Contents Achnowbdgments page Introduction I t9 PART I r z 3 Rorry and the Rejection of Objectivity 21 Brandom, Pragmatism, and Experience 4' Communication, Perception, and Objectivity 8z PART 4 y 6 viii tzt II An Experiential Account of Objectivity r23 Pragmatism, Experience, and Answerability r17 Meaning, Habit, and the Myth of the Given r92 Conclusion 23' References 243 Index 214 I vll Inuoduction Communication and Experience In this book, I enter into a debate that has been going on at least since the publication of Richard Rorty s Canseqatnces of ?ragmatism, oyer whether a linguistic brand of pragmatism can articulate the cenual insights of the pragmatic tradition better than a type of ptagmatism that takes experience as its central concept. Rorty began this debate when he argued that r}e classical pragmatic concept of experience is hopelessly confi-rsed and ought to be replaced by an analysis of the linguistic capacities that inform inquiry and thought in general" He claimed that the concept is confused because it falls prey to what r$filftid Sellars calls the Myth of the Given, and that it ought to be replaced because "'language' is a more suitable notion than 'experience' for saying the holistic and end-foundadonalist thing which James and Dewey wanted to say" (Rorty ry85, 4o). The classical pragmatists, like Rorty, wished to overcome the modern philosophical tradition, one in which epistemolory is seen as '6rst philosophy'. But, Rorty argued, a view that puts experience at its center cannot enact rhis overcoming because the concept of experience, in being Given, is roo loaded with epistemological freight from that very tradition to do dre job. If their wish was to leave modern 'subject-centered' philosophy behind, the pragmatists ought to have "dropped the term'experience"'(Rorty r998e, 297) rether than rehabilitate it by issuing a rafical empiricism. They ought to have dissolved the epistemological problematic not by trying to bridge the divide beween mind and world, but by seeing knowledge as a linguistic social practice in which we are answerable to one another rather than to the world itself.' A largc literature has dcvcloped around thc debate between classical pragmatism and Rorryian neopragmatism, See Bcrnstein 1992, Kloppcnberg 1996, Hildcbrand zoo3, the papers ifl Hildebrand zor4, Koopman zoo9, and Malochowski zot4. I ) rrr gr r r l t is Pragmatic philosophers who work in the analytical tradition and who have come after Rorqr's neo-pragmatism have generally agreed with him about the theoreticd imponance of experience. \tr7hile there have been a few contemporary analytical pragmatists for whom the concept of experience has more than an antiquarian importance, the concept has not been dre center around which the contemporary analytical appropriation of the pragmatic tradition turns. As Rorty puts it, these philosophers a lot, but to say very lirtle about ideas or such sentential attitudes as beliefs and desires . . . Following up Sellars's criticism of the myth of the given, they do not rhink anything is "given immediately in experience" . . . In short, tend to talk about sentences experiences, as opposed to contemporary philosophers who profess sympa*ry with pragmatism show limle sympathy with empiricism - they would rather forget empiricism rather than radic.lize it. (Rorry ry98e, z9r-z9z) But while agreeing with Rorry about the concept of experience, most analytical pragmatists who have come after Rotry - those who Cheryl Misak dubbed the 'new pragmatists' - disagree with him about whether taking the 'linguistic turn' necessitates, as he thinks, rejecting the idea of objectivity - the idea that we are answerable to the wodd in addition to other subjects. For Rorty, notoriously, the goal of our epistemic practices is not truth, correspondence with reality, but intersubjective agreement. To think that our representations can stand "in immediate relation to a nonhuman reality" (Rory r99rb, zr) is to accept the philosophical fantasy that we can transcend the finite and historically contingent conceptual and linguistic framework that structures our wodd view. To reject this fantasy is to turn "away from the very idea of human answerability to the world" (Rorty t998d, r 4z-r 41) and accept that "there is nothing to the notion of objectivity saye that of intersubjectiye agreement" (Rorry' r998a, 6-Z).ln Rorty's language, it is to replace the language of objectivity with that of solidarity. In contrast, for the new pragmatists - and here I have in mind Cheryl Misak, Hilary Putnam, Jeffrey Stout, Bjorn Ramberg, Michael \(illiams, Huw Price, Robert Brandom, and Donald Davidson - any satisfactory pragmatic position must engage the question of how thought is constrained by and answerable to the world, in addition to other subjects.' \X/hile the new pragmatists agree with Rorry's 'humanist' notion ' Introduttiou rn, Objectivity, and Experience We could also mention Susan Haack and Isaac l-evi here. Misak claims that t}ere are other thinkers that could be thought ofa^s ncw pragmatists cven though dley do not see themselves as part ofthe pmgmatic tradition. Shc reftrcnccs Simon lllackburn, John McDowell, and Crispin Wright. For widc rcadings of rhc pmg,nratic tradition that includc such figures, sec Bcrnstein t995, z,oro, tnd. that the world by itself cannot dictate to us what we should think about it, they "are united in their efforts to articulate a position that tries to do .iustice to the objective dimensionof human inquiry" (Misak zoo7, r).3 I agree with the sentiment expressed by the new pragmatists that Rorry's neo-pragmatism is flawed because it does not accommodate a pragmatically reconstructed notion of objectiviry. This book aims to afticulate a pragmatic position that includes such a notion. \7'here I diverge from the new pragmatists concerns the strategy one must use to rehabilitate this concept.4 'Srhereas most new pragmarisrs think that objectivity is best rehabilitated solely in cornmunicatiue-theoretic terms - i.e., in terms that can be cashed out exclusively by capacities that agents gain through taking part in linguistic communication - I argue that rehabilitation can best be achieved through experiential-theoretic means.t In other words, I take it that to achieve