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JF and Phil finally get down to brass tacks with William James\'s essay "Does Consciousness Exist?" At the heart of this essay is the concept of what James calls "pure experience," the basic stuff of everything, only it isn\'t a stuff, but an irreducible multiplicity of everything that exists -- thoughts as well as things. We\'re used to thinking that thoughts and things belong to fundamentally different orders of being, but what if thoughts are things, too? For one thing, psychical phenomena (a great interest of James\'s) suddenly become a good deal more plausible. And the imaginal realm, where art and magic make their home, becomes a sovereign domain.

REFERENCES

William James, "Does \'Consciousness\' Exist?"
\\nSteven Shaviro, The Universe of Things
\\nJean-Paul Sartre, The Transcendence of the Ego
\\nWilliam James, Essays in Psychical Research
\\nWeird Studies D&D episode
\\nProust, \\xc0 la Recherche du Temps Perdu
\\nThe Venera 13 probe\'s photos of the surface of Venus
\\nWallace Stevens, "A Postcard from the Volcano"