“Philosophy still has to learn that it is made by human beings and depends to an alarming degree on their psychic constitution. In the critical philosophy of the future there will be a chapter on ‘The Psychopathology of Philosophy’. Hegel is fit to bust with his presumption and vanity. Nietzsche drips with outraged sexuality, and so on. There is no thinking qua thinking, at times it is a pisspot of unconscious devils, just like any other function that lays claim to hegemony. Often what is thought is less important that who thinks it. But this is assiduously overlooked. Neurosis addles the brain of every philosopher because he is at odds with himself. His philosophy is nothing but a systematized struggle with his own uncertainty.” ( C.G. Jung 1943 Quote taken from Scharfstein ‘The Philosophers’ p. 377)

In my last piece I discussed Bertrand Russell’s strange views on mental imagery. How in some places Russell argued that he was an extremely poor mental imager; while his 1919 paper ‘On Propositions’, Russell argued that he knew from direct experience that mental imagery existed; and furthermore, real thinking would be impossible without the use of mental imagery. In a personal communication philosopher David Berman made a couple of comments which may be useful in helping further our understanding of Russell’s strange seemingly and contradictory views on mental imagery.
Berman works in the area of psychological philosophy and has developed a typology that he uses to help him understand the distinctive views held by the great philosophers throughout history. According to Berman there are two main types of philosopher (1) The Conscious type: Berkeley, Descartes, Socrates (2) The Material type: Hobbes, Spinoza, James. Berman also argues that there is a third though less fundamental type (3) The socio-linguistic type; Hegel, Russell, Rorty. He argues that some philosophers are a combination of types with one aspect or type being major and the other minor. Thus you can get philosophers who are a combination of the Consciousness Type and the Socio-linguistic type with the Socio-linguistic type being dominant or vice-versa. On Berman’s typology Bertrand Russell was Socio-linguistic thinker (major) and a material type (minor). I have discussed Berman’s typology in more detail in this blog-post https://wordpress.com/post/kingdablog.wordpress.com/10 .
In a general sense Berman justifies his typology by studying (1) Strong distinctive mental types living or dead, (2) his interviews with people who have distinctive mental types, eidetic imagers, people with Synesthesia, etc (3) detailed studying and reporting on his own introspective experiences, (4) detailed studies of the great philosophers texts and lives (Berman: Penult p. 5). General justifications aside we will now discuss how Berman deals with the specific case of Russell and how his typology relates to his philosophy.
In his ‘Manual of Experimental Philosophy’ Berman discussed a curious incident in Russell’s mental development. In his ‘Problems of Philosophy’ Russell argued that mental acts are directly observable and patently real. However, a few years later under the influence of James, Russell argued, not only that mental acts didn’t exist, but they were theoretical constructs not something we directly observe. This change of mind is frankly bizarre. It would be one thing if Russell, originally conceived of mental acts as a theoretical construct and later changed his mind, and argued that his philosophical position would be more parsimonious without the theoretical construct. But the fact that Russell originally argued that he could directly observe mental acts and later argued that we don’t observe them calls for an explanation. How could Russell be so sure that he observed mental acts in his earlier philosophy, and then later deny that he observed them?
Russell’s answer was that he was driven by a theoretical need to destroy idealism to postulate mental acts. On Russell’s account when he thought he was observing mental acts he was engaging in a form of wishful thinking. Using his typology Berman argues that Russell’s views on mental acts are evidence of the type of mind that Russell had. A person with vivid conscious experiences (someone like Descartes, Berkeley), would find it difficult to confuse a wish with something they directly introspectively experience because of their transparent access to their own conscious experiences. However, if according to Berman’s typology Russell is a socio-linguistic thinker who is excellent at thinking themselves into of the systems of philosophers; this would offer a compelling explanation of Russell’s strange views on mental acts. As a socio-linguistic thinker Russell’s direct experiences would be less direct than those of a type 1 or a type 2 thinker. Hence, for Russell when he claimed he was observing mental acts; presumably he meant observation in a less fundamental more theory laden manner than type 1 or type 2 thinkers would.
