DOCSLIB.ORG

William James' Theory of Emotion

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
William James' Theory of Emotion Western University Scholarship@Western Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository 8-26-2014 12:00 AM William James' Theory of Emotion James Southworth The University of Western Ontario Supervisor Louis Charland The University of Western Ontario Graduate Program in Philosophy A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the equirr ements for the degree in Doctor of Philosophy © James Southworth 2014 Follow this and additional works at: https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd Part of the History of Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Southworth, James, "William James' Theory of Emotion" (2014). Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository. 2315. https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/etd/2315 This Dissertation/Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Scholarship@Western. It has been accepted for inclusion in Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository by an authorized administrator of Scholarship@Western. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WILLIAM JAMES’ THEORY OF EMOTION (Thesis format: Monograph) by James Southworth Graduate Program in Philosophy A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies The University of Western Ontario London, Ontario, Canada © James Southworth 2014 Abstract William James’ theory of emotion has had a profound impact within philosophy and psychology over the last 130 years. While his counterintuitive James-Lange theory – which asserts that an emotion is the feeling of bodily changes – has been widely criticized, it has also had its supporters over the years, including recently with advocates from neuroscience, psychology and philosophy. In part one (Chapters 1-4), I argue that critics and advocates alike have misinterpreted James on emotion due to a neglect of his overarching framework as developed in The Principles of Psychology. The James-Lange theory remains silent on a number of philosophical questions, including the relationship between emotion and consciousness, the nature of an emotional feeling, and the relationship between emotion and other mental and bodily phenomena, such as instinct, habit, will and attention. By considering James’ views on these matters, I hope to show that his comprehensive theory of emotion is far different than traditionally conceived. As a result, the standard criticisms of the theory, such as its inability to account for intentionality, cannot be sustained. In part two (Chapters 5-7), I consider James’ later treatment of emotion as developed in The Will to Believe and The Varieties of Religious Experience. While it is generally thought that James employs a cognitive theory of emotion in these later works, I argue that this is not the case; that his treatment of emotion is continuous with his earlier theory. Nevertheless, James does expand his conception of emotion in The Varieties of Religious Experience with his discussion of two kinds of emotions: feelings of reality and transformational emotions. I attempt to draw out the important implications that these two kinds of emotions have for the relationship between emotion and belief. In the final chapter, I turn my attention to The Will to Believe. I contend that the many misinterpretations of this short essay are rooted in a misunderstanding of what James means by ‘our passional nature’. Drawing upon my previous analysis of emotion, I present what I take to be James’ ultimate argument in the essay, which is far more passionate than the prevailing right to believe interpretation. ii Keywords William James, James-Lange theory, emotion, feeling, stream of consciousness, knowledge by acquaintance, knowledge about, intentionality, belief, the unconscious, habit, instinct, attention, feelings of reality, transformational emotions, passional nature, will to believe iii Acknowledgments I would like to thank all the faculty and graduate students at Western who have helped me over the course of the last five years. I would especially like to thank Louis Charland, not only for introducing me to the topic of my dissertation, but also for his ongoing encouragement, insight and feedback. This helped to make the researching and writing of my dissertation a truly rewarding experience. iv Table of Contents Abstract ............................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. iv Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v Introduction: More than a Century of Misunderstanding ................................................... 1 1 Situating Emotion Within Consciousness ...................................................................... 6 1.1 Three Interpretations ............................................................................................... 6 1.1.1 The Standard View ..................................................................................... 6 1.1.2 Ellsworth’s Cognitive Interpretation ........................................................... 8 1.1.3 Hatfield’s Hybrid Interpretation ............................................................... 10 1.1.4 A Common Problem ................................................................................. 13 1.2 Primary Feelings ................................................................................................... 13 1.3 Secondary Feelings ............................................................................................... 17 1.4 The Metaphysical Status of the Emotions ............................................................ 21 1.5 The Role of Introspection ..................................................................................... 23 1.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 26 2 Emotional Feeling ........................................................................................................ 27 2.1 Emotion and Action .............................................................................................. 