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C. D. Broad

Charlie Dunbar Broad (30 December 1887 – 11 March 1971), professionally known as C. D. Broad, was an English philosopher whose career centered at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he advanced analytic philosophy through rigorous analysis in epistemology, metaphysics, and moral philosophy.^[1]^[2] Broad's early training in natural sciences informed his philosophical approach, leading to seminal critiques of scientific methodology and perception in works such as Perception, Physics, and Reality (1914) and Scientific Thought (1923), the latter challenging the justification of inductive reasoning from first principles.^[1] Appointed Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in 1933, he explored emergentism in The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), positing novel causal properties in complex systems without reducing mind to matter, and later examined time's structure in a "growing block" model emphasizing objective becoming.^[2]^[3] His methodical style and commitment to clarifying fundamental concepts earned him wide readership among both specialists and lay audiences, though his speculative inquiries into psychical phenomena, including survival after bodily death, reflected a cautious openness to empirical anomalies beyond materialist orthodoxy.^[4]^[5]

Life and Career

Early Life and Education

Charlie Dunbar Broad was born on 30 December 1887 in Harlesden, Middlesex, England, as the only child of middle-class parents in comfortable circumstances.^[6]^[1] He attended a preparatory boarding school before entering Dulwich College in 1900, where he remained until 1906.^[1]^[2] In 1906, Broad secured an entrance scholarship in natural sciences to Trinity College, Cambridge.^[2]^[7] There, he initially pursued the natural sciences tripos, achieving a first-class result in Part I in 1908, with a focus on physics and chemistry.^[8]^[9]^[7] Broad subsequently transferred to the moral sciences tripos, earning a first-class honors with distinction in Part II in 1910.^[8]^[9]^[7] During his undergraduate years, he was influenced by philosophers such as G. E. Moore and Bertrand Russell, whose lectures shaped his early analytical approach.^[7]

Academic Positions and Contributions to Institutions

Broad was elected a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1911, a position that marked the beginning of his long association with the institution.^[10]^[2] Concurrently, he served as assistant lecturer to G. F. Stout at the University of St Andrews in 1911.^[11] In 1914, he took up a lecturing role at Dundee, which was then affiliated with St Andrews, while balancing academic duties with wartime contributions.^[10]^[11] In 1920, Broad was appointed to the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Bristol, succeeding C. Lloyd Morgan, though he held the position for only two years before returning to Cambridge.^[11] Upon his return in 1923, he joined Trinity College as a College Lecturer and resumed active involvement in Cambridge's philosophical faculty.^[10]^[2] From 1926 to 1931, he served as Lecturer in Moral Sciences within the Faculty of Philosophy at Cambridge.^[2]^[11] Broad's seniority at Cambridge advanced with his appointment as Sidgwick Lecturer in 1931, a role he maintained until 1933.^[10]^[2] In 1933, he was elected to the Knightbridge Professorship of Moral Philosophy, one of the university's oldest endowed chairs in philosophy, which he occupied until his retirement in 1953.^[10]^[11]^[2] Through these positions, Broad contributed to Cambridge's institutional strength by supervising graduate students, delivering lectures that shaped analytic philosophy's development, and providing advisory support to Trinity College, including eventual bequests that aided its philosophical resources.^[2]

Personal Life and Death

Broad, born Charlie Dunbar Broad on December 30, 1887, in Harlesden, Middlesex, was the only child of middle-class parents.^[8] Upon taking up residence at Trinity College, Cambridge, he decided against marriage and adopted a fixed routine centered on lecturing, writing, and college life in rooms previously occupied by Isaac Newton.^[7] Broad remained unmarried throughout his life, maintaining a private existence devoted primarily to philosophical pursuits without family obligations or children.^[7] He continued residing at Trinity College after retirement, dying there on March 11, 1971, at age 83.^[2]

Philosophical Methodology

Distinction Between Critical and Speculative Philosophy

Broad characterized critical philosophy as the systematic analysis of general concepts, such as those of cause, number, place, and person, which are employed in scientific theories and ordinary thought but often remain vague or ambiguous.^[10] Its secondary task involves scrutinizing fundamental propositions, like the principle that every event has a cause, to assess their validity through logical examination and empirical evidence, thereby fostering incremental progress in conceptual precision.^[12] This approach, exemplified in Broad's own detailed critiques of predecessors such as David Hume's account of causation, prioritizes clarification over construction, rendering it a preparatory discipline amenable to verifiable advancement.^[10] In contrast, speculative philosophy seeks to integrate all facets of human experience—encompassing scientific observations, ethical intuitions, aesthetic perceptions, and religious insights—into a unified conception of Reality as a coherent whole.^[10] Broad viewed this enterprise as inherently conjectural, involving "guesses" about interconnections that must remain provisional and subject to revision as new data or analyses emerge, rather than yielding definitive truths.^[12] Unlike critical philosophy's focused dissections, speculative efforts demand a synoptic perspective, attempting to resolve apparent incoherences across domains, as Broad pursued in The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925) by hypothesizing emergent properties in the material world.^[10] Broad emphasized that speculative philosophy logically presupposes critical philosophy, as the latter's conceptual refinements supply the tools for the former's ambitious syntheses, while critical work occasionally draws on speculative assumptions for context.^[12] He advocated prioritizing critical methods for their reliability, cautioning against premature speculative leaps that risk incoherence without prior analytical groundwork, yet defended speculative inquiry as valuable for stimulating comprehensive hypotheses testable against experience.^[10] This distinction informed Broad's practice, as seen in his Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (1933–1938), where Volume I applied critical scrutiny to John McTaggart Ellis McTaggart's idealistic metaphysics by dissecting arguments and exposing logical flaws, deferring broader constructive alternatives.^[10]