Berman’s typology could be used as a possible explanation of Russell’s strange views on mental imagery that we discussed in our last blog-post: https://wordpress.com/post/kingdablog.wordpress.com/305 . Again the fact that Russell argues in places that he is a poor mental-imager, and in other places argues that mental-imagery is indispensible for thinking could be evidence of the socio-linguistic nature of his thinking. Russell’s focus is so driven by conceptual concerns that he is unaware of how these conceptual arguments are undermined by his own reports of his experiences. I think that Berman’s typology goes some way towards explaining Russell’s seemingly contradictory views on the nature of mental imagery. However, as I noted in the last blog-post they don’t explain the nature of Russell’s reports of the emotional determinants of when he experiences mental imagery. So while I think that Berman’s typology is a useful partial explanation of Russell’s views I don’t think the typology goes far enough in helping us understand Russell’s claims. While most of the time Russell was the socio-linguistic thinker, that Berman describes, Russell had another side which he only became aware of from time to time. It was this side of him that he attempted to destroy with a cold rationality; he used this rationality try and contain his deep emotional experiences.
We saw above that Berman’s tripartite typology was a useful tool in helping us understand Russell’s philosophical claims about mental acts and mental imagery. Berman also uses another typology to help him understand different views held by the great philosophers. This typology distinguishes between philosophers who are primarily tactile thinkers (TT) or visual thinkers (VT). Berman argues that Russell is a TT and this fact influences Russell’s philosophical views on some subjects.
In his ‘Problems of Philosophy’, Russell famously analysed his experience of a table he was sitting on front of. Berman sensibly argues, that studying the nature of Russell’s description of his experience of the table, is an excellent way of discovering the type of mind Russell had.
In his problems of philosophy Russell had used various different intuition pumps to get his readers to note that they don’t directly perceive material things but rather we are directly acquainted with sense-data which we use to represent the material object. But Russell noted that despite his arguments showing that we don’t directly experience matter, people instinctively think they do experience matter. He locates this instinctive belief in the existence of matter in our sense of sight. Russell argues that as a result of our sense of sight we are led instinctively to believe that matter exists. Interestingly Russell doesn’t argue that our other senses e.g. touch lead us instinctively to believe in matter.
On Berman’s view when Russell claims that we instinctively believe in the existence of matter because of our sense of sight, and not because of our other senses; Russell is actually describing his own unique way of conceiving the world and isn’t picking out a universal trait shared by all humans.
In my previous blog-post I briefly discussed Russell’s claim that Bergson was a strong mental-imager. Russell had argued that both Watson and Bergson were building up their philosophies because of their idiosyncratic psychological capacities. However, Berman has noted that Russell’s views on Bergson’s capacity for Mental-Imagery were actually mistaken. In his Penult Berman cites the testimony of Bergson’s friend H-Wildon Carr:
“Anyone can who has the psychological habit of introspection can test for himself the prevailing character of his imagery and so can know whether he is or is not a visualizer, and if that is so I can settle the question finally so far as Bergson is concerned for I have learnt on his own authority that he is not” (Carr 1912 quote taken from Berman ‘Penult p. 73)
So according to Bergson himself he was a poor at forming mental imagery. So Russell’s conjecture about Bergson is directly contradicted by Bergson’s direct report of his own introspection. Furthermore in his Penult when he analysed Bergson in a similar manner to the way he analysed Russell; Berman claimed that Bergson was a tactile thinker. As Berman noted this discovery is a bit odd; as if Bergson and Russell were the same mental type then it is odd that they disagreed so violently about philosophy. To address this difficulty Berman appealed to his other typology of (1) Conscious Thinker, (2) Material Thinker, (3)Socio-linguistic thinker.
On Berman’s taxonomy both Bergson and Russell are tactile thinkers. However, On Berman’s taxonomy Russell’s major type was the socio-linguistic type. As we saw above the socio-linguistic type has less fundamental experiences and hence relies more on socio-linguistic understanding. Berman argues that because Russell was a Socio-linguistic thinker primarily and only secondarily a tactile thinker he relied more heavily on socio-linguistic knowledge than his own experiences in developing his own theory of the world. According to Berman, Bergson was primarily a tactile thinker, and developed his philosophy based on his direct experiences of reality. Hence, Berman has a justification based on his overall typology of why despite the fact Bergson and Russell were tactile types they ended up holding opposing philosophical views.
