William James

While William James and Charles Sanders Peirce are considered the two fathers of American Pragmatism, Peircian Pragmatism is often being presented as the comparatively ‘objective’ alternative to metaphysical realism, with the Jamesian version being castigated as an overly ‘subjective’ departure from Peirce’s position. However, while James clearly does put more of an emphasis on ‘subjective’ factors than does Peirce, his doing so is often the result of his simply drawing out consequences of the framework that Peirce presented in an 1872 (...) meeting of their ‘Metaphysical Club’ where James and Peirce famously discussed the core ideas that have been associated with pragmatism ever since. In particular, while Peirce was still flirting with idealism at the time, James drew out some of the consequences that followed from those 1872 discussion once they were placed more firmly in a naturalistic, particularly Darwinian, framework. Peirce was never comfortable with these consequences, and in later work tried to distance himself from a number of positions defended in his earlier papers. James, by contrast, never rejected that early framework, which resulted in the increasing differences between the versions of pragmatism developed by the two. These differences show up most clearly in their conflicting conceptions of both when our beliefs are rationally justified, and what it would take for those beliefs to be true. (shrink)

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it. It thereby introduces some unique ideas and approaches to the analysis of concepts. Looking largely to pragmatism’s founder, Charles Peirce, this chapter presents an account of concepts as habits which associate specific kinds of environmental stimuli with schemata of action and ensuing experience, within linguistic communities. I explain how this account avoids Sellars’ ‘Myth of the Given’. I then explore how Peirce’s semiotic approach to (...) philosophy of language and mind theorized signifying habits as symbols which draw icons and indices together into propositional structures, thereby generating meanings that are specifically applicable and indefinitely generalizable. This original account of concept formation is further illuminated through an examination of Peirce’s philosophy of perception, which makes particularly manifest the process whereby primitive indices, or ‘percepts’, are enfolded in symbolic meanings through habitual ‘perceptual judgements’. (shrink)

Philosophically engaged fiction often employs ideas in ways that reflect the exploitation-exploration dilemma in developmental psychology: by exploiting well articulated theories by enacting their conflicts, or by exploring the uncertainties of puzzling ontologies or moral complexities. We can see this in action in many works, but some novels of ideas seek to defy such categorization, with lessons for readers and writers. This paper analyzes two recent works – The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) and Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Portable Veblen (2016) (...) – to show how they deal with related concerns and settings through very different approaches. While Powers offers an enactment, its complexity seeks to evade the book becoming a simple polemic. McKenzie’s protagonist explores her muddled identity, philosophy and much else while flirting with the enactment of ideas when she does not comprehend. (shrink)

Contemporary religious epistemology is often divided into classical evidentialists, who work primarily in and through arguments, and their detractors, who often take perceptual or functional states to be immediately justifying. As a result, contemporary religious epistemology often overlooks the relationship between theory and practice and the rich historical traditions that integrate lived experience and intellectual assent. Recovering the genealogical link between 18th century Protestant pietism and the 19th century classical pragmatism of William James, Pietism and Pragmatism articulates a philosophical approach (...) that brings questions of religion and spirituality back to practice while contributing to traditional and perennial philosophical discussions. Applying this approach to the philosophical space between the traditional Christianity and perfect being theism of the Protestant pietists and the pluralism and alternative theism of Jamesian pragmatism, Pietism and Pragmatism offers a defense of the continued relevance of spirituality and religion and a fresh exposition of the boundaries of philosophy of religion. (shrink)

In some of her earliest writings, Susan Stebbing developed a hitherto overlooked response to the scientific realism debate. This paper reconstructs Stebbing’s objections against different forms of scientific anti-realism defended by Pragmatism, Bergson, and his ‘New Positivist’ followers. Within the broader context of her critique of ‘anti-intellectualism’, Stebbing argues that the different forms of epistemic instrumentalism upheld by each side lead to widely divergent views of scientific theory choice. F.C.S. Schiller’s Pragmatism maintains that scientific hypotheses are arbitrary postulates, partly confirmed (...) by their ‘workings’. By contrast, drawing on Bergson’s method of intuition, the New Positivists radically divorce the practical utility of scientific hypotheses from their truth-value. While both sides rely on Poincaré’s conventionalism, Stebbing argues that he not only rejected their brands of instrumentalism, but also defended a version of structural realism. Stebbing demonstrates the opposition between these purported allies by applying their views to the question of theory choice between Euclidean and non-Euclidean axioms in geometry. In doing so, she expresses her own preference for a realist alternative, thus paving the path to her better-known later defences of realism. (shrink)

This is the Hebrew edition of William James's renowned essays-collection from 1897, The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.

