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

It would be misleading to make any reference to Marx's “theory” of truth-for nowhere in the corpus of Marx's writings will one find an essay dealing with truth in a thematic way. Marx's scattered remarks on truth occur within the context of discussions of social questions. What one can pull together on the topic of truth amounts at most to the sketch of a concept which applies to social knowledge and not knowledge in general. My aim will be to reconstruct (...) Marx's concept of social truth on the basis of his writings on society and social theory.Those who want a systematic essay developing a general Marxist theory of knowledge have, of course, Lenin's classical formulation of Marxist epistemology in Materialism and Empiriocriticism. We also have Leszek Kolakowski's bold and heretical attack on Lenin's interpretation in “Marx and the Classical Definition of Truth” where we find the astounding claim that Marx's view of truth is closer to that of William James than to that of Lenin.Kolakowski's essay has been the subject of numerous attacks both by predictably indignant true believers and by independent, creative Marxists. (shrink)

Despite there being deep lines of convergence between the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead, C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and other classical American philosophers, it remains an open question whether Whitehead is a pragmatist, and conversation between pragmatists and Whitehead scholars have been limited. Indeed, it is difficult to find an anthology of classical American philosophy that includes Whitehead’s writings. These camps began separately, and so they remain. This volume questions the wisdom of that separation, exploring their (...) connections, both historical and in application. The essays in this volume embody original and creative work by leading scholars that not only furthers the understanding of American philosophy, but seeks to advance it by working at the intersection of experience and reality to incite novel and creative thought. This exploration is long overdue. Specific questions that are addressed are: Is Whitehead a pragmatist? What contrasts and affinities exist between American pragmatism and Whitehead’s thought? What new questions, strategies, and critiques emerge by juxtaposing their distinct perspectives? -/- . (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 (...) class='Hi'>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)

I offer here a solution to a mystery about William James's theory of the self. Among the many students of James who have been mystified is Gerald Myers, who expresses surprise in William James: His Life and Thought that, given the religious and mystical overtones of his later metaphysics, James did not abandon the apparent bodily self of the earlier Principles of Psychology for a “nonbodily, spiritual, and mysterious referent for the first-person pronoun,” instead of consistently (...) adhering “to his claims that the body is at the center of any experience of self, that nothing nonbodily shows itself definitely to introspection, and that nothing about using I makes a mystery of the self”. The mystery is particularly deep because James explicitly avowed the coherence of the Principles treatment of the self with the later metaphysical treatment, such as the material in Essays in Radical Empiricism. Arguing in “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” from the Essays that a metaphysics of pure experience should replace the dichotomy between consciousness and the body, James adduces in support his earlier discussion of the self: “In my Psychology I have tried to show that we need no knower other than the ‘passing thought’.” On the other hand, Myers observes, “if telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition actually occur,” as James was disposed to think, “our everyday equation of the self with bodily experience will surely require some revision”. Then too James's religious convictions as expressed in The Varieties of Religious Experience would also seem to call for revision of the earlier equation. James wrote there, for instance, that “the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance” and that “union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end.” “Yet instead of suggesting how his psychological concept of the self might have shifted during the progression from Principles to the metaphysics of pure experience,” Myers comments with a note of puzzlement, “James wrote in his later period that this concept was a natural ally if not the original herald of that metaphysics.”. (shrink)

