Essays in Radical Empiricism

William James

• Editore: Dover Publications
• Anno: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780486149295
• Argomento: Philosophy
• Categoria: Philosophical Essays

The influential philosopher's preoccupation with ultimate reality and his turn toward a metaphysical system are the focus of Essays in Radical Empiricism. Originally published in journals between 1884 and 1906, these 12 essays were selected by William James to illustrate the doctrine he called `radical empiricism` — a concept that made him the center of a new philosophic approach.
Proclaiming experience to be the ultimate reality, James explores the applications of experience to the problem of relations, the role of feeling in experience, and the nature of truth. He argues in favor of a pluralistic universe, denying that experience can be defined in terms of an absolute force determining the relationships between things and events. Relationships, regardless of whether they hold things together or apart, are as real as the things themselves — their functions are real, and there are no hidden factors responsible for life's harmonies and dissonances.
Seminal essays in this collection include `Does Consciousness Exist?: `The Essence of Humanism,` and `Absolutism and Empiricism.` In addition, this edition features a new translation of `On the Notion of Consciousness` — the first English rendering of the essay, which was written in French. Indispensable to an understanding of the great philosopher's other works, this systematic and compact treatment functions equally well in and out of the classroom.

INDEX

Absolute Idealism Essay XII.

Activity: vii, Essay VI.

Affectional Facts, Essay.

Agnosticism.

Appreciations. See Affectional Facts.

Bergson, H..

Berkeley.

Bode, B. H..

Body

Bradley, F. H.

Cause.

Change.

Cognitive Relation. See also Knowledge.

Concepts

Conjunctive Relations

Consciousness: vii, Essay Essay VIII.

Continuity

Democritus.

Descartes.

Dewey, J..

Disjunctive Relations

Dualism

Empiricism, Essay XII. See also Radical Empiricism.

Epistemology. See also Knowledge.

Ethics.

ExperienceSee also Pure Experience.

External Relations. See also Relations, and Disjunctive.

Feeling. See Affectional Facts.

Free Will.

Haldane, J. S..

Hegel.

Herbart.

Hobhouse, L. T..

Hodder, A. L..

Hodgson, S..

Höffding, H..

Humanism, Essay VII, Essay XI.

Hume.

Idealism.

Ideas

Identity, Philosophy of.

Indeterminism.

Intellect.

Joseph, H. W. B..

Kant.

Kierkegaard.

Knowledge See also Cognitive Relation, Objective Reference.

Life.

Locke.

Logic.

Lotze.

Materialism.

Mill, J. S..

Mill, James.

Miller, D..

Minds, their Conterminousness, Essay IV.

Monism.

Moore, G. E..

Münsterberg, H..

Natorp, P..

Naturalism.

Neo-Kantism.

Objective Reference.

Objectivity

Panpsychism.

Parallelism.

Perception

Perry, R. B..

Physical Reality

Pitkin, W. B..

Pluralism.

Pragmatism

Primary Qualities.

Prince, M..

Pringle-Pattison, A. S..

Psychology.

Pure Experience, Essay

Radical Empiricism

Rationalism

Realism.

Rehmke, J..

RelationsEssay. See also Conjunctive and Disjunctive.

Religion.

Renouvier.

RepresentationSee also Substitution.

Royce, J..

Santayana, G..

Schiller, F. C. S..

Schubert-Soldern, R. v..

Schuppe, W..

Secondary Qualities.

Self.

Sensation.

Sidis, B..

Solipsism: Essay IX.

Space.

Spencer, H..

Spinoza.

Spir, A..

Stout, G. F..

Strong, C. A..

Subjectivity

Substitution

Taine.

Taylor, A. E..

Teleology.

Things Essay.

Thought See also Knowledge.

Time.

Transcendentalism.

Truth

Ward, J..

Will.

Woodbridge, F. J. E..

Worth.

Wundt, W..

1

The use of numerals and italics is introduced by the editor.

2

[Reprinted from the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. I, No. 18, September 1, 1904. For the relation between this essay and those which follow, cf. below, pp. 28–29. ED.]

