This is the first comprehensive interpretive and critical analysis of the thought of one of America's foremost phiolosophers and psychologists- William James.

Since locke, introspection has been generally defined as a form of observation. this is true, for example, of the classical tradition in psychology exemplified by wundt and titchener. recent experimental work by cognitive psychologists continues to treat introspection as a mode of observation while denying its alleged success in identifying cognitive processes. besides psychologists, philosophers such as james, ryle, and quinton are discussed, and they, too, define introspection as a type of observation analogous to perception. the present article calls attention (...) to other concepts of introspection that are important but that have figured less prominently in the history of philosophy and psychology. it is agreed here that, so far as the goals of self-knowledge and self-control are concerned, a concept of introspection other than that of observation is the significant one. explicating the nature of this alternative concept of introspection and its relevance for self-knowledge is the major aim of the article. (shrink)

James argued that time is a sensation, and the main point of this paper is to deny that claim. The concept of the specious present is explained, indicating how it clarifies the concept of "the present moment." But neither it nor an argument used by Mach and James show time to be a sensation. The analysis presented here requires distinguishing concepts of sensation from concepts of temporal relations. James' view is really a theory that time-as-duration is sensed. But this assumes (...) that the description of time as sensed is also a description of time as an objective property of independent events. This is nowhere established, and making it plausible is a recurrent problem for philosophies like neutral monism and radical empiricism. (shrink)

Books on William James quickly succeed one another nowadays, but the best and most durable to appear is Richard Gale’s The Divided Self of William James. What makes the book exceptional is its intimate grasp of James’s thought and of the thinker behind it. Gale’s interpretations of texts, meticulously selected from the corpus of James’s writings, are valuable as criticisms but even more as widening our sights on James’s favorite philosophical targets. Gale has made James his intellectual colleague for many (...) years, contributing brilliant articles to Jamesian scholarship along the way, and the insights gained from that collegial association now come together in this wonderfully original and stimulating volume. (shrink)