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Radical empiricism

Radical empiricism is a philosophical doctrine developed by the American philosopher and psychologist William James in the early 1900s, which posits that experience constitutes the sole and immediate material of knowledge and reality, with relations between experiences—such as conjunctions and disjunctions—being directly felt and as objectively real as the experiences they connect.^[1] This approach rejects traditional dualisms between mind and matter or subject and object, insisting instead that the entire universe of reality emerges from a continuous "stream" or "pure experience," where everything real must be experienceable and every experienced element must be real.^[1] Formulated as a method distinct yet complementary to James's pragmatism, radical empiricism emphasizes empirical verification over abstract speculation, holding that philosophical debates should be limited to elements definable through direct experience.^[1] At its core, radical empiricism rests on three interconnected principles outlined by James: a postulate that only phenomena drawn from experience are admissible in philosophical inquiry; a statement of fact that relations (both unifying and separating) are matters of direct experience, not mere intellectual additions; and a generalized conclusion that experiences thus connect "from next to next" via these relations, forming a self-sustaining continuum without need for trans-empirical substances or absolute unities.^[1] James articulated these ideas in essays such as "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" (1904) and "The Thing and Its Relations" (1905), later compiled posthumously in the 1912 volume Essays in Radical Empiricism, edited by Ralph Barton Perry.^[1] Ontologically, it embraces a pluralistic worldview where reality is not a static block but a dynamic mosaic of processes, allowing for novelty, indeterminacy, and practical consequences to shape truth.^[1] Methodologically, it prioritizes the "forward-looking" feel of transitions in life over rigid logical categories, influencing fields like psychology by grounding consciousness in relational experience rather than isolated sensations.^[1] James's radical empiricism emerged amid debates with rationalists and idealists, such as his responses to critics like Bertrand Russell, positioning it as a defense of empirical immediacy against intellectualist reductions.^[1] While intertwined with pragmatism—sharing an emphasis on experiential verification—it differs by focusing explicitly on the ontology of relations, making it a foundational critique of empiricist traditions from Hume onward that undervalued conjunctive experiences.^[1] Its legacy persists in process philosophy, phenomenology, and contemporary debates on consciousness, underscoring the irreducibility of lived relations to abstract analysis.^[2]

Introduction and Definition

Core Definition

Radical empiricism is a philosophical doctrine formulated by William James, asserting that pure experience serves as the singular and comprehensive source of all reality. This theory fundamentally rejects dualistic distinctions, such as those between mind and matter or subject and object, proposing instead that reality consists entirely in a continuous stream of direct experience without any underlying transcendent elements.^[3] Central to radical empiricism is the notion of "pure experience," which James characterizes as a neutral, pre-reflective substance or "stuff" that precedes cognitive categorization. This primal material is neither intrinsically mental nor physical but can manifest in either mode based on its contextual relations, thereby giving rise to both subjective awareness and objective phenomena from the same undifferentiated flux. As James states, "There is only one primal stuff or material in the world, a stuff of which everything is composed, and if we call that stuff 'pure experience,' then knowing can easily be explained."^[3] The "radical" character of this empiricism lies in its treatment of relations among experiences—such as spatial, temporal, or conjunctive "and" and "with" connections—as experientially immediate and as ontologically real as the discrete terms they link. In his seminal 1904 essay "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?," James elaborates that experience operates in a "double-barreled" manner, functioning simultaneously as both the knower and the known within varying relational contexts. He illustrates this by noting that "the same numerically identical piece of experience can enter into many conscious streams, figuring as a thought in one and as a thing in another," thus dissolving the presumption of a distinct consciousness and emphasizing experience's self-sufficiency.^[3]

