Radical Empiricism.

2.8.1. "Experience"; A Neutral Name.

James’s foremost task was to clarify the notion of "experience" from its traditional usage which refers to the psychic events o f consciousness. Russell, in his critique o f James’s theory, observed that his use o f the word "experience" referred "to the lingering taint o f an idealistic ancestry. "M In accepting James’s thesis Russell, in 1921, declared "sensations" as neutral entities. The use of the word "sensation" had been criticised by Alan Dorward in his "Critical Notices of Bertrand Russell,

The Analysis o f Mind", 1922. Generally the word "sensation" always means something connected with consciousness. But Russell might say that the things which he called sensation is the same thing which other people call sensation. The mistake they commit only when they regard the thing as mental. Therefore he has the right to retain the word while freeing it from its false associations. This may not be an adequate reply. Dorward points out:

When they call a thing a sensation, |the people) mean to imply that it is mental; and if they were convinced that they were mistaken in supposing it to be mental, they would probably say, not "Well, you have now convinced me that sensation are not mental," but "I now see that what I thought to be mental is really not so, and 1 was therefore mistaken in calling it a sensation". |P. 92]. 25

Junes On Neutral Monism. 7 3

James’s reply would have been similar to that o f Dorward in Russell’s use of the term "sensation". Both Russell and James chose these words for the apparent neutrality they show. I think that James preferred the term "experience" because the term "feeling" is a characteristic of mind which shows a peculiar mental function. But the term "experience" not only refers to the function of mind but also has an explicit reference to its relation to objects. Similarly Russell’s use of the term "sensation" is mainly because it expresses the complex "act-acquainted with-object". This is the definition he gave in his "The Nature of Sense-data", where he regarded sensation to be synonymous with perception.

For James, experience is not a subjective phenomenon but an empirically given neutral phenomenon, which describes mind and matter. A pure experience, which is neither subjective n o r objective, consists of "neutrals, indifférents, undecideds, posits, data, facts." \TCW J, vol 2, p. 405],

2.8.2. The Concept "Radical".

James’s next aim was to show that his philosophy radically differed from those of the intellectualists and the sensationalists. The intellectualists begin their analysis of the nature of the w orld by postulating synthetic a priori premises without any real appeal to empirical premises. In their order of logic, wholes are prior to parts, and transcendental egos and absolutes are taken to stand as agents of unification of parts. T he classical empiricism, though rightly emphasizes the part, the element, the individual, tends to uphold nature as discrete and atomic. For empiricists like Hume and J.S. Mill "substantive psychoses, sensations and their copies and derivatives, juxtaposed like dominoes in a game," (Principles, vol. 1, p. 245) are really separate and have no connection. These empiricists had a tendency to do away with connections as co-ordinate parts o f experience. They insist most on disjunctions and hence reduce the flow of experience to mere "loose and separate" atomic units.

James, who began with the basic claim of the empiricist, that parts are prior and the whole is of the second order, insists that relations, in the conjunctive and disjunctive forms, are co-ordinate parts of experience. This is the reason for his adding the term "radical" to his form o f empiricism. James brought in the concept of "felt relation", which is the major omission of psychology and which the metaphysician ignored as the essential element in forming our knowledge of

James On Neutral Monism. 7 4

reality. Radical empiricism neither excludes nor includes any element that is not directly experienced. James argued:

For such a philosophy, the relations that connect experiences must themselves be experienced relations, and any kind o f relation experienced must be accounted as "real" as anything else in the system. |"A World of Pure Experience", p. 22], 2.8.3. The Notion O f "Conjunctive Relations’ .

James argued that our universe o f experience is not something ordered a priori,

hut to a large extent chaotic. It is chaotic in the sense that the world is experienced as continuous, related, where a variety o f connections run through all the experiences that compose it, and are ever-changing. In other words the world of pure experience is a "quasi-chaos" {ibid., p. 32), where unity and disconnection are real.

In his descriptive analysis o f the logic of reality James called "radical empiricism" a mosaic philosophy, in which the pieces are held together not by their bedding but are "clung together by their edges, the transitions experienced between them forming their cement." [Ibid., p. 42]. Like the stream of consciousness, the separateness o f experiences in the stream remain separate and are "felt" where the "substantive states" (the resting period) and "transitive states" (the period o f flight) run into each other continuously. This is the view which the Intellectualists and the Sensationalists failed to understand. It is, in radical empiricism, the "conjunctive relation", i.e. to say "a feeling of and, a feeling of

if, a feeling of but, and a feeling o f by, quite as readily we say a feeling of blue or feeling of cold," in all its form gets recognized." |Principles, vol. 1, pp. 245-46|. The conjunctive experience has been discredited by both the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricist, like Hume, left experience permanently disjointed, and the rationalists, like Kant and Spinoza, explained the "looseness" by their absolutes, or transcendental ego, or other fictitious agencies of union. James held that the relation was present in the stream of consciousness and hence required no artificial bonding. "Radical empiricism ... does fu ll justice to conjunctive relations." ["A World of Pure Experience", p. 23]. James explained, Firstly, if the experiences are taken at their face-value, i.e. to feel just as they are without confusing it with abstract talk about it involving words that lead one to invent secondary conceptions, there conjunctions and disjunctions are accounted as real.

