James, William, 1842–1910, American philosopher, b. New York City, M.D. Harvard, 1869; son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James James, Henry, 1811–82, American student of religion and social problems, b. Albany, N.Y.; father of the philosopher William James and of the novelist Henry James .
..... 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 (prăg`mətĭzəm)
..... Click the link for more information. , a term already used by Charles S. Peirce Peirce, Charles Sanders (pûrs), 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad.
..... 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

William James

(credit: Courtesy of the Harvard University News Service)

(born Jan. 11, 1842, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Aug. 26, 1910, Chocorua, N.H.) U.S. philosopher and psychologist. Son of the philosophical writer Henry James (1811–82) and brother of the novelist Henry James, he studied medicine at Harvard, where he taught from 1872. His first major work, The Principles of Psychology (1890), treated thinking and knowledge as instruments in the struggle to live. His most famous work is The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). In Pragmatism (1907), he generalized the theories of Charles Sanders Peirce to assert that the meaning of any idea must be analyzed in terms of the succession of experiential consequences to which it leads and that truth and error depend solely on these consequences (see pragmatism). He applied this doctrine to the analysis of change and chance, freedom, variety, pluralism, and novelty. His pragmatism was also the basis for his polemic against monism, the idealistic doctrine of internal relations, and all views that presented reality as a static whole. He was also a leader of the psychological movement known as functionalism.

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.