BASIC RULES OF REASON
by I. A. RICHARDS
KEGAN PAUL, TRENCH, TRUBNER & Co., Ltd. LONDON, 1933
Psyche Miniatures, General Series No. 62
DIVISION OF PAGES
TO THE READER
This little book is in Basic English. It is a first attempt to put some chief parts of the science which has rightly been named ' the key to knowledge ' into the new language which is becoming month by month the international language of the Earth. For those who have no knowledge of Basic, a list of books about it has been printed on the last page. The rules for working the 850 words here used (all of which are printed at the front, on one side of a bit of business notepaper) are given in Basic English and in the ABC ; and the different forms and uses of the words themselves are made clear in The Basic Words.
As to my experience in using this language ; I am not conscious that at any point I have said anything which is in any way different from what I had in mind to say, or that I have been forced to say it in a way which is less clear, or less in harmony with my purpose than the other ways which would, with a longer Word List, have been open to me. In fact, very frequently the opposite has been true ; the simple language has been better for this sort of work than a more complex language. About half of the book is an account of views with which everyone who has any experience with these questions will be in agreement. The other half is only a statement of my opinions about points on which agreement is unhappily not possible in the present conditions of knowledge. But when what is said is wrong, the error is to my thought, not in the language, and may be put right without the use of more or different words.
For suggestions on points of detail in the writing I am in debt to Miss Lockhart of the Orthological Institute. I. A. R.
Magdalene College, Cambridge
I . A LANGUAGE MACHINE
An idea in the mind is to a Natural Law as the power of seeing is to light. S. T. Coleridge, on Shakespeare's use of language.
The purpose of this book is to give a clear account of how we may best put our thought in order, of if we are not able quite to do this, how we may best make a serious attempt in this direction. To put our thoughts in order is to make them come into agreement with things, to make them give us a truer picture, a representative map or instrument for guiding our acts, so that men may give effect to as great a number of their desires as possible. The name of the general theory of how to do this is ' Logic '. As Bentham said, ' Logic is the art which has for its end (or purpose) the giving, in the best way, direction to the mind '. This direction is chiefly a power of keeping the divisions between our thoughts in the right places, and the right places are only the places in which, for the purpose in view, we have a need to put them, and the places in which other for their purposes have put them.
Another very great authority -- Charles Saunders Pierce -- gave as his account of Logic : that it is the theory of good behaviour in thought, in the sense in which good behaviour is the use of self-control for the purpose of making our desires come about. (His words were, "Logic is the ethics of thinking, in the sense in which ethics is the bringing to bear of self control for the purpose of realizing our desires.") Because we are only able to put and keep our thoughts in control by the help of language, and because of control of language, for this purpose, is the control of the senses of our words, a great part of Logic, as Bentham and Pierce saw it, becomes the theory and right use of the senses of our chief words -- those upon which the ordering of the senses of our other words is dependent. The senses of these chief words -- and their ways of working with or against one another -- are the rules of reason There are not (1) the sense and (2) rules for putting them together ; but the senses themselves give us, in their ways of acting, the rules of reason.
p. 10 . . . . . . (more) . . . for 11 pages . . .
After these first pages about the purpose and need of a better apparatus for controlling the senses of our words, we may go on freely to the necessary work.
II . THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE
Let us take the most important word, in the theory of the comparison of senses and in the work of taking statements to bits for the purpose of comparison, and make lists of their chief senses. We will give numbers to these senses, so that we may put a finger on them, without trouble, when in the process of discussion it becomes necessary to give them separate attention. We will be able to see -- together and on one page -- the chief senses which may be coming into use at this point in the discussion. We will then see not only which tricks and twists we will have to keep in mind, but -- and this is more important -- the other possible theories.
The first reaction of most readers to number (12-112, 3-24 and so on) in pages put before them is normally fear mixed with disgust. It is hoped, however, that here the great help which such numbering gives in keeping different things separate will make you more kind to them. Without them I would be forced to make the discussion at least three times longer, and to say the same thing even more frequently than I do. A numbered list at the end of the book in which lists of all the senses of the key-words are printed together in their numbered order will make the necessary looking forward and back as little trouble as possible. These numbers are only names for the sense, names which make their positions in relation to one another clear to the eye. A number like 5-12 makes us see that the sense it is a name of is a division of sense
5-1 ; 9-211 and 9-212 are different divisions or special forms of 9-21 and so on.
