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William James (
January 11,
1842 –
August 26,
1910) was a pioneering
American psychologist and
philosopher. He wrote influential books on the young science of psychology,
educational psychology, psychology of
religious experience and
mysticism, and the philosophy of
pragmatism. He was the brother of novelist
Henry James.
William James was born in
New York City, son of
Henry James, Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric
Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.
James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather
Ralph Waldo Emerson,
Horace Greeley,
William Cullen Bryant,
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.,
Charles Sanders Peirce,
Josiah Royce,
George Santayana,
Ernst Mach,
John Dewey,
Helen Keller,
Mark Twain,
James Frazer,
Henri Bergson,
H. G. Wells,
G. K. Chesterton,
Sigmund Freud,
Gertrude Stein, and
Carl Jung.
Early years
William James, with his younger brother
Henry James (who became a prominent novelist) and sister
Alice James (who is known for her posthumously published diary), received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French languages along with a
cosmopolitan character. His family made two trips to
Europe while he was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. His early artistic bent led to an early apprenticeship in the studio of
William Morris Hunt in
Newport, Rhode Island, but yielded in
1861 to scientific studies at
Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School.
In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical and mental difficulties, including problems with his eyes, back, stomach, and skin, as well as periods of
depression in which he was tempted by -- and even attempted --
suicide. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the
Civil War, but the other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice) all suffered from periods of invalidism.
James switched to medical studies at
Harvard Medical School in
1864. He took a break in the spring of
1865 to join Harvard's
Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the
Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, having suffered bouts of severe
seasickness and mild
smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. He traveled to
Germany in search of a cure and remained until November 1868. (During this period he began to publish, with reviews appearing in literary periodicals like the
North American Review.) He finally earned his
M.D. degree in June
1869, but never practiced medicine. What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in
1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching.
James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, finding his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in
1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave".
[Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1, (1935), 1996 edition: ISBN 0-8265-1279-8, p. 228.]Professional career
James spent his entire academic career at Harvard. He was appointed instructor in
physiology for the spring
1873 term, instructor in
anatomy and physiology in
1873, assistant professor of psychology in
1876, assistant professor of
philosophy in
1881, full professor in
1885, endowed chair in psychology in
1889, return to philosophy in
1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in
1907.
James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when
psychology was constituting itself as a
science. James's acquaintance with the work of figures like
Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and
Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at
Harvard University. He established one of the first—he believed it to be
the first—laboratories of experimental psychology in the United States in Boylston Hall in
1875.
[ Gerald E. Myers, William James: His Life and Thought, Yale University Press, 1986, p. 486. ]During his Harvard years, James joined in philosophical discussions with
Charles Peirce,
Oliver Holmes, and
Chauncey Wright that evolved into a lively group known as the
Metaphysical Club by the early 1870s.
Louis Menand speculates that the Club provided a foundation for
American intellectual thought for decades to come.
Among James's students at Harvard were such luminaries as
George Santayana,
W.E.B. DuBois,
G. Stanley Hall,
Ralph Barton Perry,
Gertrude Stein,
Horace Kallen,
Morris Raphael Cohen,
Alain Locke,
C. I. Lewis, and
Mary Calkins.
Following his January, 1907 retirement from Harvard, James continued to write and lecture, publishing
Pragmatism,
A Pluralistic Universe, and
The Meaning of Truth. James was increasingly afflicted with cardiac pain during his last years. It worsened in 1909 while he worked on a philosophy text (unfinished but posthumously published as
Some Problems in Philosophy). He sailed to Europe in the spring of 1910 to take experimental treatments which proved unsuccessful, and returned home on
August 18. His heart failed him on
August 26,
1910 at his home in
Chocorua,
New Hampshire.
He was one of the strongest proponents of the school of
Functionalism in psychology, and
Pragmatism in philosophy.
Writings
William James wrote voluminously throughout his life. A fairly complete bibliography of his writings by John McDermott is 47 pages long.
[John J. McDermott, The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition, University of Chicago Press, 1977 revised edition, ISBN 0-226-39188-4, pp. 812–58.] (See below for a list of his major writings and additional collections)
He gained widespread recognition with his monumental
Principles of Psychology (1890), twelve hundred pages in two volumes which took ten years to complete.
Psychology: The Briefer Course, was an 1892 abridgement designed as a less rigorous introduction to the field. These works criticized both the English
associationist school and the
Hegelianism of his day as competing dogmatisms of little explanatory value, and sought to re-conceive of the human mind as inherently purposive and selective.
Epistemology
James defined
true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer. Truth, he said, is that which works in the way of belief. "True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse" but "all true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere," he wrote.
