William james biography timeline booking

For James, the first two attributes, ineffability and the noetic quality, "will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. It is anti-naturalistic, and harmonizes best with twice-bornness and so-called other-worldly states of mind " original italics. In line with his pragmatism, he asserted that the epistemological authority of mystical consciousness for the individual who experiences it is may be rightfully justified, but that others are under no obligation to accept that authority uncritically.

Importantly, however, the mere existence of mystical states necessarily indicates an incompleteness in the epistemological authority of the non-mystical. In his book The Pluralistic Universehe would expand upon his notion of "radical empiricism" in arguing for the possible association of empiricism and religion in the study of human spirituality [ 67 ] In viewing mysticism from a psychological perspective, he acknowledged that the limits of our being extend far beyond what is ordinarily accessible by our sense perception, and that our finite beings are affected by unconscious forces.

James viewed mysticism as the most foundational aspect of religion. While he grants that religious experience reveals the possibility of union with something greater than oneself, he clarifies that mysticism and philosophy identify that something as an "all inclusive soul of the world" that he does not deem wholly necessary for a practical and fulfilling religious life.

As always, James is averse to any dogmatic or absolutist doctrines, within religion and without, and thus values mysticism as a unique method of personal acquaintance with a larger reality. James wrote that humans had many instincts, even more than other animals. James is one of the two namesakes of the James—Lange theory of emotionwhich he formulated independently of Carl Lange in the s.

The theory holds that emotion is the mind's perception of physiological conditions that result from some stimulus. In James's oft-cited example, it is not that we see a bear, fear it, and run; we see a bear and run; consequently, we fear the bear. Our mind's perception of the higher adrenaline level, heartbeat, etc. This way of thinking about emotion has great consequences for the philosophy of aesthetics as well as to the philosophy and practice of education.

To this simple primary and immediate pleasure in certain pure sensations and harmonious combinations of them, there may, it is true, be added secondary pleasures; and in the practical enjoyment of works of art by the masses of mankind these secondary pleasures play a great part. The more classic one's taste is, however, the less relatively important are the secondary pleasures felt to be, in comparison with those of the primary sensation as it comes in.

Classicism and romanticism have their battles over this point. The theory of emotion was also independently developed in Italy by the anthropologist Giuseppe Sergi. Why do we run away if we notice that we are in danger? Because we are afraid of what will happen if we don't. This obvious answer to a seemingly trivial question has been the central concern of a century-old debate about the nature of our emotions.

The article appeared in a philosophy journal called Mindas there were no psychology journals yet. It was important, not because it definitively answered the question it raised, but because of the way in which James phrased his response. He conceived of an emotion in terms of a sequence of events that starts with the occurrence of an arousing stimulus the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system ; and ends with a passionate feeling, a conscious emotional experience.

A major goal of emotion research is still to elucidate this stimulus-to-feeling sequence—to figure out what processes come between the stimulus and the feeling. James set out to answer his question by asking another: do we run from a bear because we are afraid or are we afraid because we run? He proposed that the obvious answer, that we run because we are afraid, was wrongand instead argued that we are afraid because we run:.

Our natural way of thinking about … emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My theory, on the contrary, is that the bodily changes follow directly the perception of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur IS the emotion called 'feeling' by Damasio.

The essence of James's proposal was simple. It was premised on the fact that emotions are often accompanied by bodily responses racing heart, tight stomach, sweaty palms, tense muscles, and so on; sympathetic nervous system and that we can sense what is going on inside our body much the same as we can sense what is going on in the outside world.

According to James, emotions feel different from other states of mind because they have these bodily responses that give rise to internal sensations, and different emotions feel different from one another because they are accompanied by different bodily responses and sensations. For example, when we see James's bear, we run away. During this act of escape, the body goes through a physiological upheaval: blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, pupils dilate, palms sweat, muscles contract in certain ways evolutionary, innate defense mechanisms.

Other kinds of emotional situations will result in different bodily upheavals. In each case, the physiological responses return to the brain in the form of bodily sensations, and the unique pattern of sensory feedback gives each emotion its unique quality. Fear feels different from anger or love because it has a different physiological signature the parasympathetic nervous system for love.