However, despite the plausibility of Berman’s claim that Russell was a socio-linguistic type, Berman went overboard in the level of superficiality he accused Russell of engaging as a result of his mental type. At one point in his Penult Berman accused Russell of bowing down to science when trying to do metaphysics. I think that this is grossly unfair. Russell did think that science was our best way of discovering the nature of reality but he never “bowed down” to science. Thus, for example while Russell did make use of behavioural science in his philosophy of language and mind. He was very critical of behavioural science on a number of grounds. Firstly, Russell was critical of Watson’s denial of the existence of mental imagery, Russell argued that it could be shown using the testimony of introspection that Mental Imagery existed. Secondly, Russell argued that basic facts from the science of perception and physics undermined the behaviourist’s claims to be making objective observations. Thirdly, while he thought behavioural science was of some use in epistemology, it didn’t have the conceptual resources to deal with some epistemic problems (such as the problem of the scepticism).
Furthermore, while Russell relied on physics in developing his metaphysical world views he was critical of some physicists interpretations of what science told us. Thus Russell argued that Eddington was badly wrong in claiming that science and religion were compatible. When it comes to the work Russell is most celebrated for his ‘Principles of Mathematics’, ‘Principia Mathematica’ and his ‘On Denoting’, Russell not only wasn’t bowing down to science, he was developing theories that went beyond any science of the time. The evidence from his critical engagement with behavioural science, his disputes with physicists like Eddington, and his own original philosophical contributions, are unambiguous refutations of Berman’s claims that Russell merely bowed down to science when engaging in philosophy.
However, even if Berman does go too far in his characterisation of Russell as bowing down to science when developing his metaphysics; he is surely correct in his assertion that Russell was primarily a socio-linguistic thinker. And Berman’s taxonomy divided into major and minor types does offer a partial explanation of why Bergson and Russell’s philosophies differed despite them both being tactile types.
As we discussed in my last blog-post, contingent facts about Russell’s life that were out of his control; such as the death of his parents when he was a child, and his being brought up by his puritanical grandmother, had a deep influence on his intellectual and emotional development. Such accidents of history and the philosopher’s defensive reactions to these experiences will influence their worked out philosophies as adults. For an example of emotions and their relation to a philosopher’s system see my blog-post on Quine and Emotions: https://wordpress.com/post/kingdablog.wordpress.com/228 . So while Berman is surely correct in emphasising differences in typology resulting in Bergson and Russell’s different philosophy; he is only telling half the story by neglecting contingent facts of life that may have played an even bigger role in the differences between their philosophies.
There have been some attempts to interpret philosophical systems in light of contingent facts about the life of a philosopher; thus in his ‘The Philosophers: Their Lives and the nature of their Thought’ Scharfstein discussed atomism as a philosophical doctrine. He noted that in ancient times the debate between atomists such as Democritus and their opponents were done at a time when we had a very poor scientific understanding of the nature of the world. Given the limited evidential basis informing the ancient discussions of the validity of atomism Scharfstein speculated that a major component in the position philosophers took in these debates was their concrete experience of reality .
Scharfstein didn’t just discuss atomism in relation to pre-scientific speculation about the nature of the physical world. He also discussed a peculiar form of atomism that has been prevalent amongst philosophers discussing their selves, their perceptions and the nature of their thought. In this case he also thought that discussions of the nature of the philosopher’s psychology would reveal why they were drawn to atomism:
“Therefore, when I think of the atomism of Hume, James, Russell, and Wittgenstein, I conclude that it must have been their inward experiences that made them receptive to the atomic disintegration of the self” (Scharfstein: ‘The Philosophers’ p. 77).
