DOCSLIB.ORG

Abstract This Article Strives to Continue the Lure of Whitehead's Call: That

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Abstract This Article Strives to Continue the Lure of Whitehead's Call: That 12 PARSE JOURNAL Abstract Tis article strives to continue the lure of Whitehead’s call: that “Philosophy cannot exclude anything”. Tus speculative philosophy extends William James’s radical empiricism. Its task is to locate itself on the ground of experience in its multifariousness, and to preserve what experience makes important. But importance can never be reduced to a matter of fact. To make a situation important consists in intensifying the sense of the possible that it holds in itself and that insists in it, through struggles and claims for another way of making it exist. 13 The Insistence of Possibles: Towards a Speculative Pragmatism DIDIER DEBAISE ISABELLE STENGERS Didier Debaise is a permanent researcher at the Fonds National de la Isabelle Stengers, Professor of the Université Libre de Bruxelles, has written Recherche Scientifque (FNRS) and the Director of the Centre of Philosophy numerous books, among which the following have been published in English at the Free University of Brussels (ULB), where he teaches contemporary translation: In Catastrophic Times (2015), Women who Make a Fuss (2014) philosophy. He is the co-founder, with Isabelle Stengers, of the Groupe with Vinciane Despret, Cosmopolitics I and II (2010 and 2011), Tinking with d’Études Constructivistes (GECO). His main areas of research are Whitehead (2011), Capitalist Sorcery: Breaking the Spell (2011) with Philippe contemporary forms of speculative philosophy, theories of events, and links Pignarre, Te Invention of Modern Science (2000), Power and Invention: between American pragmatism and French contemporary philosophy. He is Situating Science (1997), A History of Chemistry (1996) with Bernadette director of a collection at Les presses du réel, member of the editorial board Bensaude-Vincent, A Critique of Psychoanalytical Reason (1992) with Léon of the journals Multitudes and Infexions. He wrote two books on Whitehead’s Chertok, and Order out of Chaos (1984) with Ilya Prigogine. Starting with the philosophy (Un empirisme spéculatif and Le vocabulaire de Whitehead), defense of the passionate adventure of physics against its enrolment as model edited volumes on pragmatism (Vie et experimentation), on the history of of rationality and objectivity, she has developed the concept of an ecology of contemporary metaphysics (Philosophie des possessions), and he wrote numerous practices afrming a speculative constructivism in relation with the philosophy papers on Bergson, Tarde, Souriau, Simondon, and Deleuze. He has just of Gilles Deleuze, Alfred North Whitehead and William James, and the published a new book entitled L’appât des possibles which will shortly appear in anthropology of Bruno Latour. English (Nature as event, Duke University Press, 2017). 14 PARSE JOURNAL 1. Alfred North White- PECULATIVE THINKING, as has been shown, inter alia by Eduardo head, Modes of Tought. Toronto: Macmillan. 1966 as we seek to inherit it, is Viveiros de Castro and Deborah [1938]. p. 2. expressed for the frst time, Danowski, they are the last spasms of a with the greatest accuracy, in reaction to catastrophes ahead.2 2. Danowski, Deborah and De Castro, Eduardo Alfred North Whitehead’s Viveiros. “L’Arrêt du Sexhortation “Philosophy can exclude In this context, it seems to us essential to monde”. In De l’univers 1 clos au monde infni. Emilie nothing”. A strange proposition, which, put forward a certain number of proposi- Hache (ed.). Paris: Editions while appearing to be a description of tions, which do not in any way claim to Dehors. 2014. philosophical activity in general, or of describe, and in so doing, to pin down, a 3. Tis was the title of a kind of heuristic prudence, in efect shifting scenario, but rather to highlight the symposium which denotes a deliberately polemical, violent what could in our view make necessary we organised at Cerisy in summer 2013, and which position. Te case is simple: modern that which we have called elsewhere 3 resulted in the publication philosophy has become bogged down “speculative gestures”. A proposition Gestes spéculatifs. Didier in the forms of a purifcation, of a has no descriptive vocation, much less Debaise and Isabelle Stengers (eds.). Dijon: Les reverting to principles, of a criticism of a normative one, but comes under what presses du réel. 2015. what is merely appearance, seduction or Whitehead called “Lure for Feelings”, a 