The Logical Structure of a World of Pure Experience

Abstract

The main concern of this thesis is philosophical and, more broadly, scientific methodology. It is argued that there is a need for a stronger integration of phenomenology, broadly construed as description and study of lived experience, into contemporary philosophical methodology. <br /> It is argued that phenomenology in some form or other is methodologically indispensable. Especially, the very concept of objectivity, that often motivates the dismissal of lived experience, cannot be independent of putatively ‘un-objective’ experience. In this way, lived experience exhibits a certain methodological primacy. Three understandings of this claim are discussed. ‘Accessive primacy’ is the notion that the only access subjects have to worldly things is as (intentional) objects of experience. ‘Foundational primacy’ highlights the necessary contribution of certain experiences to the justification of belief. Both accessive and foundational primacy are subsumed by ‘immersive primacy’: Experience is not only the access of subjects to objects and not only the foundation of subjects’ knowledge of objects, but rather, the whole process of accessing and founding is immersed in lived experience. To describe that process, we have to engage in phenomenology as a specifically transcendental project. Thus, the question is not so much whether to do phenomenology, but rather, how to do it: as an implicit, unsystematic practice, or as an explicit, methodical one. Such a methodical phenomenology aims for more than description of singular experiences, rather, it attempts to capture the intersubjectively and intersituationally invariant structures of experience. <br /> A phenomenological approach proceeding from the immersive primacy of experience is bound to take it into account in the epistemology of phenomenology itself. The natural candidate for this role is a constructivist or enactive account of epistemology, paying heed to the self-referentiality of research on experience being immersed in experience. This, in turn, can only be carried out as a phenomenology that is empirical in a specific sense of the term, meaning the integration of intersubjectivity into all stages of the process of inquiry. The most elaborated form of empirical phenomenology has recently been developed in the approach of microphenomenology, proceeding by interviews on singular experiences and analysis of the descriptions gathered in the interviews. It is argued that empirical phenomenology in general and microphenomenology in specific can be understood as approaches relying on abduction as their primary mode of reasoning. <br /> In striving for the elucidation of universal structures of experience through the analysis of gathered phenomenological descriptions, empirical (micro)phenomenology needs a descriptive framework to situate and compare analyses and express background hypotheses. The standard framework distinguishes three aspects of experience: intentionality, subjective character and qualitative character. This is subtended by the dual structure of a subject of experience being intentionally directed towards an object of experience. But, it is argued, assuming the subject-object duality leads into a specific ‘phenomenological Myth of the Given’. <br /> As an alternative that is independent of the duality, the framework of ‘pure experience’ is proposed, that has been suggested by William James in the context of his mature philosophical approach called ‘radical empiricism’. In this framework, subject and object are seen as relational configurations within a basic field of pure experience that is in itself independent of the subject-object duality. As an adequate way to develop this descriptive framework, Rudolf Carnaps idea of a relational description for experience is proposed. <br /> The descriptive framework of pure experience is meant to be as presuppositionless as possible, but it has to proceed on some metaphysical’ assumptions on the nature of lived experience. The central one is constituted by the notion of an all-encompassing relationality of experience. This notion engenders the distinction between relational and non-relational, individual ‘bits’ of experience. Above that, the pure-experiential approach has to take the present experienced moment as point of departure. Temporal (and possibly continuous) structure is a central feature of experience. To get a clear account of (pure) experience, an overview of the feasible accounts of temporality and continuity is provided. <br /> Building on the metaphysical clarifications, a proposition for basic constituents of a relational pure-experiential descriptive framework is made. Five relations (mutual differentiation, relative resemblance, relative directedness, relative cohesion, relative salience) are assumed and it is proposed how they may serve in relational description of experience.