Empirical experience

“ For, by definition, his past experiences are over, and are irrevocably no longer present, at any present empirical moment. No man, then, has ever observed the empirical fact that he himself has in the past observed facts, or has acquired by experience this which he now views as his own personally possessed body and outcome of experience.
Therefore, let no one who says, in a realistic sense, “Human experience, the experience of many men, exists,” venture to add that he himself, or that any other man has, merely as man, empirically verified this assertion. ”

“ For internal experience in general and its possibility, or perception in general, and its relation to other perceptions, unless some particular distinction or determination thereof is empirically given, cannot be regarded as empirical cognition, but as cognition of the empirical, and belongs to the investigation of the possibility of every experience, which is certainly transcendental. ”

“ Thus, in so far as physics is an empirical and verifiable science, it must assume or prove that the inference from appearances to matter is, in general, legitimate, and it must be able to tell us, more or less, what appearances to expect. It is through this question of verifiability and empirical applicability to experience that we are led to a theory of matter such as I advocate. ”

“ A sensory manifold being all which is really empirical in experience, a reason which transcends experience must provide synthesis. The net outcome might have suggested a correct account of experience. For we have only to forget the apparatus by which the net outcome is arrived at, to have before us the experience of the plain man—a diversity of ceaseless changes connected in all kinds of ways, static and dynamic. This conclusion would deal a deathblow to both empiricism and rationalism. ”

“ It is clear that in these cases the answer is given by experience, as the result of experiments performed in the past. Any judgment about empirical possibility is based on experience and will often be rather uncertain; there will be no sharp boundary between possibility and impossibility. ”

“ Now we learn what this empirical character is only from phenomenal effects, and from the rule of these which is presented by experience; and for this reason all the actions of man in the world of phenomena are determined by his empirical character, and the co-operative causes of nature. ”

“ Wherever there appear to be gaps in the series of perceptions we assume that further investigation will discover the intervening members. This demonstration of the validity of the categories of magnitude and causality likewise involves a limitation: The validity of the categories can only be affirmed within the range of possible experience; they cannot be applied to things which from their very nature cannot become objects of experience. Experience is the empirical synthesis which furnishes validity to every other synthesis. ”

“ A conception used by any empirical science is an ideal tool, or a sort of mechanical contrivance. Using it, we work over the data of our common experience until these data Page:The World and the Individual, Second Series (1901) .djvu/224 cation, of description, of experiment, and of prediction, which are as material in their embodiment as the works of an industrial art. While science deals with natural facts in a far more universal way than does any industrial art, its purposes are no less human than are those of its fellow. Both coöperate to the end of man’s mastery over Nature. ”

“ Experience as Experimentation.—It has already been intimated that sensational empiricism represents neither the idea of experience justified by modern psychology nor the idea of knowledge suggested by modern scientific procedure. ”

“ But all true metaphysics is taken from the essential nature of the thinking faculty itself, and therefore in nowise invented, since it is not borrowed from experience, but contains the pure operations of thought, that is, conceptions and principles à priori, which the manifold of empirical presentations first of all brings into legitimate connection, by which it can become empirical knowledge, i.e. experience. ”

“ CHAPTER I THE MEANS OF EMPIRICAL OBSERVATION OF THE VOICE
To all knowledge obtained through the observation of facts and phenomena, the term empirical is properly applied. Empirical knowledge must be the basis of every science. To be available in forming a science, empirical knowledge of a subject must be so carefully gathered that all probability of error is eliminated ”

“ The empirical method inevitably magnifies the influences of the past; the experimental method throws into relief the possibilities of the future. The empirical method says, "Wait till there is a sufficient number of cases;" ”

“ That fact, indeed, is present to no human observer’s experience. And yet, although it thus transcends every man’s observation and verification, it is an ‘accredited’ fact.” But the thesis, as thus amended, is no longer even a relatively pure empiricism. It is a synthesis of an appeal to human experience with an admission of principles that, whatever they are, or however they are grounded, transcend every man's experience. ”

“ We may regard as a certain conquest of the experimental method and of true psychological analysis, the establishment of principles which at the same time that they are given to us by the surest of all experiences, that of consciousness, have a bearing superior to experience, and open to us regions inaccessible to empiricism. ”

“ In conformity with the character of my former writings, as well as with the labors in which I have been engaged during my scientific career, in measurements, experiments, and the investigation of facts, I limit myself to the domain of empirical ideas. ”

“ After so-called “rational knowledge” is accounted for, empiricism now has the right and the power to claim the whole field of knowledge. We know nothing except by experience, and experience is the only criterion of the truth or falsity of any real proposition. ”

“ The empirical laws of those phenomena which depend on known causes, and of which a general theory can therefore be constructed, have, whatever may be their value in practice, no other function in science than that of verifying the conclusions of theory. ”

“ If man receives all his impressions and forms all his conceptions from the world of sense, and derives his experiences from the world of sense, it follows that the empirical world ought to be so constructed as to offer a wealth of truly human experiences. ”

“ Thus perception involves a twofold choice. Out of all present sensations, we notice mainly such as are significant of absent ones; and out of all the absent associates which these suggest, we again pick out a very few to stand for the objective reality par excellence. We could have no more exquisite example of selective industry.
That industry goes on to deal with the things thus given in perception. A man's empirical thought depends on the things he has experienced, but what these shall be is to a large extent determined by his habits of attention. ”