Historical Origins

Radical empiricism emerged in the late career of William James (1842–1910), particularly during the 1890s and early 1900s, as an extension of his psychological insights into the nature of experience. In his seminal 1890 work, The Principles of Psychology, James introduced the concept of the "stream of consciousness," portraying thought as a continuous flow rather than discrete units, which laid the groundwork for his later philosophical rejection of traditional mind-matter dualisms.^[4]^[5] This psychological foundation evolved into radical empiricism as James sought a metaphysical framework that treated experience as the fundamental reality, free from representational intermediaries. James drew intellectual influences from British empiricists such as David Hume and John Stuart Mill, whose emphasis on sensory data as the basis of knowledge resonated with his own views, but he radicalized their approaches by critiquing their atomistic tendencies and representationalism. Hume's bundle theory of the self and Mill's associationist psychology treated experiences as loosely connected impressions, which James saw as failing to capture the direct, relational continuity of lived reality; instead, he insisted that relations between experiences must be as empirically real as the terms they connect.^[5]^[6] This departure positioned radical empiricism as a more holistic empiricism, prioritizing the immediacy of "pure experience" over mediated representations. The doctrine took shape through key texts published in the early 1900s. James's 1904 essay "Does 'Consciousness' Exist?" in the Journal of Philosophy, Psychology and Scientific Methods argued against consciousness as a separate entity, proposing instead that all experience is neutral and undivided.^[1] This was followed later in 1904 by "A World of Pure Experience," which further elaborated the idea of experience as a primal stuff that bifurcates into knower and known only secondarily.^[1] These ideas developed concurrently with his work on pragmatism and were viewed by James as a metaphysical complement to its epistemological method, though he emphasized their distinction as separate doctrines, as noted in his 1907 book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, based on his 1906–1907 Lowell Institute lectures in Boston.^[6] A posthumous collection, Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), edited by Ralph Barton Perry, compiled these and other essays, solidifying the doctrine's formulation.^[7] Early reception in American philosophy circles during the 1900s included critical engagement through James's correspondence with scholars like Dickinson Sergeant Miller, who independently developed similar views on cognition and debated James on the implications of pure experience for knowledge.^[8]^[5]

Core Principles

The Postulate

Radical empiricism's first principle, known as the Postulate, establishes a methodological foundation by limiting philosophical inquiry to elements directly traceable to experience. William James articulated this as follows: "The only things that shall be debatable among philosophers shall be things definable in terms drawn from experience. (Things of an unexperienceable nature may exist ad libitum, but they form no part of the material for philosophic debate.)"^[9] This commitment ensures that philosophy avoids speculation beyond the bounds of verifiable sensation, perception, and relational dynamics encountered in everyday life, thereby grounding all discourse in the concrete flux of human awareness. Central to the Postulate is the insistence that philosophical investigation commence with the minimal assumptions sufficient to align with the full array of experiential facts, eschewing any a priori impositions that might distort or override direct evidence. James emphasized starting from the "stream of experience" itself, without preconceived categories or transcendent principles that cannot be tested against lived realities.^[1] This approach demands empirical verification for every claim, transforming philosophy into a descriptive and analytical enterprise rooted in what is immediately given, rather than prescriptive abstractions. The Postulate explicitly rejects intellectualist philosophies, such as those of rationalism or absolute idealism, which begin with abstract categories like substance, ego, or universal essences and impose them upon experience. James critiqued such systems for privileging logical coherence over the tangible interconnections observed in perception, arguing instead that all postulates must demonstrate their utility and truth through correspondence with sensory data and practical outcomes.^[10] For instance, in metaphysics, rather than invoking unobservable entities like a noumenal realm, the Postulate requires explanations to connect seamlessly to phenomena such as the direct sensing of an object's spatial and temporal relations in a room. Similarly, in ethics, moral principles gain legitimacy only insofar as they manifest in the concrete consequences of actions within personal and social experience, without reliance on hypothetical divine commands or immutable ideals detached from human feeling and behavior.

