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.