Dimensiones de la Contabilidad Gubernamental Estados Financieros

22. Macmurray, John, "The Principle of Personality in Experience" PAS (1928-29) XXIX, p.523» hereafter cited as PPB

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immediate or unexpressed experience. While the concept of reflec­ tive experience is not difficult, the concept of immediate experience is problematic since to think about or to express experience is to destroy the immediacy of the experience. Immediate experience has a number of definitive characteristics, the first of which is its unexpressed or unreflected-upon state, i.e. immediate experience

is lived through, but is not thought about, which presupposes our immersion in experience. The best example of this characteristic of immediate experience is the knowledge one has of another person, which is the reason that Macmurray sometimes referred to practical knowledge as .personal knowledge as opposed to impersonal knowledge or

theoretical knowledge. A second characteristic of immediate experience is its unity and completeness. To stop and think or reflect breaks the wholeness of the living experience. Immediate experience, therefore, has as one of its properties a unity which is broken by the abstraction of reflective experience. Beflection separates the unity of one’s experience into many unconnected parts. Macmurray stressed, neverthe­ less, that immediate experience is not primitive experience, i.e. not something that one can grow out of or the elemental substratum that exists within all men since it is different for each man. Although one can blunt ones capacity for immediate experience by talking and reflecting upon it, normal reflection can enlarge ones own feeling. Consequently, immediate experience is not just raw experience which is totally unaffected by thinking. Immediate experience cannot be reduced or limited to just experiences, since sense experience is only an element of immediate experience. Sense experience seems to presuppose a certain amount of passivity on the part of the agent, whereas for Macmurray the activity of the agent is the source of ex­ perience. This underlines the difference between Macmurray* s view

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and that of the olassioal empiricists in that Macmurray*s outlook was essentially based upon action, whereas the view of the classical empiricists were essentially one of passivity.

The epistemological principles, that have been so far discussed, point to a general connection between experience, knowledge and

reflection. Reflection is only possible upon what has been or is 24-

capable of being experienced by the self. All theoretical con­ clusions or hypotheses about what is possible for activity in the world must be verified by being part of the self*s immediate exper­ ience. These are the general principles that apply to all experience as well as to all reflection. As has already been noted there are different modes of reflection. The purpose of each of these modes of reflection is to improve theoretical or impersonal knowledge and

thus ultimately the action of the self with respect to a more or less clearly defined area of experience. The action of *Uie self to a certain extent depends for its successful functioning upon whether or not the theoretical knowledge improves. The intention behind a particular mode of reflection is to reflect upon a given area and

to provide the self with reliable theoretical knowledge about a

particular area, which is divided by Macmurray into three now familiar 25

fields of art, science and religion.

All of these three modes are grounded in the total field of human experience, therefore, each is related to the other. However,

23. Thomason, op. cit., pp.125-127 ^

24# Discussed in Chapter 5

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the different attitudes tend to emphasise different apsects of the field of experience, since certain experiences lend themselves more easily to one mode of reflection as opposed to another,

Althou^ experience is a unity, and all the reflective activities of man refer to the whole of experience, there is in actuality a different centre or locus for each of idle three attitudes, i.e. a

26

different field of interest.

Since the central mode of apperception is religion then the central problem is what can be considered the field of religious experience? "What are the normal and universal facts of human ex­ perience out of which religion, as a special kind of human behaviour

27

arises?" Macmurray*s assumption was that someone talks about religion and therefore "there is a field of real, direct experience out of which religious phenomena emerge, and the way he interprets

pp religion will reveal the kind of facts which he had in mind". The problem seems to come from the fact "that it seems impossible to distinguish any special set of facts which form the field of religion. All the facts of experience seem to be data for the religious con-

29

sciousness". Which is a general statement of the problem of religious experience.

The field of religious experience is more than the whole field of human experience of the world around us, since it also includes ourselves, Macmurray understood the scientific attitude and the artistic attitude in terms of setting the world of eaqperience against ourselves, which makes the total of experience an incomplete one for the artistic and scientific attitudes. Within religion there is not

26. Thomason, op. cit., pp.l6l-l62

27. SEE p. 19

28. SEE p. 19