William James Pragmatism (one lecture)

William James Pragmatism

In 1898 when James William first invoked pragmatism , pragmatism was but one of many philosophic themes pursued over a lifetime . The origin of James pragmatism was his scientific training in medicine his teaching of physiology and later of psychology , and his great principles of psychology . Further back was his early ambition to become a painter , an articulate observer of color and shape and of expressive details Anticipation of his pragmatism can be found in the psychology , in several early articles and there are no sharp line divides the

pragmatism from later ventures into radical empiricism . Pragmatism and its forerunner , the will to believe , had their philosophic initiation in a moment of trial and personal crisis for James when in his late twenties . From his medical studies and readings in science , the idea began to force itself upon James that man is a mechanism doomed from the start to action in a mechanically closed universe

From the idea , like the universe it represented , there seemed no escape . The prospects of suicide or madness apparently hung equally in balance for James . Other fears accompanied this insufferable conviction or followed from , it such as that of honor and dread . The affirmation of free will , of action , of creative life buttressed by reading on Renouvier and Darwin and by his own incipient pragmatism saved James This early and private record of James 's thought is impressive as a disclosure of central motives and circumstances in the making of his pragmatism . The passage helps explain James 's pragmatism , not explain it away . It throws much light on how pragmatism , as James conceived the doctrine , could function as an invaluable guide to the acquisition of creative and satisfactory acts of thought and belief . For James accordingly pragmatism was more than a critical maxim for achieving clarity of meaning . It provided a method for resolving moral , religious and metaphysical problems , hence freeing us from abstraction and insufficiency from fixed principles , closed systems and pretended absolutes and origins . It directs us to concreteness and adequacy towards facts , toward actions and towards power

In James pragmatism one of his lectures is about pragmatism and commonsense , according to James various texts may serve as scripture the source of alterative common sense : only rules of common sense guide everyday practices . For pragmatists , common sense therefore remains the ultimate source of corrective rules within any finite world of experience , which various pragmatists may identify , variously with a particular cosmos , or natural language systems , or culture or community of everyday practice . The rule of Pragmatism remains exclusively a rule of common sensism for citizens of any such world or for philosophers who recognize only one world of actual experience . The rule of pragmatism us ultimately extra-linguistic or indifferent to linguistic differences James hold that differences among human communities are ultimately reducible to context specific instance of general rules of common sense Relatives among them hold that rules of common-sense are specific to each language community and therefore , that the beliefs...