This essay is © 2001 by Charles Johnson, and is freed for credited reprinting and derivative works (but not, of course, for plagiarism) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 copyleft license. If you have any questions or comments about the essay, feel free to contact the author.
They are deeply immersed in illusions and dream images; their eye glides only over the surface of things and sees
forms; their feeling nowhere leads to truth, but contents itself with the reception of stimuli, playing, as it were, a game of blindman’s bluff on the backs of things.—Nietzsche, On Truth and Lie in the Extra-Moral Sense
In Some Main Problems of Philosophy, G.E. Moore
famously holds up an envelope and directs his audience to inspect it. In
inquiring with them as to what happened, Moore launches into one of the most
hotly debated issues in the past century of Analytic philosophy: the nature of
apprehension, our cognitive relationships to the external objects amongst which
we live, and our ability to make judgments about the world in virtue of what we
see. In his effort to complete the story about the envelope, Moore comes to the
topic of just what seeing
is and what sort of cognitive relationships we
bear to the things we see. In so doing, he turns to the issue of the knowledge
of things, or apprehension, the cognitive relationship by which I am able to
pick out a thing in the world and speak of it. In order to complete his
story about the envelope, Moore must make a distinction between direct and
indirect apprehension of things, which allows him to explain how we speak of
those things which are not immediately picked out by their presence in our
awareness. In considering similar problems in the similarly titled The
Problems of Philosophy, Bertrand Russell develops a distinction that is
in many ways similar—the famous distinction between knowledge by
acquaintance and knowledge by description. Although Russell and Moore’s
distinctions address a common problem and seem in almost every respect to be
similar, a tension lurks beneath the surface between the two accounts. The
tension arises from the different standpoints from which Moore and Russell
attack the problem of knowledge of things, and it is cast in the starkest relief
by consideration of their diverging views on the problem of memory and our
awareness of the past. Careful consideration will show that, although neither
Moore nor Russell’s approach to our awareness of objects is likely to be
fruitful, the considerations that such comparisons raise highlight a crucial
issue for any doctrine of apprehension, and Russell’s account will prove
superior to Moore’s in expressing what it is to speak of a thing as it
was. (I.1)
Moore’s distinction between direct and indirect apprehension
arises in his effort to complete the story about the envelope. Both Moore and
Russell have thus far agreed that when I beheld the envelope, a part of what
happened to me was that I saw certain sense-data—a particular whitish
patch of colour, of a certain size and shape
(46). In the course of
developing this part of the story, Moore is greatly worried by the apparently
mutually exclusive properties borne by the sense-data observed by each of us.
From different perspectives, it seems as though the envelope appears with many
different patterns of color, perhaps even with different sizes and different
shapes (from different distances and different angles). It seems, then, that the
sense-data impressed upon me cannot be identical with the one envelope that we
all see. Nor can they be identical with the other, mutually exclusive sense-data
seen by the others around me. Moore—in the midst of a great deal of
caviling—lays down three principles, described as the
accepted view
(because of their supposed widespread acceptance by
philosophers) which he proposes as the most convincing account of how all of
this is: (II.1)
absolutely no part of the sense-data, which I ever apprehend, exists at all except at the moment I am apprehending it.(M. 40) (II.2.1)
no two of us ever apprehend exactly the same sense-datum. They would allow that we might, perhaps, apprehend sense-data exactly alike; but they would say that even though exactly alike—the same in quality—they cannot ever be numerically the same.(M. 41) (II.2.2)
none of the sense-data apprehended by any one person can ever be situated either in the same place with, or at any distance in any direction from, those apprehended by any other person.(M. 42) (II.2.3)
Now, however, we are in something of a pickle. At the beginning of the
exercise we had wanted to say that we all saw the same envelope. But if all we
are aware of is the sense-data that present themselves to us, then there is
nothing common to all of us that we can bring before our minds and say that we
saw the same thing. The sense-data before our minds, on the accepted view,
are different from one another just because they
are before our minds, rather than a single mind. And thus, having for the
moment accepted the philosophical view that all the sense-data seen by any one
of us are seen by that person alone,
we are committed to arguing
that if we do in fact all see the same envelope, this seeing of the
envelope cannot possibly consist merely in our seeing of those sense-data
(M. 46). (II.3)
In order to resolve the tension between philosophical reflection and
common-sense intuitions, we must now distinguish (at least) two different ways
for a thing to be before the mind. With the accepted view
of
sense-data in hand, one way of knowing things will be the apprehension of
sense-data that has already been explored. This relationship Moore dubs direct apprehension,
and characterizes in terms of apprehension
of sense-data under the accepted view,
i.e., that which
happens when you actually see any colour, when you actually hear any sound, when
you actually feel the so-called
(M. 46). Moore later also allows that we have direct apprehension
of propositions, but his basic characterization of direct apprehension is
carefully tailored to accompany sense-data under the sensation
of heat …
etc., etc.accepted
view.
