Talk:William James/Archive 1

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Contents

"References" section

As I understood it, "References" was a place to list material we use in constructing an article, and as such shouldn't require comment about quality, though it might be apt to icnlude comments about what material was referenced; "Further reading" is the usual Wikipedia convention for additional materials reccomeded to the reader with comments about particular areas of importance. -- कुक्कुरोवाच|Talk‽ 16:06, 21 Jun 2004 (UTC)

truth

i have some issues with the following:

Pragmatism as a view of the meaning of truth is considered obsolete in contemporary philosophy, because the predominant trend of thinking in the years since James' death (1910) has been toward non-epistemic definitions of truth, i.e. definitions that don't make truth dependent upon the warrant of a belief. A contemporary philosopher or logician will often be found explaining that the statement "the book is on the table" is true if and only if the book is on the table.

imo, to equate logical positivism with contemporary philosophy and contend that pragmatism is considered "obsolete" seems to clearly violate the npov policy. Positivism had its hey-day, but is no longer the dominant trend in philosophical thought by any means. I kind of think the paragraph should just be eliminated, but this certainly seems like something that should be discussed first. otherwise, if no discussion ensues in a couple of days, i'll edit it as i see fit. Heah 18:56, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I wrote this graf. Sorry that I haven't risen to its defense in a more timely fashion. I'll get back to you soon and make the case for restoring it. --Christofurio 14:47, May 31, 2005 (UTC)

Okay. Here goes. I've restored the passage in question, because it is a noteworthy fact, and not an expression of point of view. To say that film cameras are "considered obsolete" by 21st century digital photographers wouldn't be a POV either, after all, just a fact. "This is too bad because film has its advantages" would be a POV! So would, "and good riddance to that icky chemical stuff anyway!" be a POV. Noting the fact that a general consensus has developed defining terms and questions differently in philosophy is like noting the fact of the rise of digital tech. I don't say "too bad" or "hurrah" either. --Christofurio 23:19, Jun 4, 2005 (UTC)

hmm . . . but still, my problem is that you seem to be equating logical positivism and contemporary philosophy. i don't think that the "general concensus" among philosophers would be to define truth along the lines of "snow is white if and only if snow is white". in the last two decades, this version of "truth" has also become obsolete. it is no longer the premeir way of thinking taught in universities (or at least american universities)- or at least, it has been fading over the last two decades, and interest in hegel, heideger, plato, pragmatism, et al has been rekindling. i don't think you'd find all that many philosophers actually subscribing to this form of truth.
some concensus can surely be reached though- noting that pragmatist theories of truth quickly gave way to logical positivism is surely worth a mention, but if so it should probably also be noted that the "if and only if" definition of truth is no longer so prominent as it once was.
--Heah (talk) 15:50, 5 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I want to echo Heah's objection here. I think it is important to point out that some important contemporary critics of the the analytic philosophy tradition exhibit, in some sense, a pragmatic conception of truth--big examples are Richard Rorty and Jürgen Habermas. Arguably Thomas Kuhn and the later John Rawls also have latent commitments to a pragmatist epistemology.
--68.36.87.27 13:53, 29 August 2005 (UTC)
ASAIK, what folks like Rorty are doing is reviving pragmatism as a theory of knowledge, or what is nowadays called warrant. That's consistent with the non-epistemic account of truth that is now dominant. --Christofurio 16:04, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree with this objection to the epistemology/cash value section, although I think it is an understatement. When you talk about a philosopher, you speak of their ideas in the terms of that philosopher. This article comes right out calling James’ epistemology obsolete and then goes on to talk about his ideas in the past tense, as if they have no credible value in modern times. It wouldn’t matter if every living philosopher was a positivist and rejected pragmatism, that wouldn’t justify this kind of write-up in an encyclopedia. Further, that’s not how philosophy is done. Nobody accepts Platonism today but courses on the subject don’t come out and wave a hand at it, they study Plato on Plato’s terms. First, this treatment is unacceptable in that it relies on anachronistic thinking. Second, this is not supposed to be an ‘essay’ relating James’ pragmatism to positivism. Last, it is supposed to be about the philosophy of James, hence people reading it would like to know about just that, not what contemporary philosophers think about subjects as broad as epistemology and truth. However, this article is more bent towards criticizing James’ philosophy than explaining it. While it is by no means necessary to talk about contemporary ideas when discussing someone’s philosophy, if you feel the need to, simply make a mention of it and do not base an entire section around it. Tuk 17:06, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Positivism does not equal pragmatism. The line from Peirce to James to Popper is clear enough (I omit Dewey, since Popper does). Pragmatism in its current form is rational empiricism, which stands between defunct positivism and its opposite, critical theory/social constructivism. A workable, humanistic philosophy, suitable for our modern (or postmodern) problems.Vendrov 07:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

James and parapsychology

This paragraph has been moved here from the article:

William James was interested in Parapsychology. Parapsychology is the study of the evidence involving phenomena where a person seems to affect or to gain information about something through a means not currently explainable within the framework of mainstream, conventional science. Proponents of the existence of these phenomena usually consider them to be a product of unexplained mental abilities.

