pure experience

is an attempt to probe for an underlying experiential unity behind language and reflective or conceptual thought.

With his distinctive notion of pure experience, James looked to probe what he perceived to be the underlying experiential unity behind language and reflective or conceptual thought.

is that fundamental stuff which both mind and matter are aspects of.

This posthumous collection includes James's groundbreaking essays on 'pure experience,' originally published in 1904'5. James's fundamental idea is that mind and matter are both aspects of, or structures formed from, a more fundamental stuff'pure experience'that (despite being called 'experience') is neither mental nor physical.

is the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories.

Pure experience, James explains, is 'the immediate flux of life which furnishes the material to our later reflection with its conceptual categories' a that which is not yet any definite what, tho' ready to be all sorts of whats'' (ERE 46). That 'whats' pure experience may be are minds and bodies, people and material objects, but this depends not on a fundamental ontological difference among these 'pure experiences,' but on the relations into which they enter. Certain sequences of pure experiences constitute physical objects, and others constitute persons... but one pure experience (say the perception of a chair) may be part both of the sequence constituting the chair and of the sequence constituting a person. Indeed, one pure experience might be part of two distinct minds, as James explains in a chapter entitled 'How Two Minds Can Know One Thing.'

is ultimately the 'that' which is not yet any definite 'what' and depending on what kind of relations this pure experience enters, it is capable of becoming any manner of things (i.e. a physical object, a person , a mind, a body).

pure experience, n.Definitions

pure experience