An Overheard Conversation and William James

I had just left the hospital and reached the corner when the street light turned red. I was preoccupied, scanning the morning in my mind. I heard the choppy siren sound announcing that the blind could now cross the street and noticed how much that sound annoyed me. That stopped me. I mean the blind do need to hear this, but couldn't it be a prettier sound? Come on; stop, I thought to myself. I'm over the top here. Just relax a bit. So I breathed deep and looked up at the trees, my head turned slightly.

“My boobs are bigger and my ass is bigger. He asked me, ‘What's new?' And I told him. That's it, that's what's new.”

I hadn't noticed them at all, the two girls standing in front of me. I had just walked across the street and I'm sure I was almost invisible to them, non-descript in a dark gray business suit. But I am probably invisible to 13-year-old girls no matter what I am wearing. And now I tried not to notice them since I was sure that they didn't want me to hear what one had just told the other. I didn't have to act uninterested because I actually had been uninterested in them until now. Now I had to work to continue it.

Later that night Deborah, my wife asked about the writing course I was taking. “Our writing assignment this week is to write about an overheard conversation but I can't write about this,” I said to her.

“You must, precisely for that reason,” her words are still echoing now.

Why would that be? Does writing compel us in some way to speak about the unspeakable? What strange solitude exists here in writing? Strange because it is so private and yet so widely held, this world that words create once they are written down. The pictures they make the songs they sing. How is it that we can all know it so intimately? How can we actually know what someone else means when they think something and then tell us? My friend Dean Brown told me recently that William James once wrote an essay on this mystery, How two minds can know one thing. It was written in 1905, so quite a few minds have checked into this by now.

What does James say, you must want to know. It's dense wading this swamp of pure philosophy. We must arm ourselves with gun and camera, strange creatures are sure to be encountered. But the geography is an even bigger danger. Ropes and waist-high boots are necessary for the quicksand of “things-in-themselves”. The impassable morass of “ostensions” requires special aerial equipment. And maps are just no good for the “reifications”. There is simply no way out of them.

But James is worth it; he is a friend in this inhospitable land. So we take his lead. In good professional form he starts with definitions. He calls a thing, e.g. this pen, a datum, a sense impression and he defines these as “pure experiences”. In those days philosophers used pens in many ways that today are obsolete because of computers, but the point remains. These pure experiences are known to a mind as a “representation” of an object or class of objects. The “representative theory of cognition” is “what we all spontaneously do”, he tells us (p. 131, Essays in Radical Empiricism. Univ. Nebraska Press 1996). It is what we mean by knowing. It is literally a recognition or re-cognition. Though there is something of interest here, it is not about cognition. Like James' pen “representation as cognition” is somewhat obsolete. Somewhat because we all still use pens just not the same way as we used to. Now we use computers and pens. And now we know that “sense impressions” are heavily censored in sense organs and “pure experiences” are heavily edited in the nervous system. The current view is more that we construct “pure experiences” rather than have them. Cognition is more properly understood as “bringing forth” or “constructing” a world. But like our pen with our computer we still use representation as way of talking about what science does just not as a way of talking about cognition (See Representing and Intervening Ian Hacking, Cambridge U Press, 1983). But we can't fault James for this. The biology of visual perception hadn't yet been worked out when he was writing.

But James was on the right track because his question remains, How can two minds know one thing? And here true to his brilliance he gets interesting. He notes that at the moment we “know” a pen in the sense of recognizing it as a cognition it attaches to our consciousness with feelings, nuance. It becomes our “own” experience and in this way enters our consciousness. So now we can see how one mind can know a thing. What about two minds?

A paradox emerges. My consciousness is unique so how can something of my consciousness be shared by someone else's? Not to worry says James. “The paradox of the same experience figuring in two consciousnesses seems thus no paradox at all. To be ‘conscious' means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being”(p. 132). So two minds know one thing by attaching that one thing to each of their consciousnesses in its unique way. Is it the same thing? James never answers this but implies that the thing is the same but “knowing” it is unique.

Then he climbs in a hot air balloon and leaves the swamp beckoning to us. “Understand this is not a logical difficulty”, he tells us waving from the air. “It is an ontological difficulty rather.”(p. 132)

So we can understand how two minds can know one thing. And we can further see how we take for granted that the same thing is known and that on deeper examination how knowing is really unique to the individual. But why is it an ontological difficulty? “Relationship, of course”, it seems he is saying but his voice is drawing fainter. James offers a few corollaries from post-Kantian idealists, his white scarf flowing in the air, but we can't hear him. And he is clearly losing interest as he enjoys a magnificent view of us, still in the swamp.

Oh, the girls. They soon realized that I was standing behind them and ran off giggling like children. I noticed it was around three in the afternoon. St. Martin's school had just gotten out. Did I really know anything about what they were saying?



