[Krimel]
James is quite clear that concepts arise from and are subservient to
perception. That is what empiricism is, anyway you slice it. He certainly
acknowledges their interrelations but when push comes to shove perception
wins.
Ron:
If he was quite clear about the primacy of percept, then why did he forward
the idea of a radical empiricism to replace it?
[Krimel]
Exactly!
He didn't and it doesn't.
Ron:
Wow, even wiki misinterpreted what James means:
Radical empiricism
Radical empiricism is a postulate, a statement of fact and a conclusion, says
James
in The Meaning of Truth. The postulate is that "the only things that shall be
debatable
among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience".
The fact
is that our experience contains disconnected entities as well as various types
of
connections, it is full of meaning and values. The conclusion is that our
worldview
does not need "extraneous trans-empirical connective support, but possesses in
its
own right a concatenated or continuous structure."
Postulate
The postulate is a basic statement of the empiricist method: our theories
shouldn't
incorporate supernatural or transempirical entities. Empiricism is a theory of
knowledge that emphasizes the role of experience, especially sensory
perception,
in the formation of ideas, while discounting a priori reasoning, intuition, or
revelation. James allows that transempirical entities may exist, but that it's
not
fruitful to talk about them.
Fact
James' factual statement is that our experience isn't just a stream of data,
it's a
complex process that's full of meaning. We see objects in terms of what they
mean to
us and we see causal connections between phenomena. Experience is
"double-barreled":
it has both a content ("sense data") and a reference, and empiricists unjustly
try to
reduce experience to bare sensations, according to James. Such a "thick"
description
of conscious experience was already part of William James' monumental
Principles of
Psychology in 1890, more than a decade before he first wrote about radical
empiricism
and it's an important part of his argument.
It differs notably from the traditional empiricist view of Locke and Hume, who
see
experience in terms of atoms like patches of color and soundwaves, which are in
themselves meaningless and need to be interpreted by ratiocination before we
can act upon them.
Conclusion
James concludes that experience is full of connections and that these
connections
are part of what is actually experienced:
Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one
context of associates, play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of
'consciousness';
while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the
part of a
thing known, of an objective 'content.' In a word, in one group it figures as a
thought,
in another group as a thing. And, since it can figure in both groups
simultaneously we
have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective, both at once.
(James 1912, Essay I)
Context and importance
James put forth the doctrine because he thought ordinary empiricism, inspired
by the advances
in physical science, has or had the tendency to emphasize 'whirling particles'
at the expense
of the bigger picture: connections, causality, meaning. Both elements, James
claims, are equally
present in experience and both need to be accounted for.
________________________________
From: Krimel <[email protected]>
To: [email protected]
Sent: Tuesday, June 30, 2009 1:17:41 PM
Subject: Re: [MD] Reductionism
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