I give in my account only some of the reasons for making the divisions where I do. The apparatus is a machine for separating the senses of other words when it is necessary to do so. The test of the value of our divisions is the amount of help they give us. It is important to keep in view this fact that we are not here putting on paper something which is given to us, so much as making a machine -- a machine for controlling thought which will let us do some things and keep us from doing other things. It is a good machine if it is of use to us ; any changes which will make it of more use to us will make it better. They are not able to be tested in any other way than this. If the reader is troubled by this word use here, a look at necessary, sense 17-12, in the list at the end of the book, may make the point clearer.
On the other hand, if it is to be of use, it is necessary to keep some of the divisions in the places in which our minds normally put them. The attempt to make a machine like this is, in fact, a way (and the best way) to the discovery of how our minds do their work.
But, as we will see, our minds do their work in a number of different ways. They put the chief divisions, upon which all the other are dependent, in a number of different places for different purposes. So a number of different machines are possible and necessary. Very little of the theory of the connections between these possible machines has been worked out. The history of thought is still waiting for such a theory. The experts have had enough to do putting their machines together or attacking the machines of other experts. They have not made the right sort of comparisons, and their machines have not been put together for this purpose. This sad condition of our theories will seem very strange in the future, because the work is important.
The histories of different nations make their ways of thought different ; and the fact that they are different will, in the end, be of value to us all. But there is no need for them to be out of all relation to one another ; as they are now. The machine which is put together in these pages is for the connection of different systems of thought -- of different men, nations, governments, sciences, religions, societies -- with one another. To get things into clear relations to one another we have first to take them to bits. But the purpose is new knowledge and new buildings, not destruction. This machine is only one of a number of possible machines ; it will be tested by the work which it lets us do.
The most important words in this machine are : --
| Theory of Knowledge. | Theory of Connections. | Theory of Instruments. |
| Though 1 | Cause 9 | Property 12 |
| Thing 2 | Effect | Is 13 |
| Fiction 3 | Force | General 14 |
| Fact 4 | Event | Special |
| Knowledge 5 | Law 10 | Quality 15 |
| Belief 6 | Part 11 | Relation 16 |
| True 7 | System | Necessary 17 |
| Sense 8 | Change | Possible 18 |
| Same | Probable 18 |
| | Sort |
| | Degree |
| | Agreement |
I take them in these three groups because the sort of discussion I give them is changed from one group to another. The senses of the words int he last group, for example, have not quite the wide and free ways of being different from one another which those in the first group have. A group is a unit, but senses from all three of them have at times to be kept in view together.
With accounts of the chief senses of these key-words before us on paper in clear lists, the worst troubles of all discussion will in a short time be seen to give the best chances for new discoveries. they will no longer be, as they are now causes of unfertile doubt and complex errors. The lists in this book will at first not be complete and clear enough to give us every sense which is needed. But even list which are not complete will let us see much which we do not now naturally see without them. Even a bad attempt will be much better than no attempt at all.
In giving lists of the senses of those
words which I take first I have to make use,
in special senses, of those which come later.
The numbers put with these special senses
as directions to the reader to take a look at a later page will make the position clear.
When at first you do not see how or why a word is being given some one of its senses,
or do not make out which sense it has, go on to the place where the words used in
giving it a sense are given their senses and then come back.
We will take the word thought first - and
let us not be troubled if at first we seem not to be saying anything new or
important. All men have knowledge about most of these things from their early years,
from the first steps in their learning. Here this knowledge is only being put into order
Thought
1-1 . In the widest sense, any event in the mind.
In this sense all the history of a mind is
made up of thoughts; but for most purposes we have to make
divisions between
thoughts and feelings for example, or
between thoughts and desires. Feelings
and desires are equally events in the mind.
