T H E DOCTRINE OF ‘PURE EXPERIENCE’: THE EVOLUTION OF A CONCEPT

FROM MACH TO JAMES TO TOLMAN PAUL TIBBETTS

PART I. THE CONCEPT OF ‘EXPERIENCE’ IN JAMES’ PSYCHOLOGICAL WRITINGS Throughout the Principles of Psychology we find James employing the Lockean

distinction between sensation and reflection on sensation, between what is imme- diately present to the senses and what is the product of logical inference in judgment. This distinction is clearly evident in the following analogy.

Conceptual systems which neither began nor left off in sensations would be like bridges without piers. Systems about fact must plunge themselves into sensations as bridges plunge their piers into the rock. Sensations are the stable rock, the terminous a quo and the terminus ad quem of thought. To find such termini is our aim with all our theories-to conceive first when and where a certain sensation may be had, and then to have it. Finding it stops discus- sion. Failure to find it kills the false conceit of knowledge. Only when you deduce a possible sensation for me from your theory, and give it to me when and where the theory requires, do I begin to be sure that your thought has anything to do with truth.’

I n the concluding chapter of the Principles, “Necessary Truths and the Effects of Experience,” James continued and further elaborated upon this distinction between what comes before us and what we think.2 I n this same chapter he also re- marked that the empirical psychologist, along with the scientist in general, must clearly differentiate in his writings between the empirical order of things and their rational order of comparison.a Such a distinction obviously parallels that drawn by Hume between matters of fact and relations of ideas.

Even though James had been working on the Principles for a number of years (from 1878-1890), these distinctions were present from the very beginning of this long period. For example, in “Reflex Action and Theism” (1881) James had already drawn a distinction between the conceiving or theorizing faculty, the “world of our conceptions” on the one hand, and the “world of our impressions” on the other.4 It was also in this early article that James marveled a t “the miracle of miracles: that the given order lends itself to our remodeling. It shows itself plastic to many of our scientific, . . . aesthetic, and practical purposes and ends.”5

1W. James, The Principles of Psychology (1890), 2 vols. (New York: Dover, 19.50), 11, p. 7. ZZbid., 11, p. 634. 3Zbid., 11, p. 676. 4W. James, “Reflex Action and Theism” (1881). Reprinted in The Will lo Believe (1896), (New

York: Dover, 1956), p. 117. ‘Zbid., pp. 119-120.

I

PAUL TIBBETTS received his Ph.L). from Purdue University; his dissertation related Mead’s theory of perception and action to recent developments in perceptual psychology. He is the editor of Perception: Selected Readings from Sczence and Phenomenology (1969). His present areas of specialization are epistemology and the philosophy of science, specifically the problems of observation, evidence and theory verification. in the social/behavioral sciences. His papers on these to ics have appeared in the Psychological Record, Dialectica and Philosophy and Phnomeno- logical &.search. He is currently at the University of Dayton.

55

56 PAUL TIBBETTS

Though he wondered a t this strange and perhaps unique ability that man-as- knower, man-as-theorizer possessed, James continued to affirm throughout the Principles that all valid scientific abstractions are ultimately traceable back to and grounded in everyday experience and, in turn, in the world of the senses. The analogy of the bridge in the above quote was more than a useful metaphor; it was a declaration of James’ faith in traditional empiricism. However, as an empirical psychologist the traditional concept of a “sensation” was inadequate for James’ purposes; the various studies on the nervous system by Helmholtz,, Fechner and others revealed to James that sensory experience is highly transformed and organized by the body and other biological factors. In Experience and Nature Dewey came to a conclusion which largely coincided with the one drawn by James.

. . . It is pure fiction that a “sensation,” or peripheral excitation, or stimulus, travels undis- turbed in a solitary state in its own coach-and-four to enter the brain or consciousness in its purity.

When philosophers have insisted upon the certainty of the immediately and focally present or “given” and have sought indubitable immediate existential data upon which to build, they have always unwittingly passed from the existential to the dialectical; theu have substituted a general character for a n immediate this. For the immediately given is always the dubious; it is always a matter for subsequent events to determine, or assign character to.7

Dewey’s argument was present in a t least embryonic form in one of James’ earliest publications, a critique of Herbert ,Spencer’s theory of mind. James there argued that, “the knower is not simply a mirror . . ., passively reflecting an order that he comes upon and finds simply existing.’18 That is to say, the mind is not a mere onlooker but an actor with a central role to perform in the drama of expe- rience. Unfortunately, he did not a t this point in his career go much beyond making these largely negative remarks as to what role the mind does not play in experience. Until the publication of the Principles, i t was largely left to others to develop the implications of the above insights.