Junes On Neutral Monism. 7 5

Secondly, in case of treating things separately, when they are given as continuously joined, we ought to perform the converse act by invoking higher principles of "disunion" to make experienced "disjunctions" more truly real. James further explained the "continuity-experience" and "discontinuity- experience" in the following way. In order to explain the experience of continuity James brought in the concept o f "the co-conscious transition' by which one experience passes into another when both belong to the same self. Within the personal histories of each individual, subject and object, interest and purpose are continuous. Since personal histories change in tim e, the "change" is immediately experienced as continuous transition as opposed to discontinuous transition. In one’s personal history one may feel the later moment of one’s experience succeeds an earlier one forming two moments. But such transition from the one to the other is "continuous".

Discontinuity-experience is also a definite sort o f experience. Discontinuity is felt when the transition takes place between at least two individuals. This is because what I call my experience and your experience can be externally with each other but mine cannot pass into yours or yours into mine. In such transition, James held:

I have to get on and off again, to pass from a thing lived to another thing only conceived, and the break is positively experienced and noted. |"A World o f Pure Experience", p. 25|. Although the functions emphasised by both the experiences are same, the sameness is ascertained after the break has been felt. The experience of sameness can be understood by James’s treatment of thought and thing in terms o f cognitive relation. In order to facilitate our understanding o f this, 1 shall discuss his theory of knowledge.

james On Neutral Monism. 7 6

2.9. The Theory o f Knowledge. 2.9.1. Introduction.

"The relation o f knowing is the most mysterious thing in the world." |Principles, vol. 1, p. 216|.

James aimed to dissolve duality in the stream of experience which arises from the ambiguity involved in the psychological explanation o f cognition. "The psychologist’s attitude towards cognition.... is a thoroughgoing dualism." \Ibid.,

p. 218]. James revolted against the idea that there are two irreducible elements in the process of knowing. The dualism of mind and body gives rise to such a mysterious situation and claimed that the relation between the knower and the known is such that

"neither gets out of itself or into the other, neither in any way is

the other, neither makes the other. They just stand face to face in a common world, and one simply knows, or is known unto, its counterpart." |Ibid., p. 218|.

There is no doubt that in his Principles, beside metaphysical dualism, James had also accepted epistemological dualism. We have earlier seen that, for James, "feelings" are knowledge of acquaintance. Such words like "lo", "there", "ecco", "voila", simply start off the cognitive process but which are not cognitive in themselves. It is the "thought", the knowledge about, where the full cognition takes place. James declared that "the "thoughts," ... are the conceptions and

judgments." \Ibid., p. 222]. Later when we discuss Russell we will find that like James he also laid much emphasis upon these epistemological distinctions but in a significantly different way. Russell’s aim was to provide a firm basis for empirical knowledge. He held that the sense-data, knowledge by acquaintance, where no error takes place, are the basis o f knowledge. Sense-data are knowledge by themselves. He made a distinction between a sensation and a sense-datum and argued for a relational theory of sensation. Russell argued that sensation is a relational occurrence in which a subject is "aware" of an object. But as a neutral monist, following James, he discarded this view (See Chapter Four and Five) and became less interested in epistemology26 and sceptical about its importance in

26. Stace, 'Russell’s Neutral M onism', in Schilpp, 1944, p. 358. Stace thinks that Russell has become more "empirical".

James On Neutral Monism. 7 7

ontological doctrine. For James, the "feelings", unlike Russell's sense-data, to which one is acquainted are not knowledge. Thoughts are the proper medium of knowledge. These distinctions are not pressed hard by James and will become clear as we progress. But there is no doubt that for him dualistic epistemology became the footings of his metaphysical theory.27

The process of "meaning and knowing", the foremost function of consciousness, not only played a distinctive role in James's psychology but became the essential groundwork for two of his most important theses, "radical empiricism" and "pragmatism". The essence of these two theses lies in the concept of "relations" of ideas as elements in experience to future experiences which are their meaning. For James truth lies in the correspondence between ideas and objects. It is essential to mention that the relation of mind to its object was discussed by Royce in his The Religious Aspect o f Philosophy (1885) which impressed James. In a letter to Renouvier, James illustrated Royce’s argument and said:

|T]o me the argument seems irresistible, so long as we take the relation of really intending an object, au serieux. \TCWJ, vol. 1, p. 705].

James was not enthusiastic about Royce’s theory in its entirety. We know Royce was an idealist and James was a venomous critique of idealism. James claimed that for Royce there should be a "power" outside of both the thought and the object so that the thought can represent, either rightly or wrongly, the object which it stands for. James depicts Royce’s thesis thus:

In short, it makes everything, so far as anything has relation to truth or error; and since both our thoughts and the things we think of have such relation, this Absolute Thought which is involved in the idea of their relation, may also be called the ground of their being. |Ibid. , p. 705].

