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Wiki MarkupHartshorne argues, to my mind, convincingly, that "Descartes confused the uniqueness of self-awareness, as the sole, relatively _distinct_ experience of singular concrete realities, with a supposed but baseless uniqueness of being the _sole certain_ experience of concrete realities, collective or singular. When I feel pain, it is certain that something concrete is going on, not just in 'my mind' but in something else, and that what is going on is in some sense bad, not good" (_Insights and Oversights_: 277; cf. also 275: "\[I\]t is logically impossible that an experience such as mine could occur _solus_ . . . . Insofar perception is as certain as . . . reflection or self-awareness. It gives us a world with certainty as to its existence and _some_ of its features but with pervasive indistinctness as to its singular constituents.").

But if it is true that our only experience of singular concrete realities that is distinct as well as certain is our experience of our own (past) experience; and if what is not distinct though certain when one feels pain is only that "something concrete is going on," then I fail to see how he can say so confidently, "Nature as experienced is indeed part of the unity of our experience and is of the nature of mind, not of mere matter. This point . . . is phenomenological, if anything is" (Creativity in American Philosophy: 148). Clearly, what "is phenomenological, if anything is" is not that experience other than my own is going on, but only that something concrete other than I myself is going on.unmigrated-wiki-markup

So, too, with his argument elsewhere, when he takes up his self-assigned task of reconciling "the two points: Knowing finds, does not produce, what it knows, but knowing is partly constituted by the things known." On the one hand, he holds, "\[t\]o experience or know is not in the least to create the thing experienced or known. On the other hand, it remains valid that _when known_ the thing known has _become_ part of the life of feeling and/or thought of the knower" (_CAP_: 148). But, again, for knowing to be partly constituted by things known is one thing; for it to be constituted by other knowing, or, at any rate, other experiencing, is something else. So I dispute his claim that we all experience what he says he experiences, i.e., "the social duality of immediacy, its aspect of participation, _sympathy_, feeling ofof