Bertrand Russell: The Analysis of Mind

11. LECTURE XI. GENERAL IDEAS AND THOUGHT (continued)

I think the view which I have been advocating, to the effect that a general idea is distinguished from a vague one by the presence of a judgment, is also that intended by Ribot when he says (op. cit., p. 92): "The generic image is never, the concept is always, a judgment. We know that for logicians (formerly at any rate) the concept is the simple and primitive element; next comes the judgment, uniting two or several concepts; then ratiocination, combining two or several judgments. For the psychologists, on the contrary, affirmation is the fundamental act; the concept is the result of judgment (explicit or implicit), of similarities with exclusion of differences."

A great deal of work professing to be experimental has been done in recent years on the psychology of thought. A good summary of such work up to the year agog is contained in Titchener's "Lectures on the Experimental Psychology of the Thought Processes" (1909). Three articles in the "Archiv fur die gesammte Psychologie" by Watt,* Messer** and Buhler*** contain a great deal of the material amassed by the methods which Titchener calls experimental.

* Henry J. Watt, "Experimentelle Beitrage zu einer Theorie des Denkens," vol. iv (1905) pp. 289-436.

** August Messer, "Experimentell-psychologische Untersuchu gen uber das Denken," vol. iii (1906), pp. 1-224.

*** Karl Buhler, "Uber Gedanken," vol. ix (1907), pp. 297-365.