I offer here a solution to a mystery about William James's theory of the self. Among the many students of James who have been mystified is Gerald Myers, who expresses surprise in William James: His Life and Thought that, given the religious and mystical overtones of his later metaphysics, James did not abandon the apparent bodily self of the earlier Principles of Psychology for a “nonbodily, spiritual, and mysterious referent for the first-person pronoun,” instead of consistently (...) adhering “to his claims that the body is at the center of any experience of self, that nothing nonbodily shows itself definitely to introspection, and that nothing about using I makes a mystery of the self”. The mystery is particularly deep because James explicitly avowed the coherence of the Principles treatment of the self with the later metaphysical treatment, such as the material in Essays in Radical Empiricism. Arguing in “Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?” from the Essays that a metaphysics of pure experience should replace the dichotomy between consciousness and the body, James adduces in support his earlier discussion of the self: “In my Psychology I have tried to show that we need no knower other than the ‘passing thought’.” On the other hand, Myers observes, “if telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition actually occur,” as James was disposed to think, “our everyday equation of the self with bodily experience will surely require some revision”. Then too James's religious convictions as expressed in The Varieties of Religious Experience would also seem to call for revision of the earlier equation. James wrote there, for instance, that “the visible world is part of a more spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance” and that “union or harmonious relation with that higher universe is our true end.” “Yet instead of suggesting how his psychological concept of the self might have shifted during the progression from Principles to the metaphysics of pure experience,” Myers comments with a note of puzzlement, “James wrote in his later period that this concept was a natural ally if not the original herald of that metaphysics.”. (shrink)

Louis Agassiz.--Address at the Emerson Centenary in Concord.--Robert Gould Shaw.--Francis Boott.--Thomas Davidson: a knight-errant of the intellectual life.--Herbert Spencer's autobiography.--Frederick Myers' services to psychology.--Final impressions of a psychical researcher.--On some mental effects of the earthquake.--The energies of men.--The moral equivalent of war.--Remarks at the peace banquet.--The social value of the college-bred.--The university and the individual: The Ph.D. octopus. The true Harvard. Stanford's ideal destiny.--A pluralistic mystic.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:John Dewey & Moral ImaginationWilliam T. MyersJohn Dewey & Moral Imagination, by Steven Fesmire. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2003, 167 pp., $19.95 paper.The resurgence of interest in pragmatism, especially in regard to the work of John Dewey, has been ongoing for several decades now. In addition to the development of neo-pragmatism with its appreciation of the deconstructive side of Dewey, there have also been numerous books (...) written on the constructive side of pragmatism, including pragmatist aesthetics, metaphysics, politics, and education. An interest in pragmatist ethics, though later coming, seems to be picking up some steam at last, and Steven Fesmire's book, John Dewey & Moral Imagination, is an important contribution to that burgeoning area of inquiry.While Fesmire's book is not a full-blown account of a Deweyan moral theory, a fact he makes clear from the [End Page 107] outset, it is an insightful and important development of the role of aesthetics, inquiry, and imagination within a Deweyan framework. Fesmire is not interested in simply explicating Dewey's view of imagination, but in further developing Dewey's sometimes cryptic comments on the subject. But even more than that, Fesmire explicitly notes that he is going beyond Dewey, though Dewey is his starting point (p. 4). And in this enterprise, the book is successful, as Fesmire's development is very much in the spirit of Dewey's empiricism. That having been said, however, there are some elements of Dewey's ethics that I believe are important to Fesmire's interpretation, but do not receive enough attention in his book. In addition, the centrality of imagination seems somewhat overstated, sometimes to the detriment of other central notions. I will address these concerns later.In the Introduction, Fesmire states three interrelated theses that he builds a case for: "(1) Moral character, belief, and reasoning are inherently social, embodied, and historically situated; (2) Moral deliberation is fundamentally imaginative and historically situated; (3) Moral conduct is helpfully conceived on the model of aesthetic perception and artistic creation" (p. 4). He goes on to note that the first two are clearly and articulately defended by Dewey, and the third is "inspired" by him, but, clearly, this latter one he sees as a further development of Dewey's ethics.In order to build his case, Fesmire spends Part I of the book elaborating the "pragmatic turn" and its conception of "character, belief, inquiry, and intelligence" (p. 4). This first part is necessary in order to keep the second, more developmental part from seeming a piecemeal dialogue with traditional ethical theories. In other words, Part I contextualizes Part II.In the opening chapter, "Habit and Character," Fesmire contrasts the Deweyan notion of character with the traditional atomistic conception of the individual. As Dewey points out, it isn't that moral conduct ought to be social; rather it is social by its very nature (p. 13). Indeed, character and habits are socially derived from our cultural context. Moral inquiry is, then, social at its very base. Using the example of Studs Lonigan, Fesmire continues to develop these notions through a fascinating discussion of the James T. Farrell character. The application of the Deweyan notion of character and habit is a natural fit here, given that Farrell wrote his trilogy as an explicit exploration of Dewey's notion of habit. Through this discussion, we see the ongoing struggle of the individual and the environment, with the ultimate lesson learned being that one cannot be separated from the other, though either can be destructive of the other. Fesmire then applies this same essential idea to nature and culture. As Fesmire notes, "Dewey's goal was to break down the barriers that separate nature from culture, to show that biological drives are transmuted by social life, that neither impulse nor culture simply trumps the other, and that culture lends itself as much to intelligent conservation and critical redirection as to transmission" (p. 23). The lesson to learn from all of this is that the individual is not, as much traditional moral theory has supposed, a detached decision maker who can, by a simple act of will, follow some categorical imperative. Indeed, "[i]ndividuals... (shrink)