The Concept

Radical empiricism's second principle, often termed "the fact," posits that relations between experiences—such as conjunctions like "this-and-that"—are not intellectual additions imposed by the mind but integral components of the original experiential flux itself. William James argued that these relations must themselves be experienced to connect experiences, rendering them as objectively real within the system of experience as the terms they relate. This principle aligns methodologically with radical empiricism's postulate by treating such relations as empirically verifiable elements, without reducing them to mere subjective constructs.^[11] In contrast to classical empiricism, which adhered to a "copy theory" viewing sensations as discrete atomic units with relations added secondarily through association or inference, James contended that relations are directly experienced as part of the immediate stream of consciousness. Traditional empiricists, such as those following David Hume's associationist framework, treated connections like spatial or temporal transitions as abstract mental supplements rather than primal data, thereby fragmenting experience into isolated impressions. James rejected this, insisting that "any kind of relation experienced must be accounted as 'real' as anything else in the system," thereby elevating conjunctive and disjunctive relations to co-ordinate status with substantive contents.^[11] A key illustration from James involves the sensory experience of "blue and cold," where the conjunctive relation signified by "and" is not inferred or superimposed but felt as directly and immediately as the qualities of blueness or coldness themselves. In this encounter, the transition between the sensations occurs continuously, making the relational "and" an experiential fact on par with its elements, rather than a derived abstraction.^[11] This principle carries the implication that experience is inherently continuous and holistic, bridging the apparent gap between discrete sensations and integrated knowledge by grounding unity in the direct evidence of relations. By validating these transitions as empirical realities, radical empiricism avoids the dualism of mind-independent objects and mental representations, allowing for a more fluid understanding of how knowledge emerges from the flux of pure experience.^[11]

The Conclusion

In radical empiricism, the third principle, known as the conclusion, synthesizes the preceding postulates into a comprehensive worldview, asserting that the universe is fundamentally pluralistic rather than a unified monistic whole. William James describes this reality as composed of discrete parts of experience that connect "from next to next by relations that are themselves parts of experience," forming a dynamic fabric with inherent "loose ends" that preclude total closure. This pluralism allows for novelty and freedom, as experience is not a static, all-encompassing entity but a "that" characterized by sensible differences that remain unmediated and open to further connections.^[5] James explicitly rejects monistic philosophies, such as absolute idealism, which impose a "through-and-through" unity that suffocates empirical openness by treating relations as supernally true rather than directly experienced. In contrast, radical empiricism embraces a world of "innumerable feathers, leaves, strings, beads" that float and dangle in chaotic interconnection, where unity emerges provisionally through experienced relations without forcing an absolute synthesis. This view builds briefly on the experiential reality of relations, affirming that such connections enable a non-totalized cosmos.^[5] Central to this conclusion is the idea that experience grows by concatenation—successive additions of parts—rather than through logical deduction or predetermined wholeness, thereby supporting indeterminism and ongoing evolution. James illustrates this in scientific and religious contexts: in medicine, for instance, a drug like digitalis may cure or kill based on empirical relations that defy monistic prediction^[12]; similarly, religious insights must accommodate pluralistic possibilities without imposing dogmatic closure on the divine. Thus, radical empiricism's conclusion champions a reality that is ever-expanding and indeterminate, grounded solely in the flux of pure experience.^[5]

