..... Click the link for more information. and brother of the novelist Henry James James, Henry, 1843–1916, American novelist and critic, b. New York City. A master of the psychological novel, James was an innovator in technique and one of the most distinctive prose stylists in English.
He was the son of Henry James, Sr.
..... Click the link for more information. . In 1872 he joined the Harvard faculty as lecturer on anatomy and physiology, continuing to teach until 1907, after 1880 in the department of psychology and philosophy. In 1890 he published his brilliant and epoch-making Principles of Psychology, in which the seeds of his philosophy are already discernible. James's fascinating style and his broad culture and cosmopolitan outlook made him the most influential American thinker of his day.
His philosophy has three principal aspects—voluntarism, pragmatism, and "radical empiricism." He construes consciousness as essentially active, selective, interested, teleological. We "carve out" our world from "the jointless continuity of space." Will and interest are thus primary; knowledge is instrumental. The true is "only the expedient in our way of thinking." Ideas do not reproduce objects, but prepare for, or lead the way to, them. The function of an idea is to indicate "what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve—what sensations we are to expect from it and what reactions we must prepare." This theory of knowledge James called pragmatism pragmatism , method of philosophy in which the truth of a proposition is measured by its correspondence with experimental results and by its practical outcome.
..... Click the link for more information. , a term already used by Charles S. Peirce Peirce, Charles Sanders , 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1859; son of Benjamin Peirce. Except for occasional lectures he renounced the regimen of academic life and was in government service with the Geodetic
..... Click the link for more information. . James's "radical empiricism" is a philosophy of "pure experience," which rejects all transcendent principles and finds experience organized by means of "conjunctive relations" that are as much a matter of direct experience as things themselves. Moreover, James regards consciousness as only one type of conjunctive relation within experience, not as an entity above, or distinct from, its experience. James's other philosophical writings include The Will to Believe (1897), The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Pragmatism (1907), A Pluralistic Universe (1909), The Meaning of Truth (1909), Some Problems in Philosophy (1911), and Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912).
Bibliography
See his letters (ed. by his son Henry James, 1920); the Harvard Univ. Press edition of The Works of William James (17 vol., 1975–88); biographies by E. C. Moore (1965), G. W. Allen (1967), and L. Simon (1998); R. W. B. Lewis, The Jameses: A Family Narrative (1991); studies by B. P. Brennan (1968), J. Wild (1969), and P. K. Dooley (1974); R. B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (2 vol. 1935, abr. ed. 1948) and In the Spirit of William James (1938, repr. 1958); H. S. Levinson, The Religious Investigations of William James (1981); J. Barzun, A Stroll with William James (1984).
James, William
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James, William (1842–1910) philosopher, psychologist; born in New York City (brother of Henry James). After a broad education in Europe and a brief try at becoming an artist, he completed Harvard Medical School in 1869. Plagued by ailments and depression, he never practiced but did recover his energies, partly by placing faith in free will. He joined the Harvard faculty in 1872, teaching physiology, then psychology. He established America's first psychology laboratory and took twelve 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 (1904–05) 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.
James, William
Born Jan. 11, 1842, in New York; died Aug. 16, 1910, in Chocorua, N.H. American idealist philosopher and psychologist. One of the founders of pragmatism. Professor of physiology and psychology and later of philosophy at Harvard University (1872-1907).
In James’ views empiricism and biologism were contradictorily combined with extreme individualism, the assertion of free will, and elements of mysticism. In developing the ideas of C. Peirce, he advanced a new “pragmatic” criterion of truth. According to this criterion, that which corresponds to the practical success of an action is true. Truth, according to James, is “only the expedient in the way of our thinking” (Pragmatism, New York, 1963, p. 98). He attempted to stand above materialism and idealism, declaring the only reality to be the direct sensual experience of the individual (so-called radical empiricism). The primary material of experience is “neutral,” but its elements can appear in the process of cognition as both physical and psychological for the purposes of practical convenience.
According to James, thoughts, like things, consist of feelings and impressions (see “Sushchestvuet li soznanie?” in the collection Novye idei v filosofii, collection 4, 1913). This brings his position close to Machism. V. I. Lenin considered the differences between Machism and James’ pragmatism in the understanding of experiences to be “insignificant and unimportant” (Poln. sobr. soch., 5th ed., vol. 18, p. 363, footnote).
In psychology, James came out against associationism, having developed, in counterbalance to it, his own concept of the “stream of consciousness”—continuously alternating integral and individual psychic states, whose alternation reflects the physiological processes in an organism. James emphasized the principle of the activity of psychic life and the primacy in it of will and interest. According to him, the psyche has a vital “functional” value as the instrument of the biological survival of the individual. James’ doctrine that emotions are an expression of bodily movements later became one of the sources of behaviorism.
In works on the psychology of religion, James reduced religion to individual experiences that are subject to scientific analysis. At the same time, from the viewpoint of pragmatism he defended religion, which is “truthful” insofar as it is useful, since it seemingly imparts certainty and stability to existence. James was also actively engaged in parapsychological experiments and spiritualism.
In his political views, James was a representative of bourgeois liberalism.
WORKS
Principles of Psychology, vols. 1-2. New York, 1890.In Russian translation:
Nauchnye osnovy psikhologii. St. Petersburg, 1902.
Zavisimost’ very ot voli. St. Petersburg, 1904.
Mnogoobrazie religioznogo opyta. Moscow, 1910.
Pragmatizm. St. Petersburg, 1910.
Vselennaia s pliuralisticheskoi tochki zreniia. Moscow, 1911.
REFERENCE
Bykhovskii, B. E. “Pragmatizm i ’radikal’nyi empirizm’ U. Dzhemsa.” In the collection V. I. Lenin i voprosy marksistskoi filosofii. Moscow, 1960.Bogomolov, A. S. Anglo-amerikanskaia burzhuaznaia filosofiia epokhi imperializma. Moscow, 1964. Chapter 4, sec. 1.
Perry, R. B. Thought and Character of W. James, vols. 1-2. Boston, 1935.
Morris, L. R. W. James. New York, 1950.
Wild, J. The Radical Empiricism ofW. James. New York, 1969.
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