4. Whitehead, Alfred North. alienation, which it believed was its own way of giving rise to possibles. Process and Reality. An Essay way of claiming to compete on at least in Cosmology. New York, NY: equal, if not superior, ground with that of Macmillan Publishing Inc. The Pragmatic Constraint 1929. p. 338. the experimental sciences. It believed, as in a belief one holds to in the face of all 5. See also on this subject Latour, Bruno. Enquête sur odds, that this was the condition of every Let us return to Whitehead’s exhorta- les modes d’existence: Une possible experience, of all knowledge, of tion. If he states this as a requirement, anthropologie des Modernes. all political constitution. How ironic to determining a possible trajectory of Paris: La Découverte. 2012. note today, in the guise of new specula- speculative thinking, this is because 6. Souriau, Étienne. Te tive proposals, clearly quite diferent there might be new dangers or tempta- Diferent Modes of Existence [1943]. Univocal. 2009. p. from the one we will be invoking here, tions taking hold of philosophy, which 131. (Paris; Presses Univer- the same lure towards purifcation and he intends to resist. In a nutshell, sitaires de France. 2009. pp. sovereignty, the same formalist fascina- we would express this danger as an 110-111). tions of all kinds, the same relation to immoderate taste for false problems, for 7. James, William. Essays in demiurgic decision as those which laid drastic alternatives, for a kind of lazy Radical Empiricism Dover Publications. 2003 [1912]. down the motorways of modern thought. thinking or stupidity arising “naturally” If speculative thinking today is undoubt- in every situation: belief or truth, 8. Whitehead, Alfred North. edly gaining a new lease of life, it is experience or representation, facts or Modes of Tought. New York, NY: Macmillan Company. important not to confuse Whitehead’s values, subjective or objective, etc. Tese 1938. plea with formalist sacralisation, identi- alternatives, which appear so innocently fying speculation with purely formal and theoretical, are in fact unstoppable war abstract decision-making, which governs machines, spinning in a vacuum and an important part of philosophy today. producing a desertifcation of all modes How could we believe for one single of existence: reducing thinking to mere moment that a break has occurred, when representations, fctions to imaginary all underlying gestures ft so clearly into realities, values to subjective projections the context of continuity, and form a onto nature. One might counter that kind of new hyper-modernism? Perhaps, philosophy has never ceased displaying DIDIER DEBAISE AND ISABELLE STENGERS 15 dualities of this kind, bifurcations, yet rarely are they in a considerable part of contemporary speculative so celebrated, dramatised, highlighted at all levels of thinking. But Whitehead’s position, afrming that experience as during the modern period. To all these nothing must be excluded, does not for all that state alternatives, like any false problem, questions of a that everything must be taken into consideration: pragmatic nature should be addressed: what might it stipulates that we must reject the right to their aim be? What are their efects? What is it on disqualify. Experience must create constraint. It is this occasion that we are attempting to disqualify? experience upon which philosophers must confer the power to make them think. Tis position places To exclude nothing means therefore resisting the Whitehead’s speculative thinking in the extension terms of the alternatives that so inexorably seem to of what William James called “radical empiricism” foist themselves upon us, leading to false choices. (pace all those who take school distinctions too We are hence dealing with problems of a new kind, seriously): “To be radical, empiricism must not admit and Whitehead expresses this in a form, which, at in its constructions any element that is not directly frst glance, appears cryptic. “Philosophy cannot experienced, nor exclude from them any element neglect the multifariousness of the world—the that is directly experienced”.7 Te two parts of the fairies dance, and Christ is nailed to the cross.”4 So proposition form a crucial double constraint. Firstly, speculative thinking calls on us to explore modes to exclude nothing, to factor in the multiplicity of the of existence in their own setting, in their mode dimensions, which make up an experience here and of success, in their immanent demands.5 Faced now, not taking anything away for a priori reasons, with the drying up