There was one important German thinker at this time who greatly influenced James’ views regarding experience, Ernst In his now classic Analysis of Sensations (the first edition of which appeared five years before James’ Principles were published) , Mach systematically explored the notion of a “pure sensation.” This is a sensation which is neither physical nor psychical in character but which is the original datum for all knowledge claims concerning physical and psychological events. These pure sensations or “elements” become the subject matter of physical science, physiology or psychology, depending on the functional relations and contexts they are placed in by the perceiver.

. . . Thus, perceptions, presentations, volitions, and emotions, in short the whole inner and outer world, are put together, in combinations of varying evanescence and permanence, out of a

6J. Dewey, Experience and Nature, 2nd ed. (LaSalle: Open Court, 1929), p. 271. ?Ibid., pp. 283-284. 8W. James, ‘ I Remarks on Spencer’s Definition of Mind as Correspondence,” Journal of SpecuZatiLe

Philosophy, 1878, 12, 18. $James and Mach were not only in correspondence with one another buttialso had personal

contact during the period James was writing the Principles. Perry remarks that, It waa during this trip 11882-831 that James first made the acquaintance of Ernst Mach, with whom he maintained a sympathetic contact for many years. . . . ’ I Perry adds that Mach’s Analysis of Sensations “wm both a contribution to psychology and a precursor of James’s doctrine of pure experience. R. B. Perry, “European Contacts,” in The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), I, pp. 587-588.

THE DOCTRINE OF ‘PURE EXPERIENCE’ 57

sinall number of homogeneous elements. Usually, these elements are called sensations. But as vestiges of a onesided theory inhere in that term, we prefer to speak simply of elements, as we have already done. The aim of all research is to ascertain the mode of connection of these elements.10

These “combinations of varying permanence” Mach broke down into physical, physiological and psychological relations. He then designated these three possible combinations into which pure sensations or elements could be grouped by the letters ABC. . ., KLM. . ., and C& . . . .

Let those complexes of colors, sounds, and so forth, commonly called bodies, be denoted, for the sake of clearness, by ABC . . .; the complex, known as our own body, which is a part of the former complexes distinguished by certain peculiarities, may be called KLM . . .; the complex composed of volitions, memory-images, and the rest, we shall represent by ap’y . . . .” It followed for Mach that the supposedly impassable gulf between physical

and physiological inquiry, on the one hand, and psychological investigation on the other, is not an ontological but simply a methodological separation. That is to say, if the same pure sensation can appear in any or even all three possible combinations, then what distinguishes physics from psychology is not a different subject matter but simply the system of relations (or, using more contemporary terminology, the language game or conceptual framework) that is employed.

A color is a physical object as soon as we consider its dependence, for instance, upon its luminous source, upon other colors, upon temperatures, upon spaces, and so forth. When we consider, however, its dependence upon the retina (t’he elements KLM . . .), it is a psychological object, a sensation. Not the subjecbmatter, but the direction of our investigation, is different in the two domains.’*

Returning to one of the central themes of this paper, i t is not so much a dif- ference in the immediate experience of the physical scientist, the neurophysiologist, or the introspective psychologist that sets these three areas of inquiry apart from one another. Rather i t is due to the theoretical framework and explanatory principles that are taken as fundamental in each domain. This thesis coincides with Mach’s position that experience does not originally come tagged as physical, bodily or mental. These are nothing more than methodological designations made from a specific conceptual point of view and for certain purposes. Respectively, these last two points will issue in the instrumentalist interpretation of science, and the pragmatic emphasis on context and goals. More will be said on this 1ater.l3

I n summary, we have briefly seen how James, as he successively came under the influence of traditional British empiricism and Mach, moved from the sensation- reflection model of experience, to that of a distinction between an immediate as against a more inferential level of knowledge. Anticipating Russell, James respec- tively termed these knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge about. Let us now turn our attention to that important period between the Principles and the group of papers which later made up the Essays in Radical Empiricism. This period is essential for understanding James’ most mature philosophical views on experience.

‘OE. Mach, The Analysis of Sensatioiis (1886), trans. by C. Williams (New York: Dover, 1959), p. 22.

“Zbid., pp. 8-9. “Ibid., pp. 17-18. 13P. Tibbetts, “Popper’s Critique of the Instrumentalist Account of Theories and Theoretical

Terms,” Southemi Journal of Philosophy, 1971, 10(1), 57-70.

