the smell of bread, but I do not naively describe
this difference by saying that roses give me one, and bread another,
sort of sensation or feeling, as electric shocks and hot water do give
me different sorts of sensations in my hand.

In our ordinary use of them, the words 'sensation', 'feel' and
'feeling* originally signify perceptions. A sensation is a sensation of
something and we feel the ship vibrating, or rolling, as we see its
flag flying, or hear its siren hooting. We can, in this sense, feel
things distinctly or indistinctly, as we can smell them distinctly or
indistinctly. As we see with our eyes and hear with our ears, so we
feel tilings with our hands, lips, tongues or knees. To find out
whether or not a common object is sticky, warm, lissom, hard or
gritty, we have not to look, listen, sniff or savour, but to feel the
thing. Reporting a sensation is, in this ordinary, unsophisticated use,
reporting something found out by tactual or kinaesthetic observa-
tion.

True, we often use 'feel' and 'sensation' in a different, though
derivative way. When a person with sore eyes says that there is a
gritty feeling under his eyelids, or when a feverish person says that
his head feels hot and his feet feel cold, they would not withdraw
their statements on being assured that there was no grit under the
eyelids, or that the head and feet were of the same temperature.
For here their 'feel' means 'feels as if, just as 'looks' often means
'looks as if and 'sounds' means 'sounds as if. But what is needed
to complete the 'as if clause is a reference to some state of affairs,
which, if it really obtained, would be found out by feeling in the
primary sense of this word the sense in which 'I feel a piece
of grit under my eyelid' would be withdrawn, when the speaker
was satisfied that there was no grit there. We might call this a
'post-perceptual' use of the verbs 'feel', 'look', 'sound' and the
rest.

There is, however, an important disparity between 'feel' on
the one hand and 'see', 'hear', 'taste' and 'smell' on the other.
A person whose foot is numbed may say not only that he cannot
feel tilings with his foot, but also that he cannot feel his foot, whereas
a momentarily blinded or deafened person would say that he could
not see or hear things with his right eye or right ear, but not that
he could not see his eye or hear his ear. When sensation returns to



242 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

the numbed foot its owner resumes his ability to report things both
about the pavement and about the foot.

It is obvious that this primary concept of sensation is not a
component of the generic concept of perception, since it is just
a species of that genus. I can see something without feeling anything,
just as I can feel something without seeing anything.

What then of the other, sophisticated sense of 'sensation', the
sense in which it is said that seeing involves having visual sensations
or impressions ? Sensations or impressions in this sense are not things
that people mention, until they have at least a hearsay knowledge
of physiological, psychological or epistemological theories. Yet long
before they reach this level of edification, they know how to use
verbs of perception, like 'see', 'hear', taste', 'smell' and 'feel', and
they use them then just as they continue to use them after edification.
So the sophisticated concept of sensations or impressions is not a
component of their concepts of perception. We could, and should
do well to discuss with Plato the notion of perception; if we did
so, we should never have occasion to complain that he had not yet
graduated to the use of the concepts of seeing, hearing and feeling,
since he had not yet been told latter-day theories about sensory
stimuli.

Physiologists and psychologists sometimes lament, or boast, that
they cannot find a bridge across the gulf separating impressions and
the nervous excitations which cause them. They take for granted
the existence of these impressions; it is only the mechanism of their
causation which, not unnaturally, perplexes them. How could one
question the existence of sense impressions ? Has it not been notori-
ous, at least since the time of Descartes, that these are the original,
the elementary and the constant contents of consciousness ?

Now when we say that a person is conscious of something, part
of what we normally mean is that he is ready to avow or report it
without research or special tuition. Yet just this is what no one ever
does with his alleged impressions. People are ordinarily ready to
tell what they see, hear, taste, smell or feel; they are ready, too, to
tell that it looks as if so and so, or that it sounds or feels as if such and
such. But they are not ready, indeed they are not even linguistically
equipped, to tell what impressions they are or have been having. So
the notion that such episodes occur does not derive from study of
what ordinary sensible people are found telling. They are not



SENSATION AND OBSERVATION 243

mentioned in the deliverances of untutored 'consciousness'. Rather,
the notion derives from a special causal hypothesis the hypothesis
that my mind can get in touch with a gate-post, only if the gate-post
causes something to go on in my body, which in its turn causes
something else to go on in my mind. Impressions are ghostly
impulses, postulated for the ends of a para-mechanical theory. The
very word 'impression', borrowed as it was from the description
of dents made in wax, betrays the motives of the theory. It is a
philosophical misfortune that the theory was able to trade on, and
pervert, the vocabulary in which we tell the things that we find out
by feeling. It is not a specialists' theory, but a piece of common
knowledge, that we find out by sensation that things are warm,
sticky, vibrating and tough. It was, accordingly, made to seem just
a more general piece of common knowledge that we have sensations
when we see, hear and smell. The sophisticated notion of sense
impressions has been smuggled in under the umbrella of the ordinary
idea of perception by touch.

I must not omit to mention another unsophisticated use of
words like 'sensation' and 'feel'. Sometimes a person will say, not
that he feels a piece of grit under his eyelid, and not that he feels a
gritty feeling under his eyelids, but that he feels a pain in his eye, or
has a painful sensation in his eye. Nouns of discomfort, like 'pain',
'itch' and 'qualm' come then to be treated by some theorists as
names of specific sensations, where 'sensation' is used in its sophis-
ticated sense as a synonym of the other sophisticated word 'impres-
sion'. But if a sufferer is asked just what he feels, he does not satisfy
the questioner by replying 'a pain' or 'a discomfort', but only by
replying 'a stabbing feeling', *a gritty feeling', or 'a burning feeling'.
He has to use a post-perceptual ｅxpression to the effect that it feels
as if something sharp were stabbing him, something gritty were
scratching him, or something red-hot were scorching him. That
he is in slight, great or intense distress is information of a different
sort, given in answer to a different sort of question. So the suggestion
is mistaken that in nouns like 'pain', 'itch' and 'qualm' we do, after
all, possess the beginnings of a vocabulary in which to report or
describe impressions. There remains, however, an interesting and
perhaps important difference between the sense in which a piece
of grit hurts me and the sense in which a heard discord, or a seen
clash of colours, hurts me. The grit literally hurts my eye, where the



244 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

discord only metaphorically hurts my ears. I should not ask the
chemist for an optical anodyne to stop the distress given to me by
a clash of colours, and if asked whether the clash hurt my right eye
more than it hurt my left eye, I should refuse to answer, unless by
saying that it did not literally hurt my eyes at all, as grit and dazzling
lights do literally hurt my eyes.

Words like 'distress 1 , 'distaste', 'grief ' and 'annoyance* are names
of moods. But 'hurt', 'itch* and 'qualm', when used literally, are
not the names of moods. We locate hurts and itches where we locate
the grit, or the straw, that we feel, or fancy we feel. Yet 'hurt' and
'itch' are not nouns of perception either. Hurts and itches cannot,
for instance, be distinct or indistinct, clear or unclear. Whereas finding
something out by sight or touch is an achievement, 'I itch terribly'
does not report an achievement, or describe anything ascertained. I
do not know what more is to be said about the logical grammar
of such words, save that there is much more to be said.



CHATTim VIII

IMAGINATION

(i) Foreword.

I HAVE mentioned the terminological fact that 'mental' is occa-
sionally used as a synonym of 'imaginary'. A hypochondriac's
symptoms are sometimes discounted as 'purely mental'. But much
more important than this linguistic oddity is the fact that there
exists a quite general tendency among theorists and laymen alike
to ascribe some sort of an other-worldly reality to the imaginary
and then to treat minds as the clandestine habitats of such fleshless
beings. Operations of imagining are, of course, exercises of mental
powers. But I attempt in this chapter to show that to try to answer
the question, 'Where do the things and happenings exist which
people imagine existing?' is to try to answer a spurious question.
They do not exist anywhere, though they are imagined as
existing, say, in this room, or in Juan Fernandez.

The crucial problem is that of describing what is 'seen in the
mind's eye' and what is 'heard in one's head'. What are spoken
of as Visual images', 'mental pictures', 'auditory images' and, in
one use, 'ideas' are commonly taken to be entities which are
genuinely found existing and found existing elsewhere than in the
external world. So minds are nominated for their theatres. But,
as I shall try to show, the familiar truth that people are
constantly seeing things in their minds' eyes and hearing things in
their heads is no proof that there exist things which they see
and hear, or that the people are seeing or hearing. Much as stage-
murders do not have victims and are not murders, so seeing things in
one's mind's eye does not involve either the existence of things seen
or the occurrence of acts of seeing them. So no asylum is required for
them to exist or occur in.

The afterthoughts expressed at the end of the last chapter cover
also some of the things said about sensations in this chapter.

245



246 THE CONClil'T OF MIND

(2) Picturing and Seeing.

To sec is one tiling; to picture or visualise is another. A person
can see things, only when his eyes are open, and when his surroundings
are illuminated; but he can have pictures in his mind's eye, when his
eyes are shut and when the world is dark. Similarly, he can hear
music only in situations in which other people could also hear it;
but a tune can run in his head, when his neighbour can hear no
music at all. Moreover, he can see only what is there to be seen
and hear only what is there to be heard, and often he cannot help
seeing and hearing what is there to be seen and heard; but
on some occasions he can choose what pictures shall be before
his mind's eye and what verses or tunes he shall go over in his
head.

One way in which people tend to express this difference is by
writing that, whereas they see trees and hear music, they only 'see',
in inverted commas, and 'hear' the objects of recollection and
imagination. The victim of delirium tremcns is described by others,
not as seeing snakes, but as 'seeing' snakes. This difference of idiom
is reinforced by another. A person who says that he 'sees' the home
of his childhood is often prepared to describe his vision as 'vivid',
'faithful' or 'lifelike', adjectives which he would never apply to
his sight of what is in front of his nose. For while a doll can be called
'lifelike', a child cannot; or while a portrait of a face may be faithful,
the face cannot be any such tiling. In other words, when a person
says that he 'sees' something which he is not seeing, he knows that
what he is doing is something which is totally different in kind
from seeing, just because the verb is inside inverted commas and
the vision can be described as more or less faithful, or vivid. He may
say 'I might be there now', but the word 'might' is suitable just
because it declares that he is not there now. The fact that in certain
conditions he fails to realise that he is not seeing, but only 'seeing',
as in dreams, delirium, extreme thirst, hypnosis and conjuring-
shows, does not in any degree tend to obliterate the distinction
between the concept of seeing and that of 'seeing', any more than
the fact that it is often difficult to tell an authentic from a forged
signature tends to obliterate the distinction between the concept
of a person signing his own namfc and that of someone else forging
it. The forgery can be described as a good or bad imitation of the
real thing; an authentic signature could not be characterised as an



IMAGINATION 247

imitation at all, since it is the real thing without which the forger
would have nothing to imitate.

As visual observation has pre-eminence over observation by the
other senses, so with most people visual imagination is stronger
than auditory, tactual, kinaesthetic, olfactory and gustatory
imagination, and consequently the language in which we discuss
these matters is largely drawn from the language of seeing. People
speak, for example, of 'picturing' or Visualising' things, but they
'have no corresponding generic verbs for imagery of the other sorts.

An unfortunate result ensues. Among the common objects of
visual observation there exist both visible things and visible
simulacra of them, both faces and portraits, both signatures and
forged signatures, both mountains and snapshots of mountains,
both babies and dolls; and this makes it natural to construe the
language in which we describe imaginations in an analogous
way.

If a person says that he is picturing his nursery, we are tempted
to construe his remark to mean that he is somehow contemplating,
not his nursery, but another visible object, namely a picture of his
nursery, only not a photograph or an oil-painting, but some
counterpart to a photograph, one made of a different sort of stuff.
Moreover, this paperless picture, which we suppose him to be
contemplating, is not one of which we too can have a view, for it
is not in a frame on the wall in front of all of our noses, but some-
where else, in a gallery which only he can visit. And then we are
inclined to say that the picture of his nursery which he contemplates
must be in his mind; and that the 'eyes' with which he contemplates
it are not his bodily eyes, which perhaps we see to be shut, but his
mind's eyes. So we inadvertently subscribe to the theory that
'seeing' is seeing after all, and what is 'seen' by him is as genuine a
likeness and as genuinely seen as is the oil-painting which is seen by
everyone. True, it is a short-lived picture, but so are cinematograph-
pictures. True, too, it is reserved for the one spectator to whom it
and its gallery belong; but monopolies are not uncommon.

I want to show that the concept of picturing, visualising or
'seeing' is a proper and useful concept, but that its use does not
entail the existence of pictures whidh we contemplate or the existence
of a gallery in which such pictures are ephcmerally suspended.
Roughly, imaging occurs, but images are not seen. I do have tunes



248 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

running in my head, but no tunes are being heard, when I have them
running there. True, a person picturing his nursery is, in a certain
way, like that person seeing his nursery, but the similarity does not
consist in his really looking at a real likeness of his nursery, but in his
really seeming to see his nursery itself, when he is not really seeing
it. He is not being a spectator of a resemblance of his nursery, but
he is resembling a spectator of his nursery.

(3) The Theory of Special Status Pictures.

Let us first consider some implications of the other doctrine,
that in visualising I am, in a nearly ordinary sense of the verb,
seeing a picture with a special status. It is part of this doctrine that the
picture that I see is not, as snapshots are, in front of my face; on the
contrary, it has to be not in physical space, but in a space of another
kind. The child, then, who imagines her wax-doll smiling is seeing
a picture of a smile. But the picture of the smile is not where the
doll's lips are, since they are in front of the child's face. So the
imagined smile is not on the doll's lips at all. Yet this is absurd.
No one can imagine an unattached smile, and no doll-owner would
be satisfied with an unsmiling doll plus a separate and impossible
simulacrum of a smile suspended somewhere else. In fact she does
not really see a Cheshire smile elsewhere than on the doll's lips;
she fancies she sees a smile on the doll's lips in front of her face,
though she does not see one there and would be greatly frightened
if she did. Similarly the conjuror makes us 'see' (not see) rabbits
coming out*>f the hat in his hand on the stage in front of our noses;
he does not induce us to sec (not 'see') shadow-rabbits coming out
of a second spectral hat, which is not in his hand, but in a space of
another kind.

The pictured smile is not, then, a physical phenomenon, i.e. a
real contortion of the doll's face; nor yet is it a non-physical
phenomenon observed by the child taking place in a field quite
detached from her perambulator and her nursery. There is not a
smile at all, and there is not an effigy of a smile either. There is
only a child fancying that she sees her doll smiling. So, though she
is really picturing her doll smiling, she is not looking at a picture
of a smile; and though I am fane/ing that I see rabbits coming out
of the hat, I am not seeing real phantasms of rabbits coming out of
real phantasms of hats. There is not a real life outside, shadowily



IMAGINATION 249

mimicked by some bloodless likenesses inside; there are just things
and events, people witnessing some of these things and events, and
people fancying themselves witnessing things and events that they
are not witnessing.

Take another case. I start to write down a long and unfamiliar
word and after a syllable or two, I find that I am not sure how the
word should go on. I then, perhaps, imagine myself consulting a
dictionary and in some cases I can then 'see' how the last three
syllables are printed. In this sort of case it is tempting to say that
I am really seeing a picture of a printed word, only the picture is
'in my head', or 'in my mind', since reading off the letters of the
word that I 'see' feels rather like reading off the letters from a
dictionary-item, or a photograph of such an item, which I really do
see. But in another case, I start writing the word and I 'see' the
next syllable or two on the page on which I am writing and in the
place where I am to write them. I feel rather as if I were merely
inking in a word-shadow lying across the page. Yet here it is
impossible to say that I am having a peep at a picture or ghost of a
word in a queer space other than physical space, for what I 'see' is
on my page just to the right of my nib. Again we must say that
though I picture the word in a certain place, printed in a certain
type, or written in a certain handwriting, and though I can read off
the spelling of the word from the way I picture it as printed or
written, yet there exists no picture, shadow or ghost of the word
and I see no picture, shadow or ghost of it. I seem to see the word on
the page itself, and the more vividly and sustainedly I seem to see
it, the more easily can I transcribe what I seem to see on to my
paper with my pen.

Hume notoriously thought that there exist both 'impressions'
and 'ideas', that is, both sensations and images; and he looked in
vain for a clear boundary between the two sorts of 'perceptions'.
Ideas, he thought, tend to be fainter than impressions, and in their
genesis they are later than impressions, since they are traces, copies
or reproductions of impressions. Yet he recognised that impressions
can be of any degree of faintness, and that though every idea is a
copy, it does not arrive marked 'copy' or 'likeness', any more than
impressions arrive marked 'original' or 'sitter'. So, on Hume's
showing, simple inspection cannot decide whether a perception is
an impression or an idea. Yet the crucial difference remains between



250 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

what is heard in conversation and what is 'heard' in day-dreams,
between the snakes in the Zoo and the snakes 'seen' by the
dipsomaniac, between the study that I am in and the nursery in
which 'I might be now*. His mistake was to suppose that 'seeing'
is a species of seeing, or that 'perception' is the name of a genus of
which there are two species, namely impressions and ghosts or
echoes of impressions. There are no such ghosts, and if there were,
they would merely be extra impressions; and they would belong
to seeing, not to 'seeing'.

Hume's attempt to distinguish between ideas and impressions
by saying that the latter tend to be more lively than the former was
one of two bad mistakes. Suppose, first, that 'lively' means Vivid'.
A person may picture vividly, but he cannot see vividly. one 'idea'
may be more vivid than another 'idea', but impressions cannot
be described as vivid at all, just as one doll can be more lifelike than
another, but a baby cannot be lifelike or unlifclike. To say that the
difference between babies and dolls is that babies are more lifelike
than dolls is an obvious absurdity. one actor may be more
convincing than another actor; but a person who is not acting is
neither convincing nor unconvincing, and cannot therefore be
described as more convincing than an actor. Alternatively, if Hume
was using 'vivid' to mean not 'lifelike' but 'intense', 'acute' or
'strong', then he was mistaken in the other direction; since, while
sensations can be compared with other sensations as relatively
intense, acute or strong, they cannot be so compared with images.
When I fancy I am hearing a very loud noise, I am not really
hearing cither a loud or a faint noise; I am not having a mild
auditory sensation, as I am not having an auditory sensation at all,
though I am fancying that I am having an intense one. An
imagined shriek is not ear-splitting, nor yet is it a soothing murmur,
and an imagined shriek is neither louder nor fainter than a heard
murmur. It neither drowns it nor is drowned by it.

Similarly, there are not two species of murderers, those who
murder people, and those who act the parts of murderers on the
stage; for these last are not murderers at all. They do not commit
murders which have the elusive attribute of being shams; they
pretend to commit ordinary mundcrs, and pretending to murder
entails, not murdering, but seeming to murder. As mock-murders
are not murders, so imagined sights and sounds are not sights or



IMAGINATION 251

sounds. They are not, therefore, dim sights, or faint sounds. And
they are not private sights or sounds either. There is no answer to
the spurious question, 'Where have you deposited the victim of
your mock-murder?' since there was no victim. There is no answer
to the spurious question, * Where do the objects reside that we fancy
we see?' since there are no such objects.

It will be asked, 'How can a person seem to hear a tune running
in his head, unless there is a tune to hear?' Part of the answer is
easy, namely that he would not be seeming to hear, or fancying that
he heard, a tune, if he were really hearing one, any more than the
actor would be simulating murder, if he were really murdering
someone. But there is more to be said than this. The question,
'How can a person seem to hear a tune, when there is no tune to be
heard ?' has the form of a 'wires and pulleys' question. It suggests
that there exists a mechanical or para-mechanical problem, (like
those that are properly asked about conjuring-tricks and automatic
telephones), and that we need to have described to us the hidden
workings that constitute what a person does, when he fancies himself
listening to a tune. But to understand what is meant by saying that
someone is fancying that he hears a tune does not require informa-
tion about any ulterior processes which may be going on when he
does so. We already know, and have known since childhood, in
what situations to describe people as imagining that they see or
hear or do things. The problem, so far as it is one, is to construe
these descriptions without falling back into the idioms in which we
talk of seeing horse-races, hearing concerts and committing murders.
It is into these idioms that we fall back the moment we say that
to fancy one sees a dragon is to see a real dragon-phantasm, or that
to pretend to commit a murder is to commit a real mock-
murder, or that to seem to hear a tune is to hear a real mental tune.
To adopt such linguistic practices is to try to convert into species-
concepts concepts which are designed, anyhow partly, to act
as factual disclaimers. To say that an action is a mock-murder
is to say, not that a certain sort of mild or faint murder has been
committed, but that no sort of murder has been committed ; and to
say that someone pictures a dragon is to say, not that he dimly sees
a dragon of a peculiar kind, or omething else very like a dragon,
but that he does not see a dragon, or anything dragon-like at all.
Similarly a person who 'sees Helvellyn in his mind's eye' is not



252 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

seeing either the mountain, or a likeness of the mountain; there is
neither a mountain in front of the eyes in his face, nor a mock-
mountain in front of any other non-facial eyes. But it is still true
that he 'might be seeing Helvellyn now' and even that he may fail
to realise that he is not doing so.

Let us consider another sort of imaging. Sometimes, when
someone mentions a blacksmith's forge, I find myself instantaneously
back in my childhood, visiting a local smithy. I can vividly 'see'
the glowing red horseshoe on the anvil, fairly vividly 'hear' the
hammer ringing on the shoe and less vividly 'smell' the singed
hoof. How should we describe this 'smelling in the mind's nose'?
Ordinary language provides us with no means of saying that I
am smelling a 'likeness' of a singed hoof. As has been said already,
in the ordinary daylit world there are visible faces and mountains,
as well as other visible objects, which are pictures of faces and
mountains; there are visible people and visible effigies of people.
Both trees and reflections of trees can be photographed or reflected
in mirrors. The visual comparison of seen things with the seen
likenesses of those things is familiar and easy. With sounds we are
not quite so well placed, but there are heard noises and heard
echoes of noises, songs sung and recordings of songs played, voices
and mimicries of them. So it is easy and tempting to describe visual
imaging as if it were a case of looking at a likeness instead of looking
at its original, and it may pass muster to describe auditory imaging
as if it were a case of hearing a sort of echo or recording, instead of
hearing the voice itself. But we have no such analogies for smelling,
tasting or feeling. So when I say that I 'smell' the singed hoof, I
have no way of paraphrasing my statement into a form of words
which says instead 'I smell a copy of a singed hoof. The language of
originals and copies does not apply to smells.

None the less, I may certainly say that I vividly 'smell' the
singed hoof, or that its smell comes back to me vividly, and the use
of this adverb shows by itself that I know that I am not smelling,
but only 'smelling'. Smells are not vivid, faithful or lifelike;
they are only more or less strong. only 'smells' can be vivid, and
correspondingly they cannot be more or less strong, though I can
seem to be getting a more or less* strong smell. However vividly
I may be 'smelling' the smithy, the smell of lavender in my room,
however faint, is in no degree drowned. There is no competition



IMAGINATION 253

between a smell and a 'smell', as there can be a competition between
the smell of onions and the smell of lavender.