The mental aspect of emotion, the feeling, is a slave to its physiology, not vice versa: we do not tremble because we are afraid or cry because we feel sad; we are afraid because we tremble and are sad because we cry. One of the long-standing schisms in the philosophy of history concerns the role of individuals in social change. One faction sees individuals as seen in Dickens ' A Tale of Two Cities and Thomas Carlyle 's The French Revolution, A History as the motive power of history, and the broader society as the page on which they write their acts.

The other sees society as moving according to holistic principles or laws, and sees individuals as its more-or-less willing pawns. A philosopher, according to James, must accept geniuses as a given entity the same way as a biologist accepts as an entity Darwin's "spontaneous variations". The role of an individual will depend on the degree of its conformity with the social environment, epoch, moment, etc.

James introduces a notion of receptivities of the moment. The societal mutations from generation to generation are determined directly or indirectly mainly by the acts or examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the moment or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments, initiators of movements, setters of precedent or fashion, centers of corruption, or destroyers of other persons, whose gifts, had they had free play, would have led society in another direction.

While James accepted Darwin's theories of biological evolution, he regarded Social Darwinism as propagated by philosophers such as Herbert Spencer as a sham. He was highly skeptical of applying Darwin's formula of natural selection to human societies in a way that put the Anglo-Saxons on top of the chain. James' rejection of Social Darwinism was a minority opinion at Harvard in the s and s.

James studied closely the schools of thought known as associationism and spiritualism. The view of an associationist is that each experience that one has leads to another, creating a chain of events. The association does not tie together two ideas, but rather physical objects. Small physical changes occur in the brain which eventually form complex ideas or associations.

Thoughts are formed as these complex ideas work together and lead to new experiences. Isaac Newton and David Hartley both were precursors to this school of thought, proposing such ideas as "physical vibrations in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves are the basis of all sensations, all ideas, and all motions …" [ 80 ] James disagreed with associationism in that he believed it to be too simple.

He referred to associationism as "psychology without a soul" [ 81 ] because there is nothing from within creating ideas; they just arise by associating objects with one another. On the other hand, a spiritualist believes that mental events are attributed to the soul. Whereas in associationism, ideas and behaviors are separate, in spiritualism, they are connected.

Spiritualism encompasses the term innatismwhich suggests that ideas cause behavior. Ideas of past behavior influence the way a person will act in the future; these ideas are all tied together by the soul. Therefore, an inner soul causes one to have a thought, which leads them to perform a behavior, and memory of past behaviors determine how one will act in the future.

James had a strong opinion about these schools of thought. He was, by nature, a pragmatist and thus took the view that one should use whatever parts of theories make the most sense and can be proven. James believed that each person has a soul, which exists in a spiritual universe, and williams james biography timeline booking a person to perform the behaviors they do in the physical world.

James stated that, although it does appear that humans use associations to move from one event to the next, this cannot be done without this soul tying everything together. For, after an association has been made, it is the person who decides which part of it to focus on, and therefore determines in which direction following associations will lead.

Spiritualism, however, does not demonstrate actual physical representations for how associations occur. James combined the views of spiritualism and associationism to create his own way of thinking. James discussed tender-minded thinkers as religious, optimistic, dogmatic, and monistic. Tough-minded thinkers were irreligious, pessimistic, pluralists, and skeptical.

Healthy-minded individuals were seen as natural believers by having faith in God and universal order. People who focused on human miseries and suffering were noted as sick souls. James was a founding member and vice president of the American Society for Psychical Research. Inthe year after the death of his young son, James had his first sitting with Piper at the suggestion of his mother-in-law.

He expressed his belief in Piper by saying, "If you wish to upset the law that all crows are black, it is enough if you prove that one crow is white. My white crow is Mrs. After evaluating sixty-nine reports of Piper's mediumship he considered the hypothesis of telepathy as well as Piper obtaining information about her sitters by natural means such as her memory recalling information.

According to James the "spirit-control" hypothesis of her mediumship was incoherent, irrelevant and in cases demonstrably false. Piper's knowledge of the James family was acquired from the gossip of servants and that the whole mystery rests on the failure of the people upstairs to realize that williams james biography timeline booking [downstairs] also have ears.

James was convinced that the "future will corroborate" the existence of telepathy. Titchener took issue with James's support for psychical research and considered his statements unscientific. James' theory of the self divided a person's william james biography timeline booking picture of self into two categories: the "Me" and the "I".