A liberdade religiosa assegura juridicamente um espaço de possibilidades — aderir, não aderir, permanecer, converter-se ou abandonar uma religião —, mas não decide se a adesão concreta de alguém lhe é autonomamente atribuível. Examina-se em que medida uma adesão religiosa juridicamente livre pode ser atribuída ao indivíduo como sua, dado que a sua formação e a sua manutenção dependem de afetos, tradição, autoridade, relações sociais e condições epistêmicas que ele não produziu. Com William James e Edward Shils, a adesão aparece (...) como situada em sua formação, em sua manutenção e nos próprios instrumentos de exame. Da literatura da autonomia histórica e relacional recebe-se a tese de que causas sociais não eliminam a autonomia; a objeção da manipulação, em sua forma socialmente mediada, mostra que a apropriação reflexiva não basta quando as capacidades de exame foram constituídas pelo mesmo processo que formou a adesão. Em lugar de independência inteira ou suficiente, propõe-se uma condição necessária em forma de limiar: deve existir ao menos uma via de exame efetivamente acessível na qual as razões relevantes possam ser consideradas sem que a sua admissibilidade ou força dependa da pressuposição do próprio compromisso ou da autoridade localmente em disputa. A condição situa-se entre quatro pressões — a racionalidade constituída pela tradição (MacIntyre, Shils), a inevitabilidade de algum autossuporte epistêmico (Alston), a motivação antipseudocircular do princípio de Independência (Christensen) e a rejeição de uma imparcialidade forte (Pittard) —, e dela se deriva um Princípio de Independência Diagnóstica para o caso em que a dúvida do membro é convertida em evidência do defeito que a desqualifica. A distinção entre o ônus de examinar e o ônus de sair mostra que liberdade de saída não é liberdade de exame, e uma leitura imanente de Inácio de Loyola, de Newman e da Dei Filius mostra que a condição é compatível com a estabilidade do assentimento, o adiamento da mudança e a confiança em autoridades. O resultado vale simetricamente para a religião herdada, a conversão, a desconversão e o ateísmo herdado, e independe da verdade da crença. (shrink)

How can we maintain the reality and significance of human moral concerns in a universe that science has seemingly revealed to be utterly indifferent to us? This paper follows William James’ struggle to answer this question, from his early embrace of his father’s religious monism, through a period of atheistic scientism, to his mature position advocating for belief in a finite God. While James is often read as defending religious faith on pragmatic grounds, I argue instead that his belief can (...) only be understood as part of his lifelong project to recognize evil’s reality and significance. (shrink)

How can we tell whether a nonhuman animal, brain-injured patient, or artificial system is conscious? Contemporary consciousness science often approaches this question by identifying behavioral or anatomical “markers” of consciousness—e.g. purposive action, learning, play, motivational trade-offs, mirror self-recognition, metacognition, or particular neural structures. But the marker strategy faces a measurement problem. To establish that a proposed marker reliably indicates consciousness, we must already know which beings are conscious; yet determining which beings are conscious is precisely what the appeal to markers (...) is supposed to accomplish in the first place. The problem is at least as old as 19th-century debates over Eduard Pflüger’s experiments on decapitated frogs. Pflüger found that a brainless frog deprived of its favored wiping leg could use another limb to remove acid from its body. He took purposiveness as a consciousness marker for vitalist reasons; so he interpreted his result as evidence that consciousness emerges from a complex nervous system, even without a brain. Mechanists such as Thomas Henry Huxley drew the opposite conclusion: if a headless frog could try different means to achieve an end, then purposive behavior must not be a reliable marker of consciousness after all. Each side interpreted the evidence through a different theory of mind. This essay argues that William James developed an approach that skirts the problem. Rather than infer consciousness from markers, he examined the functional deficits produced by cerebral ablation. Decerebrate animals retained complex behaviors but became rigid, stimulus-bound, unmotivated, and insensitive to relative value. James explained these losses through an evolutionary hypothesis: consciousness is localized in the hemispheres and regulates behavior by enabling organisms to represent absent possibilities, evaluate competing actions, and act prudently. Modern debates over animal and artificial consciousness reproduce the 19th-century impasse. The essay therefore recommends following James in grounding claims about consciousness in independently supported theories of evolutionary function, experimentally observed incapacities, and first-person evidence—not in markers. (shrink)