of modes of existence, Étienne whatever disqualifcations might apply to it. Ten, Souriau makes a similar plea when he declares, as not to allow a principle of judgement outside the a true research programme, as a new philosophical situation, which would domesticate this multiplicity input: in terms of categories or requirements alien to it. Any thought is, from this viewpoint, absolutely located, At present, we must identify and study those embedded in the situation from which it emerges and diferent planes, those diferent modes of existence, which gives it meaning. It is a matter, we might say without which there would be no existence at all— with Gilles Deleuze, of thinking through and by the no more than there would be pure Art without milieu, of thinking, with everything an experience statues, pictures, symphonies, and poems. For art implies, enfolds within itself, and with no principle is all the arts. And existence is each of the modes of critical sorting at work, tending to purify, isolate, of existence. Each mode is an art of existing unto make of it a self-sufcient “case”.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • William James' Radical Empiricism with Jeffrey Mishlove
    InPresence 0023: William James’ Radical Empiricism with Jeffrey Mishlove Video Transcript - New Thinking Allowed with Jeffrey Mishlove ​ ​ www.newthinkingallowed.org Recorded on March 13, 2018 Published to YouTube on March 24, 2018 Copyright © 2020, New Thinking Allowed Foundation (00:38) Hello, I’m Jeffrey Mishlove, and today I’d like to talk to you about William James’ concept of “radical empiricism”. And I’d like to encourage you, before watching this video, to make sure you also catch the earlier “In Presence” segment on William James. You’ll notice at the very beginning of this video, you had the opportunity to click directly to a list that would link you to every single segment thus far in the “In Presence” series. (01:13) Now, as I mentioned before, William James is really one of the great intellects of American consciousness, certainly one of my heroes, and someone with whom I seem to have something of a “synchronistic archetypal resonance” relationship. His theory of “radical empiricism” represents, I think, the culmination of his life work. In fact, he wrote five essays on the subject toward the end of his life. They were not even published until after his death. We have to appreciate that William James was a man of the 19th century, a period of rapid industrialization in the United States. A time of great progress in terms of mechanistic thinking. But, throughout his illustrious career, James largely stood against mechanistic thinking, and I think it’s fair to say he flirted with mysticism. That’s clear if you read his book Varieties of Religious Experience, for ​ ​ example.
    [Show full text]
  • Value in Experience, Thoughts on Radical Empiricism; Reflections on Frankenberry and Stone1
    Value In Experience, Thoughts on Radical Empiricism; Reflections on Frankenberry and Stone1 David W. Tarbell Modern philosophy, going back to Descartes and Locke, has given preferred status to the kind of judgments that we find within the mathematical sciences and has made it difficult to support judgments of value and meaning. In Chapter Four of his book, The Minimalist Vision of Transcendence, Jerome Stone describes what he calls a "Generous Empiricism." He is building on the tradition of radical empiricism, and presents a transactional understanding of experience that allows him to support empirically grounded value judgments. I argue that a critique from the perspective of Heidegger and others of the continental tradition may present problems to Stone's approach. I then propose a modification of Stone's notion that I think would answer such criticisms. This leads me to the notion that our value judgments have an aesthetic component, and that we can find pragmatic support for the belief that there is an aesthetic tendency in the world of which we are a part. There is something divine and possibly transcendent in that thought. I. The Value Problem: One of the factors affecting the moral, ethical, and political climate of our present culture is diversity of judgment on matters of value. Some have said that the presence of so much diversity argues against our ability to resolve questions of truth in these areas. Their positions vary among skepticism, denying that we can know moral truth, nihilism, questioning that there is such a thing as moral truth, or relativism, claiming that moral truth is conditional on social and/or cultural circumstances.
