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Avenarius1 Philosophy of Pure Experience (I.) II.—AVENARIUS1 PHILOSOPHY OF PURE EXPERIENCE (I.). BY NOBMAN SMITH. Downloaded from AVENABIUB propounds his philosophy from a standpoint whose originality borders on paradox. While all previous philosophers have regarded experience as awaiting interpre- tation through metaphysical conceptions, Avenarius holds pure experience to be self-intelligible, and the existing meta- http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/ physical theories to be the only facts that call for philosoph- ical explanation. Sometimes he describes his philosophy as the philosophy of pure experience, and sometimes as ' em- piriocriticism'. The former title refers to its content, the latter to its method. He claims that, as regards method, it combines and transcends the philosophies of Hume and Kant. The resulting system is as original in its positive teaching as it is novel in orientation. For though in certain aspects it is closely akin to the metaphysical idealism of Spinoza and Hegel, and recently in this country has been at New York University on May 10, 2015 employed as a buttress to the Bradleian philosophy, its most competent critic has described it as the latest, and, in the present state of knowledge, the only tenable form of materialism.1 A system so strongly affiliated is, even apart from its intrinsic merits, sufficiently remarkable to claim attention. In this article I shall state and criticise the main principles of Avenarius' philosophy. But in so doing I shall consider them only from the pomt of view of the problem of knowledge, and as leading up to the statement of his theory of the introjectionist argument. That theory, which has been adopted by several English writers, I reserve for detailed criticism in a second article.3 1 Wundt: " Ueber naiven and kritischen Realismus " in Philoaopkitche Btudi*n,voL xiii, pp. 334-336, 349 ft * The following are the titles and dates of Avenariua' works: Ueber die Phcuen da SpxnontcKm Pantheitmut, 1868. Philotophie alt Denim dtr Weltgem&a dem Prirvrip de* kleiruten Kraftnauet: Prolegomena iru einer Kriidc der rtinen Erfahrung, 1876. Kriiuc der reinen Erfahrung, voL L, 1888; voL ii, 1890. Der mensdUidus WeUbegriff, 189L "Bemerkungen 2 * 14 NOBMAN SMITH : The assumptions which determine Avenarius' central >roblem may, if somewhat freely stated, be expressed in the Jollowing manner. Nothing exists save experience ; and the fundamental characteristic of the content of experience is space. The self apprehends itself as an embodied existence, and so as spatially related to the objects around it. All its perceptions, thoughts and feelings, have reference direct or indirect either to the body or to its environment. Now the spatial world thus experienced varies together with one par- ticular part of itself, namely, with the brain. And this rela- tion is mutual; change in either involves change in both; Downloaded from they stand in functional relation, varying simultaneously with one another. Since nothing exists save as experienced, and since as experienced it involves change in the Brain, the relation must be of this nature. On the other hand, how- ever, objects are causally related to the brain, and by their changes produce changes in it. This causal relation as in- http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/ volving sequence and implying independent self-centred ex- istence holds only in the forward order, and therefore excludes the possibility of simultaneous variation. The fundamental problem of metaphysics is to reconcile these two standpoints, the attitude of pure experience with the standpoint adopted in phyricB and physiology. How can the whole vary simul- taneously with a part of itself, and with a part which is causally dependent for its changes upon its relations to the rest of that whole ? Avenarius will have nothing to do with the solution offered by subjective idealism—that our experi- at New York University on May 10, 2015 ence as purely subjective may vary simultaneously with those brain-states which real external objects have produced. That solution rests on a dualism which Avenarius denounces as ungrounded and absolutely false. Our experienced world is reality, and its functional relation to its own component, the brain, must therefore be reconcilable in some other zum Begriff des Gegenstandea der Psychologic " in Vitrteljahrwcfirift fiXr •wittentdiaftliehe PhUotophie, voL xviii. (1894), vol. rix. (1896). A very useful summary of the Kritik is given by Emil Koch in the Archivfttr tyttematisehe Philotophie, vol. iv. (1898). Petzoldt has published (1900) the first volume of his Einfiihrung in die Philotophie der rtinen Erfahrung. It'gives an admirable account of Avenarius' position as embodied in the KrUik. Its value is, however, seriously impaired by its strange neglect of the MeiueMidu WMbegriff. It does not seem to contain a single reference to that work, nor consequently to the more purely meta- physical aspects of Avenarius' philosophy. Petzoldt's second volume appeared in 1904, but I have not been able to consult it An excellent and detailed criticism of Avenarius' philosophy is given by Wundt in the articles above referred to. Carstanjen has contributed an article on Avenarius to MIND, N.S., vol. vi AVBNABIUB' PHILOSOPHY OP PURE EXPEBIENCE. 