William James

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William James (January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist, and the first educator to offer psychology courses in the United States. James was one of the leading thinkers of the late nineteenth century and is believed by many to be one of the most influential philosophers ever produced by the United States, while others have labeled him "the father of American psychology".

Along with Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, James is considered one of the major figures associated with the school of philosophy known as pragmatism, and is also referred to as one of the founders of functional psychology. The analysis of the General Psychology Review, published in 2002, puts James as the 14th leading psychologist of the 20th century. A survey published in the American Psychologist in 1991 put James's reputation in second place, after Wilhelm Wundt, widely regarded as the founder of experimental psychology. James also developed a philosophical perspective known as radical empiricism. James's work has influenced intellectuals such as Durkheim, W. E. B. Du Bois, Edmund Husserl, Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, and even influenced the President, like Jimmy Carter.

Born to a wealthy family, James is the son of Swedish theorist Henry James Sr. and brother of renowned novelist Henry James and author of diary Alice James. James was originally trained as a doctor but never practiced medicine. Instead, he found his true interest lies in philosophy and psychology. James writes many topics, including epistemology, education, metaphysics, psychology, religion, and mysticism. Among his most influential books is the The Principles of Psychology , which is an innovative text in the field of psychology; Essays in Radical Empiricism , an important text in philosophy; and The Varieties of Religious Experience , which investigates various forms of religious experience, including theories of mind healing.

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William James was born at Astor House in New York City in 1842. He was the son of Henry James Sr., a well-known and independent theologian of Swedenborpora, well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elite of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family environment and the remarkable epistle talents of some of its members has made them a subject that continues to appeal to historians, biographers, and critics.

William James received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in German and French. James's home education encourages cosmopolitanism. The family made two trips to Europe while William James was a child, setting patterns that produced thirteen European travels during his lifetime. Artistic persistence initially led to an apprenticeship at William Morris Hunt's studio in Newport, Rhode Island, but he switched in 1861 to a scientific study at the Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University.

In early adulthood, James suffered various physical ailments, including the eyes, back, abdomen, and skin. He also tone deaf. He experienced various psychological symptoms diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and which included a period of depression in which he contemplated suicide for months. Two younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War. The other three brothers (William, Henry, and Alice James) all suffered from an unauthorized period.

He took medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864 (according to his brother, Henry James, author). He rested in the spring of 1865 to join naturalist Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition on the Amazon River, but canceled his journey after eight months, as he suffered from severe seasickness and smallpox. His studies were interrupted once again by illness in April 1867. He went to Germany to seek medicine and remained there until November 1868; at that time he was 26 years old. During this period, he began publishing; his review of his works appeared in literary magazines such as North American Review .

James finally earned his M.D. in June 1869 but he never practiced medicine. What he called "mental illness" would only be solved in 1872, after a long period of philosophical quest. He married Alice Gibbens in 1878. In 1882 he joined the Theosophical Society.

James's time in Germany proved to be fertile intellectually, helping him discover that his true interests lie not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Then, in 1902 he would write: "Initially I studied medicine to become a physiologist, but I drifted into the psychology and philosophy of a kind of death.I never had a philosophical teaching, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard as the first ever I give ".

In 1875-1876, James, Henry Pickering Bowditch (1840-1911), Charles Pickering Putnam (1844-1914), and James Jackson Putnam (1846-1918) founded Putnam Camp in St. Louis. Huberts, Essex County, New York.

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Careers

James interacted with diverse writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godmother Ralph Waldo Emerson, his godson, William James Sidis, and Charles Sanders Peirce, Bertrand Russell, Josiah Royce, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, Macedonio FernÃÆ'¡ndez, Walter Lippmann, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., G. Stanley Hall, Henri Bergson and Sigmund Freud.

James spent most of his academic career at Harvard. He was appointed as an instructor in physiology for the spring term of 1873, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, awarded a chair in psychology in 1889 , returned to philosophy in 1897, and professor of emeritus philosophy in 1907.

James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began teaching in those subjects, but was interested in the scientific study of the human mind when psychology was himself a science. James's introduction to works by figures such as Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated the introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University. He taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard in the academic year 1875-1876.