Part I of this essay will be devoted to Gauthier's principle of minimax relative concession. Part II will focus, more generally, on the variety of possible strategies available to liberal theory. In Part I, I will argue that the principle of minimax relative concession does not define “essential justice” as Gauthier claims. In Part II, I will argue that the difficulties facing Gauthier's strategy are common to other strategies of die same general kind. I will close by suggesting what I (...) think may prove to be a more promising approach. (shrink)

Former Google advertising strategist, now Oxford-trained philosopher James Williams launches a plea to society and to the tech industry to help ensure that the technology we all carry with us every day does not distract us from pursuing our true goals in life. As information becomes ever more plentiful, the resource that is becoming more scarce is our attention. In this 'attention economy', we need to recognise the fundamental impacts of our new information environment on our lives in order (...) to take back control. Drawing on insights ranging from Diogenes to contemporary tech leaders, Williams's thoughtful and impassioned analysis is sure to provoke discussion and debate. Williams is the inaugural winner of the Nine Dots Prize, a new Prize for creative thinking that tackles contemporary social issues. This title is also available as Open Access. (shrink)

This article critically analyzes Rawls’s attitude toward envy. In A Theory of Justice, Rawls is predominantly concerned with the threat that class envy poses to political stability. Yet he also briefly discusses the kind of envy that individuals experience toward their social peers, which he calls particular envy, and which I refer to as peer envy. He quickly concludes, however, that particular envy would not present a serious risk to the stability of his just society. In this article, I contest (...) this claim by arguing that the principles that structure Rawls’s ideal society are likely to exacerbate particular envy to a politically risky extent. Section 1 reconstructs his account of envy, giving special attention to his belief that competition kindles envy between peers. Section 2 then examines the way in which Rawls often endorses rivalry within the body politic. I argue that the society governed by justice as fairness is, on account of this rivalry, likely to generate a politically problematic degree of particular envy. In Section 3, I invoke ancient Greece as an example of a society that was, as a result of its intense competitiveness, often imperiled by dangerously elevated levels of peer envy. I then survey the key institutional mechanisms by which the ancient Greeks sought to manage this hazardous emotion. It turns out, however, that most of these mechanisms would be unavailable to Rawls insofar as they starkly contravene his principles of justice. I conclude that if Rawlsians wish to establish a society that fosters rivalry, they would do well to reflect on the means by which peer envy can be effectively harnessed. (shrink)

With the development of the division of labor, the household has declined in importance as a unit of economic production. Yet even as the individual wage earner has assumed a central place in modern exchange economies, the household has still been seen as an important unit of distribution, in which wage earners provide for their non-income-producing family members. With the breakdown of the family in recent decades, however, the communal income-sharing function of the family has, in significant part, been taken (...) overby the state. In this essay, I examine this fundamental change in the structure of production and distribution in modern exchange economies. Going beyond this, I propose a new structure of markets–markets for rights to influence collective decision-making within a society. Such markets, I suggest, wouldprovide a source of income for each member of the society. (shrink)

