In his introduction to this collection, John representative. McDermott presents James's thinking in all its manifestations, stressing the importance of radical empiricism and placing into perspective the doctrines of pragmatism and the will to believe. The critical periods of James's life are highlighted to illuminate the development of his philosophical and psychological thought. The anthology features representive selections from The Principles of Psychology, The Will to Believe , and The Variety of Religious Experience in addition to the complete (...) Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe . The original 1907 edition of Pragmatism is included, as well as classic selections from all of James's other major works. Of particular significance for James scholarship is the supplemented version of Ralph Barton Perry's Annotated Bibliography of the Writings of William James , with additions bringing it up to 1976. (shrink)
I should like to convey to you some doubts which have occurred to me on the subject of the notion of consciousness that prevails in all our treatises on psychology.
William James had the courage to experience the collision of European and American ways of thinking head on, and to emerge from it with a new philosophy - one displaying a remarkable vitality for dealing with the transformative issues at the core of the human condition. This easy to read introduction to his life and work explains why James' work is overwhelmingly valuable to us today in getting to grips with the spiritual dimension of human experience.
The culmination of William James' interest in the psychology of religion, The Varieties of Religious Experience approached the study of religious phenomena in a new way -- through pragmatism and experimental psychology. The most important effect of the publication of the Varieties was to shift the emphasis in this field of study from the dogmas and external forms of religion to the unique mental states associated with it. Explaining the book's intentions in a letter to a friend, James (...) stated: "The problem I have set myself is a hard one: first, to defend...'experience' against 'philosophy' as being the real backbone of the world's religious life...and second, to make the hearer or reader believe what I myself invincibly do believe, that, although all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind's most important function." Drawing evidence from his own experience and from such diverse thinkers as Voltaire, Whitman, Emerson, Luther, Tolstoy, John Bunyan, and Jonathan Edwards, The Varieties of Religious Experience remains one of the most influential books ever written on the psychology of religion. (shrink)
After completing his monumental work, The Principles of Psychology, William James turned his attention to serious consideration of such important religious and philosophical questions as the nature and existence of God, immortality of the soul, and free will and determinism. His interest in these questions found expression in various works, including The Varieties of Religious Experience, his classic study of spirituality. Based on the prestigious Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion he gave at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and (...) 1902, the book--studded with richly concrete examples--documents and discusses various religious states of consciousness and covers such topics as the meaning of the term "divine," the reality of the unseen, the religion of healthy-mindedness, the sick soul, the divided self and the process of its unification, conversion, saintliness, and mysticism. One of the author's most popular works, The Varieties of Religious Experience remains one of the great books on the subject, especially noteworthy for the evidence it gives for religious experience as a unique phenomenon. This Dover edition will be the least expensive one in print. Unabridged republication of the second edition of The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, originally published by Longmans, Green and Co., New York, 1902. Index. (shrink)
The Essential William James covers the primary topics for which James is still closely studied: the nature of experience, the functions of the mind, the criteria for knowledge, the definition of “truth,” the ethical life, and the religious life. His notable terms, still resonating in their respective fields, are all covered here, from “stream of consciousness” and “pure experience” to the “will to believe,” the “cash-value of truth,” and the distinction between the religiously “healthy soul” and the “sick (...) soul.” This volume’s eighteen selections receive the bulk of the attention and citation from scholars, provide excellent coverage of core topics, and have a broad appeal across many academic disciplines. (shrink)
Adapting Wittgenstein's concept of the human species as 'a ceremonial animal', Wendy James writes vividly and readably. Her new overview advocates a clear line of argument: that the concept of social form is a primary key to anthropology and the human sciences as a whole. Weaving memorable ethnographic examples into her text, James brings together carefully selected historical sources as well as references to current ideas in neighbouring disciplines such as archaeology, paleoanthropology, genetics, art and material culture, ethnomusicology, (...) urban and development studies, politics, economics, psychology, and religious studies. She shows the relevance of anthropology to pressing world issues such as migration, humanitarian politics, the new reproductive technologies, and religious fundamentalism. -/- Wendy James's engaging style will appeal to specialist and non-specialist alike. The Foreword is written by Michael J. Lambek, Professor of Anthropology, University of Toronto. (shrink)
The status of the body figures paradoxically in the interrelated discourses of whiteness, aesthetic taste, and hipness. While Richard Dyer’s analysis of whiteness argues that white identity is “in but not of the body,” Carolyn Korsmeyer’s and Julia Kristeva’s feminist analyses of aesthetic “taste” demonstrate that this faculty is traditionally conceived as something “of” but not “in” the body. While taste directly distances whiteness from embodiment, hipness negatively affirms this same distance: the hipster proves his elite status within white culture (...) by positioning himself as, in the words of James Chance’s song title, “Almost Black.” The notion of hip contributes to my analysis of taste by focusing on both the gender politics of white embodiment, and how, by taking the social body as object of the prepositions “in” and “of,” these discourses of taste and hipness produce individual bodies as white, and maintain Whiteness as a socio-political norm. (shrink)
What at bottom is meant by calling the universe many or by calling it one? -/- Pragmatically interpreted, pluralism or the doctrine that it is many means only that the sundry parts of reality may be externally related. Everything you can think of, however vast or inclusive, has on the pluralistic view a genuinely "external" environment of some sort or amount. Things are "with" one another in many ways, but nothing includes everything, or dominates over everything. The word "and" trails (...) along after every sentence. Something always escapes. "Ever not quite" has to be said of the best attempts made anywhere in the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness. The pluralistic world is thus more like a federal republic than like an empire or a kingdom. However much may be collected, however much may report itself as present at any effective centre of consciousness or action, something else is self-governed and absent and unreduced to unity. -/- Monism, on the other hand, insists that when you come down to reality as such, to the reality of realities, everything is present to everything else in one vast instantaneous co-implicated completeness -- nothing can in any sense, functional or substantial, be really absent from anything else, all things interpenetrate and telescope together in the great total conflux. (shrink)
A lecture before the Harvard Natural History Society; published in the Atlantic Monthly; and later republished in James (1897)The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy.