During the Harvard years, James joined in philosophical discussions and argued with Charles Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Chauncey Wright who evolved into an informal group known as The Metaphysical Club in 1872. Louis Menand (2001) stated that the Club this provides the foundation for American intellectual thought over the next few decades. James joined the Anti-Imperialist League in 1898, contrary to the United States annexation in the Philippines.

Among James's students at Harvard University are the likes of Boris Sidis, Theodore Roosevelt, George Santayana, WEB Du Bois, G. Stanley Hall, Ralph Barton Perry, Gertrude Stein, Horace Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, Walter Lippmann, Alain Locke, CI Lewis, and Mary Whiton Calkins. The ancient author, Gabriel Wells, taught at Harvard in the late 1890s.

After January 1907 retiring from Harvard, James continues to write and lecture, publish Pragmatism , Pluralistic Universe , and The Meaning of Truth . James had been suffering from heart disease during his last years. This worsened in 1909 when he worked on a text of philosophy (unfinished, but posthumously published as a Some Problems in Philosophy ). He sailed to Europe in the spring of 1910 to take experimental treatment that proved unsuccessful, and returned home on 18 August. Her heart failed on August 26, 1910 at her home in Chocorua, New Hampshire. She is buried in a family plot in Cambridge Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

He is one of the strongest supporters of the school of functionalism in psychology and pragmatism in philosophy. He is the founder of the American Society for Psychical Research, as well as a hero of alternative approaches to healing. He challenges his professional counterparts not to let a narrow mindset prevent honest judgment from that belief.

In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al. using six criteria such as quotations and confessions, James was found to be the 14th leading psychologist of the 20th century.

Family

William James is the son of Henry James (Senior) from Albany, and Mary Robertson Walsh. He has four brothers: Henry (novelist), Garth Wilkinson, Robertson, and Alice. William was engaged to Alice Howe Gibbens on May 10, 1878; they got married on July 10th. They have five children: Henry (born May 18, 1878), Herman (born 1884, died in infancy), Margaret (born March, 1887) and Alexander (artist).

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William James wrote very much throughout his life. The incomplete bibliography of his writings, composed by John McDermott, has a length of 47 pages.

He gained wide recognition with his monumental The Principles of Psychology (1890), for a total of twelve hundred pages in two volumes, which took twelve years to complete. Psychology: The Briefer Course , is an 1892 alignment designed as a less rigorous introduction in the field. These works criticized the British association school and Hegelianism in its day as dogmatism that competed with the small value of explanation, and tried to bring back the human mind as something inherently purposive and selective.

The True War of President of Jimmy Carter, on April 17, 1977, equaled the United States energy crisis of the 1970s, the oil crisis and the changes and sacrifices proposed by Carter's plan would be required with "moral equality of war," may have borrowed his title, many themes and a memorable phrase from James's classic essay "The Moral Equivalent of War" comes from his last speech, presented at Stanford University in 1906, and published in 1910, where "James considers one of the classical political problems: how to maintain political unity and civil virtue in the absence of war or credible threats.... "and the"... sounding call for service for the benefit of individuals and nation. "

Epistemology

James defines true belief as a useful belief for believers. The theory of its pragmatic truth is the synthesis of the theory of truth correspondence and the theory of truth coherence, with additional dimensions. Truth can be proven as far as thought and statements fit the actual things, as well as the extent to which they "hang together," or coalesce, as pieces of the puzzle may fit together; this in turn is verified by the observed results of the application of ideas to actual practice.

"The most ancient parts of truth... have also become plastics, they are also called true for human reason, they also mediate between the previously existing truths and what at that time were new observations, pure truth objectively, the truth in in forming the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying the previous part of experience with the newer parts playing no role, can not be found.The reason why we call the right things is the reason why they are right, because 'true' only means do this marriage function, "he wrote.

"Something short of God is irrational, there is nothing more than an impossible God" he wrote.

He writes, "First, it is important that God be conceived as the innermost force in the universe, and secondly, he must be conceived under a form of mental personality."

He also writes, "A God who can enjoy such an excess of horror is not a god to man to plead... In other words," Absolute "with one purpose, is not a human-like God."

