From Philosophy to Psychology and Back: The Role of Richard Semon in Russell’s Analysis of Mind

From Philosophy to Psychology and Back: The Role of Richard Semon in Russell’s Analysis of Mind

Christopher Pincock (Purdue University)
pincock@purdue.edu

One of the most vexing issues for Russell scholars is to explain what could be called Russell’s ‘psychological turn’ in the Analysis of Mind of 1921. In this paper I examine the role of the German psychologist Richard Semon (1859-1918) in Russell’s thinking between 1913 and the Analysis of Mind. While Slater has recognized the “profound effect” (Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, volume 9, xx) that Semon had on Russell, no sustained investigations of this effect have yet been made.

Based on correspondence, I date Russell’s study of Semon to the summer of 1919. Just prior to this Russell had tried to give a largely physiological or even behavioristic analysis of belief. But upon reading Semon, Russell placed Semon’s “mnemic images” at the heart of his approach and by 1923 he was prepared to criticize Ogden and Richards for not using images in their account of representation: “they pride themselves on not using images in their account of reference, yet it is difficult to see how anything except an image of a flame can have the requisite similarity to what has been formerly caused by a flame” (ibid., pp. 136-137). The bulk of the paper presents the steps that led Russell to this conclusion. It is especially puzzling in light of Russell’s earlier claims that a subject can be directly acquainted with non-mental entities.

In the end, I conclude that Russell changed his views based on the confluence of philosophical and scientific factors. Philosophically, Semon’s images filled out his new conception of belief and so finally allowed him to overcome the problems with propositions that sunk the 1913 Theory of Knowledge manuscript. These developments in psychology, though, also fit in with Russell’s desire to use philosophy to give sophisticated interpretations of our best scientific theories. This responsiveness to science is at the heart of his later rejection of images, so that by 1926 Russell could claim ““images” should not be introduced in explaining “meaning”” (ibid., 140). By this time, though, the science that occupied Russell’s attention was physics.