Two books bound together, from religious period of one of the most renowned and representative thinkers. Written for laymen, thus easy to understand, it is penetrating and brilliant as well. Illuminations of age-old religious questions from a pragmatic perspective, written in a luminous style.
F. P. Bishop argues that the ethical standard for advertising practitioners must be utilitarian. Indeed, the utilitarian theory of ethics in decision-making has traditionally been the preference of U.S. advertising practitioners. This article, therefore, argues that the U.S. advertising industry''s de-emphasis of deontological ethics is a reason for its continuing struggle with unfavorable public perceptions of its ethics — and credibility. The perceptions of four scenarios on advertising ethics and the analyses of the openended responses of 174 members of the (...) American Advertising Federation to those scenarios suggest that advertising practitioners need a stricter adherence to deontological ethics than is indicated in this study. (shrink)
Entrapment is defined and distinguished from related law enforcement practices. The subjective test of entrapment formulated by the Supreme Court and the objective test proposed by critics are discussed and evaluated. The argument is advanced that entrapment is a morally unjustifiable practice which is inconsistent with the rights of citizens in a democratic society. Guidelines are proposed for governing police conduct in potential entrapment situations and suggestions made regarding ways these guidelines might be implemented.
Marketers have traditionally evaluated products and practices on the basis of whether something could be sold. It is also important to evaluate products and practices from a societal perspective, "Should a product be sold?" The first idea reflects a managerial orientation and what must be done to sell a product; the second idea reflects a societal orientation and the impact of selling a product. In relation to the second idea, the societal marketing concept was introduced in 1972. There has been (...) little advancement in our understanding of a societal orientation since that time. The current study presents a conceptualization of a societal orientation based on a review of literature and qualitative interviews. The construct was conceptualized as "attention to the long-term well-being of individuals and society at large by enhancing positive impacts from and reducing negative effects associated with production and consumption of a product." Five domains comprising a societal orientation are proposed: physical consequences, psychological well-being, social relationships, economic contribution, and environmental consciousness. (shrink)
In 1907 William James was invited to give the Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, Oxford. Initially he was reluctant to do so since he feared undertaking them would divert him from developing rigorously and systematically some metaphysical ideas of his own that had preoccupied him for some time. In the end, however, he relented and in the spring of 1908 gave the lectures which were subsequently published as A Pluralistic Universe. As it happened, though, in the course of these (...) lectures James presented some of those metaphysical ideas, though in a popular and informal style appropriate to lecturing. Later on he did get down to working out a systematic metaphysics in proper academic style, but the project was cut short by his untimely death in 1910. The incomplete Some Problems of Philosophy, posthumously published in 1911, recapitulates some major themes of A Pluralistic Universe. (shrink)
William James' Radical Empiricist essays offer a unique and powerful argument for direct realism about our perceptions of objects. This theory can be completed with some observations by Kant on the intellectual preconditions for a perceptual judgment. Finally James and Kant deliver a powerful blow to the representational theory of perception and knowledge, which applies quite broadly to theories of representation generally.
This book is my new scholarly edition of William James, A Pluralistic Universe. The original text has been recovered, annotations to the text added to identify James' authors and events of interest, there is a new bibliography chiefly based on James' sources, a brief chronology of James' career, and I have added an expository and critical Introduction and a comprehensive analytical index.
