| 1882 | The Sentiment of Rationality |
| p.20 | p.20 | 22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality |
| Full Idea: I think there are very good grounds for upholding the view that the feeling of rationality is constituted merely by the absence of any feelings of irrationality. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.20) | |||
| A reaction: A very interesting proposal. Nothing is more basic to logic (well, plausible versions of logic) than the principle of non-contradiction - perhaps because it is the foundation of our natural intellectual equipment. |
| p.21 | p.21 | 22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact |
| Full Idea: Our pleasure at finding that a chaos of facts is the expression of single underlying fact is like a musician's relief at discovering harmony. …The passion for economy of means in thought is the philosophic passion par excellence. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |||
| A reaction: We do, though, possess an inner klaxon warning against stupid simplistic reductions. Reducing all the miseries of life to the workings of the Devil is not satisfactory, even it it is economical. Simplicities are dangerously tempting. |
| p.21 | p.21 | 22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number |
| Full Idea: The knowledge of things by their causes, which is often given as a definition of rational knowledge, is useless unless the causes converge to a minimum number, while still producing the maximum number of effects. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.21) | |||
| A reaction: This is certainly the psychological motivation for trying to identify 'the' cause of something, but James always tries to sell such things as subjective. 'Useless' to one person is a subjective criterion; useless to anyone is much more objective. |
| p.22 | p.22 | 22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole |
| Full Idea: Alongside the passion for simplification …is the passion for distinguishing; it is the passion to be acquainted with the parts rather than to comprehend the whole. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.22) | |||
| A reaction: As I child I dismantled almost every toy I was given. This seems to be the motivation for a lot of analytic philosophy, but Aristotle also tended to think that way. |
| p.23 | p.23 | 22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view |
| Full Idea: A single explanation of a fact only explains it from a single point of view. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |||
| A reaction: I take this to imply that multiple viewpoints lead us towards objectivity. The single viewpoint of an expert is of much greater value than that of a novice, on the whole. |
| p.23 | p.23 | 22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients |
| Full Idea: A completed theoretic philosophy can never be anything more than a completed classification of the world's ingredients. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.23) | |||
| A reaction: I assume this is not just the physical ingredients, but must also include our conceptual scheme - but then we must first decide which is the best conceptual scheme to classify, and that's where the real action is. [He scorns such classifation later]. |
| p.24 | p.24 | 22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose |
| Full Idea: Every way of classifying a thing is but a way of handling it for some particular purpose. Conceptions, 'kinds', are teleological instruments. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.24) | |||
| A reaction: Could there not be ways of classifying which suit all of our purposes? If there were a naturally correct way to classifying things, then any pragmatist would probably welcome that. (I don't say there is such a way). |
| p.25 | p.25 | 22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? |
| Full Idea: Can that which is the ground of rationality in all else be itself properly called rational? | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.25) | |||
| A reaction: This is the perennial problem in deciding grounds, and in deciding what to treat as primitive. The stoics see the whole of nature as rational. Cf how can the ground of what is physical be itself physical? |
| p.31 | p.31 | 22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next |
| Full Idea: A dog's curiosity about the movements of his master or a strange object only extends as far as the point of what is going to happen next. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.31) | |||
| A reaction: Good. A nice corrective to people like myself who are tempted to inflate animal rationality, in order to emphasise human evolutionary continuity with them. It is hard to disagree with his observation. But dogs do make judgements! True/false! |
| p.34 | p.34 | 22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions |
| Full Idea: It is far too little recognised how entirely the intellect is built up of practical interests. The theory of evolution is beginning to do very good service by its reduction of all mentality to the type of reflex action. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.34) | |||
| A reaction: Hands evolved for manipulating tools end up playing the piano. Minds evolved for action can be afflicted with boredom. He's not wrong, but he is risking the etymological fallacy (origin = purpose). I take navigation to be the original purpose of mind. |
