To see, to move, to know HUM 201 Autumn 2005 Day 6

What do we learn when we travel? What does it mean to know something?

William James –Upper class New York family –Brother, Henry James US’s most famous philosopher –Psychology –Pragmatism (a theory of truth) –Religious experience

Pure experience Rationalism- The theory that reason is the foundation of human knowledge –“tends to emphasize universals and to make wholes prior to parts” (41) Empiricism- The theory that all knowledge is derived from sense experience –“Lays explanatory stress on the part... And treats the whole as a collection” (41) Pure Experience- “starts with the parts and makes of the whole a being of a second order” (42)

Radical Empiricism Can not admit any element that is not drawn from experience Even the relations that connect experiences must be experienced and accounted as real –Usually empiricism only concentrates on disjunctions that “pulverizes” all experience –Rationalism tends to remove conjunctive relations from experience (supernal)

Why is this important? James’s philosophy questions how knowledge relates to connections in time and space (space as practiced place) Provides a perspective for how knowledge is gained through the experience of travel and stories of travel

Knowledge through connections Knower and known, subject and object are not discontinuous! –Example, theories of representation try to use representations to bridge gaps between subject and object You gain knowledge precisely because you are connected to the object known in space and time Differences are seen as relationships not incommensurable qualities Think of our string linking each other

The journey is the knowledge “Whenever certain intermediaries are given, such that, as they develop towards their terminus, there is experience from point to point of one direction followed, and finally of one process fulfilled, the result is that their starting-point thereby becomes a knower and their terminus an object meant or known.” (57)

Implications-other minds Other minds-You still cannot see the world through other’s eyes. Not as important because there is no radical discontinuity between subject and object. You can, however, be similarly connected in time and space. You can perceive the consequences of other’s perceptions. –Experience does not just exist in the mind

Implications-dynamic consciousness Moments are connected in the same way that objects are. Consciousness happens in a flux or stream of experience. Knowledge happens through traversing the path

Implications-stories “The towering importance for human life of this kind of knowing lies in the fact that an experience that knows another can figure as its representative... In the practical sense of being its substitute in various operations....By experimenting on our ideas of reality, we may save ourselves the trouble of experimenting on the real experiences they severally mean.” (61)

Summing up For a “tourist” knowledge of the world comes from the path traversed. It is relational It is temporal Stories connect us differently than traveling but they still provide us with knowledge of the world –The important element is the relationships and not the objects