As suggested in the subtitle, A New Philosophical Reading, the editor aspires in his Introduction and his notes to “facilitate a deeper understanding and a critical evaluation (...) of this crucial and difficult philosophical work” (p. ix). This was the last important book which James published during his lifetime. With it James aims at a critical evaluation of Hegelian monism and an exploration of the philosophical and theological alternatives. “Our world of some one hundred years on”—the editor says (...) (p. ix)—“is much the better for James’ contribution, and understanding William James on pluralism deeply contributes even now to America’s self-understanding.”. (shrink)
This new edition of William James’s 1909 classic, A Pluralistic Universe reproduces the original text, only modernizing the spelling. The books has been annotated throughout to clarify James’s points of reference and discussion. There is a new, fuller index, a brief chronology of James’s life, and a new bibliography—chiefly based on James’s own references. The editor, H.G. Callaway, has included a new Introduction which elucidates the legacy of Jamesian pluralism to survey some related questions of contemporary (...) American society. -/- A Pluralistic Universe was the last major book James published during his life time. It is a substantial philosophical work, devoted to a thorough-going criticism of Hegelian monism and Absolutism—and the exploration of philosophical and social-theological alternatives. Our world of some one hundred years on is much the better for James’s contributions; and understanding James’s pluralism deeply contributes even now to America’s self-understanding. At present, we are more certain that American is, and is best, a pluralistic society, than we are of what particular forms our pluralism should take. Keeping an eye out for social interpretations of Jamesian pluralism, this new philosophical reading casts light on our twenty-first century alternatives by reference to prior American experience and developments. -/- . (shrink)
William James undertook to steer his way between a rationalistic system that was not empirical enough and an empirical system so materialistic that it could not account for the value commitments on which it rested. In arguing against both the absolutists (gnostics) and the empiricists (agnostics), he defined a position of pluralistic moralism that seemed equally distant from both, leaving himself vulnerable to the criticism that he had rescued morality from scientism only by reducing religion to morals. Such criticism, (...) however, ignores distinctions James made between religion and theology and between monistic theology and dualistic theology. When these distinctions are taken into account, it becomes evident that James can be criticized for reducing religion to morality only from the point of view of either absolute monism or religious humanism and that radical empiricism not only embraces a significant number of nonmoral religious experiences but also leaves open the possibility of belief in the particular historical God of traditional Christianity. (shrink)
"Space," William James confessed, "is [both] a direfully difficult subject [and the] driest of subjects.'" Nonetheless, convinced that most previous accounts of space were either incoherent or mythological, he set out to describe space as it is actually experienced. His first effort, "The Spatial Quale," appeared in The Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1879. 2 This article is historically important; as Ralph Barton Perry notes, "his peculiar view of the amplitude and eonnectedness of experience seems to have begun with (...) the application to space. ''3 But, despite this fact, it is seldom read today. It was not reprinted in James's Collected Essays and Reviews because the editor found "no important difference" between the content of this article and that of the chapter in The Principles of Psychology dealing with the same topic. 4 And it has not been included in more recent anthologies of James's writings. James would undoubtedly have concurred with the reasoning behind these editorial decisions. In the preface to the Psychology he wrote: Chapter 20, on Space-perception, is a terrible thing, which, unless written with all that detail, could not be fairly treated at all. An abridgment of it, called The Spatial Quale' ... may be found by some persons a useful substitute for the entire chapter? In fact, however, there is a significant philosophical difference between... (shrink)
With this book, Jacques Barzun pays what he describes as an "intellectual debt" to William James—psychologist, philosopher, and, for Barzun, guide and mentor. Commenting on James's life, thought, and legacy, Barzun leaves us with a wise and civilized distillation of the great thinker's work.
Conclusion: "For Bergson, it will be remembered, there is a conclusion,...The conquest of death is implied metaphysically, not to be verified experimentally. Man is born at home in the world, a microcosm essentially at one with it. For James the difference of man from the world is the fundamental thing. He is not born at home in it, he makes a home of it.
A Pluralistic Universe is America's favourite philosopher's last complete work before he died in 1910. Nevertheless, it has been somewhat neglected as a final self-reckoning. Indeed the term "pragmatism" occurs pretty rarely in it, while "experience" and "pluralism" abound. As introduced and annotated by H.G. Callaway, the Cambridge Scholars edition offers some valuable background on James and the text itself, particularly for the nonspecialist reader. Besides retaining James's notes, Callaway has also provided his own glosses on important philosophical (...) terms, translations of the foreign phrases James so often fell back on, and an expanded index and new bibliography to the text. It is, as Callaway says, a "reading and study edition" (ix). (shrink)
James P. Sterba postulates a conflict situation between ‘poor’ and ‘rich’ persons in order to establish the legitimacy of a welfare right superior to unlimited priv..
