“The Many and the One” and the Problem of Two Minds Perceiving the Same Thing

Mark Moller

My health is so poor now that work goes very slowly; but I am going, if I live, to write a general system of metaphysics which, in many of its fundamental ideas, agrees closely with what you have set forth.¹

Of every would be describer of the universe one has a right to ask immediately two general questions. The first is: “What are the materials of your universe’s composition?” And the second: “In what manner or manners do you represent them to be connected?”⁷

My hypothesis is that the materials are what I shall call experiences. To be a part of the universe is to be experienced; and not to be experienced is not to be, in this philosophy of ‘pure experience.’⁸

[T]he attribution of either mental or of physical being to an experience is due to nothing in the immediate stuff of which the experience is composed, –for the same stuff will serve for either attribution – but rather to two contrasted groups of associates with either of which, as they add themselves to the original experience, our reflection upon it tends to connect it, and which in their totality are classed as the mental and the physical world.¹⁵

there is no general stuff of which experience at large is made. There are as many stuffs as there are ‘natures’ in the things experienced. If you ask what any one bit of pure experience is made of, the answer is always the same: ‘It is made of that, of just what appears, of space, intensity, of flatness, brownness, heaviness, or what not'”¹⁸

I believe that we describe the facts much better by saying that experiences in their totality are reported to one another. The present experience is the only witness we need to suppose of the past one, the future experience the only witness we need to suppose of the present one. If we look at our experiences with the simple aim of describing their succession, we see that they form a stream which in important respects possesses the quality of continuity.²⁵

[e]ach later Thought, knowing and including thus the Thoughts which went before, is the final receptacle – and appropriating them is the final owner – of all that they contain and own. Each Thought is thus born an owner, and dies owned, transmitting whatever it realized…to its own later proprietor.²⁶

This picture of the irremediably pluralistic evolution of things, achieving unity by experimental methods, and getting it in different shapes and degrees and in general only as a last result, is what has made me give to my volume the title of “The Many and the One”³¹

If empiricism is to be radical it must indeed admit the concrete data of experience in their full completeness. The only fully complete concrete data are, however, the successive moments of our own several personal histories, taken with their subjective personal aspect, as well with their “objective” deliverance or “content.” After the analogy of these moments of experience must all complete reality be conceived. Radical empiricism thus leads to the assumption of a collectivism of personal lives (which may be of any grade of complication, and suprahuman, infrahuman as well as human), variously cognitive of each other, variously connative and impulsive, genuinely evolving and changing by effort and trial, and by their interaction and cumulative achievements making up the world.³³

a given undivided portion of experience, taken in one context associates, [can] play the part of a knower, of a state of mind, of ‘consciousness’; while in a different context the same undivided bit of experience plays the part of a thing known, of an objective ‘content.’ In a word, in one groups it figures as a thought, in another group as a thing, And, since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have every right to speak of it as subjective and objective both at once.⁴³

If one and the same experience can figure twice, once in mental and once in a physical context… one does not see why it might not figure thrice, or four times, or any number of times, by running into as many different mental contexts, just as the same point, lying at their intersection, can be continued into many different lines.⁴⁴

in the ‘Principles of Psychology’… it is shown that no state of consciousness can be exactly duplicated within the experience of an individual, and it would appear that essentially the same proof will apply in comparing the experience of different individuals.⁵⁴

The objection as I made it is as clear in my mind now as then — if one says, the very object is immediately given, one implies that it may be given to you and to me, or an identical part or aspect of it may thus be given, at the same time. Now the other contents or present objects of your mind and mine will not be the same. My objection has force only on one assumption, that what we mean by “consciousness” is a relation between the contents or objects of consciousness. The object O will stand in a relation of appearance with my other content of the moment, but insofar as you are conscious of it, it will not stand in this relation (i.e., you are of course not conscious of my other content, my bodily sensation for instance). That is, the object O will stand in a certain relation and not stand in it at one and the same time — a self-contradiction.⁵⁵

But in my doctrine that the same “pen” may be known by two knowers I seem to imply that an identical part can help constitute two fields.

Bode and Miller both pick up the contradiction. The fields are not then entitative units. They are decomposable into “parts,” one of which at least is common to both, and my whole tirade against “composition” in the psychology is belied by my own subsequent doctrine!⁵⁹

The question of two knowers of the same appears identical with the question: Can what is experienced ex be identical with what is experienced co? If it can, it would seem possible for it to have more than one co.⁶⁰

But how, when all is simultaneous, can the parts equate the whole, and yet the whole be experienced as such, when each part only experiences that part? Either no whole is experienced here; or, if experienced, it must be by a more inclusive experient.⁶¹

The point is, having given up intellectualism absolutely, & adopted the compenetration view, to see whether the latter admits better of the con and ex relation being simultaneous, for such simultaneity is the crux that has bother’d me so long.⁶²

Notes

¹William James to Henri Bergson, December 14, 1902, in The Correspondence of William James 12 vols., eds. Ignas K. Skrupskelis, Elizabeth M. Berkeley, and John J. McDermott (Charlottesville and London: The University of Virginia Press, 1992-2004). Vol. 10, 167. Hereafter CWJ.