29 2.2 More Than a Bodily Feeling ................................................................................. 32 2.2.1 Emotion and Sense of Reality ................................................................... 36 2.3 The Subtle Emotions ............................................................................................. 43 2.4 The Natural Kind Status of the Emotions ............................................................. 48 2.5 The Influence of Culture ....................................................................................... 53 2.6 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 57 3 The Impossibility of Unconscious Emotions ............................................................... 58 v 3.1 The Unconscious in the Late Nineteenth Century ................................................ 61 3.2 The Argument from Cognitive/Hybrid Theorists ................................................. 64 3.3 The Somatic Theory Argument ............................................................................ 67 3.4 Objectless Emotions and the Unconscious ........................................................... 73 3.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 74 4 Emotion, Habit and the Self ......................................................................................... 75 4.1 Self-Feeling ........................................................................................................... 76 4.2 The Self ................................................................................................................. 80 4.3 Blind and Habitual Emotions ................................................................................ 82 4.4 Attention and Breaking Emotional Habits ............................................................ 86 4.5 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 91 5 Developments in James’ Conception of Emotion ........................................................ 92 5.1 Three Changes from The Principles to Varieties .................................................. 94 5.1.1 The Compounding of Mental States ......................................................... 94 5.1.2 From Dualism to Neutral Monism ............................................................ 97 5.1.3 Feelings of Reality .................................................................................... 99 5.2 Terminological Changes ..................................................................................... 100 5.3 Conclusion .......................................................................................................... 101 6 Feelings of Reality and Transformational Emotions ................................................. 102 6.1 James’ Methodology in Varieties ....................................................................... 103 6.2 Feelings of Reality .............................................................................................. 105 6.3 The Divided Self and Conversion ......................................................................
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Charisma, Medieval and Modern
    Charisma, Medieval and Modern Edited by Peter Iver Kaufman and Gary Dickson Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in Religions www.mdpi.com/journal/religions Peter Iver Kaufman and Gary Dickson (Eds.) Charisma, Medieval and Modern This book is a reprint of the special issue that appeared in the online open access journal Religions (ISSN 2077-1444) in 2012 (available at: http://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions/special_issues/charisma_medieval). Guest Editors Peter Iver Kaufman Jepson School, University of Richmond Richmond, VA, USA Gary Dickson School of History, Classics, and Archaeology, University of Edinburgh Edinburgh, EH, Scotland, UK Editorial Office MDPI AG Klybeckstrasse 64 Basel, Switzerland Publisher Shu-Kun Lin Production Editor Jeremiah R. Zhang 1. Edition 2014 0'3,%DVHO%HLMLQJ ISBN 978-3-03842-007-1 © 2014 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. All articles in this volume are Open Access distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which allows users to download, copy and build upon published articles even for commercial purposes, as long as the author and publisher are properly credited, which ensures maximum dissemination and a wider impact of our publications. However, the dissemination and distribution of copies of this book as a whole is restricted to MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. III Table of Contents List of Contributors ............................................................................................................... V Preface
    [Show full text]
  • Obituary Johan Schioldann
    Obituary Johan Schioldann To cite this version: Johan Schioldann. Obituary. History of Psychiatry, SAGE Publications, 2006, 17 (2), pp.247-252. 10.1177/0957154X06061602. hal-00570850 HAL Id: hal-00570850 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-00570850 Submitted on 1 Mar 2011 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. HPY 17(2) Schou obituary 2/5/06 09:21 Page 1 History of Psychiatry, 17(2): 247–252 Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com [200606] DOI: 10.1177/0957154X06061602 Obituary Mogens Abelin Schou (1918–2005) – half a century with lithium JOHAN SCHIOLDANN* Mogens Schou, the most prominent of the pioneers of modern lithium therapy, passed away on 29 September 2005. He was 86 years old. A couple of days before, he had returned home from an IGSLI (International Group for the Study of Lithium-Treated Patients) meeting in Poland. He succumbed to pneumonia, having managed to finish a last manuscript just hours before. Schou was born in Copenhagen in 1918. His father, Hans Jacob Schou, an influential figure in Danish psychiatry, adopted the notion of a biological basis of affective disorders from his countryman, Carl Lange, one of the early era lithium pioneers (Schioldann, 2001), and established a research laboratory to study the possible biochemical and physiological changes in manic-depressive illness (Schou, 2005).
