Pragmatists do not assume that the mind processes experience. On their view the mind is in experience. Experience is a structured and directed life-activity leading from conflict to resolution, from disturbance to equilibrium, from the irritation of doubt to a settled belief. For example, we may start envisioning alternative courses of action and choosing one to act on, find it thwarted, retract, reconsider, etc. In order to 'have' a variable we need to have the instrumentation or tools to get at its object.
Variables thus figure as indices of our modes of access to the world.
As such they represent possible ways of being in the world. Obviously, then, the scientist in the laboratory, the blind person on her way home, the frog in the pond 'have' different variables, enabling them to experience different qualities, organizing variables and qualities into different kinds. This page last updated September 15th, 1997. It is maintained by the Philosophy Department .