Pragmatism originated in the United States in the 1870s, and since then it has been influential on numerous areas of philosophical thought. This volume of new essays demonstrates pragmatism’s continuing vitality and relevance to epistemology, social and political philosophy, applied ethics, metaphysics, and more. Drawing upon the thought of classical pragmatists including Peirce, James, Dewey, Addams, and du Bois, as well as upon that of more recent pragmatists such as Rorty, the essays address a diverse set of topics including artificial (...) intelligence, authoritarianism, feminism, criminal punishment, the value of the environment, the black intellectual tradition, religious fundamentalism, academic freedom, and the moral status of prenatal humans. Concluding with leading contemporary pragmatist Cheryl Misak’s reflections on the future of the tradition, the volume demonstrates that pragmatism continues to be a source of valuable ideas and methods for philosophy today. (shrink)

William James was an American philosopher and psychologist and is often cited as the father of modern psychology. While James was trained in medicine, his interests veered more towards psychology and philosophy, and the two were deeply intertwined in his thought. The essay under consideration, “The Will to Believe,” relies heavily upon his psychology of belief, arguing that our passional nature plays a significant role in settling our beliefs. In this piece, we critically examine James’ argument, addressing his answers to (...) critics and considering other potential criticisms. (shrink)

In his innovative and creative attempt to reconcile empiricism and religion, William James made the case for finite theism and a pluralistic conception of the cosmos involving overlapping minds of several scales. In doing so, James also cautioned against abandoning functional psychology in favor of what he called entitative points of view. In his work, Ralph Barton Perry critiqued James for understating the role of embodiment in cognition. In Perry’s view, the central role the body plays in cognition suggests that (...) so-called social or composite minds lack integration and are thus cognitively inferior to embodied minds. However, Perry also believed that the emergent character of embodied cognition provides grounds for an alternative, humanistic spirituality. In this article, I compare James and Perry on theology, and I argue that Perry’s concerns about the importance of embodiment in cognitive integration help illuminate a tripartite distinction between what I call impersonal, subpersonal, and personal theologies that scholars looking for more embodied approaches to theology would do well to consider. (shrink)

In his “Pragmatism, Davidson and Truth,” Richard Rorty provides an interpretation of Donald Davidson’s philosophy that is supposed to show that Davidson is effectively a pragmatist. Rorty claims that Davidson’s views are specifically in line with those of William James. For the purposes of his essay, Rorty takes for granted a particular characterization of James without attempting to justify it. While this is understandable given Rorty’s stated goal of arguing for a pragmatic interpretation of Davidson, I want to examine to (...) what extent this implied interpretation of James is satisfactory. Rorty tries to establish Davidson as a pragmatist on the grounds of four so-called pragmatic theses. Since he claims that these theses are also applicable to James, we can address the question that Rorty takes for granted: does James in fact adhere to these four theses of pragmatism? Does James himself display those qualities that Rorty thinks are responsible for making Davidson into a pragmatist. If James does not display these qualities, we shall be led to two awkward conclusions: first that James does not hold the views attributed to him by Rorty, and second that James is not a pragmatist in the sense that Rorty uses the word. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Haoying Liu’s recent challenge to Russellian monism (RM), often understood as the view that (1) physics describes natural phenomena entirely in structural terms; (2) such phenomena possess intrinsic characters, or quiddities, that constitute or ground what physics describes structurally; and (3) phenomenal consciousness is constituted, at least in part, by such quiddities. Liu argues that RM’s appeal is undermined by the epistemic inaccessibility of quiddities and their combinatory principles, rendering it liable to a historical decline akin (...) to Thomistic hylomorphism. I contend that this critique overstates the degree of mystery inherent in RM. First, drawing on work by Torin Alter and Derk Pereboom (2023), I question whether RM is committed to the claim that physics captures only structural features of reality, thereby reopening the possibility that quiddities may be accessible to empirical or conceptual inquiry. Second, I situate RM within the neutral monist tradition that inspired it, showing how similar views in Ernst Mach and William James treat the fundamental constituents of reality as epistemically accessible. Finally, I revisit Bertrand Russell’s own formulation of neutral monism, arguing that it was intended primarily as a theoretical framework for situating mind and matter in nature rather than a discovery-oriented research program. These considerations suggest that Liu’s objection, while illuminating, does not decisively undermine RM’s philosophical viability. (shrink)