James holds the worldview in line with pragmatism, stating that the value of any truth really depends on its use for the person holding it. The additional teaching of James's pragmatism includes the view that the world is a mosaic of experiences that can only be interpreted and understood well through the application of "radical empiricism." Radical empiricism, unrelated to everyday scientific empiricism, insists that the world and experience can never be stopped for a wholly objective analysis; observer's thoughts and observational actions affect the empirical approach to truth. The mind, experience, and nature can not be separated. James's emphasis on diversity as a condition of human standards - above and against duality, especially the Hegelian dialectical duality - has maintained a powerful influence in American culture. James's description of the world-mind connection, which he describes in the form of "stream of consciousness," has a direct and significant impact on avant-garde and modernist literature and art, particularly in the case of James Joyce.

In Pragmatism Means , James writes that the central point of his own truth doctrine is, in a nutshell, that "Truth comes from facts, but they dip into more facts and add to them; or revealing new truths (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely.'The facts themselves are temporarily untrue.they are, Truth is a function of the belief that begins and ends between them. "Richard Rorty makes a controversial claim that James did not intend to give the theory of truth with this statement and that we should not take it that way. However, other pragmatic scholars like Susan Haack and Howard Mounce did not share Rorty's instrumentalist interpretation of James.

In The Meaning of Truth, James seems to speak of truth in relativistic terms: "Criticism [sc., Criticism of pragmatism] problematic... seems to come from him taking the word 'true' irrelevant, while pragmatic always means 'true to him who has a job.' "However, James responds to critics who accuse him of relativism, skepticism or agnosticism, and only believes in relative truth. Rather, it supports the position of epistemological realism.

Pragmatism and "cash value"

Pragmatism is a philosophical approach that states that the truth or the meaning of the statement must be measured by its practical consequences.

From William James's introduction to Pragmatism by Bruce Kuklick, p. xiv.

James goes on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He will look for the 'right' meaning by examining how the idea works in our lives. Faith is true, he says, if it works for all of us, and guides us quickly through our unfriendly world. James is eager to know what true belief in human life, what their "cash value" is, and what consequences it causes. Belief is not a mental entity that is mysteriously related to external reality if it is true. Confidence is a way of acting by referring to a precarious environment, and to say they are right is to say they are efficacious in this environment. In this sense pragmatic truth theory applies Darwin's ideas in philosophy; it makes persistent tests of intellectual and biological intelligence.

James's lecture on Pragmatism is arguably the most influential book in American Philosophy. The lecture inside describes his position on the subject. In his sixth lecture he began by defining truth as "deal with reality". With this, James cautioned that there would be a dispute between pragmatics and intellectuals over the concepts of "agreement" and "reality", the last reason before thought resides and becomes autonomous for us. However, he compares this by supporting a more practical interpretation that: the correct idea or belief is that we can unite with our thinking so that it can be justified through experience.

If theological ideas are proved to have value for concrete life, they will be right, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for many things. For how much they are right, it will depend entirely on their relationship with other truths that must also be acknowledged.

James has three dimensions that "reality" must agree with the truth: "(1) the matter of fact, (2) the relationship of ideas, and (3) the whole set of other truths we do" (James). To say that this truth "agrees" with "reality" pragmatically means that they lead us to fruitful results.

According to William James's pragmatic approach to belief, knowledge is generally seen as a justified and true belief. James will accept the view if the conception of truth is analyzed and justified through interpretation, pragmatically. In fact, James's entire philosophy is a productive belief.

"All [questions] must end in confidence or unbelief or doubt, unbelief is only a negative belief, and doubt is the exact opposite of both.

Believing in anything includes understanding how it is real, but distrust is the result when we ignore something because it goes against the other things we perceive to be real. In his "Rationality Sentiment", saying that the important beliefs are unknown is to doubt their truth, even if it seems possible. James calls four "postulates of rationality" as valuable but unknowable: God, immorality, freedom, and moral obligation.

On the contrary, the weak side of pragmatism is that the best justification for claims is whether it works. However, claims that have no results can not be justified, or can not be justified, because it will not make a difference.

There is no difference that makes no difference.

