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James, William

"Essays In Radical Empiricism"


While physical things, namely, are supposed
to be permanent and to have their 'states,' a
fact of consciousness exists but once and _is_ a
state. Its _esse_ is _sentiri_; it is only so far as it is
felt; and it is unambiguously and unequivocally
exactly _what_ is felt The hypothesis under
consideration would, however, oblige it to be
felt equivocally, felt now as part of my mind
and again at the same time _not_ as a part of my
mind, but of yours (for my mind is _not) yours),
and this would seem impossible without doubling
it into two distinct things, or, in other
words, without reverting to the ordinary dualistic
philosophy of insulated minds each knowing
its object representatively as a third thing,
-- and that would be to give up the pure-
experience scheme altogether.
Can we see, then, any way in which a unit of
pure experience might enter into and figure in
two diverse streams of consciousness without
turning itself into the two units which, on our
hypothesis, it must not be?
128
II
There is a way; and the first step towards it
is to see more precisely how the unit enters into
either one of the streams of consciousness
alone.


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