Greetings,
Roger. I will answer your previous posting if you still feel there is a need after this, but here is
the crux of the matter and I hope I can get it across a bit better than I have so far. Tell me at
which point you think I have it wrong as I find it astonishing that this is not plainly obvious to
everybody. Perhaps I have gone completely mad.
We are discussing William James and Radical Empiricism here and I am stating that James' philosophy
presupposes human beings (and the human mind) for the following reason.
James is a psychologist. His philosophy was intended to illuminate the way in which human beings
relate to the world. His starting point (and premise) is that there are human beings who relate to
the world and everything he writes needs to be looked at in that context. James is not concerned
with how the world is ordered when humans are not present, or what the world was like 60 million
years ago before humans existed. What he means by 'pure experience' is pure human experience. His
essay you refer to could easily have been entitled, 'Does consciousness exist in the human being.'
Indeed his answer to that question is an emphatic, 'Yes,' with the case having been made that it
does not denote an entity but a function.
Throughout his essays he invites the reader to reflect upon his own experience in order to establish
his point. There is nothing outside of human experience in James' essays as human experience is what
they are about. Now if this doesn't mean that there have to be human beings with human brains having
pure experiences, which then become divided into knower and known, then I shall eat my hat.
So what is 'pure experience' made up of?
JAMES: "the answer is always the same: "It is made of that, of just what appears, of space, of
intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or what not." Shadworth Hodgson's analysis here leaves
nothing to be desired. Experience is only a collective name for all these sensible natures, and save
for time and space (and, if you like, for 'being') there appears no universal element of which all
things are made." (William James, "Does Consciousness Exist?", Chapter 1 in Essays in Radical
Empiricism. New York: Longman Green and Co (1912): 1-38.)
Look at that for a direct answer! Pure experience is made up of JUST WHAT APPEARS. A collective name
for all these SENSIBLE natures. James is talking about US and how WE experience. Save for time,
space and being, THERE APPEARS NO UNIVERSAL ELEMENT OF WHICH ALL THINGS ARE MADE!!!! (Quality fans
take careful note) It is made of THAT, but what is THAT?
JAMES: "The presentation, the experience, the that in short (for until we have decided what it is it
must be a mere that) is the last term of a train of sensations, emotions, decisions, movements,
classifications, expectations, etc., ending in the present, and the first term of a series of
similar 'inner' operations extending into the future, on the reader's part." (Ibid)
I repeat, ON THE READER'S PART!!
Pure experience is the presentation (to US). It is what WE are aware of before WE categorise it. It
is a train of emotions, sensations etc, in US. The 'that' or my preferred symbol, 'X.'
Is the point I am making too simple? All I am saying is that in Radical Empiricism WE ARE POSTULATED
FROM THE START. The premise is that I AM EXPERIENCING. It is MY PURE EXPERIENCE that James is
concerned with. James is concerned with the way I relate to the world. He is interesting in the way
mankind divides his pure experience.
Empiricism (radical or otherwise) itself is a METHOD by which humans seek to understand their
relationship with the universe. You can't have a method without a human being to undertake it. By
contrast, you demonstrably can have a universe without a human being - check the fossil record if
you don't believe me.
"Experiential verification is the sole pre-supposition," you say Roger. What on earth is doing the
verifying and having the experience??
Left field? Somebody tell me I haven't gone stark staring bonkers, please!
Struan
------------------------------------------
Struan Hellier
< mailto:struan@clara.co.uk>
"All our best activities involve desires which are disciplined and
purified in the process."
(Iris Murdoch)
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