Great Ideas of Philosophy

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VI. James took up the “common sense” tradition of Thomas Reid that had been lost during the ascendance of JohnStuart Mill.A. Common sense is how a species meets daily challenges—to be skeptical about its existence is pointless.B. But the common sense of one species is not that of another, as the challenges to one species are not that ofanother.1. James sits and reads a book, his eyes slowly passing over one line at a time; his dog watches thisunintelligible behavior.2. Is one set of experiences authentic, the other not?VII. James preserved the scientific perspective and approach to the nature of mind but required science to come toterms with the facts of mental life. He rejected all attempts to filter experience such that only those contentscompatible with favored theories were preserved.A. Adopting a common-sense realist position, James was able to fend off the Hegelian criticism of science’sone-sidedness and honor that criticism that requires science to be faithful to the complexities of its subjectmatter.B. We are fire and clay; consciousness is not easily found in the body, but neither science nor philosophyadvances by denying it is there.Recommended Reading:James, W. Essays in Radical Empiricism and A Pluralistic Universe. Phoenix Books, 1977.Perry, R. B. The Thought and Character of William James. Vanderbilt University Press, 1996.Questions to Consider:1. Explain whether evolutionary theory honors the Jamesian sense of survivalism as a force in the natural world.2. Summarize what theory of the “self” is needed in James’s conception of mental associations.28©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership
Lecture Forty-SevenWilliam James’s PragmatismScope: If some broad “ism” is to be used as a label for the character of James’s work, it would be functionalism.Both philosophy and science may ask about anything what it is for, what part it plays in the larger schemeof things, and within that larger scheme of things is where life is actually lived. The functionalistperspective translates directly into pragmatism and pluralism.James’s pragmatism ties truth to what are, in fact, the “highest interests” of those who pursue truth orattribute it to their assertions and negations. The basis on which even scientific theories stand or fall isultimately pragmatic in this sense, for what cannot serve these highest interests must ultimately yield towhat does. James’s pluralism rejects rigid theories of the true and the false; there is no final word on theuniverse or on what the highest interests of beings such as ourselves may be.OutlineI. We now move from William James’s radical empiricism to his pragmatism and pluralism.A. The practical side of James’s philosophy begins with functionalism. His Principles of Psychology put inplace an essentially functionalist psychology and formed the foundation for American behaviorism. Jamestakes the position that the creatures of nature, via evolution, obviously are fit to deal with the environmentthey find themselves in.B. There’s a famous brief treatise by James on the question “Does consciousness exist?” The answer Jamesgives is “yes and no.”1. If we think of consciousness as immaterial, spaceless, massless but nonetheless an ontologically realthing, no, that doesn’t exist.2. But if we think of it as a flow of ideas, the stream of perceptions and thoughts and feelings, the processby which a supernumerary intelligence knits together experiences over a course of time, thenconsciousness is indubitable.C. Without invoking Aristotelian “final causes” or attaching himself to every feature of Darwinian biology,James nonetheless ties processes to functions, to larger purposes and possibilities.D. What, then, is the function of consciousness? What is it for? What does it achieve that could be achieved inno other way?1. The brain is a fabulously complex organ, consisting of millions of cells constantly at work processingsensory input. Yet the result is not simply a “blooming, buzzing confusion.”2. For survival, we must not only be able to sense our environment with great subtlety but react to stimuliinstantly and correctly: This is the “hair-trigger” nature of brain functions.3. Our conscious processes are declared to be necessary to regulate the flow of mental functioning,through such specifically conscious functions as attention, selection, and will.E. It is out of experience that the will itself is constructed. This is James’s ideomotor theory of the growth andfunction of the will:1. It is under purely reflexive control at first, as the infant responds to stimuli.2. These reflexive experiences continue, and they persist as a reservoir of behavior the individual candraw on.3. By attending to the possibilities around us, we are able, in responding, to select one behavior overanother from the reservoir we have accumulated.F. For James, the will is simply part of our nature, as it must be if the game of living is to get going in the firstplace.II. James’s pragmatism is tied to his functionalism.A. Critics of pragmatism often take pragmatists to be claiming, “If it works, it’s true.” On this understanding,there would be no way to distinguish between competing scientific worldviews if both of them led tocomparable practical success.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 29
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Lecture OneFrom the Upanishads to H
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E. The Upanishads would merge us wi
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2. Despite their oracles, priests,
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4. Looking at geometry, we are told
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E. The contribution of pre-Socratic
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of the mystery of earth itself impe
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Lecture SixHerodotus and the Lamp o
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Lecture SevenSocrates on the Examin
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Xenophon. Memorabilia. Cornell Univ
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II. A philosopher is engaged in the
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Lecture NineCan Virtue Be Taught?Sc
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Lecture TenPlato’s Republic⎯Man
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Annas, J. “Classical Greek Philos
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III. The dominant school of Greek m
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1. Epistemonikon is a special featu
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Timeline800-600 B.C.E. ............
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1705...............................
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1873...............................
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Functionalism: The view that consci
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Tabula rasa: A blank slate. In the
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progress in one of its most summoni
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John Locke (1632-1704): Physician a
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The Great Ideas ofPhilosophy, 2 nd
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Table of ContentsThe Great Ideas of
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Lecture ThirteenAristotle on Friend
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C. Aristotle is recovering the Home
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III. The problem of conduct is then
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C. The Stoic account relies on the
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Lecture SixteenThe Stoic Bridge to
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Recommended Reading:Bede. A History
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III. Roman law successfully permitt
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Lecture EighteenThe Light Within⎯
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B. Augustine approaches the problem
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B. Very early, the Islamic commitme
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Lecture TwentySecular Knowledge⎯T
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IV. The third great institutional c
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1. Scholasticism was an attempt to
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Lecture Twenty-TwoScholasticism and
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E. Further, to the intellectual vir
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historical volumes tell Florentines
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Lecture Twenty-FourLet Us Burn the
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1. First, the courts required a doc
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650-850 C.E. ......................
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1794...............................
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Apatheia: Freedom from pathos and s
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ut cannot know what it is. Ultimate
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Biographical NotesAeschylus (525-45
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Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771)
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Socrates (c. 469-399 B.C.): Greek p
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Daniel N. Robinson, Ph.D.Philosophy
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Scope:The Great Ideas of Philosophy
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B. This expansion, however, does no
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1. This standard essentially rules
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Lecture Twenty-SevenNewton⎯The Sa
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Lecture Twenty-EightHobbes and the
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Recommended Reading:Hobbes, T. Levi
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B. Other things can be known to be
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Lecture ThirtyNo Matter? The Challe
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Lecture Thirty-OneHume and the Purs
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Lecture Thirty-TwoThomas Reid and t
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efore him were not always faithful
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2. His Letters on the English makes
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Lecture Thirty-FourThe Federalist P
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VI. The Federalist Papers and the g
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Page 169 and 170: Lecture FortyThe Aesthetic Movement
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Page 177 and 178: Lecture Forty-ThreeDarwin and Natur
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Page 183 and 184: Lecture Forty-FiveThe Freudian Worl
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Page 214 and 215: Lecture Forty-NineAlan Turing in th
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Lecture Fifty-SevenOn the Nature of
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2. So far as it can coexist with th
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3. Slavery is commonplace in all of
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3. Does the just-war theorist have
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B. The quadrivium comprised arithme
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2. He argues that the former is pre
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1. The objects of the knowable worl
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etween a world of beauty and one of
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⎯⎯⎯. On Free choice of Will.
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Herodotus. The Persian Wars. G. Raw
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———. Toward a Science of Huma
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