If a person who has recently been in a burning house reports
that he can still 'smell' the smoke, he does not think that the house
in which he reports it is itself on fire. However vividly he 'smells'
the smoke, he knows that he smells none; at least, he realises this,
if he is in his right mind, and if he does not realise it, he will say
not that the 'smell' is vivid, but, erroneously, that the smell is strong.
But if the theory were true that to 'smell' smoke were really to
smell a likeness of smoke, he could have no way of distinguishing
between 'smelling' and smelling, corresponding to the familiar
ways in which we distinguish between looking at faces and looking
at likenesses of them, or between hearing voices and hearing record-
ings of voices.

There are usually ocular ways of distinguishing between things
and snapshots or effigies of them; a picture is flat, has edges
and perhaps a frame; it can be turned round and turned upside
down, crumpled and torn. Even an echo, or a recording, of a voice
can be distinguished, if not audibly, at least by certain mechanical
criteria from the voice itself. But no such discriminations can be
made between a smell and a copy of a smell, a taste and a likeness
of a taste, a tickle and a dummy-tickle; indeed, it makes no sense
to apply words like 'copy', 'likeness' and 'dummy' to smells, tastes
and feelings. Consequently we have no temptation to say that a
person who 'smells' the smithy is really smelling a facsimile or
likeness of anything. He seems to smell, or he fancies he smells,
something, but there is no way of talking as if there existed an
internal smell replica, or smell facsimile, or smell echo. In this case,
therefore, it is clear that to 'smell' entails not smelling and there-
fore that imaging is not perceiving a likeness, since it is not per-
ceiving at all.

Why, then, is it tempting and natural to misdescribe 'seeing
things' as the seeing of pictures of things? It is not because 'pictures'
denotes a genus of which snapshots are one species and mental
pictures are another, since 'mental pictures' no more denotes pictures
than 'mock-murders' denotes murders. on the contrary, we speak
of 'seeing' as if it were a seeiifg of pictures, because the familiar
experience of seeing snapshots of things and persons so often
induces the 'seeing' of those things and persons. This is what



254 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

snapshots are for. When a visible likeness of a person is in front of
my nose, I often seem to be seeing the person himself in front of
my nose, though he is not there and may be long since dead. I
should not keep the portrait if it did not perform this function. Or
when I hear a recording of a friend's voice, I fancy I hear him
singing or speaking in the room, though he is miles away. The
genus is seeming to perceive, and of this genus one very familiar
species is that of seeming to see something, when looking at an
ordinary snapshot of it. Seeming to see, when no physical likeness
is before the nose, is another species. Imaging is not having shadowy
pictures before some shadow-organ called 'the mind's eye'; but
having paper pictures before the eyes in one's face is a familiar
stimulus to imaging.

An oil painting of a friend is described as lifelike, if it makes me
seem to see the friend in great clarity and detail, when I am not
actually seeing him. A mere cartoon may be lifelike without being
at all similar to a lifelike oil painting of the same person. For a
picture to be lifelike it is not necessary or sufficient that it should
be an accurate replica of the contours or colouring of the subject's
face. So when I vividly 'see' a face, this does not entail my
seeing an accurate replica, since I might see an accurate replica
without being helped to 'see' the face vividly and vice versa. But
finding a picture of a person lifelike or 'speaking' entails being
helped to seem to see the person, since that is what 'lifelike' and
'speaking' mean.

People have tended to describe 'seeing' as a seeing of
genuine but ghostly likenesses, because they wanted to explain
vividness or lifelikeness in terms of similarity, as if, for me vividly
to 'see' Helvellyn, I must be actually seeing something else very
similar to Helvellyn. But this is erroneous. Seeing replicas, however
accurate, need not result in 'seeing' vividly, and the speakingness of
a physical likeness has to be described, not in terms of similarity,
but in terms of the vividness of the 'seeing* which it induces.

In short, there are no such objects as mental pictures, and if there
were such objects, seeing them would still not be the same thing as
seeming to see faces or mountains. We do picture or visualise faces
and mountains, just as we do, mbre rarely, 'smell' singed hoofs,
but picturing a face or a mountain is not having before us a picture
of the face or mountain, it is something that having a physical



IMAGINATION 255

likeness in front of one's nose commonly helps us to do, though we
can and often do do it without any such promptings. Dreaming,
again, is not being present at a private cinematograph show; on the
contrary, witnessing a public cinematograph show is one way of
inducing a certain sort of dreaming. The spectator there is seeing a
variously illuminated sheet of linen, but he is 'seeing* rolling
prairies. So it would invert the true state of affairs to say that the
dreamer is regarding a variously illuminated sheet of 'mental'
linen; for there is no mental linen, and if there were, seeing it
variously illuminated would not be dreaming that one was galloping
over the prairies.

The tendency to describe visualising as seeing genuine, but
internal, likenesses, reinforces and is reinforced by the Sense Datum
Theory. Many holders of this theory, supposing, erroneously, that
in 'seeing' I am seeing a peculiar paper-less snapshot, though one
which, oddly, cannot be turned upside down, think that a fortiori
in seeing proper I am seeing a peculiar non-physical colour expanse.
And supposing, erroneously, that having a visual sensation is
descrying a flat patchwork of colours spread out in 'a private space',
they find it all the easier to say that in imaging we are scanning a
more ghostly patchwork of colours hung up in the same gallery
with that original patchwork of colours. As in my study there
may be both a person and a shadow or a portrait of that person, so
in my private sight-gallery there might be both sense data and
reproductions of sense data. My objections to the interpretation of
picturing as picture-seeing do not in themselves demolish the
Sense Datum Theory of sensations; but they do demolish, I hope,
the ancillary theory that picturing is looking at reproductions of
sense data. And if I am right in saying that having a visual sensation
is wrongly described as some sort of observing of a patchwork of
colours, since the concept of sensation is different from the con-
cept of observing, it will follow, as can be established on other
grounds, that imaging is not only not any sort of observing of
anything; it is also not having a sensation of a special sort. Seeming
to hear a very loud noise is not being in any degree deafened, nor is
seeming to see a very bright light being in any degree dazzled. So
far are ideas from being impressions of a special sort, that to describe
something as an idea, in this sense, is to deny that an impression is
being had.



256 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

(4) Imagining.

It will probably be asked, 'What then is it for a person to fancy
that he sees or smells something ? How can he seem to hear a tune
that he does not really hear? And, in particular, how can a person
fail to be aware that he is only seeming to hear or see, as the
dipsomaniac certainly fails? In what precise respects is 'seeing' so
like seeing that the victim often cannot, with the best will and the
best wits, tell which he is doing?' Now if we divest these questions
of associations with any 'wires and pulleys' questions, we can see
that they are simply questions about the concept of imagining or
make-believe, a concept of which I have so far said nothing positive.
I have said nothing about it so far, because it seemed necessary to
begin by vaccinating ourselves against the theory, often tacitly
assumed, that imagining is to be described as the seeing of pictures
with a special status.

But I hope I have now shown that what people commonly
describe as 'having a mental picture of Helvellyn' or 'having
Helvellyn before the mind's eye' is actually a special case of
imagining, namely imagining that we sec Helvellyn in front of
our noses, and that having a tune running in one's head is imagining
that one has the tune being played in one's hearing, maybe in a
concert-hall. If successful, then I have also shown that the notion
that a mind is a 'place', where mental pictures are seen and repro-
ductions of voices and tunes are heard, is also wrong.

There arc hosts of widely divergent sorts of behaviour in the
conduct of which we should ordinarily and correctly be described
as imaginative. The mendacious witness in the witness-box, the
inventor thinking out a new machine, the constructor of a romance,
the child playing bears, and Henry Irving are all exercising their
imaginations; but so, too, are the judge listening to the lies of the
witness, the colleague giving his opinion on the new invention, the
novel reader, the nurse who refrains from admonishing the 'bears'
for their subhuman noises, the dramatic critic and the theatre-goers.
Nor do we say that they are all exercising their imaginations because
we think that, embedded in a variety of often widely different
operations, there is one common nuclear operation which all alike
are performing, any more than we think that what makes
two men both fanners is some nuclear operation which both do in
exactly the same way. Just as ploughing is one farming job and tree-



IMAGINATION 257

spraying is another farming job, so inventing a new machine is one
way of being imaginative and playing bears is another. No one
thinks that there exists a nuclear farming operation by the
execution of which alone a man is entitled to be called 'a farmer' ;
but the concepts wielded in theories of knowledge are apt to be less
generously treated. It is often assumed that there does exist one
nuclear operation in which imagination proper consists; it is
assumed, that is, that the judge following the witness's mendacities,
and the child playing bears, are both exercising their imaginations
only if they are both executing some specifically identical ingredient
operation. This supposed nuclear operation is often supposed
to be that of seeing things in the mind's eye, hearing things in one's
head and so on, i.e. some piece of fancied perceiving. Of course, it is
not denied that the child is doing lots of other things as well; he
roars, he pads around the floor, he gnashes his teeth and he pretends
to sleep in what he pretends is a cave. But, according to this view,
only if he sees pictures in his mind's eye of his furry paws, his
snowbound den and so on, is he imagining anything. His noises
and antics may be a help to his picturing, or they may be special
effects of it, but it is not in making these noises, or performing these
antics, that he is exercising his imagination, but only in his 'seeing',
'hearing', 'smelling', 'tasting' and 'feeling' things which are not
there to be perceived. And the corresponding things will be true
of the attentive, if sceptical, judge.

Put as bluntly as this, the doctrine is patently absurd. Most of
the things for which we ordinarily describe children as imaginative
arc ruled out in favour of a limited number of operations the
occurrence and qualities of which it is difficult to ascertain, especially
from relatively inarticulate children. We see and hear them play,
but we do not see or hear them 'seeing' or 'hearing' things. We
read what Conan Doyle wrote, but we do not get a view of what he
saw in his mind's eye. So, on this theory, we cannot easily tell
whether children, actors or novelists are imaginative or not, though
the word 'imagination' came to be wielded in theories of knowledge
just because we all know how to wield it in our everyday
descriptions of children, actors and novelists.

There is no special Faculty .5>f Imagination, occupying itself
single-mindedly in fancied viewings and hearings. on the contrary,
'seeing' things is one exercise of imagination, growling somewhat



2;S THE CONCEPT OF MIND

like a bear is another; smelling things in the mind's nose is an
uncommon act of fancy, malingering is a very common one, and
so forth. Perhaps the chief motive from which many theorists have
limited the exercises of imagination to the special class of fancied
perceptions is that they have supposed that, since the mind is
officially tri-partitioned into the Three Estates of Cognition, Volition
and Emotion, and since imagination was born into the first, it must
therefore be excluded from the others. Cognitive malpractices are
notoriously due to the pranks of undisciplined Imagination, and
some cognitive successes arc in debt to its primmer activities. So,
being an (erratic) Squire of Reason, it cannot serve the other
masters. But we need not pause to discuss this feudal allegory.
Indeed, if we are asked whether imagining is a cognitive or a non-
cognitive activity, our proper policy is to ignore the question.
'Cognitive* belongs to the vocabulary of examination papers.

(5) Pretending.

Let us begin by considering the notion of pretending, a notion
which is partly constitutive of such notions as those of cheating,
acting a part, playing bears, shamming sick and hypochondria. It
will be noticed that in some varieties of make-believe, the pretender
is deliberately simulating or dissimulating, in some varieties he may
not be quite sure to what extent, if any, he is simulating or dis-
simulating, and in other varieties he is completely taken in by his
own acting. on a small scale this can be illustrated by the child
playing bears, who knows, while in the well-lit drawing-room, that
he is only playing an amusing game, but feels faint anxieties when
out on the solitary landing, and cannot be persuaded of his safety
when in the darkness of a passage. Make-believe is compatible
with all degrees of scepticism and credulity, a fact which is relevant
to the supposed problem, 'How can a person fancy that he sees
something, without realising that he is not seeing it?' But if we pose
the parallel questions, 'How can a child play bears, without being all
the time quite sure that it is only a game? How can the malingerer
fancy that he has symptoms, without being perfectly confident
that they are only his fancies ?' we see that these questions, and many
others like them, are not genuifte how-questions at all. The fact
that people can fancy that they see things, are pursued by bears, or
have a grumbling appendix, without realising that it is nothing but



IMAGINATION 259

fancy, is simply a part of the unsurprising general fact that not all
people are, all the time, at all ages and in all conditions, as judicious or
critical as could be wished.

To describe someone as pretending is to say that he is playing a
part, and to play a part is to play the part, normally, of someone
who is not playing a part, but doing or being something ingenuously
or naturally. A corpse is motionless, and so is a person pretending
to be a corpse. But a person pretending to be a corpse is, unlike the
corpse, trying to be motionless, and, again unlike the corpse, he is
motionless from the wish to resemble a corpse. He is, perhaps,
deliberately, skilfully and convincingly motionless, whereas the
corpse is just motionless. Corpses have to be dead, but mock-
corpses have to be alive. Indeed, they have to be not only alive, but
also awake, non-absent-minded and applying their minds to the
part they are playing.

Talking about a person pretending to be a bear or a corpse
involves talking obliquely about how bears and corpses behave, or
are supposed to behave. He plays these parts by growling as
bears growl and lying still as corpses lie still. one cannot know how
to play a part without knowing what it is like to be or do
ingenuously that which one is staging; nor can one find a mock-
performance convincing or unconvincing, or dub it skilful or
inefficient, without knowing how the ingenuous performance itself
is conducted. Pretending to growl like a bear, or lie still like a
corpse, is a sophisticated performance, where the bear's growling
and the corpse's immobility are naive.

The difference is parallel to that between quoting an assertion
and making it. If I quote what you asserted, then what I say is
just what you said ; I may even say it in just your tone of voice.
Yet the full description of my action is not at all like that of yours.
Yours was, perhaps, an exercise of the skill of a preacher; mine is
that of a reporter or mimic; you were being original; I am being an
echo: you said what you believed; I say what I do not believe. In
short, the words I utter are uttered, so to speak, as they would
be written, inside inverted commas. The words you uttered
were not. You spoke in oratio recta; I may intend what I say to
be taken as if in oratio obliqua. In* the same sort of way, while the
bear just growls, the child's growling is, so to speak, inside inverted
commas. His direct action is, unlike the bear's, one of representation,



260 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

and this obliquely embodies growling. Yet the child is not doing
two things at once, any more than I, in quoting you, am saying
two things at once. A mock-performance differs from the ingenuous
performance which it represents, not in being a complex of
performances, but in being a performance with a certain sort of
complex description. A mention of the ingenuous performance
is an ingredient in the description of the mock-performance. The
noises issuing from the child may be as similar as you please to
those issuing from the bear, just as the noises issuing from my lips
may be as similar as you please to the noises you made in your
homily, but the concept of such mock-performances is logically
very different from that of the ingenuous performances. In
describing their authors, we use quite different batteries of predicates.

Is a forged signature the same sort of thing as a genuine signature,
or is it a different sort of thing? If the forgery is perfect, then the one
cheque really is indistinguishable from the other and so, in this
sense, they are exactly the same sort of tiling. But forging a signature
is quite unlike signing; the one requires what the other does not,
the wish and the ability to produce marks indistinguishable from a
signature. In this sense they are completely different sorts of things.
The whole ingenuity of the forger is exerted in trying to make his
cheque a perfect facsimile of the authentic cheque, the signing of
which had taken no ingenuity. What he is after has to be described
in terms of the similarity between writings, just as what the child
was after has to be described in terms of the similarity between
his noises and the bear's noises. Deliberate verisimilitude is a part
of the concept of copying. The very likenesses between copies and
their originals are what make activities of copying different in type
from the activities copied.

There are lots of different sorts of pretending, different motives
from which people pretend and different criteria by which pretences
are assessed as skilful or unskilful. The child pretends for fun, the
hypocrite for profit, the hypochondriac from morbid egotism, the
spy, sometimes, from patriotism, the actor, sometimes, for art's
sake, and the cooking instructress for demonstration purposes. Let
us consider the case of the boxer sparring with his instructor. They
go through the motions of sericrtis fighting, though they are not
fighting seriously; they pretend to attack, retreat, punish and
retaliate, though no victory is aimed at, or defeat feared. The pupil



IMAGINATION 261

is learning manoeuvres by playing at them, the instructor is teaching
them by playing at them. Yet though they are only mock-fighting,
they need not be carrying on two collateral activities. They need
not be both punching and also pulling their punches; both laying
traps and also betraying the traps they lay; or both plying their
fists and also plying propositions. They may be going through only
one set of movements, yet they are making these movements in a
hypothetical and not in a categorical manner. The notion of hurt
enters only obliquely into the description of what they are trying
to do. They are not trying either to hurt or to avoid hurt, but
only to practise ways in which they would hurt and would avoid
hurt, if engaged in serious fights. The cardinal thing in sparring is
abstaining from giving punishing blows, when one could, i.e. in
situations in which one would give such blows if the fight were
serious. Sham-fighting is, to put it crudely, a series of calculated
omissions to fight.

The central point illustrated by these cases is that a mock-
performance may be unitary as an action though there is an
intrinsic duality in its description. only one thing is done, yet
to say what is done requires a sentence containing, at the least, both
a main clause and a subordinate clause. To recognise this is to see
why there is no more than a verbal appearance of a contradiction
in saying of an actor, playing the part of an idiot, that he is grimacing
in an idiotic manner in a highly intelligent manner; or of a clown
that he is deftly clumsy and brilliantly inane. The scathing
adjective attaches to the conduct mentioned in the subordinate
clause of the description and the flattering adjective or adverb to
the activity mentioned in the main clause, yet only one set of
motions is executed. Similarly, if I quote a statement, you might
correctly characterise what I say both as 'accurate' and as
'inaccurate', for it might be a highly inaccurate statement of the
size of the National Debt quite accurately quoted, or vice versa.
Yet I have uttered only one statement.

Acts of pretending are not the only ones the descriptions of
which incorporate this dualism between the direct and the oblique.
If I obey an order, I do the thing I am told to do and I comply
with the command; but as I coAply with the command by doing
the thing, I execute only one action. Yet the description of what I
do is complex in such a way that it would often be correct to



262 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

characterise my conduct by two seemingly conflicting predicates.
I do what I am told from force of habit, though what I am ordered
to do is something which I am not in the habit of doing; or I obey
like a good soldier, though what I am ordered to do is something
which it is a mark of a bad soldier to do. Similarly, I may do wisely
in following advice to do something unwise, and I may with
difficulty carry out a resolve to do something easy. In Chapter VI,
Section (6) we found it convenient to distinguish verbally between
higher order tasks and lower order tasks, and between higher
order performances and lower order performances, meaning by a
'higher order task', one the description of which incorporates the
mention of another task of a less complex description. It will be
realised that the fact that the movements made in the execution of
one task are entirely similar to those made in the execution of
another is compatible with the descriptions of the tasks being not
only different but different in type in the way indicated.

To return to pretending. The frame of mind of a person
pretending to be cross is different from that of a person who is
cross, and different from it not just in the fact that the former is not
cross. He is not cross, though he acts as if he were; and this simulation
involves, in some way, the thought of crossness. He must not only
possess, but in some way be using, the knowledge of what it is for
someone to be cross. He intentionally models his actions upon
those of a cross man. But when we say that putting on the behaviour
of a cross man involves having the thought of crossness, we run a
certain risk, namely the risk of suggesting that pretending to be
cross is a tandem process consisting of one operation of meditating
about crossness, shepherding a second operation of performing the
quasi-cross actions. Such a suggestion would be wrong. Whether or
not pieces of make-believe happen to be preceded by, or interlarded
with, pieces of describing or planning, it is not in this way that
make-believe involves the thought of what is simulated. The
business of trying to behave in ways in which a cross man would
behave is itself, in part, the thought of how he would behave; the
more or less faithful muscular representation of his poutings and
stampings is the active utilisation of the knowledge of how he
would comport himself. We concede that a person knows what the
publican's temper is like if, though he is unable to give to himself,
or to us, even a lame verbal description of it, he can yet play the



IMAGINATION 263

part to the life; and if he does so, he cannot then say that he is
unable to think how the publican behaves when annoyed.
Mimicking him 15 thinking how he behaves. If we ask the person
how he thinks the publican acted, we shall not reject a response given
by impersonation and demand instead a response given in prose.
Indeed, so far from the concept of pretending to be cross requiring
for its elucidation a causal story about operations of planning
shepherding operations of acting quasi-crossly, the converse is the
case. To explain the sense in which planning a line of conduct leads
to the pursuance of that line of conduct, it is necessary to show that
executing a planned task, is doing, not two things, but one thing.
But the tiling done is an act of a higher order, since its description
has a logical complexity, like that which characterises the descrip-
tions of pretending and obeying. To do what one has planned to do
and to growl like a bear are both relatively sophisticated occupations.
To describe them, we have obliquely to mention doings, whose
description embodies no corresponding oblique mentions. Of the
same type are acts of repenting of what one has done, keeping a
resolution, jeering at another's performance and complying with the
rules. In all these cases, as well as in many others, the doing of the
higher order acts involves the thought of the lower order acts; yet
the phrase 'involves the thought of does not connote the collateral
occurrence of another, cogitative act.

One variety of pretending is worthy of mention at this point.
A person engaged in a planning or theorising task may find it
useful or amusing to go through the motions of thinking thoughts
which are not, or are not yet, what he is disposed ingenuously to
think. Assuming, supposing, entertaining, toying with ideas and
considering suggestions are all ways of pretending to adopt schemes
or theories. The sentences in which the propositions entertained are
expressed are not being ingenuously used; they are being mock-used.
There are, metaphorically speaking, inverted commas round them.
Their employer is wielding them with his intellectual tongue in his
cheek; he utters them in a hypothetical, not in a categorical frame
of mind. Very likely he advertises the fact that he is wielding his
sentences in a sophisticated and not in a naive way by using such
special signals as the words 'iF, 'suppose', 'granting', 'say' and so on.
Or, he may talk aloud, or to himself, in a sparring, instead of a fight-
ing tone of voice. But he may still be misunderstood and accused of



264 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

seriously meaning what he says, and then he has to explain that he
had not been committing himself to what he had been asserting,
but only considering just what he would have been committing
himself to, had he done so. He had been trying out the thought,
perhaps to give himself practice in it. That is to say, supposing is a
more sophisticated operation than ingenuous thinking. We have to
learn to give verdicts before we can learn to operate with suspended
judgments.

This point is worth making, partly for its intimate connection
with the concept of imagining and partly because logicians and
epistemologists sometimes assume, what I for a long time assumed,
that entertaining a proposition is a more elementary or naive
performance than affirming that something is the case, and, what
follows, that learning, for example, how to use 'therefore' requires
first having learned to use 'if. This is a mistake. The concept
of make-believe is of a higher order than that of belief.

(6) Pretending, Fancying and Imaging.

