Mind Association Some Misinterpretations of Empiricism Author(s): W. T. Stace Source: Mind, Vol. 67, No. 268 (Oct., 1958), pp. 465-484 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Mind Association Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2251199 Accessed: 27-09-2018 16:54 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms Mind Association, Oxford University Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Mind This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:54:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms I1.-SOME MISINTERPRETATIONS OF EMPIRICISM 1 BY W. T. STACE THE empiricism of the present day is, of course, a very different thing from the empiricism of Hume's day. Apart from the development of a more precise terminology to replace IHume's rather loose language, a considerable extension in the doctrine -of empiricism itself occurred when the members of the Vienna Circle introduced the principle of verifiability. The change was great enough perhaps to divide the history of empiricism since Locke and Hume into two periods, which we may call respectivel.y classical empiricism and modern empiricism. Nevertheless a comnmon thread runs through both periods, namely the general principle of empiricism itself. Both the classical and the modern doctrines are versions of that. And I suggest that the essence of the change consisted in the extension of the principle of empiri- cism to a new area, not in a change of the principle itself.: The Newtonian law of gravitation was first discovered and applied in the case of the moon's revolution round the earth. Subsequently its application was extended to the whole solar system and then to the stellar universe. These subsequent extensions in the application of the law did not, of course, involve any change in the law itself. It remained the same identical law in a new application. I believe that in the same way the change from the classical to the modern type of empiricism consisted -in the application of the general principle of empiricism to a new area of discourse, not in any alteration of the principle itself. It also seems clear that the essence of this change lay in the fact that, whereas Ilume applied the e-mpiricist principle only to single words or terms, such as " red " "blue - "golden mountain ", "vwinged horse " " substance ", " force " ' causal power ", "necessity " "self ", "God ", and so on, the modern empiricists have attempted, by means. of their principle of verifiability, together with its more recent modifications, whether in terms of testability, confirmability, or some other related concept, to extend its application to whole sentences. Just as Hume said that, unless -the meaning of a word could be pointed out in 1 Being the first annual " Alfred North Whitehead " lecture delivered at Harvard University on 11th April, 1957. 30 465 This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:54:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 466 W. T. STACE: experience, it was in fact devoid of meaning, so the modern empiricists affirmed that unless the significance of a sentence could be verified or tested or confirmed or in- some other-way checked in experience, it was in fact devoid of significance. Whether the attempt of the modern empiricists to extend the application of empiricism from words to sentences has been successful or not-which may be a matter of controversy-it will always remain to their credit that they were the first to realize the existence of a problem which the classical empiricism had altogether neglected, the problem of finding an empirical criterion for the significance of sentences. To discuss these matters is, hlowever, no part of the task which I have set myself in this lecture. Indeed I have only mentioned the difference between classical and modern empiricism in order to draw attention to their common element. They are both applications of emrppiricism. There must therefore be some quite general principle of empiri- cism which is basic to them both, and it is this, and some common misinterpretations of it, which I wish to discuss. Wlhat is this general principle of all empiricism ? If we go back to Hume, we find that his formulation of the empiricist principle contains two parts, one of which is psycho- logical, the other epistemological. The first or psychological part tells us that all " ideas "-to use Hume's own terms-are causally conditioned by " impressions ", that is to say, by experiential data of some kind. The second or epistemological part asserts that if a word is supposed to stand for an idea, then if the idea is a simple or unanalysable one it must be possible to specify the simple experiential datum to which it refers; or, if the idea is a complex one, it must be possible to subject it to a process of analysis the end-terms of which will be such experiential data. If the supposed idea, that is to say, the supposed meaning of the word, cannot be either referred to a simple datum, or analysed into its component data, then there is in fact no such idea; that is to say, the word which was supposed to stand for an idea fails to do so and is therefore meaningless. This second or epistemological part of Hume's principle performs two functions. First, it provides a technique for discriminating between meaningful and meaningless terms. " Show me the impression ", says Hume. If you can, then the word has passed the empirical test, and may be allowed to have meaning. If you cannot, then the word is meaningless. And secondly, this epistemological part of Hume's principle suggests a technique for answering the further questioni " What is the meaning of the word ? "-that is -to say, a technique of philo- This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:54:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms SOME MISINTERPRETATIONS OF EMPIRICISM 467 sophical analysis. For instance, the complex idea of a " golden miountain " is analysable into the simple, or simpler, ideas of the experiential impressions of " gold " and " mountain ". No (loubt Hume's technique of analysis maybe elementary by modern standards, but it is genuine as far as it goes, and it may fairly be regarded as the starting point of the modern schools of philo- sophical analysis. Most modern analysts will say that the first part of fHume's principle is not philosophy at all. It is empirical psychology. It is a generalization about the way in which ideas are generated in our minds. It may perhaps embody, in a very loose way, a psychological truth, it will be said, but it is not philosophy. Only Hume's second or epistemological part, with its implied technique of conceptual analysis, can count as philosophy. Mv own opinion is that you can stipulate this, if you wish. You can do so because it is a matter of convention only where you place the boundaries between philosophy and science, or indeed between any one branch of intellectual enquiry and any other. But if you exclude Hume's psychological statement about the origin of ideas from his principle of empiricism, you have to pay a certain price for this philosophical chastity. For this psychological part functions as the logical basis or proof of the epistemological part. The epistemology is in Hume logically dependent on the psycho- logy. It is only because all ideas have been psychologicallv derived from impressions that it must always be possible to analyse them back into the impressions from which they came. The connection between the psycbological part and the epistemo- logical part is one of strict logical implication. For the proposi- tion " Prior impressions are a necessary causal condition of meanings "-which is the psychological part of Hume's principle -entails the proposition " If there are no impressions, then there can be no meanings "-which is the epistemological part. There- fore, if you exclude the psychological part from your formulation of the empiricist principle, you rob the principle of the basis of proof on which it depends; and in that case the principle can only justify itself on the ground that it is a convenient but freely stipulated definition -of meaning. That is the price you pay. Perhaps this is quite satisfactory to the empiricist philosopher, and gives him all he wants. But he must recognize that the logical status of his empiricism is then no more than that of an optional convention. Suppose that, for the moment at any rate, we provisionally accept this position, although I shall reconsider the question later. We now try to formulate that general principle of empiricism This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Thu, 27 Sep 2018 16:54:38 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms 468 W. T. STACE: which is common both to the classical doctrine of Hume and to the modern empiricists. It will really, of course, be the same as Hume's principle except that we shall have to amend Hunie's formulation in two respects.