In any case it will seem as though anything which counts as the object
of a direct apprehension, except for propositions, will be something
sense-datummy and subject to the conditions of the accepted
view.
(II.4)
However, our ability to bring one and the same envelope before all our minds
and say, We all see the same envelope,
there must be another way of
knowing things, another mode in which something can be brought before the mind.
This relationship Moore characterizes as the relation which you have to a
thing when you do directly apprehend some proposition about it, but
do not directly apprehend the thing itself
(74), and he gives it
the name indirect apprehension.
Whereas both forms of
apprehension places us in some cognitive relation
(M. 78) which
enables us to know truths about the thing that we apprehend, direct apprehension
is the picking out of data that are directly confronting the mind in their
experiential richness, whereas indirect apprehension is a much barer relation,
only obtaining in virtue of having the ability to make judgments about the thing
indirectly apprehended. Direct apprehension will be phenomenologically basic,
whereas indirect apprehension will depend upon bringing various propositions
before the mind. (II.5)
With this distinction in hand, the story about the envelope can
now be completed. We all see
the same envelope before
us—but see
here is being used in a sense other than
the direct visual sensations that we have of its color, shape, position, and so
on—for the objects of these sensations are, on the accepted view,
essentially private. Rather, our seeing of the same material envelope
consists, partly in directly apprehending certain sense-data,
but in addition to this, being endowed with a cognitive relationship that can
allow direct apprehension of a proposition connecting those sense-data to a
material object, that is, knowing, besides and at the same time,
that there exists something other than these sense-data
(M. 51). Picking out
the material object for all of us to talk about requires our perceptual faculty
to convey the double existence
that Hume so vigorously denied, presenting
to us both a private sense-datum (directly apprehended) and also the ability to
speak of a something quite other than these sense-data
(M. 51). (II.6)
Russell’s parallel distinction between knowledge by
acquaintance and knowledge by description also takes its cue from
Russell’s efforts to work out a story about the perception of office
supplies. Like Moore, he is confronted with the question of how to string
together many people’s radically private sense-data and connect them to
the common envelope (or table) that is being observed. However, Russell leaves
much of the ontological story about sense-data open, and he does not commit
himself to the accepted view
of sense-data in its
entirety—in particular, he does not seem to take any particular stance on
the esse-is-percipi thesis
(1). The worry driving Russell in making his distinction is primarily a concern
about how the sentences regarding a material envelope can be made
meaningful. (III.1)
Russell frames this worry in the familiar terms of knowing what
you’re talking about: it is scarcely conceivable that we can make a
judgement or entertain a supposition without knowing what it is that we are
judging or supposing about
(R. 58). Our ability to talk about things (such
as the material envelope) which are not brought before our minds in an
unmediated confrontation requires us to have some cognitive relationship with
the thing of which we intend to speak. But how can we account for the ability to
bring things before the mind beyond the range of that which we primitively know?
