On "Filmic Experience" - 1

The question of experience is inexorably tied to the issues of perception. In the history of philosophy, questions on the nature of experience are generally discussed through visual experience and pain. Different modalities of experience (such as hearing discussed by Husserl) come at a later stage in philosophy. While it is true that all modalities of experience are more or less phenomenal in character, modalities different than perception are discussed only later by phenomenology. With phenomenology, the concept of experience extends itself to other areas of research, beginning with different modalities and becoming in the end the privileged object of knowledge of philosophy for a period of time (ending roughly about 1940).

Casetti enumerates some other uses of “experience” in footnotes but I will be specifically using it in the framework of the philosophical discussion beginning with classical empiricism and extending to phenomenology. I believe that to discuss filmic experience, aside from the three reasons that Casetti gives as his basis, we should first have an account of what experience itself is (that is, if such a coherent account is possible). I think that Casetti is using the term experience without explicating what he means by it. However, even to argue that there is such a thing as a filmic experience different from other experiences, we should be clear about what we mean by this concept.

In the classical empiricist sense, experience is the only ground for knowledge, which makes it the only legitimate object of epistemology. This focus on empirical grounds for knowledge is a reaction against the rationalist arguments that there are innate ideas in the mind (a priori, independent of experience). This period of empiricism, beginning with Locke and Berkeley and finalizing with Hume’s skepticism is replaced by phenomenology (considered as an extreme empiricism) which argues that physical world is reducible to experience. Consciousness is always consciousness of something: experience is capable of transcending the subject-object duality. In fact, empiricism itself can be seen as just another way to get rid of Cartesian dualism. In other words, phenomenology is different from classical empiricism in that in empiricism the issue is between the subject experiencing and the object experienced, still a kind of duality, still a gap.

Pragmatism of James is another kind of phenomenology and his theory of radical empiricism roughly argues that "everything" is experience. His radicalism comes from his argument that relations such as cause and effect are also part of our experience and therefore they are not beyond experience but precisely empirical phenomena. This move is an attempt to escape Hume’s skeptic arguments. Whatever James is successful or nor is not relevant here but his arguments about truth is what I am interested in.

James formulates a pragmatist theory of truth in which he argues that something is true as long as it successfully takes us from a part of experience to another part of our experience. In this sense, true is what is “expedient”, what is suitable for achieving a certain end. Therefore, pragmatist theory of truth is both a correspondence theory of truth (corresponding with a reality and determined by its relation to the world) and a coherence theory of truth (determined by its relations to other statements within a system). In this sense, if the idea of God “works”, in the sense that, if it leads us to meaningful, satisfactory experiences, than it is true.

The reason I am giving such a detailed account of theories of truth is to show that what we call “reality”, that world which we assume as given, is different from what is “true”. Now this may seem obvious, but in our experience of the world, what is real and what is true cannot so easily be distinguished. Even in philosophical analysis the issue is far from clear.