William James was an acknowledged master of phenomenal description. He gave us the "stream of consciousness" that "flows," and the newborn's mental life as a "blooming, buzzing confusion." But in Consciousness Is Motor, Alexander Klein shows that James sculpted these phenomenal descriptions around an armature of empirical details. His book reconstructs James's models of consciousness and volition, uncovering results from animal experimentation and clinical observation on which those models were built. What emerges is a more powerful and more empirically-informed account (...) of mind than has been appreciated. -/- James's early work on consciousness engaged the 1870s automatism controversy. The controversy was triggered, Klein argues, by experiments demonstrating that living, decapitated frogs are capable of goal-directed action. One side regarded goal-directedness as evidence of spinal consciousness; the other espoused epiphenomenalism, reasoning that consciousness must play no role in producing even purposive action since the latter is possible for brainless creatures. -/- James intervened, Klein shows, by arguing that consciousness has a likely evolutionary function-behavior regulation-and so cannot be a mere epiphenomenon. It accomplishes this function by affording a capacity for evaluation, on Klein's reading. As evidence, James appealed not just to introspection, but also to experimental facts, such as that hemisphere-less vertebrates have a diminished capacity for evaluating different available means to pursue goals. James's "ideo-motor" model of action demonstrated precisely how an evaluating consciousness could help regulate behavior. Klein excavates key clinical observations James designed the ideo-motor model to accommodate, including observations of patients with impairments like paresis and anaesthesia. The resulting model features an early example of a predictive, error-correction feedback loop for motor control. -/- Klein concludes by showing how James's models of consciousness and action feed into his distinctive philosophical outlook, soon to be known as pragmatism. According to his doctrine, meaning and truth are understood in terms of goal-directed action guidance. Consciousness Is Motor paints a striking new portrait of James as an empirically-informed philosopher and psychologist-one who anticipated some contemporary approaches, even while furnishing neglected alternatives to theoretical problems that continue to vex researchers today. (shrink)

Scholarship is divided on the value of honors education. While some believe it to be a continuation of academic tracking and skewed towards white students, others argue that honors colleges provide opportunities for academic growth for highly talented students. The core concerns in this debate center on equity and excellence in education, yet an opportunity for addressing both matters together has largely been unrealized. In this paper, we draw inspiration from the philosophies of American Pragmatists John Dewey and William James. (...) We believe these philosophers’ promotion of peer education and service could provide a promising approach for offering special challenges and resources to talented honors students. Such efforts could take the form of a University Academic Service Program, which would benefit honors students and their peers, so long as it attends to the reasonable criticisms that have been levelled against honors colleges and service-learning programs. (shrink)

Der Beitrag rekonstruiert die metaphilosophischen Grundzüge des klassischen amerikanischen Pragmatismus anhand der drei Hauptvertreter Peirce, James und Dewey. Im Mittelpunkt stehen vier Aspekte: erstens die Kontinuität von Philosophie und Lebenswelt, die den Pragmatismus als antifundamentalistische und erfahrungsgebundene Praxis ausweist; zweitens die Kritik an Abstraktionen und disziplinären Kompartmentalisierungen, die den funktionalen Charakter von Begriffen betont; drittens das Modell der experimentellen Methode, das von der Hypothesenbildung über spekulative Metaphysik bis hin zu einem regulativen Kohärenzideal reicht; und viertens der melioristische Anspruch, der Philosophie (...) als transformative Praxis in den Bereichen Erziehung, Lebenskunst und Demokratie versteht. Trotz interner Differenzen verbindet die drei Denker die Überzeugung, dass Philosophie ihre Aufgabe nicht in distanzierter Theoriebildung, sondern in der reflexiven Beteiligung an sozialen und wissenschaftlichen Praktiken erfüllt. (shrink)

This paper examines how radical naturalism, when defined as an ontological position grounded exclusively in the scientific method, is ultimately self-refuting. Drawing on the works of William James and Charles Sanders Peirce, I argue that both thinkers, though in different ways, pose significant challenges to naturalism. James interprets naturalism as an “overbelief,” a dogmatic worldview that is assumed rather than justified through science. Peirce, in turn, highlights the indispensable role of abduction in scientific inquiry, a conjectural process that cannot itself (...) be naturalistically explained. When combined with Jaegwon Kim’s analysis of the epistemological and metaphysical dimensions of naturalism, these insights reveal that radical naturalism cannot justify itself, and it is also self-refuting. As a result, the scope of legitimate naturalistic positions must be reconsidered within more modest boundaries. (shrink)

