
William James and the philosophy of pragmatism - benbreen
https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2018/winter/feature/the-thinker-who-believed-in-doing-0
======
filoeleven
Pragmatism turned out to be a slippery enough concept that James, a writer
with a well-deserved reputation for clarity, had to write a second book about
it to address all the misconceptions. His version is all about making explicit
the process that we all go through in weighing each new incoming experience or
evidence for something against our mountain of collected experiences, which is
how we individually decide whether or not something is true. It’s not as
simple as “does this agree with what I have experienced before,” since some
kinds of new information can radically change our perspective on past events.

The article mentioned that he coined the term “stream of consciousness,” which
is so familiar now to us that we can gloss over the depth with which he
treated it. For James, the idea of “a thought” was itself an abstraction: if
consciousness is a stream then there is no hard separation from a thought that
comes before or after the one raises up for examination. He makes mention of a
“fringe” surrounding whichever thought has most of our attention, and these
fringes are constantly expanding to become the center of our focus, only to be
replaced by the next. This came to mind when I was reading about attention
models in neural networks, and how accounting for attention improved their
functioning for some classes of problems.

If you’re interested in William James, one of the best introductions to his
work is not by James himself but by Jacques Barzun, entitled “A Stroll with
William James.” Barzun quotes James extensively in it, and ties together the
overarching themes of his various works with a deft hand. I may be slightly
biased here because my jumping-off point for reading James was Barzun’s “From
Dawn to Decadence,” a sprawling work that led me to investigate a number of
references, but none turned out to be as rewarding as reading William James,
who has become a personal hero.

------
igravious
An entire article about William James and pragmatism with nary a mention of
Charles Sanders Peirce. Curious.

If I may excerpt from _The Complete Idiot 's Guide to Philosophy_,

“ Peirce's pragmatism eventually became well known, thanks largely to the work
of William James, who drew attention to Peirce's ideas. But Peirce objected to
many of James' views and sought to distance his own thinking from that of
James. At one point, he rejected the term, "pragmatism" for his own philosophy
and proposed the term, "pragmatacism" in its place, joking that the new term
was "ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers."† ”

† As has turned out to be the case!

~~~
mcguire
Peirce's pragmatism seems to me to be rather less pragmatic than James'.

------
mcguire
" _Pragmatism was a method for making decisions, testing beliefs, settling
arguments. In a world of chance and incomplete information, James insisted
that truth was elusive but action mandatory. The answer: Make a decision and
see if it works. Try a belief and see if your life improves. Don’t depend on
logic and reason alone, add in experience and results. Shun ideology and
abstraction. Take a chance. “Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is
made true by events.”_

" _James insisted he was more of a popularizer and synthesizer than an
originator. Aristotle and John Stuart Mill were pragmatists, exponents of
empiricism. Of course, some philosophers were skeptical of pragmatism. Truth
becomes whatever is useful, whatever has cash value. Bertrand Russell was
terrified that pragmatism would dethrone the ideal of objective truth, calling
it “a form of the subjective madness which is characteristic of most modern
philosophy.” Pragmatism to these skeptics encourages relativism and
subjectivity and leads to irrationalism._

" _Not so, says contemporary historian James Kloppenberg. Pragmatism swept
through the first half of twentieth-century America, encouraging the
experimentation of Progressivism and the New Deal. Retreating, it is now
returning, influencing legal realism and encouraging cultural pluralism and
scientific government. According to Kloppenberg, it contributed to the
worldview of Barack Obama. Pragmatism is the enemy of certainty,
simplification, and fanaticism. It champions skepticism, experimentation, and
tolerance._ "

Pragmatism is a misunderstood philosophy. Objective truth is objective truth
and can't really be dethroned, but the major threat of pragmatism (as of most
other philosophies that don't rely on received wisdom) is that many of the
things that are held as truth aren't actually objectively true.

------
JeuelyFish
I'm always glad to see Articles about Pragmatist Philosophers and their works
on HN. I'm also glad to see that this article at least touches on how James'
work relates to contemporary politics and issues.

One of the defining features of American Pragmatism is it's optimism. I think
it's fair to say that the currently widely held sentiment about the state of
society is that we are on the decline. I find that reading James, and talking
to others about the need to address the rising issues (immigration protection,
environmental concerns, wealth distribution, etc), injects that same optimism.
Things are bad, but we can DO things to change things for the better.

------
rusk
William James is widely credited as the progenitor of modern American
psychology, and his "Principals" [0] one of the first widely disseminated
textbooks on the subject of mental health. He had his own demons, and sought
to share his experiences overcoming. I've just recently picked it up and hope
to read it soon, as I've been told that it's still a book that reads quite
well.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Psychology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Principles_of_Psychology)

~~~
salmonfamine
Also, his pre-modernist novels are incredible. The Turn of The Screw is one of
those books that has stuck with me since I read it. Highly recommend.

~~~
rusk
You sure this is the same guy? It's available on Project Gutenberg [0] but the
attribution is a "Henry" James ...

[0]
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/209/209-h/209-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/209/209-h/209-h.htm)

~~~
ashark
Yeah, Henry James is the novelist. William's brother. I'd call his output...
mixed, but much of it's really good. Big fan of Washington Square, myself.
Probably better to approach shorter novella-ish works like that, and his
actual short stories (there are lots) first, and work your way up to the
novels (there are also lots of those). Do not start with _Daisy Miller_. It's
among his most famous and widely-read, but just don't.

------
thepompano
"Varieties _remains for most believers a powerful defense against Karl Marx,
who criticized religion as the opiate of the masses_ "

That's not what Karl Marx said. He said: _" Religion is the sigh of the
oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless
conditions. It is the opium of the people"_

------
mcguire
W. James was on the border of philosophy and psychology, and is probably
better read as the former today.

Project Gutenberg:
[http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/325](http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/325)

(Thanks to rusk) Internet Archive:
[https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22James%2C+W...](https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22James%2C+William%2C+1842-1910%22)