Relations to Science and Empiricism

Broad's critical philosophy placed a premium on empirical data derived from sensory experience and scientific observation, forming the bedrock for analyzing concepts employed in everyday life and the natural sciences. He maintained that the primary task of philosophy is to dissect these empirically grounded beliefs, clarifying their implications and interrelations without presupposing unverified metaphysical commitments.^[10] This approach reflects an empiricist orientation, wherein knowledge claims must trace back to the "given" facts of perception and experimental results, as Broad argued in his methodological writings.^[10] For instance, he rejected dogmatic rationalism, insisting that philosophical inquiry commence with the unanalyzed data supplied by common sense and science, thereby ensuring propositions remain tethered to verifiable evidence rather than speculative conjecture.^[10] In works such as Perception, Physics, and Reality (published 1914), Broad interrogated the alignment between perceptual empiricism and physical theory, defending representational realism on the basis of sensory data like the visual sensa of objects, which he took as immediate empirical objects.^[10] His theory of perception posits sensa as the foundational elements of empirical knowledge, mediating between mind and external reality while demanding rigorous analysis to avoid illusions or misinterpretations inherent in unaided sense experience.^[10] This empiricist framework extended to his critique of causation, where he challenged purely regularity-based accounts prevalent in science, proposing instead a notion of contingent necessity that accommodates empirical patterns without reducing them to mere correlations.^[10] Broad's philosophy of science, detailed in Scientific Thought (1923), further illustrates his integration of empiricism with scientific practice. There, he dissected core concepts like induction and probability, asserting that scientific conclusions from empirical data are inherently probabilistic and liable to error if treated as deductive certainties.^[10] He examined measurement and functional relations in physics, emphasizing philosophy's role in elucidating the logical presuppositions of scientific methods without overriding their empirical autonomy.^[13] Broad viewed science and philosophy as mutually reinforcing, with the former providing raw empirical content and the latter offering analytical refinement; scientists neglecting philosophical critique, he warned, risk uncritical acceptance of flawed inductive inferences.^[10] This symbiotic relation underscores his causal realism, wherein empirical laws reveal underlying necessities emergent from observed regularities, as later explored in his emergentist metaphysics.^[10]

Approach to Metaphysical Inquiry

Broad viewed metaphysical inquiry as the domain of speculative philosophy, which seeks to frame a comprehensive hypothesis about the nature of Reality by integrating empirical data from sciences, introspective facts, ethical intuitions, and other human experiences that empirical methods alone cannot fully address.^[14] Unlike critical philosophy, which clarifies concepts and assumptions through logical analysis, speculative philosophy proceeds by constructing provisional theories that extend beyond observable phenomena, aiming to "save the appearances" while acknowledging their tentative status as educated guesses rather than deductive certainties.^[15] This approach presupposes prior critical examination to avoid conceptual confusions, ensuring that metaphysical hypotheses remain grounded in clarified empirical foundations.^[14] Key methods in Broad's speculative metaphysics include synopsis, whereby diverse experiential domains—such as perceptual variations, psychical phenomena, and scientific laws—are deliberately juxtaposed to reveal underlying patterns or anomalies; induction, generalizing from limited observations to broader principles, as in inferring compositional relations from artifacts to natural kinds; and analogy, drawing parallels between disparate realms like biological development and mechanical assembly to hypothesize structural similarities.^[14] Deduction follows to explore logical consequences of these hypotheses, while verification tests them against recalcitrant facts, such as apparent paranormal events that challenge materialist restrictions on causation.^[14] Broad emphasized that such methods must prioritize empirical consonance, treating metaphysics as an extension of scientific inquiry rather than a rival, with hypotheses like emergentism evaluated as empirical claims subject to future disconfirmation if reductive explanations emerge.^[14] Broad's metaphysical method was inherently cautious, rejecting dogmatic systems in favor of pluralistic classification schemes that outline possible theories—such as panpsychism, neutral monism, or dual-aspect views—without committing to one as ultimate truth, given the epistemic barriers to direct observation of fundamental realities.^[15] He advocated for "working hypotheses" that facilitate further inquiry, recognizing that speculative philosophy's value lies in its heuristic power to guide research into uncharted domains, like the mind-body relation, rather than in providing final answers.^[14] This realism about limitations stemmed from his commitment to causal and empirical constraints, insisting that metaphysical proposals retain compatibility with established science while probing its boundaries through indirect evidence and logical coherence.^[14]

Major Philosophical Positions

Epistemology and Theory of Perception

Broad's theory of perception centers on a representative realist framework, positing that perceivers are directly acquainted with sensa—momentary, particular phenomenal qualities or characters—rather than with physical objects themselves.^[16] These sensa, such as a specific instance of redness at a definite time and place, function as the immediate objects of sensory awareness, serving as intermediaries between the perceiver and the external world.^[16] In this view, outlined in detail in Chapter VIII of Scientific Thought (1923), sensa possess "simplicity of location" and are not analyzable into substances or events but are instead primitive, non-relational entities that ground perceptual experience.^[16] This act-object analysis distinguishes the act of sensing (a relational cognitive episode) from its objects (the sensa), rejecting both naive realism—which claims direct perception of material things—and idealism, which denies an independent physical reality.^[17] Broad argued that illusions and hallucinations demonstrate the need for sensa, as they reveal discrepancies between appearance and reality that direct realism cannot accommodate without ad hoc adjustments.^[17] Physical objects, by contrast, are complex structures inferred from patterns of sensa across multiple perceivers and contexts, with their existence and properties justified by inductive generalization rather than direct intuition.^[18] Epistemologically, Broad's approach establishes sensa as the foundational given in empirical knowledge, providing indubitable data from which broader claims about the world are constructed via critical philosophy's conceptual analysis.^[19] Knowledge of physical reality thus rests on a two-tier structure: direct apprehension of sensa yields certainty, while inference to unperceived objects introduces fallibility but is warranted by the uniformity of sensory patterns and the success of scientific predictions.^[19] In Perception, Physics, and Reality (1914), he contended that physical science describes functional correlations (e.g., between stimuli and responses) but cannot reveal intrinsic qualities, which sensa alone disclose, thereby limiting science's ontological claims while affirming perception's role in accessing the real.^[20] This framework anticipates responses to skepticism by emphasizing the reliability of memory and cross-verification among observers, though Broad acknowledged challenges in specifying the exact causal links between sensa and brain events.^[21]