So take as a narrower sense for thought :
1-2. An event in the mind which puts
something before the mind.
Some writers say, or take as said, that the
thing which is put, by thought, before the
mind is a picture, or that, if it is not a
picture, it is something which is like a
picture in being a copy of something which
is not before the mind (or in the mind)
in this sense. These things which, on this
theory, are before (in) the mind are frequently named
images. For example,
when we have a thought of a tree, we will
be said to have an image (or picture) of a
tree before the mind: and when we have a
thought of a noise, we have an image (a
copy) of the noise before us, and so on. This
theory of images may be wrong. A great
number of persons say that they do not
ever have images, and persons who sometimes have images say that they
are able
to have thoughts without having any
images. Even those who make use of
images in their thought say that their
images are sometimes not at all like the
things they are having thoughts of.
So it is wise not to make our account of
thoughts dependent on any theory of
images but to say that what is before the
mind in thought is in some way the thing
which the thought is about and not only
some picture or other copy of it in the
mind. It will be clear that, if we say this.
the word before is not being used in the
same way in which it is used when we say
this book is before my eyes. We take
before here in ' before the mind ' in a special
sense (not quite like any other use of it)
as the name of the relation which thoughts
have to the things they are thoughts about.
What is important is that thoughts (in
this sense, 1-2) put the mind into a special
connection with things. A thought is of
or about some thing and so it may be true
(7-l) or false. A feeling or desire is not
about something in the same way (when we
are not, as we frequently are, giving to the
words feeling or desire a sense which makes
them the same as thoughts in this sense). It will be noted that we may
equally say that a thought is of something or about it.
In most places the two are not different. We may, however make them different -- was we will see in connection with the word thing (2-2) -- and this gives us sometimes a feeling that they are different in some way in other places where, in fact their sense is the same.
If a thought is of something as it is, then it is true ; if it is of something as the ting is not, then it is false ; and the agreement of thoughts with things may be put to the test. Thoughts are those events in the mind by which the mind has knowledge of things and events. (Normally things and events not in our minds but sometimes other thoughts, feeling and so o in our minds.)
A division in this sense of thougth is of much use : --
1-21. A thought may be of something as three, as being so ; or it may, 1.22, be only of something, without the question ' Is the something so or not ?' coming up at all. In other words, a thought may be, in addition, a belief (6-2 or 6-3), or it may be only a thought. When we are not deeply interested, or needing to do anything, then our thoughts are frequently without this addition. This division is important when we come to questions about the limits of knowledge, and the different senses of true, belief, fiction, possible and so on.
Two less interesting senses of thought are :
1-3. The proocess of having thoughts (1-2).
We are said to be 'in thought ' as a condtion opposite to being, for example, in a deep sleep, or having only feelings.
1-4. The processs of having thoughts (1-2) in an order which is in agreement with the order of facts (4-2) or the attempt to put thought into agreement with facts.
1-5. A division which is sometimes important comes up with thoughtbe a group of general properties which that event has and other events may have. for example, we say ' Newton's best thoughts took place in Cambridge ' and ' Newton's thought about space was changed by Einstein '. In the second of these we are not saying that Einstein did anything to the events in Newton's history. We are saying athat in place of thoughts (such as Netwon had) of one sort Einstein made use of thoughts of another sort.
In sense 1-2 a thought is one event with a fixed place and time : in sense 1-5 a thought is a general (14-12) property which thoughts (1-2) may have. If they have it, we say that they are the same thought, and , by a fiction (3-2) we take them to be one thing (2-4).
This way of getting a more general sense from an example is used very frequently. Red may be the name of one event of seeing, or it may be, and in general use is, the name of any event like a given thing seen, or an event in the mind of a given sort. So, in addition, with most words under the heading ' general ' in the Basic list. And when necessary we may make any word general in this way. Trouble and danger of error only come up with a small number of words used in building theories, where we get two different theories -- by taking a word in its general sense or as the name of one event. We will see the point of this more clearly in the discussion of fictions.
We may now go on from thoughts to things.