Scharfstein argued that the psychology underlying the atomism was informed by a deep depression suffered from all of these atomistic philosophers:
“Hume, James, Russell, and Wittgenstein were all undermined by suffering…underwent deep depressions, and all were tempted by suicide-Hume on only one occasion however. All four of these adopted approximately Buddhist solutions to the pains of life… Mach…was isolated, lonely and sensitive…like James, Russell, Hume, and Wittgenstein he adopted a near Buddhist solution.” (ibid p. 78)
Scharfstein’s analysis is interesting but he provides virtually no evidence to support his position. Obviously, undergoing great depressive periods isn’t sufficient to make one an atomist in the above sense. If it were then psychiatric wards would be full of people espousing atomistic philosophies. Furthermore, plenty of philosophers have suffered periods of depression and haven’t become atomistic philosophers; Schopenhauer is a notable example. Nonetheless despite the fact that Scharfstein’s analysis isn’t overly convincing it does remind us that contingent accidents life can play a role in the philosophy that a person adopts or creates. Bergson, and Russell may have both been tactile thinkers but they lived very different lives and had different aptitudes that may have lead them to adopting their different overall philosophies.
In my next blog-post I will flesh out Bergson and Russell’s philosophies and how it related to their lived experiences. I will then try to disambiguate the degree to which their typologies influenced their philosophical systems; and compare the influence of typology with the influence of accidents of their biography on their respective philosophies.

In his 1919 paper ‘On Propositions: What they are and how they mean’ Bertrand Russell attempted to solve a problem which had bothered him since 1903 but to which he could not find a solution. The problem which concerned Russell was called the problem of the unity of the proposition. Russell made various different attempts to solve this problem culminating in his 1913 ‘Theory of Judgement’ which was severely criticised by Wittgenstein and led to Russell abandoning his theory of judgement. Since his ‘Principles of Mathematics’ Russell had difficulties in accounting for the unity of the proposition. His technique of logical analysis involved him analysing propositions down to their basic atomic components. However, the problem was that once he did this he found it difficult to reconstruct the propositions in a way that had sense. If we take the proposition ‘The dog is bigger than the cat’, in the proposition one has two different nouns and a two place predicate. The problem is that if we treat the two place predicate ‘is bigger than’ and nouns ‘The dog’ and ‘The Cat’ as separate atoms, then we are left with the difficulty of how these atoms can be related to each other in a sensible manner. If we take the two nouns as separate atoms and the relational predicate as another atom; then the question becomes as to how the atoms are related together. If we say the relational predicate is related to the atoms by another relation we will go on an infinite regress of relations relating relations. But if we say that the relation intrinsically relates the two atoms we are pointing towards a mystery as opposed to solving it. Russell eventually decided that the atoms are related by a process of judgment by a subject. But he had intractable difficulties in explicating the nature of the subject or the nature of the atoms the subject was supposedly organising.
Around 1919, while in prison, Russell came to believe that solving the difficulty (which relates to symbolism) would of necessity involve psychological data. So Russell turned his attention to psychology. His primary area of interest was the behaviourism of J.B. Watson, however while Russell was impressed with Behavioural science, he found one major difficulty with it. Watson’s behaviourism involved denied that mental imagery existed and explained away mental imagery interms of muscular movements. Russell strongly disagreed with this approach:
“When Professor Watson says: “I should throw out imagery altogether and attempt to show that practically all natural thought goes on in terms of sensori-motor processes in the larynx (but not in terms of imageless thought”, he is it seems to me, mistaking a personal peculiarity for a universal human characteristic.” (Bertrand Russell ‘On Propositions’ p. 293)
Above Russell is criticising Watson for engaging in the typical mind fallacy when theorising about mental imagery. On Russell’s hypothesis; Watson has an inability to call up mental imagery and confusedly mistakes his inability as a universal trait shared by all humans. This inference of Watson’s is obviously an invalid one; and Russell cites the work of Francis Galton who demonstrated empirically that most humans were able to create mental imagery (though the degree to which they could do so varied).
Russell also noted that Galton’s study of mental imagery demonstrated that people’s ability to form mental images decreased as they got older. Russell speculated that perhaps Watson had lost the ability to form mental imagery through hard abstract work in behavioural science. This conjecture of Russell’s has been verified in a close scholarly study of Watson’s evolving views on mental imagery; ‘The First Modern Battle for Consciousness: J B Watson’s Rejection of Mental Imagery’ by Berman and Lyons. Through a close textual analysis of Watson’s writing throughout his career they demonstrated that early in his career Watson admitted to experiencing mental imagery while later in his career he claimed an inability to form mental imagery. Berman and Lyons argue convincingly that Watson’s change of mind resulted from him losing the ability to form mental imagery later in life. So Russell’s conjecture about Watson’s capacity to form mental imagery does seem to have been on the mark. Likewise Russell was surely correct to charge Watson with engaging with the typical mind fallacy.
