[MD] FW: Essay on James

[David M]

Hi DMB

You wrote: The infinite possibilities and radical freedom implied by this 
ontological ground gives James the intimacy and freedom he seeks, but it is 
limited. It is limited by experience rather than an objective reality in the 
materialist sense.

DM: Are possibilities infinite? Are they real? In experience we are aware of 
possibilities, but surely they are not infinite, not for a finite person 
living
through a particular time in a particular place. And surely there are 
impossibilities that limit our possibilities so that they are not infinite? 
Such is freedom,
such is the reality of our experience within a world/environment. We are not 
un-free, we have choices, we are in an open process that has many
possibilities but these are not infinite. We might become a singer, or a 
thinker, or a tax inspector, but we can't become a goldfish or grow two
heads or read every book in the world. Experience gives us the opportunity 
to discover what our real possibilities and limitations are, and decide
whichof our possibilities we will try to realise.

RADICAL EMPIRICISM
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).

DM: This seems key to me. Clearly such an empiricism challenges standard 
empiricism that wants to try to understand experience only in
mathematical,quantitative, measurable and repeatable terms. There is more to 
life and experience than standard empiricism, many other
qualities, the dynamic, the flux, the accidental, the emotional, the 
purposeful, the meaningful, etc.


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: Not that obvious how it challenges idealism to me,you can't accuse Hegel 
of leaving anything out!


 “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: 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.

The central demand of radical empiricism, that we should include all 
experience and add nothing to it is exactly what makes it so radically 
empirical. Experience is reality and reality is experience. “Should we not 
say here that to be experienced as continuous is to be really continuous, in 
a world where experience and reality come to the same thing” (PCAP 186)?

DM: 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. And 
before you think this is a mind/body distinction I'd suggest that the
potential for patterns at all levels to express any form of behaviour is 
something that is not actual prior to such expression. How else does
an inorganic carbon atom become an organic sitting in a brain cell?


She will count mystical experiences if they have practical consequences” 
(PCAP 202).


DM: I am not wanting to attain this, but would this not admit theism as it 
has had great practical consequences? What enables James to embrace
mystical experience and rejected more traditional religious experience?

 “The great point is that possibilities are really here”,


DM: 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.