Posted for Seth Graves-Huffman
William James Pragmatism Lectures 3 and 4
Lecture 3-Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered
James addressed that we should analyze pragmatism with some older metaphysical disputes. Starting out, we have the classic substance problem. A substance is a thing that is composed of a multitude of attributes, a substance example being lead. Things like lead and chalk may have many similar attributes but are entirely different, either way it is still matter. These phenomena would come in groups such as the lead group, chalk group, etc., and our thoughts and feelings would be a little different, as James says, a part of our spirit substance. A substance’s attributes are its pragmatic cash in value. Now, concerning the defining of the word substance academia has had an issue of being too technical. These substances can be referred to as phenomenon as we cannot access their core reality. Now, looking at the ‘substance’ involved in the Eucharist one can exude their own subjective influence on the core reality truly unknowable to us and feel a change in receiving the bread and wine, now as the body and blood of Christ. Suspend the causal search and the pragmatic cash value is high in sensations. A pragmatic cash value only concerns sensations and the subjective. Now, looking at the dispute of materialism as opposed to theism or spiritualism in a world that is created as is and without interference. Materialism is solely concerned with nature and facts, spiritualism however, is concerned with nature, facts, and the individuals personal influence within. However, the dispute between there two is merely aesthetic preference. Many see science as gross, and many see religion as noble and then there is people that see these two as completely opposite. James would say that is because they both merely point at the same reality. So, which is more practical? Well with neither option can you get any contingent expectations thus it would be an idle dispute. A wise man walks away. So, what is the alternative in this scenario of materialism or spirit? A practical one. However, if both are the same the difference between the two would better be referred to as a universal subjective. All the while, a materialist’s universal future is a bleak one of expansion and shutting down. We all have near mystical moments every day, but generally they leave us with nothing whatsoever. Versus the spiritual pragmatic that believes God preserves a moral order and truly we as people do all have personal moral orders. With this spiritualism deals with the world of promises but the materialist deals with, as James says, ‘disappointment’. God ensures a saving future. Next, we have the design problem. God has always been debated in the external world; God made a bird its beak in his design for it to reach. However, concerning Darwin, the beak formed as it was fit by nature’s design. This put a large struggle in the path of theism, but through the human spirit, accommodation was able to fit the two pragmatically; God created the world as is and left it to become as needed. But concerning the pragmatic method, there is no consequential difference thus the dispute is idle. However, the theist does retain a strong cash value of future promise. Lastly, the free-will problem. A theist would pragmatically rationalize that they are better off not questioning free-will. A determinist would argue we are because of what happened before, but this is personally diminishing thus lacking pragmatism. Dignity has much to do with freedom. As determinists insinuate people as accountable for what they did not choose, its runs difficult pragmatically as we should be individuals not concepts. James argues that pragmatism needs to rejoin free-will with determinism.
Lecture 4-The One and the Many
Philosophy has a history concerning unity, or better defined as totality. People tend to highly regard unity over variety, a unity as a great fact with many interlocked parts whether by abstract monism or by or scientific conceptual. Concerning oneness, if we are to grant the concept existence, what is gained versus lost? James offered eight different routes. One, the world as a discourse is conceptualized as a singularity for discussion’s sake. Two, is this oneness continuous? Do the one and the many connect? Surely parts of dust are held together, but merely by space and time as a connecting medium. Three, there would be an innumerable paths of continued connection; you can trace the lines of influence far back, for example gravity or light or even conceptual abstractions and their influence. These may arise and become mental roadblocks that force us to reassess, this would be a loss in continuity. Four, the problem of causal unity; past minor causes necessitate the consideration of an original cause or the absolute. But with pragmatism, we concern the relative of theism and be it the absolute or the atom there has always been a plural notion of the many. Five, generic unity; there are many species in each kind and a kind implies the same for all within the grouping. Surely logic predicates things the same but no two things can be exactly identical making it hard to predict repeat futures. Six, the unity of purpose; the world as one meaning means that a vast number of factors come to serve common purposes. An example would even include man made systems such as banks or postal. The purpose can be many things, money, happiness, etc. but when we do set out purpose, things do happen and alter. As a species, our purposes do clash for compromise, showing our shared human teleological needs. Seven, aesthetic union, this is very similar to a teleological union. Narratives are aesthetic and help hold things together in a conceptual unity. Finally, eight, concerning accepting oneness, the great monistic thinking medium. The notion concerns the concept of the one knower, for them the many exists but only as objective thought with the purpose of a unity of mental states, thus knowing the one. Their concern for knowing consists in the arrival to the oneness. But what of the absolute one, the all-knower? For the rationalists, God’s consciousness comes as that of an individual conscious experience. The empiricists? What we know is because someone before us knew something. By this the world is a universal noetic as it is joined by the knowledge of others. Thus, in readdressing the technical defining issue with substance we see it is now as something conceptual and of pragmatic value. So, in the end, what is the practical difference between the one and the many? Turning to the one-knower, a unity of the world is the pragmatic value. And versus the absolute-knower? James uses a mystical follower example concerning their disbelief in the one and the many, neither exists as all is one and not separate. For them they gain a pragmatic value of a trust in the future with a lack of fear of purpose. Pragmatism aims at a moderate temperament between monism and pluralism in order to get at the practical. However, absolute unity in not sided with the fact loving of pragmatism thus to be pragmatic it must start as pluralistic. But, by pragmatic principle it is good to be pluralistic one day and monistic another day, it just all comes down to the conceivable point of view of that day’s subjective.