Metaphysics and Emergentism

Broad developed his metaphysical framework around the concept of emergence, positing that certain complex wholes possess properties irreducible to the arrangements of their constituent parts, thereby challenging strict mechanistic reductionism. In his 1925 work The Mind and Its Place in Nature, he articulated British Emergentism as a middle path between panpsychism and pure materialism, arguing that higher-level phenomena, such as consciousness, arise from lower-level physical structures via unpredictable qualitative novelties that introduce novel causal laws.^[22] These emergent qualities, unlike "resultant" properties that follow deductively from the laws governing parts, defy precise prediction from subvenient bases, yet remain grounded in them without violating lower-level regularities.^[23] Broad's emergentism carried ontological weight, emphasizing that emergent features exercise downward causation, influencing lower strata in ways not derivable from mechanical summation alone—for instance, mental states exerting sui generis effects on bodily processes.^[3] He enumerated 17 possible relations between mental and physical events, favoring "emergent materialism" wherein the mental supervenes on spatio-temporal structures but harbors irreducible dispositions, such as sensory qualities, that evade physicalist assimilation.^[24] This view aligned with empirical science by accommodating observed biological complexities, like the transition from inorganic to organic matter, while rejecting vitalistic intrusions or idealistic denials of matter.^[25] In broader metaphysics, Broad's emergentism informed a hierarchical realism, envisioning nature as layered strata—mechanical, chemical, vital—each yielding unpredictable escalations, with mind at the apex as paradigmatically emergent.^[26] He critiqued alternative ontologies, dismissing panpsychism for conflating all qualities into experiential primitives and mechanism for failing to account for experiential irreducibility, thus grounding his position in first-hand analysis of perceptual data and scientific limits.^[10] Though speculative, Broad tempered emergentism with epistemic humility, acknowledging it as a hypothesis testable against future discoveries, yet metaphysically primitive in positing brute qualitative facts.^[27]

Philosophy of Time and Causation

Broad's philosophy of time evolved across his works, reflecting a shift from an eternalist perspective to a tensed theory emphasizing temporal becoming. In his early paper "Time" (1921), he endorsed a Russellian eternalism, maintaining that past, present, and future events are equally real and that distinctions among them are indexical rather than ontological, dismissing presentism as confused rhetoric.^[10] By 1923, in Scientific Thought, Broad advanced a growing block theory, positing that the past and present constitute a real, expanding block of existence, while the future remains wholly unreal—"nothing at all"—until events "become" present and are incorporated into the block, thereby accounting for the passage of time through absolute becoming rather than mere relational change.^[10] ^[28] This view reconciled empirical observations of temporal flow with metaphysical realism about the past, critiquing both pure presentism (for ignoring memory and historical evidence) and full eternalism (for failing to capture genuine novelty and directionality). In later reflections, such as his 1959 paper "Osteological Nominalism," Broad reinforced absolute becoming as time's primitive feature, where successive phases supersede one another without coexisting in a static manifold.^[10] Broad engaged deeply with J. M. E. McTaggart's arguments for the unreality of time in Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (1933–1938), rejecting McTaggart's idealistic conclusion that temporal relations are contradictory while affirming the A-series (tensed distinctions of past, present, and future) as irreducible to the B-series (tenseless "earlier-than" relations). He argued that McTaggart's paradox arises from misapplying atemporal logic to inherently tensed reality, defending time's objective existence against idealist dissolution, though he conceded challenges in reconciling it with special relativity's block-like spacetime, which he viewed skeptically as descriptive rather than ontologically prescriptive.^[10] Broad's temporal ontology emphasized the specious present—a durationally extended "now" informed by perception—distinguishing phenomenal experience from the objective progression of events, and he linked this to causation by suggesting that the future's openness enables genuine causal efficacy unbound by prior total determination.^[10] Regarding causation, Broad rejected David Hume's regularity account, insisting that true causal relations involve contingent necessities beyond mere constant conjunctions or logical entailments, as explored in Scientific Thought where he analyzed causation within scientific induction and the uniformity of nature.^[10] He required a principle of natural kinds to ground causal laws, arguing that without such structures, empirical generalizations (e.g., "all ravens are black") lack predictive force, tying causation to emergent properties and probabilistic regularities rather than strict determinism.^[10] In his 1934 lecture "Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism," Broad defined determinism as every event having a total cause that exhaustively determines its occurrence and explored its implications, proposing "non-occurrent causation" as a potential libertarian mechanism where agents initiate causal chains without prior events fully specifying outcomes, akin to a probabilistic break in deterministic sequences.^[3] ^[10] However, he ultimately deemed agent-causation incoherent, questioning how a timeless substance could determine dated events ("How could an event possibly be determined to happen at a certain date if its total cause contained no factor to which the notion of date has any application?"), leading to a pessimistic stance that viable indeterminism eludes us, rendering libertarian free will untenable under either determinism or its negation.^[10] This intersected with his temporal views, as the future's indeterminacy (in the growing block) might permit causal openness, yet Broad maintained that scientific evidence favors causal closure without substantive gaps for uncaused agency.^[10]