There is not much difference between a child playing at being
a pirate, and one fancying that he is a pirate. So far as there is
a difference, it seems to come to this, that we use words like
'play', 'pretend' and 'act the part', when we think of spectators
finding the performance more or less convincing, whereas we use
words like 'fancy' and 'imagine' when we are thinking of the actor
himself being half-convinced; and we use words like 'play' and
'pretend' for deliberate, concerted and rehearsed performances,
whereas we are more ready to use words like 'fancy' and 'imagine'
for those activities of make-believe into which people casually and
even involuntarily drift. Underlying these two differences there is,
perhaps, this more radical difference, that we apply the words
'pretend' and 'act the part', where an overt and muscular representa-
tion is given of whatever deed or condition is being put on, while
we tend, with plenty of exceptions, to reserve 'imagine' and 'fancy'
for some things that people do inaudibly and invisibly because 'in
their heads', i.e. for their fancied perceptions and not for their
mock-actions.

It is with this special brand of make-believe that we are here
chiefly concerned, namely what we call 'imaging', 'visualising',
'seeing in the mind's eye' and 'going through in one's head'.



IMAGINATION 265

Even people who might allow that sparring consists in going through
some of the motions of fighting in a hypothetical manner will not
readily allow that the same sort of account holds good of seeing
Helvellyn in one's mind's eye. What motions are there here to go
through in a hypothetical manner? Even though in describing how
the dipsomaniac 'sees' snakes we use inverted commas, as we do in
describing how the child 'scalps' his nurse, or how the boxer
'punishes' his sparring partner, it will be urged that the force of
these commas is not the same in the two sorts of cases. Picturing is
not sham-seeing in the way that sparring is sham-fighting.

We have, I hope, got rid of the idea that picturing Helvellyn
is seeing a picture of Helvellyn, or that having 'Lillibullero' running
in one's head is listening to a private reproduction, or internal echo,
of that tune. It is necessary now to get rid of a more subtle supersti-
tion. Epistemologists have long encouraged us to suppose that a
mental picture, or a visual image, stands to a visual sensation in
something like the relation of an echo to a noise, a bruise to a blow
or a reflection in a mirror to the face reflected. To make this point
more specific, it has been supposed that what is taking place, when I
'see', or 'hear', or 'smell', corresponds to that element in perceiving
which is purely sensuous; and not to that element which constitutes
recognising or making out; i.e. that imaging is a piece of near-
sentience and not of a function of intelligence, since it consists in
having, not indeed a proper sensation, but a shadow-sensation.

But this opinion is completely false. Whereas an unknown
tune may be played in a person's hearing, so that he hears the tune
without knowing how it goes, we cannot say of a person in whose
head a tune is running that he does not know how it goes. Having
a tune running in one's head is one familiar way in which knowledge
of how that tune goes is utilised. So having a tune running in one's
head is not to be likened to the mere having of auditory sensations;
it is to be likened rather to the process of following a familiar tune,
and following a heard tune is not a function of sentience.

Similarly, if I peer through a hole in a hedge on a misty day,
I may not be able to identify what I see as a watercourse flowing
in spate down a mountainside. But it would be absurd for someone
to say 'I vividly see something* in my mind's eye, but I cannot
make out even what sort of a thing it is'. True, I can see a face in
my mind's eye and fail to put a name to its owner, just as I can have a



266 THE CONCEPT Of MIND

tune in my head, the name of which I have forgotten. But I know
how the tune goes and I know what sort of a face I am picturing.
Seeing the face in my mind's eye is one of the tilings which my
knowledge of the face enables me to do ; describing it in words is
another and a rarer ability; recognising it at sight in the flesh is the
commonest of all.

We saw in the previous chapter that perceiving entails both
having sensations and something else which can be called, in a
strained sense, 'thinking*. We can now say that to picture, image or
fancy one sees or hears also entails thinking, in this strained sense.
Indeed, this should be obvious, if we consider that our picturing of
something must be charactcrisable as more or less vivid, clear,
faithful and accurate, adjectives which connote not merely the
possession but the use of the knowledge of how the object pictured
does or would really look. It would be absurd for me to say
that the smell of burning peat comes vividly back to me,
but that I should not recognise the smell, if the peat were smoking
in my presence. Imaging, therefore, is not a function of pure
sentience; and a creature which had sensations, but could not learn,
could not 'see', or picture, things any more than it could spell.

A person with a tune running in his head is using his knowledge
of how the tune goes; he is in a certain way realising what he would
be hearing, if he were listening to the tune being played. Somewhat
as the boxer, when sparring, is hitting and parrying in a hypo-
thetical manner, so the person with a tune running in his head may
be described as following the tune in a hypothetical manner.
Further, just as the actor is not really murdering anyone, so the
person picturing Helvellyn is not really seeing Helvellyn. Indeed,
as we know, he may have his eyes shut, while he pictures the
mountain. Picturing Helvellyn, so far from having, or being akin
to having, visual sensations, is compatible with having no such
sensations and nothing akin to them. There is nothing akin to
sensations. Realising, in this way, how Helvellyn would look is
doing something which stands in the same relation to seeing
Helvellyn as sophisticated performances stand to those more naive
performances, whose mention is obliquely contained in the
description of the higher order performances.

But there remains, or appears to remain, a crucial difference,
which may be brought out thus. A sailor, asked to demonstrate



IMAGINATION 267

how a certain knot is tied, finds that lie has no cord with which to
demonstrate. However, he does nearly as well by merely going
through the motions of knotting a cord empty-handed. His
spectators see how he would tie the knot by seeing how he
manoeuvres his hands and fingers without any cord in them. Now
although he is, so to speak, hypothetically knotting cord, still he
is really moving his hands and fingers. But a person picturing
Helvellyn with his eyes shut, while he is certainly enjoying, so to
speak, only a hypothetical view of the mountain, does not seem to
be really doing anything. Perhaps his non-existent visual sensations
correspond to the sailor's non-existent piece of string, but what
corresponds to the movements of his hands and fingers ? The sailor
does show the spectators how the knot would be tied; but the
person visualising Helvellyn does not thereby show to his companion
its contours or its colouring. Does he even show them to
himself?

This difference between the two varieties of make-believe is,
however, nothing but a consequence of the difference between
perceiving something and bringing something about. This difference
is not a difference between bringing something about privily and
bringing something about overtly, for perceiving is not bringing
anything about. It is getting something or, sometimes, keeping
something; but it is not effecting anything. Seeing and hearing are
neither witnessed nor unwitnessed doings, for they are not doings.
It makes no sense to say 1 saw you seeing the sunset', or 'I failed to
watch myself hearing the music'. And if it makes no sense to speak
of my witnessing, or failing to witness, a piece of hearing or seeing,
a fortiori it makes no sense to speak of my witnessing, or failing to
witness, a piece of fancied hearing or fancied seeing. No hearing
or seeing is taking place.

In the concert-hall a man's neighbour can, perhaps, see him
beating time to the music and even overhear him half-whistling or
half-humming to himself the tune the band is playing. But not only
do we not say that his neighbour sees, or overhears, him hearing the
music, as he sees or overhears him accompanying it, but we do not
say, either, that his neighbour fails to witness him hearing the music.
'Secretly' and 'openly' do not attach to 'hearing', as they can attach
to 'cursing* and 'plotting'. A fortiori, while his neighbour in the
train may detect him beating time to a tune that is running in his



268 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

head, he does not claim either to detect, or to fail to detect, his
bearing' of the imagined tune.

Next, as we saw in the last chapter, following a known tune
involves not only hearing the notes, but also much more than
that. It involves, so to speak, having the proper niche ready
for each note as it comes. Each note comes as and when it was
expected to come; what is heard is what was listened for. This
listening for the due notes entails having learned and not forgotten
the tune and is therefore a product of training and is not a mere
function of aural sensitiveness. A deafish man may follow a tune
better than one who hears it better.

A person listening to a moderately familiar tune may on
some occasions describe himself as having got the tune wrong,
meaning by this that, though he was not himself playing or humming
the tune, but only listening to it, yet here and there he listened for
notes other than those which were really due to come; and he was
taken by surprise to hear a particular movement beginning when it
did, though he also recognised that it was his mistake to be
surprised. It must be noticed that his error about the course of the
tune need not have been, and ordinarily would not have been, formu-
lated in a false sentence, private or public; all he 'did' was to be
listening for what was not due to come, in place of what was due
to come, and this listening for notes is not a deed done, or a series of
deeds done.

This very point brings us to the case of a person following an
imagined tune. To expect a tune to take one course, when it is
actually taking another, is already to suppose, fancy or imagine.
When what is heard is not what was listened for, what was listened
for can be described only as notes which might have been heard,
and the frame of mind in which they were listened for was therefore
one of erroneous expectancy. The listener is disappointed, or abashed,
by what he actually hears. A person going through a tune entirely in
his head is in a partially similar case. He, too, listens for something
which he does not get, though he is well aware all the time that he is
not going to get it. He too can get the tune wrong, and either realise,
or fail to realise, that he does so, a fact which by itself shows
that imaging is not merely the having of sensations or sensation-
echoes, since this could not be characterised as the acceptance of
either a wrong or a correct version of a tune.



IMAGINATION 269

Going through a tune in one's head is like following a heard
tune and is, indeed, a sort of rehearsal of it. But what makes the
imaginative operation similar to the other is not, as is often supposed,
that it incorporates the hearing of ghosts of notes similar in all but
loudness to the heard notes of the real tune, but the fact that both are
utilisations of knowledge of how the tune goes. This knowledge
is exercised in recognising and following the tune, when actually
heard; it is exercised in humming or playing it; in noticing the errors
in its misperformance; it is also exercised in fancying oneself hum-
ming or playing it and in fancying oneself merely listening to it.
Knowing a tune just is being able to do some such things as recognise
and follow it, produce it, detect errors in the playing of it and go
through it in one's head. We should not allow that a person had
been unable to think how the tune went, who had whistled it
correctly or gone through it in his head. Doing such things is
thinking how the tune goes.

But the purely imaginative exercise is more sophisticated than
that of following the tune, when heard, or than that of humming it;
since it involves the thought of following or producing the tune, in
the way in which sparring involves the thought of fighting in earnest,
or in the way in which uttering something at second hand involves
the thought of its first hand utterance. Fancying one is listening
to a known tune involves listening for' the notes which would be
due to be heard, were the tune being really performed. It is to listen
for those notes in a hypothetical manner. Similarly, fancying one is
humming a known tune involves 'making ready' for the notes which
would be due to be hummed, were the tune actually being hummed.
It is to make ready for those notes in a hypothetical manner. It is not
humming very, very quietly, but rather it is deliberately not doing
those pieces of humming which would be due, if one were not
trying to keep the peace. We might say that imagining oneself
talking or humming is a series of abstentions from producing the
noises which would be the due words or notes to produce, if one
were talking or humming aloud. That is why such operations are
impenetrably secret; not that the words or notes are being produced
in a hermetic cell, but that the operations consist of abstentions
from producing them. That, too, is why learning to fancy one is
talking or humming comes later than learning to talk or hum.
Silent soliloquy is a flow of pregnant non-sayings. Refraining from



270 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

saying things, of course, entails knowing both what one would have
said and how one would have said it.

Doubtless some people on some occasions of imagining tunes
fancy themselves not merely passively hearkening but also actively
producing the notes, just as most imagined discourse contains not
only imagined hearing but also imagined speaking. Very likely,
too, people who imagine themselves producing noises tend to
activate slightly those muscles which they would be activating fully,
if they were singing or talking aloud, since complete abstention is
harder than partial abstention. But these are questions of fact with
which we are not concerned. Our concern is to find out what it
means to say, e.g. that someone 'hears* something that he is not
hearing.

The application of this account to visual and other imagery is
not difficult. Seeing Helvellyn in one's mind's eye does not entail,
what seeing Helvellyn and seeing snapshots of Helvellyn entail,
the having of visual sensations. It does involve the thought of
having a view of Helvellyn and it is therefore a more sophisticated
operation than that of having a view of Helvellyn. It is one utilisation
among others of the knowledge of how Helvellynshould look, or, in
one sense of the verb, it is thinking how it should look. The expecta-
tions which are fulfilled in the recognition at sight of Helvellyn are
not indeed fulfilled in picturing it, but the picturing of it is some-
thing like a rehearsal of getting them fulfilled. So far from picturing
involving the having of faint sensations, or wraiths of sensations,
it involves missing just what one would be due to get, if one were
seeing the mountain.

Certainly not all imaging is the picturing of real faces and
mountains, or the 'hearing' of familiar tunes and known voices.
We can fancy ourselves looking at fabulous mountains. Composers,
presumably, can fancy themselves listening to tunes that have never
yet been played. It may be supposed, accordingly, that in such cases
there is no question of the imaginary scene being pictured right, or
of the tune still under composition being 'heard' to go otherwise
than as it really goes; any more than Hans Andersen could be cither
accused of misreporting the careers of his characters, or praised for
the factual fidelity of his narratives.

Consider the parallels of pretending and quoting. An actor on
one day plays the part of a Frenchman; on the next day he has to



IMAGINATION 271

play the part of a visitor from Mars. We know how the former
representation might be convincing or unconvincing; but how could
the latter? Or I might start by quoting what you have said and go
on by giving utterance to what you would or could have said. We
know what it is for a quotation to be accurate, but a pretence
quotation cannot be either accurate or inaccurate; it can only be,
in some remoter sense, in character or out of character, by being,
or failing to be, the sort of tiling that you would or could have said.
None the less, the actor is pretending to give a convincing repre-
sentation of the man from Mars, and I am pretending that I am
quoting your very words. It is just a piece of double representation. A
boy mimicking a boxer sparring is in a similar case, for he is not
fighting and he is not rehearsing fighting; he is staging some of
the moves of a person rehearsing fighting. He is mock-mock-
fighting. As the predicates by which we comment on fighting do
not attach to sparring, so the predicates by which we comment on
sparring do not attach to mimicries of sparring. Correspondingly,
not only do the predicates by which we comment on our view of
Helvellyn not attach to the manner in which we picture Helvellyn,
but also the predicates by which we comment on our visualisations
of Helvellyn do not attach to our visualisations of Atlantis or Jack's
Beanstalk. None the less, we pretend that this is how Atlantis and
the Beanstalk would have looked. We arc doing a piece of double
imagining.

We arc now in a position to locate and correct an error made by
Hume. Supposing, wrongly, that to 'see* or 'hear' is to have a
shadow-sensation, (which involves the further error of supposing
that there could be shadow-sensations), he put forward the causal
theory that one could not have a particular 'idea' without having
previously had a corresponding sensation, somewhat as having an
angular bruise involves having been previously struck by an angular
object. The colours that I see in my mind's eye are, he seems to
have thought, traces somehow left by the colours previously seen
by me with my eyes open. The only thing that is true in this account
is that what I see in my mind's eye and what I hear 'in my
head' is tied in certain ways to what I have previously seen and
heard. But the nature of this tie is not at all what Hume supposed.

We saw that mock-actions presuppose ingenuous actions, in the
sense that performing the former involves, in a special sense, the



272 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

thought of the latter. A person who had not learned how bears
growl, or how murderers commit murders, could not play bears, or
act murders. Nor could he criticise the acting. In the same way, a
person who had not learned how blue things look, or how the
postman's knock sounds, could not see blue things in his mind's
eye, or 'hear' the postman's knock; nor could he recognise blue
things, or postman's knocks. Now we learn how things look and
sound chiefly and originally by seeing and hearing them. Imaging,
being one among many ways of utilising knowledge, requires
that the relevant knowledge lias been got and not lost. We no
more need a para-mechanical theory of traces to account for our
limited ability to see things in our mind's eyes than we need it
to account for our limited ability to translate French into English.
All that is required is to see that learning perceptual lessons entails
some perceiving, that applying those lessons entails having learned
them, and that imaging is one way of applying those lessons. Addicts
of the trace theory should try to fit their theory to the case of a tune
running in someone's head. Is this a revived trace of an auditory
sensation; or a series of revived traces of a series of auditory
sensations ?

(7) Memory.

It is convenient to append to this discussion of imagination a brief
excursus on remembering. We must begin by noticing two widely
different ways in which the verb 'to remember' is commonly used.

(a) By far the most important and the least discussed use of the
verb is that use in which remembering something means having
learned something and not forgotten it. This is the sense in
which we speak of remembering the Greek alphabet, or the way
from the gravel-pit to the bathing-place, or the proof of a theorem,
or how to bicycle, or that the next meeting of the Board will be in
the last week of July. To say that a person has not forgotten some-
thing is not to say that he is now doing or undergoing anything, or
even that he regularly or occasionally does or undergoes anything.
It is to say that he can do certain things, such as go through the
Greek alphabet, direct a stranger back from the bathing-place to
the gravel-pit and correct someone who says that the next meeting
of the Board is in the second week in July.

What, in this use, is said to be remembered is any learned lesson,



IMAGINATION 273

and what is learned and not forgotten need have nothing to do with
the past, though the learning of it of course precedes the condition
of not having forgotten it. 'Remember' in this use is often, though
not always, an allowable paraphrase of the verb 'to know'.

(b) Quite different from this is the use of the verb 'to remember*
in which a person is said to have remembered, or been recollecting,
something at a particular moment, or is said to be now
recalling, reviewing or dwelling on some episode of his own past.
In this use, remembering is an occurrence; it is something which a
person may try successfully, or in vain, to do; it occupies his attention
for a time and he may do it with pleasure or distress and with ease
or effort. The barrister presses the witness to recall things, where the
teacher trains his pupils not to forget things.

Recalling has certain features in common with imagining. I
recall only what I myself have seen, heard, done and felt, just as
what I imagine is myself seeing, hearing, doing and noticing things;
and I recall as I imagine, relatively vividly, relatively easily and
relatively connectedly. Moreover, much as I imagine things
sometimes deliberately and sometimes involuntarily, so I recall
things sometimes deliberately and sometimes involuntarily.

There is an important connection between the notion of not-
forgetting and the notion of recollecting. To say that a person
either actually is recalling something, or can recall, or be
reminded of it, implies that he has not forgotten it; whereas to say
that he has not forgotten something does not entail that he ever
does or could recall it. There would be a contradiction in saying
that I can or do recollect the incidents that I witnessed taking place
at a picnic, though I no longer know what occurred there. There is
no contradiction in saying that I know when I was born, or that I
had my appendix removed, though I cannot recall the episodes.
There would be an absurdity in saying that I do or can recall
Napoleon losing the Battle of Waterloo, or how to translate English
into Greek, though I have not forgotten these tilings ; since these are
not the sorts of things that can be recalled, in the sense of the verb
in which what I recall must be things that I have myself witnessed,
done or experienced.

Theorists speak sometimes of memory-knowledge, memory-
belief and the evidence of memory, and, when discussing the
'sources' of knowledge and the ways by which we come to know



274 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

things, they sometimes talk as if memory were one such 'source*
and as if remembering were one such way of coming to know things.
Memory is, accordingly, sometimes ranged alongside of perception
and inference as a cognitive faculty or power; or remembering is
ranged alongside of perceiving and inferring as a cognitive act or
process.

This is a mistake. If a witness is asked how he knows that
something took place, he may reply that he witnessed it, or that he
was told of it, or that he inferred to it from what he witnessed or
was told. He could not reply that he found out what took place
either by not forgetting what he had found out, or by recalling
finding it out. Reminiscence and not-forgetting are neither 'sources'
of knowledge, nor, if this is anything different, ways of getting to
know. The former entails having learned and not forgotten; the
latter is having learned and not forgotten. Neither of them is a
sort of learning, discovering or establishing. Still less is recalling
what took place using a piece of evidence from which certain or
probable inferences are made to what took place, save in the sense
that the jury may infer from what the witness narrates. The witness
himself docs not argue 'I recall the collision occurring just after
the thunder-clap, so probably the collision occurred just after the
thunder-clap'. There is no such inference; and even if there were,
the good witness is one who is good at recollecting, not one who
is good at inferring.

Certainly the witness may be forced to admit, even to his
surprise, that he must have been drawing on his imagination, since,
for one reason or another, he could not have been recalling what he
professed to be recalling; in other circumstances he may volunteer
that he himself has doubts whether he is recalling, or making things
up. But it does not follow from the fact that alleged reminiscences may
be fabrications that veracious reminiscences are discoveries or successful
investigations. A person who is asked to tell what is known of
the Milky Way, or to draw a map of the rivers and railways of
Berkshire, may say and draw things which he does not know to
represent the facts, and he may be surprised to find that he has been
doing this, or be uncertain whether he is doing it. But no one
thinks that telling and drawing are 'sources' of knowledge, ways of
finding things out, or bits of evidence from which discoveries can
be made by inference. Telling and drawing things are, at best,



IMAGINATION 273

ways of conveying lessons already learned. So is recalling a conning
of something already learned. It is going over something, not
getting to something ; it is like recounting, not like researching.
A person may recall a particular episode twenty times in a day.
No one would say that he twenty times discovered what happened.
If the last nineteen reviewings were not discoveries, nor was the
first.

The stock accounts given of reminiscence give the impression
that when a person recalls an episode belonging to his own past
history, the details of the episode must come back to him in
imagery. He must 'see' the details 'in his mind's eye', or 'hear' them
'in his head'. But there is no 'must' about it. If a concert-goer
wishes to recellect just how the violinist misplayed a certain piece,
he may whistle the bungled tune, or play it on his own fiddle just
as the artist had done it; and, if he repeats the mistake faithfully,
he is certainly recollecting the artist's error. This might be his
only way of recalling how the artist had gone wrong, since he may
be poor at going over tunes in his head. Similarly a good mimic
might recapture the preacher's gestures and grimaces only by
reproducing them with his own hands and on his own face, since he
may be poor at seeing things in his mind's eye. Or a good draughts-
man may fail to recollect the lines and the rigging of a yacht, until
he is given a pencil with which to delineate them on paper. If their
mimicries and delineations are good and if, when they go wrong,
their authors duly correct them without being prompted, their
companions will be satisfied that they have recollected what they
had seen, without desiring any additional information about the
vividness, copiousness or connectedness of their visual imagery or
even about its existence.

No one would say that the concert-goer, the mimic or the
draughtsman had got to know anything by reproducing the
misplayed tune, the preacher's gestures, or the lines of the yacht,
but only that they had shown how the tune had been heard to be
misplayed, how the preacher had been seen to gesticulate and how
the yacht had been seen to be shaped and rigged. Reminiscence in
imagery does not differ in principle, though it tends to be superior
in speed, if otherwise greatly inferior in efficiency; and it is, of
course, of no direct public utility.

People are apt grossly to exaggerate the photographic fidelity



276 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

of their visual imagery. The main reason for this exaggeration seems
to be that they find that very often, particularly when suitably
prompted and questioned, they can give very comprehensive,
detailed and well-ordered verbal descriptions of episodes at which
they have been present. They are then tempted to suppose that,
since they can describe such bygone episodes nearly as well now as
they could have done during their occurrence, they must be checking
their narratives against some present replicas or souvenirs of the
vanished scene. If a description of a face is about as good in the
absence as in the presence of the face, this must be due to the presence
of something like a photograph of the face. But this is a gratuitous
causal hypothesis. The question, 'How can I faithfully describe
what I once witnessed?' is no more of a puzzle than the question,
'How can I faithfully visualise what I once witnessed ?' Ability to
describe things learned by personal experience is one of the knacks
we expect of linguistically competent people; ability to visualise
parts of it is another thing that we expect in some degree of most
people and in high degree of children, dress-designers, policemen and
cartoonists.