William James’ Principles of Psychology, in which he made famous the ‘specious present’ doctrine of temporal experience, and Edmund Husserl’s Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, were giant strides in the philosophical investigation of the temporality of experience. However, an important set of precursors to these works has not been adequately investigated. In this article, we undertake this investigation. Beginning with Reid’s essay ‘Memory’ in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, we trace out a line of development of ideas (...) about the temporality of experience that runs through Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, and finally the work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, both of whom were immediate influences on James (though James pseudonymously cites the latter as ‘E.R. Clay’). Furthermore, we argue that Hodgson, especially his Metaphysic of Experience (1898), was a significant influence on Husserl. (shrink)
The James–Lange theory considers emotional feelings as perceptions of physiological body changes. This approach has recently resurfaced and modified in both neuroscientific and philosophical concepts of embodiment of emotional feelings. In addition to the body, the role of the environment in emotional feeling needs to be considered. I here claim that the environment has not merely an indirect and thus instrumental role on emotional feelings via the body and its sensorimotor and vegetative functions. Instead, the environment may have a (...) direct and non-instrumental, i.e., constitutional role in emotional feelings; this implies that the environment itself in the gestalt of the person–environment relation is constitutive of emotional feeling rather than the bodily representation of the environment. Since the person–environment relation is crucial in this approach, I call it the relational concept of emotional feeling. After introducing the relational concept of emotional feeling, the present paper investigates the neurophilosophical question whether current neuroimaging data on human emotion processing and anatomical connectivity are empirically better compatible with the “relational” or the “embodied” concept of emotional feeling. These data lend support to the empirical assumption that neural activity in subcortical and cortical midline regions code the relationship between intero- and exteroceptive stimuli in a relational mode, i.e. their actual balance, rather than in a translational mode, i.e., by translating extero- into interoceptive stimulus changes. Such intero-exteroceptive relational mode of neural coding may have implications for the characterization of emotional feeling with regard to phenomenal consciousness and intentionality. I therefore conclude that the here advanced relational concept of emotional feeling may be considered neurophilosophically more plausible and better compatible with current neuroscientific data than the embodied concept as presupposed in the James–Lange theory and its modern neuroscientific and philosophical versions. (shrink)
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience was an intellectual landmark, paving the way for modern study of parapsychology and religious experience. In this indispensable new companion to the Varietie s, key international experts in the fields of religious studies, psychology and mysticism offer contemporary responses to James's book, exploring its historical importance and modern relevance. As the only critical work dedicated to the cross-disciplinary influence of The Varieties of Religious Experience , it stands as a testament to (...)James's genius and ongoing legacy. (shrink)
William James' Principles of Psychology , in which he made famous the "specious present" doctrine of temporal experience, and Edmund Husserl's Zur Phänomenologie des inneren Zeitbewusstseins were giant strides in the philosophical investigation of the temporality of experience. However, an important set of precursors to these works has not been adequately investigated. In this article, we undertake this investigation. Beginning with Reid's essay "Memory" in Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man , we trace out a line of development (...) of ideas about the temporality of experience that runs through Dugald Stewart, Thomas Brown, William Hamilton, and finally the work of Shadworth Hodgson and Robert Kelly, both of whom were immediate influences on James (though James pseudonymously cites the latter as 'E.R. Clay'). Furthermore, we argue that Hodgson, especially his Metaphysic of Experience (1898), was a significant influence on Husserl. (shrink)
James Shelley argues that the perception of beauty, as Hutcheson characterizes it, in the first of the two treatises that comprise the Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, that is, the Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design, is not what I called in The Seventh Sense, ‘non-epistemic’ perception but, rather, ‘epistemic’ perception through and through. Having studied Shelley's arguments with care, and consulted the relevant primary sources yet again, I am still convinced (...) that the best reading of Hutcheson's second Inquiry, in the first edition of 1725, has Hutcheson espousing a non-epistemic account of our perception of what he calls ‘absolute beauty’. And so I argue in the present paper. (shrink)
Religious pluralis does have, as James Kraft says, a negative impact on the epistemic confidence with which one holds a religious position, when epistemology is thought on both the externalist and internalist lines. I also conclude both that there is a resulting epistemic humility and that a tolerance of religious diversity results from it, but I reach these conclusions for entirely different reasons. Epistemic humility and religious tolerance are fostered by the realization that many religions are striving for the (...) infinite, though all have limited views of it. (shrink)
