Philosopher and psychologist, born in New York City, New York, USA, the brother of Henry James. After a broad education in Europe and a brief try at becoming an artist, he completed Harvard Medical School (1869). Plagued by ailments and depression, he never practised, but did recover his energies, partly by placing faith in free will. He joined the Harvard faculty (1872), teaching physiology, then psychology. He established America's first psychology laboratory and took 12 years to complete his massive Principles of Psychology (1890), which evocatively described mental and physical processes while summing up the current state of psychology and introducing new theories. As a philosophy professor (from 1880) he sought to reconcile his empiricism with religious faith, largely by a pragmatic theory that made the truth of beliefs depend on their consequences. He made a respectful study of psychological aspects of religion in lectures published as Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), and developed his theory of reality as pure experience in articles (19045) published posthumously as Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912). His vivid style, broad sympathies, and concern for basic issues have kept him a central figure in American thought.
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Western Philosophy and Psychology 19th/20th century philosophy |
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| Name: | William James |
| Birth: | January 11, 1842 |
| Death: | August 26, 1910 |
| School/tradition: | Pragmatism |
| Main interests: | Pragmatism, Psychology, Psychology of Religion, Epistemology, Meaning |
| Notable ideas: | The Will to Believe Doctrine, the pragmatic theory of truth, radical empiricism, James-Lange theory of emotion |
| Influences: | C.S. Schiller,Henri Bergson, Hilary Putnam, Richard Rorty |
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.
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 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.
James switched to medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864.
James's time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, finding his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology.
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.
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.
Among James's students at Harvard were such luminaries as George Santayana, W.E.B.
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.
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. (See below for a list of his major writings and additional collections)
He gained widespread recognition with his monumental Principles of Psychology (1890), fourteen hundred pages in two volumes which took ten years to complete.
Epistemology
James defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer.
James' assertion that the value of a truth depends upon its use to the individual who holds it is known as pragmatism. 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.
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 was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their "Cash Value" was, what consequences they led to. 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.
Will to Believe Doctrine
Philosophy of religion
James did important work in philosophy of religion. 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. James has been a significant influence for the New Age and Human Potential movements of the 1960s and 1970s.
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.
This way of thinking about emotion has great consequences for the philosophy of aesthetics.
[W]e 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.
William James' bear
From Joseph LeDoux's description of William James' Emotion
Why do we run away if we notice that we are in danger? It all began in 1884 when William James published an article titled "What Is an Emotion?" It was important, not because it definitively answered the question it raised, but because of the way in which James phrased his response. 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? 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. 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. 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;Philosophy of history
One of the long-standing schisms in the philosophy of history concerns the role of individuals in producing 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. In 1880, James waded into this controversy with "Great Men and Their Environment," an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly.
"Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness," James wrote.
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