the aims of the new pragmatists, we need to do more than see objectivity as a norm of rationaliry embedded in our socid-linguistic pracdces, in the so-called game of giving and asking for reasons; we also need to see it as emergent from our experiential interaction with the world. In this way, my argument is an attempt to redeem and reactualize for contemporary philosophy a key insight developed by the classical pragmatists, especially James and Dewey.6 In making this argument, I do not mean to suggest that linguistic communication has no importance for answering the question of objectivity. For, as we shall see in Chapters 3 and 6, linguistic communication is necessary to articulate an important stratum of the concept of objectivity, and it plays a key role within the pragmatist account of experience. \7hat I argue instead is that any account that thinks that an I Brmdom zor ra. It should be noted that there are other very imponant pragmatists who, while not strictly speaking analytical philosophers, took the linguistic turn - i.e., Jiirgen Habermas and Richard J. Bernstein. Both take it that pragmatism's account of instrumental reason must be supplemented with accounts o[ communicative reason, imported via speech acts tieory or Gadamerian hermeneutics. In reant years, both have come to stress more strongly the imponance of experience in the clcsical pragmatist's sense. See Habermm zoo3 and Bernstein zoro. For an analysis of the relation of the new pragmatists to the pragmatic tradition as a whole, see Bermtein zoo7. a I adopt the language of 'rehabilitation" from McDowell zoooa. t I say "most new pragmatists" because not all of them schew experience. Here I am thinking of Putnam and Misak. While not focused on the term 'experience', Putnam came to think that the account of the mind-world relation at work in the pragmatists (especially James) and other allied thinken (Autin and McDowell) is central to overcoming the antinomies that beset modem philosophy. See Putnm r99ob, 1998, and ry99. Misak argues that pragmatists need both .lmguagemdcxperienceinrheirpictureiftheyaretomakesenseofobjectivity.SeeMisakzor4. " I do not mean ro suggcst that Peirce did not think uperience to be imponant. He did. Bur he did not takc it to be a centml objcct of invcstigation as James and Dewcy did. 4 analysis of linguistic communication is by itself sufficient to rehabilitate objectivity cannot succeed. The Two Pragmatisms My daim is that an account of experience akin to that ofJames and Dewey is necessary to make sense of objectivity. This goes against the standard interpretation of these authors, which argues that they are not wholeheartedly committed to this ideal. For instance, in her recent book The American Pragntatists, Misak develops the idea that pragmatic uadition includes two distinct kinds of pragmatism: one represented by Chauncey \trright, Peirce, C. I. Lewis, and Sellars; the otler represented by James, Dewey, and Rorry.T Although she recognizes that there is substantial ovedap between these kinds of pragmatism, the first "tries to retain a place for objectiviry and for our aspiration to get things right while the other is not nearly so committed to that." She goes on to say: On the one side of the debate we have Richard Rorty and his classical predecessors flames and Dewey) hol&ng that there is no truth at which we - only agreement within a community or what works for an lndividual or whar is found to solve a problem . . . On the other side of the divide, we have those who think of pragmatism as rejecting an might aim ahistorical, transcendental, or meaphysical theory of uuth, but nonetheless being committed to doing justice to the objective dimension of human inquiry - to the frct that those engaged in deliberation and investigation take thernselves to be aiming at geaing thingt right, avoiding mistakes, and improving their beliefs and theories. On this more objecdve kind of pragmatism, which emanates from \ftight and Peirce, the faa that our inquiries are historically situated does not enail that they lack objectivity. (Misak 2ory,7) I do not deny that there are reasons for breaking up intellectual space in this wan especially if one focuses, as Misak does, on truth. I agree with Misak that James and Dewey (and, of course, Rorty) do not do justice to the fact that truth is a distinct norm of thought and inquiry that cannot be reduced to what wodrs (in the way of our thinking), nor to warranted belief. Although I do not think that Misak does iustice to the complexities ofJames's or Dewey's theories of truth, one can agree with her that James sometimes leaves the reader with a sense that he thinks that truth is what is satisfying for me or for you and that Dewey sometimes seems 7 Innoduuiort Pragmadsm, Objectivity, and Experience Scc Mouncc ryg7 for r rtrnilrr'tuo-prrgmrt&t' readtng of the pragmatic tradition. to suggest that a true idea is one that is warranted due to its merely solving a local problem.8 But the objectivity question operates at rwo levels for the pragmatist -e at the epistemic level and at the level of content * and truth does not play the same role at each level.'o At the epistemic level, the question of objectivity concerns the question of how ow inquiries must be structured so as to issue in judgments that can be counted as knowlcd.ge. At this level, which is the one that is usually discussed with respect to the pragmatists, one is concerned with how inquiry, thoogh value laden, fallible, and without foundations, can nonetheless get things right. It can, so the thought goes, because inquiry is a self-correcting enteqprise, rhe authority of which is determined solely by evidence and open, unconsrrained reason giving by a community of inquirers. At the level of conrent, in contrast, the question of objectivity concerns how potentially knowledge-bearing thoughts or judgments can have objectiue contrnt - i.e., can be rationally constrained by and answerable to the mind-independent world. Here the question is how the world can stand as rhe norm for the correctness of thought and judgment about it. Before going on, it is imporant to point out thar for the classical pragmatists, the second question is not completely independent of the first because, on their view, thought or