What is the value of public philosophy? “Philosopher-first” accounts suggest that the ideas that academic philosophers produce can, when disseminated, be useful to the wider public. However, such accounts assume that there is a gap between the interests and activities of professional philosophers and those of the wider public, which must be overcome by translating philosophy into more accessible terms. This article offers an alternative account—the “public-first” account. On this account, philosophy is a necessary part of everyday life. Each of (...) us relies upon a background of conceptual resources that shape our interpretations, expectations, and behaviours in the world. Professional philosophers might be useful in analysing, maintaining, and fixing our conceptual infrastructure. However, there is no gap between philosophy and everyday life, which must be overcome. Whilst most defences of public philosophy argue that it is beneficial to the public, on the “public-first” account, public philosophy is also vital for the discipline of philosophy itself. If philosophers want to adequately evaluate their philosophical theories, they must appeal to a much wider and more diverse range of human experience than that of professional philosophers themselves. As such, public philosophy is necessary for properly conducted philosophical inquiry. (shrink)

I provide a transcription of an inscription written by Josiah Royce in a copy of his The Spirit of Modern Philosophy which pertains to William James’ opinion of that book and of Royce’s work in general, followed by some brief remarks thereon.

The relationship between faith and reason is multifaceted. Faith transcends reason in that it is more than reason alone can contain or fully guarantee, yet it is neither unreasonable nor something to which reason is irrelevant--and reason says some pretty fine things about it! This volume updates nine previously published articles on faith and reason by a Christian philosopher who has been studying these matters for two decades, alongside one new essay and a philosophical dialogue. These articles explain and integrate (...) key ideas on faith and reason, including Alvin Plantinga's account of how Christian belief can be knowledge even without evidence; defenses of faith from Augustine and William James; accounts of empirical evidence for faith from different world religions; the distinction between faith and sight in the New Testament; the structure of the evidence for the authority of the Bible; the idea that faith transcends reason because some articles of faith are beyond human comprehension, even if we have evidence that they are true; and the nature of faith as a total commitment beyond what the evidence alone can guarantee. (shrink)

Dans cet article, l’auteur examine le naturalisme de James comme un exemple des intersections entre la biologie, la psychologie et la philosophie. L’article reconstruit les principaux arguments épistémologiques, éthiques et métaphysiques de James pour montrer comment sa philosophie s’inscrit dans la biologie de Darwin. Ainsi, le contingentisme de James devient cohérent avec sa critique de l’interprétation du principe darwinien de la « sélection naturelle » et avec l’idée de Darwin de l’ambiguïté comme marque de la réalité physique et humaine.

Philosophers and psychologists acclaim Edward C. Tolman's “Cognitive Maps in Rats and Men” as an early, transformative instance of representationalist explanation. The article is said to mark a move by Tolman to renounce his behaviorism and to herald a new, cognitivist psychology. I argue, opposingly, that framing the text with reference to later psychology badly distorts its meaning. The text is better understood with respect to the contexts of its age and deeper currents in the history of psychology. Tolman is (...) not upturning behaviorism; he is re-litigating an intramural debate between behaviorists pertaining to the place of physiology in psychology. (shrink)

William James argued that certain beliefs require a leap of faith before sufficient evidence becomes available—and his paradigm example of such beliefs is taken from science. Scientific knowledge often begins with a weakly supported and underdeveloped proposal, laden with contrary evidence, and plagued by internal inconsistencies. Consequently, the proposal often garners limited interest. Initially, a novel scientific proposal only appeals to a small group of scientists who instinctually find something in the proposal that strikes them as profoundly right. Motivated by (...) faith, they are convinced that once the hypothesis has been further developed, revised, and its full promise made good on over the course of years or decades of hard work, that their early belief will ultimately be vindicated. The present paper contends that James' "The Will to Believe" justifies religious faith on precisely the same grounds. James' defense of faith is an attempt to apply his views about belief ahead of sufficient evidence in scientific knowledge formation to defend a religious believer's faith. The relationship between belief and evidence when it comes to the religious hypotheses is—as James puts it—analogous to California's gold. California is where one travels to bring gold back from, carrying gold to California is to get matters backwards; likewise, belief is the means of discovering scientific and religious truth, to demand evidence before belief is the wrong way around. (shrink)