5s PAUL TIBBETTS

PART 11. THE PERIOD OF TRANSITION During the Winter term of the 1897-1898 school year, James conducted a

seminar entitled “Philosophical Problems of Psychology”, the lecture notes for which Ralph Barton Perry included in his two volume study, The Thought and Character of Will iam Jarnes.l4 I n these lecture notes it is obvious that James was at this time preoccupied with the pure experience hypothesis, according to which the same experiential datum could be “taken over again in a different context and subsumed under different categories,” as Perry expressed it. I n fact one of the required texts in James’ seminar was Mach’s Analysis of Sensations! James’ indebt- edness to Mach is evident in the following statements of methodology.

Various original contents, preserving their “logical” identity, can figure in various combina- tions with each other, forming parts of diverse systems, [such as]

(1) The field of Plato’s classificatory conception of “ideas,” where the originals meant are the various abstract qualities or types-of-nature that may appear in any field. The rela- tions here are those of comparison.

(2) The system of ideal values, aesthetically or ethically arranged. The relations are those of worth, and the field is one of appreciation.

(3) The system of physical nature, where the terms are sensations or hypothetic objects sensationally defined, and the relations those of sequence and coexistence or quantitative equivalence. . . .

(4) The psychological system of individual streams of consciousness, if such a collection can be called a system. . . .

What places the same content now in one system, now in another system, is the fact that there are so many relations in which it can stand. . . . Since, within each system, the relations that govern the content in other systems are abstracted from, we have so many mutually exclusive points of view of the content; and what is true of it from one point of view is either false from another or is so irrelevant that it cannot be treated as positively true. . . .I6

Shortly after offering this seminar, James contributed an article on “Expe- rience” to Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1901). James there defined experience as

. . . the entire process of phenomena, of present data considered in their raw immediacy, before reflective thought has analyzed them into subjective and objective aspects or ingredients. It is the summum genus of which everything must have been a part before we can speak of it at all.“

Above all, James wanted to stress the essential “neutrality of signification” of pure experience. To do this he added the following comment.

If philosophy insists on keeping this term indeterminate, she can refer to her subject- matter without committing herself as to certain questions in dispute. But if experience be used with either an objective or a subjective shade of meaning, then question-begging occurs, and discussion grows impossible.”

As we will now see, the concept of pure or neutral experience will prove to be central to all of James’ writings, in science, epistemology, and even in his normative inquiries.

1dR. B. Perry, “Unpublished Notes.” Reprinted in The Y‘hought and Character of William James,

161bid., 11, p. 368. ‘6J. Baldwin, (Ed.) Dictiomry of Philosophy a i ~ d Psychology, 3 vols. (New York: Macmillan,

”Zbid., I, pp. 360-361.

11, pp. 367-371.

3901), I, p. 360.

THE DOCTRINE OF ‘PURE EXPERIENCE’ 50

PART 111. THE PERIOD OF RADICAL EMPIRICISM We now come to James’ most mature and comprehensive statements regarding

the concept of experience, which collectively were published under the title Essays in Radical Empirisim. So as not to alienate the reader with what might a t first sight appear to be too radical a view, James began the first essay in this collection by depicting the contemporary state of philosophical thought.

It is difficult not to notice a curious unrest in the philosophic atmosphere of the time, a loosening of old landmarks, a softening of oppositions, a mutual borrowing from one another on the part of systems anciently closed, and an interest in new suggestions, however vague, as if the one thing sure were the inadequacy of the extant school-solutions. The dissatisfaction with these seems due for the most part to a feeling that they are too abstract and academic.

I propose, therefore, to describe the pattern as clearly as I can consistently with great brevity, and to throw my description into the bubbling vat of publicity where, jostled by rivals and torn by critics, it will eventually either disappear from notice, or else, if better luck befall it, quietly subside to the profundities, and serve as a possible ferment of new growths or a nucleus of new crystallization.’8

Where James made his first distinctive contribution to the analysis of expe- rience was in his emphasis that experience is not given as so many individual bits and pieces, in contrast with the atom-like impressions conjured up by Humean psychology. I n opposition to traditional empiricism, James argued that the con- junctive relations between one experience and another are given in experience, rather than being imposed on experience by the mind. James agreed that a true empiricism should certainly exclude from its consideration of experience any ele- ment which is not originally given in experience; however, neither should it exclude what, upon close inspection, is clearly part of such experience. To use his own words,

Now, ordinary empiricism, in spite of the fact that conjunctive and disjunctive relations present themselves as being fully co-ordinate parts of experience, has always shown a tendency to do away with the connections of things, and to insist most on the disjunctions. Berkeley’s nominalism, Hume’s statement that whatever things we distinguish are as ‘loose and separate’ as if they had ‘no manner of connection,’ . . . [t.his] and the general pulverization of all Expe- rience by association and the mind-dust theory, are examples of what I mean.

