William James Lecture Notes

Dates: 1842-1910

James's Account of Psychology:

• The fundamental activity of consciousness is the experience of thinking itself.

• Five general characteristics of consciousness:

• 1) All thoughts are personal thoughts. Thoughts are either my thoughts or your thoughts; not thought in general.

• 2) Our mental states are dynamic, not static. Each thought has its own quality and integrity.

• 3) Changes in consciousness are continuous; no discontinuous gaps. The various changes in thought are part of the same whole; i.e. a personal self.

• 4) Consciousness deals with objects independent of itself. This is a reply to Hegel's Metaphysics which insisted on absolute subject.

• 5) Selective attention. We are interested in certain aspects of objects more than others at any given time. Our understanding is therefore placed against the backdrop of our stream of consciousness.

• We therefore believe things are the case according to our own aesthetic, emotional, and active needs.

James's Empiricism:

• Only objects of experience are debatable by philosophers.

• Unlike Hume in that James admits that we can have experience of relations between objects of our experience.

• James thinks he can account for the interconnectedness of our experience without the rigid categories of Kant's system.

• The primary objects of our experience are particular and not universal. This view explains his rejection of rationalism in favor of empiricism.

• Any experience (even those of relations) must be thought to be as real as anything else in the system.

• Philosophy has had a tendency to overemphasize concepts over percepts. (This is similar to Kant's phrase: "Concepts w/o percepts are empty; percepts w/o concepts are blind.") Concepts are secondary formations and are a falsely static representation of a dynamic reality.

• Kant has denied the flux of consciousness (He is unfair to Kant here). Similarly James rejects Leibniz's theodicy as unconvincingly abstract.

• Distinction between hypothetical knowledge (knowing-that) and practical knowledge (knowing-how).

James's Pragmatism:

• Pragmatism is an empirical method, insofar as our knowledge stems from and refers to our conscious experience.

• Two opposing types of philosophical approaches:

• 1) "Tender-Minded": Rationalistic, Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Committed to Free Will, Monistic, Dogmatic. (Augustine, Anselm, Aquinas, Descartes, Leibniz, Hegel)

• 2) "Tough-Minded": Empirical, Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Skeptical. (Locke, Hume; Kant is a mix of both)

• Each approach views the other with suspicion and disdain. Tough-minded philosophers view the other as overly sentimental and soft-headed. Tender view the other as unrefined, calloused or brutal.

• James's task is to synthesize these two approaches coherently.

• Thus James wants a philosophy that is pluralistic (anti-monistic), neither dogmatic nor skeptical, neither optimistic nor pessimistic, and is committed to both religious faith and free will.

• Pragmatism is a method for settling metaphysical disputes which would otherwise be insoluble.

• Example: free-will/determinism. Pragmatism asks: "What difference would it make to anyone if this notion rather than the other notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle."

• Metaphysical disputes can therefore be made to "collapse into insignificance" when subjected to a pragmatic test.

• Some metaphysical views remain alive today because they have passed the pragmatic test (e.g. freedom, immortality, existence of God).

• The difference made must be practical and not just abstract or theoretical (empiricism).

• "If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true for pragmatism...."

• Evidence for God thus lies in inner personal experiences and not in formal deductive arguments.

• Problems with Hegelian Monism: 1) Does not account for our finite consciousness; 2) Problem of Evil is too theoretical for Hegel; 3) Hegel's system contradicts perceptual experience of the world in terms of flux, struggles, losses and gains, etc.; and 4) it is fatalistic.

• Rather than optimism or pessimism he favors "meliorism", which holds that things can improve if we strive to make them better. Emphasis on our initiative, effort, and responsibility.

Faith and the Will to Believe:

• Our ability to will ourselves to believe something is dependent upon that something being a live hypothesis for us. (Argument against Pascal's Wager)

• To the extent that hypotheses are "live options" for us, our will has some leverage, but only to that extent.

• Much of what we believe is thus based in the authority of others. This determines to what extent various hypotheses are live options for us.

• Thus "[our] faith is faith in someone else's faith."

• James interprets reason broadly enough to include faith. It is rational therefore to dedicate oneself to a theological proposition in absence of adequate evidence through an act of volition which can make a concrete difference (see example in textbook)

• Such faith must still have an experiential component, though (again, empiricism)

Religious Experience:

• Book: The Varieties of Religious Experience

• Pluralistic account of religious experience (not dogmatic)

• Moves away from religious institutions and towards religious feelings and impulses. Three features:

• 1) Focus on feeling, action, and experience rather than on theoretical doctrine.

• 2) Emphasis on religious individuals rather than on religious institutions

• 3) Religious life must have a solitary component. Not just communal.

• 4) Emphasis in how individuals view themselves in relation to the divine; not whether the divine actually exists.

• 5) "The Divine" is interpreted broadly enough to encompass Emersonian optimism and certain types of Buddhism. What matters is the seriousness and gravity of the experience.

Religious Consciousness:

• Distinction between "healthy-mindedness" and the "sick soul".

• Healthy-Mindedness: Religious optimism and joy (e.g. Walt Whitman); Christian liberalism.

• Sick Soul: Dwells on the view that evil is in our very essence. Morbid pessimism. (e.g. Tolstoy). Critique of traditional Catholicism.

• A healthy mixture of the two is best, but optimism is favorable to pessimism.

Mystical experience:

* He remains open to these, although he has not experienced one himself (pluralism).