In this paper I offer three main challenges to James (2011). All three turn on the nature of philosophy and secure knowledge in Spinoza. First, I criticize James's account of the epistemic role that experience plays in securing adequate ideas for Spinoza. In doing so I criticize her treatment of what is known as the ‘conatus doctrine’ in Spinoza in order to challenge her picture of the relationship between true religion and philosophy. Second, this leads me into a (...) criticism of her account of the nature of philosophy in Spinoza. I argue it is less piecemeal and less akin to what we would recognize as ‘science’ than she suggests. Third, I argue against James's core commitment that Spinoza's three kinds of knowledge differ in degree; I claim they differ in kind. My argument will offer a new interpretation of Spinoza's conception of ‘common notions’. Moreover, I argue that Spinozistic adequate knowledge involves something akin to angelic disembodiment. (shrink)
This article is about a sidebar in James Gibson's last book, The ecological approach to visual perception. In this sidebar, Gibson, the founder of the ecological perspective of perception and action, argued that to perceive an affordance is not to classify an object. Although this sidebar has received scant attention, it is of great significance both historically and for recent discussions about specificity, direct perception, and the functions of the dorsal and ventral streams. It is argued that Gibson's acknowledgment (...) of Wittgenstein's ideas of classification suggests a limited scope of his theory of direct perception?it cannot account for the classification of objects. The implications for both the specification debate and theorizing about the brain's dorsal and ventral pathways are explored. Based on a recent ecological conception of information and direct perception, we ultimately argue that both affordance perception and classification are direct. (shrink)
Academic popularizers of the new field of evolutionary psychology make notable appeals to William James to bolster their doctrine. In particular, they cite James’ remark that humans have all the “impulses” animals do and many more besides to shore up their claim that people’s “instincts” account for their flexibility. This essay argues that these scholars misinterpret James on the instincts. Consciousness (which they find inscrutable) explains cognitive flexibility for James. The evolutionary psychologists’ appeal to James (...) is, therefore, unwarranted and, given the conditions relevant to the public and professional audiences they address, also ineffective as a rhetorical tool for enlisting new recruits. (shrink)
James Stacy Taylor advances a thorough argument for the legalization of markets in current (live) human kidneys. The market is seemly the most abhorrent type of market, a market where the least well-off sell part of their body to the most well off. Though rigorously defended overall, his arguments concerning exploitation are thin. I examine a number of prominent bioethicists’ account of exploitation: most importantly, Ruth Sample’s exploitation as degradation. I do so in the context of Taylor’s argument, with (...) the aim of buttressing Taylor’s position that a regulated kidney market is morally allowable. I argue that Sample fails to provide normative grounds consistent with her claim that exploitation is wrong. I then reformulate her account for consistency and plausibility. Still, this seemingly more plausible view does not show that Taylor’s regulated kidney market is prohibitively exploitative of impoverished persons. I tack into place one more piece of support for Taylor’s conclusion. (shrink)
I am grateful that someone whose work I greatly admire could be the philosopher to so eloquently and succinctly cut to the heart of the problem that I posed in the previous issue of Deleuze Studies. James Williams' critical reply leaves me, prima facie, confronted by a stark alternative: either I have misunderstood Deleuze, or I have illustrated problems and lacunae in Deleuze. I will suggest, however, that this is a false alternative, and that Williams' and my divergent accounts (...) of The Logic of Sense – and even Deleuze's oeuvre as a whole – is better understood as a situation of ‘both/and’ rather than ‘either/or’, and hence that my interpretation of Deleuze isn't wrong, but necessarily iconoclastic. (shrink)
Do Buddhist ‘moral’ principles, such as generosity, equanimity, and compassion, consistently map onto Greek and, more generally, Western ‘virtues’? In other words, is it at all possible to talk about a Buddhist ‘virtue ethics’? Should equanimity, for instance, be understood as having the same function in Buddhist moral thought as temperance has for Plato, Aristotle, or the Stoics? Does the Buddha’s effort to embody certain cardinal virtues (sīla) resemble the classical Greek and Roman pursuit of a life of personal flourishing (...) (eudaimonia)? And, to take one step further – Is Buddhism’s perceived enlightened attitude toward the environment suggestive of a new ethics aimed at confronting the global ecological crisis? Buddhism, Virtue, and Environment, a volume co-authored by David Cooper and Simon James, addresses these questions and concerns in a systematic and philosophically sophisticated way. (shrink)
Griffiths (2001) make a number of comments about James Mark Baldwin's motivations and character at the time that he was developing what later became known as the "Baldwin effect." Some of these comments I found to be misleading. I attempt to correct the historical record concerning the origins of the "Baldwin effect.".