[ William James. "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth". Lecture 6 in Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York: Longman Green and Co (1907): p. 83. http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/James/James_1907/James_1907_06.html online edition] James' assertion that the value of a truth depends upon its use to the individual who holds it is known as
pragmatism. Additional tenets of James' pragmatism include the view that the world is a mosaic of diverse experiences that can only be properly understood through an application of "radical empiricism." Radical empiricism, distinct from everyday scientific
empiricism, presumes that nature and experience can never be frozen for absolutely objective analysis, that, at the very least, the mind of the observer will affect the outcome of any empirical approach to truth since, empirically, the mind and nature are inseparable. James' emphasis on diversity as the default human condition--over and against duality, especially Hegelian dialectical duality--has maintained a strong influence in American culture, especially among liberals (see
Richard Rorty), and his radical empiricism lies in the background of contemporary
relativism. James' description of the mind-world connection, which he described in terms of a "stream of consciousness," had a direct and significant impact on
avante garde and
modernist literature and art.
In
What Pragmatism Means, James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in brief, that "truth is
one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it.
Truth is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons."
Richard Rorty claims that James did not mean to give a theory of truth with this statement, and that we should not regard it as such.
Cash Value
From the introduction to William James's
Pragmatism by Bruce Kuklick p.xiv.
:James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of 'true' by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if in the long run it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. James was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their "Cash Value" was, what consequences they led to. A belief was not a mental entity which somehow mysteriously corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they guided us satifactorily in this environment. In this sense the pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Antonio_Damasio#Philosophy_and_Neurobiology biological fitness. If what was true was what worked, we can scientifically investigate religion's claim to truth in the same manner. The enduring quality of religious beliefs throughout recorded history and in all cultures gave indirect support for the view that such beliefs worked. James also argued directly that such beliefs were satisfying—they enabled us to lead fuller, richer lives and were more viable than their alternatives. Religious beliefs were expedient in human existence, just as scientific beliefs were.
Will to Believe Doctrine
Main|Will to Believe
section
Philosophy of religion
James did important work in
philosophy of religion. In his
Gifford Lectures at the
University of Edinburgh he provided a wide-ranging account of
The Varieties of Religious Experience (
1902) and interpreted them according to his pragmatic leanings. Some of the important claims he makes in this regard:
*Religious genius (experience) should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than religious institutions—since institutions are merely the social descendant of genius.
*The intense, even pathological varieties of experience (religious or otherwise) should be sought by psychologists, because they represent the closest thing to a microscope of the mind—that is, they show us in drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things.
*In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, shared experience and history, we must each make certain "
over-beliefs" in things which, while they cannot be proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller and better lives.
The investigation of
mystical experience was constant throughout the life of James, leading him to experiment with
chloral hydrate (1870),
amyl nitrite (1875),
nitrous oxide (1882), and even
peyote (1896). James claimed that it was only when he was under the influence of nitrous oxide that he was able to understand
Hegel.
[William James, http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jnitrous.html "Subjective Effects of Nitrous Oxide" ] He concluded that while the revelations of the mystic hold true, they hold true only for the mystic; for others, they are certainly ideas to be considered, but can hold no claim to truth without personal experience of such. James has been a significant influence for the
New Age and
Human Potential movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
He was non-practicising
Congregationalist.
Theory of emotion
James is one of the two namesakes of the
James-Lange theory of
emotion, which he formulated independently of
Carl Lange in the
1880s. The theory holds that emotion is the mind's perception of physiological conditions that result from some stimulus. In James' oft-cited example; it is not that we see a bear, fear it, and run. We see a bear and run, consequently we fear the bear. Our mind's
perception of the higher adrenaline level, heartbeat, etc., is the emotion.
This way of thinking about emotion has great consequences for the philosophy of
aesthetics. Here is a passage from his great work,
Principles of Psychology, that spells out those consequences.
quotation|
We must immediately insist that aesthetic emotion, pure and
simple, the pleasure given us by certain lines and masses, and
combinations of colors and sounds, is an absolutely sensational
experience, an optical or auricular feeling that is primary, and not
due to the repercussion backwards of other sensations elsewhere
consecutively aroused. To this simple primary and immediate
pleasurein certain pure sensations and harmonious combinations of them, there
may, it is true, be added secondary pleasures; and in the practical
enjoyment of works of art by the masses of mankind these secondary
pleasures play a great part. The more classic one's taste is,
however, the less relatively important are the secondary pleasures
felt to be, in comparison with those of the primary sensation as it
comes in.