Will trust the doctrine

In William James's 1896 lecture entitled "The Will to Believe", James defended the right to violate the principle of evidentialism in order to justify the adventure hypothesis. This idea predicts 20th century objections to evidentialism and seeks to justify justified beliefs in a firm principle that will prove more fruitful. Through his philosophy of pragmatism, William James justified his religious beliefs by using the results of his hypothetical efforts as evidence to support the truth of the hypothesis. Therefore, this doctrine enables one to trust the god and prove his existence with what one believes in one's life.

This was criticized by supporters of skeptical rationalism, such as Bertrand Russell in Free Thought and Official Propaganda and Alfred Henry Lloyd with The Will to Doubt. Both argue that one must always comply with fallibilism, acknowledging all human knowledge that "None of our true beliefs has all had at least a penumbra of ambiguity and error," and that the only way to get closer to the truth is to never assume certainty, but always check all parties and try to reach the conclusion objectively.

Free will

In his search for truth and the principles of psychology, William James developed his two-stage free will model. In his model, he tries to explain how people make decisions and what factors are involved. He first defines our basic ability to choose as free will. Then he defined our two factors as opportunities and choices. "James's two-stage model effectively separates the chances (independent, independent elements) of choice (a definite decision that follows causally from character, values, and especially one's feelings and desires at the moment of decision)."

Opportunities are, as said before, the "free element" is part of a model we can not control, a wild horse if you will. James said that in the order of the model, coincidentally came before the choice. At the moment our decision is given the opportunity to make a decision and then the choice is what we do (or do not do) about the decision.

When it comes to choice, James says we make choices based on different experiences. It comes from our past experience, the observation of others or as James himself says. "The inventory of ideas from movements that [...] left behind in memory by their unintentional performance experiences is the first precondition of voluntary life." What James explains is that once you have made a decision in the past, that experience dumped into your memory where it can be used as a reference the next time a decision has to be made. And will be withdrawn from as a positive solution. But in the development of the design, James also struggled with being able to prove that free will is actually free or predetermined.

One can make judgments about repentance, moral approval and moral disapproval, and if it does not exist, then that means our will is predetermined. An example of this is "James says the problem is a very" personal "matter and that he can not personally understand the universe as the place where murder should happen." Basically, if there is no regret or judgment then all bad things will not be considered bad, just as predetermined because there is no "good" and "bad" choice. "The free will option is pragmatically more correct because it better accommodates the judgment of regret and morality." Altogether, James uses this line of reasoning to prove that our will is completely free: because of our code of morality, and an acceptable alternative universe in which a decision is considered to be different from the one we choose.

In The Will to Believe , James simply asserts that his will is free. As his first act of freedom, he said, he chose to believe that his will was free. He was encouraged to do this by reading Charles Renouvier, whose work convinced James to move from monism to pluralism. In his diary on April 30, 1870, James wrote,

I think yesterday was a crisis in my life. I completed the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and saw no reason why the definition of his free will - "keeping my mind because I chose when I might have other thoughts" - needs to be an illusion definition. Anyhow, I'll assume for now - until next year - that it's not an illusion. My first act of free will is to believe in free will.

In 1884 James set the term for all discussions about determinism and compatibilism in the future will argue with his lecture to students of Harvard Divinity School published as "Dilemma of Determinism." In this discussion he defines the general terms "hard determinism" and "soft determinism" (now more commonly called "compatibilism").

Ancient determinism is what we call hard determinism. It does not shrink from words like death, the shackles of desire, necessity, and the like. Nowadays, we have a gentle determinism that hates harsh words, and, denying death, necessity, and even fate, says that his real name is freedom; for freedom only needs to be understood, and slavery to the highest is identical with true freedom.

James calls compatibilism a "contestation of evasion", just as Thomas Hobbes and David Hume - that free will is only freedom from external coercion - is called "mind" by Immanuel Kant.

James describes opportunities as both hard and soft determinism, but "indeterminism". He says

The faction of the determinist argument is an antipathy to the idea of ​​coincidence... The idea of ​​this alternative possibility, the recognition that one of several things may happen is, after all, just a roundabout name for coincidence.

James asked the students to consider his choice to walk home from Lowell Lecture Hall after his lecture.

What does it mean to say that my choice of where to go home after the lecture was ambiguous and accidental?... This means that Divinity Avenue and Oxford Street are called but only one, and one only, will be elected.

