Rachael's Final Project Proposal

Rachael Dziechciarz
Research Paper Proposal
March 3, 2008

The general topic area that I will be working on is Pragmatism and social/political progressive movements. More specifically, I will focus on pragmatism and democracy. I am going to do this using option one.
The pragmatist position on democracy is that it is a process of experiences that the people within the democratic society are constancy learning. Democracy is a process, like learning and education, which has no end in sight. It is the way community goes about the learning process collectively. Also, democracy is one of the tools that is necessary in order for the “Great Community” to be achieved.
The pragmatists use the experiences of democracy that have been learned to continue the quest for better experiences. I think that the pragmatists want to find an objective way to practice democracy, which will lead to a society where individual and social goals are achieved simultaneously. One of the issues with democracy is that the people that have decision-making power are not as objective as they should be, and this leads them to use democracy as a way to achieve their political ends. As stated earlier, democracy never has an end, and should be viewed as a combination of experiences that should be continuously called into question.
Democracy doesn’t have to an abstract ideal, but can be implemented in such a way as to bring about true communication among people in the same society. When people learn to communicate with one another effectively, selfish interests become shared interests too, which creates a win-win situation for everyone involved. Furthermore, I would like to claim that the closer society gets to true democracy across the world, using the pragmatic method, the more chance there will be for stability and peace to reign over destruction and war.
Right now, I know that I will be using many ideas that came from John Dewey. This is because he developed clear ideas about how pragmatism fits in with the concept of democracy. I will definitely use his “Search for The Great Community,” and probably also “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy.” Another pragmatist thinker that I will incorporate into my paper is Ralph Waldo Emerson. I think that his article titled “Self-Reliance” has many ideas about how a society should act. I think Dewey may have taken some ideas from Emerson’s work, although I will admit that Emerson has some extreme views that I won’t include to support my topic.

Top 10 titles that concern my topic area:
(1) Democratic hope: pragmatism and the politics of truth by Robert B. Westbrook (BOOK)
(2) Democracy and the claims of nature: critical perspectives for a new century by Ben A. Minteer (BOOK)
(3) Pragmatic moral realism: a transcendental defense by Sami Pihlstrom (ELECTRONIC RESOURCE)
(4) Judging under uncertainty: an institutional theory of legal interpretation by Adrian Vermeule (BOOK)
(5) Public Administration as Pragmatic, Democratic, and Objective by David L. Hildebrand (JOURNAL ARTICLE)**(I’m definitely going to use this one!)
(6) Rediscovering the Taproot: Is Classical Pragmatism the Route to Renew Public Administration? by Patricia M. Shields (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(7) Dangerous Supplements, Inventive Dissent, and Military Critiques of the Bush Administration’s Unitary Executive Theories by Marouf Hasian Jr. (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(8) Principle vs. Pragmatism: Policy Shifts and Political Competition by M. Tavits (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(9) The Challenge of Pragmatism for Constructivism: Some Perspectives in the Programme of Cologne Constructivism by Stefan Neubert and Kersten Reich (JOURNAL ARTICLE)
(10) Democracy After Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics by Michael J. McGandy (BOOK)

Chaz and Andrews Project Proposal

The topic which our project is centered on is Pragmatism and the environment applied to our hiking trip we will be conducting this spring break. We will be focusing on Dewey's approach to self in relation to the environment when separated from Dewey's notion of the “great community”. By placing ourselves outside of our community we will explore how this alters our perception of self through the environment, or “nature”. By applying pragmatism to our project our goals are two-fold. First we will take a hands on approach to the pragmatist theory or pragmatist view on self by placing ourselves in an environment beyond our normal routine. Second we will be exploring pragmatists views on conservation and sustainable developments based on observations during our journey and readings of Dewey and Bill Belleville's book Losing It All to Sprawl: How Progress Ate My Cracker Landscape.
We will be challenging the Pragmatist idea that self is intrinsically connected to one's community. Dewey states that “nature's place in man is no less significant than man's place in nature,” thus to explore this idea we want to change our place in nature expecting to see nature change place in ourselves so to speak. While Chaz agrees with Dewey's belief that the self is connected with the environment or nature, and Andrew feels that the self is a choice undetermined by the immediate surroundings. The discourse on this matter during our trip will be the basis for the project and how we come to discern our positions. Emerson's ideas of nature will also be incorporated to distinguish Dewey's ideas and how they relate to his and our own.
The sources of reading we will be using for our research are both the Emerson and Dewey passages from Pragmatism and Classical American Philosophy as well as Bill Belleville's book. I think also Stuhr's Pragmatism, Postmodernism, and the Future of Philosophy could apply in some manner upon further investigation.

Andrew's Post

A) I was actually very much intrigued by James concept of consciousness. This could partly be because he vamboozled me with his talk about secondary personalities and direct research on the nature if experience, or maybe because I have an inherent trust of him as a psychologist and a philosophy. Moreover, he captured my affinity for Buddhism with his second and third natures of thought (That it is continuous and always changing). For a mix of all these reasons, his ideas on consciousness really spoke to me. His notion of the ever changing self, one who can never experience the same sensation twice, even sensory stimulation by the same object, is also right up my alley and something that I held as a personal belief long before reading James. His philosophy, on this subject at least, was well organized, well argued and extremely compelling. For these reasons I consider his ideas about consciousness to be more that philosophically adequate, they are downright interesting.

James beliefs about reason on the other hand I was not so impressed by. Following from my vehement disagreement with a purely instrumentalist view of truth, I cannot allow myself to push a concept as important as reason to the realm of pure social construction. James feels that rationality is one more of the “lenses” which we develop to look at the world. He takes it off his perch as the central philosophical tool, and says that it, like everything else, cannot be approached with out us bringing along our experiences as well. It is therefore not perfect, not infallible and not the central method of us getting after truth. It is quite the opposite, a tool or lense that we can use to examine the world. But in using it we change it to fit our conceptions of what it should be. It is therefore not infallible and central to discovering truth, just another expedient concept that mankind has kept around for a long time.

Obviously if James does not agree with the notion of pure reason, he cannot agree with Descartes. James and Peirce have disagreed with Descartes on a number of issues and this is simply one more of them. Descartes would not be comfortable with James’ ideas of the subject bringing its experience to all facets of life, and the repercussions that has on truth. Furthermore, Descartes believed that reason was the paramount way which we could understand reality. James is not in line with this as all.

B) I think the most central tenet of James’ philosophy on belief stems from his “dead hypothesis” theory. I actually found this idea to be very profound, especially his use of it to answer the famous Pascals ontological argument. While it may seem rational to believe in god if the stakes are so high, one cannot bring themselves to believe in the Christian God if they are not already, on some level, programmed to do so. To a Muslim, the existence of the Christian God is a dead hypothesis, and there for not even a considerable option. After rightfully critqueing Pascals wager, things begin to take a turn for the worse.

James begins to use his theories to explain why one would accept a belief without that much evidence. TO show some reasons, James begins to go after science. Here he asserts that science too accepts many beliefs and faiths for similar reasons that religion does. Since scientists believe so strongly in their method, their hopes for certain outcomes effects their experience of them. This is much the same way that religious individual’s experience of the world is shaped by their belief in God. I think this is more of an attack on science than it is a support of belief, an attack that is not entirely unfounded, but one that does not prove belief and faith to be anymore acceptable that it is already seen to be by the rational community. Much like his previous attempts to explain faith, I find this one unconvincing.

Post 5

James account of our conscious experience is very much in keeping with the idea of continuity and flow of experience that is a recurring theme in pragmatism. He steps away from earlier modern philosophical accounts of the notion of consciousness. He doesn’t move away from rationalism and empiricism completely he tries to wedge his way in between the two. Originally under the Cartesian account of consciousness thought and thing itself were very distinct. The soul was a separate nonphysical entity which perceived objects and objects were those which were perceived. This clear distinction is blurred by James in his account of consciousness where the mind is more closely related to the objects and not something entirely separate. This point can be seen in his take on sensible objects in the Stream of Thought. He looks at consciousness as a flow and one that is defined by a fluxuating interaction between subject and object. He like Descartes finds that beginning inquiry with the senses is inherently problematic. Their reasons for this are different, Descartes saw that they had constantly deceived him but James finds this problematic for another reason directly related to empiricism. It is a common notion that the different conditions of the mind in all of their complexity are built up from simple sensations which are assumed to remain the same. He writes it seems like a bit of metaphysical sophistry to deny that simple sensations are consistent and that we experience them repeatedly. However, James argues that there is in fact no proof that the same body of sensation gotten by us twice only the same object.(164) Our conscious experience is continually changing and no impression lands on an unmodified brain. The impact of previous experience weighs heavy and the way we experience the same object is changed by this. Even things that change daily being hungery tired full mold each experience.
His account of conscious seems pretty adequate and he explains his theory well. It seems to me that experience certainly changes constantly and things I used to view in one way become considerable different as time goes on. Often times I look back on situations and thought I must have been a different person to have thought in the way I did. James puts it better then I can he says, “From one year to another we see things in new lights. What was unreal has grown real, and what was exciting is insipid. The friends we used to care the world for are shrunk into shadow” (166). He describes conscious experience in a very realistic and pragmatic way. However, I think he strays a little when applies his theory in arguing against Hume. Hume discovered a profound problem in the way we think about our experience and that is the relations between sensible objects; ie causation. There is really no evidence for observing the relationship between event A and B in the external world. We turn our conscious to the relationship and discover there is no actually feeling of a connection between these events. This James argues that since consciousness is continuous and not like a train or chain that we should feel the relations like and, by and but just as strongly as blue or the feeling of cold. I don’t see how asserting that consciousness is an unbroken stream can really effect Hume’s argument. The language they use only focuses on the substantive aspect of thought as opposed to the transitive. He really only attributes the failings of the way empiricist’s look at the conception of though as divided by names and categorization of individual objects.

