‘The college building in Regent’s Park is commodious’
means, according to the analysis first made by Bertrand Russell, the proposition,
‘There is an entity which (i) is a college building in Regent’s Park and (ii) is commodious and (iii) is such that any college building in Regent’s Park is identical with it.’
The descriptive character of the phrase ‘The college building in Regent’s Park’ is thus evident. Also the proposition is denied by the denial of any one of its three component clauses or by the denial of any combination of the component clauses. If we had substituted ‘Green Park’ for ‘Regent’s Park’ a false proposition would have resulted. Also the erection of a second college in Regent’s Park would make the proposition false, though in ordinary life common sense would politely treat it as merely ambiguous.
‘The Iliad’ for a classical scholar is usually a demonstrative phrase; for it demonstrates to him a well-known poem. But for the majority of mankind the phrase is descriptive, namely, it is synonymous with ‘The poem named “the Iliad”.’
Names may be either demonstrative or descriptive phrases. For example ‘Homer’ is for us a descriptive phrase, namely, the word with some slight difference in suggestiveness means ‘The man who wrote the Iliad.’
This discussion illustrates that thought places before itself bare objectives, entities as we call them, which the thinking clothes by expressing their mutual relations. Sense-awareness discloses fact with factors which are the entities for thought. The separate distinction of an entity in thought is not a metaphysical assertion, but a method of procedure necessary for the finite expression of individual propositions. Apart from entities there could be no finite truths; they are the means by which the infinitude of irrelevance is kept out of thought.
To sum up: the termini for thought are entities, primarily with bare individuality, secondarily with properties and relations ascribed to them in the procedure of thought; the termini for sense-awareness are factors in the fact of nature, primarily relata and only secondarily discriminated as distinct individualities.
No characteristic of nature which is immediately posited for knowledge by sense-awareness can be explained. It is impenetrable by thought, in the sense that its peculiar essential character which enters into experience by sense-awareness is for thought merely the guardian of its individuality as a bare entity. Thus for thought ‘red’ is merely a definite entity, though for awareness ‘red’ has the content of its individuality. The transition from the ‘red’ of awareness to the ‘red’ of thought is accompanied by a definite loss of content, namely by the transition from the factor ‘red’ to the entity ‘red.’ This loss in the transition to thought is compensated by the fact that thought is communicable whereas sense-awareness is incommunicable.
Thus there are three components in our knowledge of nature, namely, fact, factors, and entities. Fact is the undifferentiated terminus of sense-awareness; factors are termini of sense-awareness, differentiated as elements of fact; entities are factors in their function as the termini of thought. The entities thus spoken of are natural entities. Thought is wider than nature, so that there are entities for thought which are not natural entities.