    [Show full text]
  • Affect Vs. Emotion
    www.thecine-files.com Affect Vs. Emotion Steven Shaviro Affect theorists tend to distinguish between affect and emotion. I will start with the latter, because it is easier to explain. Emotions are personal experiences or states, like anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise: these are the six basic emotions catalogued by the psychologist Paul Ekman (2012), though we may well dispute his claims that this list is either exhaustive, or invariant across cultures.1 There are also more complex emotions, like humiliation, contempt, relief, jealousy, exhaustion, and so on; it is unclear whether these can be broken down into combinations of the more basic ones, or whether more specific cultural contexts need to be involved. It also isn’t easy to delineate the boundary between emotions and moods (which might include such conditions as melancholy, despair, and contentment). Presumably emotions are acute and momentary, while moods are longer-lasting and more stable, providing a general background to our more immediate experiences. But in spite of all these difficulties, we are generally able to recognize emotions in ourselves and others. Indeed, emotions are always attached to subjects or selves. They are conditions that come over us, or in which we find ourselves. They are states of mind that we experience directly. They tend to color and inflect—or even set the conditions for—nearly all of our other perceptions and actions. Cognitivists and evolutionary psychiatrists understand emotions largely in functional terms. Emotions, they tell us, are shortcuts which aid us in making judgments necessary to our survival. If something tastes disgusting, I immediately spit it out; I might well die if I only rejected a given piece of food after having rationally determined that it was poisonous.
    [Show full text]
  • The Principles of Psychology: V. 1 PDF Book
    THE PRINCIPLES OF PSYCHOLOGY: V. 1 PDF, EPUB, EBOOK William James | 696 pages | 01 Dec 1957 | Dover Publications Inc. | 9780486203812 | English | New York, United States The Principles of Psychology: v. 1 PDF Book His style is hard to follow. Please click the button below to reload the page. Viewed this way, reaction and seeking are active components in the service of survival. Philosopher Helmut R. Read it if you must. Career Development Quarterly, Vol. Volume III includes extensive notes, appendixes, textual apparatus, and a general index. Flavell , Ellen M. In the use of the comparative method, James wrote, " instincts of animals are ransacked to throw light on our own Help Learn to edit Community portal Recent changes Upload file. Rating details. Mark Davis rated it it was amazing Oct 14, Case in point: Mind Dust from the Soul. He believed that the universe was not static and orderly but ever-changing and chaotic. I do have Volume 2 waiting in my queue and will get to it at some point, not soon though. His works blew a dent in my resolution to read 50 books this year, but with good reason. Elsewhere, he states that we love adulation, we desire to please, and we are ambitions and vain. As someone who has a big interest in psychology, I decided to order this volume and the next using a gift card I received. Error rating book. There are four methods from James' book: stream of consciousness James' most famous psychological metaphor ; emotion later known as the James—Lange theory ; habit human habits are constantly formed to achieve certain results ; and will through James' personal experiences in life.