judgment is rationally answerable to the world by being part of an inquiry-like strucrure - namely, a feedback governed rycle of perception, thought, and action in which refective problem solving informs our bodily habits and skills and in which these bodily habits and skills prepare us for intelligent future practice. This rycle is inquiry-like in the sense that the patterns of rhe disciplined forms of inquiry that come to be developed in the modern sciences are implicit in, and are a development of,, this anthropologically basic way of coping with the wodd. But, nonetheless, an answer to the second question will have a different emphasis *ran an answer ro the first, having to do not with the correct procedures for getting objective knowledge, but with t " F,rr mor" nuanred accounts oftheir theories ofuuth see Burke 1994 and Putnam 1997, Like Ror-ty, I sometimes in this book taik about'the pragmadst' or'the pragmatists'. Sometimes I ttsc thcsc terms in a vcry general sense to refer to all of*re clmsical pragmatists. But more often, I, unlikc llony, use them to denote those who take cxperience to be the ccntral concept of thc prnl;rnatic tradition. "'lrrlxrsiringrhcscrwolcvcls, Ilirllorvllousczor5,chapter5.Objectiviry,ofmurse,hasmanyother tncutrittgs, hut thcsc ,rrc thr: two tlrrt rrc gcrnrrne lor thc argurlent of this book. I give a brief l)lrlinrirli( lr:corttrl ol'orrtokrg,irrrl rrlricrtivity'in [,cvinc zor7. 6 Infiaduction Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience the way that subjects and their cognitive abilities are situated within, and constrained by, the environment. The debate about truth between the two kinds of pragmadsm almost always concerns the epistemological level of oblectiviry. It is at this level that Misak's claim that o.r. rr"idr an account of truth to make sense of objectivity has purchase. To illustrate, let us take Dewey and Peirce_ as our avarars of the two kinds of pragmatism. For Dewey, thought and judgment are epistemically objective because they are a product of a self-correcting enteiprise thar involves communication and reason givilB between inquiiers who have the right uirtues of inquiry. Dewey names three central virtues: 'whole-heartedness', 'open-mindedness', and 'intellectual responsibiliry'. Dewey takes it that inquiry cannot be a-perspectival - a procedure that-maximally abstracts from an inquirer's subjective endowments, as realists about epistemic objectiviry like Nagel and'sTilliam hold, because inquiry requirei that one cares about, is d.euoted to, and is interested in one's obj."t." *itho.rt these evaluative and affective states, inquiry would not get very far. But whole-heartedness is not equivalent to having a succession affective states, for "it requires consistency, continuity, and community of purpose and effort" (LN 7,216)." So these states must, to constitute th. ,irtue of whole-heartedness, fund the correct habits of attention such that one can focus on the object of one's inquiry in an undistracted and single-minded way. To be open-minded, in conrrasr, is to have the "active d.r-ir. to listen to more sides than one; to give heed to facts from whatever if source they come; to give full attention to alternative possibilities; to recognize ihe possibility of error even in the beliefs that are dearest to us" (-LSr S, l3@. So open-mindedness is the virtue that opens us to being sensitive to evidence and other points of view and attentive to the fact that the correctness or incorrectness of our beliefs is determined by the evidence preestablished opinion. l^asdy, to be intellectually responrather than our -"consider the consequences of a projected step ' ' ' to be sible, one must willing to adopt these consequences when they follow reasonably from any position already taken. Intellectual responsibiliry secufes integriry; that is io ,"y, consistency and harmony in belief' (L\f 8, r38). Here, one learns to submit one's thinking to the logical and material entailments of the beliefs one has taken on and to accePt responsibility for these entailments. " See Tiles 1988, chapter 5, for a omparison of Dewey and Villiam's views' " \r/ith the uception of the Essays in Expeimmul Logic (Dewey zooT) "1d F Hegel (Dewelzoro), refetences to Dewey y" r-lhr-Cylhcnd \Yorhs of lohn Vortr, Middle 6rify 'Vorhs kcturc \florks, and Late Ylorks). The Early Worhs are abbreviated E]V, the Middle MrV, and the Late Vork LY/. Peirce does not disagree that virtues such as these are necessary for correct inquiry; but he thinls that these virrues, ro be effecdve, need to be connected internally to the hope for a belief that would continue to meer the aims of inquiry in the face of continued inquiry and reason giving which is what a true belief is for Peirce.'r Dewey, in his later work, accepts this conditional account of truth. "The best definition of mtth from the logical standpoint which is known to me is that of Peirce . . . 'Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief" (LV rz, 341n). But it is true that for Dewey this logical concepdon does very little work in his thought. Dewey worried that focusing on it would divert our attention away from the methods by which our various inquiries actually fix belief and tempt us into reinstating a realist view of rruth. But I think he had another worry. In his moral philosophy, Dewey argued that happiness is not "directly an end of desire and effort, in the sense of an end-in-view purposively sought for, but is rather an end-product, a necessary accompaniment, of the character which is interested in objects that are enduring and intrinsically related to an outgoing and expansive nature" (LY l, r98). To make happiness one's direct end is the surest way to not achieve it, for then one does not cultivate a genuine and direct interest in the kinds of objects that will, in fact, make one h*ppy. I think he has the same thought about truth: instead of focusing on truth itself, we should - in light of our cultivated interests and habits - directly plunge into the objects of our concern. It is this that will produce truth, but as a by-product of, or accompaniment to, an inquiry that looks into objects in the right way. Misak claims that the marls of epistemic objectivity are these: "'S7e aim to get things right, we