Russell argued convincingly that the existence of mental imagery was a clear refutation of the type of behaviourism that Watson was endorsing. However, Russell made further uses of mental imagery in trying to solve the unity of the proposition which resulted in Russell having to incoherently attack his own ability to form judgements. When discussing the meaning of words Russell made the following point:
“So far we have found four ways of understanding words:
(1) On suitable occasions you use the word properly.
(2) When you hear it, you act appropriately.
(3) You associate the word with another word (say in a different language) which has the appropriate effect on behaviour.
(4) When the word is first being learned, you associate it with an object. The word ‘motor!’ can make you leap aside, just as motor can, but it cannot break your bones. ( Russell ‘On Propositions’ p. 301)

Russell’s account of the nature of words is thus far pretty comprehensive; and as he notes holds no difficulties for the behaviourist. But Russell argues that such usage of words is limited to what he calls demonstrative language; picking out and discussing objects in the immediate environment. Another important use of language is narrative use of language which involves telling someone about some remembered event. On Russell’s account a narrative use of language typically involves the formation of mental images in the speaker discussing the remembered event, and the formation of mental images in the mind of the person who listens to and understands what the speaker is saying. Russell notes:
“It is clear that, in so far as the child is genuinely remembering, he has a picture of the past occurrence, and the words are chosen so as to describe the picture; and in so far as the hearer is genuinely apprehending what is said, the hearer is acquiring a picture more or less like that of the child… it is nevertheless the possibility of a memory image in the child and an imagination image in the hearer that makes the essence of the ‘meaning’ of the words. In so far as this is absent, the words are mere counters, capable of meaning, but not at the moment possessing it. We may say that while, words used demonstratively describe and are intended to cause sensations, the same words used in narrative describe and are intended to cause images.” (Russell ‘On Propositions’ p. 302)

Based on the above line of reasoning Russell concludes that there are two other main ways that words can mean as well as the four mentioned above. (5) Words can be used to describe or recall a memory image, (6) Words can be used to describe or recall an imagination image. Russell notes that 5 and 6 are the essence of the meaning of words.
Russell uses such mental imagery in attempting to solve the problem of the unity of the proposition:
“I have a complex image, which we may analyse, for our purposes, into (a) the image of the window, (b) the image of the fire, (c) the relation that (a) is to the left of (b). The objective consists of the window and the fire with the very same relation between them. In such a case, the objective of a proposition consists of the meanings of its constituent images related (or not related, as the case may be) by the same relation as that which holds between the constituent images in the proposition. When the objective is that the same relation holds, the proposition is true; when the objective is that the same relation does not hold, the proposition is false.” (Russell ‘On Propositions’ pp. 316-318)

Russell’s attempted solution to the problem of the unity of the proposition involves the postulation of mental imagery. Likewise he argues that mental imagery is the essence of the meaning of words in most cases. This position raises a number of difficulties for Russell. As we saw above Russell argued that Watson didn’t have the ability to form mental imagery. But if we assume with Russell that Watson didn’t have the capacity to form mental imagery then this raises questions with Russell’s theory of meaning. Watson is perfectly capable of reasoning verbally about things in the past and things in the future. Russell respected Watson enough to ask him to read and comment on his ‘Analysis of Mind’. In practice Russell acted as though Watson was a thinker who was capable of meaning things by his words. Yet on Russell’s theory; he should have judged Watson’s speech which didn’t involve mental imagery as follows:
“it is nevertheless the possibility of a memory image in the child and an imagination image in the hearer that makes the essence of the ‘meaning’ of the words. In so far as this is absent, the words are mere counters, capable of meaning, but not at the moment possessing it.” (ibid p. 302)

If Russell was true to his word he should have judged a non-imager like Watson’s speech as a meaningless counter. That Russell didn’t adopt this extreme approach in interpreting the verbal utterances of Watson is evidence that Russell didn’t fully endorse his theory in practice.
