Abstract

Our ancestors believed in many things which did not exist—gods, witches, the luminiferous ether, phlogiston, reincarnated souls, sense-data, conceptual analysis, and the like. But they had no better ways of coping with the irradiations beating down upon their sense organs. So they were justified in making assertions which did not bear those desirable relations to things in the world—relations like naming and truth—which we like to think are sustained by our own assertions. This fact brings out the difference between the results of rational, sincere and industrious inquiry on the one hand, and truth on the other. Our ancestors had all the former virtues, but somehow these did not suffice to get them in touch with reality. Since we can no longer dismiss them as blinded by prejudice, passion and superstition, we would like some philosophical way of explaining our superiority to them.