Free Will and Ethical Implications

Broad's examination of free will centered on its compatibility with determinism and indeterminism, primarily in his 1934 inaugural lecture Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism. He defined determinism as the thesis that every event, including human actions, is fully determined by the complete state of the universe at any prior time conjoined with unchanging laws of nature. Indeterminism, by contrast, posits that some events lack such complete determination by prior occurrences. Libertarianism, which Broad associated with genuine free will necessary for moral responsibility, requires that certain voluntary actions be causally determined not by temporal antecedents but by the agent as a enduring substance through "non-occurrent causation"—a form of influence from the self as a continuant rather than transient events.^[10]^[29] Broad rejected determinism on the grounds that it eliminates categorical obligability, the sense in which an agent could have done otherwise independently of hypothetical conditional facts about their character or motivations; under determinism, actions are inevitable given the past, rendering moral praise or blame incoherent. He deemed indeterminism metaphysically possible, as quantum mechanics suggested events not fully predictable from prior states, but insufficient for free will, since mere chance or randomness in brain events would not confer rational control or responsibility to the agent—it would merely introduce caprice without agency. Libertarianism faced his strongest critique: non-occurrent causation by the self proves unintelligible, as efforts of will are themselves events that demand occurrent (event-based) causes, leading to an infinite regress or contradiction with the event-series model of causation; thus, Broad concluded libertarianism is impossible.^[10]^[29] These views carried profound ethical implications, particularly for moral responsibility, which Broad tied to the principle that "ought implies can" in a robust, non-hypothetical sense—requiring actions to be substitutable at will without full determination by prior events. If libertarian free will is unattainable, genuine moral responsibility appears illusory, challenging ethical systems reliant on desert-based praise, blame, or retribution; for instance, punishing wrongdoers under determinism or indeterminism without libertarian agency reduces to mere consequentialism without retributive justice. In his broader ethical writings, such as Five Types of Ethical Theory (1930), Broad analyzed intuitionist and consequentialist frameworks (e.g., those of Butler and Sidgwick) without resolving the free will dilemma, implying that ethical theory must confront the potential delusory nature of retributive attitudes while preserving prima facie duties through non-naturalist intuitions. This "free will pessimism" underscores a tension in ethics between empirical causation and normative demands, suggesting moral discourse may rest on unverifiable metaphysical assumptions.^[10]^[29]

Engagement with Psychical Research

Broad joined the Society for Psychical Research in 1920, following the tradition of earlier Cambridge philosophers like Henry Sidgwick and Frederic Myers, and later served as its president in 1935 and again in 1958.^[8]^[30] His involvement reflected a broader interest in using empirical investigation of purported paranormal phenomena—such as telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and postmortem survival—to test philosophical theories of mind, time, and causation.^[31] Broad maintained a rigorously analytical stance, insisting that claims required repeatable, high-quality evidence akin to scientific standards before philosophical acceptance, while dismissing weaker cases like psychokinesis due to insufficient data.^[5] In his 1925 monograph Mind and Its Place in Nature, Broad integrated psychical research into his emergentist metaphysics by hypothesizing a "psychic factor" in human nature—a non-physical component potentially capable of surviving bodily death and interacting with the living via telepathy or apparitions.^[30] He argued that reliable evidence for extrasensory perception (ESP) would challenge reductive materialism, as it implied direct mind-to-mind causation without physical mediation, and precognition would undermine unidirectional time and standard causal principles by suggesting future events could influence the present.^[31] To frame such phenomena, Broad introduced "basic limiting principles" (BLPs)—fundamental assumptions about space, time, and causation that normal experience upholds but psi ostensibly violates—emphasizing that their empirical refutation would necessitate revising core philosophical doctrines.^[5] Broad's later contributions included the 1953 collection Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research, compiling essays on topics like the philosophical import of ESP and survival, and his 1959–1960 Perrott Lectures at Cambridge, published as Lectures on Psychical Research in 1962.^[5] These works examined historical SPR cases, such as spontaneous hallucinations and mediumship, applying probabilistic analysis to assess veridicality while critiquing methodological flaws in early investigations.^[30] On precognition, influenced by John William Dunne's dream records, Broad proposed a "hypertime" model positing multiple temporal dimensions to reconcile apparent retrocausation with causality, though he stressed this as speculative pending stronger experimental confirmation.^[30] Overall, Broad viewed psychical research not as endorsing mysticism but as a potential empirical corrective to philosophy, capable of falsifying untenable positions if data proved robust.^[31]

Reception, Criticisms, and Influence

Initial Reception Among Peers

Broad's early monograph Perception, Physics, and Reality (1914) elicited engagement from Bertrand Russell, who provided a detailed review in Mind in October 1918, analyzing its arguments on the relation between physical science and perceptual knowledge.^[32] This review highlighted Broad's systematic approach to epistemological issues, marking an early acknowledgment of his contributions within analytic circles at Cambridge. The publication of Scientific Thought (1923), a comprehensive examination of scientific concepts amid recent physical developments, prompted further peer scrutiny. Russell reviewed it in the Mathematical Gazette in October 1923, underscoring its philosophical significance for understanding foundational scientific ideas.^[33] Additionally, Dorothy M. Wrinch offered a critical assessment in Mind in April 1924, evaluating its treatment of induction and physical theory, which reflected Broad's rising profile among epistemologists and philosophers of science.^[34] Broad's The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925) solidified his reputation for analytical precision. A contemporary review noted that Broad, as a Cambridge lecturer, was already "well-known in scientific and philosophic circles for his clear thinking and lucid exposition," commending the work's thorough dissection of mind-body problems and emergentist views.^[35] These responses from established figures like Russell indicated broad respect for Broad's methodical style, though his speculative elements occasionally diverged from more empiricist leanings among peers, fostering ongoing debate rather than outright dismissal.