Thing
2-1. The word with the most general (14-11) sense possible. We have to say ' Every thing is thing ' because we have no more general word with which to give an account of them. In this sense, to say about anything that it is a thing is not say any thing about it. If it is then it is a thing. So thing, in this sense , is almost without sense. It has less sense than any other word. Like is (13-2) it is an instrument which is of use only in putting the sense of other words together. MInds, events, processes, qualities, properties, numbers, relations, times, points, spaces, changes, rates of change, fictions, doubts, smells, destructions -- all things we have or make names for -- are, in this sense, things.
2-2. In a narrower sense only those things ( 2-1) are things about which other things are said. . . .
. . . p 33 . . . (more) . . . 33 pages . . .
Sense
8-1 . The sense of sense I have been using in every place but one (p.35) is the same as 1-5 of thought. A sense is a property of a thought. Two thoughts are different when they have different properties which make them thoughts of different sorts of things.
8-2 . Other quite different senses of sense are common. Seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, tasting are named senses, the five senses ; so is any way of getting knowledge which does not come under these heads but is of the same general sort. Experts say that we have not five but about fifteen senses -- muscle sense, heat and cold senses and so on. Sense taken in this way is best looked on as another word made up of the same letters, not as the same word taken in another sense. So, equally, with sense as a name for strong desires, those of sex, for example.
A use of sense which is nearer to the one we are making is that in which persons who are wise are said to have sense, that is, to have good sense.
8-3 . Good sense is, at least in part, a power to keep our thoughts, the senses of our words, in the right places. So there is a connection between the control of the senses of words and good sense. One who is not able to keep the senses of his words in order is said to be ' out of his senses '. In this sense, who among us is in them ?
III . THEORY OF CONNECTIONS
We not only have thoughts of things, we have thoughts of them as being together or in connection one with the another, in a number of ways. Language here gives us an idea that the number of these ways in which we take things together is without any limit (unlimited). It may be so, the structure of our thoughts may be as different from example to example as the 200,000 words we put them into. But this does not seem probably. From very early days in the thought of the West (from Aristotle on) experts in the comparison of thoughts have been able to make short lists of headings, under one or other of winch any thought we have may be put. Let us see which are the most important forms of connection which we give to things in our thought.
Four chief heads seem to be enough.
We have thoughts of :
A as being the cause of B or as caused by B.
A as being part of B or as having B as a part.
A as being in space or time relations to B.
A as being more or less like B.
A very great number of the connections
used in thought, if taken to bits, may be
seen to be made up of parts which have these forms. Or, if this is not the right
account to give, we may at least say that by taking connections of these forms only
and putting them together, we are able to get complex connections which will take
the place of most relations. Here, again, a decision between these two accounts of
what we are doing is a question not about how things are, but about how we are
building and using our machine for making comparisons between thoughts.
An example is :- to say that a man is
the owner of a house may be to say that he has, in the past, done certain things
(has been the cause of certain events, given money, put his name on bits of
paper) which in turn have been the cause of other men doing or not doing other things
(let him have the free use of the house, send him tax papers . . . ) and so on.
Let us take these forms of connection in
turn the first, cause-effect, is the one which gives most trouble. It has a number
of senses, some of them complex, and to get clear thoughts about these and so control
of them we have to take the complex senses to bits.
Cause .
9-l . C is a cause of E when F does not
take place without C. In other words
C is a condition of E. Condition, we may
make a note here, has two chief senses,
8-l and another which is very like it. To
say that something is in a condition - a
man in good condition, healthy ; or in bad
condition, unhealthy - is to say that at or
through a time it has certain properties.
(See l2-2). Now when in 8-1 we say that
something is a cause (or a condition) of a
certain effect, it is only as having certain
properties, being as it is, being in the
condition it is in, that it is the cause. A
thing in a condition (in this sense) is an event. Some events are quick and small
- the death of an ant for example. Some are long in time and great - the Himalayas.
Any thing (or group of things) in a condition, may be said to be an event - but . . .
. . . Page 67 . . . (more) . . . 18 pages.
Part
. . .