²The complete text of these manuscripts has been published in Manuscript Essays and Notes, The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). Hereafter MEN.

³Ibid, 6.

⁴H. S. Thayer in his introduction to the Harvard edition of Pragmatism gives all of these reasons for why James never completed his magnum opus. See H. S. Thayer, “Introduction” in Pragmatism, The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), xiv.

⁵Ignas Skrupskelis, “Introduction” in MEN, xx.

⁶Skrupskelis does recognize that James’s difficulty in solving the problem of two minds simultaneously perceiving the same object was a serious obstacle to James’s attempts to work out his radical empiricism (Ibid., xxx-xxxix). Skrupskelis does not, however, draw the connection between this difficulty and James’s failure to complete “The Many and the One.” In part, this is because Skrupskelis thinks that James gave up the project of completing this book in late 1904 before James became aware in late 1905 that his solution to the problem of two minds simultaneously perceiving the same thing is unsuccessful. Apparently, Skrupskelis bases his conclusion about the date both on the lack of any reference to “The Many and the One” in James’s letters after July 1904 and James’s decision to begin writing and publishing the articles that eventually became Essays in Radical Empiricism (“Notes” in MEN, 325-326). My own view is that James did not abandon writing “The Many and the One” until much later, most probably in the spring of 1906. On May 21 of that year, James states in a letter to Giovanni Papini his intent to “publish a digestible and popular volume intended as a text-book for students, & sketching the Universe of radical empiricism a grands traits” (CWJ, vol. 11, 226). I think that it is more plausible to hold that it is around this time that James gave up the goal of writing a systematic, metaphysical work that would have presented the technical details of his radical empiricism to other philosophers in favor of an introductory textbook that would present his radical empiricism in broad outlines more easily understandable by students. If this is right, then the decision to abandon “The Many and the One” project occurred after James became aware of the difficulties with the solution to the problem of two minds simultaneously perceiving the same thing. In fact, I think it was these difficulties, among others, that eventually led James to the alternative of writing the introductory textbook. As Peter Hare puts it in his introduction to the Works edition of Some Problems in Philosophy “The restrictions of the format of an introductory text would, [James] must have hoped, allow him to refuse — with a clear intellectual conscience — to grapple unreadably with certain technical difficulties and permit him to present his philosophical system with the clarity he has so long sought.” Peter Hare, “Introduction” in William James, Some Problems in Philosophy (1911), The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979, xviii-xix.

⁷James, MEN, 21.

⁸Ibid.

⁹Ibid., 37.

¹⁰Ibid., 21.

¹¹Ibid., 23.

¹²Ibid., 26-27.

¹³Graham Bird has questioned whether James intends for his “philosophy of pure experience” to be understood as asserting an ontological claim. In focusing on James’s discussion of pure experience in the articles of Essays in Radical Empiricism, he suggests that James’s philosophy of pure experience is better understood as an “extended epistemology,” and thus treats this discussion as an attempt on James’s part to solve various pressing epistemological problems. It is difficult to fault Bird for trying to rescue the philosophy of pure experience from the objections he thinks it faces if it is read as asserting an ontological claim (regardless of whether these objections are correct). However, there seems little doubt that James does intend to assert such a claim. He stresses this himself in a letter to Charles Strong written on October 2, 1907. Referring to the articles that are Bird’s focus, James writes:

the problem there was metaphysical, not epistemological; it was an analysis of the nature of what is experienced, not of the meaning of knowing, and whatever epistemology I may have brought in was by the way, and illustrative, not fundamental. (CWJ, vol. 11, 455)

But I also think that the discussion of the philosophy of pure experience in “The Many and the One” leaves no doubt that James’s intent in writing this book is to do metaphysics in the traditional sense, and the claim that pure experience is the basic material of the world is an ontological claim.

¹⁴Another way to put the point is that pure experience becomes mental or physical only once it is talked of. See James, ERE, 13. But also see William Joseph Gavin, William James and the Reinstatement of the Vague (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1992). Gavin provides an important discussion of pure experience in the context of James’s views on language.

¹⁵Ibid., 27.

¹⁶David C. Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 24.