But things get much worse for Russell’s theory when consider how he uses it to deal with the problem of the unity of the proposition. On Russell’s view our mental imagery of a state of affairs is true when the imagery is isomorphic with the state of affairs it depicts and false when it isn’t. Russell thinks this isomorphism between our mental images and the reality it depicts solves the unity of the proposition problem. But we saw earlier that Russell argued that Watson was incapable of forming mental imagery. Based on this fact Russell would have to conclude that Watson was incapable of judging statements such as ‘the cat is on the mat’. This is a fantastical result.
However things get even more fantastical when we consider what Russell said about his own mental imagery. In his ‘Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ written the year before his paper on Propositions Russell made the following claim:
“That, of course, is especially likely in very abstract studies such as philosophical logic, because the subject-matter that you are supposed to be thinking of is so exceedingly difficult and elusive that any person who has ever tried to think about it knows you do not think about it except perhaps once in six months for half a minute. The rest of the time you think about the symbols, because they are tangible, but the thing you are supposed to be thinking about is fearfully difficult and one does not often manage to think about it. The really good philosopher does once in six months think about it for a minute. Bad philosophers never do.” (Bertrand Russell ‘The Philosophy of Logical Atomism’ p. 185)
Above Russell argues that the philosopher (including Russell) when thinking about abstract matters in logic can rarely get to the thing itself and instead has to think purely in symbols. Yet in his ‘On Propositions’ written less than a year later Russell argues that when a person is thinking in symbols they are using counters, capable of meaning but without imagery devoid of meaning. This would mean that Russell only thinks meaningfully only once every six months for a half a minute.
Of course a defender of Russell could argue that he is in the above quote talking about one of the most difficult subjects known to man and that when it comes to more prosaic subjects he can think in images for a much longer period. But even this defence of Russell doesn’t fit with the facts we know about his intellectual capacities.
In his masterful biography of Russell Ray Monk noted that Russell read Williams James’s Principles of Psychology and found James’s account of people having different capacities to form Mental Imagery fascinating. In a section where James discussed Galton’s breakfast table test; James noted:
An exceptionally intelligent friend informs me that he can frame no image whatever of the appearance of his breakfast-table…the ‘mind-stuff of which this ‘knowing’ is made seems to be verbal images exclusively.
In the margins where Russell wrote about the above example, he noted ‘this is almost my own case’ (ibid p. 86). Furthermore when Russell was psychologically tested by Crawshay-Williams, the results indicated that Russell was primarily a verbal thinker.
It is both fascinating and strange that Russell who by his own acknowledgement (and according to a psychologist who tested him), was a poor Visual Imager; would construct a theory of judgement that meant he was virtually incapable of forming any judgements. The examples, Russell gave of using imagery that were isomorphic to mind independent facts seem to be the very facts he would be incapable of forming. So, for example, if he were incapable of forming an image of his breakfast table he couldn’t judge whether the salt was to the right of his cup of tea. He could use verbal reasoning to make this judgement but according to Russell this type of judgment wouldn’t be an example of real thinking.
The question which now needs to be asked is why would Russell sketch a theory of thinking that implied that he could rarely think? Russell’s reliance on imagery becomes even more strange when one thinks on the philosopher who Russell spent a lot of his time criticising; Henry Bergson. After meeting and talking with Bergson; Russell made the following comment:
“I didn’t find out anything except, even more strongly, what one gathers from his books, that he is a very vivid visualiser, but has little auditory or tactile imagination-his whole philosophy is dominated by a sense of sight” (ibid p. 239)
It is surprising to find that Russell’s theory in ‘On Propositions’ results in a state of affairs where Russell is arguing that Bergson, (who he strongly disagrees with) is capable of meaning; whereas Russell most of the time is just using counters and not thinking.
It is difficult to understand what could lead Russell to advocate a view made meaning so parasitic on something Russell claimed to be incapable of. Could Russell really think that he wasn’t meaning anything when he spoke?
