The Problems of Philosophy - Chapter 11

(Originally Written September 23, 2005 in Book 2)

The Problems of Philosophy
Bertrand Russell 1912

Chapter 11 - On intuitive knowledge

Everything we believe ought to be capable of being proved or at least being able to be shown to be highly probably. If a belief is had but there can be no reason given that belief is considered unreasonable. (In my margin's I wrote "Pascal's argument for refutation" as I had not come across the term 'eschatalogically verifiable' yet).

There are two types of self-evident truths:
1. general principles
2. truths immediately derived from sensation: these are called 'truths of perception'

There are two types of self-evident truths of perception: (judgments of perception)
1. one type simply asserts the existence of sense-datum
2. the other type occurs when we acknowledge the existence of the sense data and subject it to analysis (an example is a red circle; we see red, we see round , we put it together and we see a red circle)

Another judgment we make is the judgments of memory

"A memory of an object is apt to be accompanied by an image of the object and yet the image cannot be what constitutes the memory" (Russell, 114).

The essence of memory is having immediately before the mind an object we recognize as past. 

Memory's accuracy is proportional to the vividness and closeness in time to the object or event.

There is a continual gradation in the degree of self-evidence in memory which corresponds with a gradation in the trustworthiness of that memory.

All self-evidence has degrees of accuracy, based on various factors.