Reminiscing, then, can take the form of faithful verbal narration.
When it does so, it differs from reminiscence by mimicry and
reminiscence by sketching inasmuch as what took place is told and
not portrayed (though the telling often embodies some dramatic por-
trayal as well). Clearly, here, too, no one would wish to speak as if
narration were either a 'source* of knowledge, or a way of acquiring
knowledge. It belongs not to the stages of manufacture and
assembly, but to the stage of export. It is akin not to learning
lessons, but to reciting them.

People are, however, strongly tempted to think that vivid
visual recall must be a sort of seeing and therefore a sort of finding.
One motive of this mistake may be brought out as follows. If
a person learns that a naval engagement has taken place, without
himself having been a witness of it, he may deliberately or
involuntarily picture the scene in visual imagery. Very likely
he soon settles down to picturing it in a fairly uniform way
whenever he thinks of the battle, much as he is likely to settle down
to describing the episode in a fairly uniformly worded narrative,
whenever he is called on to tell the story. But though he cannot,
perhaps, easily help picturing the scene in his now routine manner,



IMAGINATION 277

still he recognises a difference between his habitual way of picturing
scenes of which he was not a witness and the way in which
unforgotten episodes of which he was a witness 'come back* to
him in visual imagery. These, too, he cannot help picturing in a
uniform way, but their uniformity seems to him compulsory and
not merely settled by repetition. He cannot now c see' the episode
as he pleases, any more than he could originally have seen it as
he pleased. He could not originally have seen the thimble elsewhere
than on the corner of the mantelpiece, since that is where it was.
Nor, however hard he tries, can he now recall seeing it elsewhere,
for all that he can, if he likes, imagine seeing it lying in the scuttle.
Indeed he may well imagine seeing it in the scuttle, while
repudiating someone else's allegation that that is where it was.

The reader of a report of a race can, subject to certain restrictions
imposed by the text of the report, first picture the race in one way
and then deliberately or involuntarily picture it in a different and
perhaps conflicting way; but a witness of the race feels that, while
he can call back further views of the race, yet alternative views are
rigidly ruled out. This is what makes it tempting to say that
reminiscence by imaging has in it something analogous to scanning
a photograph, or to listening to a gramophone record. The
'cannot' in 'I cannot "see" the episode save in one way' is tacitly
assimilated to the mechanical 'cannot' in 'the camera cannot
lie', or in 'the record cannot vary the tune'. But in fact the 'cannot',
in 'I cannot "see" the episode save in one way' is like that in 'I
cannot spell "Edinburgh" as I like'. I cannot write down the
correct letters in the correct order and at the same time be writing
down any other arrangement of letters; I cannot be spelling out
'Edinburgh' as I know it should be spelled out and also be spelling
it out in any other way. Nothing forces my hand to spell it in one
way rather than another; but simple logic excludes the possibility
of my both producing what I know to be the required spelling
and producing an arbitrary spelling in one and the same operation.
Similarly, nothing forces me to do any picturing at all, or to do my
picturing in this way rather than that; but if I am recalling how the
scene looked when I witnessed it, then my picturing is not arbitrary.
Nor in making my way from tfte gravel-pit to the bathing-place
am I forced to take this rather than any other footpath. But if I
know that this is the right path, then I cannot, in logic, both take



278 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

the path known to be the correct one and also take any other path.

Consider again the case of the concert-goer who reproduces
the violinist's mistake by whistling the bars as the violinist had
misplayed them. The only sense in which he 'has' to whistle as he
does, is that he will not be reproducing the violinist's mistake if he
whistles anything else. He whistles what he whistles because he has
not forgotten what he heard the violinist do. But this is not a cause-
effect 'because'. His whistling is not causally controlled or governed
either by the violinist's misperformance, or by his own original
hearing of it. Rather, to say that he has not forgotten what he heard
is to say that he can do some such things as faithfully reproduce
the mistake by whistling it. As long as he continues to bear in
mind the violinist's mistake, he continues to be able and ready to do
some such things as to show what the mistake was by faithfully
re-performing it. This is what is meant by 'bear in mind'.

If a child is set to recite a poem, but gets it wrong, or partly
wrong, we do not say that he has recited the poem. Nor is a mis-
quotation a sort of quotation. If we are told that someone has
spelled or construed something, we do not ask, 'But did he get it
right?', since it would not be spelling or construing if it were
misspelling or misconstruing. But of course there do exist uses of
these verbs in which they have the same force as the phrases 'try to
spell', or 'try to construe'. In these uses they can be significantly
qualified by 'unsuccessfully'.

'Recall', save when it means 'try to recall', is in the same way a
'got it' verb. 'Recall unsuccessfully' and 'recall incorrectly' are
illegitimate phrases. But this does not mean that we have a privileged
faculty which, given its head, carries us to our destination without
our having to be careful. It means only that if, for example, we
picture incidents otherwise than as we know they looked, then we
are not recalling, any more than we are quoting, if we ascribe other
words to a speaker than those which we know he uttered. Recalling
is something which we sometimes have to try hard and which we
often fail to bring off; and very often we do not know whether
we have brought it off or not. So we may claim to have recalled
something and later be persuaded to withdraw the claim. But
though 'recall' is a 'got it Verb, it 'is not a verb of finding, solving
or proving. Rather, like 'reciting', 'quoting', 'depicting' and
'mimicking', it is a verb of showing, or is at least affiliated to such



IMAGINATION 279

verbs. Being good at recalling is not being good at investigating,
but being good at presenting. It is a narrative skill, if 'narrative* be
allowed to cover non-prosaic as well as prosaic representations.
That is why we describe recollections as relatively faithful, vivid
and accurate and not as original, brilliant or acute. Nor do we call
people 'clever' or 'observant' merely because things come back to
them well. An anecdotalist is not a sort of detective.



CHAPTER IX

THE INTELLECT

(1) Foreword.

So far I have said little positive about Reason, the Intellect or the
Understanding, about thought, judgment, inference or conception.
Indeed, what little I have said has largely been of a deflationary
tendency, since I have repeatedly argued against the common
assumption that the use of such epithets as 'purposive', 'skilful',
'careful', 'ambitious' and 'voluntary' entails, as a causal pre-rcquisite,
the occurrence of cogitative or theorising operations. I have probably
left the impression that since planning and theorising operations
can themselves be characterised as purposive, skilful, careful, ambi-
tious, voluntary and the rest, I regard these operations merely as
special occupations on all fours with such occupations as tying knots,
following tunes or playing hide-and-seek.

Such a democratisation of the offices of the old elite will have
seemed all the more shocking, since there exists a widespread habit
of using 'mind' and 'mental' as synonyms of 'the intellect' and
'intellectual'. It is quite idiomatic to ask an examiner what sort of a
mind a candidate has, when all that is wanted is to be told how
well he can tackle certain sorts of academic tasks. The questioner
would be surprised to be answered that the candidate was fond of
animals, bashful, musical and witty.

It is now time to discuss certain features of the concepts of
specifically intellectual powers, propensities and performances. It
will be found that these have indeed a primacy of a certain sort,
though not that causal anteriority which is commonly postulated
for them.

(2) The Demarcation of the Intellect*

The place of the intellect in human life is apt to be described,
with or without consciousness of metaphor, after certain models.

280



THE INTELLECT 281

Sometimes the Intellect is talked of as a special organ, and strong
or weak intellects are assimilated to strong or weak eyes and biceps.
Sometimes the Understanding is talked of as a sort of publishing
firm or mint which issues its products via the retail traders and
banks to the customers. And sometimes Reason is talked of as a
sapient lecturer or magistrate, who tells his audience from his place
in its midst what he knows, commands and recommends. We need
not trouble, now, to argue that these and kindred models are unsuited
to provide the terms on which our discussions are to be hinged.
But there is one underlying promise made by all these models of
which we need to be suspicious from the start. We can tell pretty
exactly what are the things which strength or weakness of eyes and
biceps enables us to do, or prevents us from doing; we can tell just
which products are issued, and which are not issued, by this publishing
firm and that mint; and we can tell just what was, and what was not,
imparted by a particular lecturer in a particular lecture. But if
asked just which human actions and reactions should be classed as
intellectual, we have no similar criteria. Mathematical calculation
should certainly be so classed, but what if it is full of mistakes and
lucky guesses, or is done by sheer rote? Forensic argumentation,
but what if its motive is the desire to make the worse seem the better
cause ? Philosophising, but what if the thinking is wishful ? The
collection and colligation of facts, but what if their collection is
jackdaw-like and their colligation fanciful?

On some accounts it is a defining property of intellectual
operations that they are governed by the purpose of discovering
truth. But bridge and chess are intellectual games in which the
purpose of performing the required intellectual operations is victory
and not discovery. The engineer and the general plan with their
heads, but they do not aim at adding to knowledge. The legislator
has to think in abstract terms and in a systematic way, but his
labours issue not in theorems but in Bills. Conversely, the
reminiscences of the aged may pile up into formidable bodies of
truths, but we hesitate to class these recollections as exercises of
more than minimal intellectual powers. The aged do not think out
what once happened; it just comes back to them. Nor do we
ordinarily regard the observant child's incessant discoveries of
things by eye, ear, nose, tongue and fingers as exercises of intellectual
powers. He does not win scholarships by them.



282 THE CONCEPT. OF MIND

Nor are the boundaries between what is and what is not intel-
lectual made much clearer by referring to the notion of thinking,
since 'thinking' is not only just as vague as 'intellectual', but also
has extra ambiguities of its own. In one sense, the English verb
'think' is a synonym of 'believe' and 'suppose' ; so it is possible for
a person, in this sense, to think a great number of silly things, but,
in another sense, to think very little. Such a person is both credulous
and intellectually idle. There is yet another sense in which a person
may be said to be 'thinking hard what he is doing', when he is
paying close heed to, say, playing the piano; but he is not ponder-
ing or being in any way pensive. If asked what premisses he had
considered, what conclusions he had drawn or, in a word, what
thoughts he had had, his proper answer might well be, 'None. I had
neither the time nor the interest to construct or manipulate any
propositions at all. I was applying my mind to playing, not to
speculating on problems, or even to lecturing to myself on how to



It is sometimes said that by an 'intellectual process' or by
'thinking', in the special sense required, is meant an operation with
symbols such as, par excellence, words and sentences. 'In thinking
the soul is talking to itself. But this is both too wide and too narrow.
A child reciting by pure rote a nursery rhyme, or the multiplica-
tion-table, is going through a sort of ｅxpression-wielding process,
but he is not attending to what his words and sentences mean;
he is not using his ｅxpressions, but parroting them, as he might
parrot a tune. Nor yet will it do to say that a thinker is a person
who operates purposefully and attentively with ｅxpressions; for if
a jigsaw puzzle was constructed out of fragments of a once-learned
foreign nursery rhyme, a child might work hard and efficiently
at rearranging them in their proper order, though he had
no idea what the sentences of the rhyme meant. It will not
do even to say that thinking consists in constructing complexes
of ｅxpressions as vehicles of specific meanings, for we allow
that a person is thinking who is merely following ex-
pressions delivered by someone else. He is not putting his
own ideas into words but getting ideas from someone else's
words.

On the other hand, we have to allow that a person is doing
genuine intellectual work in some situations where no ｅxpressions



THE INTELLECT 283

at all are being used, whether woras, code-symbols, diagrams or
pictures. Tracing out the intricacies of a tangled skein of wool,
studying the position of the game on the chessboard, and trying to
place a piece of a jig-saw puzzle, would usually be allowed to be
cogitation, even though unaccompanied by any self-colloquy.

Lastly, to apply a point made earlier, the distinction between
unstudied and studied utterance becomes of importance here. In
the greater part of our ordinary sociable chat we say the first things
that come to our lips without deliberating what to say, or how to
say it; we are confronted by no challenge to vindicate our state-
ments, to elucidate the connections between our utterances, or to
make plain the purport of our questions, or the real point of our
coaxings. Our talk is artless, spontaneous and unweighed. It is not
work and it is not meant to edify, to be remembered, or to be
recorded. None the less our remarks have their points and the
listener understands them and responds appropriately.

Yet this is not the sort of talk we have in mind when we speak
of someone judging, pondering, reasoning or thinking something
out. We do not judge a person's intellectual powers by most of the
ways in which he chats. We judge them rather by the ways in which
he talks when his talk is guarded, disciplined, and serious, uttered
in his on-duty tone of voice and not in any of his off-duty tones
of voice. We do, however, judge a person's intellectual potentiali-
ties partly by the jokes he makes and appreciates even though
these belong to his out-of-school conversations. Theorists arc
inclined to assume that the differences between unstudied chat
and weighed discourse is one only of degree, so that the things that
come straight to our lips reflect the same sorts of intellectual pro-
cesses as those reflected by seriously delivered pronouncements. But
in practice we consider only the latter when assessing a person's
judiciousness, acumen and grasp. So in practice we do not regard
all intelligent ｅxpression-using as thinking but only or chiefly that
which is done as work. We do not regard unstudied chat as low-level
theorising or planning, and we are quite right not to do so. It is
not the object of ordinary chat to advance anyone's theories or
plans. Nor do we regard strolling and humming as gentle toil.
But, after all, does it matter if all attempts at giving a hard-edged
definition of 'intellectual' and 'thought' break down somewhere or
other? We know well enough how to distinguish urban from rustic



284 THE CONCEPT OP MIND

areas, games from work, and spring from summer, and are
unembarrassed by the discovery of undecidable marginal cases. We
know that solving a mathematical problem is an intellectual task,
hunting the thimble is a non-intellectual task, while looking for an
apposite rhyme is a halfway house. Bridge is an intellectual game,
Snap an unintellectual game and Beggar-my-neighbour is betwixt
and between. Our daily use of the concepts of the intellect and of
thought is unembarrassed by the discovery of a moderate number
of borderline cases.

Certainly for some purposes this does not matter. But it does
matter a lot to us. It means that the same thing is wrong both
with the older theories which spoke of Reason, the Intellect or the
Understanding as a specific Faculty or occult organ, and with the
newer theories which speak of the specific intellectual processes of
judging, conceiving, supposing, reasoning and the rest. They are
pretending to have identification-marks for things which they
cannot in fact always identify. We do not always know when to
apply, and when not to apply, the trade-names of epistemology.

Let us start again. There is one idea not far from the forefront
of most people's minds when they contrast intellectual powers and
performances with other powers and performances, namely that of
schooling. The intellectual powers are those which are developed
by set lessons and tested by set examinations. Intellectual tasks are
those or some of those which only the schooled can perform.
Intellectuals are persons who have profited from the highest
available education, and intellectual talk is edified and edifying talk.
Native or untutored knacks are not classed with intellectual pro-
ficiencies, and even arts learned mainly by sheer imitation, like
skipping, playing Snap and chatting, are not spoken of as intellectual
accomplishments. This certificate is reserved for exploitations of
lessons learned at least in part from books and lectures, or, in general,
from didactic discourse.

It is clear (i) that no one could follow or use didactic discourse
who had not already learned to follow and use conversational talk,
and (2) that didactic discourse is itself a species of studied discourse.
It is discourse in which schooling is given, and it is discourse which
is itself in some degree the product of schooling. It has its own drills
and it is spoken or written not in the sociable, conversational, but
in the non-sociable, drill style. It is delivered magisterially. Even if a



THE INTELLECT 285

bright conversational style is affected, a merely conversational
reception of it is known to be inappropriate, so the conversational
style is recognised to be fraudulent. The teacher is only pretending
that she and the pupils are not really working. We shall see later
that behind this seemingly trivial way of demarcating what is
intellectual from what is not, in terms of the academic machinery
by which certain things come to be learnt, there lies something very
important.

It is now necessary to discuss some of the concepts of thought
and thinking. We must distinguish clearly between the sense in
which we say that someone is engaged in thinking something out
from the sense in which we say that so and so is what he thinks,
i.e. between the sense of 'thought' in which thought can be hard,
protracted, interrupted, careless, successful or unavailing from the
sense in which a person's thoughts are true, false, valid, fallacious,
abstract, rejected, shared, published or unpublished. In the former
sense we are talking about work in which a person is at times and
for periods engaged. In the latter sense we are talking about the
results of such work. The importance of drawing this distinction
is that the prevalent fashion is to describe the work of thinking
things out in terms borrowed from descriptions of the results
reached. We hear stories of people doing such things as judging,
abstracting, subsuming, deducing, inducing, predicating and so
forth, as if these were recordable operations actually executed by
particular people at particular stages of their ponderings. And, since
we do not witness other people in the act of doing these things, or
even catch ourselves in the act of doing them, we feel driven to
allow that these acts are very subterranean happenings, the occur-
rences of which are found out only by the inferences and divinations
of expert epistemologists. These experts seem to tell us that we do
these things somewhat as anatomists tell us of the digestive and
cerebral processes that go on inside us without our knowledge.
So our intellects must be fleshless organs, since these para-
anatomists find out so much about their clandestine functionings.

I hope to show that the words judgment', 'deduction', 'abstrac-
tion' and the rest belong properly to the classification of the products
of pondering and are mis-rendered when taken as denoting acts of
which pondering consists. They belong not to the vocabulary of
biography but to the vocabulary of reviews of books, lectures,



286 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

discussions and reports. They are referees' nouns, not biographers*
nouns.

(3) The Construction, Possession and Utilisation of Theories.

Although there are plenty of avocations, both games and work,
which we describe as intellectual without implying that their
purpose is to discover truths, there are good reasons for giving
early consideration to that special family of avocations in which
we are concerned to discover truths. I say 'family of avocations',
since nothing is to be gained by pretending that Euclid, Thucydides,
Columbus, Adam Smith, Newton, Linnaeus, Porson and Bishop
Butler were all in partnership.

The work for which each of these men got his reputation can
be called the work of 'theory building', though the word 'theory'
has widely different senses. Sherlock Holmes' theories were not
built by the same methods as those of Marx, nor were the uses or
applications of them similar to those of Marx. But both were alike
in delivering their theories in didactic prose.

Before we say anything more specific about the operations or
processes of building theories we should consider what it means to
say that someone has a theory. Building a theory is trying to get
a theory, and to have a theory is to have got and not forgotten it.
Building a theory is travelling; having a theory is being at one's
destination.

To have a theory or a plan is not itself to be doing or saying
anything, any more than to have a pen is to be writing with it.
To have a pen is to be in a position to write with it, if occasion
arises to do so; and to have a theory or plan is to be prepared
either to tell it or to apply it, if occasion arises to do so. The work of
building a theory or plan is the work of getting oneself so prepared.

I say that the possessor of a theory is prepared to state it or
otherwise apply it. What is this distinction? To be in a position to
tell a theory is to be able to give a good answer to someone, the
theorist himself maybe, who wants or needs to learn, or learn better,
what the theory is, i.e. to deliver, by word of mouth or in writing,
an intelligible statement of the conclusions of the theory, the
problems which they solve and perhaps also the reasons for accepting
these and rejecting rival answers. Having a theory involves being
able to deliver lessons or refresher-lessons in it. The intelligent



THE INTELLECT 287

recipient of such lessons comes himself to have the theory or else,
if he is sophisticated enough, to grasp without adopting it. But we
do not build theories, any more than we build plans, merely or
primarily in order to be equipped to tell them. The chief point of
giving didactic exercises to oneself, or to other pupils, is to prepare
them to use these lessons for other than further didactic ends.
Columbus did not explore only to add to what was recited in geo-
graphy lessons. Having a theory or plan is not merely being able to
tell what one's theory or plan is. Being able to tell a theory is, in fact,
being able to make just one, namely the didactic exploitation of it.
Mastery of Euclid's theorems is not merely ability to cite them; it
is also ability to solve riders to them, meet objections to them and
find out the dimensions of fields with their aid.

There is no single-track answer to the question, 'How is a theory
turned to accounts other than didactic accounts?' Sherlock
Holmes' theories were primarily intended to be applied in the
apprehension and conviction of criminals, the thwarting of planned
crimes and the exculpation of innocent suspects. They might also
have been intended to be used as instructive examples of effective
detection-techniques. His theories were applied, if further deductions
were actually made from them, and if criminals were arrested and
suspects released in accordance with them. Newton's theories were
used when correct predictions and retrodictions were made on the
basis of them, when machines were designed in accordance with
them, when the hope of building perpetual-motion machines was
given up, when some other theories were abandoned, or else were
codified with his, when books were produced and lectures delivered
enabling students to grasp the whole or parts of his theories and,
lastly, when some or all of his theory-building techniques were
learned from his example and successfully applied in new investiga-
tions. To be a Newtonian was not just to say what Newton had
said, but also to say and do what Newton would have said and done.
Having a theory is being prepared to make a variety of moves,
only some of which are teachings; and to teach something to
someone, oneself or another, is, in its turn, to prepare him
for a variety of tasks, only some of which will be further teachings.

We might say, therefore, that^n theorising the soul is, inter alia,
preparing itself to talk or write didactically; and that the intended
benefits to the recipient consist of acquired preparednesses to act and



288 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

react in various new ways, only some of which will themselves be
further didactic pronouncements. This shows part of what is
wrong with the notion of Reason as the power merely to give and
receive didactic talks. But some of the operations learned certainly
will be further didactic talkings, since at least one thing that is
learned in listening attentively to didactic talking is how to say just
those same things, or things to the same effect, or at least how to
talk in that manner. At the very least the recruit learns the words
of command and how N.C.O.s deliver them. A lesson in anything
is also a lesson in giving and receiving lessons of that sort. Galileo,
in teaching about the behaviour of stars, pendulums and telescopes,
also taught by his example how to talk scientifically about any other
subject.

To come now to the work of building theories. First, I am not
restricting this phrase to those operations which, like mathematics,
jurisprudence, philology and philosophy, can be done in an arm-
chair or at the desk. Columbus could not have given his account
of the west side of the Atlantic without voyaging thither, nor could
Kepler have given his account of the solar system, unless he and
Tycho Brahe had spent weary hours visually studying the heavens.
None the less we distinguish the theories, which they finally built
and then taught to the educated world by word of mouth or in
print, from the exertions and observations without which they
would not have built those theories. The formulations of their
theories embody reports of, or references to, the courses set and the
observations made, but they do not embody the courses set, or the
observations themselves. The results of research can be delivered
in prose, but researching docs not generally consist only in
operating with pens, but also in operating with microscopes and
telescopes, balances and galvanometers, log-lines and litmus-papers.