Strangely enough; there is a sense in which Russell did take his public utterances to be somewhat meaningless. Russell’s childhood was tragic. At the age of two his mother and sister died. His father died a year later. Russell was then brought up by his grandparents. After his grandfather died and his brother was sent off to boarding school Russell was brought up at home by his puritanical grandmother. Russell learned early to form polite chat at home with his grandmother and to keep his real thoughts and feelings to himself. Later on in life when he was informed about psychosis being a major factor in his family he came to associate these thoughts and feelings with fears of going insane.
Nonetheless, despite outward appearances Russell had a rich fantasy life and felt resentful at his grandmother and his life in general. Throughout his life he would swing between finding people he believed could penetrate to the true him; artists like Joseph Conrad and D. H. Lawrence or his lover Lady Ottoline, to disenchantment when relations strained with these muses. When this happened Russell would throw himself into his mathematical logic and regressed to the way of acting he maintained with his grandmother:
“Everything vital and important to him was kept hidden behind a polite, stiff and priggish exterior” (Monk ‘Russell p. 158)
“And, just as he had then, so he now tried desperately ‘to avoid all deep emotion’ and to live once more on the surface” (ibid p.305)
But what is the nature of this self, he believed, these artists grasped about him? When discussing his bond with Conrad; Russell noted:
“It had to do with our shared ‘Satanic Mysticism’, the truth of which he had never been convinced about, but ‘in moments of intense emotion it overwhelms me.’ It consists in thinking there are two levels: ‘one of science and common sense, and another, terrifying, subterranean and periodic, which in some sense held more truth than the everyday view.” (ibid p. 317)
So for Russell at some level; the subterranean depths were more real than the level of science and common sense. But what did these subterranean depths consist of? A further discussion of Russell’s capacity for mental imagery is revealing.
Despite what we discussed above; Russell could form some mental imagery. While living abroad and away from his girlfriend he commented in a letter that:
“I have lost the power of visualising thee, which I only keep a few days of parting” (ibid p. 87)
So when it came to someone he was emotionally and sexually attached to he could form mental images. Furthermore, and more disturbingly, when noting his violent tendencies he also noted that these violent thoughts gave him burning hot imagery:
“I remember when I wanted to commit murder, the beginning was a sudden picture (I hardly have pictures at ordinary times) of a certain way of doing it, quite vivid, with the act visible before my eyes. It lived with me then for ever so long, always haunting me; I took to reading about murders and thinking about them, and always with that picture before me. It was only hard thinking that kept me straight at the time- the impulse was not amenable to morals, but it was amenable to reasoning that this was madness.” (ibid p. 256)
So with someone he cared deeply about he could form some mental imagery even if he couldn’t maintain the imagery for long without contact with that person. His imagery improved as we saw when he was highly emotional; for example in the disturbing example of his fantasies of murder. However, he didn’t always need to be strongly aroused by love or hate to form mental images:
“Bates bores me while I am reading him, but leaves pictures in my mind which I am glad of afterwards.” (ibid p.529)
But in again his forming images is related to reading fiction. For Russell, mental imagery is restricted to lovers, hated people he thinks violent thoughts about, and to the realm of fiction. In other words, for Russell mental images are primarily the realm of fantasy. Yet in his paper in propositions he thinks that the essence of thinking is in images. He goes as far as to say that true thinking cannot occur without such images.
It is a reasonable conjecture that Russell growing up in Victorian society with a puritanical grandmother taking care of him, resulted in him hiding all his passions and bad thoughts from public consumption; even from himself at times. But at an unconscious level he always thought that this hidden self was his real self (as opposed to a just another aspect of his evolving personality). Russell was terrified that at his core he had inherited insanity from his family. His sometimes violent fantasies became associated with this madness and these fantasies, typically accompanied by imagery, became associated with what he unconsciously believed was the truth. His public philosophy which he constructed without mental imagery became unconsciously associated with a meaningless facade.
It is my contention that Russell’s ‘On Propositions’ was an unconscious confession that his public philosophy was a meaningless facade, and that his true nature was the self revealed in his intense imagery of lovers, enemies, fiction and madness itself.