    [Show full text]
  • Radical Empiricist Poetics in the New York School and Beyond
    Radical Empiricist Poetics in the New York School and Beyond by Maude Chanson Emerson A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Charles Altieri, Chair Professor Eric Falci Professor John Campbell Spring 2017 ! Abstract Radical Empiricist Poetics in the New York School and Beyond by Maude Chanson Emerson Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Charles Altieri, Chair This dissertation contends that the first-generation New York School poets—especially John Ashbery, Frank O’Hara, and James Schuyler—develop the aesthetic possibilities of the philosophical stance that William James called “radical empiricism.” James followed the British empiricists in granting priority to parts, individuals, and unanalyzed sensations, but he radicalized the empiricist perspective by holding experiences of cohesion and relation to be as real as those of disjunction and discrete sensation. Schuyler, Ashbery, and O’Hara each practice an empiricist poetics: a poetics of the everyday, the felt, and the miscellaneous. At the same time, their poetries pose challenges to the conceptions of experience on which empiricism historically has been based, from the presumption of a unified experiencing subject to the relegation of sensation and abstraction to separate orders of reality. I argue that these challenges should not be seen as a denial of experience, as some postmodernist readings of New York School poetry allege, but as part of a careful and critical commitment to experience. As radical empiricists, these poets understand experience not as an inward phenomenon but as a field in which inner and outer are merely potential and constantly shifting divisions.
    [Show full text]
  • To Viv the Global Brain Becoming Material, Unfolding Experience Through Radical Empiricism and Process Philosophy
    From Her (2013) to Viv the Global Brain Becoming Material, Unfolding Experience through Radical Empiricism and Process Philosophy Evelyn Wan Abstract This paper reflects upon the methodological questions entailed by what digital media materiality could be, and how one could analytically approach it via theories of experience such as radical empiricism and process philosophy. I argue that for digital media, becoming material means to ‘enter into experience’. However, this notion of ‘experience’ is not defined in relation to the phenom- enological, distinctly-human subject. I offer instead an expanded notion of experience that resides in non-human objects, networks and other physical entities like mobile phones and computers. Oper- ating system (OS) and intelligent assistants such as Samantha in Spike Jonze’s Her (2013) and the next-generation Siri in develop- ment, Viv the Global Brain, can be seen as representations of what such a non-human experience could be like, as digital objects com- municate with one another. William James, father of radical empir- icism, argues that the definition of matter as something that lies behind physical phenomena is merely a postulate of thought. In his philosophy, the world is made up of only one primal material – that of experience. While James could not have anticipated our era of digital technologies at the time of writing in 1890, radical empiri- cism offers an interesting angle in approaching what digital mate- riality could be. Mark Hansen’s latest monograph, Feed Forward: On the Future of Twenty-First-Century Media (2015), turns to Alfred North Whitehead in an attempt to understand how 21st-cen- tury media operations feature in a world of objects where humans are implicated in, but not central to digital networks.
    [Show full text]
  • Immediation II
    Immediation II Edited by Erin Manning, Anna Munster, Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen Immediation II Immediations Series Editor: SenseLab “Philosophy begins in wonder. And, at the end, when philosophic thought has done its best, the wonder remains” – A.N. Whitehead The aim of the Immediations book series is to prolong the wonder sustaining philosophic thought into transdisciplinary encounters. Its premise is that concepts are for the enacting: they must be experienced. Thought is lived, else it expires. It is most intensely lived at the crossroads of practices, and in the in-between of individuals and their singular endeavors: enlivened in the weave of a relational fabric. Co-composition. “The smile spreads over the face, as the face fits itself onto the smile” – A. N. Whitehead Which practices enter into co-composition will be left an open question, to be answered by the Series authors. Art practice, aesthetic theory, political theory, movement practice, media theory, maker culture, science studies, architecture, philosophy … the range is free. We invite you to roam it. Immediation II Edited by Erin Manning, Anna Munster, Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen OPEN HUMANITIES PRESS London 2019 First edition published by Open Humanities Press 2019. Copyright © 2019, Erin Manning, Anna Munster, Bodil Marie Stavning Thomsen. Chapters copyright their respective authors unless otherwise noted. This is an open access book, licensed under Creative Commons By Attribution Share Alike license. Under this license, authors allow anyone to download, reuse, reprint, modify, distribute, and/or copy their work so long as the authors and source are cited and resulting derivative works are licensed under the same or similar license.