Debating Deliberative Democracy explores the nature and value of deliberation, the feasibility and desirability of consensus on contentious issues, the implications of institutional complexity and cultural diversity for democratic decision making, and the significance of voting and majority rule in deliberative arrangements. Investigates the nature and value of deliberation, the feasibility and desirability of consensus on contentious issues, the implications of institutional complexity and cultural diversity for democratic decision making, and the significance of voting and majority rule in deliberative arrangements. (...) Includes focus on institutions and makes reference to empirical work. Engages a debate that cuts across political science, philosophy, the law and other disciplines. (shrink)

We only see Mars from Earth's perspective in the first season of The Expanse, but Season 2 changes that by introducing Gunnery Sergeant Bobbie Draper, a Martian Congressional Republic Navy (MCRN) marine. Mars as seen by Martians resembles our Mars: ruddy, rocky, dusty, inhospitable, and cold. This chapter focuses on Draper and the Mars Congressional Republic (MCR). What is striking about the culture of the MCR is how naturally it flows from contemporary visions of space exploration, especially those from the (...) Apollo era forward. For somewhat more specific examples, the chapter considers the “Statement of Philosophy” of the National Space Society, another well‐known space advocacy organization in the US. The MCR's commitment to terraforming Mars demonstrates that its future depends “upon the progress of science and technology.”. (shrink)

At first glance, Fichte and Nietzsche may strike us as intellectual contraries. For example, Fichte’s belief in historical progress and universal moral law appears to be diametrically opposed to Nietzsche’s searching critique of Enlightenment optimism. This impression is reinforced by Nietzsche’s disparaging remarks about Fichte. What is more, from the dearth of critical literature comparing the two thinkers, one might be tempted to conclude that they are broadly irrelevant to one another. In this paper, however, I argue that their theories (...) of subjectivity are in many respects remarkably similar and worthy of comparison. But I also explain how, despite this convergence, their normative philosophies end up so conspicuously at odds with one another. I begin by examining the resemblance between their denials of the substantial self (Section 1). In Sections 2 and 3, I analyse Fichte’s and Nietzsche’s positive accounts of subjectivity, self-cultivation, and the political preconditions of self-cultivation. In these latter two sections, I focus on pinpointing the conceptual juncture at which their practical outlooks begin to part, which I argue can be located in their drive psychologies and their distinct conceptions of conscience (Gewissen). These theoretical differences then generate a large-scale disagreement regarding the political systems they believe best enable self-cultivation, with Fichte favouring for a democratic regime, and Nietzsche opting for an aristocratic one. I conclude Section 3 by sketching a possible way out of this dilemma. (shrink)

It is becoming increasingly common for authoritarian regimes to leverage digital technologies to surveil, repress and manipulate their citizens. Experts typically refer to this practice as digital authoritarianism (DA). Existing definitions of DA consistently presuppose a politically repressive agent intentionally exploiting digital technologies to pursue authoritarian ends. I refer to this as the intention-based definition. This paper argues that this definition is untenable as a general description of DA. I begin by illustrating the current predominance of the intention-based definition (Section (...) 2). Section 3 then presents four counterexamples to this definition: benign surveillance; digital sovereignty; attention-harvesting algorithms; and tech-induced loneliness. In each case, we witness authoritarianism being promoted by digital technologies without any evidence of this being intentionally caused by politically repressive agents. Based on these observations, I contend that the intention-based definition is underinclusive and is therefore unsustainable. Section 4 outlines an improved definition of DA – what I call the promotion-based definition. Since this more expansive definition does not posit intentional, politically repressive agency as a precondition of DA, it can accommodate the counterexamples discussed in Section 3. Moreover, it enables us to catch a broader spectrum of cases of DA, such as tech-induced loneliness, which those adhering to the intention-based definition are prone to overlook. After outlining further practical benefits of the promotion-based definition, I argue that we still need to distinguish between intentional and unintentional forms of DA since they call for distinct types of remedial action. -/- . (shrink)