¹⁷James’s letters establish that he was still working on the “The Many and the One” in the summer of 1904, but also that he had become frustrated with how slow his writing had gone up to that point. In letters to Francois Pillon (June 12, 1904, CWJ, vol. 10, 409) and to Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller (June 12, 1904, CWJ, vol. 10, 412), he laments at having written only thirty two pages in the previous two years. Apparently, just a few weeks after writing these letters, James decided that he could wait no longer to make the details of his radical empiricism public. In July of that same year, he wrote “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist” and by the spring of the following year he had finished most of the other essays on radical empiricism that were later republished as Essays in Radical Empiricism. There is, however, no indication in these or other letters during this time that James published these articles because he had abandoned his hope of completing “The Many and the One.”

¹⁸William James, Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 14. Hereafter ERE.

¹⁹Two of the more useful discussions of James’s concept of “pure experience” are still John McDermott’s introduction to the Works edition of Essays in Radical Empiricism (ERE, xxx-xxxviii) and Charlene Haddock Seigfried’s Chaos and Context: A Study in William James (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1978), 38-52.

²⁰James, MEN, 21.

²¹Ibid.

²²Ibid., 22.

²³Ibid., 7.

²⁴Ibid., 25.

²⁵Ibid., 29.

²⁶William James, Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (1890), The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 322. Hereafter, PP.

²⁷Relevant here is the question of whether James is embracing panpsychism in “The Many and the One” or the view that reality is inherently psychic. Marcus Peter Ford, for instance, argues that James was a panpsychist at least up to 1904, at which point he gave it up for the “neutral monism” of the articles in Essays in Radical Empiricism. If Ford is right, then this would make James a panpsychist when he began writing “The Many and the One. It is true that James does describe his view as being panpsychic once in “The Many and the One” manuscripts (MEN, 6). However, as we have seen, he also wants to claim that pure experience is ontologically neither mental nor physical, which would conflict with this description. One possibility, of course, is that James is simply inconsistent in these manuscripts (and perhaps in the articles in Essays in Radical Empiricism too, as Ford argues.). However, I think that Wesley Cooper is right that James is actually defending an “attenuated panpsychism.” That is, James ascribes to experience qualities that are normally attributed to the mental, i.e., change, continuity and purposefulness, but falls short of claiming that it is psychic. Although it is possible to point to passages where James does seem to say that experience is psychic as well, Cooper’s interpretation fits most of the relevant passages and has the advantage of eliminating the apparent inconsistency in James’s view. See Marcus Peter Ford, William James’s Philosophy: A New Perspective, (Amherst, MA: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982) and Wesley Cooper, The Unity of James’s Thought (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2002), 42.

²⁸James, ERE, 39.

²⁹James, MEN, 5.

³⁰Ibid., 14.

³¹Ibid., 5-6.

³²William James, Talks to Teachers on Psychology (1899), The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), 153.

³³William James, “Review of Personal Idealism” (1903) in Essays, Comments and Reviews, The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fedson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987), 544-545.

³⁴James, MEN, 5.

³⁵Ibid., 37-38.

³⁶James, PP, 220.

³⁷Ibid., 221.

³⁸James, ERE, 38.

³⁹Ibid.

⁴⁰Ibid.

⁴¹Ibid., 39.

⁴² He does make this point in “The Many and the One” manuscripts too. See James, MEN, 19-20.

⁴³James, ERE, 7.

⁴⁴Ibid., 39.

⁴⁵James, MEN, 6.

⁴⁶Ibid., 32.

⁴⁷James, ERE, 25.

⁴⁸Ibid., 42.

⁴⁹James, MEN, 32.

⁵⁰Again, my view is that James was still hoping to complete “The Many and the One” in the fall of 1905. See notes #6 and #17.

⁵¹These notebooks have been published in MEN, 65-129.

⁵²Boyd Henry Bode, “Pure Experience and the External World,” The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, 2 (1905), 128-133.

⁵³See James, PP, 224-230 and 266-273.

^{54]Bode, “Pure Experience and the External World,” 132.}

⁵⁵This letter is dated August 23, 1932 and is quoted in Gerald E Myers, William James: His Life and Thought. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986), 567-568fn.

⁵⁶James, PP, 165.

⁵⁷Ibid., 162-164.

⁵⁸For a more detailed discussion of James’s attempts in these notebooks to respond to Miller’s and Bode’s objections, see Mark Moller, “James, Perception and the Miller-Bode Objections,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 37 (Fall 2001), pp. 609-626; Harry Heft, “Restoring Naturalism to James’s Epistemology: A Belated Reply to Miller & Bode,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 38 (Fall 2002), 559-580; Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience, 146-202; and Skrupskelis, MEN, xxxi-xlii.

⁵⁹James, MEN, 65.

⁶⁰Ibid., 71.

⁶¹Ibid., 70.

⁶²Ibid., 123.

⁶³See William James, A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Works of William James, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977), 121.

⁶⁴Ibid., 95.

⁶⁵Ibid., 96.