| p.36 | p.36 | 22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses |
| Full Idea: In what did the emancipating message of primitive Christianity consist but in the announcement that God recognizes those weak and tender impulses which paganism had so rudely overlooked. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.36) | |||
| A reaction: Nietzsche says these are the virtues of a good slave. Previous virtues were dominated by military needs, but the new virtues are those of large cities, where communal living with strangers is the challenge. |
| p.39 | p.39 | 22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it |
| Full Idea: That nature will follow tomorrow the same laws that she follows today is a truth which no man can know; but in the interests of cognition as well as of action we must postulate or assume it. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.39) | |||
| A reaction: The stability of nature is something to be assessed, not something taken for granted. If you arrive in a new city and it all seems quiet, you keep your fingers crossed and treat it as stable. But revolution or coup could be just round the corner. |
| p.40 | p.40 | 22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible |
| Full Idea: The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof solely by the size of a vulgar fraction, is as ideally inept as it is practically impossible. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |||
| A reaction: James probably didn't know about Bayes, but this is directed at the Bayesian approach. My view is that full rational assessment of coherence is a much better bet than a Bayesian calculation. Factors must be weighted. |
| p.40 | p.40 | 22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence |
| Full Idea: What is the use of being a genius, unless with the same scientific evidence as other men, one can reach more truth than they? | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |||
| A reaction: This is aimed at Clifford's famous principle. He isn't actually contraverting the principle, but it is a nice point about evidence. Simple empiricists think detectives only have to stare at the evidence and the solution creates itself. |
| p.40 | p.40 | 22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed |
| Full Idea: Every philosopher whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a preliminary assurance that this can be made to work. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.40) | |||
| A reaction: I would refer to this as 'intuition', which I think of as reasons (probably good reasons) which cannot yet be articulated. Hence I like this idea very much, except for the word 'dumb'. It is more like a rational vision, yet to be filled in. |
| p.42 | p.42 | 22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint |
| Full Idea: Each tester of the truth of a theory …acts as if it were true, and expects the result to disappoint him if his assumption is false. The longer disappointment is delayed, the stronger grows his faith in his theory. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.42) | |||
| A reaction: This is almost exactly Popper's falsificationist proposal for science, which interestingly shows the close relationship of his view to pragmatism. Believe it as long as it is still working. |
| p.43 | p.43 | 22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it |
| Full Idea: Clearly it is often the part of wisdom to believe what one desires; for the belief is one of indispensable preliminary conditions of the realisation of its object. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.43) | |||
| A reaction: Roughly, action is impossible without optimism about possible success. This may count as instinct, rather than 'wisdom'. |
| p.44 | p.44 | 22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong |
| Full Idea: The philosophy of evolution offers us today a new criterion, which is objective and fixed, as an ethical test between right and wrong: That is to be called good which is destined to prevail or survive. | |||
| From: William James (The Sentiment of Rationality [1882], p.44) | |||
| A reaction: Perceptive for its time. Herbert Spencer may have suggested the idea. James dismisses it, because it implies a sort of fatalism, whereas genuine moral choices are involved in what survives. |
| 1884 | What is an Emotion? |
| p.194 | p.53 | 23981 | Rage is inconceivable without bodily responses; so there are no disembodied emotions |
| Full Idea: Can one fancy a state of rage and picture no flushing of the face, no dilation of the nostrils, no clenching of the teeth, no impulse to vigorous action? …A purely disembodied human emotion is a nonentity. | |||
| From: William James (What is an Emotion? [1884], p.194), quoted by Peter Goldie - The Emotions 3 'Bodily' | |||
| A reaction: Plausible for rage, but less so for irritation or admiration. Goldie thinks James is wrong. James says if intellectual feelings don't become bodily then they don't qualify as emotions. No True Scotsman! |
| 1896 | The Will to Believe |
| p.188 | p.58 | 6570 | Imagine millions made happy on condition that one person suffers endless lonely torture |