11-4 . When something has a number of qualities, these qualities (with the thing which has them) are parts of the system they together make up. (The question ' Is there a thing in addition to its qualities ?' is again one about different sorts of language-machines equally of use for different purposes. See in comparison thing 2-2).
11-5 . Some writers take, as being very important, a sense in which a system is a group of things such that if any one of them is changed all the others are changed in some degree by that change. Everything there is, for some purposes, taken to be a system in this sense -- the changes in parts of it which are at a great distance from one another being small without limit. The motions of fish in the sea (or stars in the sky), in this view, make my size a very little different. And in a more special use of this sense it has been said that living things (or some of them) are unlike all other things in having a special organization of their parts in this way, and that minds have it in the highest degree. But we have to take care here to keep two different questions separate. To go back to our picture, 11-1 ; If AB is changed then BC is changed. but this is not the sort of system which those who make use of the sense, 11-5, have in view. Most of these writers, in fact, make a very sharp division between groups formed by addition (like the picture in 11-1) and groups said to be different from, or more than, the addition ('sum') of their parts. What they have in mind is the fact that a very small change made to one part of an animal, say to the cat's eye when it sees a mouse, may be the cause (9-1) of a very great number of complex changes in its other parts. But with a change in one leaf of a tree no such great number of other changes come. Even less with a change in one bit of dust, and so on. The important thing with this sense of system is to keep in mind that we are not able to put limits to groups of things and say that they are systems (' Minds are systems ', ' animals are systems ' and so on) without first getting a very great amount of detailed knowledge about the conditions under which changes in all parts come after changes in any parts. Some changes go with others under some conditions -- that is all we may say. In other words, some systems (11-3 or 11-4) have more connections between their parts than others. The form of the laws of cause for them is more complex. But to make one wide division between systems and say that, in some, changes in all parts take place with changes in any part is to go forward a long way in front of our knowledge.
IV . THEORY OF INSTRUMENTS
The space and time connections of things are special examples of the connections of parts in systems, and the questions which come up with them, for the detail of winch we have to go to mathematics, are outside the range of these pages. But the senses of name and of the other words which may take its place are part of Logic. With the discussion of them we come to the third division of this book, the Theory of Instruments.
The reader will have taken note of a number of words which have been used at important points without any special account of their sense being given. Among them have been agreement, same, different, property, quality, relation, general, special, degree, sort and is. What comes now is an attempt to put our uses of these words in a clear light. I take them together in a separate division under the name of Theory of Instruments because -- more, it may be, than with any other words -- we have to take care not to put the wrong questions about them. All words are instruments with winch we keep control of their senses : but these words are instruments with whose senses in addition to this we keep control of the senses of other words. It will be best to make a start with Property.
Property
12-1 . In the simple everyday sense, a property is that of which some man is the owner, that which some man has.
12-2. In a sense taken from 12-1,
anything which anything (see thing, 2-2)
may be said to be or to have (see is 13-1). For
example : mountains are high - have the property of being high; 6 is greater than
5 -- has the property of being greater than 5 ; men are not plants - have the property
of not being plants. No limit is necessary to the things we may, truly or falsely, say
are properties of things. Everything is what it is - has the property of being the
same as itself. The moon has the property of having the property . . . of
not being made of green cheese. This last is only another way of saying that the
moon is not made of green cheese.
But there is a danger of our taking
properties as something more than other
ways of saying what may be said without them. Experts in mathematics have said,
for example, that "even if there were no things at all, there would still be the
property of being seven in number - though nothing would have this property".
This danger may be overcome by keeping in mind that all properties are like this
property of the moon - that it is not made of green cheese.
In other words a property is an instrument for making comparisons between
statements, between thoughts, between the senses of words. But we commonly
make use of properties as if they were something more, part of the structure of
what we are having thoughts about or making statements about. ' X is green '
and X has the property of being green do not say different things - the second is
not a fuller account than the first. But they say the same thing in ways which
are of use for different purposes, and these
purposes for which the word property is of use have now to be taken into view.
Here comparison may be made with
our use of the words being and existence.