Using a close reading of a single clause and its context in a section in A Pluralist Universe, we see the moral dangers James saw in traditional ontology, in particular its relation to war and peace. This analysis opens up James’s combining the personalist philosophy of his friend Borden Bowne (and others) with the pluralism he developed late in his career. This leads, further, to reflection of James’s performative philosophizing. Finding in James a theory of “pluralistic personalism” gives us a (...) fresh look at the far-reaching power of his basic concepts of moral philosophy. (shrink)

The chapter explores comparatively the attention to the practical dimension that—each in his own way—Michel Foucault, Friedrich Nietzsche, and the classic pragmatist thinker William James pay when confronted with the challenge of providing a non-skeptical response to the relativist stance on truth that arose in the post-Kantian age. Particular focus will be given to the extent to which these three authors conceived of the practical framework as the only one that allows us to meaningfully address and determine truth.

There is no epistemic fault in interpreting events in ways that improve our behavior and lifestyle in situations that force interpretation. Fictionalized but possibly true narratives endow adult life with meaning, in turn rendering day-to-day affairs more agreeable. In this essay, I call the practice of introducing stories when a situation forces interpretation to affect behavior or lifestyle faux-believing, and I explicate and defend faux-believing against the objection that it is epistemically blameworthy After giving two examples of 'faux belief,' and (...) distinguishing it from similar concepts, including belief proper, I ask if we can have the right to faux-believe independent of whether the faux belief is justified. Next, I turn to William James's "The Will to Believe" to argue that if James is correct that we have the right to believe, then we also have the right to faux-believe. While explicating James's argument for when we have the right to believe on insufficient evidence, I highlight two separate theses of James's (often erroneously thought to be a single thesis). It is one of these two theses that implies we also have the right to faux-believe. (shrink)

Review of Nikolay Milkov's "Hermann Lotze’s Influence on Twentieth Century Philosophy" (Walter de Gruyter 2023) in Finnish. Full text available for free.

The book is structured as a dialogue between the American intellectual William James and one of his famous students (Gertrude Stein, Theodore Roosevelt, W.E.B. Du Bois, etc.) discussing a topic.

Some Christians claim to sense Jesus’ presence; some Hindus feel “one” with what they view as the permanent core of reality (i.e., Brahman); some “spiritual but not religious” people experience ecstatically losing themselves in the vast expanse of the universe. These are all examples of mystical experiences. But what defines a mystical experience? In his landmark study The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) William James (1842-1910) attempts to define the common features shared by all mystical experiences, and address whether such (...) experiences justify beliefs based on them. James is considered the first philosopher of mysticism. This essay introduces James’ views on mystical experience. (shrink)

Charlene Haddock Seigfried argues that William James’s philosophy significantly influenced the shaping of pragmatist feminism and feminist pragmatism. Interpreting his works, she recognized the potential of his ideas for feminist reconstruction and their alignment with feminist goals. However, Seigfried also criticizes James for what she perceives as pervasive sexism in his writings. In this paper, I will defend James from the accusations made by Seigfried and demonstrate that he did not hold such a hostile attitude towards women as she suggests.

Founding psychologist William James famously called for pluralism, valuing psychology's range of theoretical and philosophical foundations, methods and perspectives. In this book, Araujo and Osbeck investigate the meanings of pluralism across James's writings, connecting them to psychological research and theory today.