    [Show full text]
  • In Defense of Radical Empiricism
    In Defense of Radical Empiricism A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of Ohio University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree Master of Arts Ryan D. Ross May 2015 © 2015 Ryan D. Ross. All Rights Reserved. 2 This thesis titled In Defense of Radical Empiricism by RYAN D. ROSS has been approved for the Department of Philosophy and the College of Arts and Sciences by John W. Bender Professor of Philosophy Robert Frank Dean, College of Arts and Sciences 3 Abstract ROSS, RYAN D., M. A., May 2015, Philosophy In Defense of Radical Empiricism Director of Thesis: John W. Bender Laurence BonJour defends a moderate version of rationalism against rivaling empiricist epistemologies. His moderate rationalism maintains that some beliefs are justified a priori in a way that does not reduce to mere analyticity, but he tempers this strong claim by saying that such justification is both fallible and empirically defeasible. With the aim of ruling out radical empiricism (the form of empiricism that repudiates the a priori), BonJour puts forth what he calls the “master argument.” According to this argument, the resources available to radical empiricists are too slender to allow for justified empirical beliefs that go beyond what is immediately available to sense- perception, e.g., what we see, hear, and taste. If so, then radical empiricists are committed to a severe form of skepticism, one in which it is impossible to have justified beliefs about the distant past, the future, unobserved aspects of the present, etc. Worse, radical empiricists, who pride themselves on their scientific worldview, would be unable to account for justified beliefs about the abstract, theoretical claims of science itself! Clearly, the master argument is intended to hit the radical empiricist where it hurts.
    [Show full text]
  • Whitehead's Panpsychism As the Subjectivity of Prehension
    Whitehead's Panpsychism as the Subjectivity of Prehension Leemon B. McHenry LEEMON B. McHENRY is Visiting Scholar in the Department of Philosophy, University of California, Los Angeles, CA 90024. 1. Introduction Whitehead's concept of prehension is undeniably the master principle of his process metaphysics. It is the central function of a creative universe whereby the many past occasions become a novel one. In my view, the concept of pre­ hension is Whitehead's most original and distinctive contribution to metaphy­ sics. It is also the very idea that prevents most contemporary philosophers from understanding or appreciating his thought. In this paper, I wish to explore the idealist context in which the concept of prehension becomes intelligible. While I do not deny that important influences from physics and biology helped Whitehead frame his idea, I contend that pre­ hension only makes sense as a concept of panpsychistic idealism. Here I use the term 'idealism' not in the sense of nature dependent on mind, but rather nature understood fun.damentally as sentient experience. 1 This appears to be White­ head's intention when, introducing the term 'prehension' for the first time in Science and the Modern World, he says: For Berkeley's mind, I substitute a process of prehensive unification. In order to make intelligible this concept of the progressive realization of natural occurrences, considerable' expansion is required, and confrontation with its actual implications in terms of concrete experience. (SMW 69) Whitehead also draws analogies with Leibniz's monads and Spinoza's modes in order to clarify how his novel idea of prehension squares with the notion of individual perspectives interlocked in a system of internal relations.
