William James: The Pluralistic Universe

Four dialogues where the psychologist finally philosophizes

A course on the thought of William James.

Course outline

1. 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…
2. 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…
3. 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…
4. 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…

Part of the Symposium course library.