Next, in talking of building theories I am not referring only to
the classical examples of famous discoveries but to a class of tasks
in which all people who have had any education participate in
some degree on some occasions. The housewife trying to find out
whether a carpet will fit a floor is engaged in an unambitious task
of theorising. She is investigating something and the results of
her investigations will be statable. Both what she reports to her
husband and what she does with the carpet will show what theory
she has reached, since her morning's work with tape-measure, pencil



THE INTELLECT 289

and paper was preparing her both to lay the carpet this way round
and not that, and to tell her husband that the carpet will go there
that way round, since the shape and size of the floor and of the
carpet are so and so. I am also using the word 'theory' to cover the
results of any kind of systematic inquiry, whether or not these
results make up a deductive system. An historian's account of the
course of a battle is his theory.

If a farmer has made a path, he is able to saunter easily up and
down it. That is what the path was made for. But the work of
making the path was not a process of sauntering easily, but one of
marking the ground, digging, fetching loads of gravel, rolling and
draining. He dug and rolled where there was yet no path, so that
he might in the end have a path on which he could saunter without
any more digging or rolling. Similarly a person who has a theory
can, among other things, expound to himself, or the world, the
whole theory or any part of it; he can, so to speak, saunter in prose
from any part to any other part of it. But the work of building the
theory was a job of making paths where as yet there were none.
The point of the analogy is this. Epistemologists very frequently
describe the labours of building theories in terms appropriate only
to the business of going over or teaching a theory that one already
has ; as if, for example, the chains of propositions which constitute
Euclid's 'Elements' mirrored a parallel succession of theorising
moves made by Euclid in his original labours of making his
geometrical discoveries; as if, that is, what Euclid was equipped to
do when he had his theory, he was already equipped to do when
constructing it. But this is absurd. on the other hand, epistemolo-
gists sometimes tell the opposite story, describing what Euclid did
in delivering his theories when he had them, as if it was some
recrudescence of the original theorising work. This, too,
is absurd. These epistemologists describe using a path, as if it
were a piece of path-making; the others describe the path-making,
as if it were a piece of path-using.

Now just as the farmer, in toiling at making paths, is preparing
the ground for effortless sauntering, so a person in toiling at
building a theory is preparing himself for, among other things, the
effortless exposition of the theorift which he gets by building them.
His theorising labours are self-preparations for, among other
things, didactic tasks which are not further self-preparations, but



290 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

preparations of other students. Naturally there are halfway houses*
There is a stage at which a thinker has his theory, but has not yet
got it perfectly. He is not yet completely at home in it. There are
places where he sometimes slips, stumbles and hesitates. At this
stage he will go over his theory, or parts of it, in his head, or on
paper, not yet with the ease begotten by much practice, nor with the
trouble that it had cost him to do the original building. He is like
the farmer, whose path is still sufficiently rough to require him to
tread up and down it somewhat heavy-footedly, in order to smooth
out some remaining inequalities of the surface. As the farmer is
both half-sauntering and still preparing the ground for more
effortless sauntering, so the thinker is both using his near-mastery
of his theory and still schooling himself to master it perfectly.
Telling himself his theory is still somewhat toilsome and one of the
objects of this toil is to prepare himself for telling it without toil.
Now when we are told that a proper use of an indicative
sentence reflects an act of judging', or 'making a judgment', and
that a proper use of an indicative sentence embodying conjunctions
like 'if', 'so' and 'because' reflects an act of 'reasoning', 'inferring'
or 'drawing a conclusion from premisses', we ought to ask whether
these proper uses of such indicative sentences are supposed to occur,
when their user is building his theory, or whether they arc supposed
to occur, when he already has his theory and is delivering it in didactic
prose, spoken or written, with the facility borne of adequate prac-
tice. Are conceptions, judgments and inferences or, compendiously,
thoughts, path-making moves, or are they a certain class of path-using
moves, namely path-showing or path-teaching moves? Are they
steps and stages in learning something, or are they bits of the lesson
that we teach, on demand, when we have learned it? It is a truism
to say that the expert who is thoroughly at home with his theory
expounds the several elements of it with complete facility; he is not
now having to study what to say, or else he could not be described as
being thoroughly at home with his theory. He is going over old
ground and not now breaking new ground. But this ready and
orderly delivery of simple and complex indicative sentences is
quite unlike those perplexed, tentative and laboured wrestlings and
wrigglings which had constituted the probably protracted building of
his theory. These were what had prepared and trained him to be
able ultimately to give this ready delivery of the elements of his



THE INTELLECT 291

theory. So we ought to decide whether the required acts of
conceiving, making judgments and drawing conclusions from
premisses are to be looked for in the theorist's earlier exploratory,
or in his resultant expository, activities, in his acquiring knowledge,
or in his telling what he knows. Is it in the detective's reports, or in
his investigations, that we are supposed to find his judgments and
his inferences?

I say that we ought to pose this question, but in fact
cpistemologists tend not to realise that such a question exists. What
they commonly do is to classify the elements of doctrines didactic-
ally expounded by theorists already at home in them, and to postu-
late that counterpart elements must have occurred as episodes in
the work of building those theories. Finding premisses and con-
clusions among the elements of published theories, they postulate
separate, antecedent, 'cognitive acts' of judging; and finding argu-
ments among the elements of published theories, they postulate
separate antecedent processes of moving to the 'cognising' of con-
clusions from the 'cognising' of premisses. I hope to show that
these separate intellectual processes postulated by epistemologists
are para-mechanical dramatisations of the classified elements of
achieved and expounded theories.

It is not being denied that our theorising labours do incorporate
a lot of soliloquy and colloquy, a lot of calculating and miscal-
culating on paper and in our heads, a lot of diagram-sketching
and erasing on the blackboard and in our minds' eyes, a lot of
interrogating, cross-examining, debating and experimental
asseverating; and certainly some of these pieces of ｅxpression-
using operate, not as self-addressed interim reports of sub-theories
already built or grasped, but as parts of the exercises by which we
prepare ourselves for getting theories which we have not yet got.
I say, for example, a lot of things tentatively; I roll them on my
tongue and, if there seems any promise in them, I repeat them again
and again in a rehearsing frame of mind, so as to get myself used
to the ideas; thus I prepare myself by practice to work with them
later on, if they turn out well, or else to wean myself from them for
good, if they turn out ill. I give myself tutorial behests, reproaches,
commendations and encouragements, and I put to myself searching
and leading questions in a magisterial tone of voice to keep myself
from shirking dull or difficult problems. But ｅxpressions like these,



292 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

used in these ways, cannot be described as expressing judgments or
inferences, in the sense of being didactic expositions of conclusions
reached, or arguments mastered. They will not, for the most part,
appear in the publication of the theory, when and if this is arrived
at; any more than the teacher's blue- and red-pencilled scorings,
ticks, exclamation-marks, queries and reminders in the margins of
his pupils' essays will be reproduced in the pupils' final statements of
the theory. They are parts of the scaffolding which theorising
uses, not parts of the edifice in which successful theorising results.
Nor are recruit drill orders shouted aloud, or said in their heads,
by trained soldiers on the battlefield.

(4) The Application and Misapplication of Epistemological Terms.

The glossary of terms in which intellectual powers and operations
are traditionally described contains such words and phrases as
judgment', 'reasoning', 'conception', 'idea', 'abstract idea', 'concept',
'making judgments', 'inferring', 'drawing conclusions from
premisses', 'considering propositions', 'subsuming', 'generalising',
'inducing', 'cognition', 'apprehension', 'intuition', 'intellection' and
'discursive thinking'. Such ｅxpressions are employed, not indeed by
the laity but by theorists, as if with their aid, and not easily without
it, correct descriptions can be given of what has at a particular
moment been occupying a particular person; as if, for example,
John Doe could and should sometimes be described as having
woken up and started to do some judging, conceiving, subsuming
or abstracting; as spending more than three seconds in entertaining
a proposition, or in moving from some premisses to a conclusion;
or as sitting on a fence, alternately whistling and deducing; or as
having had an intuition of something a moment before he coughed.

Probably most people feel vaguely that there is a tinge of
unreality attaching to such recommended biographical anecdotes.
John Doe's own stories about himself are not expressed in such
terms, or in terms easily translatable into them. How many cognitive
acts did he perform before breakfast, and what did it feel like to do
them ? Were they tiring ? Did he enjoy his passage from his premisses
to his conclusion, and did he make it cautiously or recklessly? Did
the breakfast bell make him step short halfway between his
premisses and his conclusion? Just when did he last make a judgment,
or form an abstract idea, what happened to it when he had made or



THE INTELLECT 293

formed it and who taught him how to do it? Is conceiving a quick
or a gradual process, an easy or difficult one, and can he dawdle
over it or shirk doing it? About how long did it take him to consider
the proposition and was the spectacle in the later stages of the
^consideration like or unlike that in the initial stages ? Was it rather
like gazing blankly at something, or more like detailed scrutiny?
He does not know how to begin to answer such questions. These
questions which he answers easily and confidently about the inci-
dents in his life which he does report, he cannot answer at all about
the sorts of incidents which epistemologists suggest that he must be
able to report.

Moreover these postulated cognitive acts and processes are said
to take place behind locked doors. We cannot witness them taking
place in John Doe's life. He alone could report their occurrence,
though unfortunately he never does divulge any such things. Nor,
however well indoctrinated, do we ourselves ever divulge any such
things. And the reason why such episodes never are divulged is
clear. Biographical anecdotes told in these idioms are myths,
which means that these idioms, or some of them, have their proper
applications, but are being misapplied, when used in anecdotes about
what people are at a particular moment doing or undergoing. So
what is their proper application? And what is wrong with their
employment in descriptions of what people do and undergo ?

If we read a scientist's printed treatise, or a detective's typewritten
report, or listen to an historian's lecture on a campaign, we are indeed
presented with arguments, which can be called 'inferences' or
'reasonings', with conclusions, which can be called Verdicts',
'findings' or judgments', with abstract terms, which can be said to
signify 'abstract ideas' or 'concepts', with class-membership
statements, which can be said to be or signify 'subsumptions', and
so on. The comparative anatomy of the limbs, joints and nerves of
the statements of built theories is a proper and necessary branch of
study, and the terms in which it classifies these elements are
indispensable for the discussion of the truth and consistency of
particular theories and for the comparison of the methods of
different sciences.

But then we shall be asked, 'A^hy, if it is legitimate to characterise
pieces of published theories in such idioms, is it not also legitimate
to describe in corresponding idioms corresponding pieces of



294 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

theorising? If the printed statement of a theory embodies the
printed statements of some premisses and conclusions, why should
we not say that the thinking out of the theory embodied corres-
ponding premiss-cognising and conclusion-cognising acts? If
there is an argument in a book, must there not have been a corres-
ponding piece of implication-cognising in the biography of
the thinker who discovered what the book tells? If a detective's
report contains an abstract term like 'alibi*, must there not have
taken place in the course of his investigations an internal episode of
having the corresponding abstract idea of Alibi? Surely theories
printed in books, or delivered in lecture-halls, are like the footprints
left by the previous tread of a foot. It is legitimate to apply directly
some of the predicates of a footprint to the foot that printed it, and
to infer from some of the other predicates of the footprint to some
different but co-ordinate predicates of the foot; so why should we
not in the same way characterise the theorising operations of the
theorist by predicates transferred or inferred from those of his
handiwork? From what other causes could these effects have come?'

This last question, which I have tendentiously put into the
mouths of the champions of the tradition that I am criticising,
shows, I think, the nature of the myth. It is a variant of the old
causal myth that we have already considered and rejected. It is the
para-mechanical hypothesis applied specifically to the separable
slices of didactic prose which enter into the statements of theories.

There must occur, so the argument might run, special internal
processes of abstraction, subsumption and judgment, for of what
else could the abstract terms of published theories, their class-mem-
bership phrases and their conclusions be the effects? There must occur
private operations of discursive thinking, for what else could cause
passages of significant prose ^ appear in public lectures or in print?
Or, to put this para-mechanical point in terms of the favoured verb
'to express', there must be mental acts of passing from premisses to
conclusions, since the 'because' and 'so' sentences which feature in
the statements of theories are significant and therefore express
counterpart cogitative operations in the theorist's mind. Every
significant ｅxpression has a meaning, so when an ｅxpression is
actually used, the meaning of it i&ust have been occurring some-
where, and it can have been occurring only in the form of a thought
that took place in the speaker's or writer's private stream of



THE INTELLECT 295

consciousness. Presumably, if epistemologists had paid as much
attention to arithmetical and algebraical reckonings as they have
to geometrical demonstrations, they would, in consistency, have
used analogous arguments to prove the occurrence, behind our
postulated Iron Curtains, of mental processes of adding, subtracting,
multiplying and dividing, and we should have been told that,
besides such mental acts as conception, judgment and inference,
there are also the cognitive acts of adding, subtracting and equating.
We might even have been credited with one Faculty of Long
Division and another of Quadratic Equations. Of the exercises of
what other mental powers could our pencilled long-division sums
and our dictated quadratic equations be the outward ｅxpressions?

With the general defects of the para-mechanical hypothesis we
need no longer concern ourselves. But we should attend to certain
specific points that arise in its application to intellectual operations.
First, while it is certainly true, because tautologous, to say that
properly used significant ｅxpressions have their particular meanings,
this does not warrant us in asking, 'When and where do these
meanings occur ?' A bear may be now being led about by a bear-
leader, and a footprint must once have been imprinted by a particular
foot, but to say that an ｅxpression has a meaning is not to say that
the ｅxpression is on a lead held by a ghostly leader called a 'meaning'
or a 'thought', or that the ｅxpression is a public trace left behind
by an unheard and invisible step. To understand an ｅxpression is
not to infer an unwitnessable cause. The very fact that an
ｅxpression is made to be understood by anyone shows that the
meaning of the ｅxpression is not to be described as being, or
belonging to, an event that at most one person could know anything
about. The phrase 'what such and such an ｅxpression means' does
not describe a thing or happening at all, and a fortiori not an occult
thing or happening.

Next, the suggestion that, for a person wittingly to use a
significant word, phrase or sentence, there must antecedently or
concomitantly occur inside him a momentary something, some-
times called 'the thought that corresponds with the word, phrase or
sentence*, leads us to expect that this supposed internal occurrence
will be described to us. But* when descriptions are proffered,
they seem to be descriptions of ghostly doubles of the words,
phrases or sentences themselves. The 'thought' is described as if it



296 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

were just another more shadowy naming, asserting or arguing.
The thought that is supposed to bear-lead the overt announcement
'{Tomorrow cannot be Sunday, unless today is Saturday* turns
out to be just the announcement to oneself that tomorrow cannot
be Sunday without today being Saturday, i.e. just a soliloquised
or muttered rehearsal of the overt statement itself. We certainly
can, and often do, rehearse in our heads or sotto voce what we are
then going to tell the audience, or write down on foolscap. But
this makes no theoretical difference, as the same supposed question
again arises, 'In what does the significance of this soliloquised
or muttered ｅxpression consist? In yet another 'thought to corres-
pond' going on in yet another still more twilit studio? And
would this in its turn be just another rehearsed announcement?'
To say something significant, in awareness of its significance, is not
to do two things, namely to say something aloud or in one's head
and at the same time, or shortly before, to go through some other
shadowy move. It is to do one thing with a certain drill and in a
certain frame of mind, not by rote, chattily, recklessly, histrionically,
absent-mindedly or deliriously, but on purpose, with a method,
carefully, seriously and on the qui vive. Saying something in this
specific frame of mind, whether aloud or in one's head, is thinking
the thought. It is not an after-effect of thinking the thought, such
that the author might conceivably have thought the thought, but
shirked saying the thing to himself, or to the world. But, of course,
he might have thought the same thought, saying a different thing,
since he might have uttered a sentence to the same effect in a different
language, or in a different form of words in the same language.
Knocking in a nail is not doing two things, one with a hammer
and another without a hammer, for all that just brandishing a
hammer unskilfully, carelessly or aimlessly does not get nails
knocked in, and for all that the carpenter could have knocked in
his nail with another hammer instead of with this one.

So when a person has, or is at home with, a theory and is,
therefore, prepared, among many other things, to deliver to himself
or to others a didactic statement of it, he is ipso facto prepared
to deliver the required premiss-sentences, conclusion-sentences,
narrative-sentences and arguments, together with the required
abstract nouns, equations, diagrams, imaginary illustrations and so
forth. And when called on to give such an exposition, he will at



THE INTELLECT 297

particular moments be actually in process of deploying these
ｅxpressions, in his head, or viva voce, or on his typewriter, and he
may and should be doing this with his mind on his job, i.e. purpose-
fully, with method, carefully, seriously and on the qui vive. He
will be talking or writing, heeding what he is saying. So we can
say, if we like, that since he is at particular moments heedfully
deploying his abstract terms, premiss-sentences, conclusion-sen-
tences, arguments, graphs, equations, etc., he is then and there
'thinking' what they mean. To say this is perfectly legitimate, but
it is slightly hazardous, since the present participle 'thinking* is
liable to tempt us to suppose that he is being the author of two
processes, one probably overt process of saying or typing con-
catenated phrases and sentences, and another, necessarily covert
shadow-process of having or producing some ghostly harbingers of
those sayings and writings, namely some 'ideas' or judgments' or
'inferences' or 'thoughts', 'cognitive acts' of which his vocal and
manual acts of saying and writing are the mere 'ｅxpressions' or
'footprints'. And this is just the temptation that is yielded to by
those who describe theorising activities as internal foreshadowings
of the prose-moves made in the didactic telling of an achieved
theory.

This brings us back to our earlier question, whether we are
supposed to look for the supposed acts of judging', 'having abstract
ideas', 'inferring' and the rest in the theorist's exploratory, or in his
expository operations. Are they supposed to be manifested in his
saying things, when he knows what to say, or in his travailings, when
he does not yet know what to say, since he is still trying to get
this knowledge? When he is exercising acquired facilities, or when he
is still in difficulties? When teaching how or when learning how ?
I think it is clear, without much more argument, that didactic
expositions of arguments with their conclusions and their premisses,
of abstract ideas, of equations, etc., belong to the stage after arrival
and not to any of the stages of travelling thither. The theorist can
impart his lessons, because he has finished learning them. He can
use his equipment, because he is at last equipped. It is just because
the pathmaking is over that he is able to saunter on the paths that
he had laboured to construct fey: that purpose; or it is just because
the arduous weapon-training is at last completed that he can now
without any difficulties handle his weapons. His 'thoughts' are what



298 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

he has now got; they are not the toils without which he would not
have got them.

If we are to use at all the odd ｅxpression 'making a judgment*,
we must say that the detective makes the judgment that the game-
keeper killed the squire, only when he is putting into indicative prose
a piece of the theory that he now has, and that he keeps on making
this judgment as often as he is called upon to tell this part of his
theory, whether to himself, to the reporters or to Scotland Yard.
And then we shall refrain from talking as if a separate antecedent
act of making this judgment had occurred as a part of his investiga-
tions.

So if we like to reserve the word 'thinking', in the sense of
'thinking out*, for some of the preparatory pondering labours
without which he would not have got his theory, then that thinking
cannot be described as consisting of, or containing, the making of
any judgments, save in so far as he may have settled some sub-
theories en route, which he was accordingly prepared to deliver to
himself, to the reporters, or to Scotland Yard in interim reports.
Travelling to London does not consist of jobs done in London, or of
rehearsals of the interviews which may be held there.

Doubtless in the course of his inquiries the detective may have
spurred on and directed his efforts by putting to himself the
interrogation 'Was it the gamekeeper who killed the squire?' But
an interrogative sentence, so used, is not a conclusion-teaching
sentence but a conclusion-hunting directive. He asks it, because
there is something he has not established, not because there is
something that he is prepared to tell, because he has established it.

Doubtless, again, he may tentatively announce to himself or to
Scotland Yard 'It might have been the gamekeeper*. But not only
would this not pass for an act of making the judgment, or reporting
that the gamekeeper did kill the squire, but, anyhow in certain
junctures, it would have to be taken as the interim report of a
sub-theory already built and occupied, and therefore no longer
under construction.

'Well', it may be conceded, 'perhaps there is something wrong
with the idea that theorising ought to be described as consisting
of, or containing, 'acts of judging*. Certainly a theorist cannot
tell things, before he can tell them; he cannot declare his findings,
while still investigating. Trials terminate in verdicts; they do



THE INTELLECT 299

not consist of them. But what about inferring? Surely it is part
of the very notion of a rational being that his thoughts sometimes
progress by passages from premisses to conclusions ? It must therefore
sometimes be true of any rational being, John Doe, say, that he is at
a particular moment moving to a conclusion from some premisses,
even though he is strangely embarrassed at being asked whether he
enjoyed his trips the last three times he made such passages,
how long they took him, whether he dawdled over them, whether
he inferred hard or idly and whether lie ever stopped halfway
between premisses and conclusions/

It is certainly true that John Doe may, on finding or being
told certain things, then tell himself and us consequential truths
which had not occurred to him before. Discoveries are often made
by inference. But not all arguing is discovering. The same argument
can be used by the same person time and time again, but we should
not say that he repeatedly made the same discovery. The detective
was, perhaps, given certain clues on Tuesday and at some moment
on Wednesday he says to himself for the first time 'it could not
have been the poacher, so it was the gamekeeper who killed the
squire'. But when reporting his results to his superiors he need not
say in the past tense 'on Wednesday afternoon I argued that the
gamekeeper killed the squire'; he may say 'From these clues I
conclude that the gamekeeper killed the squire', or 'From these
clues it follows that he was the murderer', or 'The poacher did not,
so the gamekeeper did kill the squire'. He may say this several times
to his slow-witted superior, and later say it again several times in
Court. Each time he is using his argument, drawing his conclusion,
or making his inference. These descriptions are not reserved for
the one occasion when the light burst upon him.

Nor need there have been any occasion on which the light burst
upon him. It might well be that the idea that the gamekeeper
was the murderer had already occurred to him and that the new
clues seemed at first to have only a slight pertinence to the case.
Perhaps during some minutes or days he considered and recon-
sidered these clues, and found that the loopholes they seemed to
leave became gradually smaller and smaller until, at no specifiable
moment, they dwindled away* altogether. In such a situation,
which was the situation of all of us when we began to study the
proof of Euclid's first theorem, the force of the argument does



300 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

not flash, but only dawn, upon the thinker, much as the meaning
of a stiff piece of Latin unseen does not flash, but only dawns,
upon the translator. Here we cannot say that at such and such
a moment the thinker first drew his conclusion, but only that, after
such and such a period of chewing and digesting, he was at last
ready to draw it in the knowledge that he was entitled to do so.
His mastery of the argument came gradually, like all masteries
which involve learning by practice; but when it was achieved, he
was then ready to state the whole argument without hesitation or
qualms, to state it as often as might be necessary and to state it in a
variety of alternative phrasings.

This familiar fact that before we can use an argument readily
we have to acquire mastery of it by more or less gradual practice is
apt to be obscured by the logicians' habit of adducing for their
examples specimens of completely hackneyed arguments. An
argument is hackneyed, when practice with it or its kin has long
since prepared us to use it unhesitatingly and without qualms. The
force of a hackneyed argument is immediately obvious for the same
reason that the meaning of a Latin sentence is immediately obvious
when we are quite used both to its vocabulary and to its syntax.
They leap to the eye or flash upon us now, but it was not so once.
Nor is it so now, when we are confronted by arguments, or Latin
sentences, of which we have never met even the brothers or the
cousins.

