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The Experientialist Alternative:

Giving New Meaning to the Old Myths

The fact that the myths of subjectivism and objectivism have stood for so long in Western culture indicates that each serves some important function. Each myth is moti­vated by real and reasonable concerns, and each has some grounding in our cultural experience.

What Experientialism Preserves of the Concerns That Motivate Objectivism

The fundamental concern of the myth of objectivism is the world external to the individual. The myth rightly empha­sizes the fact that there are real things, existing in­dependently of us, which constrain both how we interact with them and how we comprehend them. Objectivism's focus on truth and factual knowledge is based on the im­portance of such knowledge for successful functioning in our physical and cultural environment. The myth is also motivated by a concern for fairness and impartiality in cases where that matters and can be achieved in some rea­sonable fashion.

The experientialist myth, as we have been sketching it, shares all these concerns. Experientialism departs from objectivism, however, on two fundamental issues:

Is there an absolute truth?

Is absolute truth necessary to meet the above concerns---the concern with knowledge that allows us to function successfully and the concern with fairness and impartiality?

    Experientialism answers no to both questions. Truth is

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always relative to understanding, which is based on a nonuniversal conceptual system. But this does not preclude satisfying the legitimate concerns about knowledge and im­partiality that have motivated the myth of objectivism for centuries. Objectivity is still possible, but it takes on a new meaning. Objectivity still involves rising above individual bias, whether in matters of knowledge or value. But where objectivity is reasonable, it does not require an absolute, universally valid point of view. Being objective is always relative to a conceptual system and a set of cultural values. Reasonable objectivity may be impossible when there are conflicting conceptual systems or conflicting cultural values, and it is important to be able to admit this and to recognize when it occurs.

According to the experientialist myth, scientific knowl­edge is still possible. But giving up the claim to absolute truth could make scientific practice more responsible, since there would be a general awareness that a scientific theory may hide as much as it highlights. A general realization that science does not yield absolute truth would no doubt change the power and prestige of the scientific community as well as the funding practices of the federal government. The result would be a more reasonable assessment of what scientific knowledge is and what its limitations are.

What Experientialism Preserves of the Concerns That Motivate Subjectivism

What legitimately motivates subjectivism is the awareness that meaning is always meaning to a person. What's mean­ingful to me is a matter of what has significance for me. And what is significant for me will not depend on my rational knowledge alone but on my past experiences, values, feel­ings, and intuitive insights. Meaning is not cut and dried; it is a matter of imagination and a matter of constructing co­herence. The objectivist emphasis on achieving a univer­sally valid point of view misses what is important, insight­ful, and coherent for the individual.

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The experientialist myth agrees that understanding does involve all of these elements. Its emphasis on interaction and interactional properties shows how meaning always is meaning to a person. And its emphasis on the construction of coherence via experiential gestalts provides an account of what it means for something to be significant to an indi­vidual. Moreover, it gives an account of how understanding uses the primary resources of the imagination via metaphor and how it is possible to give experience new meaning and to create new realities.

Where experientialism diverges from subjectivism is in its rejection of the Romantic idea that imaginative understand­ing is completely unconstrained.

In summary, we see the experientialist myth as capable of satisfying the real and reasonable concerns that have moti­vated the myths of both subjectivism and objectivism but without either the objectivist obsession with absolute truth or the subjectivist insistence that imagination is totally un­restricted.