| Full Idea: Consider a case in which millions could be made permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture. | |||
| From: William James (The Will to Believe [1896], p.188), quoted by Robert Fogelin - Walking the Tightrope of Reason Ch.2 | |||
| A reaction: This seems to be one of the earliest pinpointings of a key problem with utilitiarianism, which is that other values than happiness (in this case, fairness) seem to be utterly overruled. If we ignore fairness, why shouldn't we ignore happiness? |
| 1904 | Does Consciousness Exist? |
| Intro | p.100 | 9285 | 'Consciousness' is a nonentity, a mere echo of the disappearing 'soul' |
| Full Idea: 'Consciousness' is the name of a nonentity. ..Those who cling to it are clinging to a mere echo, the faint rumour left behind by the disappearing 'soul' upon the air of philosophy. ..I deny that it stands for an entity, but it does stand for a function. | |||
| From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], Intro) | |||
| A reaction: This kind of view is often treated as being preposterous, but I think it is correct. No one is denying the phenomenology, but it is the ontology which is at stake. Either you are a substance dualist, or mind must be eliminated as an 'entity'. |
| §3 | p.110 | 9286 | Consciousness is not a stuff, but is explained by the relations between experiences |
| Full Idea: Consciousness connotes a kind of external relation, and not a special stuff or way of being. The peculiarity of our experiences, that they not only are, but are known, is best explained by their relations to one another, the relations being experiences. | |||
| From: William James (Does Consciousness Exist? [1904], §3) | |||
| A reaction: This view has suddenly caught people's interest. It might be better than the higher/lower relationship, which seems to leave the basic problem untouched. Does a whole network of relations between experiences gradually 'add up' to consciousness? |
| 1907 | The Meaning of the Word "Truth" |
| p.2 | p.250 | 6710 | You can only define a statement that something is 'true' by referring to its functional possibilities |
| Full Idea: Pragmatism insists that statements and beliefs are inertly and statically true only by courtesy: they practically pass for true; but you cannot define what you mean by calling them true without referring to their functional possibilities. | |||
| From: William James (The Meaning of the Word "Truth" [1907], p.2) | |||
| A reaction: I think this clarifies an objection to pragmatism, because all functional definitions (e.g. of the mind, or of moral behaviour) are preceded by the question of WHY this thing is able to function in this way. What special quality makes this possible? |
| p.299 | p.230 | 22305 | If the hypothesis of God is widely successful, it is true |
| Full Idea: On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. | |||
| From: William James (The Meaning of the Word "Truth" [1907], p.299), quoted by Michael Potter - The Rise of Analytic Philosophy 1879-1930 35 'Prag' | |||
| A reaction: How you get from 'widely satisfactory' to 'true' is beyond my comprehension. This is dangerous nonsense. This view of truth seems to be a commonplace in American culture. Peirce hurray! James boo! James accepted verification, where possible. |
| 1907 | Pragmatism - eight lectures |
| Lec 2 | p.21 | 18971 | Theories are practical tools for progress, not answers to enigmas |
| Full Idea: Theories are instruments, not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest. We don't lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our theories, limbers them up and sets each one to work. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |||
| A reaction: This follows his criticism of the quest for 'solving names' - big words that give bogus solutions to problems. James's view is not the same as 'instrumentalism', though he would probably sympathise with that view. The defines theories badly. |
| Lec 2 | p.23 | 18972 | Ideas are true in so far as they co-ordinate our experiences |
| Full Idea: Pragmatists say that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |||
| A reaction: I'm struck by the close similarity (at least in James) of the pragmatic view of truth and the coherence theory of truth (associated later with Blanshard). Perhaps the coherence theory is one version of the pragmatic account |
| Lec 2 | p.25 | 18973 | New opinions count as 'true' if they are assimilated to an individual's current beliefs |
| Full Idea: A new opinion counts as 'true' just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |||
| A reaction: Note the tell-tale locution 'counts as' true, rather than 'is' true. The obvious problem is that someone with a big stock of foolish beliefs will 'count as' true some bad interpretation which is gratifyingly assimilated to their current confusions. |
| Lec 2 | p.30 | 18974 | Truth is a species of good, being whatever proves itself good in the way of belief |
| Full Idea: Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and co-ordinate with it. The true is whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 2) | |||
| A reaction: The trouble is that false optimism can often often be what is 'good in the way of belief'. That said, I think quite a good way to specify 'truth' is 'success in belief', but I mean intrinsically successful, not pragmatically successful. |
