Wireless Worlds: Subject-Object Relations in the Twenty-first Century

摘要

Just after the turn of the century, when radio waves were starting to fill the air, the American philosopher and psychologist William James put forth a pragmatist program for understanding what constitutes reality. While classical empiricists had understood reality to be out there in the world, apprehended through the sensation of physical phenomena, James opposed this subject/object dichotomy and instead stressed the importance of their relationship. In James' radical empiricism, subjects and objects are co-constitutive; they are not fixed but rather affect one another, and cannot be understood separated from one another.