Abstract:The closing section of James's "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results" contains a surprisingly abrupt dismissal of Kant's philosophy. This paper suggests that James's real target is his host, George Holmes Howison, whose Philosophical Union had invited James to speak at Berkeley. James and Howison shared a common commitment to pluralism in opposition to the Absolute monism such as Josiah Royce was developing. Howison relies on Kant's account of the a priori as well as his moral ideal of a Kingdom of (...) Ends in order to fashion a pluralistic form of |idealism that would avoid the errors he found in Absolute monism while also countering the influential evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer. While James shared Howison's opposition to monism, as well as his critical view of Spencer, he did not share his aversion to evolutionary ideas. Ultimately, the pragmatism that he announced at Berkeley would reply to Howison's Kantian approach by retaining a pluralism while building on the modern psychology growing out of evolution. James's position would test the alliance that they had forged against monism. In time, it would prove too fragile to withstand their growing differences until a final break came in the year before James's death. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Prelude to Tackling Contemporary Crises: William James and a Psychological Springboard to Political ChangePaul Croce (bio)“That selective industry of the mind,... incessantly deciding, among many things,... which ones for it shall be realities.”—William James, 1892 (PBC, 167)“[N]either the whole of truth, nor the whole of good, is revealed to any single observer.”—William James, 1899 (TT, 149)The modern world has witnessed tremendous increases in prosperity, and that material abundance has (...) spurred great achievements. But these successes have also brought enormous and troubling side effects. Climate change, biodiversity loss, social inequality, and more problems have grown into crises with potential to challenge the achievements themselves. Alongside these challenges, many outstanding proposals have also emerged for dealing with our present crises. The crises and the insights for addressing them are in a harrowing competition, reminiscent of what H. G. Wells called “a race between education and catastrophe.” During recent chapters of this contest, especially in the United States, sound suggestions for halting or reversing environmental deterioration and for reducing class and racial inequities have gained some public and political support but have also met considerable resistance.1 While direct work to [End Page 26] address the crises is important, those efforts can be supported with understanding of the people and ideologies resisting that work. In fact, neglect of these impediments, which can further enable them to reduce abilities or willingness to address problems or even notice them, may be the biggest crisis of all.Just as medication can directly heal an illness while rest and self-care can build up general strength to support recovery, so coping with crises calls for both grappling with them directly and also consideration of the impediments that reduce the strength of those steps toward social healing. The inquiry here serves as a complement to sound proposals for immediate action by diagnosing what has hindered their realization. Outcries against injustice and creative interventions address the acute conditions of current crises, while cultural assessments of ways those responses gain or lose attention serve as prescriptions for addressing the chronic conditions that have exacerbated the crises through distraction. As with medical issues, long-term and preventive care of chronic problems can support acute treatment, even as they do not displace the need for immediate action.This article confronts a puzzle about why so many people do not pay attention to such large problems in nature and society and what steps can be taken to bridge that divide between the committed and the distracted. The emphasis here on attention shifts focus away from ideological differences and toward the values selections that drive the ideological differences. This article portrays James’s own path as he learned from differences before explaining how his theories offer insights on how selective choices shape the assumptions supporting ideologies that so often form into hostile contrasts.2 In addition to these alerts about the challenges of disagreement, he also presents methods to encourage listening across differences for chances to turn some of those commitments into constructive possibilities rather than treating them as reasons [End Page 27] to fight. These ways to evaluate cultural and political debates and increase understanding about selective choices can shed light on how so many people have been unwilling or unable to pay attention to the mounting problems, and through encouragement of more listening with respect, these methods can encourage more support for addressing the crises themselves.I. Jamesian Ways to Listen Across DifferencesCharles Taylor calls William James (1842–1910) “our great philosopher of the cusp.” This brief, elegant expression depicts a borderland thinker adept at mediating contrasting ideas. James’s often-difficult experiences in development toward that way of thinking and that reputation provide more depth about the contrasts that he experienced on the way toward his creative syntheses in psychology and philosophy.3 His wrestling with different interpretations serves as a microcosm for the challenges and rewards of listening for potential insights on each side of even hostile contrasts. He designed deliberate ways to reckon with differences, considering each to be a partial yet valuable window into the human condition. In his youth, he was torn between the competing perspectives of religious thought... (shrink)

Reconstructing the philosophical project of William James, Alexis Dianda deploys a concept of experience that avoids both foundationalist epistemology and an account of the subject rooted in immediately given objects of consciousness. In doing so, Dianda rethinks the role of experience as well as the aims and resources of pragmatic philosophy.