Faith and belief are great concern to James and he looks to find justification for faith outside of establishing the truth of these beliefs. He sees the complexity of human experience and looks to understand the way in which we come to hold are beliefs. In the most pragmatic sense the beliefs that we hold are those which we believe to be useful to us. However not just any opinion or belief can be truly adopted by our own volition. They are propositions that we hold but they are not based on reason. James is concerned with religious belief and extends his thought into it. In matters of religion one has to choose to believe based on insufficient evidence as to whether God exists. He has a problem with Pascal making the justification for belief in God a mere probability. It may be the prudent choice to believe but not just anyone can start going to mass and magically believe in something they didn’t before. The belief has to be a live option it has to have meaning to you and trigger some emotional response that is set up by your previous experience. These faith based beliefs can not be assessed solely in terms by ones intellect when reason can not verify the belief. It is like truth we desire to know that there is truth and we want our minds to match up with this concept but certain truth can not be had when there is no absolute it seems our desires, and passions are left to lead us in our choice. Although there is not possibility of being certain we must use the evidence we have choose what to believe. James exclaims “Believe truth! Shun Error!” He believes that these are two separate laws and it is absolutely worth the risk to make the leap and accept the possibility of being wrong.
I think his discussion of faith based beliefs says a lot about his take on rationality. I think it is good because it is a realistic portrayal of the decision making process. We often seem to absolutists is a world that contains inherently fallible knowledge. It seems to me that it is an intrinsic aspect of human nature to desire clear knowledge and we must often take a belief and run with it without relying on reason alone. He leaves reason in the equation because we need it to guide is in choosing what to believe based on the experiential knowledge we have. There will always be contending solution to these issues and our individual prejudices and desires weigh in to the equation heavily. James says even of logicians “This very law which logicians impose on us...is based on nothing but their natural wish to exclude elements for which they, in there professional quality of logicians, can find no use” (233). Surely a logician would find problems with the description and they would argue they are doing this because reason guides them to do it. It seems common in every day life that we are forced to make choices between conflicting ideas that are marked by their under determination. This can even be seen in science which is thought to be an entirely objective discipline. For example Ptolemy’s Aristotelian world view or Kepler’s Neo-Platonist beliefs lead to conflicting accounts of the way our solar system behaved and where we are located in it. Also practical consequences weigh heavily in the science, Einstein found something peculiar in Newtonian dynamics and found space and time aren’t absolutes for now that doesn’t changed the expedient belief in this world view.

Post 5

Of all the pieces we've covered so far, James' "The Will to Believe", has two considerable (and interesting) surprises to offer.  The first of which, this essay appears to be written a nod towards the noble goal of clarity, something notably lacking in some of the previous essays we've tackled.  This is only surprising because the subject matter is, as one might ascertain from the title, faith.  If this is surprising, it is only because a significant amount of the material offered by the discipline of philosophy on the subject of God, tends to be well concealed in haze of poor analogies and circular arguments.  For proof, re-examine Meditation Three (which I did last night, in an attempt to explain the argument to a non-philosophy-student), a experience the agony of attempting definition all over again.

The second surprise in this essay is that James' openly acknowledges that a student of logic is less apt to admit or argue their faith, once they realize the near impossibility in the task.  This immediately reminded me of a statement Dr. Smaw made to a class of freshman philosophy students I witnessed last year.  He told them that, as newly minted logicians, they should avoid engaging in God arguments.  At any point, when the God card was put on the table, they should simply let it go.  From that point, it's impossible to continue logically.  This is surprising simply because it lacks the smattering of philosophical arrogance that usually accompanies a God/faith-related essay.  But then, James isn't really a philosopher, is he?

Those two things aside, James' actual essay approaches the subject from a, yes, truly pragmatic perspective (and one that perhaps only a psychologist could so casually execute).  He establishes the language of the essay, that is, the token words he's going to redefine for the purposes of his discussion.  Then he proceeds to declare an argument made by Pascal to be "dead", or Jamespeak, for one which has no sufficient grounding to appeal to us.  These distinctions are pleasantly practical ones, for they seem to examine faith much like a cultural anthropologist might, rather than a philosopher.  James' resurrects the Pascal argument moments later, however, to introduce the central thesis of his essay.

 

In the end, James' discussion here is really less about God and more about reconciliation.  The attempt to reconcile the absolutist nature of man with the empiricist tendency he may espouse.  James' spends an enormous amount of his time here, more or less setting up a practical, dare we say pragmatic, argument for the empiricist perspective.  Frankly, this essay might serve as an excellent primer for the argument, if only because it's so perfectly clear.  But James' real question, and the real purpose of the essay, is how to cope with the fact that man (by nature) seems to long for the absolute, even when he acknowledges the virtues of empiricism.  This essay seems to be more or less James' vehicle for attempting to explain how he might still consider himself an empiricist and yet a man of faith.  And, one must admit, the argument is good.  Perhaps it is only good because it is mercifully clear and lacks any sort of tricky absolutes (often hidden under the veil of empiricism).  James' simple argues that for man, faith can be quite pragmatic, because it offers for us a number of unrevealed benefits.  If we believe we may someday reap those benefits, we have acknowledged a pleasant possibility that may ultimately yield an enormous amount of good.  If the benefits of faith prove never to materialize, we've lost nothing from it except the possibility of having been mislead.  James' more or less bases his discussion on resolving the odds of belief.  In the end, he determines that there is no harm, and it is in fact practical, to believe.  The odds are positively split, but the alternative of pure disbelief will never yield any real good.  

It seems, in the end, a critique on the schools of empiricism that may reject faith based on a lack of immediately or conclusive evidence.  James' pleads with the empiricists to understand that a school of thought that would prevent an individual from acknowledging certain truths, should those truths appear evident, lacks the sort of freedom that should define it.  It's a good argument, despite the fact that some that there are some obvious flaws to that kind of reasoning.  But it's not really meant to be the sort of argument one is intended to critique or attempt to tear down to the best of the philosophic knowledges.  It's more of an internal justification.  Or at least I'm electing to view it as such.  The crux of his argument, that there is a practical purpose to weighing the odds on belief, has an odd sort of appealing practicality to it that I find fits extremely well within the pragmatist frame.   

post 5

Rob Hoffman

a) I found James’ account of consciousness to be not only perfectly adequate, but also exceptionally modern. In his disavowal of the existence of consciousness, James is completing the logical steps that begin with a disagreement with Cartesian dualism. Kant, he feels, has argued effectively and convincingly against the notion of dualism, but there are still lingering characteristics in our beliefs and even in our language. Consciousness, James argues and many modern philosophers might agree with, is one such remnant of old, dualistic language. Paul and Patricia Churchland are perfect examples of contemporary philosophers of mind who have been arguing against the notion of consciousness for years.

Previously, consciousness was considered an absolute necessity. Surely we were thinking, and it very much appears that this thinking occurs within a matrix of consciousness. James, ever the pragmatist, views consciousness as something of an unnecessary innovation. It cannot be deduced from anything but itself (2), meaning it has no real effect on anything. Something with no effect is not inclined, given pragmatist views, to be seen as true or worth consideration. Instead of thinking of consciousness as some kind of special function of thinking, James would be likely to agree with the Churhlands and say that what appears to us as consciousness is only our rationalization of ongoing brainstates.

His new take on rationalism could be seen as a result of this new conception of consciousness, as well as a result of the pragmatist views of the limits of our experiential abilities. The fact that rationalism is tailored to get us through the day and is as likely to use false beliefs to do it as true beliefs is obvious in its departures from previous philosophical conventions.

I am actually not as opposed to his conceptualization of rationality as one might expect given my disagreement with him over truth. Again, his work is in line with modern thinking (in part because it helped create the modern thinking) in evolutionary psychology. While there are problems with evolutionary psychology, it does make a good point by stating that our rationality is evolved to keep us alive and make us successful at reproducing, but not necessarily to give us true understandings of the deeper mysteries of the universe. This makes rationality itself fallible, fulfilling one of the pragmatist conventions.

b) Continuing the trend of pragmatists utilizing scientific and experimental terminology, James uses the term “hypothesis” to refer to a proposition which we can either believe or not believe. Some of these hypotheses are ones which we have some natural inclination, no matter how small, to possibly accept; these are called live hypotheses. Dead hypotheses, on the other hand, are those which James claims a given individual does not have any real possibility of accepting. I personally question the existence of dead hypotheses, but as they are not absolutely essential to his final conclusions, I will overlook them for the time being.