With this simple example, James lays a two-stage decision process with random alternate present opportunities, leading to the choice of one possibility that turns the ambiguous future into an irreversible past. James's two-stage model separates the opportunity (the possible undetermined alternative) of choice (individual free action, where randomness does not matter). The next thinkers using this model include Henri Poincarà ©, Arthur Holly Compton, and Karl Popper.

Religious philosophy

James did an important job in religious philosophy. In his Gifford Lecture at the University of Edinburgh he gave extensive reports on The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and interpreted them according to his pragmatic tendencies. Some important claims he made in this regard:

• Religious genius (experience) should be the main topic in religious studies, not religious institutions - because institutions are only the social offspring of genius.
• An intense, even pathological (religious or other) kind of experience must be sought by psychologists, as they represent the thing closest to the mind microscope - that is, they show us in a form that drastically magnified the normal process of things.
• To be able to interpret meaningfully the sphere of shared experience and history, each of us must make "exaggerated beliefs" in things that, though can not be proven by experience, help us to live better and better. life.
• Mysticism Religion is only half mysticism, the other half consists of madmen and both are in subliminal or transmarginal territory.

James investigated the mystical experience throughout his life, leading him to experiments with chloral hydrate (1870), amyl nitrite (1875), nitrous oxide (1882), and peyote (1896). James claims that only when he is under the influence of nitrous oxide, he is able to understand Hegel. He concludes that while the mystical revelations remain true, they apply only to mystics; for others, they are certainly ideas to consider, but can not claim the truth without such personal experience. American Philosophy: An Encyclopedia categorizes him as one of several figures who "take a more pantheistic or pandeist approach by rejecting the view of God as separate from the world."

Mysticism

William James gives a description of mystical experience, in his famous collection of lectures published in 1902 as the The Varieties of Religious Experience. These criteria are as follows

• Passivity - feeling held and held by a superior power that is not under your own control.
• Ineffectiveness - there is no adequate way to use human language to describe the experience.
• Noetic - a universal truth revealed that can not be obtained elsewhere.
• Transients - mystical experiences are only temporary experiences.

Instinct

Like Sigmund Freud, James was influenced by Charles Darwin's natural selection theory. At the core of James's psychology theory, as defined in the The Principles of Psychology (1890), is the "instinct" system. James writes that humans have many instincts, even more than other animals. This instinct, he says, can be defeated by experience and by one another, because many of the instincts are actually in conflict with each other. In 1920, however, psychology turned away from the theory of evolution and embraced radical behaviorism.

Emotion Theory

James is one of the two names of James-Lange's emotional theory, which he formally independently of Carl Lange in the 1880s. The theory argues that emotion is the perception of the mind to the physiological conditions resulting from some stimulus. In the example often quoted by James, it does not mean we see bears, fear, and flee; we see bears and run; consequently, we are afraid of bears. The perception of our thoughts about adrenaline levels, heart rate, etc. is higher is emotion.

This way of thinking about emotions has major consequences for aesthetic philosophy and philosophy and practice of education. This is part of his great work, The Principles of Psychology, detailing the consequences:

[W] e should immediately emphasize that the aesthetic, pure and simple emotions, the pleasure given us by certain lines and masses, and combinations of colors and sounds, are truly sensational experiences, primary optical or auricular feelings, and not due to the backward reaction from other sensations elsewhere in a row is aroused. For this simple and immediate pleasure in a purely certain sensation and harmonious combination of it, perhaps, it is true, added secondary pleasure; and in the practical pleasures of art by the masses of mankind, this secondary pleasure plays a major role. The more classic taste is, however, the less important relative is the perceived secondary pleasure, compared to the main sensation when it comes. Classicism and romance have their struggles above this point.

Emotional theories also developed themselves in Italy by Anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi,. To reward, such a theory should be called the James-Lange-Sergi emotional theory.

bear William James

From Joseph LeDoux's description of William James Emotion

Why do we run if we realize we are in danger? Because we fear what will happen if we do not do it. The obvious answer to this seemingly insignificant question has been a major concern of the old debate about our emotional nature.

