Description
Book SynopsisThis book is a critical edition of William James’s Essays in Radical Empiricism. The text has been annotated to explain and expand on James’s references and to briefly develop points of criticism. The editor has added a new, critical Introduction, an extended bibliography and a new, comprehensive index. William James is perhaps America’s favorite philosopher and his writings remain popular around the world. Yet he studied to be an M.D., taught anatomy and physiology at Harvard, and he came to international prominence with his magnum opus, The Principles of Psychology (1890). James represented America just as the U.S. arrived on the world stage. This critical edition examines James’s later philosophical work from the perspective of the scientific naturalism often prominent in the Principles. It also takes up developments in historical and contemporary sources of functional psychology—which James often inspired—up to and including reflections of the contemporary French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. The aim is to place the evaluation of James on pragmatism and radical empiricism within the scientific perspective of contemporary work in the philosophy of psychology and the philosophy of mind. James on “radical empiricism” and “pure experience” and “pragmatism” are particular topics of critical attention.
Table of ContentsPreface
Introduction
William James, Functional Psychology, and Radical Empiricism
Chapter 1
Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?
Chapter 2
A World of Pure Experience
Chapter 3
The Thing and its Relations
Chapter 4
How Two Minds Can Know One Thing
Chapter 5
The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure Experience
Chapter 6
The Experience of Activity
Chapter 7
The Essence of Humanism
Chapter 8
La Notion de Conscience
Chapter 9
Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?
Chapter 10
Mr. Pitkin’s Refutation of ‘Radical Empiricism’
Chapter 11
Humanism and Truth Once More
Chapter 12
Absolutism and Empiricism
Bibliography
Index