distinguish between thinking that one is right and being right, we criticize the beliefs, actions, and cognitive skills of ot}ers, we think that we can make discoveries and that we c:rn improve our judgment" (Misak zooo, 77).'4 It is not clear to me that Dewey's view of truth as a by-product rather than an end-in-view makes him incapable of doing justice to these marks. Open-mindedness and intellectual 'r on 'Ssz t.882-r913 !1y--Y 7 'a Misak argues, I think conecdy, that this delinition of truth is preferable to Peirce's more famous account of uuth m the belief that an infinitely expanding community of inqu.irers would endorse at the end ofinquiry. It is preferable because it avoids several serious problems to which the latter is subject, for instance, that inquiry can stop before the end oFinquiry and that it seems imposible for u in tle present to specifr the conditions that will obtain at the end of inquiry. See Misak zooo and zoo4. See Habermas zooo for other difficulties with the end of inquiry view of truth. In this passage, Misak is arguing that moral discoursc can be objective. But the marla she identifies arc general featura ofobjectivity in all domains. 8 Introdtution Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience responsibility togerher involve an appreciation of the distinction between being right and merely thinking that one is right, and of the need to critiiize and appraise reasons. And the virtue ofwhole-heartedness involves devotion to the object of one's inquiry, which entails a belief that we c:rn make discoveries and improve our thought. I think it is clear that Dewey ttas interested in our gefting things right, although not in our fedshizing our conclusions as having gotren things right (for this certainly'blocks the way of inquiry). Our getting things right will be a by-product of corect inquiry rather than its direct aim. Nonetheless, I agree with Misak that Dewey gets something wrong here. For, in my view, to inquire into something corecdy by having the nght viftues of inquiry iust is ta be aiming at gening beliefs that we would have no reason to revise - i.e., true beliefs. Take the virue of open-mindedness, in which we learn to be sensitive to the evidence and the possibility of our being out of alignment with it This vinue would seem to depend on the fact that the inquirer is looking for beliefs that not only are in alignment with the evidence but ones that would continue tobe such. If this is so, then truth is not mer+ a by-product of inquiry but is internally connected to it. But while this book at certain points takes up the issue of epistemic objectivity, it is primarily about objectivity at the level of content. Here, the question is how potentially knowledge-bearing thoughts or judgments can have contents that are rationally answerable to the mind-independent world. Here, truth is not germane in the same way. For raditional versions of the correspondence theory of truth, the account of truth dnes dercrmine one's account of the objectivity of content. According to this theory, a thought or judgment is uue if and only if it corresponds to the facts. Whether a thought or judgment corresponds to the facts is an objective affair that is setled independendy of what you, I, or anyone thinls. Truth is evidence and inquiry transcendent. But if t]ris is the case, then if one grasps what it is for a thought or judgment to be true, which is what for a truth-theoretic semantics determines its content, then one also grasps that what one's thought or judgment corresponds to is independent of what you, I, or anyone thinl$. For the correspondence theory, the concept of objectivity comes, as it were, for free. But this is not so for those who reject the traditional correspondence theory and the truth-theoretic accounts of content that depend on it, as all pragmatists do. If one thinks that the content of the concepts that comprise thought or judgment .ue not conferred direcdy through wordiworld correspondence r.lations, but rather through their role in judgments that themselves have a functional role in a subject's goal-directed cognitive system, then the g question of whether the content these concepts articulate correcdy answer to the object this content is purporredly about becomes an open one. One needs a positive account of the objectivity of content over and above an account of truth. Misak, predicably, argues that James and Dewey can't give a positive account ofthis concept ofobjecrivity either: One kind of pragmatism thinls rhat our history and evolution makes us into the interpredve engines we are and, although we cannor completely pry apart interpretation from rhe trurh of che matter, there nonetheless is a matcer that we are interpreting. That is Peirce, and we shall see, C. I. Irwis. The other kind of pragmarism rhinls rhat not wen by abstraction can we say that there is something rhac stands apan ftom our interpreradon of it. That is Dewey and, in a different sort of way, James and Schiller. (Misak zot1, u6) For Misak, the question here is not one direcdy about truth, but about whether one can avoid idealism by developing an accounr ofthought or judgment in which it is constrained by something that stands apart from it. For dl of the pragmatists, this is a difficult quesdon because they think that our access to the world is d*ryr mediated - by signs, conceprs, habits, purposes, and interests. For this reason we c:ul never, as Misak says, corn?bteb pry aparr the matter interpreted from our interpretation of it." To think that we can is to fall prey to what Sellars calls the Myth of the Categorical Given, the myth that the inrrinsic narure of things is direcdy revealed to us simply through being Given, prior ro our learning to use concepts, signs, erc.'u In light of rhis, Misak's claim becomes the following: Peirce, kwis, and Sellars can, withour falling prey ro the Myth of the Given, account for the fact thar thought is constrained by and answerable to something thar stands apaft from ir, while James, Dewey and, ofcourse, Rorty- cannot. I aim, in the course of this booh to dernonsuate that Misak's claim is wrong. In the first part of the book, I argue that cenain new pragmatists that Misak fiinks of as pan of the Peircean line of pragmatism - i.e., Brandom and Davidson - Gr.nnot, in fact, account for objectivity." Th.y cannot because their views are predicated on the same move that underlies Rorty's position - nameh the rejecdon of experience. In the second part " - 'o '7 The language of inteqpretation i$ C. I. l"ewis'. !flhcn the conceptual judgment one'inrcrprer' the given. Sce Scllars r98r, rr. Sce Misek zot1, 2,48 pragmatist linc. sensoqy given is uken in a cerain way by and 217 for her rcadings of Brandom and Davidson as pan of this ro Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience Introdaction of the booh in contrast, I argue that James and Dewey ought not to be grouped with Rorty because they, while not falling Preyto the Myth of the Given, retain a robust place for the objectivity of content in their thought. Two Concepts of Experience One way to express the central thought ofthis book is this: for a pragmatist to have a satisfactory account ofthe objectiviry ofcontent, an account of how thought is rationally constrained by and answerable to the world, he or she must be a type of empiricist. In this, I agree with John McDowell, who had done more than anyone else in contemPorary philosophy to emphasize this point. In Mind. and Wmld., McDowell aniculates what he calls a 'minimal empiricism', a view in which experience serves as a 'tribunal for our thinking'. If empirical thinking is to be corect ot incorrect depending on whether it answers to how things are in the wodd, and if our way of getting in touch with the world unavoidably involves experience, then our thinling - if it is to be in touch with the world - in some way be answerable to experience. If thought is to be objective, of the way thinp genuinely are, it must be objective by way of a consideration of our experiential encounter with the world. must I agree with McDowell when he argues, on the basis of his minimal empiricism, that Rorty, Brandom, and Davidson can't make sense of the objectivity ofthought because they eschew experience. Indeed, in the first part of this booh I cash out this thought in great detail. But my grounds for making this point are different than McDowell's. This is because I argue, in the second p* ofthe book, that to arriculate the connection benareen objectivity, thought, and experience correcdy, we need to go beyond the account of experience found in McDowell's minimal empiricism to the more radical accounts of experience found in the pragmatic tradition.'8 '8 In chapter r ofhis book The Pragnatic Tarz, Richard Bernstein argues that the pragmatic uadition is besiseen in light of the question about mind and world identified by McDowell rather than in terms ofthe theory ofmeaning articulated by Peitce in his 1878 lllastrations ofthe Logir ofSeience papers, and taken over and transformed by James in his pragmatism, Bernstein makes this intirpredve move by reminding us of the imponance of Peirce's 1858-1859 loarnal o{ Speik&ae Philosoplty Cogunon Series papen (where Peirce's anti-Cartesian program is first leid out) and by showing us that Peirce's theory ofperception can make sense oflthe fact that it involve both 'secondness'and 'thirdness'without falling prey to the Myth of the Given. See Bernmein 1954 for the origin of this inteqpretive stratcgy. My book follows Bernstein's inteqpredve teorientation, but it focuses on James and Dewry rather than Peirce. This entails that certain aspects ofthe theory of meaning downplayed by Bcrnsteln must bc included as pan of a pragmatist answer to the problems suuounding tlc rcladon of mlnd and world idcntified by McDowell. rr According to McDowell's well-known accounr experience can be a tribunal for our empirical thought because it involves, prior to thought or judgment, an actualization of conceptud capacities. It's not that sensory consciousness is first brought about by the causal affection of the world and then worhed on by conceptual capacities. It's rather that in experience "conceptual capacities are drawn on in receptivity" (McDowell r996a, 9). The pragmatic account of experience also takes it that experience inextricably involves an actualization of spontaneity within receptiviry, and that this actualization is necessary to understand how experience can be a tribunal. But it has a diflerent conception of spontaneity than McDowell and, therefore, a different account ofexperience. There are nvo analytically distinct notions of experience at play in the pragmatic tradition that are important for us - notions that, as Brandom poins out, align with the German distinction bemreen Erbbnis and Erfahrung. Both Erlebnis and Erfahrunghave long fustories and complex meanings, which go far beyond the pragmatic tradition.'e And my use of these terms does not c:rpture all of the meanings that the concept of experience has, even in the pragmatic tradition.'o 'W'hat I want to do here is to simply sketch, in a preliminary way, rlvo idealized norions of experience so that we have a common basis upon which to proceed. As the book progresses, tlese notions will become significandy enriched and intertwined." Consider Jimi Hendrix's song "Are You Experienced?" \trC'h.at did he mean in asking this? One thing he asked was whether one has had, in one's conscious life, concrete states and episodes characteristic of an LSD trip. To have this experience is to consciously undergo certain kinds of sates and episodes, to live through them. One has not had an LSD trip unless one has had those kinds of experiences. In this sense, experience is "what the Germans call an Erbbniss - anything that can be regarded as a concrete and integral moment in a conscious life" (|ames r988a, zr). But Hendrix also meant something else by his question: has one, through having these concrete states and episodes, learned anything from them? Has one, through past experiences of LSD, become a wise"and thoughffirl person "not necessarily stoned, but beautifirl," as he puts it? Or talce Brandom's 'e 'o " Jay zooS aadCan zor4 for encellent histories of this concept. I do not corsider the meaning rhat experience has in James's Vari*ies of Rekgio*t F*ptiotce or in his late, more Bergsonian work. \Vhile James and Dovey used the terms bhbnis and, Erfahnmg on occasion, I do not mean ro suggest that these arc thc tcrms that they use to crpnu€ their concepts of orperience. I have introduccd thcsc tcnns simply to hclp domcsticatc thc complority of the concept. See For orample, rz Introduction Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience 13 acquired a ceftain kind of know-how through past training and habituation (see Brandom zorra, z). \7e are asking whether they have gone through a temporally extended bamingproces that involves both consciotx and nonconscious states and episodes. In this sense, experience is akin to imposed onto tIrc sensory matter by rhe Understanding. This is because relations are given as already included in the sensory muchness. \flhat is needed is not tlre imposition of form onto disorganized sensory marter, but rhe seboing and ernphasizing of relations alrealy irubricaud in the matter by attention, &scrimination, and potentidly, by conceptualization.'