The "Me" can be thought of as a separate object or individual a person refers to when describing their personal experiences; while the "I" is the self that knows who they are and what they have done in their life. He linked this part of the self to the soul of a person, or what is now thought of as the mind. James further divided the "Me" part of self into: a material, a social, and a spiritual self, as below.

The material self consists of things that belong to a person or entities that a person belongs to. Thus, things like the body, family, clothes, money, and such make up the material self. For James, the core of the material self was the body. He believed a person's clothes were one way they expressed who they felt they were; or clothes were a way to show status, thus contributing to forming and maintaining one's self-image.

James felt that if one lost a family member, a part of who they are was lost also. Money figured in one's material self in a similar way. If a person had significant money then lost it, who they were as a person changed as well. Our social selves are who we are in a given social situation. For James, people change how they act depending on the social situation that they are in.

James believed that people had as many social selves as they did social situations they participated in. James also believed that in a given social group, an individual's social self may be divided even further. For James, the spiritual self was who we are at our core. It is more concrete or permanent than the other two selves. The spiritual self is our subjective and most intimate self.

Aspects of a spiritual self include things like personality, core values, and conscience that do not typically change throughout an individual's lifetime. The spiritual self involves introspection, or looking inward to deeper spiritual, moral, or intellectual questions without the influence of objective thoughts. What James refers to as the "I" self.

For James, the pure ego is what provides the thread of continuity between our past, present, and future selves. The pure ego's perception of consistent individual identity arises from a continuous stream of consciousness. The pure ego was not a substance and therefore could not be examined by science. Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk.

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William james biography timeline booking

In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist — This article is about the philosopher and psychologist. For other people with the same name, see William James disambiguation. New York CityU. Tamworth, New HampshireU. Pragmatism functional psychology radical empiricism. Du Bois G.

Pragmatism psychology philosophy of religion epistemology meaning. Will to believe doctrine crisis of self-surrender pragmatic theory of truth radical empiricism James—Lange theory of emotion psychologist's fallacy brain usage theory soft determinism dilemma of determinism stream of consciousness James's theory of the self the term multiverse.

Early life [ edit ]. Career [ edit ]. Family [ edit ]. Writings [ edit ]. Epistemology [ edit ]. Pragmatism and "cash value" [ edit ]. Will to believe doctrine [ edit ]. Main article: The Will to Believe. Free will [ edit ]. Philosophy of religion [ edit ]. Mysticism [ edit ]. Henry James, the novelist, was his brother. William James was born into a rich and comfortable family that regularly made visits to Europe.

His father was fascinated by theological and philosophical matters, and he was determined that all of his children should receive an excellent education. As such, he ensured that they were enrolled in the finest schools and were given an extensive and wide-ranging introduction to art and culture. The young William hoped to be allowed to study art, but his father — otherwise very liberal — tried to persuade him to study philosophy or science instead.

However, when the boy showed a continuing interest in painting, his father finally relented. James then spent a year studying art under William Morris Hunt. His younger brother, Henry James, would find fame as a novelist and writer. Early on, James aspired to be either an artist or a scientist. He studied painting with William Morris Hunt while the family was living in Newport, Rhode Island, aroundbut he eventually chose a different path for his life.

InJames enrolled at the Lawrence Scientific School, where he delved into such topics as chemistry and physiology. He went on to study at Harvard Medical School in The following year, James took a break from his education to join Louis Agassiz's expedition to the Amazon basin. He also spent time in Germany in to recuperate from some health woes, including back pain, sight problems and depression.

After earning his medical degree inJames decided not to practice medicine. He eventually became a lecturer at Harvard University. James became a staff at Harvard University in as a physiology instructor. Throughout his teaching career at the university, he also served as a professor of philosophy and a professor of psychology. James stayed at Harvard University for more than three decades, retiring InWilliam was hired to write the book on the field of psychology.

It took him 10 years to write one of the early primers on psychology, The Principles of Psychology. This book influenced other insightful people like John Dewey and Bertrand Russell. His interest in philosophical issues grew more as his profession progressed. Inhe published a book entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience. The book is considered to be another one of his leading works.

The work Pragmatism further explored his philosophical views.