Radical empi?icism, as I understand it, does full justice to conjunctive relations, without, however, treating them as rationalism always tends to treat them, as being true in some supernal way, as if the unity of things and their variety belong to different orders of truth and vitality altogether .19

In the preface to the Meaning of Truth, he later added that “the relations between things, conjunctive as well as disjunctive are just as much matters of direct particular experience, neither more so nor less so, than the things themselves.’120 In fact, the omission of conjunctive relations from the empiricist world-view directly led to the abortive attempt by both empiricists and idealists to introduce various intellectual functions to supplement what was felt to be missing in immediate experience, namely, relations. This led to the introduction of “trans-experiential agents of unification, substances, intellectual categories and powers, or Selves; whereas, if empiricism had only been radical and taken everything that comes without disfavor,

law. James, “ A World of Pure Experience” (1904). Reprinted in Essays in Radieal Empiricism (New York: Longmans, Green, 1912), pp. 39-40.

‘Olbid., pp. 42-44. 2OW. James, The Meaning of Truth (1909) (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968), p. xii.

60 PAUL TIBUETTS

conjunction as well as separation, each a t its face value, the results would have called for no such artificial correction.”21

Dewey expressed the identical criticism against traditional empiricisni a number of years later. In Reconstruction and Philosophy Dewey remarked that once we come to see that the isolated and simple impressions of Locke and Hume are not part of original experience but “ . . . answer to certain demands of their theory of mind, the necessity ceases for the elaborate Kantian and Post-Kantian machinery of a priori concepts and categories to synthesize the alleged stuff of experience.”ZZ The ‘glue’ which binds the elements of experience together is itself part of expe- rience, thus avoiding recourse to Kant’s categories of the understanding or to the transcendental schematism for unifying phenomenal experience. As might be suspected, this point was a constant source of irritation between pragmatism, on the one hand, and intellectualism, British idealism, and Neo-Ihntianism on the other.

The second major theme in the Essays in Radical Empir ic i sm is the concept of pure experience, which we earlier encountered in James’ lecture notes of 1897 and in his article in Baldwin’s Dictionary. In the Essays he noted that

‘Pure experience’ is the name which I gave to the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our latter reflection with its conceptual categories. . . an experience pure in the literal sense of a that which is not yet any definite what, . . . But the flux of it no sooner comes than it tends to fill itself with emphases, and these salient parts become identified and fixed and abstracted; so that experience now flows as if shot through with adjectives and nouns and prepositions and conjunction^.^^

Philosophically, two of the more important adjectives which pure experience becomes ‘shot through with’ are mental and physical. Related to these particular adjectives are such terms as subjective and objective, real and nonreal, and inside and outside consciousness. Unfortunately, the thesis that experience prior to concep- tualization was essentially neutral proved to be quite difficult for James’ contem- poraries to grasp. Commentators insisted on reading either an idealism or a phys- icalism into James’ writings, depending upon their own philosophic leanings. One group of commentators, for example, assumed that pure experience was something like an intellectual intuition of reality. Conversely, another group saw the concept of pure experience as an implicit denial of intellectualism (which of course it was), and therefore as a vote for a physicalistic interpretation of experience. James denied both accounts of his positionz4 t’hough this did little to lessen the misunderstandings that arose. In his important essay, “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?”, James restated as pointedly as possible the neutral character of original experience.

The instant field of the present is a t all times what I call the ‘pure’ experience. It is only virtually or potentially either subject or object as yet. For the time being, it is . . . unqualified actuality, or existence, a simple I h a P

? I W . James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, pp. 43-44, ??J. l)ewey, fieconstrucliort, in Philosophy, 2nd ed. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1048), pp. 90-91. ‘”V. James, “The Thing and Its llelations” (1905). Reprinted in Essays iu Radical Empiricism,

pp. 93-94. 24111egardiiig nIac:h’s posit,ivisni, and the atlempt to reduce psychology t o neurophysiology,

Perry records James’ response as “ Ilecidedly not,’-for this could only mean the reduction of psychology, tliroiigh psychophysics, to physics; while for James psychology had its OWL categories, scientific.ally w niithoritative w: those of physivs and metaphysically more fundamental.” 11. B. Perry, The ’I’h,onghl a d Ch,aracter of William James, 11, pp. 389-390.

?&\V. .J:tmes, “ Hoes ‘Consciousness’ I4:xist ?” (1904). Reprinted in h’ssa:ys in. Radical. Empiricism, p. 23.

