William James
(1842 – 1910)
American philosopher, historian and psychologist, considered the “Father of American Psychology”. He was a pragmatist and one of the founders of functional psychology. His philosophy was influenced by his study of psychology and evolutionary theory, but also as a response to personal psychological, moral, and religious crises that he experienced.
With his articulation of pragmatism (Pragmatism, 1907), James wanted to produce a philosophy that is capable of resolving metaphysical and religious dilemmas. He also saw it as both a theory of meaning and a theory of truth.
Pragmatism is a philosophical method that views abstract philosophical topics (such as knowledge, language, truth, belief, metaphysics, etc.) in terms of their practical use. With big philosophical questions, such as ‘What is freedom?’ or ‘Is there a soul?’, the pragmatic method tries to interpret each concept in relation to its practical consequences.
The guiding question: what difference does it make practically, if a statement is true or false?
If there are no practical differences, then the both possibilities mean practically the same thing.
For example, examine two sentences from a pragmatic point of view:
A: Steel is harder than flesh —> if it were false, things in our practical would be very different
B: God exists —> if it were false, some people’s conception of life would be dramatically different, for others it would not make a difference at all. So, pragmatically, there are some people for whom the distinction is meaningful and for others it means practically the same thing.
In deciding the validity of religious and metaphysical statements, James proposed a subjective theory of truth which states that ideas become true only insofar as they create relations with parts of our experience. The truth of an idea is not something inherent in the idea itself, but it is something that becomes true by events.
- Because of the subjective nature of his philosophy, the truth of a belief is completely dependent on the individual person that holds it
- So, from a subjective point of view, the truth of the above sentence B (“God exists) can (1) be irrelevant for those for whom it makes no difference, or (2) true or (3) false, depending on how this belief practically corresponds to the lived experience of an individual.
In his Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), he preoccupied himself with the study of the individual aspects of religious experiences and mysticism. Together with his articulation of pragmatism, he justifies the right to hold moral and religious values on practical grounds, even if they cannot be justified on intellectual or empirical grounds.
Furthermore, in his philosophy, James emphasised diversity as a fundamental aspect of the human condition, which runs contrary to the standard dualism in philosophy (see for example Hegelian dualism of concepts).
In psychology, his greatest contribution was his articulation of many novel psychological theories, which he describes in his Principles of Psychology (1980):
He was the first to describe human thought as a completely continuous stream of consciousness. He also noted that humans can never experience the same idea or thought more than once.
He also introduces a new theory of emotion (later called the James-Lange theory of emotion), which argues that emotion is the consequence of the physical experience. That is, a stimulus first causes a physical response in the body, which is then followed by an emotion.