I'm tired tonight. Got a raging case of wicked bronchitis and it feels like I've got two porcupines in my chest cavity. Rather than type from scratch, I'll rely heavily on excerpts from a precis written by others to save myself some time. My commentary is italicized.
From an article at radicalacademy.com:
"James developed the view, in opposition to the more traditional associationism, that consciousness functions in an active, purposeful way to relate and organize thoughts, giving them a streamlike continuity. In the history of psychology, James's theory of mind is called functionalism. James had established an international reputation in psychology before his main focus turned to philosophy, and many of his philosophical views have their roots in his psychological studies.
"James starts from a Positivist viewpoint, that is, from experience, which for him is established by psychological facts. The psychological facts make their appearance as an undifferentiated stream. In this psychic stream the mind makes a distinction between subject and object, sensations and concepts. Concepts arise out of the necessity of organizing the confused facts of experience. Hence their value is not absolute but relative to their utility in practice, i.e., relative to their practical consequences (Pragmatism).
While it is true that concepts must first be organized and formulated by humans before they can be used, neither their validity nor their value is dependent on their utility. A concept, once formulated correctly, exists whether it is of any practical utility to a given individual in a given context. A concept of no apparent use or value today may be of paramount importance tomorrow. It is incorrect to assert that any correct concept is valueless.
"The pragmatic method," says James, "tries to interpret each notion (concept) by tracing its respective practical consequences."
Again, practical consequences of a concept are irrelevant qua "concept". Practical consequences are contextual. What is of value in one context may be harmful in another. The CONCEPT (and its validity) is the same in either case.
"The value of concepts whose practical consequences have not yet been experienced scientifically, depends upon the will."
Mysticism.
"Thus between two hypotheses, neither of which can be tested scientifically, the choice is made by the will on the basis of utility."
I suppose it's marginally better to choose on the basis of "utility" than by by some other arbitrary measure, such as adherence to the "word of God". But from a philosophical standpoint, any hypothesis which does not violate observable reality and known physical laws is potentially a valid one, regardless of its "utility". Note who is doing the deciding here, according to James -- not man's rational faculty, but his "will", whatever that is.
"James considered pragmatism to be both a method for analyzing philosophic problems and a theory of truth. He also saw it as an extension of the empiricist attitude in that it turned away from abstract theory and fixed or absolute principles and toward concrete facts, actions, and relative principles."
And this is why I say that Pragmatism is not a philosophy at all, but an anti-philosophy. With no absolute principles, no abstract theory, it is nothing more than an endless process of trying-out of various actions, observations of random (and, to a Pragmatist, unconnected) concretes, with no attempt made to systematize them. Anything goes, quite literally.
"James considered philosophies to be expressions of personal temperament..."
-- thus indicating handily his misunderstanding of what philosophy is --
"... and developed a correlation between "tough-minded" and "tender-minded" temperaments and empiricist and rationalist positions in philosophy."
What ???
"Theories, he felt, are "instruments" that humans use to solve problems and should be judged in terms of their "cash value" or practical consequences for human conduct.
"He developed the notion of truth as a "leading" that is useful: it can change as human experience changes."
Here is his core error. Truth does NOT change as human experience changes. The truth is unchanging, regardless of whether humans have discovered that particular truth at that particular time, or choose to acknowledge it once discovered.
"The morality, as well as the truth, of an idea or action should be judged, according to James, in a similar way -- in terms of its outcome in human experience. In The Will to Believe (1897) and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), James examined the problem of belief in cases in which no immediate evidence exists on which to base one's belief. He concluded that in the area of religious commitment, belief can create its own truth through the effects created in the experience of the believer by his "willing nature." Belief in God is thus pragmatically justified if it makes a positive difference in the experience of the believer."
In other words, it is okay to delude yourself into believing any false set of premises as long as (for the moment) it makes you feel good. Again, the antithesis of philosophy.
"In A Pluralistic Universe (1909) and Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912), James developed his metaphysical position: there is no fixed external world to be discovered by one's mind but instead a "humming-buzzing confusion" that one organizes through experience."
Shades of Immanuel Kant, Batman!
"The universe, as well as one's knowledge of it, is continuously evolving. Never complete, it cannot be reduced to a single underlying substance."
In other words, entities are not static. So what? That does not mean they are unknowable.
"Neither materialistic nor spiritualistic monism satisfied William James. The individual is a mere puppet in the hands of absolute substance, be it universal matter or universal mind. The test of a theory, belief, doctrine, must be its effect upon us, its practical consequences -- the pragmatic test: whatever works is true."
Pragmatism in a nutshell -- "whatever works is true" -- carefully avoiding any definition of the term "works".
"The possession of truth is not an end in itself but a preliminary means to vital satisfaction."
Obviously. The problem is with James's definition of the "truth", and with his methodology (or more accurately, anti-methodology) of discovering it.
"Knowledge is an instrument for the sake of life, existing as practical utility. True ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate, and verify."
Correct. But they need not necessarily have any utilitarian value to fulfill those conditions.
