[FRIAM] Radical Empiricism

Mon Jun 5 11:08:45 EDT 2023

What James is talking about / alluding to:

  A - Hallucinogens (which he did experience) where the "preconceived notions of theories" are disrupted, and one gropes to make sense of what is apprehended. But, this is only a partial example as multiple perceptual filters, "oh wow the colors, the colors," are still present.

B- Satori (which I do not think James claims to have experienced but was aware of others making the claim) where there is no separation between "self" and "universe." But, in this instance the term "experience" is nonsensical because the implied experiencer does not exist.

C- Hallucinogens and satori (incidental and ephemeral Satori) which is an 'additive" experience as described by Huxley with mescaline—a kind of "extra"—ordinary experience.

As to agreement with Husserl: not "same" but "similar" in a faceted way.

davew

On Sun, Jun 4, 2023, at 7:29 PM, David Eric Smith wrote:
> So there’s a rather concrete way in which one can imagine ChatGPT’s being particularly useful as a time-saver.
> 
> I have heard it said (and find it persuasive), that philosophy is different from physics because what philosophers want to do and settle for being is different from that for physicists.
> 
> A physicist can pick up F = ma and start from there to get something done.
> 
> Each philosopher is, in a sense, a new beginning of the universe, and you are expected to read thousands of pages of his composition to be permitted to engage with him. That is a good barrier to exclude pretty-much-everbody from most conversations.
> 
> But there are specific topics on which engaging with this group is a game of whack-a-mole, and it would be _so_ satisfying to catch that damned mole far enough out of the hole to pin him down to the board for once.
> 
> It is on this point:  
> 
> Summarizing what, as Marcus rightly says, as been repeated 10^n times before, CGTP quotes:
> At the core of radical empiricism is the concept of "pure experience." According to James, pure experience refers to the immediate, unmediated apprehension of reality, devoid of any conceptual or interpretative filters. It involves experiencing the world as it is, without imposing preconceived notions or theories onto the experience.
> 
> What the HELL does anyone think this is supposed to refer to?  I am not asking whether it actually does refer to anything, but rather what anyone believes he is saying by it.
> 
> And I can ask that in a rather concrete way.  Were James to engage with Husserl, would he claim that the access to the “immediate apprehension” is by way of the same portal as Husserl’s epoche? 
> 
> I ask because they set themselves up to make a particular style of assertion.  
> 
> By analogy, we have seen that human bodies can do things like Amanars and any of the 4 Bileses (which should have been 5, and would have been were it not for COVID).  But that doesn’t mean every human body can do any of them.  There is rather a lot of specific training that goes into becoming one of the bodies that can do any of this.
> 
> The various “internal” experience-focused philosophers present these things as doable, but technical and particular and requiring training.
> 
> But if you then ask what that is about, you get either a demand to follow several thousand pages in each person’s formulation, or the kind of cloudy motivational life-coach speech that almost all of the CGPT summary is composed of.  (Reminds me of something I once heard said of chimp speech: if you aren’t there working with them, you cannot anticipate how mind-numbingly repetitive it is).  
> 
> So rather than asking “what it is” (the skill or whatever), I can ask “If they were arguing with each other, would they even assert to each other, each with his supposed privileged appreciation of the mysteries, assert or deny that they are referring to the same thing.
> 
> This might allow us to not have to approach the full body of philosophical literature as if each corpus were Sui generis.  
> 
> Eric
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
>> On Jun 5, 2023, at 2:43 AM, Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:
>> 
>> ChatGPT now allows sharing conversations. I've asked it about William James book "Essays in Radical Empiricism"
>> https://chat.openai.com/share/375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fchat.openai.com%2fshare%2f375aef4e-a8d6-467e-8061-bd85b341c46b&c=E,1,SrWav4ypspeJiXxANsU84IqWFKy5OPWIx-qHp0YLHpEHLinoe3Q3aAeuo_0eErOe6fnJYosh3T6fflwMl7CsxV2wKAIIwCbBlleeoZM8db1fEE4,&typo=1&ancr_add=1>
>> 
>> -J.
>> 
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