William James: The Pluralistic Universe

Four dialogues where the psychologist finally philosophizes

A course on the thought of William James.

Psychology

What you will learn

State the pragmatic method — trace the concrete consequences; 'there can be no difference anywhere that doesn't make a difference elsewhere' — and apply it to dissolve a dispute.
State the truth doctrine precisely: truth as verification-process ('truth happens to an idea'), agreement as leading — and what it does NOT say (the dog on the log still decides).
Weigh the reception honestly: the 'whatever pays' caricature, my answers, Peirce's rebuke, and the real gap the critics found.
State the 1904 thesis exactly: not that thoughts don't exist, but that consciousness as an ENTITY — a stuff distinct from its contents — is 'the name of a nonentity'; knowing is a relation between experiences.
Run the pen analysis: one 'that', physical by one context, mental by another — and state radical empiricism's postulate: relations, conjunctive and disjunctive, are directly experienced.
Weigh the record: the two-knowers strain ('pure experience breaks down here definitively' — my own notebook), the Berkeley-minus-God charge, and Russell's and Whitehead's tributes — held together, verdict to the student.
State the dispute: monism's block universe (the Absolute, in whom all is eternally complete) vs. pluralism's distributive reality — 'the word and trails along after every sentence.'
State what the pluralist concedes and keeps: real connections (concatenated union, next to next) without total unity — the federal-republic figure.

Pragmatism: Truth in the Making — The method, the theory of truth, and the war they started: no difference that makes no difference; truth as what happens to an idea; the critics answered — and the honest concession that my own…
Does Consciousness Exist? — The 1904 bombshell and the doctrine beneath it: consciousness as entity is a nonentity; experience is the primal stuff, sorted into thought and thing by context; relations are experienced as directly…
The One and the Many — The Hibbert Lectures' fight of my life: against the Absolute's finished block, a strung-along universe of eaches — bought at the price of the logic of identity, kept company by Fechner and Bergson…
The Verdict — The audit and the end: Cannon's laboratory case against the emotions; Clark 1909 and the double verdict on Freud; the behaviorist eclipse and the century's slow vindications; the last summer, the…

Pragmatism (1907) — the Lowell lectures made a book, priced at a dollar so anyone could argue with me — the method, the theory of truth, and meliorism.
The Meaning of Truth (1909) — the sequel of rebuttals — where I answer the critics who made pragmatism say that truth is whatever pays.
Essays in Radical Empiricism (1912) — the metaphysical essays of 1904-05, gathered after my death — 'Does Consciousness Exist?' and the world of pure experience.
A Pluralistic Universe (1909) — my Hibbert lectures at Oxford — against the Absolute, with Fechner and Bergson for company, toward the unfinished universe.
Some Problems of Philosophy (1911) — the textbook I did not live to finish — my instructions said it hoped to round out a system 'too much like an arch built only on one side.'
Memories and Studies (1911) — the posthumous gathering of addresses — 'A Pluralistic Mystic', my farewell in Benjamin Blood's words, is its last piece.
The Principles of Psychology (1890) — where all of this began — the psychology whose unfinished business this tier settles.

pragmatic method, pure experience, pluralism

Part of the Simposeum course library.