William James

William James ( born January 11, 1842 in New York; † August 26, 1910 in Chocorua, New Hampshire ) was an American psychologist and philosopher. From 1876 to 1907 he was professor of psychology and philosophy at Harvard University. James applies as the founder of psychology in the United States as well as one of the main proponents of philosophical pragmatism.

Life

William James was born in 1842 at the Waldorf -Astoria in New York. His father, Henry James sr. had inherited a fortune; for William and his younger brother, the future writer Henry James, this meant that he was encouraged from an early age and in the time 1847-1860 numerous public and private schools in New York, London, Paris ( 1856), Newport (1858 ), Geneva ( 1859) and Bonn (1860 ) - with no qualifications - visited. The only sister of the two, Alice James (1848-1892), however, remained, at the request of her father, without any training.

From 1860 William James initially studied painting in Newport and from winter of 1861 chemistry at the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard. During this time he met the young Charles S. Peirce, with whom he entertained a lifelong friendship. James moved repeats the field of study and began in 1863 to study medicine. In 1864 he accompanied the geologist Louis Agassiz on an expedition to Brazil in the Amazon. But its disease-related visits to various German spas gave him the opportunity in 1867 in Berlin to attend lectures on the physiology and psychology. After his return from Germany James graduated in medicine in 1869 successfully with the MD (Doctor of Medicine ) from. The scientists struggled all his life with chronic back and eye disorders, sleep disorders and depression.

From 1872 to 1907 William James worked as a lecturer at Harvard University. From 1873 to 1876 he taught anatomy and physiology. In 1875 he gave the first lectures on experimental psychology on U.S. soil. In 1876 he was appointed professor of psychology and philosophy. In 1885 he moved entirely to philosophy. Of his students, he was appreciated for his humor and his unconventional lecture guide, for he it was - in contrast to many other professors of his time - possible, the courses provide while with questions.

James earned international recognition through his main work Principles of Psychology, and for his philosophical achievements. In addition to his scientific work of James 1898 co-founded the American Anti- Imperialist League and protested against the Philippine-American War.

Psychology

James is considered the founder of American psychology as a science. On him the introduction of the Department of Psychology goes back to U.S. universities. His psychological theories took basic ideas of Gestalt psychology and behaviorism in advance and are an important foundation of the psychology of religion. Originally, the publisher Henry Holt had agreed with James the creation of a textbook, which should appear in 1880 after two years. However, James continued to work on a systematic presentation of all the knowledge of his profession, in which he had at the same time incorporating the results of his empirical research and his new functionalist theory. The Principles of Psychology finally appeared in 1890 in two volumes with 1400 pages, on which James gave a summary of the psychology of the 19th century almost the whole of its width. Two years after the release came an abbreviated and fashioned in parts replaced Psychology: Briefer Course (1892 ) on the market.

The wrote in a remarkable science prose work is the one from a scientific historical perspective interesting as it shows the state of research in psychology in the late 19th century and critiquing with prevailing theoretical positions of Wilhelm Wundt, Ernst Mach and Gustav Theodor Fechner. In addition, James refers about the theory of "self" philosophically relevant positions, such as that of David Hume, Immanuel Kant and John Stuart Mill in the presentation with a.

The main innovation of James is that he conceived scientific psychology and in his theory creates a connection of consciousness and Gerhirnzuständen. James looked at the body and mind as related parts of a single organism. The contrast between body and soul, as he had been treated in the previous association psychology, was thus abolished and replaced by a psychophysical functionalism. Were methodologically important in his new psychology introspection, experiment and comparation. Stronger than a unified theory offered James an open catalog of research questions that are, in his view can only be solved in conjunction with an accompanying metaphysics. Only with a clarification of the epistemological preliminaries psychology as a science is possible. This put in the excerpt in the introduction and at the end point of view has already anticipates the later philosophical priorities in the work of James. The empirical ( materialistic ) Psychology looked at James only as a precursor of a unified human science, in which the questions of consciousness are to be fully clarified. ( Psychology ( 1920), p 468 )

A psychological theorem, which James has set in about the same time and independently by the Danish physiologist Carl Lange (1834-1900), emerged as the so-called James - Lange theory repeatedly in the discussion on a theory of emotion. Furthermore, it is also James' description of the self in the "Principles " with its subdivision of "I" (English " I", that is the own stream of consciousness ) and the "self" (English " Me," that is, the reflektivierbare identity) in the history of developmental psychology received.