$7hat is given to us originally is not a manifold of sensory atoms but a aagu€ sensory whole that requires selective attention to make explicit certain of its what the Germans, especidly those features. enample: when we ask job applicants whether they have any experience, we are not asking whether they have lived through concrete moments in their conscious lives (and so are not zombies); we are asking whether they have in the Hegelian tradition, cdl Erfahrurug. l,et me say a bit more about these concepts of experience. For Brandom and his teacher on this point, Rorry, "expeiettce," in the sense of Erbbnis, is "'the epistemologists' name for their subject matter, a name for the Cartesian cagitationes, lockean ideas" (Rorty ry79, tlo). In other words, they understand an episode of Erlebnis to be "the occurrence of a self-intimating event of pure awareness" (Brandom Lorra, 6-7). B* the assimilation of Erhbnis to self-intimating impressions and ideas has little to do with how this concept of experience worts in James's Principbs of Psychobg, which is my main source for this conception of experience. " James's account of experience is complex. On the one hand, he famously gives an account of thought in which it is undergone by an agent as ensemble of part ofhis or her personal consciousness, as constandy changing, as strearnlike or sensibly continuous with other thoughts, and of objects. Thoughts are given in experience as having these characceristics. On the other hand, orperience for James, unlike for the classical empiricist, is active and not '$7e must characterize this active side carefirlly. James wrote simply passive. this in the margins of his copy of the Cri.tique of Pure Reason: "Of course lhnt is on sound psychological ground that in distinguishing receptivity from activity, only he makes the latter funish a part of the content, it is limited to firnishing emphasis, to selecting from the content."23 For Kant, the manifold of sense is understood as a manifold of whereas discrete atomic impressions, Because impressions are discrete and separate, the faculry of judgment must bring to bear a concept to unify the manifold, must engender form onto sensory matter. The content of the experience is a product of this engendering and, therefore, of the combination of form and matter. ForJames, in contrast, form does not need to be " zr For a presentation rhat leys out in gcat detail the affinities between the notions of experience found in Pirciplcs xrd in Dilthcy, thc grcat qPonent of Erbbnis, see Kloppenberg 1986. quotcd in Skrupskclis 1989, r74,In thc original, lhnt is abbrcviated as 'K' t* It is clear that what James means by experience in the sense of Erlebnis diverges quite considerably from what Rorty and Brandom mean by that term. Rorty and Brandom mean by experience an immediate episode in which the mere presence to the senses of the outward order has justificatory purport for rhe experiencing crearure. James is clearly not working with this notion of experience. \7hile James rhinl$ that what is presenr to a creature's senses is given in the innocent sense that one has no conffol over what stimulates our sense organs (given how one is positioned), this is not what they experience.'S7hat one experiences depends both on what is present to the senses and on what one attends to, discriminates, and potentially conceptualizes * which itself depends on patrerns and habits instituted by past acts of attention, discrimination, and conceptualization. For James, as we shdl see, experience is always funded, maning that the present operation of these capacities is shot through by prior operations of these capacities. His conception of Erlebnis contains an account of Erfahrung, an account of how experience as lived is mediated and enriched through time. The second conception of experience, experience x Erfahrang also sees experience as inexuicably active and passive. But this conception, which is Dewey's, puts the point in an action-theoreticd conrext, one that places experimentation at its center: Experience is primarily a proces$ of undergoing: a process of standing something; of suffering and passion, of affection, in the literal sense of these words. The organism has to endure, to undergo, the consequences of its own actions . . . Undergoing, however, is never mere passivity. The most patient padent is more than a receptor. He is also an agent - a reactor, one trying o<periments, one concerned with undergoing in a way which may influence whar is sdll to happen . . . Experience, in other words, is a mafter of simuluneo* doings and sufferings. (M!7 ro, 8) Experience in its most basic sense is, for Dewey, the temporally extended sensorimobr process through which an agenr interacts with an 14 Pragmatism, Objectiviry and Experience environment through simultaneously acting on and being acted on by it. This process is more basic than knowing. If we discern the pattern of this interaction, we can grasp Dewey's conception of experience. At this juncture, there are two important things say about this pattern. First, experience displays a pattem of problem+oluingbehavior. Because we act in a precarious and continually changing environment, sometimes the habitual connections bemreen what we do and what we undergo no longer support fuid activity. In this case, the "situadon" in which we act "becomes tensional" (Dewey zoo7,7) or indeterminate. Here, the meaning of the situation in which we pre-refectively act is disrupted. !7'hen this happens, we must engage in a process of refection and deliberation by utilizing meanings that are constituted communicatively in the space of reasons. Here, we, alone or with others, anal1rzr the situation, develop hypotheses, and act on them to asceftain the consequences of their institution. Here we try "to make a backvvard and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence." If this connection is ascertained by refection, the "undergoing becomes instructive - discovery of the connection of things" (M$7' 9, r+z). This discovery is "insffumental to gaining control in a troubled situation," and so is the basis for reestablishing fuid action. But it is more than that, for "it is also instrumental to the enrichment of the immediate significance of subsequent experiences" (Dewey zoo7, to). 