Sense data and the philosophy of mind: Russell, James, and Mach

Abstract

The theory of knowledge in early twentieth-century Anglo American philosophy was oriented toward phenomenally described cognition There was a healthy respect for the mind body problem, which meant that phenomena in both the mental and physical domain were taken sinuously Bertrand Russell's developing position on sense-data and momentary particulars drew upon, and ultimately became like, the neutral monism of Ernst Mach and William James Due to a more recent behaviorist and physicalist inspired "fear of the mental", this development has been down played in historical work on early analytic philosophy Such neglect as sumes that the "linguistic turn" is a proper and permanent effect of twentieth century philosophy, an assumption that distorts early analytic historiography, and begs a substantive philosophical question about thought and cognition.

Keywords

• Epistemology
• mind-body problem
• neutral monism
• perception
• psychology
• sense-data