"Truth is, therefore, useful because it is true, it is true because it is useful."
Circular definition.
"James's empiricism opposes classical rationalism and traditional empiricism. He denies that whatever is rational is real."
As do all Mystics.
"To reach reality we must take experience as it exists before it has been manipulated by conceptual thinking. Reality is the flux of our sensations coming from what we know not. It is the totality of consciousness, experience permeated with thought. Reality is ever in the making, growing where thinking beings are at work."
Pure Kant. The primacy of consciousness as opposed to the primacy of existence.
"James's radical empiricism makes for pluralism, multiplicity, diversity, opposition either in quantity or quality. Pluralism satisfies man's moral nature..."
Exactly how does this arbitrariness satisfy man's moral nature? Aztec priests considered it moral to drown babies to appease the rain god. Drowning babies "worked"... it always rained sometime after the sacrifice. They also sacrificed virgins to the god of corn. This "worked", too -- the corn grew. Yet neither action was moral.
"...recognizes individual perceptions. It is melioristic; if each man will do his best, the universe cannot fail."
Again, a Kantian, mystic, anthropocentric, "primacy of consciousness" view of existence.
"In such a world man is free to seek his ideal."
And in a rational universe man is not? Says who?
The following critical note is from the website. I have reproduced it here unchanged because I like it:
"The only metaphysics consistent with James's theory of knowledge has to be based on a selection from among a multitude of opinions. This eclectic approach is clearly the negation of philosophy, for it does not lead to any absolute or to any certitude. James sought to avoid this difficulty and to reach the absolute and God by having recourse to the unconscious mind."
Okay, back to the body of the article:
"James's psychology gives foundation to his empiricism. Consciousness is active and a unity. It is selective and teleological. It carves out man's world. The will, by making a strong idea focal to the exclusion of others, fills the mind and prepares for action. The intellect isolates and integrates "things," imputes reality to them, through the emotional and active life, and conceives them pragmatically."
Note James's view that consciousness imputes reality to "things". Again, the "primacy of consciousness" approach: without a consciousness to bring things into reality, there is no reality. 100% Kant. Also, observe his faulty epistemology here -- who are the active participants in this "bringing into reality" process? In James's view it is not the rational faculty that performs this, but "the emotional and active life". Sounds like Nietzsche to me.
"The unity of consciousness is thorough connectedness, a flowing stream, "substantive" parts shading into one another through the "transitive" parts, surrounded by a "fringe" or "feeling of tendency." "
Kant.
"He acknowledges a stream of experiences but not a stream of conscious experiences."
Huh?
"Therewith he denies that in knowledge the relation between the knowing subject and the object to be known is fundamental, which almost all modern philosophers had taken for granted. This denial has induced many contemporary philosophers, though opposed to James's views, to reconsider the bases and starting points of their own thoughts."
To the detriment of modern philosophy.
"James discovered besides, around and beneath the conscious mind, a darkened psychical zone, the zone of the subconscious, in which -- he believed -- the highest spiritual values, such as genius, sanctity and so forth, were formed, and contact was established with the absolute."
WEBSITE AUTHOR'S CRITICAL NOTES: "James's discovery of the subconscious mind was surely a great contribution to psychology and won for James world-wide fame. But we cannot accept James's doctrine that the highest spiritual values originate in the subconscious mind, for the subconscious mind is irrational and therefore the highest spiritual values would be founded on irrationality -- a supposition which is absurd. James may justify in this way his stand as a liberal Protestant; he may be quoted as a father of Modernism; but no one can deny that his religious position is in complete opposition to the basic statement of his pragmatism -- for it does not lead to any solution, to any practical certitude, to any justification of the universe.
If the only road leading to the supreme spiritual reality is to be found in the analysis of psychological emotions, of religious sentiment, objective Christian dogma disappears. It is modified and replaced by the subjective exigencies of each individual, and thus every believer creates his own religion, his own truth. This, of course, is the central position of Modernism. The logical consequence is that even the nature of God will be understood differently according to various religious emotions. In fact the sincere religious tendency of James himself stumbles along and falls into a pluralistic conception of Divinity. God is finite, He exists in time -- a being among many beings, and like us, a creator of His own story.
How can any satisfaction be found in such a religion? Even from the viewpoint of Pragmatism, it cannot work, for in it none of the fundamental aspirations of mankind are fulfilled. There is no certitude, no hope, no absolute. How can such a limited God guarantee the order of the physical and of the human world? What is left of the world of spirits?
Religious Pragmatism is merely a shortsighted, emotional and irrational attempt to replace dogmatic, absolute and universal truth with the personal fancies of the man in the street. It is morally disastrous, for if truth depends upon subjective feeling, any action can be justified by virtue of the satisfaction it procures. Such a philosophy makes man his own judge and leads to total moral anarchy.
Pinky again. As an atheist, I have no comment on the religious aspects one way or the other. As a moral individual, I must agree with the author's assertion that morality by whim or by public opinion poll is not morality. There IS an objective morality, whether James chooses to acknowledge it or not.
pinky
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