Classicism and
romanticism have their battles over this
point. Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of memory and
association, and the stirring of our flesh with picturesque mystery
and gloom, make a work of art romantic. The classic taste brands
these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the naked beauty of
the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned with frippery or
foliage. To the romantic mind, on the contrary, the immediate beauty
of these sensations seems dry and thin. I am of course not discussing
which view is right, but only showing that the discrimination between
the primary feeling of beauty, as a pure incoming sensible quality,
and the secondary emotions which are grafted thereupon, is one that
must be
William James' bear
From
Joseph LeDoux's description of William James'
Emotion [Joseph E. LeDoux, The Emotional Brain: the Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life, ISBN 0-684-83659-9, p. 43.]:Why do we run away if we notice that we are in danger? Because we are afraid of what will happen if we don't. This obvious (and incorrect) answer to a seemingly trivial question has been the central concern of a century-old debate about the nature of our emotions.
:It all began in 1884 when William James published an article titled "What Is an Emotion?"
[http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/emotion.htm "What is an Emotion?" Mind, vol. 9, 1884, p. 188-205] The article appeared in a philosophy journal called
Mind, as there were no psychology journals yet. It was important, not because it definitively answered the question it raised, but because of the way in which James phrased his response. He conceived of an emotion in terms of a sequence of events that starts with the occurrence of an arousing stimulus {the
sympathetic nervous system or the
parasympathetic nervous system}; and ends with a passionate feeling, a conscious emotional experience. A major goal of emotion research is still to elucidate this stimulus-to-feeling sequence—to figure out what processes come between the stimulus and the feeling.
:James set out to answer his question by asking another: do we run from a bear because we are afraid or are we afraid because we run? He proposed that the obvious answer, that we run because we are afraid, was
wrong, and instead argued that we are afraid because we run:
::Our natural way of thinking about... emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion (called 'feeling' by
Damasio).
:The essence of James' proposal was simple. It was premised on the fact that emotions are often accompanied by bodily responses (racing heart, tight stomach, sweaty palms, tense muscles, and so on;
sympathetic nervous system) and that we can sense what is going on inside our body much the same as we can sense what is going on in the outside world. According to James, emotions feel different from other states of mind because they have these bodily responses that give rise to internal sensations, and different emotions feel different from one another because they are accompanied by different bodily responses and sensations. For example, when we see James' bear, we run away. During this act of escape, the body goes through a physiological upheaval: blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, pupils dilate, palms sweat, muscles contract in certain ways (evolutionary, innate defense mechanisms). Other kinds of emotional situations will result in different bodily upheavals. In each case, the physiological responses return to the brain in the form of bodily sensations, and the unique pattern of sensory feedback gives each emotion its unique quality. Fear feels different from anger or love because it has a different physiological signature {the
parasympathetic nervous system for love}. The mental aspect of emotion, the feeling, is a slave to its physiology, not vice versa: we do not tremble because we are afraid or cry because we feel sad; we are afraid because we tremble and are sad because we cry.
Philosophy of history
One of the long-standing schisms in the
philosophy of history concerns the role of individuals in social change.
One faction sees individuals ("heroes" as
Thomas Carlyle called them) as the motive power of history, and the broader society as the page on which they write their acts. The other sees society as moving according to
holistic principles or laws, and sees individuals as its more-or-less willing pawns. In 1880, James waded into this controversy with "Great Men and Their Environment," an essay published in the
Atlantic Monthly. He took Carlyle's side, but without Carlyle's one-sided emphasis on the political/military sphere, upon heroes as the founders or over-throwers of states and empires.
"
Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness," James wrote. "
Wagner to enjoy peculiar musical effects;
Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality,
Artemus Ward to our humor;
Emerson kindles a new moral light within us."
Notes
Bibliography
Works by James
*
The Principles of Psychology, 2 vols. (1890) Dover Publications 1950, vol. 1: ISBN 0-486-20381-6, vol. 2: ISBN 0-486-20382-4
*
Psychology (Briefer Course) (1892) University of Notre Dame Press 1985: ISBN 0-268-01557-0
*
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
*
Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (1897)
**
The Will to Believe, Human Immortality (1956) Dover Publications, ISBN 0-486-20291-7
*
Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1899), ISBN 1-4219-5806-6
*
The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), ISBN 0-14-039034-0
*
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), 1981: ISBN 0-915145-05-7, 1995: ISBN 0-486-28270-8
*
A Pluralistic Universe (1909), University of Nebraska Press 1996: ISBN 0-8032-7591-9
*
The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to "Pragmatism" (1909) Prometheus Books, 1997: ISBN 1-57392-138-6
*
Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy (1911), University of Nebraska Press 1996: ISBN 0-8032-7587-0
*
Memories and Studies (1911) Reprint Services Corp: 1992: ISBN 0-7812-3481-6
*
Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) Dover Publications 2003, ISBN 0-486-43094-4
**critical edition, Frederick Burkhardt and Fredson Bowers, editors. Harvard University Press 1976: ISBN 0-674-26717-6 (includes commentary, notes, enumerated emendations, appendices with English translation of "La Notion de Conscience")
*
Letters of William James, 2 vols. (1920)
*
Collected Essays and Reviews (1920)
*Ralph Barton Perry,
The Thought and Character of William James, 2 vols. (1935) Vanderbilt University Press 1996 reprint: ISBN 0-8265-1279-8 (contains some 500 letters by William James not found in the earlier edition of the
Letters of William James)
*
William James on Psychical Research (1960)
*
The Correspondence of William James, 12 vols. (1992-2004) University of Virginia Press, ISBN 0-8139-2318-2
Collections
*
William James: Writings 1878-1899, (1992).