(III.2)
In order to get out of this pickle, Russell develops his
distinction between knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by
description—a distinction which will, initially at least, track many of
the same things as Moore’s distinction between direct and indirect
apprehension. We have acquaintance, Russell writes, with anything of which we
are directly aware, without the intermediary of any process of inference or
knowledge of truths
(R. 46). In acquaintance the thing that we know presents
itself, as it were, nakedly before the mind, placing us in a cognitive
relationship to, for example, the color of the envelope such that I know the
colour perfectly and completely when I see it, and no further knowledge of it
itself is even theoretically possible
(R. 47). Acquaintance, like direct
apprehension, is an essentially simple relationship between the knower and the
thing known such that the thing is indubitably identified and available for
judgments, without any need to refer outside of the experience of acquaintance
itself. (III.3)
So far, so good. But Russell has already examined the phenomenology of seeing an object before us, and he has confessed that he failed to find in it any acquaintance with material objects such as the envelope. If he is to speak of the one envelope that we all say we see, then he will need to distinguish a second way of knowing things, which does not require this primitive acquaintance with the thing known. Russell finds this in the notion of knowledge by description. Anything which does not disclose itself to the mind in its full richness, as objects of acquaintance do, must be known to us indirectly, through a description. On Russell’s account, like Moore’s, our ability to speak of things to which we do not have a direct cognitive relation requires us to pick them out in virtue of our ability to make statements about them. For Russell, this ability is explained in virtue of picking out the object by a description phrased in terms of other things. Thus, (III.4)
There is no state of mind in which we are directly aware of the table [qua material object]; all our knowledge of the table is really knowledge of truths, and the actual thing which is the table is not, strictly speaking, known to us at all. We know a description, and we know that there is just one object to which this description applies, though the object is not directly known to us. (R. 47-48) (III.5)
The table itself does not show up on our cognitive charts, but we can use our knowledge of other things to, as it were, triangulate to the table itself and speak of it, even though it is not directly before the mind. (III.6)
If we are, then, to pick out objects outside of the range of acquaintance by
speaking of them in terms of other objects which we have cognitively picked out,
it soon becomes clear that all of the terms we use in the description must
ultimately be reduced to the names of things with which we are acquainted. On
Russell’s view, only objects of acquaintance present themselves as already
picked out; therefore, only objects of acquaintance can provide a foundation
from which to pick out objects beyond the range of immediate experience. He must
introduce the principle of acquaintance as the basic requirement for
any meaningful cognitive relationship involving description. Thus Russell:
The fundamental principle in the analysis of propositions concerning
descriptions is this: Every proposition which we can understand must be
composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted
(R.
58). (III.7)
With this distinction in hand, Russell can now survey the field
of human experience to see what sort of things might count as objects of
acquaintance, and what sorts of things will have to be triangulated by a
description. Sense-data have already been taken as paradigmatic examples of
objects of acquaintance, but this is not enough for Russell. In order to connect
objects of immediate acquaintance with things outside of our acquaintance, we
clearly cannot be acquainted only with self-contained particulars. Otherwise
there could be no descriptions that identify anything other than a laundry list
of objects of acquaintance. Russell, therefore, adds acquaintance with
universals (according to what he describes as a roughly Platonic theory of their
nature and self-disclosure) alongside our acquaintance with sense-data. With
these two objects of acquaintance in hand, along with a rich set of logical
operators, he can now begin to form descriptions that pick out objects outside
of the range of acquaintance, as when he speaks of a material envelope or table
as the physical object which causes such-and-such sense-data.