THE DOCTRINE OF ‘PURE EXPERIENCE’ 61

To use one of the adjectives mentioned above, even the notion of consciousness was something absent in pure experience; along with such adjectives as mental and psychical, it was a designation that arose in reflection on experience and there- fore in retrospect. To say that in pure experience we are conscious would be to violate the essentially neutral character of experience, especially when one considers the mentalistic and subjective connotations associated with this particular adjec- tive. Perry once remarked in this context that James’ doctrine of pure experience actually required a new term such as “phenomenon” which would not be confused with consciousness, but which would constitute a more intuitive manifold within which consciousness itself shall be distinguished and explained.,lzfi In his incisive article on James, Arthur Bentley also voiced a similar comment.

To restate James’s datum by injecting, however craftily, some form of subjective into its veins is to falsify your report on James. To assign it physiologically a research home in a brain or neural system is to abandon James’s full field of behavioral inquiry for a narrow specialty-. . . Speak of “experience” and you must mean “pure experience” if you want to talk about James in his own sense; you cannot imply that “experience” exists by that name, with the “pure” form as one of its varieties; you are obligated in James’s texts to understand the . . . “experiencing” and “the experienced” equally and together-the “subjective and objective both at once”- unsevered except as in later inquiry you may trace and appraise any differentiation that may show itself?’

We have now completed our brief examination of the concept of experience and its development in James’ writings. We have followed this concept through the oftentimes explicit sensationalism of the early psychological writings, where James frequently resorted to the Lockean and Humean distinction between sensation and reflection, impressions and ideas. In the phenomenalistic period, we saw the influence of Mach in James’ notion of pure experience. Finally, in his last set of writings, which we can term his phenomenological period (for reasons that will soon become evident), we saw the doctrine of pure experience linked up with one of his most important philosophical insights, his radical empiricism. Together these last two doctrines constitute James’ metaphysics (which is developed in A Pluralist ic Universe) , an axiology (as seen in T h e Meaning of T r u t h , the W i l l to Believe and the Variet ies of Religious Experience) , and finally an epistemology regarding the relation between the given element in experience and conception (which relation James began to explicate in his last work, S o m e Problems in Philosophy) . With this summary in mind, let us now turn to the fourth and last part of this paper. (In addition to the commentaries by Perryz6 and Bentleyz7 on James’ doctrine of experience, a few other excellent critiques might also be mentioned a t this p ~ i n t . ) ~ ~ - ~ l

26R. B. Perry, I n the Spirit of William James (1938) (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 1958), p. 93.

27 A. Bentley, “The Jamesian Datum” (1943). Reprinted in Inquiry Into Inquiries, edited by S. Ratner (Boston: Beacon Press, 1954), p. 236.

ZSV. Lowe, “William James’s Plurialistic Metaphysics of Experience.” In In Commemoration of William James, 1842-1342 (no editor listed) (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), pp.

ZQH. Linschoten, on the Way Toward a Phenomenological Psychology: The Psychology of William James, edited by A. Giorgi (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1968). Esp. see Chap IV, “Language, Experience, Reality” and Chap. VIII, “Experience and Behavior.”

30A. Gurwitsch, ,,The Field of Consciousness (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1953). Esp. see Chap. One, The Problem of Dimensional Differences and the Philosophy of Radical Em- piricism.”

31J. Edie, “Necessary Truth and Perception: William James on the Structure of Experience,” In New Essays in Phenomenology, edited by J. Edie (Chicago: Quadrangle Press, 1969).

157-177.

62 PAUL TIBBETTS

PART IV. THE DOCTRINE OF PURE EXPERIENCE IN TWENTIETH CENTURY THOUGHT There are at least two major psychologists who to different extents were influ-

enced by James’ notion of pure experience: E. C . Tolman and E. G. Boring. That these theorists should have employed the same concept as one of the pillars of their respective positions, should strongly suggest to the reader the potential explanatory and unifying power of James’ philosophy, especially in its epistemological dimen- sions. (Actually, the distinction between a relatively neutral, prereflective level of experience as against an interpretive level of analysis is common to a number of twentieth century philosophers. For further discussion see footnote 32. In any case, among experimental psychologists, Tolman and Boring stand closest in my estimation to James’ position.)

Tolman was one of the foremost behavioral scientists of his generation (from the 1920’s through the early 1950’s). It is therefore quite surprising to nonpsycholo- gists and even to some psychologists that in “Psychology Versus Immediate Expe- rience” (1935) Tolman defended the notion of pure e~perience.3~ As most readers are aware, the behaviorist is primarily concerned with constructing an explanatory model of animal and human behavior which will systematically exclude any reference whatsoever to subjective states or mental events, due to their private and nonob- servable character. Only by restricting his descriptive statements to directly observable and, consequently, measurable behavior will the psychologist establish a truly scientific account of human action. That behaviorism has traditionally had close affiliations with operationism, positivism and physicalism is of course no accident. However, unlike those psychologists who gravitated toward the more naive forms of reductionism, Tolman was one behaviorist, in my opinion, who expressed a surprising sophistication regarding methodological and conceptual issues. In the above article, for example, Tolman began by stating his behavioristic orientation.