This article explores four major areas of moral concern regarding virtual reality technologies. First, VR poses potential mental health risks, including Depersonalization/Derealization Disorder. Second, VR technology raises serious concerns related to personal neglect of users’ own actual bodies and real physical environments. Third, VR technologies may be used to record personal data which could be deployed in ways that threaten personal privacy and present a danger related to manipulation of users’ beliefs, emotions, and behaviors. Finally, there are other moral and (...) social risks associated with the way VR blurs the distinction between the real and illusory. These concerns regarding VR naturally raise questions about public policy. The article makes several recommendations for legal regulations of VR that together address each of the above concerns. It is argued that these regulations would not seriously threaten personal liberty but rather would protect and enhance the autonomy of VR consumers. (shrink)

Three common assumptions of both liberal theory and political debate are the autonomy of the family, the principle of merit, and equality of life chances. Fishkin argues that even under the best conditions, commitment to any two of these principles precludes the third._“A brief survey and brilliant critique of contemporary liberal political theory…. A must for all political theory or public policy collections.” –_Choice_ “The strong points of Fishkin’s book are many. He raises provocative issues, locates them within a broader (...) theoretical framework, and demonstrates an urgent need for liberals to set certain priorities. His main message—that liberalism has radical implications for ordinary life—needs to be heard by many.” --Virginia L. Warren, _Michigan Law Review_ “A highly original and powerfully argued book…. Fishkin is undoubtedly right, and his warning needs to be taken seriously…. This is not a book that catechizes us about what we should believe concerning the practicalities of distributive justice. It is a book that advises us about how we need to think about beliefs that are already popular dogmas, in the interest of making sense.” –James Gaffney, _America_ James S. Fishkin_ is associate professor of political science at Yale University. He is also the author of _The Limits of Obligation_ and _Beyond Subjective Morality_. (shrink)

This book aims to contribute significantly to the understanding of issues of value which repeatedly emerge in interdisciplinary discussions on space and society. Although a recurring feature of discussions about space in the humanities, the treatment of value questions has tended to be patchy, of uneven quality and even, on occasion, idiosyncratic rather than drawing upon a close familiarity with state-of-the-art ethical theory. One of the volume's aims is to promote a more robust and theoretically informed approach to the ethical (...) dimension of discussions on space and society. While the contributions are written in a manner which is accessible across disciplines, the book still withstands scrutiny by those whose work is primarily on ethics. At the same time it allows academics across a range of disciplines an insight into current approaches toward how the work of ethics gets done. The issues of value raised could be used to inform debates about regulation, space law and protocols for microbial discovery as well as longer-range policy debates about funding. (shrink)

According to Stewart Shapiro's coherence principle, structures exist whenever they can be coherently described. I argue that Shapiro's attempts to justify this principle are circular, as he relies on criticisms of modal nominalism which presuppose the coherence principle. I argue further that when the coherence principle is not presupposed, his reasoning more strongly supports modal nominalism than ante rem structuralism.

Life history theory’s principle of allocation suggests that because immature organisms cannot expend reproductive effort, the major trade-off facing juveniles will be the one between survival, on one hand, and growth and development, on the other. As a consequence, infants and children might be expected to possess psychobiological mechanisms for optimizing this trade-off. The main argument of this paper is that the attachment process serves this function and that individual differences in attachment organization (secure, insecure, and possibly others) may represent (...) facultative adaptations to conditions of risk and uncertainty that were probably recurrent in the environment of human evolutionary adaptedness. (shrink)

Still-vital lectures on teaching deal with psychology and the teaching art, the stream of consciousness, the child as a behaving organism, education and behavior, native and acquired reactions, habit, association of ideas, attention, memory, acquisition of ideas, perception, will, and more. The three addresses to students are "The Gospel of Relaxation," "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings," and "What Makes a Life Significant?" Preface. 2 black-and-white illustrations.