Such a
description can now be broken down into an existential quantification (logical
operator) for a thing which is (1) a physical object (universal), and (2) causes
[universal] such-and-such sense-data [various particulars]. By combining
universals and particulars with which we are acquainted, we can reason outward
beyond the range of immediate acquaintance and thus pass beyond the limits of
our private experience
(59). As long as a thing to be spoken of can be
completely described in terms of other things which are directly before the
mind, we can say that (in a certain sense) we know it, and we will be able to
speak of it even though our native faculties do not allow us to have it disclose
itself directly to us. (III.8)
Given the outline of Russell’s distinction, we can see that there are very close parallels with the distinction made by Moore between direct and indirect apprehension—with acquaintance being roughly equivalent to direct apprehension and knowledge by description being roughly equivalent to indirect apprehension. However, Moore and Russell have approached their doctrines from different directions. Moore developed his distinction between direct and indirect apprehension in order to complete the story about the envelope in light of a doctrine about the ontological status of the objects of our direct experience. On his view, direct apprehension is a phenomenon tightly fitted to sense-data, and indirect apprehension will have to cover nearly everything else. Russell, on the other hand, develops his distinction in light of a principle about the meaningfulness of sentences, and his distinction has far fewer ties to a particular view on sense-data. Because of this, Russell can—and, ultimately, must—add much more to the roster of objects of acquaintance than simply sense-data. Acquaintance less narrowly constructed than direct apprehension, and and it will turn out that this difference in approach leads Russell and Moore’s apparently congenial distinctions come into conflict. (III.9)
The most dramatic separation between Moore’s and Russell’s accounts can be seen when we turn to their accounts of memory. Returning to the envelope, Moore observes: (IV.1)
I look at the envelope again and I see the whitish colour. I turn my head away, and I no longer see it. But I remember that I did see it a moment ago. I know that I did see it. There is nothing that I know more certainly than this. Moreover I know that that whitish colour was: that there was such a thing in the Universe. (M. 49) (IV.2)
What is the nature of the presentation of the envelope in memory? One
potential confusion must be mentioned in order to dismiss it immediately. Both
Russell and Moore note that memory of an object is apt to be accompanied by
an image of the object, and yet the image cannot be what constitutes memory
(R. 114-115). This is shown clearly enough by the observations that (1) the
image is in the present, whereas what is remembered is known to be in the
past
(R. 115), and (2) that if the image itself were memory, then I could
not possibly know that the image which I now see was at all different from the
colour which I saw a moment ago
(M. 50), but in fact we can and do evaluate
the images that accompany our memories and speak of whether or not they justly
portray the thing remembered. (IV.3)
Remembering an object, then, is having that object, safe at home in the past, before my mind now, presented to me by the faculty of memory. But what is the nature of this presentation? Is it knowledge by acquaintance or knowledge by description? Is it direct apprehension or indirect apprehension? (IV.4)
Moore argues that memory is one way of having before the mind,
which is not direct apprehension
(M. 47)—indeed, in this
passage he introduces it as a paradigm case of indirect apprehension.
When you remember an object, Moore claims, you are no longer directly
apprehending the coloured patch which you saw
(M. 47). Moore draws an
analogy between the relationship between present sense-data and the material
object with which they are connected, on the one hand, and the relationship
between the present image and the sense-data remembered, on the other. Just as
direct apprehension of present sense-data somehow also elicits indirect
apprehension of the material object, direct apprehension of the mental image
also elicits indirect apprehension of the remembered object. When you turn your
eyes away from the envelope and remember what you saw, there is—so to
speak—a leftward shift in the ledger: (IV.5)
| (IV.6) | Image | Sense-data | Material envelope |
|---|---|---|---|
| Then | N/A | Direct app. (Sensation) | Indirect app. |
| Now | Direct app. (Imaging) | Indirect app. (Memory) | Indirect app. |
Russell, on the other hand, introduces memory as a paradigm case of the
extension [of knowledge by acquaintance] beyond sense-data
(R. 48). On
the account of memory he develops, the essence of memory is not constituted
by the image, but by having immediately before the mind an object which
is recognized as past
(R. 115, emphasis added). Here the image is, at most,
a psychological illustration that accompanies the essential acquaintance with
past objects, and our relationship with these objects is no more strained, just
as immediate and cognitively simple, as it was when we had seen them face to
face. In light of further deliberations about problems of fallacious memory,
Russell will eventually recognize that some memories (or memories
so-called, at least) are examples of knowledge by
description, but here as always they are rooted in the primary knowledge of
things, which is the acquaintance—here the acquaintance conveyed in
(primary) memories. (IV.7)
Moore and Russell are each driven to the conclusion that they adopt by the prior commitments that structured their respective distinctions. For Moore, the driving force is his ontological theses about the objects of direct apprehension. For Russell, it is his semantic and epistemic commitments in the analysis of knowledge by description. (IV.8)
We reviewed earlier the three theses which Moore presents as the
accepted view
about sense-data, and noticed how
Moore’s notion of direct apprehension
is tailored to
fit sense-data under the accepted view.