    [Show full text]
  • Feelings and the Body: the Jamesian Perspective on Autonomic Specificity of Emotion§ Bruce H
    Biological Psychology 84 (2010) 383–393 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Biological Psychology journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/biopsycho Review Feelings and the body: The Jamesian perspective on autonomic specificity of emotion§ Bruce H. Friedman * Department of Psychology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA 24061-0436, United States ARTICLE INFO ABSTRACT Article history: ‘‘What is an emotion?’’ William James’s seminal paper in Mind (1884) proposed the idea that Received 27 May 2009 physiological and behavioral responses precede subjective experience in emotions that are marked by Accepted 17 October 2009 ‘‘distinct bodily expression.’’ This notion has broadly inspired the investigation of emotion-specific Available online 29 October 2009 autonomic nervous system activity, a research topic with great longevity. The trajectory of this literature is traced through its major theoretical challenges from the Cannon–Bard, activation, and Schachter– Keywords: Singer theories, through its rich empirical history in the field of psychophysiology. Although these James–Lange theory studies are marked by various findings, the overall trend of the research supports the notion of Emotion autonomic specificity for basic emotions. The construct of autonomic specificity continues to influence a Autonomic nervous system number of core theoretical issues in affective science, such as the existence of basic or ‘natural kinds’ of emotion, the structure of affective space, the cognition–emotion relationship, and the function of emotion. Moreover, James’s classic paper, which stimulated the emergence of psychology from philosophy and physiology in the latter nineteenth century, remains a dynamic force in contemporary emotion research. ß 2009 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
    [Show full text]
  • Dream Consciousness
    Nicholas Tranquillo Editor Dream Consciousness Allan Robson's New Approach to the Brain and Its Mind Vienna Circle Institute � Springer Yearbook 112 A. Damasio I also agree with Robson's defense of the emotional congruence of dreams. In Chapter 11 most (if not all) dreams, the signal of the emotion is appropriate to the dreamed What Is Dreaming for, If Anything? events. On the other hand, I do not agree that one's regular waking experience is emotionless. We are fortunately spared large emotional upheavals for long stretches of daily living, but I believe there is a continuously fluctuating state of background emotion and feeling. I regard the complete absence of that emotional background as pathological. Daniel C. Dennett Another suggestion of Robson's that I especially like is that REM sleep dream states resemble the hallucinatory states of awake individuals in whom conscious­ ness is usually regarded as normal. This has important implications for research on the psychoses. Let me now turnto Hobson's use of REM sleep dreams as a basis for an account of the origins of consciousness. Here, I agree with the notion that dreariJ. conscious­ ness is likely to be a less evolved stage of consciousness than standard wakeful One of fae charges leveled against adaptationism (most famously by Gould and consciousness. However, I resist Robson's idea that dreams represent the bottom Lewontin 1979, in their attack on "just-so stories") is that we adaptationists jump to level of the consciousness process, that they arethe protoconsciousness, as he calls our "panglossian" hypotheses without- due consideration, let alone testing, of it.
    [Show full text]
  • Psychology Collection
    A GUIDE TO THE: PSYCHOLOGY COLLECTION Scope of the Collection The Library’s psychology collection contains approximately 3000 volumes. These include theoretical works, material on the history of the subject, and biographies. The collection covers the main branches of psychology, including social, cognitive, comparative and child psychology. Also represented in the Library’s holdings are theories such as psychoanalysis, and interdisciplinary fields including the psychology of religion, war-related trauma (shellshock), and parapsychology. Most material is in English but German, French and Russian are also represented. Shelving Arrangements The majority of the collection is shelved at S. Psychology, although there is a separate shelfmark for comparative psychology, S. Psychology (Animal). Material within the two shelfmarks is arranged on the shelves in single alphabetical sequences, not subdivided by geographical area or topic. The S. Psychology and S. Psychology (Animal) shelfmarks are sub-divisions of the Library’s Science & Miscellaneous classification. The sequence begins on Level 5, running up to S. Psychology, Jung and continues on Level 6 from S. Psychology, K. Oversize books designated as ‘quarto’ (4to.) in the Library’s catalogues will be found in the section of the Science & Misc., 4to. sequence on Level 5, at the shelfmarks S. Psychology, 4to. and S. Psychology (Animal), 4to. Relevant material in related subjects may also be located at a number of additional shelfmarks, so it is always worth consulting the printed and computer subject indexes. Interdisciplinary works on the relationship between psychology and other disciplines are often located in the relevant areas, e.g. A. Art for books on the psychology of art, Literature for literary criticism, and Philology (Gen.) for material on the psychology of language.