So far from it being true that 'inference' denotes an operation
in which a discovery is made, an operation, therefore which could
not be repeated, we mean by 'inference' an operation which the
thinker must be able to repeat. He has not got hold of an argument,
unless he can wield it and its brothers on all sorts of occasions and
in various formulations. It is not enough that a new and true idea
should once occur to him on once receiving a piece of information.
If he is to merit the description of having deduced a consequence
from premisses, he must know that acceptance of those premisses
gives him the right to accept that conclusion; and the tests of
whether he does know this would be other applications of the
principle of the argument, though he would not, of course, be
expected to name or to formulate 'that principle in abstracto.

We must, therefore, distinguish learning to use a particular
argument, or to use any arguments of a certain family, from



THE INTELLECT 301

learning new truths by using such an argument. The more prompt
the latter is the better, probably, is our mastery of the argument.
But our acquisition of this mastery may well have been gradual
and perhaps all the more sure for having been gradual. If a person
shows that he can use the argument by actually using it properly
in the discovery of a new truth, he shows also that he can use this
same argument for a variety of ends other than that of solving his
own momentary queries. Having an argument, like having a pen,
a theory or a plan, is different both from getting it and from using
it. Using it entails having it and having it involves having got, and
not lost, it. But, unlike some sorts of theories and plans, argu-
ments are not mastered merely by absorbing information, nor is
mastery of them lost through shortness of memory. They are more
like skills. Practice is necessary for mastering them and even long
desuetude is seldom sufficient for forgetting how to work them.
By 'practice' I refer not to the special exercises given to the few by
instructors in logic, but to the ordinary exercises taken by everyone
in everyday discussion and reading, as well as to the more academic
exercises given to nearly everyone in the classroom.

An argument is used, or a conclusion drawn, when a person says
or writes, for private or public consumption, 'this, so that', or
'because this, therefore that', or 'this involves that', provided that he
says or writes it knowing that he is licensed to do so. This saying or
writing in this frame of mind is, of course, a mental, indeed an
intellectual act, since it is an exercise of one of those competences
which are properly ranked as 'intellectual'. But this is not to say
that it is a 'mental act' in the sense that it is performed behind the
scenes. It may be done in silent soliloquy, but it may just as well be
done aloud, or in ink. Indeed we expect to find a thinker's most
subtle and most careful arguments, where we expect to find a
mathematician's best calculations and demonstrations, namely in
what he submits in print for the criticism of his colleagues. We
know what to suspect if a thinker boasts that he has a good argument
which he will not or cannot publish.

This brings us to another point. We saw that there was some
sort of incongruity in describing someone as being at a time and
for a period engaged in passing from premisses to a conclusion.
'Inferring' is not used to denote either a slowish or a quickish
process. 'I began to deduce, but had no time to finish' is not the



302 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

sort of thing that can significantly be said. In recognition of this
sort of incongruity, some theorists like to describe inferring as an
instantaneous operation, one which, like a glimpse or a flash, is
completed as soon as it is begun. But this is the wrong sort of
story. The reason why we cannot describe drawing a conclusion
as a slowish or quickish passage is not that it is a 'Hey, presto'
passage, but that it is not a passage at all. A person may be quick
or slow to reach London, solve an anagram or checkmate the
opposing king; but reaching a conclusion, like arriving in London,
solving an anagram and checkmating the king, is not the sort
of tiling that can be described as gradual, quick or instantaneous.
We can ask how long it took to run a race, but not how long
it took to win it. Up to a certain moment the race was still in
progress; from that moment the race was over and someone
was the victor. But it was not a long or short moment. Coming
into possession of a piece of property is another instance of the same
kind. The preliminary negotiations may take a long or a short time,
but the passage from not yet owning the article to being its owner
is neither as quick as a lightning flash nor as protracted as the dawn.
'Passage' was a misleading metaphor. It is equally misleading when
used to describe the change that occurs when a person conies into
possession of a truth for which he has been for a long or a short time
negotiating.

When a person has got an argument, his first or his fiftieth
deployment of it in speech or writing certainly takes time. He may
gabble it very fast to himself and drawl it rather slowly over the
telephone. The delivery of an argument may take seconds or hours.
Often we use the verb 'argue', though seldom the verbs 'infer',
'deduce' or 'draw conclusions', for the process of delivering an
argument. In this use we can say that the speaker was interrupted
half-way between stating his premisses and stating his conclusions,
or that he got from his premisses to his conclusions much faster
today than he did yesterday. Similarly a stammerer may take a long
time telling a joke. But we do not ask how long it took him to
make the joke. Nor do we ask how long a thinker spent in arriving
at, as distinct from travelling towards, his conclusion. 'Conclude',
'deduce' and 'prove', like 'checkmate', 'score', 'invent' and 'arrive',
are, in their primary uses, what I have called 'got it' verbs, and
while a person's publications, or other exploitations of what he has



THE INTELLECT 303

got, may take much or little time, his transition from not yet having
got it to having now got it cannot be qualified by epithets of rapidity.
When a person uses these verbs in the timeless present tense, as
in 'I conclude*, 'he deduces' or 'we prove', he is using them in a
sense derivative from their primary sense. They do not directly
report gettings, but something nearer akin to possession.

The traditional assumption that inference-verbs denote processes
or operations required its makers to say, first, that the processes or
operations were of lightning rapidity and, second, that their
occurrence was the impenetrable secret of their author. The argu-
ments he produced in discussions, or in print, were mere 'ｅxpressions'
of his own privy operations and mere spurs to kindred privy
operations on the part of their recipients. Misconstruing referees'
verbs as biographers' verbs leads inevitably to demanding double-life
biographies.

The epistemology of ratiocination has, with many other branches
of epistemology, been handicapped by allegiance to a special
superstition, the superstition that the theorising operations which
it is trying to describe ought to be described by analogies with
seeing. It takes as its standard model the prompt, effortless and
correct visual recognition of what is familiar, expected and sunlit,
and makes no mention of the belated and hesitant recognition, or mis-
recognition, of what is strange, unexpected or moonlit. Furthermore,
it takes as its model what is denoted by the visual achievement verb
'see', and not what is denoted by the visual task words 'peer',
'scrutinise' and 'watch'. Thinking things out is described as consisting,
at least partly, of consecutive 'seeings' of implications. But this is
to describe theorising work by analogies with what is not work
but achievement; or it is to describe what are actually more
or less difficult self-schoolings by analogies with achievements,
which are effortless, just because a long run of previous
efforts has long since inculcated complete facility in making
them. It is like describing a journey as constituted by arrivals,
searching as constituted by findings, studying as constituted by
examination triumphs, or, in a word, trying as constituted by
successes.

It is true that quite often implications are immediately obvious,
in something like the ways in which jokes and cows are often
immediately obvious. Just as we do not, in ordinary favourable



304 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

circumstances, have to study at all in order to make out that the
creature in the meadow is a cow, so, in favourable circumstances,
we do not have now to study at all in order to be ready to say, for
example, 'then tomorrow is Boxing Day' on being reminded that
today is Christmas Day. Here we already enjoy full familiarity,
either with the particular argument, or with a lot of its brothers and
sisters. When an argument is itself hackneyed, or of a hackneyed
sort, no present studying is needed, since those former encounters
with it or its kin, which made it hackneyed, have already given us
this preparation. Nor do we now have to cudgel our brains, when
required to give the English for mensa.

The same is true of seeing cows. Our recognition of them is
nowadays effortless and instantaneous, just because the necessary
preparatory studies which we went through in our infancy have
long since made hackneyed the ordinary appearances of cows. So
these favourite specimens of the effortless and instantaneous act of
'seeing' that one truth follows from another show nothing about the
process of learning how to use or follow arguments, since they are
nothing but further instances of things done with complete facility by
people who have already got by practice the knack of doing them.

It is a curious fact that, though we make this metaphorical use
of the verb 'to see' even more commonly in speaking of our
instantaneous appreciation of jokes than we do in speaking of our
instantaneous acceptance of arguments, no epistemologist has
supposed that joking entails the prefatory occurrence of 'mental
acts' of cognising the points of jokes, as they commonly do suppose
that using arguments presupposes prefatory 'mental acts' of 'seeing'
implications. Perhaps this is only because Euclid's 'Elements' do not
contain any jokes. But perhaps the reason is that it is patent that a
piece of joke-seeing could not be a causal antecedent of joke-telling,
i.e. that telling a joke is not 'expressing' an antecedent piece of
joke-seeing.

I now want to show that using an argument does not 'express'
an antecedent and 'internal' piece of implication-seeing. If
someone tells a joke, it follows that he has got a joke to tell, and
he can not only tell it over and over again, but also see its point,
when someone else tells it. Similarly, if he uses an argument, it
follows that he has got an argument to use and may not only produce it
over and over again, but can also acknowledge its force, when someone



THE INTELLECT 305

else uses it. But the fact that ability to use an argument carries with
it the ability to 'see* the implication, when someone else presents the
argument to him, does not require that he is causally bound to do
such a piece of 'seeing* just before, or just while, he himself uses the
argument. The contemplative metaphor of 'seeing' implications or
jokes, which is perfectly appropriate to certain special situations is,
for that very reason, inappropriate to others. The jester's audience
has indeed not made any jokes; it has only appreciated, or failed to
appreciate, the jokes made by him. The audience has been receptive
or unreceptive, discerning or undiscerning, quick or slow in the
uptake; but it has not been either original or unoriginal, inventive
or uninventive. It has found something funny, found it unfunny, or
failed to find it funny; but it has not said or done anything funny or
unfunny. Seeing jokes is the role of the audience, whereas making
them is the job of the jester. The audience can be described in con-
templative metaphors, but the jester must be described in executive
terms. If no jokes were made, there would exist no jokes to be seen.
For a repartee to be found amusing, a repartee must have been
made. The jester himself cannot 'see' the humour of his repartee,
until he has made it, though he can 'see' it, before he tells it to a
larger audience. Seeing jokes presupposes the making of jokes, as
art galleries presuppose easels and consumers presuppose producers.
If the idioms of construction, execution, invention and production
were not applicable to jesters, painters and farmers, the idioms of
seeing jokes, appreciating pictures and consuming farm produce
would be left without application.

The same holds good in matters of theory. If proofs were not
given, proofs could not be accepted; if conclusions were not drawn,
there could be no allowing or disallowing of inferences; if statements
were not made, there could be no acquiescing in statements. For
one judge to concur in a verdict, another judge must have given a
verdict. Or^ly constructed and delivered arguments can be examined
and only when an inference has been at least mooted, can an
implication be seen or missed. We do not first see an implication
and then go on to draw a conclusion, any more than we first accept
the solution of an anagram and then go on to solve it. Multiplications
have to be done before they can*be marked 'correct'.

This contrast between the uses of the contemplative and of the
executive or constructive idioms in the description of intellectual



u



306 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

work may be illustrated in another way. When children are given
their elementary instruction in geometry, the proofs of the theorems
are commonly presented to them printed in books, or written on
the blackboard. The task of the pupils is to study, follow and
acquiesce in those proofs. They learn by concurring. But when they
are given their elementary instruction in arithmetic and algebra,
they are set to work in quite a different way. They have to do their
own adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing. Nor do they
study classical solutions of equations; they have to solve their
own equations. They learn by operating. Consequently, while
the contemplative idiom belongs naturally to the instruction and
description of learners of geometry, it is the executive idioms which
belong to the instruction and description of learners of arithmetic
and algebra. Pupils are criticised for not being able to 'see' or 'follow*
demonstrations, whereas they are criticised for not being able to 'do'
long division or 'solve' quadratic equations. Similarly we talk of
translations rather as being made or given, than as being allowed or
adopted.

Formal logic was, unfortunately, taught from the start in the
esteemed geometrical manner, with the result that the epistemology
of ratiocination and of intellectual work in general continues to be
told chiefly in the contemplative idiom, that is, in terms appropriate
to classrooms furnished with blackboard, but no pens or paper, instead
of in terms appropriate to classrooms furnished with pens and paper,
but no blackboard. We are given to understand that to 'cognise'
is not to work something out, but to be shown something. Had
arithmetic and chess been brought into the curriculum before
geometry and formal logic, theorising work might have been
likened to the execution of calculations and gambits instead of to the
struggle for a bench from which the blackboard can be clearly seen.
We might have formed the habit of talking of inference in the
vocabulary of the football field, instead of in that of the grandstand,
and we should have thought of the rules of logic rather as licenses
to make inferences than as licenses to concur in them. It would
not then have occurred to us that an act of internally 'seeing* an
implication must be a prelude of using any argument; it would
have been obvious, as is true, th*t a person can be described as
'seeing' that one truth follows from another only when he hears
or reads, perhaps in his head, the promulgated argument 'this, so



THE INTELLECT 307

that*, 'because this, therefore that', or the statement 'if this, then
that'.

I shall discuss briefly one more instance of terminological
malversation. There are certain kinds of ｅxpressions in regular use
by both theorists and laymen which are properly and conveniently
classified as 'abstract'. A mile is an abstraction, so are the National
Debt, the Equator, the average taxpayer, the square root of 169,
and Cricket. Every moderately educated person knows how to
make intelligent use of a good many abstract terms and how to
follow their use by others; he wields them, for the most part,
unperplexedly, consistently and appropriately in general statements,
homilies, questions and arguments. In certain junctures he recog-
nises the utility of classifying such terms as 'abstract'. When his
child asks him why the Equator is marked on the map, yet is
invisible to the people who cross it, or how it is that cricket has been
played in England for many years, though no cricket matches last
more than three or four days, he is ready to answer or divert the
question by saying that the Equator and Cricket are only abstract
ideas. Saying this is to say, though the layman is unlikely to put
it in this way, that statements, questions and arguments which
incorporate abstract terms like 'the Equator', 'the average taxpayer'
and 'Cricket' are on a higher level of generality than their syntax
would suggest. They read as if they contained mentions of individual
things, persons and matches, when in fact they refer, in different
ways, to ranges of individually unmentioned things, persons and
matches.

If a person is at a particular moment using an abstract term,
using it significantly and using it knowing its significance, he can
be said to be using an abstract idea, or even thinking an abstract
thought, notion or concept. And from these innocuous, if infelicitous
ｅxpressions, it has been easy to move to making such seemingly more
profound and diagnostic statements as that his abstract term
'expresses' the abstract idea that he is there and then having. Exciting
questions then raise their heads. How and when did he form this
abstract idea? Where has it been and what has it been doing in the
period between his last and his present use of it? Is it somewhat like
a badly blurred picture in the mind's eye, or is it more like a pack of
clear mental pictures, each one of which differs slightly from its
neighbours? That minds are the only warehouses which could



308 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

possibly store such precious, if ethereal, articles would naturally not
be in question.

In real life no one ever tells this sort of story. No one refuses
to join a game on the score that he is busy forming an abstract
idea, or says that he finds conceiving concepts a harder or longer job
than doing long division. No one says that he has just found an
abstract idea, after having mislaid it for some weeks, or that his
idea of the average taxpayer is not blurred enough, or, alternatively,
not photographic enough, to do its job. No teacher bids his pupils
to sit down and do some abstracting, or gives them good or bad
marks for their exercises in such a task. No novelist depicts his
hero as pluckily, briskly or half-heartedly abstracting. The verb 'to
abstract' is clearly not a genuine biographical verb; it is therefore
not a verb appropriate even to shadow biographies.

Consider a new example. Geographical contours are certainly
abstractions. The soldier finds nothing on the hillside answering
to the 300-feet contour line on his map, in the way in which he does
find rivers and roads answering to the map-symbols for rivers and
roads. But though contour lines are abstract symbols, in a way in
which symbols for rivers are not abstract, the soldier may know quite
well how to read and use them. Identifying his coppice with a
coppice marked on his map, he can tell how high above sea level
he is, how high he must climb to reach the summit and whether he
will be able to see the bridge over the railway when the fog lifts.
He can draw a map with roughly judged contours, he can fix
and keep rendezvous at points on given contours and he can talk
sense about contours. So, startled though he would be by the allega-
tion, he has the abstract idea of Contour.

But in saying that he has this idea we are not saying that there
exists an impalpable something which he and he alone can find if
he turns his attention inwards. We are saying that he can execute,
regularly executes, or is now executing, some of the tasks just
described, together with an indefinite variety of kindred tasks.

The question, 'How did he form this abstract idea?' becomes the
question, 'How did he acquire this specific knack or competence?' To
this question he himself can provide the answer. He was given
lectures in map reading and map drawing; he was sent out over
strange country with a compass and a map; he was told to notice
how the wrack left behind by a recent flood had formed a line along



THE INTELLECT 309

the hillside twelve feet above the lake; he was asked what would be
obscured and what would be left visible, if the flat-bottomed cloud
sank to 300 feet above sea-level; he was ridiculed when he drew a
map in which the contour lines were crossed or broken. It had
taken him three weeks before he really knew the ropes. We could
paraphrase this by saying that he was for three weeks forming the
abstract idea of Contour. But it would be safer and more natural to
say that it took him three weeks to learn how contour lines are
read and used and how the word 'Contour' is used. The other
description tempts one to suppose that throughout the period of
three weeks something was being slowly distilled or concocted in
his metaphorical insides, or that something rather like a negative
was being gradually developed in a metaphorical dark room,
even while he himself was occupied in football, eating and sleeping.
'Contours are abstractions', or 'Contour lines are abstract
map-symbols' is a proper and useful instruction for a map-referee
to give to would-be readers and makers of maps. 'Contour lines
are the outward ｅxpressions of the mapmakers' mental acts of
conceiving heights (in feet) above sea-level' suggests that reading a
map entails penetrating the impenetrable shadow-life of some
anonymous surveyor.

(5) Saying and Teaching.

In this chapter, as well as elsewhere in this book, I have been at
pains to distinguish different sorts of talk, the sociable, unstudied
chat of slippered conversation, the guarded conversational talk of
the reticent and insincere, and the studied, unconversational, shod
talk of the instructor. In this chapter we have been particularly
concerned with this last, namely the didactic discourse, written or
spoken, published or self-addressed, in which a person teaches what
he has to teach. The main reason for harping here upon the methods,
ends and even tones of voice of didactic discourse is that it is in terms
of didactic discourse that the concept of the intellect is being eluci-
dated. At least an important part of what we mean by 'intellectual
powers' is those specific capacities which are originally inculcated
and developed predominantly by didactic discourse, and are them-
selves exercised, inter alia, in teaching the same lessons or adaptations
and expansions of them in further allocutions. Didactic discourse is
the vehicle for the transmission of knowledge.



310 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

But there is also a more general reason for discussing the different
sorts of talk. Epistemologists have always been aware that there
are some close connections between thought and speech, but their
elucidations of these connections have been retarded by the tacit
supposal that there exists some nuclear and homogeneous activity
of saying things. They have used, without apparent qualms, verbs
like 'state', 'propound', 'enunciate', 'declare', 'describe', 'assert',
'express', 'tell', 'say' and 'discourse', as if they provided both a
full and an unambiguous account of what a person is about, when he
is described as doing one or other of these things. But there is no
single-track or nuclear activity of just saying things. What is said
is said either conversationally, or coaxingly, or reassuringly, or
peremptorily, or entertainingly, or reproachfully, and so forth.
Talking in a bargaining way is different from talking in a confessional
way, and both are different from talking anecdotally, menacingly or
provokingly. Even what we write is meant to be read in a special
tone of voice, and what we say to ourselves in our heads is not 'said'
in a monotone.

Didactic speaking and writing is the species with which we are
here concerned. It is talk in which, unlike most of the others, what
we tell is intended to be kept in mind. Talk of most of the other
kinds is not intended to be kept in mind, but responded to, or
otherwise acted on straightway. Didactic talk, unlike most of
the others, is meant to better the mind of the recipient, that is, to
improve its equipment or strengthen its powers. Teaching is
teaching someone to do, which includes to say, tilings, and what a
pupil has been taught to do, he is expected to continue to be able to
do for at least a fair time afterwards. Lessons are meant to be learned
and not forgotten. In a word, teaching is deliberate equipping. Of
course, not all teaching is done by talking didactically. Infants
learn things by following examples which may, or may not, be
deliberately set for their imitation. Some lessons are taught by
deliberately setting examples and giving demonstrations. Some are
taught by sheer drill, some by ridicule and so forth.

Now didactic discourse, like other sorts of lessons, but unlike
most of the other sorts of talk, is intended to be remembered,
imitated and rehearsed by the recipient. It can be repeated without
losing its point, and it is suitable for retransmission by word of
mouth or in writing. Lessons so taught can be preserved, as lessons



THE INTELLECT 311

taught by demonstrations and examples cannot be preserved; they
can therefore be accumulated, assembled, compared, sifted and
criticised. Thus we can learn both what our grandfathers taught
to our fathers and what our fathers added to, or modified, in the
lessons they had been taught. The original discoveries by which
they bettered their instructions can be embodied in the schooling
of their sons, for it does not take genius to learn what it has taken
genius to invent. Intellectual progress is possible just because the
immature can be taught what only the mature could have found out.
The sciences grow because the undergraduate can by suitable
schooling be trained to start where Euclid, Harvey and Newton
left off.

Furthermore, didactic discourse is impersonal and untopical, in
the sense that the lessons it delivers could be delivered by any
suitably trained teacher to any suitably prepared recipient; and the
occasions of delivering it are not fixed, as the occasions of delivering
conversational, bargaining, reassuring, or prosecuting remarks are
fixed, by non-recurrent situations. If a repartee, a traffic-signal or
a promise is not made by a particular person to a particular person
at a particular juncture, the opportunity for making it has gone for
ever; but if John Doe missed yesterday's lesson on the Latin
subjunctive, or failed to finish the chapter on the size and distance
of the moon, there may be the same point as before in his reception
tomorrow or next week of those same lessons. It will not escape
those who are familiar with the philosophical discussions of the
nature and status of what are called 'propositions', that the predicates
by which propositions are described are just those which do belong
ex officio to the jobs of didactic discourse and do not belong to
repartees, limericks, queries, interjections, condolences, accusations,
vows, behests, complaints, or any of the countless other sorts of
non-didactic saying. It is no accident that some theorists like to
define 'intellectual operations' as operations with propositions,
or that other theorists like to define 'propositions' as the products
or implements of intellectual operations. Both are implicitly
referring to our lesson giving, lesson taking and lesson using
activities and powers, without, of course, explicitly mentioning
such vulgar matters.

