# Avenarius and the Standpoint of Pure Experience

Doctoral dissertation, 1905
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
| | | 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 |
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1941, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 82 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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