James B. Ashbrook's "new natural theology in an empirical mode" pursued an integrated understanding of the spiritual, psychological, and neurological dimensions of spiritual life. Knowledge of neuroscience and personality theory was central to his quest, and his understandings were necessarily revised and amplified as scientific findings emerged. As a result, Ashbrook's legacy may serve as a case example of how to do religion-and-science in a milieu of scientific change. The constant in the quest was Ashbrook's core belief in the (...) basic holism of brain, mind, personality, the nature of reality, and the underlying reality of God. (shrink)
Most theoretical approaches in bioethics begin with a theory that articulates and defends basic principles or rules that are more or less systematically related and that seek to yield more or less precise conclusions with regard to specific acts, cases, or policies. Concerns about the agent and descriptions of the context of action stand on the margins of the theory. This is ironic, given the overwhelming importance and impact the training of health care professionals has upon them and upon the (...) practice of health care as a whole, and given the fact that many advocates of the theories themselves concede that one's beliefs and how one describes a situation and weighs "facts" and values relevant to the case strongly determine one's conclusions. While morality may not lead ineluctably to religion, as Kant believed, bioethics does appear inevitably to involve particularity. I examine the work of James M. Gustafson and Stanley Hauerwas to analyze two views of the role of particularity in bioethics. I then show the relevance of their work for addressing some problems with the practicality and concreteness of current models in bioethics. Keywords: applied ethics, bioethics, casuistry, community, discernment, principlism, theological ethics CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)
Susan James, in her recent work Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon 1997), prefaces her investigation of emotions in the seventeenth century with a series of remarks about the earlier career of the emotions, in particular their treatment in the Middle Ages. In brief, she takes the ‘new’ analyses of the passions put forward in the seventeenth century to be a philosophical sideshow to the main event: the dethronement of Aristotelian natural philosophy and metaphysics (22). (...) She describes the consequences for psychology as follows.. (shrink)
James F. Drane: A Liberal Catholic Bioethics. Muenster, DE: Lit Verlag. 2010, 290 Pages Content Type Journal Article Category Book Review Pages 771-774 DOI 10.1007/s11406-011-9319-4 Authors Andrew Papanikitas, Department of Education and Professional Studies, King’s College London, Strand Campus, London, WC2R 2LS UK Barbara Prainsack, Kings Institute of Social Science and Public Policy, King’s College London, Strand Campus, London, WC2R 2LS UK Journal Philosophia Online ISSN 1574-9274 Print ISSN 0048-3893 Journal Volume Volume 39 Journal Issue Volume 39, Number 4.
While much of James O. Young’s Art and Knowledge is devoted to showing how works of art might be of cognitive value, we will focus on a prior claim, defended in the first chapter of Art and Knowledge, that “art” ought to be defined such that only works with cognitive value count as artworks. We begin by noting that it is not very clear—despite the considerable attention Young devotes to the matter—just what it is for an artwork to have (...) cognitive value. If by this claim he means only that we can learn something from a work, then the claim is trivial. We might learn from Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, for example, that a urinal can become an artwork. But Young assumes that if Fountain is a work of art, then some works of art do not have cognitive value. So he must have a richer, narrower conception of cognitive value in mind. For the moment let us not worry what this richer, narrower conception of cognitive value is. Rather, let us just assume, along with Young, that Fountain does not have cognitive value. Why, then, is this not a counterexample to Young’s claim that “art” ought to be defined such that only works with cognitive value counts as artworks? Shouldn’t we define “art,” if we are going to define it, such that all and only works of art count as art? Why ought we adopt a definition of something which excludes from the category being defined things that, on the definer’s own grounds, are properly within that category. Surely, for any definiendum the definiens ought to pick out all and only those things that have the necessary and sufficient properties for being labeled by the definiendum. (shrink)
This paper is a reply to JamesKeller's criticisms of my Foundationalism, Coherentism and the Levels Gambit (Synthese 55, April 1983).Foundationalists have often claimed that, within a foundationalist framework, one can justify beliefs about epistemic principles in a mediate, empirical fashion, while escaping the charge of vicious circularity that is usually thought to afflict such methods of justification. In my original paper I attacked this foundationalist strategy; I argued that once mediate, empirical justification of epistemic principles is allowed, (...) the foundationalist must also allow circular patterns of justification of the sort that he typically criticizes coherentists for espousing. Here I argue that Keller's reply only makes matters worse for the foundationalist. At several points, his reply turns out to be inconsistent either with reliabilism or with the foundationalist strategy he is trying to defend. (shrink)
James K.A. Smith argues that the ontology of participation associated with Radical Orthodoxy is incompatible with a Christian affirmation of the intrinsic being and goodness of creatures. In response, he proposes a Leibnizian view in which things are endowed with the innate dynamism of ‘force’. Creatures have a certain depth of being, and are intrinsically good, just because they each have an inner virtuality that they bring into expression. Such force is said to be a metaphysical component of the (...) agent. In this paper it is asked whether John Milbank's ontology of participation can be defended by distinguishing between two senses of being a subject. Perhaps it is possible for a creature to bring into expression what is an infused ‘alien’ gift rather than a metaphysical component – to be expressive subject, but not ontic subject, for divine power. However, while this distinction promises to make sense of the reception of an indwelling ‘other’ in grace, knowledge and love, neither proper substance nor proper existence can be received in this way. A creature must be the ontic subject for its being, after all. Still, divine being might proceed from God as radical indwelling gift, as non-ontic ground for ontic being. (shrink)
