About James's RADICAL EMPIRICISM dmb said: In “A World of Pure Experience” James lays out the rules of his empiricism. “To be radical, an empiricism must neither admit into its constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude from them any element that is directly experienced”, he says, and “a real place must be found for every kind of thing experienced, whether term or relation” (PCAP 182). This doctrine seems exceptional in its even-handedness and there is an elegant symmetry to its demand that nothing be ignored nor left out. It almost seems innocent and yet it serves as a direct attack on his determinist and idealist rivals almost as soon as it is introduced.
DM replied: Not that obvious how it challenges idealism to me, you can't accuse Hegel of leaving anything out! dmb says: These would be the accusations of William James. He accuses idealism of adding stuff by treating abstractions as if they were ontological realities rather than tools. I think Pirsig makes it pretty clear that this is why he rejects the comparison with Hegel (made by those deep thinkers over at Psychology Today) and accepts the comparison to James's radical empiricism instead. dmb continued: “Throughout the history of philosophy the subject and its object have been treated as absolutely discontinuous entities” and this gap “has assumed a paradoxical character which all sorts of theories had to be invented to overcome” (PCAP 184). Here he complains that the empiricists have been ignoring certain experiences in their constructions, namely the continuity of experience. His other rivals, the idealists, are guilty of trying to plug this gap by giving reality to abstractions that are aren’t found in experience. DM replied: Such as? Do not idealist refer to aspects of experience that materialists and positivists try to dismiss as secondary or epiphenomenal. I think the problems with idealism are somewhat different than you are suggesting. dmb replies to these replies: I suppose Hegel's Absolute (and similar Gods) would be the quintessential example of a fictional metaphysical addition. Also, please notice the quotation marks. The problems with idealism identified here are the problems that concern James. (The "Quintessence" is the fifth element, that unknown metaphysical reality that lies behind the four physical elements.) DM said: Not adding anything to experience seems a bit problematic to me. Because anything we might imagine, think, conceive, etc, is also experience and also real. If I imagine an orange elephant with green spots that is an aspect of my imaginative possibilities of experience. Is there such an elephant anywhere in the cosmos? Probably not. But if there is such an elephant in a UFO travelling to earth as we speak and then turns up for us to see, smell, hear and maybe ride, then such an elephant would be an actual elephant that can be experienced as such. Clearly we need a distinction between what is experienced in imagination and thought and what can be experienced as actual. I wonder if James' worry about adding things to experience is confusing the actual with the experienced? Of course what is only imagined and latter becomes actual can be very important, just take Einstein's ideas about relativity before he got round to putting them to paper. dmb says: Radical Empiricism doesn't deny the power of imagination, the usefulness of abstractions or the formulation of scientific theories. But until your colorful elephant lands and gets out of that UFO, we're not allowed to include it in our philosophical accounts. And its a good thing too. Einstein's mathematical efforts were checkable by mathematicians but most scientists also saw that the theory had to be tested by an actual experiment. As you know, one was finally devised and Einstein's theory was put to the test. But how does one test for the existence of an Absolute Spirit? Plato's Forms? Orange elephants with green spots or the space ship that carries it? Western Philosophy is apparently full of such untestible nonsense. And it looks like these fictions are almost always abstractions from life which are then given as the cause of that life from which it was abstracted.... DM said: Sure you threw your rattle out of your cot when I suggested that possibilties are real a couple of months ago. But hey, you are getting there. dmb says: Getting there? Hardly. I think your notion of possibilities as real is just one more case of treating abstractions as real entities. I think it confuses ordinary anticipation and hope with metaphysical realities. This is just one of several reasons why we can't rightly count you as a radical empiricists or as a dude who knows what he's talking about. Who is confused about what's actual and what's based in experience. And that's why that condescending attitude doesn't look good on you. Not that it looks good on anybody. _________________________________________________________________ Help yourself to FREE treats served up daily at the Messenger Café. Stop by today. http://www.cafemessenger.com/info/info_sweetstuff2.html?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_OctWLtagline Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
