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PURDUE UNIVERSITY (01/07) GRADUATE SCHOOL Thesis Acceptance Graduate School ETD Form 9 PURDUE UNIVERSITY (01/07) GRADUATE SCHOOL Thesis Acceptance This is to certify that the thesis prepared By Joel William Krueger Entitled WILLIAM JAMES AND KITARƯ NISHIDA ON "PURE EXPERIENCE," CONSCIOUSNESS, AND MORAL PSYCHOLOGY Complies with University regulations and meets the standards of the Graduate School for originality and quality DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY For the degree of Final examining committee members Charlene Haddock Seigfried , Chair Donald W. Mitchell Daniel W. Smith Thomas P. Kasulis Approved by Major Professor(s): Charlene Haddock Seigfried Approved by Head of Graduate Program: Rod Bertolet Date of Graduate Program Head's Approval: April 20, 2007 WILLIAM JAMES AND KITARŌ NISHIDA ON “PURE EXPERIENCE,” CONSCIOUSNESS, AND MORAL PSYCHOLOGY A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of Purdue University by Joel W. Krueger In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2007 Purdue University West Lafayette, Indiana ii This dissertation is dedicated to my parents, in loving gratitude for their patience and support. iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am deeply indebted to all of the members of my committee, Professor Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Professor Donald W. Mitchell, Professor Daniel W. Smith, and Professor Thomas P. Kasulis. Each in their own way provided ongoing examples of how serious scholarship can co-exist alongside the virtues of warmth, humor and compassion. I am especially indebted to Professor Charlene Haddock Seigfried, my major advisor. Her critical reading of this dissertation was invaluable, and her comprehensive knowledge of James a continuing inspiration. Finally, I would like to thank my wife, Robyn Remke, for her support and encouragement. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER ONE: James on Consciousness and Pure Experience.......................................1 Introduction .............................................................................................................1 James on Consciousness and Experience ................................................................2 James on Pure Experience .....................................................................................14 The Purpose of Pure Experience................................................................15 The Place of Pure Experience – A Prelude................................................21 The Place of Pure Experience in Perception and Action ...........................28 Pure Experience as the Prereflective Continuity of Subject-Object, Perceiver-Environment ..................................................................31 Pure Experience as the Integration of Perception and Action in the Body’s Adaptive Intelligence ........................................................37 Summary................................................................................................................42 CHAPTER TWO: James’s Pure Experience and the Extended Mind...............................44 Introduction............................................................................................................44 Definitions..............................................................................................................45 Internalism and Phenomenal Content ....................................................................56 James on Consciousness and Selectivity ...............................................................58 v Page Bodily Self-Awareness, Agency, and Externalism about Phenomenal Content ...64 Empirical Support ..................................................................................................74 Consciousness as a Selecting Agency........................................................75 Phenomenological Primacy of Prereflective Bodily Self-Awareness .......82 Summary................................................................................................................89 CHAPTER THREE: Nishida on Consciousness and Pure Experience .............................92 Introduction............................................................................................................92 Foundations of Nishida’s Pure Experience............................................................95 Nishida’s Pure Experience in its Zen Buddhist Context......................................100 Dōgen on the Bodily Basis of (No-)Mind and (No-)Self ....................................107 Acting-Intuition and the Embodiment of Pure Experience..................................113 A Problem with Pure Experience.............................................................113 The Sensorimotor, Intersubjective, and Social-Historical Dynamics of Acting- Intuition................................................................................................................115 Acting-Intuition and Sensorimotor Skillfulness ......................................115 Acting-Intuition, Intersubjectivity and the Social-Historical World .......123 Summary..............................................................................................................135 CHAPTER FOUR: Nishida’s Pure Experience and Moral Skillfulness .........................140 Introduction..........................................................................................................140 Definitions............................................................................................................142 Three Kinds of Nonconceptual Content ..............................................................145 Nonconceptual Content and Skilled Coping........................................................150 Buddhist Moral Psychology and Nonconceptual Content...................................157 The Phenomenological Structure of Moral Skillfulness in Action......................165 The Nondual Gestalt Structure of Skillful Moral Perception ..................166 Skillful Moral Action as Bodily-Knowing ..............................................172 vi Page Empirical Support ................................................................................................184 Summary..............................................................................................................193 NOTES.............................................................................................................................198 BIBLIOGRAPHY............................................................................................................210 VITA................................................................................................................................230 vii ABSTRACT Krueger, Joel W. Ph.D., Purdue University, May 2007. William James and Kitarō Nishida on “Pure Experience”, Consciousness and Moral Psychology. Major Professor: Charlene Haddock Seigfried. The question “What is the nature of experience?” is of perennial philosophical concern. It deals not only with the nature of experience qua experience, but additionally with related questions about the experiencing subject and that which is experienced. In other words, to speak of the philosophical problem of experience, one must also address questions about mind, world, and the various relations that link them together. Both William James and Kitarō Nishida were deeply concerned with these issues. Their shared notion of “pure experience” is the conceptual cornerstone of their attempt to deal with the philosophical problem of experience. This dissertation is an analysis of “pure experience” and its relevance to several issues in contemporary philosophy of mind. Drawing upon James’s and Nishida’s “pure experience”, I argue both for a sensorimotor-based, “extended” conception of consciousness and a bodily skills-based account of moral psychology. In the first chapter, I discuss James’s “pure experience” as developed in Essays in Radical Empiricism. I argue for a phenomenological interpretation of pure experience. I contend that a phenomenological rendering of pure experience respects James’s claim that consciousness and perception are modes of bodily activity: not things that happen to us but rather things that we do. I draw out pure experience’s implicit claims about the prereflective continuity of conscious self and world, and I make explicit the way that the body’s world-engaged, sensorimotor systems secure this prereflective continuity within pure experience. viii In the second chapter, I argue that James’s “pure experience” can be used to develop an extended view of mind. I argue that mind—including the content of phenomenal consciousness—is a dynamic, temporally-extended process that is distributed beyond the skin and skull of the subject. The extended model of consciousness I develop avoids the intractable skepticism of internalist, representation- based models of mind while, at the same time, remaining faithful to the phenomenology of our embodied and embedded experience. I discuss how recent experimental research— including work on change blindness, inattentional blindness, blindsight, neonate empathy and cross-modal perception—supports this extended conception of mentality. In the third chapter, I argue for a phenomenological interpretation of Nishida’s pure largely consonant with James’s formulation. According to Nishida, pure experience points to the fact that, via the changing forms of its prereflective adaptive action, body is functionally
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