The term parapsychology did not exist in James' day. He may have been innterested in the concept, but the editor who made the addition provided no reference to any of James writing on the subject. When adding substantive new material, please supply a reference similar to the ones in each of the other subjects covered in the article. --Blainster 20:21, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

He did have a strong interest in "psychical research", to the point of writing a fairly hefty volume on the subject. I think it would be a good item to add here, since it was kind of his "third field" (after psychology and philosophy). If nobody beats me to it, I'll add such a section when I'm done reading his Psychical Research. --M.C. ArZeCh 08:02, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

"Cash Value of Religion" section

I find the way this section is ended highly problematic. Why is the last sentence enclosed in {brackets}? Furthermore, it's completely unsupported. A reference to where James actually said this would make it relevant, but it looks and sounds like someone is putting in their own inference.

Also Most formatting conventions I'm familiar with say that ellipsis-preceded phrase would do better in its own paragraph, instead of being tacked on to the quote. --M.C. ArZeCh 04:09, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

You know, I went back to make the modification, and I don't see anything besides the quote that actually belongs there. I'm removing everything but the quote until someone can bring in some real references, because most of it sounds like someone's private interpretation. Whoever put it there or wants it there, tell us where James actually says these things. --M.C. ArZeCh 04:15, 25 December 2005 (UTC)

Cash Value of Religion

<Comment on the following phrase in Cash Value—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.>

From William James Pragmatism 1981; ISBN 0915145057; p. 63.

The only way to get forward with our notion {God is One} is to treat it pragmatically. Granting the Oneness to exist, what facts will be different in consequence? What will the unity be known as? The world is One—yes, but how one? What is the practical cash value of the oneness for us?
{The practical cash value of positing "oneness" is that your 'world view' is that of an infinite organically interdependence organism (i.e. G-D) and you know you can't harm any one part without eventually harming yourself or your progeny.} For curley brackets kindly see Note 1.

Yesselman 21:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

William James' Bear

<From William James—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].


From Daniel M. Wegner's The Illusion of Conscious Will; 2002; 0262232227 p.54—James' Bear and Free Will:

The conclusion suggested by this research is that the experience of conscious will kicks in at some point after the brain has already started preparing for the action. Libet sums up these observations by saying that "the initiation of the voluntary act appears to be an unconscious cerebral process. Clearly, free will or free choice of whether to act now could not be the initiating agent, contrary to one widely held view. This is of course also contrary to each individual's own introspective feeling that he/she consciously initiates such voluntary acts; this provides an important empirical example of the possibility that the subjective experience of a mental causality need not necessarily reflect the actual causative relationship between mental and brain events" (Libet 1992, 269).

Yesselman 21:44, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Functionalism?

I don't know enough about the topic to edit the page, but the word 'functionalism' doesn't appear even once. I noticed that the entry on functionalism itself is very sparse, and doesn't mention any proponents such as James. Is this something which should be expanded upon? A google search for "william james" functionalism suggests that maybe it should.

Jmacaulay 18:23, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

Ethics of Belief

There's a great thought experiment that I believe is credited to William James that likens a persons acceptance of a belief to a ship captain's use of a ship wherein the quality of the ship corresponds to the quality of the potential belief.

I'm not sure where he's written this, and I'm also not sure if it's important enough to include on this page. However, I am sure that I am too lazy to add this to the page and I am sure that there is someone out there more qualified than myself for writing it.

130.243.74.84 15:35, 20 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe you're referring to a passage that the English mathematician and positivist philosopher W.K. Clifford wrote, in his essay The Ethics of Belief, which James criticized in The Will to Believe.
Clifford wrote that a shipowner who stifled his doubts about the worthiness of his vessel as a matter of 'faith' would be negligent, and would bear responsibility if its passengers drowned because he failed to pursue those doubts and investigate the hull. --Christofurio 13:41, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
While I would like to see James' position refuted, I think he may have safeguarded against this particular criticism in The Will to Believe by stating that it only worked with dilemnas which were 'genuine', 'forced', 'living', or 'momentous'. In other words, I think any sea captain worth his salt would find stifling doubts or negligence here not be of an unforced or non-momentous or living kind. Then again, maybe not, but, remember what Plato said, a sea captain ought to do what sea captains do. --Teetotaler

Google Tech Talk

William James was featured in a Google Tech Talk by Alan Wallace, Toward the First Revolution in the Mind Sciences, held on August 8, 2006, and available in video at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=983112177262602885&q=alan+wallace ; I have no idea if this is relevant for the external link section, so I just leave the note here. Hope that's ok. --LA2 21:48, 18 August 2006 (UTC)