Philosophical Context

Relation to Pragmatism

Radical empiricism serves as the ontological foundation for William James's pragmatism by asserting that reality is composed solely of pure experience—encompassing sensations, relations, and their conjunctive and disjunctive aspects—which provides the experiential basis for testing and validating pragmatic hypotheses.^[13] In this view, pragmatic truth, defined as the practical workability of ideas in guiding action and resolving disputes, gains its legitimacy through direct engagement with the flux of experience rather than abstract deduction.^[6] In the preface to his 1907 Pragmatism lectures, James notes that radical empiricism is independent of pragmatism, with no logical connection between them, though he later viewed the pragmatist theory of truth as advancing radical empiricism by demonstrating how experiential relations constitute reality, allowing ideas to be assessed by their concrete, future-oriented consequences rather than eternal principles.^[6]^[13] Both doctrines exhibit a shared anti-intellectualism, prioritizing the immediacy of lived experience and practical effects over rationalist abstractions or essentialist metaphysics that posit unchanging essences.^[14] This common rejection of intellectualist pretensions enables a pluralistic worldview where truth emerges from adaptive, empirical processes rather than dogmatic unity.^[6] A key distinction lies in their scopes: pragmatism operates epistemologically, offering a method for knowing and verifying truth through its instrumental value in experience, while radical empiricism is ontological, defining the real as the totality of experience without residue.^[6] James emphasizes that one can embrace pragmatism without adopting radical empiricism, though the latter enriches the former by grounding it in a metaphysics of relational experience.^[13]

Connections to Other Empiricisms

Radical empiricism, as articulated by William James, departs from the classical British empiricism of John Locke, George Berkeley, and David Hume by rejecting the representational theory of ideas that posits mental contents as copies or intermediaries between the mind and the external world.^[1] In Locke's view, ideas serve as representations derived from sensory impressions, forming the basis of knowledge through association, while Berkeley denies material substance in favor of ideas perceived by a divine mind, and Hume further reduces experience to discrete impressions and ideas without necessary connections. James radicalizes this framework by treating experience as fundamentally neutral—neither strictly mental nor physical—and inherently relational, insisting that relations between experiences are as real and directly known as the terms they connect, thus avoiding the atomistic disconnection in Hume's bundle theory of the self and perceptions.^[1]^[15] This approach builds on the sensationalist core of British empiricism, which prioritizes sensory data as the source of knowledge, but extends it to encompass "transitive" experiences—the feelings of tendency, continuity, and relation that bridge discrete sensations, rather than confining empiricism to static impressions alone.^[1] James critiques the traditional empiricists for overlooking these dynamic aspects, arguing that genuine empiricism must include whatever is experienced, including the "conjunctive relations" that make experience a continuous stream, thereby transforming sensationalism into a more holistic doctrine.^[15] In relation to logical empiricism of the Vienna Circle, such as Rudolf Carnap's, James anticipates the verificationist emphasis on empirical testability as a criterion for meaningful statements, yet diverges by refusing to reduce experience to atomic propositions or logical constructions analyzable via formal language.^[16]^[17] Moritz Schlick, a key figure in the Circle, admired James's "radical empiricism" for its experiential focus, but the logical empiricists pursued a more austere, protocol-sentence-based reductionism that James would reject in favor of the irreducibly pluralistic and contextual nature of lived experience.^[17] The core innovation of radical empiricism lies in its foundationless empiricism, where experience is treated as a holistic, interconnected whole rather than built from isolated sensory atoms, challenging the atomistic presuppositions of both classical and logical variants while preserving empiricism's commitment to direct experience as the ultimate arbiter of truth.^[1]^[18]