Key Criticisms and Debates

Broad's emergentism, which posits that certain complex wholes possess properties unpredictable from their parts' physical and chemical behaviors, was criticized for introducing "occult" qualities without sufficient empirical warrant, potentially halting scientific inquiry into reductionist explanations.^[10] Jaegwon Kim, in a 2006 analysis, contended that Broad's framework fails to resolve the causal exclusion problem, as emergent mental properties cannot downwardly cause physical events without violating the causal closure of physics or rendering such causation epiphenomenal.^[36] Post-1930s developments in quantum mechanics and molecular biology further eroded support for Broad's position by revealing lawful regularities in systems once deemed irreducibly novel, such as chemical bonds and neural firings.^[37] Debates surrounding Broad's philosophy of time center on apparent inconsistencies across his oeuvre: his 1921 endorsement of Russellian eternalism, where past, present, and future coexist tenselessly, contrasted with later suggestions in works like Examinations of McTaggart's Philosophy (1933) of a growing block model incorporating precognitive phenomena, implying future contingents and retroactive influences.^[10] L. Nathan Oaklander argues that these shifts reflect unresolved tensions between Broad's commitment to causal determinism and his openness to time-symmetric causation inspired by J. W. Dunne's dream experiments, challenging the coherence of his rejection of absolute becoming.^[38] Critics like Michael Tooley have questioned whether Broad's later views adequately address McTaggart's unreality-of-time argument without lapsing into idealism.^[28] Broad's advocacy for psychical research as philosophically relevant—evidenced in his 1953 Tarner Lectures defending the empirical testability of telepathy, clairvoyance, and postmortem survival—provoked accusations of methodological laxity from logical positivists, who viewed such inquiries as pseudoscientific distractions from verifiable propositions.^[39] H. H. Price, a contemporary, shared Broad's interest but faced broader analytic dismissal, with figures like Rudolf Carnap deeming parapsychology extraneous to core philosophical problems due to its reliance on anecdotal evidence over controlled replication.^[30] Broad countered that verified psi phenomena would falsify materialist reductions of mind, though skeptics highlighted evidential weaknesses, such as experimenter bias in mediumship studies he cited approvingly.^[5] In epistemology, Broad's sense-datum theory of perception, positing private qualia as intermediaries between mind and object, drew fire for engendering skepticism: if data are epistemically prior yet distinct from external realities, knowledge of the latter becomes inferential and dubitable.^[40] Gilbert Ryle, in The Concept of Mind (1949), implicitly critiqued such dualistic intermediaries as category mistakes fostering Cartesian errors, favoring behavioral analyses over Broad's "qualified particular" ontology.^[41] Later direct realists like J. L. Austin argued that sense-data multiply entities unnecessarily, privileging ordinary language descriptions of seeing over Broad's 1925 representationalism.^[42]

Long-Term Influence and Recent Scholarship

Broad's emergentist framework, articulated in The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), has exerted enduring influence on debates in philosophy of mind and science, particularly through its distinction between resultant and non-resultant properties, which prefigures contemporary discussions of irreducible higher-level phenomena without invoking vitalism.^[3] This approach impacted mid-20th-century philosophers grappling with reductionism, such as those exploring consciousness as an emergent feature of physical systems rather than strictly derivable from lower-level laws.^[43] British emergentism, reaching maturity in Broad's work, provided a conceptual bridge between mechanistic materialism and holistic accounts of nature, informing later theories in complexity science and non-reductive physicalism.^[44] In the philosophy of time, Broad's analysis of temporal passage—positing a "growing block" where past and present events exist but the future remains indeterminate—has shaped ongoing analytic metaphysics, influencing distinctions between A-series ( tensed) and B-series (tenseless) time and critiques of eternalism.^[45] His cautious engagement with precognition and causality in psychical contexts extended this temporal ontology, challenging strict determinism and prompting reevaluations of probabilistic causation in quantum-influenced interpretations.^[46] These ideas resonated in ethical philosophy, where Broad's compatibilist leanings on free will, tied to emergent novelty, informed mid-century debates on moral responsibility amid scientific advances. Recent scholarship has revived interest in Broad's metaphysics amid renewed focus on process ontologies and trope theory, with analyses framing his reduction of things to processes as a precursor to dynamic mereotopologies in contemporary ontology.^[46] A 2025 study examines Broad's treatment of precognitions in relation to John William Dunne's serialism, highlighting underexplored links between his temporal emergentism and parapsychological evidence, while noting gaps in prior time-focused monographs that overlook psychical dimensions.^[45] Emergentism reconsiderations, including 2017 arguments decoupling emergence from downward causation, draw on Broad to defend direct causal efficacy of novel properties, applying his schema to modern neuroscience and systems biology.^[43] These works underscore Broad's role in countering reductive scientism, though quantitative citation analyses rank his overall impact modestly among 20th-century figures.^[47]

