Philosophy

by Bertrand Russell

The emotions are what makes life interesting, and what makes us feel it important. From this point of view, they are the most valuable element in human existence. But when, as in philosophy, we are trying to understand the world, they appear rather as a hindrance. They generate irrational opinions, since emotional associations seldom correspond with collocations in the external world. They cause us to view the universe in the mirror of our moods, as now bright, now dim, according to the state of the mirror. With the sole exception of curiosity, the emotions are on the whole a hindrance to the intellectual life, though the degree of vigour required for successful thinking is likely to be correlated with a considerable susceptibility to emotion. If I say little about the emotions in this book, it is not from under-estimating their human importance, but solely because the task upon which we are engaged is theoretical rather than practical: to understand the world, not to change it. And if emotion determines the ends we shall pursue, knowledge is what gives us the power to realise them. Even from the practical point of view, the advancement of knowledge is more useful than anything else that lies within human power.

I come now to the subject of desire, which we considered from a behaviourist standpoint in [Chapter III]. I want now to ask whether there is anything to be added from an introspective point of view.

Let us again remind ourselves that there is an element of artificiality in isolating elements within the one process leading from stimulus to reaction. Whenever a stimulus produces a reaction, we may consider the reaction as the effect of the stimulus, or as the cause of further effects. The former is the natural way of viewing the reaction when we are concerned with knowledge; the latter is the natural way when we are concerned with desire and will. In desire, we wish to change something in ourselves or in our environment or both. The question is: What can we discover introspectively about desire?

I think that here, as in the case of knowledge, the purely behaviouristic account is more important causally than the introspective account, and applies over a much wider range. Desire as a characteristic of behaviour, as considered in Chapter III, begins very low in the scale of evolution, and remains, even in human beings, the whole of what can be discovered in a large number of instances. The Freudian “unconscious” desires give a formula which is useful as explaining causally a number of acts, but these desires do not exist as anything except ways of behaving. Some desires, on the other hand, are conscious and explicit. What, exactly, is added in these last that is not present in the others?

Let us take some stock instance, say, Demosthenes desiring to become a great orator. This was a desire of which he was conscious, and in accordance with which he deliberately moulded his actions. One may suppose, to begin with, a merely behaviouristic tendency to do such things as seemed likely to impress his companions. This is a practically universal characteristic of human nature, which is displayed naively by children. Then come attempts, just like those of rats in mazes, to reach the goal; wrong turnings, leading to derision; right turnings, leading to a brief nibble at the cheese of admiration. Self-observation, still of a behaviourist kind, may lead to the formula: I want to be admired. At this point the desire has become “conscious”. When this point has been reached, knowledge can be brought to bear on the problem of achieving the desired end. By association, the means come to be desired also. And so Demosthenes arrives at the decision to subject himself to a difficult training as an orator, since this seems the best way of achieving his end. The whole development is closely analogous to that of explicit knowledge out of mere sensitivity; it is, indeed, part of the very same evolution. We cannot, in our integral reaction to a situation, separate out one event as knowledge and another as desire; both knowledge and desire are features which characterise the reaction, but do not exist in isolation.

In explicit conscious desire there is always an object, just as there is in explicit conscious perception; we desire some event or some state of affairs. But in the primitive condition out of which explicit desire is evolved, this is not the case. We have a state of affairs which may be said to involve discomfort, and activities of various sorts until a certain different state of affairs is achieved, or fatigue supervenes, or some other interest causes a distraction. These activities will be such as to achieve the new state of affairs quickly if there has been previous experience of a relevant kind. When we reach the level of explicit conscious desire, it seems as if we were being attracted to a goal, but we are really still pushed from behind. The attraction to the goal is a shorthand way of describing the effects of learning together with the fact that our efforts will continue till the goal is achieved, provided the time required is not too long. There are feelings of various kinds connected with desire, and in the case of familiar desires, such as hunger, these feelings become associated with what we know will cause the desire to cease. But I see no more reason in the case of desire than in the case of knowledge to admit an essentially relational occurrence such as many suppose desire to be. Only experience, memory and association—so I should say—confer objects upon desire, which are initially blind tendencies to certain kinds of activity.

It remains to say a few words about “will”. There is a sense in which will is an observable phenomena, and another in which it is a metaphysical superstition. It is obvious that I can say, “I will hold my breath for thirty seconds”, and proceed to do so; that I can say, “I will go to America”, and proceed to do so; and so on. In this sense, will is an observable phenomenon. But as a faculty, as a separable occurrence, it is, I think, a delusion. To make this clear, it will be necessary to examine the observable phenomenon.

Very young infants do not appear to have anything that could be called “will”. Their movements, at first, are reflexes, and are explicable, where they first cease to be reflexes, by the law of conditioned reflexes. One observes, however, something that looks very like will when the child learns control over fingers and toes. It seems clear, in watching this process, that, after some experience of involuntary movements, the child discovers how to think of a movement first and then make the movement, and that this discovery is exceedingly pleasurable. We know that, in adult life, a deliberate movement is one which we think of before we make it. Obviously we cannot think of a movement unless we have previously made it; it follows that no movement can be voluntary unless it has previously been involuntary. I think that, as William James suggested, a voluntary movement is merely one which is preceded by the thought of it, and has the thought of it as an essential part of its cause.

When I say this, I do not mean to take any particular view as to what constitutes “thinking”. It may consist almost entirely of talking, as Dr. Watson holds; or it may be something more. That is not the point at present. The point is that, whatever philosophy one may adopt, there certainly is an occurrence which is described by ordinary people as “thinking of getting up in the morning”, or “thinking of” any other bodily movement. Whatever the analysis of this occurrence may be, it is an essential part of the cause of any movement which can be attributed to the “will”.

It is true, of course, that we may think of a movement without performing it. This is analogous to imagining a state of affairs without believing in it; each is a rather sophisticated and late development. Each will only happen when we think of several things at once, and one of them interferes with another. It may, I think, be assumed that, whenever we think of a possible movement, we have a tendency to perform it, and are only restrained, if at all, by some thought, or other circumstance, having a contrary tendency.