James then goes into some detail about the nature of our beliefs and whether or not we have the capacity to change them. He agrees with the modern, anti-Cartesian position that we cannot simply begin to believe that “the two one-dollar bills in our pocket must be a hundred dollars” (231). We can say such things, but to accept it as a belief would undermine much of our coherence view of what we know. To this end, he uses the example of Pascal’s wager and Pascal’s famous conclusion that to bring ourselves to believe in religious doctrine in which we do not currently believe, we need simply to spend enough time around it and act for long enough as though we believe it. James includes Pascal’s wager so that he might undermine and ridicule it. He claims that this type of belief will never actually come to fruition, for the nonbelievers who try to convert themselves will find that the religious convictions were always a dead hypothesis for them (232).

While reliance on the concept of a dead hypothesis is troubling enough, James then begins establishing his justification for believing in unsupported hypothesis on what I consider to be rather shaky ground. He claims that by our nature, we are inclined and even required to “decide an option between propositions, whenever it is a genuine option that cannot be decided on intellectual grounds” (234). Using this, James then goes on to begin making justifications for self-fulfilling prophecies and hypotheses for which we cannot find proper evidence until we have accepted them. He argues that this is just as in the sciences; he claims that if scientists had not adopted hypotheses that they were trying to get confirmed, we would not have made nearly as much scientific progress as we have. He goes on, “The most useful investigator, because the most sensitive observer, is always he whose eager interest one side of the question is balanced by an equally keen nervousness lest he become deceived” (237).

This idea of science flies in the face of everything that science has espoused for the last century. Experiments are not conducted with the hope of a certain outcome; the ideal scientist is not committed to one outcome, but rather open to any possibility. Psychology has been especially firm about this point. The experimenters themselves are often kept as totally in the dark as possible about the experiment so as to not allow their personal biases to influence the outcome (or perceived outcome) of the experiment.

These same objections undermine the end of his line of argumentation. James is trying to justify adopting evidentially unsupported hypotheses by claiming that, similarly to the scientist who favors one side, we might actually need to have adopted the beliefs in order to find evidence for them. This is the worst kind of science, and likewise it is the worst kind of epistemological investigation. I think James is assuming that we would not be swayed by our personal opinion or desire to find evidence, even if we had to confabulate it, for our unsupported beliefs; if this is the case, though, James fails to understand human psychology very well. It is psychologically difficult to maintain unsupported beliefs, and the human mind will find reasons, no matter how bad, to support it if there are none.

Post 5 Presentation

William James’s work “The stream of thought” presents a fascinating piece that explores the physiology of the mind from a pragmatic standpoint. James’s begins his piece by stating that previous attempts to explore physiology were invalid because they started with sensations which he argues aren’t the basic building blocks of the mind. He also argues that a simple sensation doesn’t really exist. James argues that instead of sensations we must approach the mind from the stand point of thoughts. Thoughts, James’s argues go on through five distinct “characters”.

The first “character” that he refers to is the idea that “Thought tends to personal form”. By this James means that thought is localized with an individual conscious. Thought’s don’t leave Mike’s head and enter John’s, they don’t trade between consciousnesses, and they certainty don’t collide with one another from different consciousnesses. In fact James’s says that the divide between consciousnesses is one of the greatest gulfs in nature. James also says that thoughts can’t come into being without being associated with a personal consciousness.

James’s second “character” refers to the idea that thought is in constant change. James doesn’t mean that thoughts only have a limited duration. What he means is that thoughts can never reoccur precisely as they did the first time. In other word’s he’s saying that every thought has to be different. This concept really isn’t that surprising if you consider that even small changes can have a big impact on future events and that when something is carefully examined it is changed. James believes that sensations and thoughts only appear identical and repetitive because our mind averages them in order to bring order in a chaotic world. Another way of looking at this is too say that our mind isn’t able to tell the difference between two similar sensations and it only possesses the resolution to tell the difference between objects. This would be akin to looking at two different pieces of ocean from a distance and not being able to tell the difference between the two. One of the reason’s James gives for this is that past experiences ensure that future thoughts are processed in a different manner.

The third “character” of thought relates the fact that consciousness is a stream like flow rather than a choppy gap filled path. James describes this as “within each personal consciousness, thought is sensibly continuous.” To James this means that consciousness feels unbroken from the prospective of our mind, and that even after we sleep we can resume our previous stream of consciousness and only our own stream. He also infers that this means that thought ebbs and flows in a pattern of transitions that lead to conclusions. This means that the transitions between different thoughts are seamless and fluid with each thought leading to new thoughts and conclusions.

The fourth “character”, “thought appears to deal with objects independent of itself; that is, it is cognitive, or possesses the function of knowing” simply means that a single object is the target of many human thoughts and that the human conscious thinks about the object differently then it thinks about thoughts of the object.

The final “character”, “It is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks” refers to an idea that many people are unaware of. The idea is that we ignore most of the sensory inputs that are given to us and instead look for the inputs that are most important. A great example of this is driving and seeing red. When we see red it signals us to stop even if we aren’t paying attention to all the other details of what is happening around us. This idea also transcends art and philosophy because artists reject anything that doesn’t belong in their masterpiece and philosophers are in search of the supreme idea.

Does Consciousness Exist?

Rachael Dziechciarz

The short answer is no. For James, consciousness does not exist as an entity, but more as a function of how humans "know" things in the outer world. However, since this is hard to grasp intuitively, more explanation is necessary to understand what exactly James means. Consciousness is impersonal, and merely shows that humans have an "awareness of content" (James 2) of what rests around them and what happens to them.

Before James' radical view of consciousness, many philosophers and psychologists held the idea that consciousness undeniably existed, yet they could offer no proof as to how it came to be or what it exactly is. James feels that his definition of what consciousness actually is, both a thought and a thing, is a more pragmatic way of defining how people relate their experiences of the past and present. He uses an example of how we are conscious of the room that we are sitting in. The room is both physically in front of us, and simultaneously in our minds. There are two ways to process the external world, both of which are important and "whole" in their own ways. The first is a personal biography, which is your own experience or memory of the room. The second is the history of that which is related to the room, like the house where the room is located. This compiles a lot of information about practically everything related to the room, from the history of the house to the neighborhood that the house is in. Both are valid ways to process the room, and both constitute our awareness or 'consciousness' of the room. There is only one room, yet there are two ways in which to be aware of it.

This analogy relates to human 'consciousness' because James argues that everything is pure experience, yet this can still be divided into thoughts and things. I think that the quote in James' piece by Professor Munsterberg best sums up this idea: "The object of which I think, and of whose existence I take cognizance without letting it now work upon my senses, occupies its definite place in the outer world as much as does the object which I directly see." In short, thoughts and the things that are thought about are one and the same. Both require a relationship with the past and the present, as well as a relationship with the outer and inner world where they exist (simultaneously).

Expected arguments against James and his rebuttal:

Argument: If experience has no 'consciousness,' then what is it?
Reply: Pure experience is everything, basically whatever it is you are conscious of. There is no universal element to consciousness, instead it is particularly and directly related to the specific thought or thing (for example: heavy, purple, sharp, etc.).

Argument: If thought and thing are the same "pure experience" in two different realms, then why are they so fundamentally different?
Reply: The difference between thought and thing lies only in the consequences. Each has the same "pure experience," yet as a thing the outcomes are real, and as a thought the outcomes can be whatever you choose. James uses the example that "mental knives may be sharp, but they won't cut real wood." (James 8)

Argument: How can you deny the existence of consciousness, when I know that I am conscious of what I do and who I am, and I can feel the thought and flow of consciousness within me?Reply: The ideas behind ‘consciousness’ (thought up by philosophers) come from the same continuous action of breathing. It is a convenient way to describe the mental processes that are present every moment, but should not suggest that an actual 'conscious' entity exists within the human being.

James' best sums up his argument for the non-existence of consciousness at the end of his essay, " That entity [consciousness] is fictitious, while thoughts in the concrete are fully real. But thoughts in the concrete are made of the same stuff as things are."This reiterates James' view that the 'consciousness' that people think they are aware of is more of the way they experience the world and relate experiences in the world. Furthermore, he states again that the dichotomy of thought and things is not what it was in the past. After all, isn't a thought merely a thing in our mind?

James: The Stream of Thought

For James, he starts off by saying that sensations are the simplest mental facts, howevever rejects the idea of starting off with sensations, and by doing so he rejects the empirical method of investigation. He describes thinking as every form of consciousess that goes on. When defining thought, he states that there are five distinctive characters in the process.

1) Thought tends to personal form: Here James is saying that there is no thought that is not a part of our consciousness. In essence, there are numerous thoughts that are independent of one another however, everything is individualistic in the sense that your thoughts are your thoughts, and a part of your person. There is a barrier that restrains our thoughts, however thoughts are grouped together when a person is conscious. These are the thoughts that are "known by no one, for disaggregated sensations reduced to a state of mental dust are not synthesized in any personality" (James 164). Here he is essentially saying that these thoughts are not necessarily conscious thoughts but they are however thoughts that assume the form of personal consciousness and develops in our memory.

2) Thought is in constant change: Here James is essentially saying that although we may see something that is the same object several times, the thought is not the same. He says that there is no thought that is alike. He says "there is no proof that the same bodily sensation is ever got by us twice." He emphasizes that we get the same object over and over again or the quality repetitively however the thought is not the same.