    [Show full text]
  • Pragmatism, Old and New
    Contemporary Pragmatism Editions Rodopi Vol. 1, No. 1 (June 2004), 3-41 © 2004 Susan Haack Pragmatism, Old and New Susan Haack The reformist philosophy of the classical pragmatist tradition has gradually evolved into the now-fashionable revolutionary styles of pragmatism, some scientistic, some literary. This evolution is traced from Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead, through Schiller, Lewis, Hook, and Quine, to Rorty’s literary-political neo-pragmatism. Rather than get hung up on the question of which variants qualify as authentic pragmatism, it is better — more fruitful, and appropriately forward- looking — to ask what we can learn from the older tradition, and what we can salvage from the new. It has probably never happened that a philosopher has attempted to give a general name to his own doctrine without that name’s soon acquiring, in general philosophical usage, a signification much broader than was originally intended.... Charles Peirce (CP 5.413) There never was such confusion. The tower of Babel was monotony in comparison. ...Dewey is obscure; Schiller bumptious and hasty; James’s doctrine of radical empiricism ... has been confounded with pragmatism; pragmatism itself covers two or three distinct theories ... the upshot has made one despair of man’s intelligence. But little by little the mud will settle to the bottom.... William James (Pragmatism, 134) It was William James who put “pragmatism” into philosophical currency and made it famous; but he acknowledged that it was Peirce who first introduced the word, in their discussions in the early 1870s at the “Metaphysical Club” in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In fact, the spirit of pragmatism already pervades the remarkable anti-Cartesian papers Peirce published in 1868-69, as well as “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” published in 1878.
    [Show full text]
  • Essays in Radical Empiricism
    1 Essays in Radical Empiricism Preface 2 Chapter I : Does Consciousness Exist? 6 Chapter II : A World of Pure Experience 19 Chapter III : The Thing and Its Relations 37 Chapter IV : How Two Minds Can Know One Thing 49 Chapter V : The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience 54 Chapter VI : The Experience of Activity 61 Chapter VII : The Essence of Humanism 75 Chapter VIII: La Notion de Conscience 81 Chapter IX : Is Radical Empiricism Solopsistic? 90 Chapter X : Mr. Pitkin's Refutation of 'Radical Empiricism 93 Chapter XI : Humanism and Truth Once More 95 Chapter XII : Absolutism and Empiricism 103 2 Preface Citation: Ralph Barton Perry. "Preface". Pp xv - xxv in William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press (1996). Editors' Note: This version of the Ralph Barton Perry's "Preface" to the collection of James's essays is taken from the 1996 republication of the original by the University of Nebraska Press. The page numbers were altered from the original publication to accomodate an introductory essay by Ellen Kappy Suckiel. EDITOR'S PREFACE THE present volume is an attempt to carry out a plan which William James is known to have formed several years before his death. In 1907 he collected reprints in an envelope which he inscribed with the title 'Essays in Radical Empiricism'; and he also had duplicate sets of these reprints bound, under the same title, and deposited for the use of students in the general Harvard Library, and in the Philosophical Library in Emerson Hall. Two years later Professor James published The Meaning of Truth and A Pluralistic Universe, and inserted in these volumes several of the articles which he had intended to use in the ' Essays in Radical Empiricism.' Whether he would nevertheless have carried out his original plan, had he lived, cannot be certainly known.
    [Show full text]
  • 1 the Centrality of Memory in James's Epistemology and the Implications for Voegelin's Theory of Anamnesis by Macon Boczek
    The Centrality of Memory in James’s Epistemology and The Implications for Voegelin’s Theory of Anamnesis by Macon Boczek, Ph.D. Department of Philosophy, Kent State University INTRODUCTION AND THESIS Wesley Cooper, a Jamesian scholar, is my resource for the general context in which William James‟s ideas will be utilized in this paper. His book on James‟s writings elaborates on the unity in all his work; but there are two levels within this unity, both empirical/scientific and metaphysical, in which James studies and comments on reality as we human beings encounter it.1 Cooper writes, “it is a basic interpretive hypothesis for me that the sensations of James‟s early writing are the pure experiences of his metaphysical writing”. In sum, according to Cooper, James, very much a cognitive realist, has produced a philosophical system with empirical and metaphysical levels giving it unity and power to circumscribe our knowledge of life in this world. James rejected any form of reduction of the mental to the physical but did indeed find a correlation between them. However, for James, the really real as pure experience is prior to both our mental and physical worlds; as such it is untouched by the corrupting “human serpent” but from its privileged position of reality, it rather flows into and generates both of these worlds.2 Hence, this paper is both a psychological summation of James‟s studies on memory based in our sensory and bodily selves, and a research into memory‟s mental and spiritual tasks in the radical empiricism of second level examination of the human non sensory mental world.