Principal Works

Early Works on Perception and Mind

Broad's inaugural book, Perception, Physics, and Reality (1914), derived from his Trinity College fellowship dissertation, systematically examined the epistemological limits of physical science in revealing the nature of reality through human perception.^[10] In it, Broad contended that sensory experiences furnish indirect evidence about physical objects, constrained by the representational character of perception rather than granting unmediated access to the external world.^[20] He dissected the physical sciences' reliance on perceptual data, arguing that while such data underpin empirical theories, they cannot conclusively determine whether reality consists solely of physical entities or admits non-physical elements, as perceptions themselves may involve intermediary phenomena beyond strict physicalism.^[10] Central to Broad's early perceptual theory was a critique of naïve realism, the commonsense view positing direct perceptual acquaintance with mind-independent physical objects possessing ordinary sensible qualities.^[10] He invoked standard arguments from perceptual illusions—such as a circular coin appearing elliptical from an oblique angle—and hallucinations to demonstrate that perceivers are not immediately aware of the objects' intrinsic properties but rather of perspectival appearances that conflict with those properties under normal conditions.^[10] To resolve this, Broad adopted an act-object analysis of sensing, distinguishing the mental act of sensing from its object: the latter comprises sensa, momentary, particular entities exemplifying phenomenal qualities (e.g., a specific elliptical visual sensum) that causally relate to physical stimuli without being identical to them or reducible to mental states.^[10] Sensa, on this account, function as neutral intermediaries, neither purely physical nor mental, preserving the intentional directedness of perception while accommodating error cases.^[17] In subsequent early writings, such as the 1921 paper "The External World" and Scientific Thought (1923), Broad extended these ideas to broader epistemological concerns, integrating perception with scientific induction and the justification of beliefs about unobserved realities.^[10] Scientific Thought scrutinized how perceptual foundations inform concepts like space, time, and causality in physics, emphasizing probabilistic inference over deductive certainty in deriving theoretical entities from sensory evidence.^[48] These works laid groundwork for Broad's philosophy of mind by framing consciousness as involving sensory acts oriented toward such sensa, prefiguring his later emergentist dualism without yet fully articulating mental causation or psychical relations.^[10] Broad's approach prioritized phenomenological description and logical analysis, eschewing dogmatic materialism while subjecting rival theories—like Berkeleyan idealism or Lockean representationalism—to rigorous scrutiny for inconsistencies in handling veridical versus non-veridical cases.^[49]

Major Systematic Treatises

Broad's Scientific Thought, published in 1923, represents a comprehensive philosophical examination of foundational concepts in physics and the special sciences, including sensation, perception, matter, space, time, and induction.^[13] Drawing from lectures delivered at Trinity College, Cambridge, the work critiques naive realism and phenomenalism while developing a critical realist framework for scientific knowledge, emphasizing the role of probability in inductive reasoning.^[10] Broad here rejects his earlier endorsement of eternalism in time, proposing instead a view that accommodates temporal becoming alongside relational theories of space and time derived from Einstein's relativity.^[10] In The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925), Broad systematically addresses the metaphysics of mind-body relations, evaluating mechanism, vitalism, and panpsychism through a lens of "enlightened common sense."^[50] The treatise argues for emergentism, positing that mental phenomena arise as novel properties from complex physical systems without reducing to them, thus avoiding both reductive materialism and dualistic interactionism.^[10] Broad critiques traditional substance dualism and introduces a qualified panpsychist emergentism, where "emergent" qualities supervene on physical bases in unpredictable ways, influencing later debates in philosophy of mind.^[50] Broad's Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy (Volume I, 1933; subsequent volumes in 1938) offers a methodical critique of J. M. E. McTaggart's idealist system in The Nature of Existence, focusing on ontology, substance, and relations. Employing analytical techniques, Broad defends a realist alternative to McTaggart's absolute idealism, rejecting the unreality of time and the denial of material substances while conceding certain logical insights into describing reality.^[10] The work spans metaphysics and epistemology, systematically dismantling McTaggart's arguments for a timeless, spiritual monadology through detailed logical analysis.

Later Essays and Reviews

Broad's later scholarly output shifted toward essays, critical reviews, and lecture series rather than comprehensive monographs, allowing focused critiques of emerging theories in induction, probability, ethics, and psychical phenomena. These pieces, often published in journals such as Mind, Philosophy, and Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, exemplified his method of dissecting arguments through logical analysis and empirical scrutiny, frequently spanning multiple installments for thoroughness. For example, his 1944 three-part examination of Georg Henrik von Wright's The Logical Problem of Induction challenged the author's formalist approach by questioning its handling of evidential support and inductive ampliative inference, arguing that probability assignments require stricter constraints from observed regularities.^[51] Similarly, in 1946, "Some of the Main Problems of Ethics" outlined deontological and consequentialist tensions without endorsing a unified system, emphasizing unresolved puzzles in moral obligation and motivation.^[51] Broad's reviews of contemporaries' works provided incisive evaluations, blending praise for rigor with pointed objections. His 1947 assessment of Bertrand Russell's A History of Western Philosophy commended its historical breadth but critiqued selective emphases on logical atomism at the expense of metaphysical alternatives.^[51] Obituaries and notices, such as those for Alfred North Whitehead (1948) and G. F. Stout (1945), highlighted influences on his own emergentist views while noting limitations in their idealistic leanings.^[51] In psychical research, essays like "The Relevance of Psychical Research to Philosophy" (1949) defended its philosophical import by proposing "basic limiting principles"—empirical barriers to paranormal claims that could be tested against ostensible evidence, such as precognition experiments—without committing to survival after death.^[51] ^[10] Selected essays were compiled into volumes that underscored thematic continuities. Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research (1953) gathered pieces probing the compatibility of paranormal data with materialism and theism, advocating cautious openness to phenomena like telepathy as potential challenges to causal closure.^[52] Lectures on Psychical Research (1962), drawn from 1959–1960 Cambridge addresses, systematically applied these limiting principles to mediumship and apparitions, concluding that some evidence warranted rejecting strict physicalism if replicable under controls.^[10] Induction, Probability, and Causation: Selected Papers (1969) anthologized writings on probabilistic inference, critiquing Humean skepticism by integrating frequency interpretations with causal asymmetries, as in his analysis of spatiotemporal continuity as a non-inductive precondition for lawful expectations.^[53] Posthumously edited collections preserved his ethical engagements. Broad’s Critical Essays in Moral Philosophy (1971) assembled reviews and analyses of intuitionism, utilitarianism, and egoism, tracing influences from G. E. Moore and Prichard while faulting their neglect of psychological realism in duty concepts.^[52] These later contributions reinforced Broad's reputation for unflinching clarity, prioritizing logical consistency over speculative synthesis, though they drew occasional criticism for overemphasizing formal critique at the expense of constructive alternatives.^[10]