3) Within each personal consciousness, thought is sensibly continuous: Here James is saying that while weare conscious our thoughts are continous, hence the stream of thought. This would make sense as our brains never stop working or functioning, and although we may not be aware it continues to be active even while we sleep. It never shuts down, which would explain why thought is continuous. Although it may seem as time has interrupted consciousness, it feels continuous. He states that there are changes in the quality of consciousness. Ultimately one idea leads to another. He compares thought to a bird when he says, "As we take, in fact, a general view of wonderful stream of our consciousness, what strikes us first is this different pace of its parts. Like a bird's life, it sems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings" (James 171).

4) Human thought appears to deal with objects independent of itself; that is, it is cognitive, or possesses the function of knowing: There are many human thoughts that are related to each same object. He says that"reflective consciousness of the self is essential to the cognitive function of thought" (James 173). In orderto know something, we must distinguish betwen the thing and its self.

5) It is always interested more in one part of its object than in another, and welcomes and rejects, or chooses, all the while it thinks: Here James focuses on what he calls the phenomena of selective attention. He claims that we are not even aware of how our minds work, and how we can switch between objects without realizing it. It is almost impossible to divide our attention impartially among things. James says that we tend to have selective emphasis on parts of place and time (James 178). Ultimately he is saying that we ignore most of the stuff that we come across on a daily basis to a great extent.

James v. Jacoby

1.) In William James’ essay, “The Will to Believe”, he discusses the distinction between rationalist and empiricists – closely aligning himself with the latter. He discusses the ways in which we, as thinking humans, come to hold beliefs. Do we believe something is true simply by an effort of the will? He argues that this is irrational, and theorizes that Pascal’s argument -- simply by willing yourself to believe in God, you will actually believe in Him – is false.

Although James believes that reason undoubtedly plays an important role in what a person chooses to belief or deny, he doesn’t think that reason acts alone. Sometimes we hold strong beliefs and are unsure of the exact reasons. I’m sure that if Socrates suddenly attacked my beliefs with questioning, they would fall very short of being rationally based. Many factors influence our choices in what to believe such as “fear and hope, prejudice and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our castes and set” (233). James argues that although we form our belief on some-what shaky grounds, if we were to wait until all our beliefs were justified wholly, they would never be significant or fully formed.

Sometimes we must rely on our passionate/emotional senses in lieu of our intellectual. Frequently we go beyond static evidence and use non-intellectual sources to decide what to believe. This is why, he argues, that rationalists, who insist “we not only can attain to knowing the truth, but we can know when we have attained to knowing it” (234) are missing out on key components that allow our beliefs to be fulfilled and flourish. It is must more rational to be empiricists, who say “although we may attain it, we cannot infallibly know when” (234), because their beliefs are not set in stone, and therefore can consistently reflect upon them, leading them closer to the truth.

James also points out the fallibility of rationalism; certainties held by the past have been proven, presently, to be false, and there is no doubt that things we hold to be True today, will be falsified tomorrow. He further points out that Religious belief that was thought to be “certain” has resulted in the torture and persecution of millions.

We should continue to search for truth, but we should give up on finding certain truths. James shows the distinction of aiming to believe the truth and aiming to shun error by a military analogy: “It is like a general informing his soldiers that it is better to keep out of the battle forever than to risk a single wound” (236).

We do not always have sufficient time to find out the Absolute Right or Truth of a given situation. James gives the example of moral questions; it is almost unfathomable to ever find rational proof of moral Right and Wrongness. Sometimes we have to use our best judgments and follow the heart, for “The heart has its reasons that Reason doesn’t understand” (237).

I believe that James’ view on rationality is philosophically adequate. I think that, although we would all love to see things in a completely unbiased, rational way, it is impossible. Numerous people have dedicated countless hours to the discourse on Truth, and yet, we have come very little in terms of Absolutes. The world would move at a snails pace if we all carefully evaluated every decision, thought and belief that popped into our heads; although I strongly believe that you must have a foundation based on facts and logical analysis, I believe that many other factors contribute to the final decision of whether or not the adopt or deny a belief.

James’s essay, “The Stream of Consciousness”, describes his ideas on thought and consciousness. He beings by stating that most books start with simple sensations, taken as facts, and proceed constructing each high stage rationally or deductively; he argues that this impedes the empirical method of investigation. Since our consciousness is constantly being bombarded by things (people, art, smells, etc.), it is impossible that a “simple” sensation could exist at all. The only thing that we can deduce is that “thought goes on” (161). He describes the five characters in Thought as being: “1. Every thought tends to be part of a personal consciousness 2. Within each personal consciousness thought is always changing 3. Within each personal consciousness thought is sensibly continuous 4. It always appears to deal with objects independent of itself and 5. It is interested in some parts of these objects to the exclusion of others and welcomes or rejects all the while” (161-162). It is interesting that James argued that consciousness is continuous because it directly opposed the traditional Aristotelian worldview which viewed it as a series of links like a train or chain; James’ consciousness was compared to a stream – constantly moving and flowing.

Consciousness also begins to establish a person’s identity or “Me”. It exists in your personal nature; the thoughts that exist within it are your thoughts. Our thoughts and our neighbors may be similar, but they will never be identical, making consciousness a uniquely personal thing.

Susan Jacoby, author of “The Age of Reason” argues against the American surge in “anti-intellectualism (the attitude that “too much learning can be a dangerous thing”) and “anti-rationalism (“the idea that there is no such things as evidence or fact, just opinion”). The issues that Jacoby is fighting against, anti-rationalism mainly, stems from the American philosophy / pragmatism that James helped to develop. He argues that although having True knowledge would be beneficial, it is entirely unpractical. We are still unqualified, as fallible human beings, to obtain the Absolutes that have eluded us for centuries. Americans today are ignorant of basic scientific, global, and cultural information; after more that three years into the Iraqi war, only twenty-three percent of those with some college could locate Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Israel on a map (Cohen, Patricia). This shows a blatant disregard for all things foreign or outside of our personal selves – part of the reason may be the empiricist method – we relying so heavily on our own heart, senses, beliefs, etc. and disregard scientific fact, geography, etc. I think that Jacoby could argue that this Jamesian way of thinking may be partially to blame for our country’s academic downfall.

2.) James argues that having faith-based beliefs are ultimately important. He defines religion as having two elements: “the best things are the more eternal things” (239) and “we are better off even now if we believe the first affirmation to be true” (239). Religion is a unique topic – if aspects such as heaven and hell turn out to be real, then the non-believing agnostics, waiting for a factual sign that God exists, won’t benefit from their continuous questioning, but the true believers will – simply by relying on their heart and faith. The agnostic approach of Religion, James asserts, could disqualify us from experiencing the Truth that we have been anxiously searching for. He says: “I cannot do so for this plain reason, that a rule of thinking which would absolutely prevent me from acknowledging certain kinds of truth if those kinds of truth were really there would be an irrational rule.” In this case, being a stickler for facts and absolute evidence could actually prohibit finding absolutes, and therefore, adopting an absolutist (or agnostic) viewpoint would actually be detrimental and illogical.

Post 4

For me, at least, it seems there is a substantial link between the first issue we we're asked to direct out attention towards in this post and the third issue.  Giving some depth and definition to the pragmatist notion of truth appears to be at the forefront of James' concerns and intentions, particularly in the "What Pragmatism Means" essay.  Pragmatism distances itself from other branches of philosophy most radically in it's dealings with the meaning of "truth" and all that it implies.  

Truth is such a deeply rooted and essential question in philosophy.  What is true?  How do we establish truth?  If one uncovers what they believe to be a finite and fixed truth, what are the greater implications of that truth?  Pragmatism seems no less concerned with this concept than any other philosophy.  The difference is, perhaps, that instead of trying to establish a finite truth, the pragmatic focus not in uncovering conceptual truths, but tackling (and to some extent, dismantling) the entire system of determining truth altogether.

There is a great deal of validity to this objective, particularly when one considers on how many occasions a thinker has posited the validity of an argument or conclusion (especially one we find incredibly problematic), as an absolute truth.  Pragmatism seeks to put an end to the practice of unwaveringly confident thinkers laying down ideas and notions as finite and absolute truths, by giving us a more practical definition of this word.  From a certain standpoint, there is something both incredibly comforting and yet, highly problematic in this endeavor.

The comfort comes in the idea finally, human knowledge is being given the veil of doubt and fallibility it truly deserves.  Perhaps we can't know anything for certain and it seems arrogant to assume that, as James put it, our "man-made language, conceptual shorthand" can ever be unquestionably correct. 

 At the same time, however, if truth is only a convenient term applied to certain ideas, which, in time may reveal themselves to have lesser truth value than we originally assumed, then why bother with the term at all?  If truth isn't truth then, well, what's the point of truth?  I find the James essays most troubling because it seems that he carries some campaigns within the pragmatism school to an unsettling extreme, where we almost risk simply losing the purpose of certain notions altogether.  Perhaps it's simply a quibble of language that I have with James' argument, but still I feel that there's something inherently a) dangerous or b) pointless, in his attempt to define, or rather un-define, the meaning of truth.  The practical purpose of questioning truths seems far less relevant when we've reached a point where nothing can be looked upon as firm, concrete, or substantial.  And yet, James' dismisses the abstractions of rationalists as entirely, a move which  I feel (given what he himself is trying to accomplish), is slightly obtuse if not completely unnecessary. 