Influence and Legacy

Impact on 20th-Century Philosophy

Radical empiricism exerted a significant influence on process philosophy, particularly through Alfred North Whitehead's development of the concept of "actual occasions" in his 1929 work Process and Reality. Whitehead drew directly from William James's notion of "pure experience," portraying actual occasions as discrete, atomic events of experience that constitute the fundamental building blocks of reality, much like James's "buds or drops of perception" that form a stream of relational processes without underlying substances.^[19] This echo universalized James's radical empiricism, extending it from human psychology to the metaphysics of all natural processes, where each actual occasion prehends (grasps) relations from the past to create novel unities.^[19] By systematizing pure experience into a cosmology of becoming, Whitehead transformed radical empiricism into a framework for understanding reality as an ongoing flux of interconnected events rather than static entities.^[19] In American naturalism, John Dewey integrated elements of radical empiricism into his instrumentalism, as articulated in Experience and Nature (1925), where he emphasized the relational character of experience as a means of reconstructing problematic situations. Dewey adopted James's radical empiricism to argue that immediate, non-cognitive experiences directly apprehend connections and "fringes" in nature, serving as the foundation for inquiry and knowledge rather than isolated sensations.^[20] This relational empiricism underpinned Dewey's view of nature as a cultural process, where human and non-human elements interact dynamically, and aesthetic or vague experiences prompt instrumental action to resolve tensions and expand understanding.^[20] Through this incorporation, Dewey advanced a pragmatic metaphysics that treated experience as inherently relational and transformative, aligning radical empiricism with naturalism's rejection of dualisms between mind and world.^[20] The impact of radical empiricism extended to phenomenology in the mid-20th century, notably influencing Maurice Merleau-Ponty's early work in the 1940s, where he invoked James's ideas on bodily experience to challenge Cartesian dualism. Merleau-Ponty, in texts like Phenomenology of Perception (1945), drew on James's "pure experience" from Essays in Radical Empiricism to position the body as an "ambiguous" pre-reflective center that intertwines self and world, rejecting the subject-object split inherent in rationalist traditions.^[21] By emphasizing the body's role in immediate, relational perception, Merleau-Ponty echoed James's radical empiricism to argue for an ontological primacy of lived embodiment, where experience emerges from the fleshly union of perceiver and perceived rather than detached cognition.^[21] This synthesis bolstered phenomenology's critique of dualism, framing bodily intentionality as the ground of meaning against abstract idealism.^[21] Within analytic philosophy, Bertrand Russell engaged with radical empiricism during the 1910s and 1920s through his advocacy of neutral monism, which partially adopted and critiqued James's framework as a basis for resolving mind-matter dualism. Russell initially accepted James's radical empiricism as an archetype, positing neutral "percepts" or sensations as the fundamental entities that could be construed either mentally or physically, thereby echoing the neutral "pure experience" that underlies both.^[22] However, Russell critiqued James for introducing covert dualisms via internal distinctions in experience, refining neutral monism in works like The Analysis of Mind (1921) to emphasize bundles of qualities and relations inferred through scientific bootstrapping, while still building on the rejection of epistemological subject-object divides.^[22] This partial adoption influenced analytic metaphysics by promoting a constructionist view of reality from neutral data, though Russell's logical refinements diverged from James's more holistic relationalism.^[22] Post-World War II, radical empiricism experienced a revival in neopragmatism through Richard Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), where he mobilized James's ideas to dismantle representationalism in epistemology and philosophy of mind. Rorty invoked James's radical empiricism to argue against the "mirror of nature" metaphor, portraying experience as a web of practical relations rather than a passive representation of an external world, thus aligning neopragmatism with anti-foundationalist critiques of Cartesianism.^[23] By rehabilitating James against analytic distortions, Rorty used radical empiricism to advocate edifying philosophy focused on cultural conversation over systematic truth-seeking, influencing late-20th-century debates on relativism and holism.^[23] This revival positioned radical empiricism as a tool for therapeutic philosophy, emphasizing contingency and solidarity in interpretive practices.^[23]