    [Show full text]
  • Varieties of Fame in Psychology Research-Article6624572016
    PPSXXX10.1177/1745691616662457RoedigerVarieties of Fame in Psychology 662457research-article2016 Perspectives on Psychological Science 2016, Vol. 11(6) 882 –887 Varieties of Fame in Psychology © The Author(s) 2016 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.com/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1745691616662457 pps.sagepub.com Henry L. Roediger, III Washington University in St. Louis Abstract Fame in psychology, as in all arenas, is a local phenomenon. Psychologists (and probably academics in all fields) often first become well known for studying a subfield of an area (say, the study of attention in cognitive psychology, or even certain tasks used to study attention). Later, the researcher may become famous within cognitive psychology. In a few cases, researchers break out of a discipline to become famous across psychology and (more rarely still) even outside the confines of academe. The progression is slow and uneven. Fame is also temporally constricted. The most famous psychologists today will be forgotten in less than a century, just as the greats from the era of World War I are rarely read or remembered today. Freud and a few others represent exceptions to the rule, but generally fame is fleeting and each generation seems to dispense with the lessons learned by previous ones to claim their place in the sun. Keywords fame in psychology, scientific eminence, history of psychology, forgetting First, please take a quiz. Below is a list of eight names. done. (Hilgard’s, 1987, history text was better known Please look at each name and answer the following three than his scientific work that propelled him to eminence.) questions: (a) Do you recognize this name as belonging Perhaps some of you recognized another name or two to a famous psychologist? (b) If so, what area of study without much knowing why or what they did.
    [Show full text]
  • The Hiring of James Mark Baldwin and James Gibson Hume at Toronto in 1889
    History of Psychology Copyright 2004 by the Educational Publishing Foundation 2004, Vol. 7, No. 2, 130–153 1093-4510/04/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/1093-4510.7.2.130 THE HIRING OF JAMES MARK BALDWIN AND JAMES GIBSON HUME AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO IN 1889 Christopher D. Green York University In 1889, George Paxton Young, the University of Toronto’s philosophy professor, passed away suddenly while in the midst of a public debate over the merits of hiring Canadians in preference to American and British applicants for faculty positions. As a result, the process of replacing Young turned into a continuation of that argument, becoming quite vociferous and involving the popular press and the Ontario gov- ernment. This article examines the intellectual, political, and personal dynamics at work in the battle over Young’s replacement and its eventual resolution. The outcome would have an impact on both the Canadian intellectual scene and the development of experimental psychology in North America. In 1889 the University of Toronto was looking to hire a new professor of philosophy. The normally straightforward process of making a university appoint- ment, however, rapidly descended into an unseemly public battle involving not just university administrators, but also the highest levels of the Ontario govern- ment, the popular press, and the population of the city at large. The debate was not pitched solely, or even primarily, at the level of intellectual issues, but became intertwined with contentious popular questions of nationalism, religion, and the proper place of science in public education. The impact of the choice ultimately made would reverberate not only through the university and through Canada’s broader educational establishment for decades to come but, because it involved James Mark Baldwin—a man in the process of becoming one of the most prominent figures in the study of the mind—it also rippled through the nascent discipline of experimental psychology, just then gathering steam in the United States of America.