'S7ith this, we come to the second and more fundamental characteristic of experience - namely, that it is a d.euehpmental barning process. Here is how Dewey puts it: "Experience as trying involves change, but change is meaningless transition unless it is consciously connected with the retr.rrn 'S7hen an activity is continued wave of consequences that fow from it. into the undergoing of consequences, when the change made by action is refected back into a change made in us, the mere ftx is loaded with significance.'We learn something" (M\trf 9, 146). \7e learn something in experience because the connections discerned by the reflective processes that reestablish routine behavior feedback into our system of habix and bodily shilk. This change in our habits is the 'change made in us' by what is learned. Habits, we could say, are the repository for the signific:tnces and meanings that are learned through experience. Experience understood as Erfahrurug is the cycle by which our habits become mean- ingfirl and significant through incorporating what has been learned through past problem solving, and where this refective problem-solving activity is made more intelligent and fexible through being funded by these enriched habits. \Vhen this cycle moves forward felicitously, there is Introd.uction r5 what Dewey calls growth, which is his naturdistic term for what the classical tradition calls Bildung. The ItineraqT of This Book Let me oudine the trajectory of this book. In so doing, the importance of these naro concepts of experience will become apparent. In Chapter r, I examine the origin of the new pragmatic strateg)r to rehabilitate objectivity by uacing it back to Rorr)r's rejection of experience. I show how Rorry's rejection of objectivity is predicated on his prior rejection of experience and how Brandom's redemptive reading of Rorry fails because it overlooks this connection benareen experience and objectivity. \Vhile Brandom argues that Rorry eschews objectivity by generalizing the lessons of his fundamentally Sellarsian social-pragmaric accounr of subjective incorigibility, I argue that the origin of his hostility is to be found in his eliminativist treatmenr of sense experience. The overall goal of this chapter is to motiyate the mro paths that can be followed to rehabilitate objectivity in the wake of Rorty's dismissal - the communicative and the experientialtheoretic paths. In Chapter z, I critique Brandom's rationdist pragmatism, which I take to be the most powerfi.rl product of the new pragmatism. Brandom's view is more complex than Rorty s because, while he follows Rorry in rejecting the concept of experience when it is understood episodically (Erlebnis), he accepts it when it is understood as a learning process (Efahrung).I argue that, despite this difference, Brandom's view still fails to account for our answerabiliry to the world. To have a satisfactory experiential-theoretic account of objectivity, one needs both concepts of experience, Erfahrung and Erlebnis, and Brandom's rejection of the latter undermines his rehabilitation of the former. In Chapter 3, I examine Brandom's and Davidson's communicativetheoretic accounts of objectivity, accoun$ that make no mention of experience. Both argue that grasp of the concept of objectivity depends on intersubjective cornmunication, for broadly'$Tittgensteinian reasons. In the absence of the criteria instituted by communicative reason giving, we would not be able to draw the distinction, with respect to a thought or judgment, between its seeming to be correct and its being correct, and so we would not be able to understand that what is corect always potentially transcends what we take to be correct. I argue thar while communication can account for grasp of the distinction between something seeming to be correct and its being corrcct, it does not provide for a grasp ofthe fact that t6 Intoduoion Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience what is correct is settled by the way the world is. But without this, one does not understand that thought is answerable ra the world for its correctness rather than the other way around. To explain this more primitive grasp requires an account of the spatial conditinns of perception. Here I follow Strawson and Eva-ns, who argue that grasp of the concept of objectivity depends not on communication but on the abiliry to reason spatially by using what Evans calls a rudimentary theory of perception. In using spatial concePts to explain why a perceivable object is not in fact perceived, one gleans, within veridical perception, that it is because the object of perception is in the wrong spatial position. This is the basis of our understanding that things exist unperceived and that our access to things depends not only on us but also on how the independent world is spatially arranged. This is what fills out the missing piece of the content of the concept of objectivity. But while I agree with Strawson and Evans that spatial consciousness is critical for grasp of objectivity, I disagree with them that the content of this argue that the concept of objectivity is an empirical concept and that grasp of it hx experiential conditions. So, with respect to this concept, I endorse the basic idea that the nameh that if the pragmatists take over from the empiricist tradition content ofa concept cttnnot be uaced back to experience, then the concePt