In this paper I am going to try to indicate my notion concerning the nature and subject-matter of psychology. I am a behaviorist. I hold that psychology does not seek descriptions and intercommunications concerning immediate experience per se. Such descriptions and attempts a t direct intercommunication may be left to the arts and metaphysics. Psychology seeks, rather, the objectively statable laws and processes governing behavior. Organisms, human and subhuman, come up against environmental stimulus situations and to these stimulus situations they, after longer or shorter intervals of time, behave. The laws and processes determining this their behavior are statable in objective terms.34

J*P. Tibbetts, “The ‘Levels of Experience’ Doctrine in Modern Philosophy of Mind,”Diakcticu,

33Tolman began his graduate work a t Harvard in 1911, the,year after James’ death. However, Tolman studied under Perry and Holt, both of whom were quite familiar with James’ doctrine of pure experience. In all likelihood, then, Tolman’s employment of the pure experience doctrine was due to the mediation of either Perry or Holt. Regarding this influence at Harvard, Tolman wrote that “ having read some William James during my senior year a t Technology, I fancied that I wanted to become a philosopher. . . . The courses I remember most vividly were: Perry’s course in Ethics, which laid the course for my later interest in motivation and, indeed, gave me the main concepts . . ., and Holt’s course in Experimental; and Holt’s seminar in Epistemology in which I was introduced to, and excited by, the New Realism. . . .” from E. G. Boring, (Ed.), History of Psychology in Autobio- gTUphy, Vol. IV (Worcester: Clark University Press, 1952). As to the possible influence of James’ doctrine on Boring, I was unable to find any reference to James on this matter in Boring’s writings. Even in Boring’s lengthy autobiographical sketch in The History of Psychology in Autobiography, edited by E. G. Boring, Vol. IV, Boring makes no reference to James in this matter. Nor do Boring’s various papers on the mind-body problem, and the distinction between subjectivity and objectivity, contain reference to James. I sus ect that Boring’s version of the pure experience doctrine derives from his reading of Mach, thou& this is a conjecture.

1971, 26 131-151.

THE DOCTRINE OF ‘PURE EXPERIENCE’ 63

One of the standard rejoinders to this argument runs as follows: ‘Though you may elect to concentrate on overt, measurable behavior, nevertheless there are such phenomena as mental states, images, and cognitive processes which only another method, that of introspection, can describe and The tendency to sympathize with the introspectivist’s retort is understandable since mental states would seem to be an obvious datum in all first-person experience. We might even come to think of our mental states as something private and subjective. Con- versely, physical objects and physical processes would then be conceived as some- thing outside us, that is, as outside our body. These two statements would logically entail the conclusion that the physical or external world can only be known mediately through our sensations rather than directly. Largely under the influence of the British empiricists, this dichotomy between perceptual experience and the external stimulus object continues to exercise a considerable influence in the philosophical and the psychological literature on perception. (See footnote 36 for a detailed account of such dualistic thinking in psychology; see footnote 37 for an alternative approach to the relation between perceptual experience and the external perceptual object .)

Tolman’s approach to this problem was simply to abandon this conception of two distinct realms, an external physical world (to be studied by the physical sciences), and numerous private mental worlds (to be studied introspectively). He did this by adopting James’ conception of pure experience, which as we have seen is neither subjective nor objective, mental nor physical. To employ Tolman’s expression, introspective psychology and the physical sciences (including behav- iorism) would be interpreted as so many alternative sets of “logical constructs” or conceptual frameworks for interpreting and organizing immediate experience. As Tolman stated,

I shall hold that immediate experience just as it appears, contains quite as much objectivity as it does subjectivity. Immediate experience, as initially given, is not my private world nor your private world. It is not something to be studied primarily by psychology. It is, rather, an initial, common matrix out of which both physics and psychology are evolved. It is the only tangible real that we have. Physics does not present another real that we have. Physics does not present another real behind that of immediate experience. Nor does psychology, as such, study this real of immediate experience in a more first-hand way than does physics. Physics is a set of logical constructs-a set of rules and equations whereby we are aided in finding our way about from one moment of immediate experience to another. Further, and this purports to be the only new and specific contribution of this paper, psychology is, I shall argue, but another set of logical constructs, another set of rules and equations, which, when added to those of physics, will give us still further aid in finding our way about from one moment of experience to the next.ss

He then went on to draw the important conclusion that

34E. C. Tolman, “Psychology Versus Immediate Experience” (1935). Reprinted in Behavior and

36F0r a highly-informative survey of this point of view see E. Boring, “A History of Introspec-

asp. Tibbetts, “Perceptual Theory and Epistemological Dualism: Some Examples from Experi-

37P. Tibbetts, “The Transactional Theory of Human Knowledge and Action,” Man-Enuiron-

SEE. C . Tolman, “Psychology Versus Immediat,e Experience,” pp. 96-97.