AndrewJohnson

I think the most important idea that I took from Jame's artical was the radical empiricism that the Pramatics seem to ascribe to. While in most of our discussions to this point about pragmatism we tried to place the philosophy somewhere between empiricism and rationalism. While this is certainly not a wrong way to see it, it seems to me that James, and pragmatism lean more to the empirical side than they do the rational side. James, like Peirce and Dewey (particularly Dewey) believes that we cannot ignore what we bring to the table when discussing our experience. We inevitably have prior opinions and notions that actually effect the way we see the world in a very real way, and directly effect the way we experience the world. This in turn reflects our notions of truth. Most critics would identify this as the area that James bridges empiricism and rationalism, asserting that while reason is extremely important, it is not unaffected by the experiences of the world that we bring to the table with us, and therefore the ideas of reason and experience are not entirely separate from one another. By in essence bridging this gap, James feels that he has created "a more familiar and less objectionable" form of empiricism. This explains why it seems that James is more kindred to this line of thought than to rationalism.

I have a couple issues with the James: the first being that I was never a fan of being different for the sake of different. It seems James goes out of his way to seperate Pramatism from other schools, so much so that it is almost damaging. He is almost trying too hard to create something new and totally American. While that is a small problem, I agree a little with Dan about some of the bigger problems. While I am changing in my opinions some, I am still distrustful of coherence theories of truth rather than correspondence. Not for any particularly new or interesting reasons, mainly for the classic critique that it seems an aweful lot like relativism to me.

While I have critiqued Pragmatism alot in this post, that doesn't mean I don't see it as an interesting school of philosophy with alot to offer. James' focus on the effect the observer has upon what he observes is an extremely important idea in philosophy and one that pragmatism certainly has right to claim as its own. Without this ideological invention education would be sadly different. I also agree with their focus on what is practical and effects us directly as being the most important. But here, like Rob, I see that classic church argument comming up. Peirce seemed to gloss over it in his essay as well, can we really know what is going to be important. It is not uncommon for things that at first seem irrelavent or useless to turn out to be very handy. If we abandoned every scientific inquiry that did not seem practical, would we have plastics, rubber or any number of things we enjoy in our everyday life. Plus in a deeper philosophical sense, what if Truth (with a capital T) is not practical or important to us. THe fact is there are moons around Jupiter, whether it effects us or not. ANd in our unceasing philosophical quest for truth we can't simply ignore that fact. In the future it may become very helpful to us, you never know.

post 4

Dan Flood

(a) The main Pragmatist tenet that I took away from James’ Lecture V was his espousal of the necessity for radical empiricism as a means of engaging the world. His assertion is that everyday experience and living cannot be evaluated objectively and scientifically without also accounting for the reasoning and experiences of the observer. He does not believe that you can realistically distinguish between the mind of the observer and the nature it observes. He purports these beliefs as he explains his conceptions of One Space and One Time. The definite bearings and distinctions of a time dated and space mapped world, do eventually blend together. It is in that blurring that nature cannot be separated out, and as a result we are left having to incorporate experience into the formation of truth. James asserts, that no more do we physically understand our spatial relation to a city in China, than do we as children draw distinctions in time. In fact he suggests that “in reality [he} utterly fail[s] to feel the facts which the map symbolizes. The directions and distances are vague, confused and mixed” (Lecture V, 4). Thus, the cosmic space and cosmic time we have introduced as a way to scientifically organize our lives do not hinder or disrupt the continuity that both maintain in our foundations of growth. Further, James contends “our forefathers have from time immemorial unified and straightened the discontinuity of their immediate experiences, and put themselves into an equilibrium with the surface of nature so satisfactory for ordinary practical purposes that it certainly would have lasted forever” (Lecture V, 6). Hence, it is impossible to separate out our experiences as we critically reason. There is in fact only one time and one space where everything that ever was and ever will be must overlap. One should not distinguish between what others would consider time periods, but should rather embrace the intertwining strands as truth is built up out of common sense and knowledge is grown en masse.

(b) Isn’t there a dangerous relativity to defining truth as an early common sense based coherence theory? Won’t that in essence give license to the masses, to morally reason, or choose not to, as they see fit?

(c) I find what James has to say about truth to be remarkable especially when it is considered in the context of some of the other Pragmatists we have studied. The formation of truth provided by Peirce, one where truth does not necessarily correspond to reality but rather coheres to the beliefs of those around you, appears somewhat more functional than that which was provided by James. Although James believes that truth is relative to the use of the believer, he claims, “new truths thus are resultants of new experiences and of old truths combined and mutually modifying one another” (Lecture V, 1). Which to me brings about the question of absolute truth. How could there be any absolute truths if truth itself is constantly gaining with experience after experience. I wonder if he actually means that the way in which we see and experience the world helps us to grow and develop a better understanding of that absolute universal truth. James provides us with a couple of analogous examples, which as it turns out, I find to be quite convincing. Firstly, he suggests that in remodeling a house, save for tearing down the very foundation, even if every wall is repainted, the house redecorated, and reconfigured, the very heart of the building, namely its foundation and original framing, remains. Similarly, the tastes and smells left in an old whiskey, or medicine bottle, will likely remain even after being washed out and refilled time and again. When he presupposes that knowledge, and that specifically of truth, grows out of the old and into the new conceptions. Small as it may seem, it seems important nonetheless that the old truths and old knowledge going all the way back to the beginning of man, must in some way influence today’s truth. Truth is perhaps a continuity of growth of knowledge. Given the external nature of the “truthing” process for James as described above, it seems likely that he would starkly disagree with the thoughts of Descartes, whose truths emanate from a presupposition of skepticism and doubt that would in turn eliminate much of the growing truth asserted by James. At this stage, Pragmatism feels very functional and simpler as far as philosophies go, and by saying that I consider it to be ore accessible and helpful as a means of understanding things. It is in many cases wildly more applicable then others that came before and some that came after it. However, in its present form, it seems to dissuade and remove all contradictions. From a negative perspective, I am left to wonder how we can determine the difference between the principles that govern our everyday living and the philosophically insightful reasoning purported by the pragmatists

(Apologies ... posting from off campus when the internet is cut out by the storms is hard than first imagined! Unfortunately, it was left until my arrival here this morning to be uploaded.)