27. James seems to disagree. In a letter to Strong, in Oct. 2, 1907, James says, "that in my essays on "Radical Empiricism" ... you can find sentences that squint towards idealism, I have no doubt... But the problem there was metaphysical, not epistemological; it was an analysis o f the nature o f what is experienced, not of the meaning of knowing, and whatever epistemology I have brought in was by the way illustrative, not fundamental. In those articles I was groping and tumbling anyhow, and doubtless guilty o f much confusion. But when expressly w riting about "knowledge" and "truth" as in Pragmatism, I have always intended ... to be realistic, and to be called an idealistfas by Montague, and others) makes me feel queer." See Perry, v. II, pp. 549- 550.

James On Neutral Monism. 7 8

For James the relation lies in the stream o f consciousness where thinking of some sort goes on. It is in the stream the comparison and the contrast between the thought and the object present to it takes place. In naturalistic psychology there is no reason to look "beyond" because the consciousness is the sole verifier of its objects. Perry reported that in fact James had confessed that he was "unable to overthrow Royce’s argument" though he regarded the argument inconclusive.28 29 As a radical empiricist his foremost task was to prove that there is no duality of substances in the sphere of phenomena. This is possible by sticking to "experience", the neutral entity, which has no inner duplicity and hence saves him from an artificial conception o f the relations between knower and known.

2.9.2. "Knowledge o f a c q u a i n t a n c e " a n d " K n o w l e d g e - a h o u t "

In order to explain his theory of cognition James follows John Grote2v in his distinction of tw o kinds o f knowledge. They are knowledge o f acquaintance and

knowledge about, of which the French and German distinctions are connaître and

savoir, and kennen and wissen respectively. Beside his Principles, James discussed his theory of knowledge in two articles reprinted in The Meaning o f Truth. They are "The Function o f Cognition", (which James in his letter to Strong in 1907 regarded "the fo n s et origio of all my pragmatism’ (TCWJ, vol. 2, p. 548), is said to constitute an answer to Royce (TCWJ, vol. 1, p. 800), and "The Tigers In India".

In both these articles James aimed to undertake the burden of resolving the problem of knowledge by showing that

"the difference between those that are mere "acquaintance," and those that are "knowledge-aftoMf"... is reducible almost entirely to the absence or presence o f psychic fringes or overtones. Knowledge about a thing is knowledge of its relations. Acquaintance with it is limitation to the bare impression which it makes" (Principles, vol. 1, p. 259).

We have earlier seen that, according to James, the knowledge of acquaintance are the "blooming" "buzzing" sensations with which babies or semi-conscious people

28. See Perry, "The Battle of the Absolute", in TCWJ, p. 799 ff. An elaborate discussion is carried out by Perry. A similar discussion is earned out in Reck, A .J., 'Epistemology In William James's Principles O f Psychology", Tulane Studies in Philosophy, vol. 22, 1973, pp. 85-86. 29. Exploratio Philosophica, London, 1865.

James On Neutral Monism. 7 9

are acquainted. Through this a first encounter is made with the external world which simply however does not give them knowledge about anything. The above quotation confirms this further by stating that the distinction between the presence and absence is the distinction between knowledge of acquaintance and knowledge about respectively. Before we treat his two articles it is important to see how James handled the theory of knowledge in his Principles.

In his Principles (vol. 1), James opened his discussion on two kinds of knowledge in the chapter of "Conception", by stating that these two knowledges are due to

"the principle o f constancy in the m in d ’s meanings" (p. 459). He explained that "the sense of sameness", the "keel and backbone of our thinking", is the basis of our conceptual knowledge. Since the principle of sameness belongs to the structure of mind and not to the universe, James said:

"the mind can always intend, and know when it intends, to think o f the Same" (p. 459).30

James defined conception as "the Junction by which we thus identify a numerically distinct and permanent subject o f discourse" (p. 461). He rules out any ambiguity in the word "conception" and says that it neither denotes the mental states nor anything signified by the mental state. It simply denotes "the relation between the two, namely, the function of the mental state in signifying just that particular thing" (p. 461).

Conceptions belong to the flux of experience and remain eternally unchangeable although the mental state may change and its meaning be different at different times. James illustrated this in the following way: a piece of paper may be white a moment ago, may now change into black. But this does not lead us to change the conception of white into the conception o f black. The conception of blackness and whiteness remains in the mind bearing different meanings. James declared:

Thus, amid the flux of opinions and of physical things, the world of conceptions, or things intended to be thought about, stands stiff and immutable, like Plato’s Realm of Ideas. IP. 462].

He distinguished concepts and percepts in the following way:

30. This interpretation is mainly responsible for the treatment of James's view as phenomenological. See for instance, Richard Stevens, James and Husserl: The Foundation o f Meaning.

James On Neutral Monism. 8 0

The great difference between percepts and concepts is that percepts are continuous and concepts are discrete. |Some Problems o f Philosophy, p. 481

We may recall that James was so enthusiastic to make his ontological theory epistemologically viable that on such an interpretation he based his theory of non- perceptual experiences. James regarded concepts as parts of pure experience