My analysis: These readings showed a vast number of pragmatic benefits involved within the religious sphere. The list was so vast and also negative to the empirical, such as science’s future of disappointment. It makes me want to consider James’s bias, why it became so intense, and if the intensity is a bit too influentially bias. The reading was hard to get past many of his explanations in empirical regards. They were all highly logical exactly as they need to be, and also fit withing a pragmatic method, however he does seem to go quick over many empirical concerns. Also, connecting the one as an abstract connection with totality was very enlightening in a pragmatic regard. James feels like he is able to give me the connection between the secular and religious spheres
When I first read Pragmatism, especially Lecture One, a whole new approach to reading philosophy opened up for me. James was critical of philosophers. His purpose was, as he wrote to his friend Frances Morse, “to defend (against all the prejudices of my ‘class,’) ‘experience’ against ‘philosophy’ as being the real backbone of the world’s religious life. . .and to make the hearer or reader believe, what I myself invincibly do believe, that, altho all the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd. . .yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function. A task well-nigh impossible, I fear, and in which I shall fail; but to attempt it is my religious act.”
ReplyDeleteDefending experience against philosophy is what he does in Lecture Three, Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered. The pragmatic method analyzes philosophical positions and asks what difference would it make in the world whether they were right or wrong. The pragmatic method seeks to identify the consequences of a belief; i.e., the resulting actions. It looks to the future.
James’s bias is his meliorism. He wants us to believe that we have the power, the will, to make the world a better place, and that believing it will make it true. That is spiritual.
Exactly so. I find WJ's "religious act" wonderfully audacious, especially in view of his statement of philosophical piety in Pragmatism ("Philosophy's results concern us all most vitally... Believing in philosophy myself devoutly" etc.)... I too believe in philosophy, and I too love to criticize philosophers who over-intellectualize and neglect the practical dimension and meanings of our actual experience in the world.
DeleteAnd by the way, Seth, I think it might be helpful for you to dip into the Richardson bio to provide some context as to who WJ was, and what his actual experience in the world was. That's how you can begin to grasp his "center of vision" and avoid reducing his thought to a flattened caricature of the sort that Bertrand Russell liked to attack ("will to make-believe" etc.) ... His letters are also good for that: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/40307/pg40307-images.html
Deletehttps://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38091/pg38091-images.html
"A pragmatic cash value only concerns sensations and the subjective"--I don't think WJ would put it this way. The metaphor of "cash value" is supposed to help us identify the practical implications of our various sensations and subjectivities, and in that way concerns how we comport ourselves in the world at large.
ReplyDelete"Materialism is solely concerned with nature and facts"--This may be true of some narrow conceptions of materialism, but note also WJ's statement:
"Matter is indeed infinitely and incredibly refined. To anyone who has ever looked on the face of a dead child or parent the mere fact that matter COULD have taken for a time that precious form, ought to make matter sacred ever after. It makes no difference what the PRINCIPLE of life may be, material or immaterial, matter at any rate co-operates, lends itself to all life's purposes. That beloved incarnation was among matter's possibilities."
And,
"the conception of spirit, as we mortals hitherto have framed it, is itself too gross to cover the exquisite tenuity of nature's facts."
"We all have near mystical moments every day"--I'd love to hear more of your experience of this, I don't think I have mystical moments every day. I do have moments of experience that don't readily translate to discursive language. Is that all you mean?
"God ensures a saving future." God, the Absolute, the Rational Principle of Necessity... call it what you will, WJ is saying that those who believe in such a thing are so consoled. His own view, though, is that our future is not secured in advance. "Shipwreck is a permanent possibility" etc.
ReplyDelete"Pragmatism aims at a moderate temperament between monism and pluralism"--Pragmatism itself does not avow such an aim, WJ says, but is neutral between the different 'isms. WJ personally sides with pluralism and against monism. But he does a pretty good job, I think, of distancing his personal "bias" from his official characterization of pragmatism as a method for resolving metaphysical disputes. This must be why he says one can be a pragmatist but not also a radical empiricist (another of his professed personal biases).