is spurious. If, however, we think of experience in a reductively empiricist wan this claim about the concept of objectivity will seem nonsensical. For if the concept of objectivity can be uaced back to the impressions and ideas that comprise experience, then the content of this concept, which is meant to signify the mind-independent world to which our thought answers, will be filled out by states that reside in a subject's consciousness. But then what is objective will always be what is objective for an individual subject. An experiential account of objectivity seems to lead to a type of subjective concept is conferred through spatial reasoning. I - idealism. But this conclusion does not result if we follow the pragmatists and think ofexperience as either Erlebnis or Erfahrung. In the second part of the book, I argue that these two concepts of experience can be used to answer different sides of the overall question of objectivity. The first side concerns our grd.s? of the concept of objectiviry. To have thought that is answerable to the mind-independent world, one must understand that what is the case is the case regardless of what one, or anyone, thinla. How is this grasp possible? The second side concerns the question of whether thought can, in fact, be objective. This question emerges because even if the conditions for a subject to grasp the concept of 17 objectivity are fulfilled, their thought still might not be answerable to the wodd for its correctness.'a In Chapter 4, I argue that James's eccount of Erbbnis gives us the resources to answer the first side of the question of objectivity. Grasp of the concept of objectivity hx two experiential conditions for James. First, it is based in our experience ofthe fact that objects persist through changes in our experience of them. Second, we grasp that persisting objects continue to exist even when unperceived because, in our experience of space as we move through it, we dways 'know-together', or co-inten4 presence and absence. Because we can reveme our attention at will, this knowing together applies not only to intuitively given spatial fields but also to our conception of space as an infinitely continuous unit. This, argue, accounts for our most basic grasp of the concept of objectiviry. In Chapters I and 6,I use Dewey's notion of experience as Erfahrungto answer the second side of the question of objectivity: whether thought or judgment, regardless ofwhat a subject Sasps, can, in fact, be answerable to the world. In Chapter 5, I compare Dewqy's experimental empiricism with I McDowell's minimal empiricism, showing that both positions are motivated by t}e need to avoid a seesaw that they see taking place between empiricism and idealism/coherentism - between a view that accepts the Myth of the Given and one that cannot make sense of extemd constraint. Both think that we must understand experience as a uibunal in order to avoid this seesaw, but their views of experience differ considerably. \7hile for McDowell experience involves the actualization of conceptual capacities within receptivity, Dewey thinks it involves the actualization of habits a ltr7hen discussing the pragrnatists, inteqprercrs do not usudly ask about objectivity but about realism. (See Pumam 1987 and 1998, Hildebtand zoo3, Kitcher zorz, and Godfrey-Smith zor3.) Realism involves rwo thoughts: one modest, one prerumptuous (see WrigLt ry91 r-t-), The modest thought concerns the independence of reality - that the way matters stand with the world, and which belie6 are true of it, are qucstions settled independendy of what wc thinlc The presumptuous thought is that even though oracdy which beliefs about the world are true is a question setded independendy ofthoughc nevenheless our beliefi are able to capture in their net a substantial ponion ofthe truth. So the question ofrealism with respect to the pragmatists is usually posed in this way: do they drink that the oristence and nature ofthe world is settled independendy ofthought, and do they think thatwe can come to know a substantiol portion ofthe mrth about rhe world? These two questions relate to my two questions about objectivity in the following way. My 6rst question, which is about ow grasp ofthe cr:ncept ofobjectivity, is distinct from either one of these questions. It is concemed with the conditions necessary for a subject to grarp that objects exist independendy oftheir thoughc not direcdy with their mind-independence or with their ability to know them. It is a kind of uanscrndenul question, My second question about objectivity, in contr{lst, involves both qucsdons ofrealism, On thc onc hand, ifour thought is to be answerable to thc mind-indcpendent woild, there must &e a mind-indspendent world for it to answer m. On rhe othcr hand, if our thought is a grnuinely etwver m thh world, it must be able to capture in its net substantial trudrs about it. I discuss thc question ofrcalism in Chaptcr 6 end dre Conclusion. r8 Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Experience or bodily skills. Because this is so, experience is intrinsically embodied and 'experimental', a temporal process in which we both act on and are acted upon by the environment in which we live. In Chapter 6, I outline the concept of experience found in Dewey's later naturalistic empiricism. Dewey agrees with McDowell that experience is the product of a process of BiUung, But, for Dewey, this process both involves feedback relations benveen the communicative meanings that populate the space of reasons and the habits and bodily skills that make up our second nature and incorporates the environment insofar as habits are natural functions that cannot be individuated without making mention of both organism and environment. Based on this, i make Nvo arguments. First, I argue that this naturalisdc concept of experience can, unlike McDowell's, support a realist construal of answerability. Second, I argue that Dewey's concept of experience does not fall prey to the Myth of the Given, as Rorty claims. I end with this because the book aims to show that the pragmatists can give an experiential-theoretic account of objectivity without falling prey to the Myth of Given. In showing that Rorry argument is groundless, I meet this last explanatory goal. s PART I