Toward a Naturalistic Philosophy of Experience

Extract

It is true that all ideas begin with experience, in a factual, temporal sense. It is also true that the validity of many ideas does not depend upon the observations of natural experience. “Experience” is used therewith in two different senses of the term, which cannot be fused by calling them different modes of experience. The difference between the inductive and the deductive, or the empirical and the formal, is involved. It has been one of the supports for the doctrine of a priori knowledge. The difference between direct experience, in which one is “at the mercy of the object,” and reflective experience, which is regarded by some philosophers as more adequate and independent, has also been prominent. It has led to the doctrine of transcendental knowledge, in response to the understandable wish to be emancipated from the natural conditions of experience. Curiously, it does not seem to be realized that an emancipation from nature would also involve independence from all conditions of human culture. That the direction of flight is away from the limitations of the natural world is evident. Not so evident is the goal, which hardly offers the desired haven of refuge in a nonnatural world that is devoid of culture as we know it.