    [Show full text]
  • UNIVERSITY of CALIFORNIA, IRVINE the Impact of a Two-Week
    UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, IRVINE The Impact of a Two-week Daily Intervention on Increased and Sustained Experiences of Awe THESIS submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS in Social Ecology by Sean Patrick Goldy Master’s Committee: Assistant Professor Paul K. Piff, Chair Professor Roxane Cohen Silver Professor Peter Ditto 2020 © 2020 Sean Patrick Goldy TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES iii LIST OF TABLES iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS vi INTRODUCTION 1 CHAPTER 1: Literature Review 1 Awe and Longitudinal Work 4 CHAPTER 2: The Present Study 7 CHAPTER 3: Method 7 Sample and Procedures 7 Measures 9 Analytic Strategy 11 CHAPTER 5: Results 12 Exploratory Analyses 14 CHAPTER 6: Discussion 16 Limitations and Future Directions 18 REFERENCES 21 APPENDIX A: Figures and Tables 26 ii LIST OF FIGURES Page Figure 1 26 Figure 2 26 Figure 3 27 Figure 4 27 Figure 5 28 Figure 6 28 Figure 7 29 Figure 8 29 Figure 9 29 Figure 10 30 iii LIST OF TABLES Page Table 1 Mean scores for daily reported emotions over the intervention period 31 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Thank you to all who have been with me along each step of this process. v ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS The Impact of a Two-week Daily Intervention on Increased and Sustained Experiences of Awe by Sean Patrick Goldy Master of Arts in Social Ecology University of California, Irvine, 2020 Associate Professor Paul K. Piff, Chair The emotion awe is associated with numerous individual and social benefits, including increased physical and mental health, prosocial behavior, and humility (Stellar et al., 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • The History of Emotions Past, Present, Future Historia De Las Emociones: Pasado, Presente Y Futuro a História Das Emoções: Passado, Presente E Futuro
    Revista de Estudios Sociales 62 | Octubre 2017 Comunidades emocionales y cambio social The History of Emotions Past, Present, Future Historia de las emociones: pasado, presente y futuro A história das emoções: passado, presente e futuro Rob Boddice Electronic version URL: https://journals.openedition.org/revestudsoc/939 ISSN: 1900-5180 Publisher Universidad de los Andes Printed version Date of publication: 1 October 2017 Number of pages: 10-15 ISSN: 0123-885X Electronic reference Rob Boddice, “The History of Emotions”, Revista de Estudios Sociales [Online], 62 | Octubre 2017, Online since 01 October 2017, connection on 04 May 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ revestudsoc/939 Los contenidos de la Revista de Estudios Sociales están editados bajo la licencia Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International. 10 The History of Emotions: Past, Present, Future* Rob Boddice** Received date: May 30, 2017 · Acceptance date: June 10, 2017 · Modification date: June 26, 2017 DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.7440/res62.2017.02 Como citar: Boddice, Rob. 2017. “The History of Emotions: Past, Present, Future”. Revista de Estudios Sociales 62: 10-15. https:// dx.doi.org/10.7440/res62.2017.02 ABSTRACT | This article briefly appraises the state of the art in the history of emotions, lookingto its theoretical and methodological underpinnings and some of the notable scholarship in the contemporary field. The predominant focus, however, lies on the future direction of the history of emotions, based on a convergence of the humanities and neuros- ciences, and
    [Show full text]
  • History of Neurology William James MD.Pdf
    History of Neurology WILLIAM JAMES, MD FEBRUARY 6TH, 2017 NEUROLOGY RESIDENT MORNING REPORT William James MD (1842-1910) • B NYC; wealthy family, went to Europe • Brother- Henry James (author) • 1st studied art • Harvard undergrad; studied in Europe under Von Helmholtz • Harvard med school- graduated age 27 • Zoological expedition with Louis Agassiz in Brazil (Amazon) • Nervous breakdown (3 years) • On recovery epiphany: – “My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will” – Returned to life: experience/anti-mental, intellectual, Cartesian • 1872 (age 30)-taught physiology at Harvard • 1875-Began teaching psychology – Established 1st experimental psychology lab in the USA • Principles of Psychology; started in 1879, published in 1890 • 1879-began teaching philosophy • After publication of Principles James lost interest in this “nasty little subject”: “All one cares to know lies outside it” William James MD (1842-1910) “The James” • 1890 Principles of Psychology-2 volumes: the “James” • One of the “Great Books” of Western Civilization! • 1892-Psychology The Briefer Course: the “Jimmy” • 1897 The Will To Believe & Other Essays in Popular Philosophy • 1899-Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals • 1902- The Varieties of Religious Experience – Another religious epiphany from vacation in Adirondacks: “it seemed as if the Gods of all the of all nature- mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast with the moral “The Jimmy” Gods of the inner life” • 1907- Pragmatism: A New Name for
    [Show full text]