The influence of William James on Ludwig Wittgenstein has been widely studied, as well as the criticism that the latter addresses to the former, but one aspect that has only rarely been focused on is the two philosophers’ use of the image of the flux, stream, or river. The analysis of some notes belonging to Wittgenstein’s Nachlass support the possibility of a comparison between James’ stream of thought, as outlined in the Principles of Psychology, and Wittgenstein’s river-bed of thoughts, presented (...) in On Certainty. After an introduction which offers a general frame for the following work, the first section of the paper examines all the Nachlass entries that directly mention James’ stream. Section 2 focuses on two remarks in which Wittgenstein explicitly criticizes James’ concept and implicitly anticipates his own way of dealing with this matter. These remarks, belonging to Manuscripts 165 and 129, both dating 1944, have not been published in any of Wittgenstein’s edited books, nor is it possible to find the same argument elsewhere. Wittgenstein’s critique concerns James’ lack of distinction between what is grammatical, or a priori, and what is empirical, or a posteriori, a distinction which the image of the stream should have suggested: a stream flows in a stream-bed and within banks. This is exactly the meaning that Wittgenstein’s own metaphor of the river-bed of thoughts is intended to convey. Section 3 analyses James’ concept of the stream and its corollaries, in order to clarify whether Wittgenstein’s critique is justified or not. James in effect draws a separation between a priori and a posteriori, but this separation is conceived from within the framework of empirical science. This analysis leads to the theme of the relations among science, philosophy and metaphysics, which is the subject of section 4. The conclusion is that Wittgenstein did appreciate James for his intuitions and for the power of his imagination: in a sense he even developed them; but he could not agree on the explicit formulation of his ideas. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a comparison between the philosophies of Husserl and James in relation to their concepts of experience. Whereas various authors have acknowledged the affinity between James’ early psychology and Husserl’s phenomenology, the late development of James’ philosophy is often considered in opposition to Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology. This is because James’ radical empiricism achieves a non-dual dimension of experience that precedes the functional division into subject and object, thus contrasting with the phenomenological analysis of the dual structure (...) of intentionality. However, I argue that the later “genetic” development of phenomenology converges with some central aspects of James’ radical empiricism. This is because genetic phenomenology leads us to conceive of the flow of primal impressions as a fundamental dimension of experience that precedes the subject-object duality and is at the base of the process of co-constitution of the subject and the object in reciprocal dependence. At the same time, Husserl conceives of the impressional core of experience as structured by formal conditions that depend on the concrete constitution of an embodied subject. For this reason, I argue that Husserl’s genetic phenomenology can complement James’ radical empiricism, thus leading to the development of the doctrine of pure experience as a form of empirical and not metaphysical realism. (shrink)

In his theory of communication Schutz exhibits a significant tension between two fundamental perspectives, phenomenology and pragmatism, and in the long run he fails to reconcile the contradictory implications these perspectives have with regard to his model of interaction.The main problem seems to be the notion of sense-constitution. Schutz develops two distinguishable accounts of constitution: an egological one and a model based on the phenomenon of direct interaction of empirical subjects. Two key concepts are related to these different modes of (...) constitution: the model of appresentation with regard to language, symbols and signs, and the model of synchronisation as triangulation of streams of consciousness and outward action sequences. They are analyzed as significant for two different methods and two different theories of communication. I propose some reasons for Schutz's insistence on a phenomenological account of the ego and the constitution of sense, and offer a brief sketch of an alternative strategy that is implicit in Schutz's theory. (shrink)

Ce texte se propose de revenir sur la manière dont les Principles of Psychology ont été compris et discutés par Husserl et par Wittgenstein. Pour ce faire, on se focalisera ici sur le sens et l’importance stratégique de la dénonciation effectuée par James de l’ erreur du psychologue dans le chapitre VII de l’ouvrage, antérieur au chapitre « The Stream of Thought » qui a retenu toute l’attention de Husserl et de Wittgenstein. Il est suggéré qu’une des sources permettant de (...) déterminer ce qui est en jeu dans les usages divergents des Principles par Husserl et Wittgenstein se situe crucialement dans la manière dont cette dénonciation de l’erreur du psychologue peut être comprise à partir des perspectives respectives des deux auteurs. Un rappel des tensions principales entre, d’une part, le travail de James dans les Principles et, d’autre part, les critiques husserliennes et wittgensteiniennes de la psychologie, permet de comprendre l’importance, la radicalité, mais aussi les insuffisances de cette dénonciation jamesienne de l’erreur du psychologue. (shrink)