| Lec 3 | p.37 | 18975 | We return to experience with concepts, where they show us differences |
| Full Idea: Concepts for the pragmatist are things to come back into experience with, things to make us look for differences. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |||
| A reaction: That's good. I like both halves of this. Experience gives us the concepts, but then we 'come back' into experience equipped with them. Presumably animals can look for differences, but concepts enhance that hugely. Know the names of the flowers. |
| Lec 3 | p.42 | 18976 | Private experience is the main evidence for God |
| Full Idea: I myself believe that the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experience. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |||
| A reaction: There is not much you can say to someone who claims incontrovertible evidence which is utterly private to themselves. Does total absence of private religious experience count as evidence on the subject? |
| Lec 3 | p.43 | 18977 | The wonderful design of a woodpecker looks diabolical to its victims |
| Full Idea: To the grub under the bark the exquisite fitness of the woodpecker's organism to extract him would certainly argue a diabolical designer. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |||
| A reaction: What an elegant sentence! The huge problem for religious people who accept (probably reluctantly) evolution by natural selection is the moral nature of the divine being who could use such a ruthless method of design. |
| Lec 3 | p.43 | 18978 | It is hard to grasp a cosmic mind which produces such a mixture of goods and evils |
| Full Idea: We can with difficulty comprehend the character of a cosmic mind whose purposes are fully revealed by the strange mixture of good and evils that we find in this actual world's particulars. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |||
| A reaction: And, of course, what counts as 'goods' or 'evils' seems to have a highly relative aspect to it. To claim that really it is all good is massive hope based on flimsy evidence. |
| Lec 3 | p.44 | 18979 | Things with parts always have some structure, so they always appear to be designed |
| Full Idea: The parts of things must always make some definite resultant, be it chaotic or harmonious. When we look at what has actually come, the conditions must always appear perfectly designed to ensure it. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 3) | |||
| A reaction: In so far as the design argument is an analogy with human affairs, we can't deny that high levels of order suggest an organising mind, and mere chaos suggests a coincidence of unco-ordinated forces. |
| Lec 4 | p.56 | 18980 | If there is a 'greatest knower', it doesn't follow that they know absolutely everything |
| Full Idea: The greatest knower of them all may yet not know the whole of everything, or even know what he does know at one single stroke: - he may be liable to forget. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |||
| A reaction: And that's before you get to the problem of how the greatest knower could possibly know whether or not they knew absolutely everything, or whether there might be some fact which was irremediably hidden from them. |
| Lec 4 | p.57 | 18981 | 'Substance' is just a word for groupings and structures in experience |
| Full Idea: 'Substance' appears now only as another name for the fact that phenomena as they come are actually grouped and given in coherent forms. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 4) | |||
| A reaction: This is the strongly empirical strain in James's empiricism. This sounds like a David Lewis comment on the Humean mosaic of experience. We Aristotelians at least believe that the groups run much deeper than the surface of experience. |
| Lec 5 | p.74 | 18982 | Pragmatism says all theories are instrumental - that is, mental modes of adaptation to reality |
| Full Idea: The pragmatist view is that all our theories are instrumental, are mental modes of adaptation to reality, rather than revelations or gnostic answers to some divinely instituted world enigma. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 5) | |||
| A reaction: This treats instrumentalism as the pragmatic idea of theories as what works (and nothing more), with, presumably, no interest in grasping something called 'reality'. Presumably instrumentalism might have other motivations - such as fun. |
| Lec 6 | p.77 | 18984 | True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify (and false otherwise) |
| Full Idea: True ideas are those that we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |||
| A reaction: The immediate question is why you should label something as 'false' simply on the grounds that you can't corroborate it. Proving the falsity is a stronger position than the ignorance James seems happy with. 'Assimilate' implies coherence. |
| Lec 6 | p.77 | 18983 | In many cases there is no obvious way in which ideas can agree with their object |
| Full Idea: When you speak of the 'time-keeping function' of a clock, it is hard to see exactly what your ideas can copy. ...Where our ideas cannot copy definitely their object, what does agreement with that object mean? | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |||