It all began in 1884 when William James published an article entitled "What Is an Emotion?" The article appears in a journal of philosophy called Mind , because there is no psychological journal yet. That's important, not because it definitively answers the questions it asks, but because of the way James expresses the answer. He contains emotions in terms of sequences of events that begin with the incidence of stimulating stimuli (the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system); and end with a passionate, conscious emotional experience. The ultimate goal of emotional research is still to explain this stimulus-to-feeling sequence - to find out what processes occur between stimuli and feelings.

James set out to answer his question by asking another question: do we run away from bears because we are afraid or scared because we run away? He proposes that the clear answer, which we run because we are afraid, is wrong, and instead argues that we are afraid because we are running:

The natural way we think about... emotions is that the mental perceptions of some facts excite mental affection called emotions, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to body expression. The theory, on the contrary, is that body changes follow directly the perceptions of interesting facts, and that our feelings of the same changes when they occur are emotions (called 'feelings' by Damasio).

The essence of James's proposal is simple. It is based on the fact that emotions are often accompanied by bodily responses (racing heart, firm stomach, sweaty palms, tense muscles, etc., sympathetic nervous system) and that we can feel what is happening inside our bodies equally because we can feel what which is happening in the outside world. According to James, emotions feel different from other states of mind because they have a body response that causes internal sensations, and different emotions feel different from each other because they are accompanied by different responses and body sensations. For example, when we see James bear, we run. During this escape, the body experiences a physiological upheaval: blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, pupils dilate, palm sweat, muscles contract in a certain way (evolution, innate defense mechanisms). Other types of emotional situations will produce different bodily upheavals. In each case, the physiological response returns to the brain in the form of body sensation, and a unique sensory feedback pattern gives each emotion its unique qualities. Fear feels different from anger or love for having different physiological signs (the parasympathetic nervous system for love). The mental aspect of emotion, feeling, is a slave to his physiology, not the other way around: we do not tremble because we are afraid or weep because we feel sad; we are afraid because we are trembling and sad because we are crying.

Historical philosophy

One of the old schemes in historical philosophy concerns the role of individuals in social change.

One faction sees individuals (as seen in Dickens Story of Two Cities and Thomas Carlyle's French Revolution, A History) as the motive power of history, and the more widely as the page where they write their actions. Others see society move according to holistic principles or laws, and see individuals as more or less pawns. In 1880, James waded through this controversy with "Great People, Great Thoughts, and the Environment," an essay published in Monthly Atlantic . He took the Carlyle side, but without the one-sided emphasis of Carlyle on the political/military sphere, on the heroes as the founder or overthrow of the state and empire.

A philosopher, according to James, must accept genius as a given entity in the same way that biologists receive it as Darwin's 'spontaneous variation'. The role of an individual will depend on his level of conformity with the social environment, times, moments, etc.

James introduced the idea of ​​acceptance at the time. The movement of people from generation to generation is determined (directly or indirectly) primarily by the actions or instances of individuals whose genius is remarkably adaptable to the current acceptance or whose unintentional position of authority is so important that they become transitional, initiators of movement, precedent or fashion setter, centers of corruption, or the destruction of others, whose talents, if they have free games, will lead the people in another direction.

See about spiritualism and association

James studied carefully the school of thought known as association and spiritualism. The view of an associate is that each experience one has toward another creates a chain of events. Association does not bind two ideas, but physical objects. This relationship occurs at the atomic level. Small physical changes occur in the brain that eventually form complex ideas or associations. Thoughts are formed because these complex ideas work together and lead to new experiences. Isaac Newton and David Hartley are both predecessors of this school of thought, proposing ideas such as "physical vibrations in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves are the basis of all sensations, all ideas, and all movements..." James disagreed with the association he believed was too simple. He refers to association as "soulless psychology" because there is nothing in creating ideas; they only appear by connecting objects with each other.

On the other hand, a spiritualist believes that a mental event is associated with the soul. Whereas in association, separate ideas and behaviors, in spiritualism, they are connected. Spiritualism includes the term innatism, which shows that ideas cause behavior. Past behavior ideas affect how a person acts in the future; these ideas are all bound by the soul. Therefore, the inner soul causes one to have thought, which leads them to conduct behavior, and remembering past behavior determines how one will act in the future.