James Post

Post for presentation. Post 4 is at the end

James, in lecture seven gives us his pragmatic account of the meaning of truth and its usefulness inn philosophy and everyday life. He first talks about common notion of truth as correspondence. We have a laundry list of ideas about the world some false and some true. Our ideas are true in a sense when they agree with reality. He says the pragmatist would agree with this dictionary definition, but one has to be more precise what is taken to be “agreement” and “reality”. He discusses some other views under a more the dualistic model of thinking. The “Intellectualist” notion is that we gain a share of truth when ideas are copies of the absolutes eternal way of thinking. This mode of thinking, James explains, makes truth out to be something static and a once and for all kind of thing. Here inquiry stops and you have reached your rational destination. From this view truth is taken more as something possessed and inflexible.
Pragmatism instead looks at truth in a different way, a way in which the truth of an idea is assessed in terms of the cash value it has in helping us cope with the external world. An idea, a true one, in a sense is not true by definition or true in any sort of a priori way of thinking. Assimilating a new idea is a process in which the idea becomes true. Beliefs become true through a method of verification. For the pragmatist it is the agreement with past belief and of fruitful connections that come from it. To be accepted the belief has to agree or fit in with ones previously defined web of beliefs that have been gained by the same process. A new belief that is deemed true becomes a guide for action, one that is helpful in connecting other ideas and beliefs in a way that will be beneficial in coping with our environment. He uses a simple example to elucidate this idea. If one is lost in the woods and believes they have come upon a cow path the belief that there is a house at the end of it (the object of the belief) becomes valuable in that situation. The pragmatic value of the idea comes from the importance of the object to us. The importance of the object is defined by the situation. At times truths like there is a house at the end of the path are obviously irrelevant. However, a stockpile of true beliefs serves as sort of an insurance policy for future situations where they might be invaluable. So upon seeing the house we have verification, that is verification through experience.
Of course this is not the only sort of verification process if it was our true beliefs would be very limited pertaining to only things we have experienced directly. Often indirect evidence must serve to verify and it does so in two ways. These are, that it coheres to our overall worldview (it has a certain degree of “fit”) and leads eventually to some sensible end. For example one could consider the inner workings of a clock. It is useful to believe the clock functions properly in a consistent pattern even though one may not know how it actually functions. Always, we are sacrificing for the sake of time and economy, verification for verifiability. James writes, “Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system.” Our super structure of beliefs hinges on a mutual exchange of beliefs. We trust that beliefs we exchange with others are in fact verified. Without this fabric the conception of truth collapses like a financial institution with no cash basis.
There are another kind of beliefs that James discusses these are the purely mental abstractions which are just as real as those which are concretely verifiable. Such as mathematical truths or the idea that white differs from black more than it does from gray. All are true in same leading sense as the house or the clock examples. These truths are verified in their pragmatic consequences. We use these principle, definitions, and relations in the same sense as the idea of the house and our ideas must be in agreement with reality be it abstract or concrete.
Truth essentially becomes a sort of verification process such as health or strength are a process in life. For the rationalist to accuse the pragmatist of putting the cart before the house is like attributing wealth as an essential quality to a rich man. The process is verified by the evidence and becomes true of someone who takes part in. Obviously rationalists have problems with the pragmatic account of truth. Experience has a way of boiling over and for showing past theory expedient in its time to be relative truth. Eventually these truths have to be reformulated. One could look at Aristotelian logic, or Ptolemy’s explanation of planetary movement to see this. These can now only be called relative truths limited to the experience they had access to. James sees the necessity for reformulation and to for living day to day with these temporary truths we have. To him there is nothing wrong with that. We have to be willing to use and to have faith in the truths we have today to guide us but at the same time be ready to pronounce them false tomorrow. Here the rationalist and pragmatist’s would certainly be at odds. The whole process is a function of prior knowledge and new experience which leads to adaptation and creation of new belief. Here the rationalist would argue that this is instead a process of accretion. The movement is not towards mutation and adaptation, but toward true reality which is objective and independent of experience.
Time and experience have a way of exceeding the limits of systems, like Ptolemy’s planetary motion and Aristotle’s syllogisms. Truths once taken as a priori absolutes can only be seen as true of their time. They are a limiting case of a further developing conception of truth revealed by experience. These beliefs become something solid because they are part of the experience of the later generation. They are part of the cumulative experience of society and are a step in the mutation of a new set of beliefs. If there is an absolute truth out there it is not something that will be discovered but made. He doesn’t seem to believe that what we are aiming for though. What is important is the journey and moving towards a cohesive and fruitful set of beliefs that will benefit society in the long run. He explains the formulation of truth as dual process it’s an interrelation between facts and beliefs with our experience as the catalyst. The facts determine our beliefs on a provisional level and through experience new facts emerge which alter these provisional truths. The truth once again rolls into fact. This is a continual process where truth belief is determined it is found lacking and adapts to new evidence. He uses a snowball as a metaphor its shape and size depend on the one had the push of the boys and on the other side the distribution of the snow.
The world is so full of similar kinds and associations and one verification serves for others of its respective kind. For the pragmatist the social dynamic of sharing and thinking create a body of knowledge that is verifiable is most important. The social structure of these beliefs are perhaps of greater importance than the singular verification. Truth ante rem becomes most important in a world of countless ideas and experiences. James avoids falling into the “rationalist trick” of calling the name the preexisting entity. Truth instead by the pragmatist view exists no more or less than reference to the objects themselves. This points again to the maxim that truth is made to discovered that this theory seems to hinge on.
A) James objects Rationalism because they are unwilling to accept to any degree the mutability of reality. They peer down a narrow tunnel backward towards their eternal truths while James argues for the flexibility of the three levels of reality and that we do play a role in the creation of it. For James truth has got to be dependent on experience and the whole point of his argument is that they do and they are true because they play a role in our lives.
James has a problem with the rationalist conception of truth beyond just correspondence. They seem to separate their eternal truth (like pure reason, or justice) from all of the muddy experience that it comes from. Why pursue the truth? for pragmatists this is easy because they are entirely interconnected and effect reality that we live. The rationalist separate truth from reality and claim the pursuit of it is from imperative duty. James finds this characterization of truth pragmatically and theoretically flawed. Truth is to be pursued for the same reasons as health and wealth because it pays to pursue them. This is an important notion for pragmatists first in their rejection of many of the ideas of modern philosophy and secondly the problems they have with rationalist’s dualistic approach to knowledge. As James explains the rationalist are essentially loosing sight of the purpose of knowledge. What good can a truth be to us if it is so far removed from the reality which we must apply it?
To me a lot of what James is writing seems like relativism and by the way he argues he would have to allow for conflicting truths. Now this is something that I can understand in the historical sense. For example Ptolemy worked with what he had technologically which was pretty much his own two eyes and he was able to come up with an instrumentally sound explanation of mars orbit. One could argue that he wasn’t wrong in a sense as I think James would, he was right given the experience he had. James talks about experience boiling over. Eventually his theory naturally couldn’t hold up when Galileo came around with his telescope. I can sort of understand calling them both right in there own time period. The kind of coherence that James puts forth in replace of correspondence doesn’t allow for individualistic relativism that perhaps one could argue that Emerson fell into. He does however allow for this sort of group coherence. As he says a big part of the ways our realities are defined are within the framework of society. I guess the main question I have is who exactly counts as a members of the group and are the beliefs we have as a group really all that coherent and tight?
I do think that the Pragmatist conception of truth is an adequate notion. Certainly it brings great criticism from other philosophies especially rationalism. It is problematic of course from the rationalism perspective because the idea of relative truth essentially violates the P&C. At this point I really don’t know what to make of the pragmatist dependent truth. However, it certainly has its strengths. It is an honest look at the way truth operates in individuals and as an entity in society. Humans don’t really seem to operate by constantly referring to static maxims as a guide for action.
They have to cope with an environment that is constantly changing and an environment that is constantly affecting our perceptions and attitudes. The pragmatic notion of truth brings to mind Dewey’s account of the reflex arch. We are all essentially little scientist trying comes to term with this changing world. We are constantly thrown of balance by our new experiences and need to find a level stabilization. They have attempted to develop an entirely new program in assessing the way we should look at truth and what it means to have true ideas. In the most pragmatic sense there is value to be gained from it.

William James

a.) William James, one of the fathers of the philosophical sect pragmatism, describes the  movement as one that “represents familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than has ever been assumed.” Pragmatists have dissected former theories of thought in order to find a method that finds the fundamental truth about things that matter. James argues that the “whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.” In order to determine the important truths and puzzles, we, as philosophers, should turn away from fixed principles and “absolutes” and toward concretes and facts. He argues that new opinions will never be able to evolve into new facts if we let our previous and ancient opinions blind us. We have to be able to escape from these old opinions – otherwise we’ll just be cohering the new with the old and therefore, not bringing anything new to the philosophical or scientific table.

 

b.) The problem that I see in pragmatism is the total disregard for old principles. James argues that we must “look away from first things, principles, ‘categories’, supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts”. My question is what background will we have in determining new things with out any previous context or influence? It doesn’t seem possible to build truths completely independent of our former beliefs…

 

c.) I do believe that certain aspects of pragmatism are an adequate method to philosophy. I think that it is important when asking questions to ask: “who cares? Will this make a difference in my world beliefs?” and it seems pragmatism asks these initial questions. Furthermore, I think that it combines adequate portions of empiricism and rationalism; it argues that truth is objective and free of applied human emotion. I agree with this fact, but argue that it is hard to ever observe or philosophize without your emotions making a print upon the data.

William James

Post 4

a) "Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. [...] At the same time it does not stand for any special results. It is a method only" (p.195). I believe that in these two opening lines of paragraphs James intends to illustrate the how pragmatism ought to have an overarching application into all aspects of philosophy. However, it should not be presumed that the overarching application ought to illicit overarching results. James would argue as would most pragmatists that the universal-ness of pragmatism is in its ability to discover what the current truth is for the particular individual examining the series of circumstances, not necessarily (indeed not likely) a static, universal truth.

b) When James says that pragmatism "has no dogmas, and doctrines save its method" (p. 196). I think James is incorrect. Pragmatism does have a dogma, it has a search for a telos in all things, and a priority placed on experience over just being told the way things are. If James considers these things just part of it's method then I believe that he is being seriously short sighted. These are more than steps in a process, they are principles on which the process is founded.

c) While pragmatism's conception of truth is useful, I find it to be inadequate. I believe that truth cannot be liminal, things either are the way they are or they aren't. It would seem to me that the pragmatists draw dangerously close to confusing truth and belief. I do not believe that truth ought to be based in any one person's beliefs, rather it ought to take root in exactly the way things are. One ought to start from a basic premise that can be universally accepted as true, if one cannot do that, then why ought any person who disagrees with the premise agree with the conclusion. Take for example a deranged man who believes that he may jump off a building and by wearing a cape he will be able to fly like superman. The truth is that gravity will overtake his belief and intervene. A belief need not be accurate to move a person to act on it, but the truth will be that he shall make quite a mess of the pavement.

post 4

Rob Hoffman

(a) “Pragmatism, on the other hand, asks its usual question. ‘Grant an idea or belief to be true,’ it says, "what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?” (James, Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth)

This selection highlights one of James’ largest critiques of prior philosophical and, to some extent, scientific thinking. When we are debating between two alternatives, we are to consider the effects that each would have upon us. If there is no change at all between the effects of one alternative and the effects of the other alternative, then we ought to consider these two to be equally true (and we ought not to worry ourselves any more over which is “right”). If the two alternatives do in fact produce different effects, then we should view the one that produces the better, more useful effects as the one that is true.