    [Show full text]
  • (George Allen & Unwin) 1983
    Bertrand Russell Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell London/Boston/Sidney (George Allen & Unwin) 1983 - 2014 B. Russell, CP I: Cambridge Essays 1888-99 ⋅ Greek Exercises [1888-89] ⋅ How Far Does a Country’s Prosperity Depend on Natural Resources [1889] ⋅ Evolution as Affecting Modern Political Science [1889] ⋅ State-Socialism [1889] ⋅ The Advantages and Disadvantages of Party Government, and the Conditions Necessary for Its Success [1889] ⋅ “The Language of a Nation Is a Monument to Which Every Forcible Individual in the Course of Ages Has Contributed a Stone.“ [1889] ⋅ Contentment; Its Good and Bad Points [1889] ⋅ Destruction Must Precede Construction [1889] ⋅ “A Locked Diary“ [1890-94] ⋅ Die Ehe [1893] ⋅ Self-Appreciation [1897] ⋅ Can We Be Statesmen? [1893] ⋅ Lövborg or Hedda [1894] ⋅ Cleopatra or Maggie Tulliver [1894] ⋅ Is Ethics a Branch of Empirical Psychology? [1897] ⋅ Seems, Madam? Nay, It Is [1897] ⋅ Was the World Good before the Sixth Day? [1899] ⋅ Paper on Epistemology I [1893] ⋅ Paper on Epistemology II [1893] ⋅ Paper on Bacon [1893] ⋅ Paper on History of Philosophy [1894] ⋅ Paper on Epistemology III [1894] ⋅ Paper on Descartes [1894] ⋅ A Critical Comparison of the Methods of Bacon, Hobbes and DesCartes [1894] ⋅ Paper on Bacon [1894] ⋅ Paper on DesCartes I [1894] ⋅ Paper on Descartes II [1894] ⋅ Paper on Hobbes [1894] ⋅ On the Distinction between the Psychological and Metaphysical Points of View [1894] ⋅ On Pleasure [1893] ⋅ On the Foundations of Ethics [1893] ⋅ The Relation of What Ought to Be to What Is, Has Been or Will
    [Show full text]
  • Sense-Data and the Philosophy of Mind: Russell, James and Mach
    SENSE-DATA AND THE PHILOSOPHY OF MIND: RUSSELL. JAMES. AND MACH GARY HATFIELD UniveTsity of Pennsylvania Abstract The theory of knowledge in early twenrierh,century Anglo,American phi .. losophy was oriented wward phenomenally described cognition. There was a heal'hy respect for ,he mind-body p1"oblem, which mean' ,ha, phe­ nomena in borh the mental and physical domains were taken serioU51y. Bertrand Russell's developing position on sense,dara aOO momentary par' ticulars dTCW upon, and ulrimately became like, the neutral monism of Ernst Mach and William James. Due ro a more recent behaviorist and physicalist inspired "fear of the mental", this development has been datcn .. l)layed in historical work on early analytic philosophy. Such neglect as .. sumes t"hat the "linguistic tum" is a proper and permanent effect of twen­ tieth .. cemury philosophy, an assumption that disW1ts early analytic his­ toriography, and begs a substantive philosophical question about thought and cognilion. In early twentieth-century Britain and America the once prevailing philosophical idealism was in retreat. Pragmatism and various re­ alisms were coming forth to take its place. Debate and discussion focused partly on the notion of truth, and partly on the theory of knowledge. The latter topic is my interest here. Theories of knowl­ edge in early twentieth-century philosophy drew some inspiration from renewed discussion of the classical empiricist writings of Berke­ ley and Hume. But they were also deeply candidoned by the prevail­ ing theories of mind and cognition found in the new experimental psychology in Germany, Britain, and America, and in the scientific epistem.ologies of German natural scientists such as Helmholtz and Mach.
    [Show full text]