James had a strong opinion about this school of thought. He is, in essence, a pragmatist and thus takes the view that one should use whatever part of the theory is most plausible and verifiable. Therefore, he recommends breaking down spiritualism and association and using the parts of them that make the most sense. James believes that everyone has a soul, which is in the spiritual universe, and leads someone to do the behavior they do in the physical world. James was influenced by Emanuel Swedenborg, who first introduced him to this idea. James states that, although it seems humans use associations to move from one event to the next, this can not be done without this soul tying it all together. Because, once an association is created, the person decides which part should be centered, and therefore determines which direction the association will lead. Associationism is too simple because it does not take into account future behavioral decisions, and memories of what works well and what does not. Spiritualism, however, does not indicate the actual physical representation for how the association takes place. James combined the views of spiritualism and association to create his own way of thinking.

James is a founding member and vice president of the American Society for Psychical Research. Loans from his name make Leonora Piper a famous medium. In 1885, a year after the death of his young son, James first sat down with Piper at the advice of his mother-in-law. James was soon convinced that Piper knew things he could only find in supernatural ways. He expressed his belief in Piper saying, "If you want to anger the law that all crows are black, that's enough if you prove that one is a white crow." My white crow is Mrs. Piper. " However, James does not believe that Piper is in touch with spirits. After evaluating sixty-nine reports of Piper's feud, he considered the telepathic hypothesis as well as Piper to obtain information about his nurse in a natural way as he recalled his memories of information. According to James the hypothesis of "spirit-control" of the medium is incoherent, irrelevant and in cases proven wrong.

James held ances with Piper and was impressed with some details given to him; However, according to Massimo Polidoro, a maid at the home of the James family was friendly with a housekeeper at Piper's home and this was probably the source of information Piper used for personal details about James. Bibliographers Frederick Burkhardt and Fredson Bowers who composed works of James wrote, "It is thus possible that Mother Piper's knowledge of the James family is derived from the gossip of the servants and that the whole mystery lies in the failure of the people upstairs to realize that the servant [below] also have ears. "

James believes that "the future will strengthen" the existence of telepathy. Psychologists such as James McKeen Cattell and Edward B. Titchener took issue with James's support for psychic research and considered his assertion unscientific. Cattell in a letter to James wrote that "The Society for Psychic Research does a lot to hurt psychology".

Jamesian self theory

William James's theory of self divides one's mental picture of self into two categories: "I" and "I". The "Me" can be thought of as a separate object or individual person referring when describing their personal experience; while "I" is the self who knows who they are and what they have done in their lives. Both concepts are described in the statement; " I know it was me who ate the cake." He refers to the "I" part of himself as "my empirical" and the "I" part of "pure Ego". For James, the part of the self "I" is the thinking self, which can not be divided again. He attributes this part of the self to the soul of a person, or what is now regarded as the mind. Educational theorists have been inspired in various ways by James's theory of self, and have developed various applications of these theories for curricular and pedagogical theory and practice.

James further divides the "I" part into: the material self, the social self, and the spiritual self, as below.

Self material

The material self is made up of things that a person or entity possesses. So things like body, family, clothing, money, and the like form a material self. For James, the essence of the material self is the body. Second for the body, James feels someone's dress is important to the material self. He believes a person's outfit is one way they express who they feel; or clothing is a way to show status, thus contributing in shaping and maintaining one's self-image. Money and family are an important part of the material self. James feels that if someone loses a family member, the part of who they are is missing as well. The money that is in a person in the same way. If once someone has significant money, then lose it, who they are as a changed person as well.

Social self

Our social self is who we are in a particular social situation. For James, people change the way they act depending on the social situation they face. James believes that people have a lot of social when they do the social situations they follow. For example, one can act differently at work compared to how the same person can act when they come out with a group of friends. James also believes that in certain social groups, individual social self can be further divided. An example is, in the social context of the individual work environment, the difference in behavior when the individual interacts with their boss versus their behavior when interacting with colleagues.

