[MD] Empiricism for dummies

[Matt Kundert]

Hi Marsha,

Marsha said:
A thought can be inspired by a sound, a sight, a smell, a taste, a touch, a previous thought.  The first five of these are what an empiricist considers experience.  Is this correct?   And are the first five also what a pragmatist considers direct experience?

Matt:
As DMB said, traditional empiricism only counts the senses as "employable experience," by which I mean thoughts that can be traced back to their origins in the senses are good to go.  I think James started to make fun of this in Principles of Psychology, and he called it (I think) atomism, which is still what neopragmatists want to call the mistake of their more current enemies.  James's sense was that the relations between things (atoms) were as directly experienced as anything else, and this old thought of his, as DMB said, eventually turned into his doctrine of radical empiricism.

DMB is also right to suppose that thought of James's is in line with what I called panrelationalism.  Atomism is when you think experiences, or perceptions, or language can be broken down into little non-breakdownable nuggets (qualia, sensa, words, etc.), and these nuggets are the real part of the bigger thing, and the bigger thing only works when it stretches back to these little things.  Opposed to this is holism, and James wanted to be a holist about experience, which is where his "stream of consciousness" metaphor comes from.  Experience isn't sifting through a bunch of rocks, its more like water, which can be dipped into and separated from the river, but it all kinda' depends on what kind of bucket you are using (a way of saying things are relative to purpose, a pragmatist master concept).

My entire so-called problem with radical empiricism is really just a problem with using the direct/indirect distinction at all at this level of conversation about experience (or language or whatever).  For the traditional empiricist, the senses are the direct part.  But James wants to toss that.  But then, what's left to be direct?  I don't believe DMB answered your question directly: are the first five [senses] also what a pragmatist considers direct experience?  The radical empiricist has to answer no, but once you've let thoughts into the area, what are we throwing up in the way so that something becomes indirect?  In the atomist picture, life is like a dude in a quarry, picking through reality-rocks, and when you aren't in touch with the rocks, you're not with reality (hence, the correspondence theory of truth).  But on James's metaphor, life is like being in a river, and when you're in a river, you're never not in contact with the river.

I recently said, in a post to Bo, that Pirsig's empiricist rhetoric can get in the way.  I don't take this as a strike against radical empiricism, though, because I take holism to be the centerpiece (and the Quality thesis to be intrinsically holist).  A radical revolutionary isn't an official part of the political system--they are in the business of overturning the political system.  And just so with James's radical empiricism.

Matt

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