15 manner with the equally andoabted causal relations of that brain to the objects external to it Avenarius' detailed analysis of the natural point of view, of the attitude, that is to say, of pure and complete experi- ence, and of its relation to the scientific, I shall now proceed to state. As far as possible I shall avoid the technicalities of Avenarius' special terminology. I with all my thoughts and feelings find myself in the midst of a spatial environment1 This environment is com- posed of manifold elements which stand in relations of depen- dence to one another. Within it I also find my fellow-men. Downloaded from They interfere with the common environment, altering cer- tain parts of it and maintaining others, and of all their actions they through words and gestures reveal the inten- tion and reason. In everything they agree with myself. I accordingly believe that they are beings like myself, and that I am myself a being like them. The spatial world which http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/ thus includes both myself and others is for ordinary con- sciousness a something given, existing, familiar, known, last- ing on in thought, constantly rediscovered as fact, and in all its repetitions remaining the same. This natural consciousness is composed of two elements which from a logical point of view are of very different value, namely, of an experience and of an hypothesis. The experi- enced—-das Vorgefundene—includes, as has just been said, the bodies of my fellow-men. The hypothesis lies in the inter- pretation which I give to the movements of my fellow-men, at New York University on May 10, 2015 in the interpretation that they are expressive, that is, that they are dependent on feeling and wilL This hypothetical element can be eliminated. I can, by an effort, think of my fellow-men as being merely automata, extraordinarily complex but without thought and feeling. Our reason for rejecting this attitude is not its unnaturamess or its unfruitfulness. Apart altogether from the difficulties of consistently develop- ing such a view, there is a valid reason for regarding it as false. For, if the elimination of the hypothesis is suggested by its formal logical character as hypothesis (in distinction from experience), its retention is enforced by its actual agree- ment with experience. In the sole case in which through personal experience I am acquainted in all its relations with the movements, of that mechanism which is named ' man,' I find it in definite relations to thoughts, feelings, volitions, etc. The denial of the hypothesis therefore involves a theory, equally, hypothetical, which in its content is further 1 Der Mentehliehe Wdtbegrifi, § 6 ff. 16 NORMAN SMITH: removed from my own experience than the hypothesis itself. And, since the content of my assumption is the matter of another individual's experience, though the hypothesis in- troduces a duality or plurality, it does not cause a dualism in the philosophical sense. Nothing is assumed which is not or cannot be experienced either by myself or by others. The proof that the natural consciousness involves no dualism demands, however, a fuller analysis of its various elements. The first distinction which Avenarius notes is 1 that between things and thoughts. Here, again, there Downloaded from is duality but no dualism. The portrait of a friend which is before me is comparable with the appearance of my friend which I recall in thought. I can note that the features, etc., are the same or different, and can state the outcome of the comparison as similarity or the reverse. If we interpolate the image between thing and thought we have a series the http://mind.oxfordjournals.org/ members of which are comparable with one another. And being, as the natural consciousness admits, thus relatively comparable with one another, there cannot exist that abso- lute heterogeneity between thoughts and things which some philosophers have asserted. The chief difference between them is, indeed, merely one of time. The sense-experience of, say, a tree, is a first experience ; the tree as it reappears in thought or image is a second experience. Were the two absolutely different experiences we could no longer speak of the image as the reappearance of the original experience', and at New York University on May 10, 2015 yet at the same time we should have to make it dependent for its occurrence on what, as absolutely different from it, could never account for it. Avenarius' next distinction is between what he names the absolute and the relative points of view*. Both may be adopted without desertion of pure experience. In the abso- lute point of view the self is left out of account, the parts of the environment being apprehended in and for themselves.
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