Russell and the Experience of Time

In an interesting discussion of Russell's treatment of sensations in Inquiry into Meaning and Truth,' Joy H. Roberts contrasts what Russell says there with an early argument of Brentano's and with a view of sensation attributed to logical positivists and expected of Russell. She finds it remarkable that Russell persists in holding to his view that we have an awareness of past in spite of his rejection of akoluthic theory. Roberts is correct in finding experience of time to be of importance to Russell for it is involved in several key epistemological issues. One issue is that, if experience is limited to present awareness (a knife-edge present), then we can have no acquaintance with past or even an awareness that there was a past. Another issue is that, supposing one's present experience includes what are ordinarily called memories and images as well as sensations, how could one distinguish one from other? It is true that a causal argument may be used for this purpose, but at best this is indirect; experience itself does not bear its origin on its face. Another issue concerns Russell's attempt to make a continuity of inference from experienced time, to common sense time and to time of physics. This is not an issue in passages in question, but is important in Russell's early discussion of experience of time in Our Knowledge of External World.' As far as experience of time is concerned, Russell acknowledged influence of William James' use of concept of the specious present. Present experience has a temporal spread to it within which earlier, middle, and later parts are ordered in succession. This kind of present experience allows us direct knowledge of immediate past (the earlier

Psychoanalysis · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · Philosophy and Theoretical Science · Philosophy, Science, and History · Psychology

• The experience and knowledge of time, through Russell and Moore

  Jack Shardlow•British Journal for the History…•2023

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