All talk is meant to exert some specific influence. A question
is meant to be heard, understood and answered; an offer is meant



312 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

to be considered and accepted; a threat is meant to deter; and a
condolence is meant to give comfort. Didactic talk is meant to
instruct. The swimming instructor says things to his pupils, but he
is not primarily intending to get the pupil to say those same things.
He intends him now to make the required strokes with his arms and
legs and later to make strokes like these without the accompaniment
of spoken or silent instructions. Ultimately, perhaps, the pupil will
teach other novices to swim, or at least teach himself to make new
strokes and to make the old strokes in more difficult conditions.
Learning the imparted lesson is becoming competent, not merely
or primarily to parrot it, but to do a systematic variety of other
things. The same holds good of more academic lessons, like lessons in
pronunciation, geography, grammar, style, botany, calculation
and ratiocination. We learn from these lessons how to say and
do things, most of which are not echoes of the words of the
lessons.

Didactic influence can be exerted not only by one person
upon another but also by one person upon himself. He can coach
himself to say and do things which are not echoes of the words in
which that coaching is given. Just as he can give himself orders,
which he then complies with in manual evolutions, so he can tell
himself things which he then turns to account in new didactic
moves. Having told himself that in the garage there are seven tins
each containing two gallons of petrol, he can then tell himself that
there are fourteen gallons of petrol in the garage. The activities
which we call 'thinking things out', 'pondering', 'considering',
'debating' and 'excogitating' are notoriously capable of being
progressive. They can achieve new results. The answers to some,
but not all, questions can be found out merely by private or inter-
personal talking, provided that the talking is the right sort of talking
and is carried on with some skill, industry and care. Jocose talking
does not solve algebraical problems nor yet does a helter-skelter
spate of algebraical ｅxpressions.

When we comment on a person's intellectual proficiencies and
limitations, the main things we have in mind are his efficiency and
keenness in making such advances. It may be thought that in referring
to the achievement of new results hy intellectual work I am talking
simply of deduction, or more generally of inference. But this,
though an important species, is not the sole species of progressive



THE INTELLECT 313

thinking. In multiplying and dividing we arrive by thinking at the
previously unknown answers to questions, but we do not call those
answers 'conclusions' ; nor do we call misreckonings 'fallacies'. The
historian, having assembled a mass of relevant facts, has to think
before he can give a coherent account of a campaign; but the
coherence of his final account is a unity of quite a different kind from
that of a chain of theorems. His account will contain a lot of
inferences and it must be free from inconsistencies; but, to be good
history, it must have other intellectual merits as well. Excellence in
translation also requires careful thinking, but the rules and canons
that have to be observed are not only rules of inference. Clumsiness
in translation shows faulty, but not fallacious, thinking. No questions
are begged nor middle terms undistributed, in the composition
of a metrically incorrect sonnet.

Thinking things out involves saying things to oneself, or to one's
other companions, with an instructive intent. The assertion of each
proposition is intended to equip or prepare the recipient to turn
what he is told to further accounts, to use it, for example, as a
premiss, or as a procedure maxim. As in the classroom, so in
inter-personal discussion and in private excogitation, neither the
teacher nor the learner is ever absolutely proficient, patient,
energetic, alert or concentrated. The instruction may have to be
repeated, rephrased, postponed or withdrawn; the recipient's
responses may be wrong, off the track, faltering and perfunctory.
Progress made on one day may on the next day seem to have been
completely lost, and protracted bafflement may give place in a
moment to forward strides which make the thinker wonder how a
task so difficult yesterday was so easy today. Tomorrow, perhaps,
he will complain that the results achieved have done nothing but
set him further tasks as tough as any that he has yet overcome. He
has, perhaps, found out a way of using yesterday's proposition as a
premiss ; but the conclusion got today must in its turn be turned to
some further premissory account. His results are always usable as
lessons from which, with skill, work and luck, further results can
be got.

We see then that the well-known fact that pondering can be
progressive, despite its consisting only in the serial production of
seemingly inert sentences, is not inexplicable. Certain sorts of
sentences, properly delivered and properly received, have an



314 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

instructive effect. They teach us to do and say things which were not
said or done in their delivery. Some thinkers have been puzzled by
the question, 'How can a person get to know new things by dint of
merely telling himself what he knows already?' They would not be
puzzled by the question, 'How can a novice learn to make new and
correct swimming strokes from listening to words from the
instructor on the bank?' or even by the question, 'How can a novice
learn to make new and correct swimming strokes from listening to
words which he impresses on himself?' The question, 'How can a
person learn to make new didactic strokes from listening to
instructively intended pronouncements from his tutor, his colleague
or himself?' is no more mysterious.

(6) The Primacy of the Intellect.

It is now easy to distinguish the sense in which intellectual
operations are higher than, and do 'govern', the exercises of other
mental capacities, from the sense in which I have denied that the
occurrence of intellectual operations is implied in all those descrip-
tions we give of people's actions and reactions which embody
mental concepts.

Intellectual work has a cultural primacy, since it is the work of
those who have received and can give a higher education, education,
namely, by didactic discourse. It is what constitutes, or is a sine qua
non of, culture. To put it crudely, barbarians and infants do not do
intellectual work, since, if they did, we should describe them instead
as at least part-civilised and near to school age. There is a sort of
contradiction in speaking of a quite unschooled intellect, unless one
is referring to someone's capacity to profit by such schooling, but
there is no contradiction in speaking of a quite unschooled mind
The schooling of a person requires that he has already acquired the
capacity to receive that schooling. Lectures cannot be followed,
much less delivered, by persons who cannot yet use or follow
artless talk.

It is therefore absurd to speak as if such things as attending,
trying, wanting, fearing, being amused, perceiving, bearing in mind,
recollecting, purposing, learning, pretending, playing and chatting
could occur only in obedience to ^didactically given instructions,
whether from an internal or an external lecturer. This is, however,
quite compatible with saying that some degree of intellectual



THE INTELLECT 315

accomplishment is a sine qua non of, for example, wanting to be a
patent-lawyer, being amused at a witticism by Voltaire, bearing in
mind the rules of Greek conditional sentences, or identifying a
magneto, or a dividend warrant. Even so, to describe someone as
doing something which he could not have done without formerly
having had a certain education does not entail saying that he must
have recited all or any of those early lessons just before he acted.
I could not now read a Greek sentence, if I had not formerly learned
Greek grammar, but I do not ordinarily have to remind myself of
any rules of Greek grammar, before I construe a Greek sentence. I
construe according to those rules, but I do not think of them. I
bear them in mind, but I do not appeal to them, unless I get into
difficulties.

There is a tendency among epistemologists and moralists to pre-
tend that to have a mind is to have inside one, not merely poten-
tially but actually, either one or two lecturers, Reason and
Conscience. Sometimes Conscience is held to be just Reason talking
in its sabbatical tone of voice. These internal lecturers are supposed
already to know, since they are competent to teach, the things
which their audience does not yet know. My Reason is, what I
myself am not yet, perfectly rational and my Conscience is, what
I am not yet, perfectly conscientious. They have not anything to
learn. And if we asked, 'Who taught my Reason and who taught
my Conscience the things that they have learned and not forgotten?'
we should perhaps be told of corresponding instructors lodged
inside their bosoms. There is, of course, a serious intention
behind this nursery myth, just as there is a serious intention
behind my flippant extension of it. It is quite true that when
a child has part-learned something and learned it partly from the
didactic discourses of his parents and schoolmasters, he has acquired
some capacity and inclination to deliver refresher-lessons to
himself in their magisterial tones of voice. He does not, in the
stock situations, have to wonder what they would tell him, or
what he should tell himself. He knows the hackneyed parts of his
lessons well enough to deliver them unhesitatingly, appropriately
and with the right gravity. And, when he does this, he does, if you
like, 'hear the voice of Reasbn', or 'of Conscience', speaking
authoritatively in accents which are a queer blend of, say, his
father's and his own. He can easily give himself the instructions



316 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

which he still finds it difficult to observe. His preaching is necessarily
ahead of his practice, since the object of delivering didactic talks
to him is to inculcate better practices in him by doing so. So at this
stage he may have learned quite well how and when to tell himself
to do things, though he has not yet learned very well how and when
to do them. The corresponding thing may occur when he is
wrestling with a piece of Latin prose. Experiencing difficulties with
the syntax of his sentence, he may 'listen for' and 'hear' the appro-
priate rule of syntax being dictated to him in a tone of voice which
is half his own and half that of his schoolmaster. This voice might
then be picturesquely described as 'the Voice of Latin Grammar'.
But in this case the provenance of the Voice' would be too obvious
for anyone to talk seriously of the original source of his grammatical
scruples being the dictates of an angelic, internal philologist.

This mention of conscience and of the knowledge of Latin
grammar brings us back to a matter already mentioned but not
yet discussed, namely to intellectual activities other than those of
theorising. Grammatical knowledge is, for example, knowing how
to compose and construe Latin sentences, and moral knowledge,
if the strained phrase is to be used at all, is knowing how to behave
in certain sorts of situations in which the problems are neither
merely theoretical nor merely technical. Knowledge of chess or
bridge is an intellectual accomplishment which is exercised in
trying to win games; strategy is one which is exercised in trying
to win battles and campaigns; the engineer's schooling and workshop
experience teach him to design bridges and not, save per acddens,
to build or expound theories.

The reason why we call such games and work 'intellectual' is
not far to seek. Not only the education necessary for mastering
the arts, but also many of the operations necessary in the practice
of them are homogeneous with those required for, and in, tasks
of building, expounding and applying theories. The ability to
compose and construe Latin sentences is an art, while the philology
of the Latin tongue is a science; but the teaching and practising
of the one coincides with a part of the teaching and applying of
the other. Engineering does not advance physics, chemistry or
economics; but competence at engineering is not compatible with
complete innocence of those branches of theory. If not the calcula-
tion, at least some estimation, of probabilities is an integral part of



THE INTELLECT 317

playing the more intellectual card games, and this is part of our
reason for describing them as 'intellectual'.

It is easy to see that intellectual development is a condition of the
existence of all but the most primitive occupations and interests.
Every advanced craft, game, project, amusement, organisation or
industry is necessarily above the hqjads of untutored savages and
infants, or else we could not call it 'advanced'. We do not have to be
scientists in order to solve anagrams, or play whist. But we have to be
literate and be able to add and subtract.

(7) Epistemology.

Before concluding this chapter, we must consider an academic
and departmental matter. A part of philosophy is traditionally
called 'theory of knowledge', or 'epistemology'. Our present
question is, 'What sorts of theories about knowledge should
epistemologists try to build, given that we have found something
radically wrong with important parts of the theories which they
have hitherto offered ? If the whole imposing apparatus of terms
like 'idea', 'conception', judgment', 'inference' and the rest has
been wrongly transferred from the functional descriptions of the
elements of published theories to the description of acts and pro-
cesses of building theories, what is left of the theory of knowledge?
If these terms do not denote the hidden wires and pulleys by
which intellectual operations were wrongly supposed to work,
what is the proper subject matter of the theory of knowledge?'

The phrase 'theory of knowledge' could be used to stand for
either of two things, (i) It might be used to stand for the theory of
the sciences, i.e. the systematic study of the structures of built
theories. (2) Or it might be used to stand for the theory of learning,
discovery and invention.

(i) The philosophical theory of the sciences or, more generally,
of built theories, gives a functional account of the terms, statements
and arguments as well as of the numerous other kinds of ｅxpressions
which enter into the formulation of the theories. It could be called
'the Logic of Science' or, metaphorically, 'the Grammar of Science'.
(But 'science' should not be used so parochially as to exclude
theories unpatronised by the Rsyal Society.) This sort of account
does not describe or allude to episodes in the lives of individual
scientists. It does not therefore describe or allude to any supposed



318 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

private episodes in those lives. It describes in a special manner what
is, or might be, found in print.

(2) As there do exist the practice and the profession of teaching,
there could exist a branch of philosophical theory concerned with
the concepts of learning, teaching and examining. This might be
called 'the philosophy of learning', 'the methodology of education'
or, more grandly, 'the Grammar of Pedagogy'. This would be the
theory of knowledge in the sense of being the theory of getting to
know. This study would be concerned with the terms in which
certain episodes in the lives of individuals are described and
prescribed for by teachers and examiners.

Now the great epistemologists, Locke, Hume and Kant, were
in the main advancing the Grammar of Science, when they thought
that they were discussing parts of the occult life-story of persons
acquiring knowledge. They were discussing the credentials of sorts
of theories, but they were doing this in para-physiological allegories.
The recommended restoration of the trade-names of traditional
epistemology to their proper place in the anatomy of built theories
would have a salutary influence upon our theories about minds.
One of the strongest forces making for belief in the doctrine
that a mind is a private stage is the ingrained habit of assuming that
there must exist the 'cognitive acts' and 'cognitive processes' which
these trade-names have been perverted to signify. So, since none
of the things which we could witness John Doe doing were the
required acts of having ideas, abstracting, making judgments or
passing from premisses to conclusions, it seemed necessary to locate
these acts on the boards of a stage to which only he had access.
The wealth of convincing biographical detail given in the
epistemologists' allegories has been, at least in my own case, what
gave one of the two strongest motives for adhering to the myth
of die ghost in the machine. The imputed episodes seemed to be
impenetrably 'internal' because they were genuinely unwitnessable.
But they were genuinely unwitnessable because they were mythical.
They were causal hypotheses substituted for functional descriptions
of the elements of published theories.



CHAPTER X

PSYCHOLOGY

(i) The Programme of Psychology.

IN the course of this book I have said very little about the science
of psychology. This omission will have appeared particularly
perverse, since the entire book could properly be described
as an essay, not indeed in scientific but in philosophical
psychology. Part of the explanation of the omission is this. I
have been examining the logical behaviour of a set of concepts
all of which are regularly employed by everyone. The concepts of
learning, practice, trying, heeding, pretending, wanting, pondering,
arguing, shirking, watching, seeing and being perturbed are not
technical concepts. Everyone has to learn, and does learn, how to use
them. Their use by psychologists is not different from their use by
novelists, biographers, historians, teachers, magistrates, coastguards,
politicians, detectives or men in the street. But this is not the whole
story.

When we think of the science or sciences of psychology, we
are apt, and often encouraged, to equate the official programmes of
psychology with the researches that psychologists actually carry on,
their public promises with their laboratory performances. Now
when the word 'psychology' was coined, two hundred years ago,
it was supposed that the two-worlds legend was true. It was supposed,
in consequence, that since Newtonian science explains (it was
erroneously thought) everything that exists and occurs in the physical
world, there could and should be just one other counterpart science
explaining what exists and occurs in the postulated non-physical
world. As Newtonian scientists studied the phenomena of the one
field, so there ought to be scientists studying the phenomena of
the other field. 'Psychology' was supposed to be the title of the one
empirical study of 'mental phenomena'. Moreover, as Newtonian

319



320 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

scientists found and examined their data in visual, auditory and tactual
perception, so psychologists would find and examine their counter-
part data by counterpart, non-visual, non-auditory, non-tactual
perception.

It was not, of course, denied that there existed and could exist
plenty of other systematic and unsystematic studies of specifically
human behaviour. Historians had for two thousand years been
studying the deeds and words, opinions and projects of men and
groups of men. Philologists, literary critics and scholars had been
studying men's speech and writing, their poetry and drama, their
religion and philosophy. Even dramatists and novelists, in depicting
ways in which the creatures of their fancy acted and reacted, were
showing in fable how they thought that real people do or might
behave. Economists study the actual and hypothetical dealings and
expectations of men in markets; strategists study the actual and
possible perplexities and decisions of generals; teachers study the
performances of their pupils ; detectives and chess-players study the
manoeuvres, habits, weaknesses and strengths of their adversaries.
But, according to the para-Newtonian programme, psychologists
would study human beings in a completely different way. They
would find and examine data inaccessible to teachers, detectives,
biographers or friends; data, too, which could not be represented
on the stage or in the pages of novels. These other studies of man
were restricted to the inspection of the mere tents and houses in
which the real men dwelt. The psychological study of man would
use direct access to the residents themselves. Indeed, not until
psychologists had found and turned the key, could the other students
of human thought and behaviour hope to do more than batter
vainly on locked doors. The visible deeds and the audible words
of human beings were not themselves exercises of the qualities of
their characters or intellects, but only external symptoms or expres-
sions of their real but privy exercises.

Abandonment of the two-worlds legend involves the abandon-
ment of the idea that there is a locked door and a still to be
discovered key. Those human actions and reactions, those spoken
and unspoken utterances, those tones of voice, facial ｅxpressions
and gestures, which have always* been the data of all the other
students of men, have, after all, been the right and the
only manifestations to study. They and they alone have



PSYCHOLOGY 321

merited, but fortunately not received, the grandiose title 'mental
phenomena*.

But though the official programme of psychology promised
that the subject matter of its investigations would consist of
happenings differing in kind from, and lying 'behind', those bits of
human conduct which alone were accessible to the other studies of
man, the experimental psychologists in their daily practice had
perforce to break this promise. A researcher's day cannot be
satisfactorily occupied in observing nonentities and describing the
mythical. Practising psychologists found themselves examining the
actions, grimaces and utterances of lunatics and idiots, of persons
under the influence of alcohol, fatigue, terror and hypnosis, and of
the victims of brain injuries. They studied sense perception as
ophthalmologists, for example, study sense perception, partly by
making and applying physiological experiments and partly by
analysing the reactions and verbal responses of the subjects of their
experiments. They studied the wits of children by collecting and
comparing their failures and successes in various kinds of stan-
dardised tests. They counted the blunders made by typists at different
stages of their day's work, and they examined people's differing
liabilities to forget different kinds of memorised syllables and
phrases by recording their successes and failures in recitations after
the lapse of different periods of time. They studied the behaviour
of animals in mazes and of chickens in incubators. Even the spell-
binding, because so promisingly 'chemical', principle of the
Association of Ideas found its chief practical application in the
prompt word-responses voiced aloud by subjects to whom test
words were spoken by the experimenter.

There is nothing peculiar in such a disparity between programme
and performance. We ought to expect wisdom about questions and
methods to come after the event. The descriptions given by
philosophers of their own objectives and their own procedures
have seldom squared with their actual results or their actual manners
of working. They have promised, for example, to give an account
of the World as a Whole, and to arrive at this account by some
process of synoptic contemplation. In fact they have practised a
highly proprietary brand of haggling, and their results, though much
more valuable than the promised Darien-panorama could have
been, have not been in any obvious respects like such a panorama.



322 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

Chemists once tried hard to find out the properties of phlogiston,
but, as they never captured any phlogiston, they reconciled them-
selves to studying instead its influences and outward manifestations.
They examined, in fact, the phenomena of combustion and soon
abandoned the postulate of an uninspectable heat-stuff. The
postulation of it had been a will-o'-the-wisp, the sort of will-o'-the-
wisp that encourages the adventurous to explore uncharted thickets
and then, ungratefully, to chart the thickets in maps that make no
further mention of those false beacons. Psychological research
work will not have been wasted, if the postulate of a special mind-
stuff goes the same way.

However, the question 'What should be the programme of
psychology?' has still to be answered. Attempts to answer it would
now be faced by the following difficulty. I have argued that the
workings of men's minds are studied from the same sorts of data
by practising psychologists and by economists, criminologists,
anthropologists, political scientists and sociologists, by teachers,
examiners, detectives, biographers, historians and players of games,
by strategists, statesmen, employers, confessors, parents, lovers and
novelists. How then are certain inquiries to be selected, while all
the rest are to be rejected, as 'psychological' ? By what criteria are
we to say that the statistical results of Schools Examination Boards
are not, while the results of intelligence tests are, the products of
psychological investigations? Why is the historian's examination of
Napoleon's motives, intentions, talents and stupidities not, when that
of Sally Beauchamp's is, a psychological study? If we give up the
idea that psychology is about something that the other human
studies are not about, and if we give up, therewith, the idea that
psychologists work on data from which the other studies are
debarred, what is the differentia between psychology and these
other studies?

Part of the answer might be given thus. The country postman
knows a district like the back of his hand; he knows all the roads,
lanes, streams, hills and coppices; he can find his way about it in all
weathers, lights and seasons. Yet he is not a geographer. He cannot
construct a map of the district, or tell how it links on to adjoining
districts; he does not know the exact compass-bearings, distances
or heights above sea-level of any of the places that, in another way,
he knows so well. He has no classification of the types of terrain



PSYCHOLOGY 323

that his district contains, and he can make no inferences from its
features to features of neighbouring districts. In discussing the
district he mentions all the features that the geographer might
mention, but he does not say the same sorts of things about them.
He applies no geographical generalisations, uses no geographical
methods of mensuration, and employs no general explanatory or
predictive theories. Similarly, it might be suggested, the detective,
the confessor, the examiner and the novelist may be thoroughly
conversant, in a rule of thumb way, with the kinds of data which the
psychologist would collect, but their handling of them would be
unscientific, where the psychologist's handling of them would be
scientific. Theirs would correspond to the shepherd's weather-lore;
his to the meteorologist's science.

But this answer would not establish any difference between
psychology and the other scientific or would-be scientific studies
of human behaviour, like economics, sociology, anthropology,
criminology and philology. Even public librarians study popular
tastes by statistical methods, yet, though tastes in books are
indubitably characteristics of minds, this sort of study of them would
not be allowed to rank as psychology.

The right answer to the question seems to be that the abandon-
ment of the dream of psychology as a counterpart to Newtonian
science, as this was piously misrepresented, involves abandonment
of the notion that 'psychology' is the name of a unitary inquiry
or tree of inquiries. Much as 'Medicine' is the name of a somewhat
arbitrary consortium of more or less loosely connected inquiries
and techniques, a consortium which neither has, nor needs, alogically
trim statement of programme, so 'psychology' can quite conveni-
ently be used to denote a partly fortuitous federation of inquiries and
techniques. After all, not only was the dream of a para-Newtonian
science derived from a myth, but it was also an empty dream that
there was or would be one unitary, because Newtonian, science of the
'external world'. The erroneous doctrine that there was a segregated
field of 'mental phenomena' was based on a principle which also
implied that there was no room for the biological sciences.
Newtonian physics was proclaimed as the all-embracing science of
what exists in space. The Cartesian picture left no place for Mendel
or Darwin. The two-worlds legend was also a two-sciences legend,
and the recognition that there are many sciences should remove the



324 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

sting from the suggestion that 'psychology' is not the name of a
single homogeneous theory. Few of the names of sciences do denote
such unitary theories, or show any promise of doing so. Nor is
'cards' the name either of a single game, or of a 'tree' of games.

The analogy suggested above between psychology and medicine
was misleading in one important respect, namely that several of the
most progressive and useful psychological researches have them-
selves been in a broad sense of the adjective, medical researches.
Among others, and above all others, the researches of psychology's
one man of genius, Freud, must not be classed as belonging to a
family of inquiries analogous to the family of medical inquiries;
they belong to this family. Indeed, so deservedly profound has
been the influence of Freud's teaching and so damagingly popular
have its allegories become, that there is now evident a strong
tendency to use the word 'psychologists' as if it stood only for those
who investigate and treat mental disabilities. 'Mental' is commonly
used, from the same motives, to mean 'mentally disordered'.
Perhaps it would have been a terminological convenience, had
the word 'psychology' been originally given this restricted sense;
but the academic world is now too well accustomed to the more
hospitable and undiscriminating use of the word to make such a
reform possible or desirable.