It should come as no
surprise, then, that the accepted view
theses weigh heavily
in Moore’s efforts to place memory in terms of the various ways of knowing
a thing. The first of the three theses, the esse-is-percipi principle, holds
a decisive weight here. Remember that on this principle, a sense-datum exists as
long, and only as long as it is the object of direct apprehension. (IV.9)
As of yet, the thesis does not say anything about memory: whether
I directly or indirectly apprehend something in memory, I apprehend what was
then, not anything that is now. Nevertheless, when (1) is
conjoined with the other two theses (privacy and dislocation), the doctrine that
emerges does bear heavily on memory. Sense-data exist only as long as they are
apprehended because they essentially dependent upon the act of apprehension. The
relationship between the object of direct apprehension and the act of direct
apprehension, in fact, is so tight that wherever there are two distinct acts of
direct apprehension, there must be two numerically distinct sense-data to
accompany them. And now, the pressure of the accepted view
is brought to bear on memory. If, after turning away from the envelope, I
directly apprehended the envelope’s sense-data in memory, then this would
be a second, different act of direct apprehension. As Moore writes, the quality
of the relationship changes such that (IV.10)
the relation which you now have to the image is obviously different from that which you have now to the sense-datum, which you saw but do not now see; while this relation which you now have with the image, is the same as that which you had to the sense-datum, just now when you actually saw it. (M. 47) (IV.11)
And since we have here two separate acts of apprehension, if both
were acts of direct apprehension, rather than indirect, then that very fact
would constitute two numerically distinct acts of direct apprehension, and thus
two numerically distinct objects apprehended. You could not, then be thinking
of the colour which you saw, and therefore having it before your mind
in a sense
(M. 47). Thus it must be that you are no longer directly
apprehending it
(M. 47), that you pick it out by entertaining propositions
about it, but you do not have a direct apprehension of the thing that you
remember. (IV.12)
For Russell, on the other hand, the looming issue in understanding memory is the principle of acquaintance. On his account, in order for me to have a thing before my mind, it must be picked out entirely by things with which I am acquainted. And so it is with judgments about the past just as much as judgments about the present. But here a worry arises: if the only vocabulary with which I can pick out a past thing is what is contained in the directory of objects of my acquaintance, then in order to describe anything before the present moment, I must have some acquaintance which allows me to speak of what has gone before, which is to say, some acquaintance with something in the past. Russell mentions his reasoning briefly twice: (IV.13)
This immediate knowledge by memory is the source of all our knowledge concerning the past: without it, there could be no knowledge of the past by inference, since we should never know that there was anything past to be inferred. (R. 49) (IV.14)
Thus the essence of memory is not constituted by the image, but by having immediately before the mind an object which is recognized as past. But for the fact of memory in this sense, we should not know that there ever was a past at all, nor should we be able to understand the word
past, any more than a man born blind can understand the wordlight. (R. 115) (IV.15)
We can understand the arguments as a sort of elliptical transcendental argument, and reconstruct Russell’s reasoning more or less as follows: (IV.16)
The crucial step in establishing that memory must convey at
least some acquaintance is the introduction of the principle of acquaintance at
step 4, and then the introduction of a principle at step 5 which we may call the
flatness of the present
principle. Roughly speaking, on
Russell’s account, my acquaintance with present things (sense-data, acts
of consciousness) and timeless things (universals) leaves me with a flat
perspective on time. There are no objects of acquaintance in either of these
categories which give me cognitive license to speak of a duration of time beyond
the present moment or the view sub specie
aeternitatis. Unless I have acquaintance with past things as
past, I have no way of spreading my judgments outward in time from the
present moment. Flashbacks in the cinema of my awareness would be
indistinguishable from the ordinary forward motion of the plot. (IV.17.9)
It seems, then, that in spite of the initial similarities between
Russell’s and Moore’s distinctions, there is a deep conflict between
them. If we have knowledge of past things, then Moore’s accepted view
with regard to objects of direct apprehension and
Russell’s principle of acquaintance come into conflict with one another.