: William James' investigation of religious experience neglected consideration of immortality. This was likely because, as James saw it, belief in personal immortality often engenders what can be called spiritual provincialism. In Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (1897/1979), James brings up the phenomenon of psychological overload that occurs when an individual considers the immense numbers of humans who would inhabit Heaven if spiritual merit were determined democratically. Consideration of James' example shows the beginnings (...) of his pragmatic notion of immortality, one that is influenced by the religious philosophy of Henry James, Sr., and which focuses on the undeniable connections among people on earth rather than the immutable persistence of individual souls in Heaven. Those who have considered the implications of James' notion of immortality as it relates to the notion of worldly embeddedness include French writer Romain Rolland, who, inspired in part by the work of James, advocates a socialistic religious philosophy. With reference to Rolland and the elder James, as well as contemporary Christian pragmatist Cornel West, James' view can be more clearly understood. (shrink)
Well known as the British politician responsible for the Balfour Declaration during World War I, James Balfour was also a philosopher. Long forgotten, his remarkable book The Foundations of Belief (1895) merits contemporary reassessment. Critical of modern compartmentalization, Balfour argues for an integration of religion, philosophy, and science---a position now often identified as postmodern. This article presents some of Balfour’s contemporary scholarly significance, and hints at his usefulness in undergraduate teaching.
Translating Chinese Classics in a Colonial Context: James Legge and His Two Versions of the Zhongyong, by Hui Wang, Peter Lang Content Type Journal Article Pages 166-167 Authors Paul Boshears, Europäische Universität für Interdisziplinäre Studien/The European Graduate School Journal Comparative and Continental Philosophy Online ISSN 1757-0646 Print ISSN 1757-0638 Journal Volume Volume 4 Journal Issue Volume 4, Number 1 / 2012.
After a discourse about the literature on visual acuity before Hume, I discuss how the “size” of visual objects is defi ned and determined. I shall thenpresent circumstantial, but commanding, evidence for the infl uence of James Jurin’s Essay upon Distinct and Indistinct Vision on Hume’s thought. This workcontains well-supported findings incompatible with claims made in T 1.2, “Of the ideas of space and time,” and elsewhere. Specifically, the prominentprinciple of the Treatise, “[w]hat consists of parts is distinguishable into (...) them, and what is distinguishable is separable” (T 1.2.1.3; SBN 27) is shown to befalse. A powerful principle, it is a premise to the most important arguments of the Treatise, but is shunned in the Enquiry and later writings because, I believe,Hume had read Jurin. (shrink)
O artigo parte de uma epígrafe de um autor já clássico que trata da relação entre vontade, autocontrole e inibição e razão, a saber, William James. Meu objetivo é analisar estas ideias filosóficas e psicológicas à luz de um experimento de ponta em neurociência. Defenderei a ideia de que mecanismos de autocontrole racional podem funcionar como uma forma de modulação de estímulos mais básicos e interpreto este fato como um exemplo de como propriedades superiores podem se relacionar com propriedades (...) de níveis inferiores. (shrink)
Josiah Royce (1855-1916), philosopher of community, taught that social consciousness arises from ego-alter contrasts and is guided by taboos and, before George H. Mead, by reciprocal gestures. A major Roycean contribution was his five conditions for coexperiencing consciousness of genuine community. Related to Freud (via Putnam), Royce did early work on âidentification theoryâ and helped midwife psychotherapy’s birth in America. Contrasting with William James’s basic differentiation of consciousness according to the quality of its contents (feeling, thought, and conduct), Royce (...) preferred a norm of increasing self-agency (shown in sensitivity, docility, and initiative). The temperaments of James as artist and of Royce as rational interpreter differentiated their approaches to psychology. (shrink)
The title of Thomas James's 2011 In Face of Reality: The Constructive Theology of Gordon D. Kaufman echoes the title of Gordon Kaufman's 1993 In Face of Mystery: A Constructive Theology. Kaufman's theology evolved over his long career, but mystery became his principal metaphor for God. In substituting reality for mystery, James signals his central project, which is to argue that Kaufman's theology offers an objective God who "really acts in the world" (1).For James, God's providential activity (...) is a touchstone of Christian theology. However, he asserts, contemporary science has left little space for God to act. Most theologians have responded by: 1) limiting interaction with scientific findings to preserve .. (shrink)
I. Growing up zigzag: -- Art is my vocation -- Newport and the Jameses -- The father -- Harvard, 1861 -- Science and the Civil War -- Comparative anatomy and medical school -- The gulls at the mouth of the Amazon -- Tea squalls and a life according to nature -- We must be our own providence -- A dead and drifting life -- Minnie Temple -- William James, M.D. -- Treading water -- The end of youth -- II. (...) The action of consciousness: Hitting bottom -- Turning to physiology -- The Metaphysical Club and Chauncey Wright -- Charles Pierce -- Cambridge and Harvard, 1872 -- Teaching -- To Europe and back -- Emerson, Mill, and Blood -- From physiology to physiological psychology -- Days of rapture and heartbreak -- The trouble with Herbert Spencer -- The action of consciousness -- III. The principles of Psychology: Spaces -- The heart wants its chance -- The feeling of effort -- Hegel in Cambridge -- Death of a mother -- Goodbye, my sacred old father -- The wonderful stream of our consciousness -- Not a simple temperament -- What is an emotion? -- The literary remains of Henry James Sr. -- The death of Herman -- Mrs. Leonora Piper -- My only absolutely satisfying companion (Alice) -- Hypnotism and summers at Chocorua -- Instinct and will -- Santayana at Harvard -- The psychology of belief -- Reunion with Alice: the hidden self --. (shrink)
...Witherspoon's Course in Political Theory, as Taken by James Madison Dennis F. Thompson Princeton University [523...Witherspoon's Course in Political Theory, as Taken by James Madison. James Madison was an unusually wen-prepared student when, at eighteen...