Modern Interpretations

In the early 21st century, radical empiricism has experienced a revival within enactivist theories of mind and the 4E cognition framework (embodied, embedded, enactive, and extended cognition), where scholars draw on William James's notion of relational experience to bridge phenomenology and neuroscience. Evan Thompson's 2007 work Mind in Life explicitly applies James's ideas of "pure experience" as a continuous, relational stream to argue for the enactive nature of cognition, positing that mind arises through the dynamic coupling of organism and environment rather than internal representations. This interpretation emphasizes how sensory-motor contingencies in neural processes echo James's radical empiricism by treating experience as inherently transactional and non-dualistic.^[24] In philosophy of mind, David Chalmers has revisited James's radical empiricism through discussions of neutral monism in the 2010s, positioning it as an alternative to reductive physicalism by highlighting the irreducibility of phenomenal experience. Chalmers argues that James's framework, which views reality as composed of neutral elements manifesting as both mental and physical, supports panpsychist or proto-conscious views of the universe, challenging the hard problem of consciousness.^[25] This engagement underscores radical empiricism's potential to integrate subjective qualia with objective science, as seen in Chalmers's explorations of how experiential relations form the basis of all reality.^[26] Feminist and postcolonial scholars have reinterpreted radical empiricism to address embodied transactions in social contexts, particularly through analyses of habits and bodies. Shannon Sullivan's 2001 book Living Across and Through Skins employs James's relational ontology to develop a transactional model of bodies, where habits are not isolated but co-constituted with environments, offering tools for critiquing racial and gendered oppressions as entangled experiences. This reading extends radical empiricism beyond abstract metaphysics to practical ethics, emphasizing how "living across skins" disrupts dualistic separations in identity formation.^[27] Recent scholarship in the 2020s has linked radical empiricism to quantum interpretations of experience, exploring themes of indeterminate pluralism.

Criticisms and Debates

Major Critiques

Bertrand Russell offered a prominent early critique of radical empiricism in his 1912 review of William James's Essays in Radical Empiricism, accusing James of conflating psychological descriptions of experience with metaphysical claims about reality. Russell argued that James's treatment of relations—such as "and" or "with"—as directly experiential confluses the subjective order of mental processes with the objective, logical structure of the world, rendering radical empiricism more a branch of psychology than a sound ontology. G.E. Moore raised objections to aspects of radical empiricism during the 1903–1910 period, particularly in his analysis of James's pragmatism, which he saw as intertwined with empiricist views. Moore contended that by prioritizing experiential flux and dissolving strict distinctions between the real and the ideal, radical empiricism veered toward subjectivism, undermining the commonsense realism that posits independent objects and properties knowable through direct acquaintance. He illustrated this by rejecting James's functionalist account of truth, insisting that experiential utility cannot collapse epistemic objectivity into mere psychological satisfaction. Idealist philosophers, including James's colleague Josiah Royce, challenged radical empiricism in the 1900s debates, arguing that its pluralistic emphasis on discrete experiential relations ignored the rational unity required for coherent knowledge and reality. Royce, in works like The World and the Individual (1899–1901), maintained that James's rejection of an absolute, inclusive mind fragmented experience into incoherent parts, failing to account for the holistic interdependence that idealism posits as essential to avoiding solipsism and ensuring interpretive stability. These critiques highlighted how radical empiricism's openness to conjunctive and disjunctive experiences undermined the systematic coherence Royce viewed as indispensable for philosophy and religion.^[28] Logical positivists in the 1930s dismissed radical empiricism as unverifiable metaphysics, with A.J. Ayer in Language, Truth and Logic (1936) exemplifying this by classifying James's claims about "pure experience" and relational realities as cognitively meaningless. Ayer argued that such propositions transcend empirical verification or analytic tautology, reducing them to emotive expressions rather than philosophical truths, and thus aligning radical empiricism with the pseudoproblems of traditional metaphysics rather than advancing scientific inquiry.^[29] Feminist critiques emerging in the 1980s further targeted radical empiricism's conceptualization of experience, contending that its neutral "pure experience" overlooked how power structures, particularly gender hierarchies, shape perceptual and epistemic access to reality. Thinkers like Sandra Harding emphasized that James's framework, by treating experience as unmediated and universal, ignored the situated, oppressive contexts that distort knowledge production for marginalized groups, rendering it inadequate for addressing social inequalities in epistemology.^[30]