Personal Life

There is mention of William James' parents, but no mention of whether he was ever married or had any children. Does anyone know? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.224.217.114 (talk • contribs) 08:25, September 24, 2006 (UTC)

James married Alice Howe Gibbons on July 10, 1878. They had four sons and a daughter. --Blainster 21:18, 25 September 2006 (UTC)

Criticism section needed

I noticed there is no criticism section in this article whereas in the article on Hilary Putnam there is a fairly extensive criticism section. In particular, Bertrand Russell linked James' philosophy with 20th century fascism (check "The Ancestry of Fascism"). I will add something if there is no objection. --Teetotaler 00:48, April 14, 2007

Your entry referred to the specific article "The Will to Believe", so I moved it there. --Blainster 23:19, 14 April 2007 (UTC)


Radical Empiricism

Can anyone cite support for the description of radical empiricism in the 'Epistemology' section? I have to have read Essays on Radical Empiricism a half dozen times, and either I really missed something, or this description sounds nothing like what James refered to with the term.

Although this section may be mixing things up a little, it should be clear from this how far pragmatism really is from positivism, where truth was (incorrectly) thought to be abstract and axiomatic. James's radical empiricism is now Popper's rational empiricism: "We search for truth, but what we find is fact, without certainty." Vendrov 08:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Anybody want to defend this passage?

"James was not trained as a philosopher, but rather as a psychologist, at the time when the two disciplines were only beginning to separate themselves. He was in fact one of the first laboratory psychologists in America, though he was also skeptical of the ultimate value of laboratories for understanding the human mind."

His formal training was as a medical doctor. He TAUGHT psychology, and made his first mark there with his famous textbook in the field, before he became known as a philosopher. I don't know what is meant by his skepticism about the "ultimate value of laboratories" here.

What he meant was the characteristics of the human mind are investigated by the subjective technique of personal report, rather than objective experiment as in the physical sciences. Since James's day many objective tools and techniques have been introduced for neurological (brain) study, but the neural correlates of consciousness have not yet been discovered over a century later. --Blainster 03:08, 30 May 2005 (UTC)
Let me add to this. James relied on introspection as an investigative technique, but also developed psychometric tools, and wrote a paper "Are We Automata?" that pre-dated modern cognitive science by 80 or so years. We today are little closer to understanding consciousness than was James, who well understood the meaning of the neural substrate (e.g., Broca's area). James's introspection a la yoga may yet again become a valid subject and means of study. James was the father of experimental psychology. He foresaw well enough, in broad strokes, all that has come since. This article does not nearly do justice to his contribution.Vendrov 07:39, 18 June 2007 (UTC)


I'm not sure to what extent James "foresaw" developments in experimental psych, but it is probably true that he deserves more credit in this article for being a pioneer, to put it mildly. There is some reason to believe that he established the first psychology laboratory, for example (though Europeans tend to question this, in a good-hearted way, as Tichener and others were at about the same time devising their labs). James might also be mentioned as one of the last (and best) thinkers to draw on both philosophy and (the new discipline of) psychology. His Introspective experiments were in many ways an outgrowth of his training in philosophy, and a nod towards the directions that the empirical science of mind would take. It is probably not an exageration to call him, as you suggest, the Father of Experimental Psychology, certainly in America. C d h (talk) 03:27, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Nitrous Oxide

Loook Ive done nitrous oxide and Idon't understand Hegel. Mc2000 (talk) 03:20, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

External Links

Is there any Wiki policy on the order in which external links are entered? An anonymous user has been altering the order in which links appear in the External Links section, so that now the "William James Cybrary" (and some affiliated websites) are at the top of the list. Now, as far as I can tell these sites are appropriate external links. It is not clear to me why they should (or should not) be at the top of the (long) list of external links. But it is clear to me that whichever sites are listed first will benefit from additional traffic. Any ideas? ChristopherHoney (talk) 18:26, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

Not sure if there is a policy besides neutrality generally, could be. I'm a fan of alphabetizing as a way of neutralizing. - Owlmonkey (talk) 01:00, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

Attempted Suicide

In the "Early Years" section the article states:

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, and even attempted suicide.

Although James certainly struggled with depression, I know of no evidence of him having attempted suicide. According to Robert Richardson's biography of James ("WJ: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism", Houghton Mifflin, 2006), James did contemplate suicide. But this is a different thing from attempting suicide. Does anyone know of the event to which the text refers? If not, I think we should change it from attempted suicide to something more like "the contemplation of suicide". 74.130.1.162 (talk) 17:10, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

You should be bold and change it. -- Craigtalbert (talk) 04:10, 6 January 2008 (UTC)
Gave it a shot ... ChristopherHoney (talk) 06:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)