Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience

by Wendell T. Bush

AVENARIUS
AND THE STANDPOINT OF
PURE EXPERIENCE

BY

WENDELL T. BUSH, Ph.D.

Lecturer in Philosophy in Columbia University

ARCHIVES OF
PHILOSOPHY, PSYCHOLOGY AND SCIENTIFIC METHODS

EDITED BY
J. McKEEN' CATTELL AND FREDERICK .J. K. WOODBRIDGE

No. 2, November, 1905

Columbia University Contributions to Philosophy and Psychology, Vol. X., Mo. 4

DISSERTATION
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Faculty of Philosophy, Columbia University

NEW YORK
THE SCIENCE PRESS

Press of
The New Era Printing Company
Lancaster, PA.

CONTENTS

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		page
	INTRODUCTION	1
	APPRECIATIONS OF EXPERIENCE
I.	The independent outer world is an object not of reasoned belief but of spontaneous experience which philosophical theory has no power to alter. To say, however, that the independent existence of the outer world is a characteristic feature of normal human experience is to say nothing whatever about its real metaphysical independence	5
II.	An object of experience need not be of the sort that can be presented to sense-perception	7
III.	Avenarius: his way of describing the experience of knowing something. Knowledge is experience with the cognitive character	9
IV.	This definition of knowledge is not self-contradictory, since it makes no metaphysical assumption to contradict. It is not a question-begging term	14
V.	Two meanings of the word experience. The word is used here to mean direct cognition of fact	15
VI.	There is a natural (not necessarily true) view of the world. This is naïve realism	16
VII.	Distinction between the Independent and the Transcendent. Independence is a character of objects within the field of experience. Transcendence means existence without necessary reference to any field of experience. The outer world and my fellow men are evidently independent, and they are characterized in normal human experience as transcendent also	22
VIII.	Solipsism can not be logically refuted, but this makes no difference to experience	25
IX.	A review of some attempts to show that experience guarantees the transcendent object. The attempts fail. Summary of the discussion thus far	29
	THE DESCRIPTION OF EXPERIENCE
I.	We can seek to give a psychophysical account of pure cognitive experience and this will not be a metaphysical undertaking, for the concepts will not be used with a metaphysical purpose	34
II.	The concept of psychophysical parallelism is employed in the interest not of ultimate explanation but of description	35
III.	The theories of Avenarius are not concerned with metaphysical problems	38
IV.	Science seeks to discover the ‘How’ of experience. Metaphysics seeks to discover the ‘Why’ of experience. The experience which science describes and metaphysics explains is experience characterized by the natural view of the world	56
	THE EXPLANATION OF EXPERIENCE
I.	Explanation in metaphysics differs from scientific description in that the former attaches the predicate of existence to its concept of reality. The demand for the existential predicate is an emotional demand	60
II.	The new epistemology of science will bring it to pass that reputable philosophy will not seek reality behind and different from the world of concrete experience	61
	SUGGESTIONS TOWARD A CONCEPT OF EXPERIENCE
	The concept suggested is that of the historical process which, starting from animism, has led to the modern concept of nature elaborated by the special sciences. The concept is suggested in the interest of history	71
	AN EMPIRICAL DEFINITION OF CONSCIOUSNESS
	Consciousness means experience that can belong to only one observer. Consciousness thus defined ceases to be a basis for idealism. There remains the natural view of the world	73