Responses and Defenses

William James himself provided an early defense of radical empiricism in his 1909 lectures compiled as A Pluralistic Universe, where he countered Josiah Royce's idealist critique by asserting that empiricism properly honors the "finite" and particular nature of human experiences, rejecting the imposition of an absolute, all-encompassing knowledge that overlooks experiential plurality.^[31] James argued that such finite experiences form the genuine basis of reality, allowing for a pluralistic universe without the need for a unifying absolute, thereby preserving the immediacy and diversity of empirical relations.^[31] John Dewey extended this defense in the 1920s, particularly in his 1925 work Experience and Nature, where he elaborated a naturalistic interpretation of radical empiricism to rebut Bertrand Russell's logical atomist objections, which dismissed holistic experience in favor of discrete sense-data.^[32] Dewey emphasized contextual verification through ongoing inquiry, portraying experience as an active, relational process that integrates immediate qualities with environmental interactions, thus countering Russell's reduction of knowledge to isolated propositions.^[33] This approach reinforced radical empiricism's viability by grounding it in empirical naturalism, where verification emerges from practical consequences rather than abstract analysis.^[32] In the mid-20th century, Justus Buchler contributed to the rehabilitation of radical empiricism's relational ontology in his 1955 book Nature and Judgment, addressing analytic philosophy's tendency toward reductionism by developing a metaphysics of natural complexes that treats judgment and experience as inherently relational and non-foundational.^[34] Buchler drew on James to argue that reality consists of traits and occurrences in dynamic interconnection, resisting the analytic drive to decompose experience into atomic elements and instead affirming a pluralistic, process-oriented empiricism.^[35] His framework defended the integrity of experiential wholeness against critiques that privileged logical structures over lived relations.^[36] More recently, in the 2000s, neopragmatist discussions have engaged with radical empiricism, where critiques like Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin's 2005 essay "Why Pragmatists Cannot Be Pluralists" argued against integrating James's pluralism with pragmatism, prompting defenses that emphasize its evasion of relativism through epistemic commitment to open inquiry and corrigibility, as in J. Edward Hackett's analysis of existential pluralism in James.^[37] In the 2020s, defenses of radical empiricism have emerged in cognitive science, particularly through enactivist and phenomenological studies that counter physicalist critiques by providing empirical evidence for the primacy of relational experience over brain-bound representations.^[38] For instance, research in embodied cognition draws on James to demonstrate how perceptual experiences involve organism-environment couplings, using phenomenological methods to validate the irreducibility of qualitative relations, thus challenging reductionist physicalism with data from introspective and behavioral experiments.^[39] These studies affirm radical empiricism's relevance by showing how immediate, relational awareness underpins cognitive processes, offering verifiable support against claims that dismiss experiential holism as illusory.^[2]

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Attempts to discover fundamental traits in the process of experiencing and producing in man. Includes chapters on judgment, query, experience, and meaning.Missing: radical empiricism relational ontology
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Philosopher Profile: Justus Buchler (Part 1) - After Nature
May 24, 2013 · Justus Buchler was one of the most original, radical, and untimely American philosophers in the twentieth century.Missing: connection | Show results with:connection
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Systematic Nonfoundationalism: The Philosophy of Justus Buchler
idea of ontological simples, of irreducible components of nature," Buchler remarks, "implies belief in absolute termini of analysis. Its appeal is not hard ...
[37]
Why Pragmatists Cannot Be Pluralists - jstor
"James's radical empiricism thus implies a radical pluralism, and this pluralism is manifest ... Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin. Caspary, William. 2000. Dewey ...Missing: neopragmatist | Show results with:neopragmatist
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(DOC) The Existential Pluralism in James's Radical Empiricism
Abstract: Originally, Robert Talisse and Scott Aikin published an essay entitled “Why Pragmatists Cannot Be Pluralists” (2005) , which has drawn much ...
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The strong program in embodied cognitive science
Feb 25, 2022 · This paper discusses how embodied cognitive science can be made more reflexive and more sensitive to the implications that our views of cognition have.Missing: defenses 2020s physicalist critiques
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The concept of experience in Husserl's phenomenology and James ...
This is because James' radical empiricism achieves a nondual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus ...Missing: defenses | Show results with:defenses