Drawing on recent work in the contemporary philosophy of economics, this book presents new ideas on liberalism, including the concept of 'growth-oriented liberalism'. Since the end of the Cold War, questions and definitions of liberalism have moved from the sphere of political systems (the socialism versus liberalism debates) to the sphere of ethics (what it means to live in a liberal society). The chapters in this work trace the trajectory of the concept of liberalism in the philosophy of economics by (...) exploring the ideological implications of the methodological debate between socialism and liberalism, the idea of liberty as real freedom, the ethical implications of Max Weber's methodology on autonomy and liberty, and new typological theories of ideologies in the context of contemporary economic ethics. This book marks a significant contribution to the literature on liberalism in the philosophy of economics and economic methodology, and is highly recommended for readers who seek updated ideas on liberal society in its ethical and philosophical contexts. Tsutomu Hashimoto is a Professor at Hokkaido University and the President of the Synodos Institute of International Studies in Japan. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:William James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning New by Todd LekanHenry JackmanBy Todd LekanWilliam James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning New York: Routledge, 2022. 156pp., incl. indexWhile William James wrote just a single article in theoretical ethics, it has often been said that ethical concerns animate almost all of his work.1 Indeed, there has been a growing interest in James’s moral philosophy, and Todd Lekan’s William (...) James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning is the latest, and arguably the best, sustained attempt to introduce readers to James’s ethical thought. The task is not an easy one, since the one essay of James’s that explicitly focuses on theoretical ethics, 1891’s “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, deals with ‘social’ concerns that don’t clearly align with the more ‘existential’ questions that run through the rest of his corpus.2 In particular, James’s main ‘ethical’ concerns in most of his writings seem to relate more to our living ‘meaningful’ or ‘significant’ lives than it does to our living a ‘moral’ ones. Consequently, writings on James’s ethics tend to treat these two strands separately, either focusing disproportionately on just one of these two aspects, or treating the two as separate components that do not affect one another.3 Weaving both strands of James’s ethical though into a coherent whole may be the primary achievement of Lekan’s book, but he provides much insight into interpretive problems relating to the individual threads along the way.The more ‘social’ strand is admirably explained in Lekan’s first chapter, “Pragmatist Moral Philosophy and Moral Life: Embracing the Tensions”, where he outlines James’s meta-ethical views from “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, and gives an account of the regulative assumptions and regulative ideals that James appeals to in order to go from his initial thesis that all goodness originates from the desires of sentient beings to the conclusion that “we are morally obligated to [End Page 105] satisfy as many demands as possible”, and that among the available ideals we might choose, “we are morally obligated to adopt ideals whose realization does not undermine the ideals held by others” (15).Ideals move to center stage in the book’s second chapter, “Ideals and Significant Lives”, which trades the social ethics of the first chapter for more existential concerns, and explains how James takes the strenuous pursuit of our own ideals to amount to a kind of ‘self-fashioning’ that makes for a ‘meaningful’ life (36). This answer to the existential question is, however, ambivalent about the social one. Unlike some other interpreters who focus primarily on the existential question, Lekan notes that James’s pluralism about ideals seems to leave plenty of room for ideals that were very much out of line with the moral injunctions of James’s social ethics to produce perfectly significant lives.4 So, for instance, pursuing an ideal tied to the promotion of the supremacy of one’s religion at the expense of all others might satisfy the requirements for creating a significant life, even if that ideal required the relentless persecution of those who did not share it. Indeed, the ideals in question need not be as extreme as this; even more mundane ideals like becoming a great painter, while not directly requiring that you harm others, might still be successfully pursued in a way that ignored the demands of others that was in tension with “The Moral Philosopher”’s emphasis on maximizing overall demand satisfaction.5As the book’s subtitle suggests, Lekan attempts to harmonize the social and existential strands of James’s thought by arguing that our self-fashioning is “responsible” when the ideals involved satisfy the constraints of the moral philosopher discussed in chapter one (50). In particular, the subject who strenuously pursues such moral ideals is characterized as the “existential moral philosopher” (29–30) and striving to satisfy that ideal would produce a life that met both James’s social and existential concerns. That said, it would have been helpful to see a little more about the tension between these two sides... (shrink)

Traditional theistic arguments conclude that God exists. Pragmatic theistic arguments, by contrast, conclude that you ought to believe in God. The two most famous pragmatic theistic arguments are put forth by Blaise Pascal (1662) and William James (1896). Pragmatic arguments for theism can be summarized as follows: believing in God has significant benefits, and these benefits aren’t available for the unbeliever. Thus, you should believe in, or ‘wager on’, God. This article distinguishes between various kinds of theistic wagers, including finite (...) vs. infinite wagers, premortem vs. postmortem wagers, and doxastic vs. acceptance wagers. Then, we’ll turn to the epistemic-pragmatic distinction, and discusses the nuances of James’ argument, and how views like epistemic permissivism and epistemic consequentialism provide unique “hybrid” wagers. Finally, we’ll cover outstanding objections and responses. (shrink)