Spiritual Self

For James, the spiritual self is who we are at our core. The spiritual self is more concrete or permanent than the other two. Identity is our subjective and intimate self. Aspects of one's spiritual self include things like their personality, core values, and consciences that usually do not change throughout their lives. The spiritual self involves introspection, or searching inward for deeper spiritual, moral, or intellectual questions without the influence of objective thinking. For James, reaching a high level of understanding about who we are at our core, or understanding our spiritual self is more useful than satisfying the social and material needs of the self.

pure ego

Pure ego is what James refers to as "I" himself. For James, pure ego is what provides the continuity thread between our past, present, and future. The pure ego's perception of a consistent individual identity emerges from the continuous stream of consciousness. James believes that the pure ego is similar to what we consider to be the soul, or the mind. Pure ego is not a substance and therefore can not be examined by science.

Famous works

• Principles of Psychology , 2 vols. (1890), Publication of Dover 1950, vol. 1: ISBNÃ, 0-486-20381-6, vol. 2: ISBNÃ, 0-486-20382-4
• Psychology (short Course) (1892), University of Notre Dame Press 1985: ISBNÃ, 0-268-01557-0, Dover Publications 2001: ISBNÃ, 0-486-41604-6
• The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
• Human Immortality: Two Causing Objections on Doctrine (Ingersoll Lecture, 1897)
  • The Will to Believe, Human Immortality (1956) Dover Publications, ISBNÃ, 0-486-20291-7
• Discussion for Teachers in Psychology: and Students in Some Living Ideals (1899), Dover Publications 2001: ISBNÃ, 0-486-41964-9, IndyPublish.com 2005: ISBNÃ, 1 -4219 -5806-6
• Variety of Religious Experience: The Study of Human Rights (1902), ISBNÃ, 0-14-039034-0
• Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Thinking Ways (1907), Hackett Publishing 1981: ISBNÃ, 0-915145-05-7, Dover 1995: ISBNÃ, 0-486-28270-8
• Pluralistic Universe (1909), Hibbert Lectures, University of Nebraska Press 1996: ISBNÃ, 0-8032-7591-9
• The Meaning of Truth: The Sequel of "Pragmatism" (1909), Prometheus Books, 1997: ISBNÃ, 1-57392-138-6
• Some Philosophical Problems: Beginning Introduction to Philosophy (1911), University of Nebraska Press 1996: ISBNÃ, 0-8032-7587-0
• Memories and Studies (1911), Reprint Services Corp.: 1992: ISBNÃ, 0-7812-3481-6
• Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), Dover Publication 2003, ISBNÃ, 0-486-43094-4
  • critical editions, Frederick Burkhardt and Fredson Bowers, editors. Harvard University Press 1976: ISBNÃ, 0-674-26717-6 (including comments, notes, emendations mentioned, attachment with English translation "La Notion de Conscience")
• William James Letter , 2 vols. (1920)
• Essay Collection and Reviews (1920)
• Ralph Barton Perry, William James's Thought and Character , 2 vols. (1935), Vanderbilt University Press 1996 reprint: ISBNÃ, 0-8265-1279-8 (containing about 500 letters by William James not found in previous editions of William James's Letter )
• William James on Psychic Research (1960)
• The Correspondence of William James , 12 vols. (1992-2004) University of Virginia Press, ISBNÃ, 0-8139-2318-2
• "Dilemma of Determinism"
• William William on Habit, Truth, and Meaning of Life , James Sloan Allen, ed. Frederic C. Beil, Publisher, ISBN 978-1-929490-45-5

Collection

• William James: Writings 1878-1899 (1992). American Library, 1212 p., ISBN 978-0-940450-72-1

Psychology: Short Course (rev and Psychological Thick Principles.), Will The Believe and Other Essays Popular Philosophy, Talks for Teachers and Students, Essays (nine others)

• William James: Writings 1902-1910 (1987). American Library, 1379 p., ISBN 978-0-940450-38-7

Varieties of Religious Experience, Pragmatism, Pluralistic Universe, Meaning of Truth, Some Philosophical Problems, Essays

William Henry: A Comprehensive Edition (1978). University of Chicago Press, 912 pp., ISBNÃ, 0-226-39188-4

Pragmatism, Essays in Radical Empiricism, and a Pluralistic Universe complete; plus options from other works

• In 1975, Harvard University Press began publishing the standard edition of The Works of William James .

See also

• "Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life"
• Religious psychology
• Functional psychology
• American Philosophy
• List of American philosophers
• William James Lecture
• William James Society
• Awareness stream (psychology)

References

Source of the article : Wikipedia