A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in PhilosophyJames, William
Philosophy
A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy
James, William
Philosophy, Modern
time, space, difference, likeness, change, rate, cause, or what not,
are just as integral members of the sensational flux as terms are, and
that conjunctive relations are just as true members of the flux as
disjunctive relations are.[4] This is what in some recent writings of
mine I have called the 'radically empiricist' doctrine (in distinction
from the doctrine of mental atoms which the name empiricism so
often suggests). Intellectualistic critics of sensation insist that
sensations are _disjoined_ only. Radical empiricism insists
that conjunctions between them are just as immediately given as
disjunctions are, and that relations, whether disjunctive or
conjunctive, are in their original sensible givenness just as fleeting
and momentary (in Green's words), and just as 'particular,' as terms
are. Later, both terms and relations get universalized by being
conceptualized and named.[5] But all the thickness, concreteness, and
individuality of experience exists in the immediate and relatively
unnamed stages of it, to the richness of which, and to the standing
inadequacy of our conceptions to match it, Professor Bergson so
emphatically calls our attention. And now I am happy to say that we
can begin to gather together some of the separate threads of our
argument, and see a little better the general kind of conclusion
toward which we are tending. Pray go back with me to the lecture
before the last, and recall what I said about the difficulty of seeing
how states of consciousness can compound themselves. The difficulty
seemed to be the same, you remember, whether we took it in psychology
as the composition of finite states of mind out of simpler finite
states, or in metaphysics as the composition of the absolute mind out
of finite minds in general. It is the general conceptualist difficulty
of any one thing being the same with many things, either at once or
in succession, for the abstract concepts of oneness and manyness must
needs exclude each other. In the particular instance that we have
dwelt on so long, the one thing is the all-form of experience, the
many things are the each-forms of experience in you and me. To call
them the same we must treat them as if each were simultaneously
its own other, a feat on conceptualist principles impossible of
performance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account