(b) My major question and criticism deals with the pragmatist conception of truth. Although I will expound upon this in greater detail below, one of the core issues is: if there is no difference in concrete life between one idea and another, then are we to assume that it does not matter which is true (and on some level, that neither is actually true)? This seems to be far too much like the Vatican response to Galileo’s observation of moons around Jupiter. Those moons, the Vatican’s astronomers claimed, were too small to be observed by the naked eye and therefore could have no concrete effect on humans and therefore did not exist, for God would not create anything that did not affect us (things that did not affect us would be, of course, useless). Trying to understand the peculiar nature of quantum physics might appear to the pragmatists as a useless argument, for the end result in life is still the same; yet, it seems odd to tell scientists that they ought not focus their attentions on this issue.

(c) Given that my focus was on the pragmatist conception of truth, which I will be presenting, I had quite a bit to say about this. Of all that we have studied thus far, it is this concept that most separates the pragmatists for the modern philosophers, especially the rationalists. While Peirce made claims about what philosophy ought to accomplish, he was never as specific as James when it came to laying down the foundation for metaphysically new, distinct principles. Pragmatism could claim to look at the world and philosophy differently, but it needed a metaphysical issue like truth to distinguish it from all that had gone before.

I am still holding out hope that there is some aspect of the pragmatist view of truth that I do not fully understand, because as it stands now I do not view it as a philosophically adequate concept. It is at best an incomplete, hasty, and limited view, and at worst it is contradictory and logically impossible.

At the heart of the rationalist issues with it is the concept that truth is merely whatever is useful at the time and that it is subject to change whenever it is no longer useful. This capricious truth loses much of what made it valuable in philosophy in the first place. From a pragmatist stand point, this conclusion might seem like a plausible extension of the idea that all our knowledge is fallible and our conclusions are the result of a process which often discards one idea after the next. However, the pragmatists falsely conflate the instrumentalist conclusions of these processes with the truth. Under a rationalist model, one could say that although truth is aimed for in these attempts, it is not always (or perhaps ever) achieved.

There are a few more issues with the mere usage of the term truth that I would like to point out before moving on. James acknowledges the pragmatists to be instrumentalists (“What Pragmatism Means”), and yet he still insists upon using the word truth. Instrumentalists will agree that we must operate as if the most useful, predictive theory in science is true, but they would not claim that it actually is true. In part, one could claim that James does not directly disagree with this, but rather merely redefines truth so as to be in line with it. This might be the case, but if so then truth has been rendered an epiphenomenal, unnecessary component of utility. We would pursue what is most useful and abandon it when it is no longer so; why make any mention of truth or nontruth?

I would like to return briefly to the topic of section (b). This seems problematic to me. If we have two explanations of the outcome of an experiment, then we ought to select for the most useful. Naturally, the most useful is going to be the one that agrees with the current, predictive models already established in science (as opposed to the one that can do nothing but tear down that which exists). If we truly did accept the pragmatists view, then, there would have been remarkably little scientific progress over the years, as those revolutionary concepts which could not yet make large predictions but could only point out major flaws would have been discarded as not as useful and therefore not true. Likewise, the pragmatists focus on verificationism flies in the face of the more modern, Popperian style of falsification.

“You can say of it then either that ‘it is useful because it is true’ or that ‘it is true because it is useful!’ Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing.” Logically speaking, this small statement is a nightmare. The circular reasoning should become immediately apparent: we know something is true because it is useful, and we know that it is useful because it is true. Likewise, if we take this and apply it to the context of the changing nature of truth discussed above, we run into serious issues. If truth can simply change from time to time when it is no longer useful, then once something is less useful than something else, it becomes untrue, and therefore not useful at all. This seems to be extremely myopic, to the point of intentionally and willfully forgetting that which was “true” or “useful” yesterday.

Finally, there are some serious problems with making blanket comments about truth when dealing with epistemic and metaphysical issues. For obvious reasons, any such comments will necessarily be self-referential. It is impossible to comment on truth in general without also commenting on the truth of the theory that you are expounding. In this way, it seems as though the pragmatist definition of truth might be self-defeating (the same way a relativist who issues a blanket statement that everything is always relative is self-defeating). The pragmatist definition of truth itself becomes accountable to only what is useful, and if at some point we find it more useful to believe that there is an absolute truth, then suddenly the rationalists are correct. This seems to be an eventuality for which the pragmatists were totally unprepared.

post 4

a) James says “The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one” in his lecture “What Pragmatism Means”. In this quote James is saying that the key concern of pragmatism is to define what the truth for a given person at a given moment in time. He is saying that the point of philosophy is to determine these truths and look towards cause and effect when determining what is true.

b) To me the primary flaw in pragmatic thought is that it doesn’t account for notions like the ironies that are prevalent in our life. Pragmatism’s quest for truth tends to ignore the idea that the ideas and mental actions we make directly effect our world in such a way as to directly influence reality. The world is not a fixed object so the act of observing or defining automatically has a dramatic effect. In other words pragmatism doesn’t allow for the butterfly to flap his wings and create a hurricane or the thoughts to be mirrored in reality just because we think them.

c) I think pragmatism is certainly an adequate approach to philosophy. Its greatest strength is that it is practical and useful on a daily basis. It also heavily encourages scientific thought and progress. Its weakness is that it is a rather limited, narrow, and pessimistic approach to life. Furthermore, one must ask which is more important the process of pursuing an answer or actually finding the answer.

James: What Pragmatism Means

a) An area that I believe that James states a key pragmatist concern is on page 195 when he says "Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed." What James is saying that Pragmatists go a step further when they conclude something is truth. WHen pragmatists analyze truth, they take specific qualities from theories presented by other philosophers before, such as empircism, rationalism and positivism, but refining these ideas in such a way that things are clear, concrete and sufficiently justified to the reader. Essentially what James is saying that pragmatism is not an entirely new idea, it is something that has been remodified and have worked out all the errors that have been found in other theories in the past.

b) Why do we bother to lok away from "supposed necessities, categories and principles" (James 196), when these are the things that most truths are based on? How would you arrive at the truth without evaluating the categories and principles that they fit under?

c) I think that pragmatism has a philosophically adequate concetion of truth because it encompasses most of the strong points of rationalism and empiricism. It states truth as something that is practical and completely objective and unfettered by emotions and other factors that may obscure truth. I believe that this is one of the stronger arguments for pragmatism because your truth tends to be relative to your experiences. It would therefore make sense that truth should be something that is "objective and remote, refined and non-utilitarian" (James 199). When emotions are taken out of deduction, it becomes much clearer. However, strangely enough I also find this a weakness because for most humans it is impossible to remove emotion and one's experiences when making deductions about a certain object or occurrence. As truth is relative to a person because of his or her's experiences, I feel that this is a flaw in pragmatism, because I believe it's impossible to be completely objective when analyzing a situation or something as truth.

James

James talks about the pragmatic method as “settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable,” which fits in well with the transcendental movement in American at the time. It appears quite simple in the manner James explains it to be in reference to the ideas of the world and to use it as “to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practice consequences.” Because this approach is so practical it is hard to believe it did not come into an identity with all of the great thinkers and philosopher of the past until Peirce. I think this really underlines exactly how different the pragmatic school of thought was from those that predated it.

The idea is to create a firm basis for our reality so that we can reach a conclusion about the world that makes sense (or doesn’t). This pragmatic use of reasoning is instrumental in disregarding notions that fail to achieve a sense of reality. In addition, creating this pragmatic foundation helps eliminate ideas that previously might have been confusing. James speaks of pragmatism as a “universal mission,” which might be a stretch but certain does help one in separating a “real” reality from one that is false. By disregarding those things that do not align into the pragmatic mold, an individual is better equipped to deal with what is concrete.

There is no better field, in my opinion, to apply this method to than the study of the universe. Although this perhaps might be a very broad generalization, for does not most of what people believe come from what they experience while living in said universe? Nonetheless, it is a very “move forward” approach” because it allows a clear focus on what is practically deem able as real.

Using James’ idea of the method followed by the genetic theory of what is meant by truth creates a very understandable way to achieve any pragmatic goals. Being able to create absolute goals and ideas helps lay the first brick in establishing a house, and it appears it is the goal of this school of thought to do such.

post 4

Rachael Dziechciarz

A) One area of the text where I think that James clearly states a key pragmatist concern is in his lecture "What Pragmatism Means" on page 194. In the second column he states, "To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve- what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reations we must prepare." I think that this is a key pragmatist concern because the statement is explaining that all things that we experience and study are for a reason, and this reason effects how we feel about everything. It goes back to the child touching the flame in the Dewey video we saw, to be clear about the flame the girl had to experience it, learn what to expect from it, and then use that to react to it in the present as well as in the future. Pragmatists are all about what use we get out of things, and at the risk of misinterpreting Peirce I do think that it follows that pragmatists are very practical. I mean that they are practical in the sense that everything has a purpose, but also never feel like you fully understand that purpose. The quote above shows a pragmatist concern because we must conceive possible effects of an object, even if we feel we know what will occur. This also makes me think of the boiling point of water example that we have talked about: even though the boiling point of water has been 100 degrees Celsius in the past, it is still important to think that this could possibly change in the future.

B) Why is it better to always question everything, and never be allowed to rest on any assumptions or "true" theories?