PsychOlogicaZ Man (Berkeley: California University Press, 1951), p. 94.

tion,” Psychological Bulletin, 1953, 60, p. 169-189.

mental Psychology,” Psychologiml Record, 1972, 22, 401422.

nzent Syslems, 1972, 8, (Part 2), p. 37-59.

61 PAUL TInTlETTS

There is, if you will, still left in my universe a dichotomy, but it is a dichotomy not between physical entities, and mental entities, but between both of these as mere logical constructs, on the one hand, and ammediate experaence as the actually given, rich, qualitied, diffuse, matrix from which both sciences are evolved on the other?* (Italics added)

About this same time, Boring adopted a similar line of reasoning. Agreeing with Tolman, Boring was also distressed by the relative isolation of introspective studies and Gestalt psychology from behavioral and neurobiological considera- tions. In opposition to the behaviorist’s mistrust of introspective studies, Boring argued that “the behaviorist is as dependent upon ‘direct experience’ as the physi- cist or the psy~hologis t .”~~ After making this important concession regarding experience, Boring then went on and derived a conclusion concerning methodology, a conclusion which circumvented quite well the entire introspectivism-behaviorism controversy.

Of course we must start with experience. No other conception of the scientific process is feasible. . . . [However,] c sensation or an emotion is just as much of a generalized reality, just as little an immediate actuality, as an electron or a neurone, and the law of association is just as much a result of an inferential process as the law of gravitation or the all-or-none law of nervous conduction. . . . I should not, however, like to call experience ‘conscious,’ because the word ‘ conscious’ implies to me a psychological reality.

. . . The scientists must remember that [Immediate] Experience cannot become the object of observation. For science it is simply a Whence, a premise to his method. Even the most direct observation is the beginning of inference, for it is never a mere phenomenologiral phot ngraphy but always the working over of experience by an Aufgabe or a point of view.41

Boring illustrates this argument with a triangle, with “immediate experience (or actuality)” a t one corner, and “psychic reality” and “physiological (including physical) reality” a t the other two corners. Arrows are then drawn from the first corner (that is, from “immediate experience”) to the other two corners to indicate that both the psychic and physiological (including physical) realities are experi- entially and logically derived from immediate experience (or actuality).

. . . We can draw the line. . . from experience to the physiological and physical facts. An entity, like a brain process or an electron, is a construct. It is not immediately experienced, but it is generated out of many observations. In this sense it is logically mediate to experience itself. Here my personal preference is for the distinction between actuality and reality. Experience is actual. The electron or the process in the brain is real hut not artud. Reality is always inferred from actually [or immediate experience] 42

As anyone familiar with the history of modern psychology is aware, Tolman and Boring were among the more sophisticated theorists of their time with regard to the epistemological and methodological issues confronting any behavioral sci- entist. In some respects, their sophistication in these matters is greater than that expressed by more recent theorists. To provide one example: Two major alternatives to the mind-body problem in modern psychology are reductionism and psycho- physical dualism. Where behaviorally oriented psychologists generally prefer the former alternative, those with training in the neurobiological sciences frequently

3QIbid, p. 96. 4oE. Boring, “The Psychologist’s Circle,” Psychological Review, 1931, 38, 178. “Ibid., pp. 180-181. Boring further developed this argument in a later essay, entitled “The

**I;.. Boring, “The Psychologist’s Circle,” p. 180. Physiology of Consciousness,” Science, 1832, 76, 32-39.

THE DOCTRINE OF ‘PURE EXPERIENCE’ 65

opt for some version of psychophysical dualism, or even for out-and-out subjec- tive idealism! (For examples of psychophysical dualism see footnotes 43-46; for a discussion of the mind-body problem in the recent literature, and the major theories currently being debated, see footnote 47.)