| A reaction: This is a very good criticism of the correspondence theory of truth. It looks a lovely theory when you can map components of a sentence (like 'the pen is in the drawer') onto components of reality - but it has to cover the hard cases. |
| Lec 6 | p.78 | 18985 | True thoughts are just valuable instruments of action |
| Full Idea: The possession of true thoughts means everywhere the possession of invaluable instruments of action. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |||
| A reaction: It looks to me like we should distinguish 'active' and 'passive' instrumentalism. The passive version says there is no more to theories and truth than what instruments record. James's active version says truth is an instrument for doing things well. |
| Lec 6 | p.84 | 18986 | Truth is just a name for verification-processes |
| Full Idea: Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as 'health' is a name for other processes in life. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 6) | |||
| A reaction: So the slogan is 'truth is success in belief'? Suicide and racist genocide can be 'successful'. I would have thought that truth was the end of a process, rather than the process itself. |
| Lec 7 | p.98 | 18987 | A 'thing' is simply carved out of reality for human purposes |
| Full Idea: What shall we call a 'thing' anyhow? It seems quite arbitrary, for we carve out everything, just as we carve out constellations, to suit our human purposes. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 7) | |||
| A reaction: James wrote just before the discovery of galaxies, which are much more obviously 'things' than constellations like the Plough are! This idea suggests a connection between pragmatism and the nihilist view of objects of Van Inwagen and co. |
| Lec 8 | p.105 | 18989 | Pragmatism accepts any hypothesis which has useful consequences |
| Full Idea: On pragmatic principles we cannot reject any hypothesis if consequences useful to life flow from it. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |||
| A reaction: Most governments seem to find lies more useful than the truth. Maybe most children are better off not knowing the truth about their parents. It might be disastrous to know the truth about what other people are thinking. Is 'useful but false' meaningful? |
| Lec 8 | p.113 | 18990 | Nirvana means safety from sense experience, and hindus and buddhists are just afraid of life |
| Full Idea: Nirvana means safety from the everlasting round of adventures of which the world of sense consists. The hindoo and the buddhist for this is essentially their attitude, are simply afraid, afraid of more experience, afraid of life. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |||
| A reaction: Wonderfully American! From what I have seen of eastern thought, including Taoism, I agree with James, in general. There is a rejection of knowledge and of human life which I find shocking. I suspect it is a defence mechanism for downtrodden people. |
| Lec 8 | p.115 | 18991 | If the God hypothesis works well, then it is true |
| Full Idea: On pragmatistic principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. | |||
| From: William James (Pragmatism - eight lectures [1907], Lec 8) | |||
| A reaction: The truth of God's existence certainly is a challenging test case for the pragmatic theory of truth, and James really bites the bullet here. Pragmatism may ultimately founder on the impossibility of specifying what 'works satisfactorily' means. |
| 1908 | The Pragmatist Account of Truth |
| 'Fourth' | p.81 | 22640 | We find satisfaction in consistency of all of our beliefs, perceptions and mental connections |
| Full Idea: We find satisfaction in consistency between the present idea and the entire rest of our mental equipment, including the whole order of our sensations, and that of our intuitions of likeness and difference, and our whole stock previously acquired truths. | |||
| From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Fourth') | |||
| A reaction: I like this, apart from the idea that the criterion of good coherence seems to be subjective 'satisfaction'. We should ask why some large set of beliefs is coherent. I assume nature is coherent, and truth is the best explanation of our coherence about it. |
| 'Fourth' | p.83 | 22641 | Realities just are, and beliefs are true of them |
| Full Idea: Realities are not true, they are; and beliefs are true of them. | |||
| From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Fourth') | |||
| A reaction: At last, a remark by James about truth which I really like. For 'realities' I would use the word 'facts'. |
| 'Seventh' | p.89 | 22642 | Man has an intense natural interest in the consistency of his own thinking |
| Full Idea: After man's interest in breathing freely, the greatest of all his interests (because it never fluctuates or remits….) is his interest in consistency, in feeling that what he now thinks goes with what he thinks on other occasions. | |||
| From: William James (The Pragmatist Account of Truth [1908], 'Seventh') | |||
| A reaction: People notoriously contradict themselves all the time, but I suspect that it is when they get out of their depth in complexities such as politics. They probably achieve great consistency within their own expertise, and in common knowledge. |