To say. ' There are cats and dogs ' and to say ' There are beings which are cats and
dogs ' or to say ' Cats and dogs have existence ' or to say ' Cats and dogs are
things (2-1) ', or to say ' Cats and dogs have the property of having existence are
only different ways of saying the same thing. Things, beings, existences, are
words of use when we have a need to put into words thoughts which are not only
about cats or only about dogs, or only about any limited sort of thing, but are
about anything. In the same way property
is a word of use when we have to do with thoughts not about green things only, or
about coloured things only or about limited sorts of things, but about the ways
in which things are in sorts. The danger
is that we make use of property when there
is no need for it, and so get the idea that
' X is green ' and ' X has the property of being green ' say different things.
This will be the best place in which to
take the word is. It has three chief senses.
Is
13-1 . Existence . To say ' A is ' or ' There
is an A ' is the same as saying ' A has
existence ' or ' A has being ' or ' Something is A '.
13-2 . Part and Sort . The is of connection.
To say ' A is B ' puts A into the greater sort B. This connection between A and B
may be taken in two ways
13-21 . A is a part of the sort B. For example, ' Gold is a metal ' --
gold is part of the sort, metals : or
13-22 . The properties common to B are part of the properties of A. Gold
has the properties common to all metals and some more - those which make it
different from all other metals. These two ways of taking ' A is B ' are of use for
different purposes.
13-3 . Completely the same (in Logic ' identity ').
To say ' A is B ' is the same as saying ' A has all the properties which
B has and no others '. When this is so completely, and A and B are not different
in any way, then they are not two things, but one thing. ' A ' and ' B ' are two
names for one thing, and the statement ' A is B ' then becomes a bad way of saying
this, because it is hard to keep in mind that A and B are not names for different
things. We will see (pp. 101,119) some of the dangers which come from this.
It is clear from this that same has two
important and different senses ; one in which to say that two things (or groups of
things) are the same is to say that in certain ways they are not different,
another in which we are only saying that one thing, or group of things, has two
names, or is being taken in two sorts.
The three words property, sort and same, it will be
noted, do almost the same work. So does the word general, to which
we may now go oncoming back later to the discussion of the forms of properties.
General
This word has one very important sense - and some others which in different ways
have come from it but are now almost opposites to one another. This makes it a
very interesting example of the ways in which senses become changed.
First take a look at these marks on the paper.
, . , . . . ? . ! . -- ; . ; . , , . . : . . ! -- " . . . ? . ;
14-1. They are all marks. What they
all are is what is general about them - a
general property of them. In addition to
being marks they are all marks-used-in-printing. This is another general property
of them, equally general in this sense. It
comes from the sense of all - which is all
of a sort. But in another sense it is less
general because marks-used-in-printing axe
only a part of all marks. In the same
way marks which are not marks used in
printing may be on paper. To be a mark-
on-paper is a more general property than
to be a mark-used-in-printing and to be
a mark-on-something is more general than
to be a mark-on-paper. So, to be coloured
is more general than to be green. This is
a more general (14-11) sense of general, but
one which comes from 141, for marks on
paper are a part only of all marks.
14-11. A thought (or a statement)
which is about a greater group of things
(having a group G as part of it) is more
general than a thought about the things in
group G or the things in a part of G.
14-12. A thought of anything as being
of a sort is a general thought : it is more
or less general as the sort is greater or less.
14-2. Most of these marks here are full
stops. We frequently say that something
is generally so, when the sense of general is
. . .
. . . page 95 . . . (more) . . . 34 pages
. . .
A last word. If you do not clearly get the sense of what I have said you will, in making the attempt to get it, have gone through a great number of the possible senses of these words in your mind. It is not very important that you get my sense and no others, and not important if what I say is true or not. And it is not important for anyone to have any belief that what has been said here is so. What is important is to see that the sense of words may be taken in groups, and that if the form of one group of senses becomes clear to us, the form of other groups of senses, which we may not ever have put in connection with them, may become clear at the same time. This gives us new chances for the control of our thought and for taking over the knowledge we have of one field into other fields. As Colegidge said, ' that only is learning which comes again as power '. And to see how any sense is in relation to any other is to get a sort of learning which comes again as power.
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