Library of America, 1212 p., ISBN 0-940450-72-0
::Psychology: Briefer Course (rev. and condensed Principles of Psychology), The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, Talks to Teachers and Students, Essays (nine others)
*
William James: Writings 1902-1910, (1987).
Library of America, 1379 p., ISBN 0-940450-38-0
::The Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, The Meaning of Truth, Some Problems of Philosophy, Essays
*
The Writings of William James: A Comprehensive Edition, (1978). University of Chicago Press, 912 p., ISBN 0-226-39188-4
::Pragmatism, Essays in Radical Empiricism, and A Pluralistic Universe complete; plus selections from other works
*In 1975, Harvard University Press began publication of a standard edition of
The Works of William James.
*
http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/amherst/ma95.html James Family Papers and Sermons at
Amherst College Archives
Secondary works
*
Jacques Barzun.
A Stroll with William James (1983). University Of Chicago Press 2002: ISBN 0-226-03869-6
*Gerald E. Myers.
William James: His Life and Thought (1986). Yale University Press 2001 paperback: ISBN 0-300-08917-1. focuses on his psychology, includes 230 pages of notes.
*
Louis Menand.
The Metaphysical Club (2001). Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, ISBN 0-374-52849-7. analyzes the lives and relationship between James, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles Sanders Pierce, and
John Dewey.
*Wesley Cooper.
The Unity of William James's Thought (2002). Vanderbilt University Press, ISBN 0-8265-1387-5
*
Deborah Blum.
Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (2006). Penguin Press, ISBN 1-59420-090-4
*Robert D. Richardson.
William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism (2006). Houghton Mifflin, ISBN 0-618-43325-2
See also
*
The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life *
Psychology of religion External links
Wikisource
*
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/james.html Emory University: William James – major collection of essays and works online
*
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/james/ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: William James*
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jbiblio.html William James biblliography at
Emory University, URL accessed
August 12,
2006*
http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/jgreatmen.html Great Men and the Environment: William James*"
http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/Mind/James.html Biological Consciousness and the Experience of the Transcendent: William James and American Functional Psychology"
*
http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-19950301-000029.html "Oh Those Fabulous James Boys!" article from
Psychology Today March/April 1995
*
http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=540 James' gravesite*
http://williamjamesstudies.press.uiuc.edu/streams.html "Streams of William James", a publication of the William James Society*
http://james.pragmatism.org/ William James Society*
http://williamjamesstudies.press.uiuc.edu/ William James Studies*
http://home.wxs.nl/~brouw724/James.html William James on the Mystical Site www.mysticism.nl*
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6477241 A short interview with Robert D. Richardson, author of the biography
William James: In the Maelstrom of American ModernismFull texts of James's works
* gutenberg author| id=William+James+(1842-1910) | name=William
*
http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/ The Principles of Psychology*
http://spartan.ac.brocku.ca/~lward/James/James_1912/James_1912_toc.html Essays in Radical Empiricism *
http://www.philosophyarchive.com/text.php?era=1800-1899&author=William%20James&text=The%20Will%20to%20Believe The Will to Believe*
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/WJAMES/toc.html The Varieties of Religious Experience*
http://www.constitution.org/wj/meow.htm The Moral Equivalent of War*
http://des.emory.edu/mfp/ttpreface.html Talks to Teachers*
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/nitrous/nitrous_article1.shtml The Subjective Effects of Nitrous OxideJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, WilliamJames, Williambn:উইলিয়াম জেম্সbg:Уилям Джеймсda:William Jamesde:William Jameses:William Jamesfr:William Jameshr:William Jamesis:William Jamesit:William Jameshe:ויליאם ג'יימסlt:Viljamas Džeimsasnl:William Jamesja:ウィリアム・ジェームズno:William Jamespl:William Jamespt:William Jamesru:Джемс, Уильямsk:William Jamesfi:William Jamessv:William Jamestr:William Jamesur:ولیم جیمزzh:威廉·詹姆士