Belief is the affirmation of reality, but not all affirmations of reality are beliefs, for if we have, or have had, perceptual experience of a reality, we do not say, “I believe,” but “I see, hear, perceive, or remember.” Similarly, of the realities involved in our inner experience, we say, “What I had in mind, desired, hoped, or felt was…” or else say, more simply, “I was much moved, was in pain, felt affection or hatred, longed for, was thinking about, knew.” On the other hand, there are realities of the perceptual order in which we may express belief, as when we say, “I believe that New Zealand exists, that nitrogen is a gas, that the earth is round, that William the Conqueror crossed the Channel in 1066, that Jesus Christ suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, was buried, and rose again.” The realities in which we thus express belief are not realities which we ourselves have observed, but are such that they could have been observed by a person appropriately situated in time and in place. Hence in this case it is not the nature of the realities affirmed that differentiates belief from experience of either the perceptual or the inner type. The difference lies elsewhere. When we affirm a reality of which we ourselves have, or have had, perceptual experience, it is the reality itself, present to our perceiving mind, which alike determines the content of our affirmation and justifies us in making it.

It is a widely held doctrine at the moment that metaphysical propositions are meaningless, are, in fact, not genuine propositions at all. This doctrine is supported by the contention that only propositions which are verifiable are significant: and it is held that metaphysical propositions do not fulfil this condition, and are consequently pseudo-propositions. Those who hold this view divide propositions into three classes: (I) Tautologies; which are analytic, certain, and are guaranteed by the principle of contradiction. (2) Factually significant propositions; which are synthetic, hypothetical, and are capable of empirical verification. (3) Pseudopropositions, which only appear to be propositions and are, in reality, meaningless nonsense.

If, as we are told, Hume's essay on Miracles was an irrelevant insertion in his Enquiry to gain it the notoriety which the Treatise had missed, the artifice has certainly been successful. Hume's thesis has been hotly debated from that day to this. Neither side it seems can claim complete victory, for both make important concessions. Green, his mostly adverse critic, agrees with Mill and L. Stephen that the argument against miracles is “irrefragable” in itself, though not consonant, he thinks, with Hume's own principles: on the other hand, Huxley whilst declaring it on the historical side “irrefragable,” demurs at least to the presentation of the formal side.

So much for the Aesthetic. We can now proceed to the Analytic, the philosophical importance of which is much greater. Kant's main contentions in this part of his work can be summed up in; two propositions: (i) human understanding contains certain a priori concepts, and on these are based certain non-empirical principles; (ii) these concepts are only general concepts of a phenomenal object, and therefore the principles in question are only prescriptive to sense-experience. As has already been said, interest in the first proposition has distracted attention from the fact that the important thing Kant has to say is contained in the second.

The object of the present article is to indicate where and how Gestalt psychology bears on the problems of the ethical philosopher. Unlike the other “schools” of psychology (Behaviourism, Freudianism, and Purposivism), Gestaltism has no obvious bearing on these problems; and yet, if we accept its fundamental tenet, it appears to carry important implications for ethical philosophy. This tenet concerns the primacy of totalities or wholes. I will begin with it, and then proceed to consider certain further principles of Gestalt which are of interest to the moralist.

In the October number of Philosophyx appears a very interesting article by Professor H. H. Price, entitled “Our Evidence for the Existence of Other Minds,” the main object of which is to formulate the grounds on which we (or I, as one should say at this stage) may claim logical justification for asserting that other minds exist. No attempt is made to “prove” the existence of other minds—an effort which is regarded as a wild-goose chase. Neither does Prof. Price seek to identify the actual process by which a particular mind accepts the existence of others as a fact; that, presumably, is a matter for the psychologist, and it may well turn out that the phenomena which give the conviction that other minds exist may vary from individual to individual and may often be logically unevidential. The object of the article, in short, is simply to state why it is reasonable to believe that other minds exist.