Given James’, Tolman’s, and Boring’s commitment to the doctrine that imme- diate experience is essentially neutral regarding such distinctions as “mental” and “physical,” psychophysical dualism and reductionism would simply have been interpreted by them as nothing more than alternative conceptual possibilities rather than as metaphysical dogmas. Unfortunately the interpretation of the mind-body problem, along with the related issue of the relation between subjective and objective factors in experience, is not generally recognized by psychologists and neurobiologists as simply a conceptual issue but is oftentimes interpreted as an empirical issue. The reason for this, in my opinion, is that students of human behavior tend to be less than well informed in epistemological matters, which was not at all the case with the three psychologists discussed in this paper. Instead of psychologists informing themselves of certain conceptual issues in the philosophy of science, what we too frequently find is an obsession with statistics and quantitative techniques, an idolization of cybernetic models and information theory, an urgency for more and more precise studies of brain structure and function, and an increasing interest in the chemical and electrical character of the nervous system. In them- selves, of course, such studies are largely neutral regarding one or another theory of human behavior; in practice, however, they are all too frequently employed to support some form of reductionism. The figures discussed in this paper would contend that no set of empirical findings necessarily entails any one theory of human behavior. The adoption of either a dualistic or a reductionistic theory is rather based on a decision to employ one or the other theory as an explanatory framework; such a decision is more a matter of stipulation than of empirical neces- sity. In an important sense, then, the adoption of the pure experience doctrine would appear to logically imply a commitment to the instrumentalist account of scientific theories as nothing more than “inference tickets.” (For further discussion of this last point, see footnote 13.)

Due to their reification of one or another conceptual model, the empirical sciences and especially psychology have thus lost sight of two basic considerations concerning the methodological status of science. First, they have forgotten that science is essentially a “second-order level of expression,” which is to say that any one of the physical or behavioral sciences is a postulated set of logical constructs for conceptualizing both everyday and prereflective experience. This is of course one of the central themes with which James was concerned in his psychological and epistemological writings, namely, that reflective analysis and pure experience occur on fundamentally different epistemic levels, with the former grounded in the latter. This is not to be construed as a rejection of science; on the contrary, James

43A. Rosenblueth, Mind and Brain: A Philosophy of Science (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970). . ~ .

V. C. Eccles, Facing Reality: Philosophical Adventures by a Brain Scientist (New York: Springer- Verlae, 1970).

r6h. Apter, The Computer Simulation of Behavior (New York: Harper and Row, 1970). 4BA. Koestler and J. Smythies (Eds), Beyond Reductionism: New Perspectives in the Life Sciences

(Boston: Beacon Press, 1971).

66 PAUL TIBBETTS

intended his writings to be taken as a constructive attempt to orientate science and especially scientific theorizing in their proper epistemological perspective. To hold that a scientific theory provides an isomorphic, picture-like representation of an extra mental reality, rather than being a highly inferential reconstruction of imme- diate experience on a conceptual level of analysis, is to lapse back into that philo- sophical naivete that characterized nineteenth century materialism and twentieth century physicalism.

Secondly, by assuming that science is the major if not the only genuine means for attaining empirical knowledge, we in fact deny, a priori, the possibility of other cultural modes of inquiry as sources of knowledge and explanation. Given James’ pure experience doctrine, however, art, religious experience and even everyday experience would be seen in a different light. Along with science in general, they would be interpreted as so many alternative attempts to bring a chaos into a cosmos, that is, to effect the transformation of immediate or pure experience into relatively stable working principles for effecting greater control and prediction. This last point is of course the bridge leading from James’ radical empiricism to his prag- matism.

It was James’ life-long contention that if we keep these two suggestions in mind it may prove possible to bring about that long sought solidarity and unifica- tion between the physical and especially the behavioral sciences with the humanistic disciplines-between, as the ,Germans express it, the Naturwissenschaften and the Geisteszuissenschaften. For James, the working of these two human pursuits into an integrated and mutually inclusive explanatory framework will come about only with the recognition that both of these disciplines are simply alternative sets of constructs for conceptualizing pure experience. As postulated conceptual frame- works, they therefore have a purely methodological rather than either an empirically or logically necessary status. In this writer’s estimation, this last thesis, along with James’ doctrine of pure experience, together constitute a sufficient basis for resolving a number of serious contemporary issues in the behavioral sciences4’, the philosophy of and the philosophy of mind50.

47P. Tibbetts, The Mind-Body Problem: Empirical or Conceptual Issue? Psychological Record,

4sP. Tibbetts, “Observable Versus Inferred Entities: Pragmatic and Phenomenological Con-

4QP. Tibbetts, “Feigl on Raw Feels, the Brain, and Knowledge Claims,” Dialectica, 1972, 26

SOP, Tibbetts, “Action, Behavior, and the Neural Identity Thesis” (in press).

1973, 25, 111-120.

siderations,” Studium Generule, 1971, 24, 1067-1078.

(3-4), 247-266.