“ This assuredly is not to be effected by mapping out the human mind into a set of independent faculties, and exhibiting in a desultory manner the facts of an empirical and unsystematic psychology. Such teaching is at the best merely theoretical. ”

“ All science is based upon experience and consists in subjecting the data furnished by the senses to a rational method of investigation. Induction, analysis, comparison, observation, experiment, are the chief instruments of such a rational method. ”

“ The knowledge that is possible to the empiricist, then, is merely that which is derived from direct experience, and simple summations or generalisations into a single assertion of a number of similar assertions, all of which were individually derived from experience. This is the position scientists as such, and believers in the theory of naturalism, take up as to the possibility of the knowledge of truth to the human mind. ”

“ There were, of course, some who employed the empirical method in psychology, but they were so far from comprehending the full scope of mental phenomena that, at best, their work gave the promise of a science rather than a science itself. ”

“ The empirical school, which lauds the experimental method so much, turns its back upon it, thus to speak, when, instead of commencing by the study of the actual characters of our cognitions, as they are attested to us by consciousness and reflection, it plunges, without light and without guidance, into the pursuit of their origin. ”

“ What we have said so far is that there have been hitherto certain observed causal laws, and that all the empirical evidence we possess is compatible with the view that everything, both mental and physical, so far as our observation has extended, has happened in accordance with causal laws. ”

“ Let us make this ability to deal with novel data the technical differentia of reasoning. This will sufficiently mark it out from common associative thinking, and will immediately enable us to say just what peculiarity it contains.
It contains analysis and abstraction. Whereas the merely empirical thinker stares at a fact in its entirety, and remains helpless, or gets 'stuck,' if it suggests no concomitant or similar, the reasoner breaks it up and notices some one of its separate attributes. This attribute he takes to be the essential part of the whole fact before him. ”

“ Theory yields the greatest possible assistance in applying the method of means. For if we have a great number of empirical measurements, each representing the joint effect of a number of causes, our object will be to take the mean of all those in which the effect to be measured is present, and compare it with the mean of the remainder in which the effect is absent, or acts in the opposite direction. ”

“ His universals, when applied to nature, are all hypothetical universals; hence the import of experiment as the test of an hypothesis. Experience does not rule out the possible cropping up of a new problem which may shift the values attained. Experience simply reveals that the new hypothesis fits into the meanings of the world which are not shaken; it shows that, with the reconstruction which the hypothesis offers, it is possible for scientific conduct to proceed. ”

“ Should he argue, however, from what has just been said, that no such realisation is at present practicable, and that all effort ought to be devoted to the preliminary inquiry; we reply, that though it is not possible for a scheme of culture to be perfected either in matter or form until a rational psychology has been established, it is possible, with the aid of certain guiding principles, to make empirical approximations towards a perfect scheme. ”

“ The same defect occurs in the reasoning of an empirical psychologist when he analyses an action into the various aspects which it presents, and then sticks to these aspects in their separation. The object which is subjected to analysis is treated as a sort of onion from which one coat is peeled off after another. ”

“ But there is no doubt that what we may call the empirical outlook has become part of most educated people's habit of mind; and it is this, rather than any definite argument, that has diminished the hold of the classical tradition upon students of philosophy and the instructed public generally. ”

“ But we must be able to combine empirical tests with subjective analysis, before the intellectual process can be completed which authorizes us to determine whether any given production reaches that highest grade of excellence implied in its being "true to nature." ”

“ We ask ourselves the general question: 'WHAT DO WE EXPERIENCE WHEN WE THINK?' Then we do not at all attempt a preliminary determination of the concept 'thought,' but choose for analysis only such processes as everyone would describe as processes of thought. ”

“ While then philosophy is unable to predict a priori the special contents of human experience, it is forced to insist that by the term “human experience” we always mean more than the facts that are verified by individual men.
It remains perfectly true, of course, that the empiristic thesis which has just been examined is not without its deep significance, and that what empiricism has intended to emphasize is, when its statement has been properly modified, a truth, and one of the first importance. ”

“ It may happen, however, that empirical is an epithet applicable only to the form of scientific exposition; whilst intuitive sagacity has arranged what are mere phenomena, according to the essential sequence of the notion. ”

“ What we have said of empirical generalizations from times past to times still to come, holds equally true of similar generalizations from present times to times past; when persons whose acquaintance with moral and social facts is confined to their own age, take the men and the things of that age for the type of men and things in general, and apply without scruple to the interpretation of the events of history, the empirical laws which represent sufficiently for daily guidance the common phenomena of human nature at that time and in that particular state of society. ”

“ The science then that deals with immediate experience must postulate mediate experience as one of its fundamental presuppositions. Thus we come once more to the conclusion, and this time from quite a different standpoint, that psychology as science in general has its presuppositions, and that it furthermore presupposes all the presuppositions of the natural sciences. ”

“ Therefore the whole empirical perception remains always upon a subjective foundation, as a mere process in us, and nothing entirely different from it and independent of it can be brought in as a thing in itself, or shown to be a necessary assumption. ”