3

Articles by Baldwin, Ward, Bawden, King, Alexander and others. Dr. Perry is frankly over the border.

4

[Similarly, there is no “activity of ‘consciousness’ as such.” See essay VI below, “The Experience of Activity,” footnote 13. ED.]

5

In my Psychology I have tried to show that we need no knower other than the “passing thought.” [Principles of Psychology, vol. I, pp. 338 ff.]

6

G. E. Moore: Mind, vol. XII, N. S., [1903], p. 450.

7

Paul Natorp: Einleitung in die Psychologie, 1888, pp. 14, 112.

8

“Figuratively speaking, consciousness may be said to be the one universal solvent, or menstruum, in which the different concrete kinds of psychic acts and facts are contained, whether in concealed or in obvious form.” G. T. Ladd: Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory, 1894, p. 30.

9

[Cf. below, “The Essence of Humanism,” §II. ED.]

10

[For the author’s recognition of “concepts as a co-ordinate realm” of reality, cf. his Meaning of Truth, pp. 42, 195, note; A Pluralistic Universe, pp. 339–340; Some Problems of Philosophy, pp. 50–57, 67–70; and below, p. 9, note 10. Giving this view the name “logical realism,” he remarks elsewhere that his philosophy “may be regarded as somewhat eccentric in its attempt to combine logical realism with an otherwise empiricist mode of thought” (Some Problems of Philosophy, p. 106). ED.]

11

Here as elsewhere the relations are of course experienced relations, members of the same originally chaotic manifold of non-perceptual experience of which the related terms themselves are parts. [Cf. below, pp. 22–23.]

12

Of the representative function of non-perceptual experience as a whole, I will say a word in a subsequent article: it leads too far into the general theory of knowledge for much to be said about it in a short paper like this. [Cf. below, “A World of Pure Experience,” §III.]

13

Münsterberg: Grundzüge der Psychologie, vol. I, p. 48.

14

Cf. A. L. Hodder: The Adversaries of the Sceptic, pp. 94–99.

15

For simplicity’s sake I confine my exposition to “external” reality. But there is also the system of ideal reality in which the room plays its part. Relations of comparison, of classification, serial order, value, also are stubborn, assign a definite place to the room, unlike the incoherence of its places in the mere rhapsody of our successive thoughts.

16

Note the ambiguity of this term, which is taken sometimes objectively and sometimes subjectively.

17

In the Psychological Review for July [1904], Dr. R. B. Perry has published a view of Consciousness which comes nearer to mine than any other with which I am acquainted. At present, Dr. Perry thinks, every field of experience is so much “fact.” It becomes “opinion” or “thought” only in retrospection, when a fresh experience, thinking the same object, alters and corrects it. But the corrective experience becomes itself in turn corrected, and thus the experience as a whole is a process in which what is objective originally forever turns subjective, turns into our apprehension of the object. I strongly recommend Dr. Perry’s admirable article to my readers.

18

I have given a partial account of the matter in Mind, vol. X, p. 27, 1885 [reprinted in The Meaning of Truth, pp. 1–42], and in the Psychological Review, vol. II, p. 105, 1895 [partly reprinted in The Meaning of Truth, pp. 43–50]. See also C. A. Strong’s article in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods, vol. I, p. 253, May 12, 1904. I hope myself very soon to recur to the matter. [See below, “A World of Pure Experience,” §III.]

19

[Cf. Shadworth Hodgson: The Metaphysic of Experience, vol. I, passim; The Philosophy of Reflection, bk. II, ch. IV, §3. ED.]

20

Spencer’s proof of his “Transfigured Realism” (his doctrine that there is an absolutely non-mental reality) comes to mind as a splendid instance of the impossibility of establishing radical heterogeneity between thought and thing. All his painfully accumulated points of difference run gradually into their opposites, and are full of exceptions. [Cf. Spencer: Principles of Psychology, part VII, ch. XIX.]

21

I speak here of the complete inner life in which ...