Description
Book SynopsisA pioneer in early studies of the human mind and founder of that peculiarly American philosophy called Pragmatism, William James remains America's most widely read philosopher. Generations of students have been drawn to his lucid presentations of philosophical problems. His works, now being made available for the first time in a definitive edition, have a permanent place in American letters and a continuing influence in philosophy and psychology. The essays gathered in the posthumously published Essays in Radical Empiricism formulate ideas that had brewed in James's mind for thirty years as he sought a way out of the philosophical dilemmas generated by the new psychology of the late nineteenth century. They constitute the explanatory core of his doctrine of radical empiricism, a doctrine that charts his course between the absolute idealism he could not accept and, at the other extreme, the law of associationism, which reduces knowledge to sheer contiguity of ideas. In his introductio
Table of ContentsForeword Introduction by John J. McDermott Essays in Radical Empiricism Does "Consciousness" Exist? A World of Pure Experience The Thing and Its Relations How Two Minds Can Know One Thing The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience The Experience of Activity The Essence of Humanism La Notion de Conscience Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic? Mr. Pitkin's Refutation of 'Radical Empiricism' A Reply to Mr. Pitkin Humanism and Truth Once More Absolutism and Empiricism Controversy about Truth