References

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Papers of C. D. Broad, Part I - archives.trin.cam.ac.uk
Charlie Dunbar Broad was born on 30 Dec 1887 at Harlesden in Middlesex. After boarding at a preparatory school, he went in 1900 to Dulwich College and in 1906 ...
[2]
Charlie Dunbar Broad - Trinity College Chapel
Charlie Dunbar Broad. C.D. Broad 1887-1971. Professor of Moral Philosophy. Epistemologist, historian of philosophy, philosopher of science, moral philosopher ...
[3]
C. D. Broad - The Information Philosopher
Information Philosopher is dedicated to the new Information Philosophy, with explanations for Freedom, Values, and Knowledge.Missing: biography | Show results with:biography
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C.D. Broad | Library of Living Philosophers | SIU
Broad has wrought his own views in ethics, theory of knowledge and metaphysics. An admirable stylist, he is read by the intelligent layman as well as by the ...Missing: biography | Show results with:biography
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CD Broad - Psi Encyclopedia
Aug 20, 2016 · Charlie Dunbar Broad spent most of his professional career at Trinity College, Cambridge. As the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes ...
[6]
Broad, Charlie Dunbar (1887–1971) - Encyclopedia.com
Charlie Dunbar Broad, the English epistemologist, historian of philosophy, moral philosopher, philosopher of science, and writer on the philosophical ...
[7]
Cambridge Philosophers Viii: C. D. Broad | Philosophy
Jan 30, 2009 · 1900 Enters Dulwich College; 1906 Entrance Scholar in Natural Sciences, Trinity College, Cambridge; 1908 Natural Sciences Tripos, Part I ...
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Papers of C. D. Broad, Part I - Archives Hub
In 1908 Broad was placed in the first class in Part I of the Natural Science tripos; he then switched to Moral Sciences and in 1910 gained a first with ...Missing: studies | Show results with:studies
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Papers of C. D. Broad, Part II - archives.trin.cam.ac.uk
In 1908 Broad was placed in the first class in Part I of the Natural Science tripos; he then switched to Moral Sciences and in 1910 gained a first with ...
[10]
Charlie Dunbar Broad - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Sep 3, 2010 · Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887–1971) was an English philosopher who for the most part of his life was associated with Trinity College, Cambridge.
[11]
Broad, Charlie Dunbar (1887-1971), philosopher
Charlie Dunbar Broad was born on 30 Dec 1887 at Harlesden in Middlesex. After boarding at a preparatory school, he went in 1900 to Dulwich College and in 1906 ...Missing: family | Show results with:family
[12]
The WSCR Archive: C.D. Broad: "Critical and Speculative Philosophy"
The great merit of Idealism is that it really has tried to do justice to the social, ethical, aesthetic, and religious facts of the world. The great merit of ...
[13]
Scientific Thought | A Philosophical Analysis of some of its fundament
Jun 23, 2014 · Originally published in 1923, this study offers a philosophical analysis of some of science's fundamental concepts and is ultimately based on a ...Missing: empiricism | Show results with:empiricism
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SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY - DiText
SOME METHODS OF SPECULATIVE PHILOSOPHY. By Professor C. D. Broad. Published in Aristotelian Society Supplement 21 (1947): 1-32. Examples of Synopsis. Problem ...
[15]
None
### Summary of C. D. Broad's Views on Critical and Speculative Philosophy
[16]
Theory of Sensa - DiText
C. D. Broad, Scientific Thought , 1923. CHAPTER VIII. "JACK. -- That, my dear Algy, is the whole truth, pure and simple. "ALGERNON. -- The truth is rarely ...
[17]
[PDF] On C.D. Broad's Sensa
Abstract. The purpose of this paper is to critically examine Broad's sensum theory. I begin by explaining why Broad introduced the sensum theory.<|separator|>
[18]
[PDF] A Critical Analysis of C D Broad's Theory of Perception
C D Broad's Theory of ... Thus, for example, the common-sense or 'naive realist' position might be described as the theory that sense-data (excluding, of.
[19]
Empirical & A Priori Elements in C. D. Broad's Theory of Knowledge
A detailed Sellarsian critique of C. D. Broad's concept empiricism, with an appended chart of Turnbull's nomenclature (by krw).
[20]
C. D. Broad, Perception, physics, and reality - PhilPapers
C. D. Broad, Perception, Physics, and Reality. [REVIEW]A. Wolf - 1914 - ; BROAD, C. D. - Perception, Physics, and Reality, etc. [REVIEW]B. Russell - 1918 - ...
[21]
Sense-perception and matter : a critical analysis of C. D. Broad's ...
Aug 12, 2019 · Sense-perception and matter : a critical analysis of C. D. Broad's theory of perception ... Mind and its place in nature, Sense data.<|separator|>
[22]
Emergent Properties - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Aug 10, 2020 · Finally, British Emergentism reaches its most developed form in C. D. Broad's (see entry) The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925). Broad ...Ontological Emergence... · Strong Emergence · Weak vs. Strong Emergence...
[23]
The Philosophical Complaint against Emergence
The rough idea behind emergentism seems to be the denial of the general principle that the whole can be fully explained in terms of the parts.
[24]
Does C.D. Broad's 17 mind-body relations exhaust the possibilities ...
Before addressing whether Broad's taxonomy truly exhausts all possibilities and whether emergent materialism is the “best” metaphysical solution, here is a ...
[25]
C. D. Broad, Mechanism and emergentism - PhilPapers
C. D. Broad in 20th Century Philosophy · Concepts of Emergence in Metaphysics · Mechanistic Explanation in General Philosophy of Science · Mental Causation, ...
[26]
Naturalism and the Metaphysics of Emergence
... metaphysics and the philosophy of science. ... Things get solved, you know?» I do not know whether or not Lieutenant Snow obtained the idea from C. D. Broad's ...
[27]
Emergence | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