There is a famous passage in chapter six of Jamesâ Principles of Psychology whose import, many believe, deals a devastating blow to the explanatory aspirations of panpsychism. In the present paper I take a close look at Jamesâ argument, as well as at the claim that it underlies a powerful critique of panpsychism. Apart from the fact that the argument was never aimed at panpsychism as such, I show that it rests on highly problematic assumptions which, if followed to their (...) logical consequences, are just as inedible to contemporary critics of panpsychism as they are to its present-day supporters. Hence, a naïve employment of the argument, as a critique leveled by physicalists against panpsychism, is counterproductive and even self-defeating. After examining the metaphysical shortcomings undermining Jamesâ position (as well as the hasty refutations of panpsychism based on it), I conclude with some reflections on what needs to be done in order to obtain a better perspective regarding the explanatory prospects of panpsychism as an alternative approach to mainstream physicalism in the study of conscious phenomena. (shrink)
All three authors range themselves against John Norton's deductive analysis of thought experiments. Brown's insight, Nersessian's mental modelling, and Gooding's embodiment, arise, in each case, from a major all-purpose philosophical theory. None reaches down to the specific level of thought experiments, which are small, rare, and precious. I urge attention to Wittgenstein's remark that "the experimental character disappears when one looks at the process as a memorable picture." Thought experiments are not experiments. They are static. They become fixed, more like (...) jokes or optical illusions. Unlike real experiments, they have no life of their own. (shrink)
James Keller recently argued that miracles in the sense of divine intervention are immoral because in such acts God would unfairly choose to help the beneficiary of the miracle over others who may be equally in need and just as deserving. I respond generally by arguing that his analysis overlooks the possibility that those who do not receive the miraculous intervention may receive other benefits of equal or greater value and that there may be purposes for miraculous intervention which (...) transcend individual benefit. More specifically, I argue that Keller's understanding of miracles does not accommodate the Christian doctrine of grace, that he does not come to grips with the evangelical purpose of miracles depicted in Christian apologetics, that his view of the context in which miracles occur is abstract and sterile in light of charismatic experience, and finally that his argument leads to the counterintuitive conclusion that the Resurrection of Christ is somehow immoral. In the light of these considerations, I argue that miracles are not immoral. (shrink)
While Good’s book forces us to recognize the caricatures of Hegel and idealism that have dominated Anglo-American thought, Dewey’s relationship with idealism in general and Hegel in particular remains complex. Good proposes that the main reason for Dewey’s rejection of idealism was World War I. I find this implausible. Good downplays the central influence of James on Dewey, first with the Principles and then with his radical empiricism. By his move to Columbia in 1905 and in his article of (...) that year, “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism,” Dewey had rejected all types of philosophy that equated reality with the object of knowledge, including idealism and Hegel. For Dewey, reality includes types of experiences that are not instances of knowing and that ideals, functionally understood, are possibilities, not actualities. (shrink)
From Karl Marx to Alexandre Kojève to Luce Irigaray, many writers have explored the implications of the famous master-slave dialectic in Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit.1 An interesting debate has developed out of the possible gender connotations of this dialectic—a debate that has centered largely on the theory that the master could represent man, with the slave consequently representing woman. A close analysis of the Phenomenology reveals that both the master and the slave are, in fact, supposed to be men. But (...) is it possible to preserve the core ideas of the Phenomenology while simultaneously recasting both the master and the slave as women? And what are the ramifications of this reconfiguration?These questions .. (shrink)
