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Proquest Dissertations 001264 UNIVERSITY DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES THE SUBCONSCIOUS IN JAMES1 EXPLANATION OF RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE by- Edward J. Capestany Thesis submitted to the faculty of Philosophy of the University of Ottawa in partial fulfillment of the reauirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. OTTAWA 1967 <>« BIBMOTH^QUE^ * #^*'% £, UttKAiC.tS o YAHW UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UMI Number: DC53877 INFORMATION TO USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleed-through, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI UMI Microform DC53877 Copyright 2011 by ProQuest LLC All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA - ECOLE DES GRADUES TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION i-x:: I. THE FIELD OF CONSCIOUSNESS AND ATTENTION 1. ULTIMATE CONDITIONS 0? ATTENTION- ITS NATURE AND ACTIVITY 2 2. THE PHENOMENON OF SELECTIVITY 19 3. THE UNITY OF SENSE EXPERIENCE 32 4. THE TRANSCENDENTAL UNITY OF APPERCEPTION 58 5. THE FIELD ©P CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE CENTER OF INTEREST 31 6. JAMES1 DESCRIPTION OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS 86 II. STUDY OF THE PRAGMATIC METHOD AND OF THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTECEDENT 1. INTRODUCTION 97 2. RELATIONS OF PSYCHOLOGY AND RELIGION 93 3. PRAGMATISM 106 4. PSYCHOLOGICAL 3SNT OF JAMES 131 5 . THE MIND AND BODY PROBLEM 133 6. THE TRANSMISSIVE FUNCTION OF THE BRAIN 144 7. THE BACK-DOOR THEORY 146 3. THE PSYCHOLOGICAL ANTECEDENT - FINAL DISCUSSION 155 III. JAMBS' HYPOTHESIS FOR THE EXPLANATION OF THE RELIGIOUS ACT 1. MARECHAL'S OPINION 160 2. THE FRAME .JOR THE THEORY OF THE SUBOONSCIOUS- TH3 RELIGIOUS CONCEPTION OF JAMBS 7. 162 3. DISCUSSION 170 4. FINAL CRITICISM 183 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA - SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STU DIES UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES TABLE OF CONTENTS IV. THE AGREEMENT OF JAMES' THEORY WITH THE PSYCHOLOGICAL DYNAMISM DEVELOPED BY PROTESTANT THEOLOGIANS 1. ATTITUDE OF JAMES TO THEOLOGY IN GENERAL 198 2 . THEORY OF JAMBS 205 3. THE PROTESTANT THEOLOGY - A NECESSARY BACKGROUND 208 4. DISCUSSION 211 V. THE MORE SUPRAPSYCHOLOGICAL - OUR UNION WITH IT - FINAL METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTION OF JAMES - THE MYSTICAL INTUITION 1. THE MORE SUPRAPSYCHOLOGICAL 216 2. THE RELATIONAL OR FUNCTIONAL THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 218 3. THE FINAL METAPHYSICAL CONCEPTION OF JAMES 223 4. THE MYSTICAL INTUITION 234 5. FINAL REMARKS 246 VI. TOPOGRAPHICAL MAP OF JAMBS' PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SUPRAPSYCHOLOGIOlL CONCEPTION 250 VII. FINAL CRITICISM 251 V III. EPILOGUE 275 Bibliography 230 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES STANDARD ABBREVIATIONS Principles of Psychology Psychology Psychology, Briefer Course P.3.C. The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy ¥ .B. Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine H.I. Talks to Teachers on Psychology: and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals T.T. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Natur e V. R. E. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking ? Pragm. The Meaning of Iruty.-A Sequel to "Pragmatism".. M.T. A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures on the Present Situation in Philosophy P.U. Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy S.P.P. Memories and Studies M.S. Hlssays In Radical Empiricism E.R.E. Collected Essays and Reviews C.E.R. UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES I UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE PES GRADUES " INTRODUCTION The Place of the "Subconscious" in the Philosophy of William James. In Lecture XVIII of his Varieties of Religious Experi­ ence, James makes his "critique" of the scholastic theodicy. Having destroyed theodicy in his own fashion and the trans­ cendent God, James seeks out an immanent way of explaining religious experience. This is presented in Lecture XX or "Conclusions." In his theory of the subliminal self acting as an alien power and control over conscious life, James insists that he is not introducing elements other than those verifiable by experience. Thus he considers it legitimate to attribute "psychological antecedents" to a series of con­ sequents of superior character. This naturalistic explana­ tion of the religious act could occur simultaneously with the divine reality. Since the testimony of the subconscious is ambiguous, there is here implied a necessary complement of the "pragmatic method" for, even though the neurotic tempera- ment-^ be the necessary condition, James is not interested in the origins but in the results: "by their fruits you shall know them." Thus the pragmatic criterion becomes the ex­ clusive one so that we may be sure of the divine testimony of the subconscious. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Modern Library edition authorized by Longmans, Green and Company, 1902, pp. 232-233. Further referred to as V.R.E. 2Ibid., p. 417 3Ibid., p. 26 4 Ibid.," p. 21 UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES II UNIVERSITE D'OTTAWA ECOLE DES GRADUES Within his Radical Empiricism, the religious "experience" is considered by James as something strictly personal^3 but which can be described to fit into a science. Considering the religious act as "a higher kind of emotion"' and a feel- 3 ing of presence, James works on the basis of a polarity with a developed tension between a higher power and the individual There is a release through the subconscious" and as a result, the development of a "center of energy" with the consequences of a new vitality. Thus James goes one step beyond Kant inasmuch as James has found out an empirical way to God. (After noting that the mystical experience, although of full authority for the individual experimenting it, might not be so for others, James establishes it, however, over against the exclusivism of rationalism based upon the understanding and the senses alone. ) The position of James regarding the subconscious, in spite of his variation, is expressed in terms of attention, -> (with all the implication that this term has in the psycho- Logical system of James), and compared to the retinal field V.R.E., p. 30 bIbid., p. 445 7Ibid., p. 46 8Ibid., p. 53 9Ibid., p. 503 10Ibid., p. 493 11 Ibid., p. 417 12 Ibid., p. 419 Ibid., p. 22o UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES Ill UNIVERSITE D OTTAWA ECOLE PES GRADUES of vision. Those matters to which we are directly and exclusively reacting (he might have said) occupy the center of attention. Thus, the distinction between the different fields (conscious and subconscious) is almost always a matter of degree of attention. I do not deny that other texts of James suggest something other-wordly, as we shall see, but he never denies the continuity. James accepted as probable Fechner's doctrine of a superhuman consciousness, compounded of the experiences of human and infrahuman minds. For James, this hypothesis acquires plausibility from the "abnormal and supernormal phenomena" of multiple personality, automatic writing and mediumship, but above all from the "religious experience" with its conviction "that we inhabit an invisible spiritual environment from which help comes, our soul being mysteriously one with a larger soul whose instruments we are." (Y.R.3., Lecture XX.) The mystical intuition would then be "only very sudden and great exten­ sions of the ordinary field of consciousness," "an immense spreading of the margin of the field." (Collected Essays and Reviews, 500) There are two issues involved in this conception: the psychophysiological one, centered around the necessary elements for the production or genesis of the center of activity or attention; and, the metaphysical one, centered around the problem of the one and the many. In relation to the first one James considers the "transmissive function of the brain." Originally delivered as a lecture by James at Harvard in 1393, his Human Immortality: Two Supposed UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA SCHOOL OF GRADUATE STUDIES IV UNIVERSITE DOTTAWA ECOLE PES GRADUES Objections to the Doctrine was published as a small book.1^ Its second edition contains a preface with further elabora­ tions. The body-mind relationship was one of those tragic problems which continued to fascinate James throughout his life. He returned to it after his Principles of Psychology in other, more philosophical writings where his views seem less "materialistic" than even the qualified epiphenomenalism expounded in his Principles. The gap is bridged in his own fashion in this lecture. James argues that, though there is overwhelming evidence for the functional dependence of mind and brain, such dependence does not necessarily imply that the brain "generates" consciousness—it may merely "transmit" it. Behind the material world there may be a "continuum of cosmic consciousness" which is transmitted through material brains in a sense analogous to that in which light is trans­ mitted through colored glass. The concluding chapters of the Varieties can be fully understood only in the light of this hypothesis. James is also aware that differences in individuals will depend on differences in the transmitting media. Thus, the release of the spiritual energy is deter­ mined by the psychophysiological ideosincracy of the indivi­ dual or by the proper stimulus. ° This is the "conditio sine qua" or psychological antecedent "quoad se" of the religious act. This type of development goes along with the descrip­ tion of the "back-door effects" done by James in the last _-_ ~ James, Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine, (Boston: Hughton, Mifflin and Co., 1398).
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