C) I think that the conception of truth that pragmatism proposes is a philosophically adequate notion. As we have said in class, it is simply a merger of empiricist and rational ideas. Furthermore, it makes sense to rely more heavily on the empiricist side, because after all that is what we have right in front of us, which cannot often be disputed. But, it is still important to understand (using experience and senses) why there are certain "unchanging truths" in this world. I think that pragmatism offers a sensible medium between the two schools of thought, and as James wrote, it is merely a method by which to make sense of everything in the world, from science to philosophy. Rarely have science and philosophy ever been allowed to even coexist in the same sentence, let alone be studied in the same way. But, at least for me, it makes sense to try and figure out an outline that can be used to help understand everything. It think other philosophers would have to enjoy this pragmatic way of studying things, since it is simple enough to be almost intuitive. I think someone like Socrates would appreciate the way pragmatists always question "truths" and things we "know." The only philosophers that I can think of that would probably have a problem with pragmatism are the rationalists, who would dismiss the pragmatic aspect of relying so much on experience. A specific strength of pragmatism is it's ability to explain anything, in terms of how humans get use out of it. One weakness is that it seems like it might be too general- is there something the pragmatists can't explain? If you can explain everything, have you proven anything?

Some Family History

Post 3(new edit)

Family history
1) After a talk with my mom I found a few interesting things about my family’s roots and the life they lead so long ago. I was told that my great grandmother Tollina Hanson grew up in Norweigh in the late 19th century around the time the early pragmatist were doing their thing here in America. She grew up as the youngest in a family of thirteen kids in a small town in Norway. Their family was big and their father would have had quite a tough time feeding them if it wasn’t for the fact that he was the town butcher. I was told that both Tollina’s parents were illiterate and my mom explained to me this was very common among poorer families. They had some interest in education but were ill equipped with the resources to pursue for them selves or their children. I learned that a kind man by the name of Evan would come by their house weekly and read them the newspaper. As it turns out my brother was named after him. This weekly encounter must have meant a great deal to the family and to my great grandmother.
I can imagine the literacy rate may have been pretty low in America at the time as well. Of course the two areas were in very different stages of development with the industrial revolution in full force in the states at the time. My great grandmother came over hear just before the turn of the century in fear being left alone. She followed her brother the second youngest who came here with his longtime girlfriend. They went through Elise Island and eventually settled up in Massachusetts where most of my family lives now. My grandmother was able to receive a better education here while living with her aunt and uncle. I found it interesting a large amount of the work in early pragmatism centered around universities in the Boston area. I know she didn’t go to college but the changes in university education may have filtered down to primary schools approach. I don’t really know though. I know this may not have particular bearing on American society at the time but I think it is relevant in representing the changing dynamic of America at the time with the emergence of a more industrialized nation and the influx of immigrants. The reasons for coming here must have been so diverse and unique for each person. Their differing ambitions talents shaping in their unique way the

Emerson
2) For Emerson one should not strive to be consistent in day to day action and thought. Emerson puts no weight in what others think of you. Reverence for past act or word is debilitating in the development of self and of self reliance. People carry the weight of their past impressions in to each new situation and inquiry and this can be limiting to individual thought. For him it is important not fear contradiction in our previous appearances to others or to our own thought. “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”(38 Sturh) This hobgoblin Emerson depicts is the burden of past experience and being unable to break free from it to look and inquire in a new way and search for truth without limit. Consistency in thought and principle in ones life is not a bad thing for Emerson. There is a distinction is between foolish and wise consistency but he does not really explain the difference directly. Emerson writes on what you think now and tomorrow. You should speak what tomorrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradicts everything you said today. For him it is far greater sin to hold back than to contradict yourself in thought and practice. This to me echoes Empedocles conception of change. The world is in constant flux the only real principle is change. I think this applies to thoughts and actions as well without following every path of inquiry with conviction and determination I think great thinkers would have not accomplished what they did. There is variation in thought and inquiry is a daily changing process it can be a great limitation to avoid new very different ideas.


In the beginning and throughout his essay on self reliance the issue of conformity lay at the forefront. This is closely related to the consistency and the hobgoblin example. He stresses with the utmost importance the need for individuality and not conforming mindlessly to the standards, institutions, and practices of society. Holding strong to ones convictions whatever they may be is the only way to do this. He writes “There is a point in every man’s education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him through his own toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given to him to till”(29 Sturh). This sentiment applies not only to the development of original thought I think but even to stance on you’re own experience. It reminded me a lot of Hamilton Holt and Dewey’s influence on his thought regarding education. This is a movement away from past knowledge and imitation and is a true way to develop and move towards originality and individuality. It is very philosophical and reminds me of the value of philosophical education.
What is so valuable is that it stresses argumentation and constantly being subject to different views and answers to questions where one must move forward and decide for yourself the line of argumentation to follow. Instead of buying into one it requires you to take the views of the past not as answers but a method and stimulus for further inquiry in the present. Emerson I think was all about this kind of thinking and it is ever present in Self-reliance (if the title isn’t a dead give away). He is all for thinking against the grain, because there is truth out there to be found and as he explains in detail society doesn’t seem to have it. The minds of the public change as easily and as often as the breeze and propaganda spread by the media is part of the problem. Worrying to much about the opinions of society clouds the mind and impedes the search for truth. He is a naturalist clearly and sees the truth being present in us as long as we can be in touch with the nature God put before us. His thinking aligned with the belief that there is a correspondence of truth and that can reveal itself but in order to find it you’re thought can’t just be pushed in one direction by the traditions of society and history. For one to truly be strong in there conviction and to think against the grain they need to be more then an individual thinker their action needs to mirror their values and philosophical theory. Emerson puts this most pragmatic unification in better worlds then I can…

“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”(29 Sturh)

Pierce
3) Descartes foundationalism was a subject of much criticism for Pierce and had implications relating directly to pragmatism. Descartes was so sure that he had discovered infallible knowledge of his own existence while it seems giving up the entire outside world including his own body in the process. Pierce argues against any real conception of absolute truth being attainable. Pierce accepts much of the experience we gain from the world is from signs not all though is valuable. Trying to develop a foundation while giving up reality of external stimuli seems wrong to him. He is still attached to empiricism in a strong way and unwilling to give up the world for the promise of solid footing, this is his view on semiotics.
Descartes went wrong in asserting this foundation as infallible i.e. cogito eros sum. This human project Pierce argues has been undertaken in failed attempts by authoritative scriptural interpretation. Descartes project only moves the process from external to internal. Descartes error is in the rejection of all knowledge that isn’t certain knowledge. There is a big difference between the being unable to attain infallible knowledge and asserting that with out it we can have no knowledge. So in this critique Pierce moves away from the infallibility that Descartes held so highly and from modern empiricism and skepticism as well.
Pierce basically argues that we may be able to obtain only knowledge of x when we seek to gain that of x, y, and z and if idealization and approximation are all that can be obtained this effort should be made to further overall understanding in our project of inquiry. The singular human conscious is insufficient grounding to provide sufficient for knowledge This seems to me in direct relation to the pragmatic epistemological stance of fallibalism. He takes and accepts the limits of our cognitive capabilities and assert still that we have the ability to create approximate maps of the world in our thought. The goal is instrumental coherence of thought and a process that will lead to better understanding and one that will prove most useful in the endeavourer.
The difference between mapping and blue print is the later suggests a beginning but the former trips to be taken into unmapped areas of inquiry. What Descartes was trying to do was create the foundation, the blue print. In Pierces rejection he leads more to a conception of mapping or a guideline for correcting past and future inquiry instead of the Cartesian limiting case of finding a true beginning point. Certainty aside there is the possibility of approximate knowledge and the chance that we may be wrong does not afford the drastic position of Cartesian foundationalism. Stur explains how his views are essentially pragmatic in that the focus now shifts from origins to outcomes and towards a method of inquiry. The outcomes are pragmatic the utmost sense. And methodological shift employs one with the tools for comparative inquiry and the ability to really approach and compare theory in a scientific manner. This acquisition of knowledge is a journey in itself and not the building of an edifice. He seeks to employ the tools to learn from recognize and correct our mistakes along the way instead of searching for starting point. This shifts the conception of knowledge in a different direction. Hopefully one that Pierce actually works out but I haven’t been exposed to his theory enough to know if he makes a true attempt at this and is truly pragmatic in his critique or whether it stands as just that a critique and nothing more.
Another central conception in Pierce's philosophy is phenemology. In the most basic sense phenomology is the study of the natural external phenomena of the natural world. This study can be attributed to the hard sciences as will as philosophy. Where philosophy differs fro the sciences is it unaided inquiry into phenomological study. The philosopher’s tools of inquiry are the objects of direct experience. For Pierce he is concerned with the categories and method of inquiry into phenomena of conscious thought. Sturh explains that he goes to great lengths in his attempt to categorize internal phenomena. He aims are to incorporate scientific objectivity and tight methodology as a guide and measure of philosophical inquiry. He believed that the grounding for philosophical inquiry were of course the objects of every day experience. For him this was a way to approach the familiar experience in a new way to raise to re raise questions in a new light from a new direction. Pragmatically this makes a lot of sense and ties into the empiricist sort of approach that he has maintained. These questions bear fruitful inquiry and answers when reexamined. There is no end to inquiry and once a corner has been reached in this sort of inquiry there are always more detail to uncover new approach in finding a coherent set of beliefs or a better map on route to knowledge.