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	Sylver Quevedo February 4, 2003 An Overheard Conversation and William James I had just left the hospital and reached the corner when the street light turned red. I was preoccupied, scanning the morning in my mind. I heard the choppy siren sound announcing that the blind could now cross the street and noticed how much that sound annoyed me. That stopped me. I mean the blind do need to hear this, but couldn't it be a prettier sound? Come on; stop, I thought to myself. I'm over the top here. Just relax a bit. So I breathed deep and looked up at the trees, my head turned slightly. “My boobs are bigger and my ass is bigger. He asked me, ‘What's new?' And I told him. That's it, that's what's new.” I hadn't noticed them at all, the two girls standing in front of me. I had just walked across the street and I'm sure I was almost invisible to them, non-descript in a dark gray business suit. But I am probably invisible to 13-year-old girls no matter what I am wearing. And now I tried not to notice them since I was sure that they didn't want me to hear what one had just told the other. I didn't have to act uninterested because I actually had been uninterested in them until now. Now I had to work to continue it. Later that night Deborah, my wife asked about the writing course I was taking. “Our writing assignment this week is to write about an overheard conversation but I can't write about this,” I said to her. “You must, precisely for that reason,” her words are still echoing now. Why would that be? Does writing compel us in some way to speak about the unspeakable? What strange solitude exists here in writing? Strange because it is so private and yet so widely held, this world that words create once they are written down. The pictures they make the songs they sing. How is it that we can all know it so intimately? How can we actually know what someone else means when they think something and then tell us? My friend Dean Brown told me recently that William James once wrote an essay on this mystery, *How two minds can know one thing. It was written in 1905, so quite a few minds have checked into this by now. What does James say, you must want to know. It's dense wading this swamp of pure philosophy. We must arm ourselves with gun and camera, strange creatures are sure to be encountered. But the geography is an even bigger danger. Ropes and waist-high boots are necessary for the quicksand of “things-in-themselves”. The impassable morass of “ostensions” requires special aerial equipment. And maps are just no good for the “reifications”. There is simply no way out of them. But James is worth it; he is a friend in this inhospitable land. So we take his lead. In good professional form he starts with definitions. He calls a thing, e.g. this pen, a datum, a sense impression and he defines these as “pure experiences”. In those days philosophers used pens in many ways that today are obsolete because of computers, but the point remains. These pure experiences are known to a mind as a “representation” of an object or class of objects. The “representative theory of cognition” is “what we all spontaneously do”, he tells us (p. 131, Essays in Radical Empiricism. Univ. Nebraska Press 1996). It is what we mean by knowing. It is literally a recognition or re-cognition. Though there is something of interest here, it is not about cognition. Like James' pen “representation as cognition” is somewhat obsolete. Somewhat because we all still use pens just not the same way as we used to. Now we use computers and pens. And now we know that “sense impressions” are heavily censored in sense organs and “pure experiences” are heavily edited in the nervous system. The current view is more that we construct “pure experiences” rather than have them. Cognition is more properly understood as “bringing forth” or “constructing” a world. But like our pen with our computer we still use representation as way of talking about what science does just not as a way of talking about cognition (See Representing and Intervening* Ian Hacking, Cambridge U Press, 1983). But we can't fault James for this. The biology of visual perception hadn't yet been worked out when he was writing. But James was on the right track because his question remains, How can two minds know one thing? And here true to his brilliance he gets interesting. He notes that at the moment we “know” a pen in the sense of recognizing it as a cognition it attaches to our consciousness with feelings, nuance. It becomes our “own” experience and in this way enters our consciousness. So now we can see how one mind can know a thing. What about two minds? A paradox emerges. My consciousness is unique so how can something of my consciousness be shared by someone else's? Not to worry says James. “The paradox of the same experience figuring in two consciousnesses seems thus no paradox at all. To be ‘conscious' means not simply to be, but to be reported, known, to have awareness of one's being added to that being”(p. 132). So two minds know one thing by attaching that one thing to each of their consciousnesses in its unique way. Is it the same thing? James never answers this but implies that the thing is the same but “knowing” it is unique. Then he climbs in a hot air balloon and leaves the swamp beckoning to us. “Understand this is not a logical difficulty”, he tells us waving from the air. “It is an ontological difficulty rather.”(p. 132) So we can understand how two minds can know one thing. And we can further see how we take for granted that the same thing is known and that on deeper examination how knowing is really unique to the individual. But why is it an ontological difficulty? “Relationship, of course”, it seems he is saying but his voice is drawing fainter. James offers a few corollaries from post-Kantian idealists, his white scarf flowing in the air, but we can't hear him. And he is clearly losing interest as he enjoys a magnificent view of us, still in the swamp. Oh, the girls. They soon realized that I was standing behind them and ran off giggling like children. I noticed it was around three in the afternoon. St. Martin's school had just gotten out. Did I really know anything about what they were saying?