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.