Probably some people will be inclined to protest that there
does exist some general and formidable distinction between psycho-
logical inquiries and all the other inquiries that are concerned with
the wits and characters of human beings. Even if psychologists
enjoy no proprietary data on which to found their theories, still
their theories themselves are different in kind from those of
philologists, camouflage-experts, anthropologists or detectives.
Psychological theories provide, or will provide, causal explanations
of human conduct. Granted that there are hosts of different ways
in which the workings of men's minds are studied, psychology
differs from all the other studies in trying to find out the causes
of these workings.

The word 'cause' and the phrase 'causal explanation' are, of
course, very solemn ｅxpressions. They remind us at once of tliDse
unheard impacts of those little invisible billiard-balls which we
learned to fancy, erroneously, were the truly scientific explanation
of everything that goes on in the world. So when we hear the



PSYCHOLOGY 325

promise of a new scientific explanation of what we say and do, we
expect to hear of some counterparts to these impacts, some forces or
agencies of which we should never ourselves have dreamed and
which we shall certainly never witness at their subterranean work.
But when we are in a less impressionable frame of mind, we
find something unplausible in the promise of discoveries yet to
be made of the hidden causes of our own actions and reactions. We
know quite well what caused the farmer to return from the market
with his pigs unsold. He found that the prices were lower than he
had expected. We know quite well why John Doe scowled and
slammed the door. He had been insulted. We know quite well
why the heroine took one of her morning letters to read in solitude,
for the novelist gives us the required causal explanation. The
heroine recognised her lover's handwriting on the envelope. The
schoolboy knows quite well what made him write down the
answer '225' when asked for the square of 15. Each of the operations
he performed had put him on the track to its successor.

There are, as will be seen in a moment, a lot of other sorts of
actions, fidgets and utterances, the author of which cannot say what
made him produce them. But the actions and reactions which their
authors can explain are not in need of an ulterior and disparate kind
of explanation. Where their causes are well known to the agent
and to all of his acquaintances, the promise of surprising news about
their real but hidden causes is not merely like the promise, but is a
special case of the promise of news about the occult causes of
mechanical happenings whose ordinary causes are notorious. The
cyclist knows what makes the back wheel of his cycle go round,
namely, pressure on the pedals communicated by the tension of the
chain. The questions, 'What makes the pressure on the pedals make
the chain taut ?' and, 'What makes the tautening of the chain make the
back wheel go round?' would strike him as unreal questions. So
would the question, 'What makes him try to make the back wheel go
round by pressing on the pedals ?'

In this everyday sense in which we can all give 'causal explana-
tions' for many of our actions and reactions, mention of these causes
is not the perquisite of psychologists. The economist, in talking
of 'sellers' strikes', is talking in general terms about such
episodes as that of the farmer taking his pigs back to the farm
because he found that the prices were too low. The literary critic,



326 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

in discussing why the poet used a new rhythm in a particular line
of his verse, is considering what composition worry was affecting
the poet at that particular juncture. Nor does the teacher want to
hear about any back-stage incidents, in order to understand what
made the boy get to the correct answer of his multiplication
problem; for he has himself witnessed the front-stage incidents
which got him there.

On the other hand, there are plenty of kinds of behaviour
of which we can give no such explanations. I do not know why I
was so tongue-tied in the presence of a certain acquaintance; why I
dreamed a certain dream last night ; why I suddenly saw in my mind's
eye an uninteresting street corner of a town that I hardly know;
why I chatter more rapidly after the air-raid siren is heard; or how
I came to address a friend by the wrong Christian name. We
recognise that questions of these kinds are genuine psychological
questions. I should, very likely, not even know why gardening is
unusually attractive when a piece of disagreeable letter-writing
awaits me in my study, if I had not learned a modicum of psychology.
The question why the farmer will not sell his pigs at certain prices
is not a psychological but an economic question; but the question
why he will not sell his pigs at any price to a customer with a certain
look in his eye might be a psychological question. Even in the field
of sense perception and memory the corresponding thing seems to
hold. We cannot, from our own knowledge, tell why a straight
line cutting through certain cross-hatchings looks bent, or why
conversations in foreign languages seem to be spoken much more
rapidly than conversations in our own, and we recognise these for
psychological questions. Yet we feel that the wrong sort of promise
is being made when we are offered corresponding psychological
explanations of our correct estimations of shape, size, illumination
and speed. Let the psychologist tell us why we are deceived; but
we can tell ourselves and him why we are not deceived.

The classification and diagnosis of exhibitions of our mental
impotences require specialised research methods. The explanation
of the exhibitions of our mental competences often requires nothing
but ordinary good sense, or it may require the specialised methods
of economists, scholars, strategists and examiners. But their explana-
tions are not cheques drawn on the accounts of some yet more funda-
mental diagnoses. So not all, or even most, causal explanations of



PSYCHOLOGY 327

human actions and reactions are to be ranked as psychological. But,
furthermore, not all psychological researches are searches for causal
explanations. Many psychologists are occupied, with greater or less
profit, in devising methods of mensuration and in making collections
of the measurements so achieved. Certainly the hope is that their
measurements will one day subserve the establishment of precise
functional correlations or causal laws, but their own work is at
best only preparatory to this ulterior task. So, as it must be styled
'psychological research', 'psychological research* cannot be defined
as the search for causal explanations.

It will now be realised why I have said so little about psychology
in the body of this book. Part of the purpose of the book has
been to argue against the false notion that psychology is the sole
empirical study of people's mental powers, propensities and
performances, together with its implied false corollary that 'the
mind' is what is properly describable only in the technical terms
proprietary to psychological research. England cannot be described
solely in seismological terms.

(2) Behaviourism.

The general trend of this book will undoubtedly, and harmlessly
be stigmatised as 'behaviourist*. So it is pertinent to say something
about Behaviourism. Behaviourism was, in the beginning, a theory
about the proper methods of scientific psychology. It held that the
example of the other progressive sciences ought to be followed,
as it had not previously been followed, by psychologists; their
theories should be based upon rcpeatable and publicly checkable
observations and experiments. But the reputed deliverances of
consciousness and introspection are not publicly checkable. only
people's overt behaviour can be observed by several witnesses,
measured and mechanically recorded. The early adherents of this
methodological programme seem to have been in two minds
whether to assert that the data of consciousness and introspection
were myths, or to assert merely that they were insusceptible of
scientific examination. It was not clear whether they were espousing
a not very sophisticated mechanistic doctrine, like that of Hobbes
and Gassendi, or whether they* were still cleaving to the Cartesian
para-mechanical theory, but restricting their research procedures
to those that we have inherited from Galileo; whether, for example,



328 THE CONCEPT OF MIND

they held that thinking just consists in making certain complex
noises and movements or whether they held that though these
movements and noises were connected with 'inner life' processes,
the movements and noises alone were laboratory phenomena.

However it does not matter whether the early Behaviourists
accepted a mechanist or a para-mechanist theory. They were in
error in either case. The important thing is that the practice of
describing specifically human doings according to the recom-
mended methodology quickly made it apparent to psychologists
how shadowy were the supposed 'inner-life' occurrences which the
Behaviourists were at first reproached for ignoring or denying.
Psychological theories which made no mention of the deliverances
of 'inner perception' were at first likened to 'Hamlet' without the
Prince of Denmark. But the extruded hero soon came to seem so
bloodless and spineless a being that even the opponents of these
theories began to feel shy of imposing heavy theoretical burdens
upon his spectral shoulders.

Novelists, dramatists and biographers had always been satisfied
to exhibit people's motives, thoughts, perturbations and habits by
describing their doings, sayings, and imaginings, their grimaces,
gestures and tones of voice. In concentrating on what Jane Austen
concentrated on, psychologists began to find that these were, after
all, the stuff and not the mere trappings of their subjects. They have,
of course, continued to suffer unnecessary qualms of anxiety, lest
this diversion of psychology from the task of describing the ghostly
might not commit it to tasks of describing the merely mechanical.
But the influence of the bogy of mechanism has for a century been
dwindling because, among other reasons, during this period the
biological sciences have established their title of 'sciences'. The
Newtonian system is no longer the sole paradigm of natural science.
Man need not be degraded to a machine by being denied to be a
ghost in a machine. He might, after all, be a sort of animal, namely,
a higher mammal. There has yet to be ventured the hazardous
leap to the hypothesis that perhaps he is a man.

The Behaviourists' methodological programme has been of
revolutionary importance to the programme of psychology. But
more, it has been one of the main sources of the philosophical
suspicion that the two-worlds story is a myth. It is a matter of
relatively slight importance that the champions of this methodo-



PSYCHOLOGY 329

logical principle have tended to espouse as well a kind of Hobbist
theory, and even to imagine that the truth of mechanism is entailed
by the truth of their theory of scientific research method in
psychology.

It is not for me to say to what extent the concrete research
procedures of practising psychologists have been affected by their
long adherence to the two-worlds story, or to what extent the
Behaviourist revolt has led to modifications of their methods. For
all that I know, the ill effects of the myth may, on balance, have
been outweighed by the good, and the Behaviourist revolt against
it may have led to reforms more nominal than real. Myths are
not always detrimental to the progress of theories. Indeed, in their
youth they are often of inestimable value. Pioneers are, at the start,
fortified by the dream that the New World is, behind its alien
appearances, a sort of duplicate of the Old World, and the child is not
so much baffled by a strange house if, wherever they may actually
lead him, its bannisters feel to his hand like those he knew at home.

But it has not been a part of the object of this book to advance
the methodology of psychology or to canvass the special hypotheses
of this or that science. Its object has been to show that the two -worlds
story is a philosophers' myth, though not a fable, and, by showing
this, to begin to repair the damage that this myth has for some time
been doing inside philosophy. I have tried to establish this point,
not by adducing evidence from the troubles of psychologists, but by
arguing that the cardinal mental concepts have been credited by
philosophers themselves with the wrong sorts of logical behaviour.
If my arguments have any force, then these concepts have been
misallocated in the same general way, though in opposing particular
ways, by both mechanists and para-mechanists, by Hobbes and
by Descartes.

If, in conclusion, we try to compare the theoretical fruitfulness
of the Hobbes-Gassendi story of the mind with that of the
Cartesians, we must undoubtedly grant that the Cartesian story
has been the more productive. We might describe their opposition
in this picture. one company of a country's defenders instals itself
in a fortress. The soldiers of the second company notice that the
moat is dry, the gates are missing and the walls are in collapse.
Scorning the protection of such a rickety fort, yet still ridden by
the idea that only from forts like this can the country be defended,



330- THE CONCEPT OF MIND

they take up their stand in the most fort-like thing they can see,
namely, the shadow of the decrepit fort. Neither position is
defensible; and obviously the shadow-stronghold has all the
vulnerability of the stone fort, with some extra vulnerabilities of
its own. Yet in one respect the occupants of the shadow-fort have
shown themselves the better soldiers, since they have seen the
weaknesses of the stone fort, even if they are silly to fancy themselves
secure in a fort made of no stones at all. The omens are not good
for their victory, but they have given some evidence of teachability.
They have exercised some vicarious strategic sense; they have
realised that a stone fort whose walls are broken is not a stronghold.
That the shadow of such a fort is not a stronghold either is the next
lesson that they may come to learn.

We may apply this picture to one of our own central issues.
Thinking, on the one view, is identical with saying. The holders
of the rival view rightly reject this identification, but they make
this rejection, naturally but wrongly, in the form that saying is
doing one thing and thinking is doing another. Thinking operations
are numerically different from verbal operations, and they control
these verbal operations from another place than the place in which
these verbal operations occur. This, however, will not do either,
and for the very same reasons as those which showed the
vulnerability of the identification of thinking with mere saying.
Just as undisciplined and heedless saying is not thinking but
babbling, so, whatever shadow-operations may be postulated as
occurring in the other place, these too might go on there in an
undisciplined and heedless manner; and then they in their turn
would not be thinking. But to offer even an erroneous description
of what distinguishes heedless and undisciplined chattering from
thinking is to recognise a cardinal distinction. The Cartesian myth
does indeed repair the defects of the Hobbist myth only by dupli-
cating it. But even doctrinal homeopathy involves the recognition
of disorders.

END



INDEX

A Competences and liabilities, 70, 79,

., 111,130-3

Abstract terms, 120, 227, 293-4, 307-8 Conscience 159 315

Achievements and Achievement words, Consciousness, 1*2, 14, 83, 136, 154 ff.,

130-1, 149-53, 222-3, 238, 278, 301- ^ 2 ^ anj xe Heeding

3 4 Conversing, see Unstudied Talk.

Actions, 33, 65 ff. f 74, 89 'Could/ see Modal Sentences.

Automatic, no

Causes of, 90, 113-14, 325 D

Voluntary and involuntary, 67,

69 Descartes' Myth, 8, n ff, 33, 158, 201,

Agitations and Agitation words, 83, 3 2 9^

93, 95, 97-8, 104, 107-8, 166, 180 See 'Ghost in the Machine/

See Moods, Motives, Feelings. Determinate words, 44-5, 96, 118-19,

Appraisals, 66-9, 73, 75, 80, 180 256-7

Argument, 47, 123, 299-304 Didactic Talk, see Teaching, Proposi-

Aristotle, 30, 48, 65, 112, 149 tions > Intellect, Theorizing, Studied

Attending, 164, and see Heeding. Talk.

Avowals, 102, 183-4 Dispositions and Disposition words, 33,

42, 43 ff, 51, 56, 71, 73, 85-6, 88,

B 91, 95, 112, 116 ff.

Generic and specific, 118

Bearing in mind, see Serial Perform- Disposition sentences, 117-25

ances, and Remembering. Logic of, 117 ff, 138-9

'Because/ see Explanation. Not fact-reporting, 117-20, 123-

Behaviourism, 32, 84, 327-30 125

Believing, 28, 133-5 Not deduced from laws, 124

Biology, 117, 323

Bodies, see Physical World. E

Emotions, 83-4, 95, 104, 114
Enjoying, 107-9, 132

'Can/ see Modal Sentences. Episodes, see Occurrences.

Care, see Heeding. Epistemological words, 185, 203, 265,

Category, 8, 22 284, 292-309

Category-mistake, 16 ff, 33, 77-9, 94, Epistemology, 317

152, 168, 206 Ethical sentences, 128, 315

Causal Connexion, 122-3 Exercises, 33, 51, 54~5, 60, 70, 86, 97,

See Law Sentences. 104

Chatting, see Unstudied Talk. See Dispositions.

Choice, 68 Expecting, 226 ff, and see Serial Per-

Cognition, 26, 62, 258 formances.

331



332 INDEX

Explanation, 50, 77-8, 88-9, 113-14* and hearing, 246, 270

134-5, 142-3, 324~5 'Seeing/ 35, 37, 234, 246 ff, 265-6,

277
F and seeing, 246, 253-6

Faculties, 23, 63, 119, 152, 238, 278,

' ' . . Impressions, see Sensations.

Fancy, see Imagining. T r , ' , .

T, i- oo Impulses, 86, 114, 243, and see Motives

Feelings, 83-8, 101-9, 201, 240-1 T \. .' I'. .

T3 1- j A Inclinations, see Motives.

Feelings and Agitations, 104-7 T c /r i r r

, , . . & Inference, 299 ff, and see Law Sen-
Formal logic, 306 yy
T- -11 rc tences.

Free-will, 20, 71, 75 ft., 196-7 <T , (T , , <T , , _

See Actions Inner Internal, Inward,' etc., 12 ff..

Freud, 14, 157, 324 35 ff., 75, 198, 245, 269

Intellect, 26, 32, 49, 126, 280 ft.

c Primacy of the, 26, 314-8

Intelligence and Intelligence words,

Gassendi, 327, 329 25 ff, 27-8, 40, 42-50, 71, 265

'Ghost in the Machine/ 15 ff, 20, 22, Intelligent (Unintelligent) be-

27* 32, 35> 50, 52, 56, 60, 63, 83, 114, haviour, 21, 30, 32, 51, in,

155, 161, 224, 318 126, 144-9, 176-7, 261-2

See Descartes' Myth. Maxims, 29-31

'Got it' words, see Achievements. Use of rules, 46

Introspection, 12-15, 58, 66, 72, 154,

H 163 ff.

Habits, 8, 42, 45-7, 89, 91, no, 132,

134, 146 J

and motives, no James, William, 84

'Head, In the/ 27, 35 ff.

Heeding and Heed words, 91, in, 132, K

135 ff, 151, 157-8, 206, 223, 226, 297

Logic of, 138 ff. Kant, 318

Involves trying, 143-5 Knowing, 226-8

Involves readiness, 147-8 how > 2 7 ff-. 40 ff , 54, 59, 70, 265,

History, 56 2(5 9

Hobbes, 327, 329 that 2 7 ff - J 34~5, 152, 161

Hume, 94, 166, 186, 249, 271, 318 Disposition word, 44, 46, 56, 123,

Hutcheson, 94 J 33

Capacity verb, 133-4

j See Theories, Thinking.

Images, Imagery, Imaging, see Imagin- ^

ing.

Imagining, 35-40, 246, 252, 256 ff, 270 L^w sentences and law-like sentences,

and pretending, 264 43~6, 7* 85, 89, 90, 97, 113, 117,

Special status pictures, 248-55 120 ff, 142, 167, 170

'Hearing/ 36, 246 ff, 265, 267-270 Inference licences, 121-7, 142, 306



INDEX



333



Law, Open hypotheticals, 120-1, 142

See Mongrel-categoricals.
Learning, 42, 49, 56, 59, 60, 129, 146-8,

231,232,272,284, 306
and didactic discourse, 284-7, 309-

3H

Liabilities, see Competences.
Locke, 159, 318

M

Matter, see Physical World, etc.
Mechanism, 75 ff., 328
Memory, see Remembering
'Mental/ 34, 199, 245, 280, 324
Mental conduct words, 7, 15-16, 19,

21, 25-6, 62

Mental operations, 7-8, 15, 22, 48, 61,
63 ff, 67, 81, 90-1, 105, 244

Connexion with physical events,

12, 19, 58, 63 ff, 81, 90-1, 105,
135, 168, 222-3, 231-2, 240

Unconscious, 14, 157, 162

Mind, 36, 40, 46, 51, i68ff, 199-200

and body, 22-3, 52, 63-4, 84, 105,

168-9, 189, 199-200, 242



Observation, Perception recipes, 218-

19, 228-34

Problems of perception, 208, 224

Occurrences and Occurrence words, 15,

46-7, 83,85, 117-18, 135, H2, 149 ff
Optical metaphors, 136-7, 159-62, 174,

i?8, 303-5

Other minds, 14, 21, 51 ff, 61, 66, 90,
114, 155, 169, 179 ff 205 see Solipsism.



Pain, 102, 105, 108, 203, 244
Para-mechanical hypotheses, 19-23, 64,
68, 114, 117, 186, 222, 243, 251, 272,

291-5, 323, 327
Para-political myth, 23
Perception, see Observation.
Phenomenalism , 2 3 4-40
Physical world, etc., 11 ff, 76 ff, 198,

319

Pleasure, 5ee Enjoying.
Preparation, see Teaching.
Pretending, 102, 133, 172, 181, 191, 256-

64, 267, 270-1
-Higher order activity, 259-64



Minding, see Heed.

'Mind's Eye, in the/ see Imagining and Privileged access, 11-14, 25 ff , 33-4,

'Head, in the/
Misunderstanding, 51-61
Modal sentences, 126 ff.
'Can/ 'could/ 'would/ etc., 46, 71,



119, 120, 126-31, 202, 220, 26l

* Would/ 93, 141-2

Compared with hypotheticals,

127-8, 140
'Mongrel-categoricals/ 47-8, 123 ff,

138-41, 145, 217, 229
Moods and Mood words, 83, 93, 95~6,

97-8, 100 ff , 109, 244
Motives and Motive words, 81-95,

98-99, 104, 106, noff, 133-4, i?i
Second-order inclinations, 112-13

O >

Observation and Observation words,
151, 199 ff, 201-4, 207, 214, 222



45, 5*. 54, 57, 61, 66, 83, 115, 119,
154, 163, 165, 167, 179, 181, 207, 209,
211, 216, 219, 247 ff, 293-5, 304-5
See 'Ghost in the Machine.'

Propositions, 185, 311

Psychology, 22, 53-4, 7<5, l6 5, 242,

319 ff
Programme of, 322



-Two worlds myth of, 319-22



R

Readiness, see Heeding and Prepara-
tion.

Reason, 47, 280-1, 284, 288, 315
Remembering, 178, 288, 272 ff

Not a source of knowledge, 274-6

and recalling, 272-3

Retrospection, 159-60, 166-7



334



INDEX



Secondary qualities, 219-20

Seeing (jokes, implications, etc.), 303 ff.

Self-consciousness, 12, 157 ff., 184, 194,

198
Self-knowledge, 167 ff.

Higher order acts, 191-8, 261-2

Systematic elusiveness of 'I,' 186 ff,

195-8
Personal pronouns: index words,

187-90, 198

Semi-dispositional words, 46 ff
Sensa, see Sensible Objects and Sense

Datum Theory.

Sensation, 84, 105-6, 109, 199 ff.
Ordinary and sophisticated usage,

200-1, 240-2
'Neat' sensation words, 201, 203,

206, 210, 225, 235, 240

Sensations and objects, 201-3, 219

Having sensations, 200, 204, 206,

209, 214, 218, 222, 232
Sense Datum Theory, 210-22, 255

Argument from illusions, 213,

216-17

'Sensible objects,' 214, 216, 221, 236-7
Serial performances, 175 ff
Shamming, see Pretending.
Skills, 33, 42, 45, 60, 133
Solipsism, 60, 156

Soul, Tripartite Theory of, 62, 100, 258
Studied talk, 144, 182, 185, 283, 287,

309, 3H
See Learning.
Successes, see Achievements.



Talking, see Studied Talk, Unstudied
Talk, Avowals, Chatting, Teaching.



Tasks and task words, 28, 130, 149-52,

176-7, 222, 237-8, 262
Teaching, 49, 144, 147, 284, 287, 309 ff
Tendencies, 131-3
Theories, 286 ff.

Theorizing, 26, 137, 147, 185, 263,

291-2, 298
Theory and practice, 26, 29 ff , 41,

46,49

Having a theory, 286-90, 296, 317

Theory building, 288-91, 294,

305, 3i8

Theory of knowledge, 317-18
Thinking, 29, 32, 34, 40, 43, m, 143-4,
185, 193, 226-8, 230, 263, 266, 282 ff.
Ordinary and sophisticated usage,

282-5
Thinking and talking, 27, 34, 47,

184, 200, 282, 295-6, 309 ff

Thinking and supposing, 263-4

Judging and inferring, 239, 290-

313
Trying, see Heeding.



U

Understanding, 51-61, 148, 170-
Unstudied talk, 181-5, 283, 314 and
see Avowals.



Volitions,' 63 ff , 72, 75
Voluntary, 63, 69 ff

W

Will, see Actions, Freewill, Volitions.
'Would,' see Modal Sentences.