Moore’s view requires an essentially ephemeral character for direct
apprehension. Russell’s requires acquaintance with past things in the
present. What, then, are we to do? (V.1)
Such questions may themselves be questionable. There are, after all, very good reasons to reject both Moore’s account of sense-data and Russell’s principle of acquaintance. Nevertheless, even if we reject the motivations for Russell and Moore’s solutions on memory, we still must come to some kind of peace with how it is we speak of things that we experienced in the past. How do we get a cognitive grip on such objects? Will a Moorean indirect apprehension do, or do we need Russellian knowledge by acquaintence to account for our knowledge of how things were? (V.2)
Moore, if he were prone to saying such things, might tell the
Russellian that she has the phenomenology all wrong. When, immediately after
directly apprehending some sense-datum,
Moore writes, you remember that
sense-datum, or remember that you did just now directly apprehend
it,
there is nothing more obvious than that you now stand in a different
relationship to the object than you did when you were looking at it. It seems
that you are, ex hypothesi, no longer directly
apprehending the snese-datum in question
(M. 74). Otherwise, you would still
be seeing it, rather than remembering it. (V.3)
Such a response, however, will only work by begging the question. On Moore’s account, it is true that the only way you could still have direct apprehension of the sense-datum is by it continuing to present itself visually to you. A Russellian account, however, can just as easily account for the phenomenological change. Memory, for Russell, simply is a different faculty of acquaintance from the sense of sight. In this way, one is acquainted with the past sense-datum, and why should the phenomenal character of this relationship be like the phenomenal character of being acquainted with a present sense-datum? If Moore assumes that the change from sight to memory requires a change in the underlying cognitive relationship, then he has in fact merely ignored one of his own principles about direct apprehension: with each of the different sensory faculties, Moore argues, (V.4)
what I mean by
direct apprehension, namely, the act of consciousness, is exactly the same in quality: that is to say, the actual seeing of a colour, considered as an act of consciousness, differs in no respect at all from the actual hearing of a sound, or the actual smelling of a smell. They differ only in respect of the fact, that whereas the one is the direct apprehension of one kind of sense-datum, the other is the direct apprehension of another kind. (M. 47) (V.5)
And so, with memory, the phenomenal difference can be understood not in terms of the difference between direct apprehension and indirect apprehension, but rather in terms of the difference between a past object of acquaintance and a present one. (V.6)
Russell, for his part, can renew his transcendental argument on
behalf of acquaintance with the past, even without the demands of the principle
of acquaintance. If the present is inferentially flat
in the way that
Russell argues that it is, then quite apart from Russell’s semantic
worries, there will simply be no way to get an epistemic grip on the past unless
I am able to stand towards past objects of awareness independently of the
present objects around me. Without an independent epistemic grasp on the past,
as Russell writes, we will not be able to infer anything about the past, because
we will have no basis on which to suppose that there are past things to be
inferred. Russell’s division of our epistemic and semantic lives into
acquaintance and description is certainly not to be accepted uncritically, but
examination of his distinction and comparison with Moore’s highlights the
crucial need for a theory of apprehension which respects the timeliness of
things in the world, and raises concerns for anyone explicating our relationship
to the things of which we speak and think. (V.7)