Halin in 1965 proved that if a graph has [Formula: see text] many pairwise disjoint rays for each [Formula: see text] then it has infinitely many pairwise disjoint rays. We analyze the complexity of this and other similar results in terms of computable and proof theoretic complexity. The statement of Halin’s theorem and the construction proving it seem very much like standard versions of compactness arguments such as König’s Lemma. Those results, while not computable, are relatively simple. They only use (...) arithmetic procedures or, equivalently, finitely many iterations of the Turing jump. We show that several Halin-type theorems are much more complicated. They are among the theorems of hyperarithmetic analysis. Such theorems imply the ability to iterate the Turing jump along any computable well ordering. Several important logical principles in this class have been extensively studied beginning with work of Kreisel, H. Friedman, Steel and others in the 1960s and 1970s. Until now, only one purely mathematical example was known. Our work provides many more and so answers Question 30 of Montalbán’s Open Questions in Reverse Mathematics in 2011. Some of these theorems including ones in Halin in 1965 are also shown to have unusual proof theoretic strength as well. (shrink)

While Nietzsche's works and ideas are relevant across the many branches of philosophy, the themes of contest and conflict have been mostly overlooked. Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche's Philosophy redresses this situation, arguing for the importance of these issues throughout Nietzsche's work. The volume has three key lines of inquiry: Nietzsche's ontology of conflict; Nietzsche's conception of the agon; and Nietzsche's warrior-philosophy. Under these three umbrellas is a collection of insightful and provocative essays considering, among other topics, Nietzsche's understanding of (...) resistance; his engagement with classical thinkers alongside his contemporaries, including Jacob Burckhardt; his views on language, metaphor and aphorism; and war, revolt and terror. In bringing together such topics, Conflict and Contest in Nietzsche's Philosophy seeks to correct the one-sided tendencies within the existing literature to read simply 'hard' and 'soft' analyses of conflict. Written by scholars across the Anglophone and the European traditions, within and beyond philosophy, this collection emphasises the entire problematic of conflict in Nietzsche's thought and its relation to his philosophical and literary practice. (shrink)

It has become orthodox to read Nietzsche as proposing the ‘sublimation’ of troublesome behavioural impulses. On this interpretation, he is said to denigrate the elimination of our impulses, preferring that we master them by pressing them into the service of our higher goals. My thesis is that this reading of Nietzsche’s conception of self-cultivation does not bear scrutiny. Closer examination of his later thought reveals numerous texts that show him explicitly recommending an eliminatory approach to self-cultivation. I invoke his theory (...) of the will to power in order to explain why he persistently valorises both elimination and sublimation as preconditions of healthy subjective unity. I conclude that which of these two approaches he recommends in a given situation depends on whether or not the impulse in question can be put to use within the overall economy of our drives. (shrink)

Despite the lack of invariance problem (the many‐to‐many mapping between acoustics and percepts), human listeners experience phonetic constancy and typically perceive what a speaker intends. Most models of human speech recognition (HSR) have side‐stepped this problem, working with abstract, idealized inputs and deferring the challenge of working with real speech. In contrast, carefully engineered deep learning networks allow robust, real‐world automatic speech recognition (ASR). However, the complexities of deep learning architectures and training regimens make it difficult to use them to (...) provide direct insights into mechanisms that may support HSR. In this brief article, we report preliminary results from a two‐layer network that borrows one element from ASR, long short‐term memory nodes, which provide dynamic memory for a range of temporal spans. This allows the model to learn to map real speech from multiple talkers to semantic targets with high accuracy, with human‐like timecourse of lexical access and phonological competition. Internal representations emerge that resemble phonetically organized responses in human superior temporal gyrus, suggesting that the model develops a distributed phonological code despite no explicit training on phonetic or phonemic targets. The ability to work with real speech is a major advance for cognitive models of HSR. (shrink)