A property is emergent if it is a novel property of a system or an entity that arises when that system or entity has reached a certain level of complexity.The British Emergentists · D. Broad · Later Emergentism · Kinds of Emergence
[28]
Roots of C. D. Broad's Growing Block Theory of Time | Mind
Oct 3, 2017 · The growing block view of time holds that the past and present are real whilst the future is unreal; as future events become present and real, they are added ...Introduction · Early twentieth century idealist... · Broad and the growing block...
[29]
Determinism, Indeterminism, and Libertarianism - Ditext
Such a term may be called the "causal progenitor" of such a series. If Determinism be true, every event has causal ancestors, and therefore are no causal ...
[30]
When psychical research and analytic philosophy shared Cambridge
Mar 14, 2025 · There is no better example of the symbiosis of academic philosophy and psychical research than C D Broad. Charlie Dunbar Broad (1887-1971) ...
[31]
The Relevance of Psychical Research to Philosophy
I will begin this paper by stating in rough outline what I consider to be the relevance of psychical research to philosophy.
[32]
[REVIEW OF C.D.BROAD, perception, physics, and reality] | Russell ...
Item Type Journal Article · Title. [REVIEW OF C.D.BROAD, perception, physics, and reality] · Author. Russell, Bertrand · Publication. Mind, 27 (Oct. 1918):492- 8.
[33]
Articles - 1895-1930 - The Bertrand Russell Society - Drew
... Review of Hu Shih, The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China. Review of C.D. Broad, Scientific Thought, Mathematical Gazette 11 (Oct 1923), 395-9.
[34]
Scientific Thought - CD Broad - PhilPapers
Sep 28, 2024 · BROAD, C. D. - Scientific Thought. [REVIEW]D. M. Wrinch - 1924 - Mind 33:184. The evolution of scientific thought from Newton to Einstein.A ...
[35]
The Mind and Its Place in Nature
By C. D.. Broad, M.A., Litt.D. London: Kegan Paul. 1925. 16s. DR. C. D. BROAD is a Cambridge Professor who is well-known in scientific and philosophic ...
[36]
Reduction and Emergence : A Critique of Kim - DiVA portal
Nov 2, 2009 · In a recent critique of the doctrine of emergentism championed by its classic advocates up to C. D. Broad, Jaegwon Kim (Philosophical Studies ...<|separator|>
[37]
[PDF] Emergence, Mental Causation, and Exclusion
The work of C.D. Broad is generally considered the peak of British Emergentism, ... criticized, but it was not philosophical criticism that pushed emergentism ...
[38]
C. D. Broad's Philosophy of Time - 1st Edition - L. Nathan Oaklander
Free deliveryIn this study, Oaklander's primary aim is to examine critically C.D. Broad's changing views of time and in so doing clarify the central disputes in the ...
[39]
THE RELEVANCE OF PSYCHICAL RESEARCH TO PHILOSOPHY
Reprinted in C. D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy and Psychical Research ... Some of these experiments are open to one or another of various kinds of criticism ...
[40]
C. D. Broad's Ontology of Mind - Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
Oct 3, 2006 · C. D. Broad's philosophical interests were enormously wide-ranging. He made important contributions to the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of ...Missing: key | Show results with:key
[41]
The Philosophy of C. D. Broad - jstor
THE Schilpp volume on C. D. Broad was published nine years ago. If it has ... when he distinguished Critical Philosophy from Speculative Philosophy in ...
[42]
C. D. Broad - DiText
C. D. Broad (1887- ), Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, and Knightbridge Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Cambridge, has been for the ...Missing: biography | Show results with:biography
[43]
[PDF] Emergentism Reconsidered - ScholarWorks@CWU
Sep 7, 2017 · Abstract. This paper argues that emergentism is not committed to downward causation but of direct causation.
[44]
The Rise and Fall of British Emergentism | Emergence
This chapter examines the special sciences found in the texts of a tradition known as “British Emergentism,” which is still evident in the works of current ...<|control11|><|separator|>
[45]
C. D. Broad on Precognitions and John William Dunne - Project MUSE
Feb 4, 2025 · Broad later became interested in poltergeists, telekinesis, telepathy, trance-mediumship, out-of-body experiences, and survival after death.
[46]
[PDF] CD Broad on Things and Processes: A Process Ontology of Tropes
In Examination of McTaggart's Philosophy, C.D. Broad advanced a distinctive ontology of things and processes. He argues that neither things nor processes are.
[47]
C. D. Broad: The Default Philosopher of the Century - DiText
Aug 12, 1998 · In ethics, Broad regarded Henry Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics to be the most sophisticated dialectical presentation to date, and he tried to ...
[48]
Scientific Thought - DiText
Scientific Thought. by C. D. BROAD, M.A., LITT. D. Sometimes Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge Professor of Philosophy in the University of Bristol
[49]
C. D. BROAD, SOME ELEMENTARY REFLEXIONS ON SENSE ...
"Sense-perception" is a technical term (and, I hasten to add, none the worse for that) used by philosophers and psychologists to cover the experiences which we ...
[50]
The Mind and its Place in Nature - 1st Edition - C.D. Broad - Routledge
In stock Free deliveryThis text looks at alternative theories of life and mind at the level of enlightened common-sense; the Mind's knowledge of Existents and the Unconscious.
[51]
Writings of C. D. Broad - DiText
1914 Perception, Physics and Reality; An Enquiry into the Information that Physical Science can Supply about the Real (Cambridge University Press, 1914).
[52]
C. D. Broad: a bibliography | Pablo's miscellany
May 28, 2013 · This bibliography is based on (1) C. Lewy's 'Writings of CD Broad, to the end of July 1959', in Paul A. Schilpp (ed.) The philosophy of CD Broad.
[53]
Induction, Probability, and Causation - Book - SpringerLink
Free delivery 14-day returnsBook Title: Induction, Probability, and Causation. Authors: C. D. Broad. Series Title: Synthese Library. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1868-4.