Page:Philosophical Review Volume 20.djvu/439

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425
REVIEWS OF BOOKS.
[Vol. XX.

with the prevailing tendency that regards the object of judgment as immediately present in the judging experience. In judgment what happens is that a new term, namely mind, is introduced into a relational complex by being related to the several terms and to the relation which together constitute this complex. If by the introduction of this new term the relation otherwise obtaining between the terms of this complex is changed we have falsity. But why falsity and not mere change of relation? Is every change a falsification? If not, then there must be something in the nature of judgment that justifies us in regarding this specific kind of change, brought about in the complex when mind is introduced as an additional term into it, as falsification and not mere change. Even if judgment were a relational complex in which mind forms one of the terms, could this definition be regarded as adequate when it fails to take any account of the fact that in judgment there is a reference to something other than just this complex of which mind forms a part? In other words can judgment be adequately described without making any reference to meaning as a factor in judgment? But of meaning Mr. Russell gives no account. He speaks of a complex in which mind forms a term, and of a corresponding complex in which mind does not form a term, but he does not tell us whether this 'correspondence' is an external relation. If it is, how is it relevant to the judgment? If it is not, what kind of a relation is it, and again how is it relevant to the judgment? So far as appears from this Essay, one might suppose that Mr. Russell, in spite of his careful study of pragmatism, had failed utterly to understand and to appreciate the problem of meaning which pragmatism squarely faces, whether successfully or not. In the case of such a thinker as Mr. Russell is, this supposition would without doubt be false, but at any rate Mr. Russell has failed to admit the reader into his confidence in this matter. The English School of Realism, of which Mr. Russell and Mr. G. E. Moore are such distinguished representatives, and which finds strong supporters in the 'American Programmists,' has before it the duty of setting forth its position on the problem of meaning; and until this is done this type of realism must remain unintelligible except to those who know the secret. The theory of external relations, so far as it has been divulged, is as hopeless in face of the problem of meaning as is the absolutist theory of internal relations. If the latter makes the problem forever insoluble for finite experiences, the former leaves it always irrelevant to any specific judgment. A realism without recognition of real meanings of some sort can hardly meet the needs of an age that has had the problem of meanings brought