1894-1895 he was president of the Society for Psychical Research, as he was a member of the Theosophical Society Adyar. James sat down with parapsychological phenomena such as clairvoyance apart and worked for years with the trance medium Leonora Piper together.

Religion portrays James in The Varieties of Religious Experience as a deeply subjective phenomenon whose inner side he would like to broadly expose of religious terms and theological systems to the simple or original sense datum, the "original" experience "radical quality " of sensation look at.

Philosophy

William James is considered one of the founders of philosophical pragmatism. In particular, in 1872 he founded together with his friend Charles Sanders Peirce the " Metaphysical Club" which can be viewed as a kind of intellectual nucleus of pragmatism. Peirce published a few years later several texts containing the central core theses of pragmatism, James also developed in the period following the pragmatism on.

As the first important philosophical text collection he published in 1897 The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy. Several essays in this volume deal with the defense of the rational justifiability of religious belief. He was referring in particular position against William Kingdon Clifford.

Their most famous product of the eponymous band for this essay " The Will to Believe." James noted there in terms of Pascal's wager that someone who comes to those kalkulierende way to faith, certainly "the inner soul of faith 's reality" missing. So we would probably watch gleefully when God such a person deny the eternal reward. His own justification strategy has structural similarity with Pascal's Wager, but the motivating moment with him is not the self-interest, but rather an inner need for faith and its moral favorability. The starting point is the assumption that we can obtain on the basis of rational considerations neither evidence for or against religious belief. This results in a weak justification, stating that no legitimate objection to the acceptance of religious belief can be put forward on the part of rationalism. In The Dilemma of Determinism, which is also included in this volume, James developed an argument for the adoption of free will, which has parallels to the argument just presented.

Among the popular - philosophical writings can also Talks to Students on Some Life's Ideals count, which first appeared in 1899 as the second part of Talks to Teachers on Psychology. Using narrative and poetic elements strengthens James here for an awareness of the value and uniqueness of the individual life and calls the other as a consequence of the unconditional respect for every form of life a.

In winter 1901/1902 James held in Edinburgh a series of lectures, which he entitled The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature published. In addition to its psychological interest in religion James tries to defend philosophical religion in this text. That the religion apparently lacked the reasoning is only from a intellectualist perspective of meaning. For James, the essence of religion is precisely not interpretative, analytical ( as a "science of god "), but intuitively.

James' influential series of lectures on pragmatism in 1907 under the title Pragmatism: published a new name for some old ways of thinking. For James, the value of a theory to its " cash value " must be measured: there are the practical consequences that follow from it. If their rightness or wrongness makes no difference to us, so the theory is superfluous and may be called wrong. Two theories that lead to the same practical consequences are the same meaning for James. Many philosophical debates can be resolved by disambiguation of the disputed terms for James, so that the intuitive reasoning of both theories may be recognized as eligible. For example, is the view that the world let conceive as a unit right in some respects, in other respects, the world must be understood as multiplicity.

Particularly strong criticism evoked by the represented James in Pragmatism concept of truth, according to which something is true if it is useful for us to believe it. In response to these criticisms, James published in 1909 a collection of his lectures and essays on this subject under the title The Meaning of Truth: A Sequel to " Pragmatism ". There he defended his position and provides the justification of possible counter-positions into question.

Writings

• Are we automata? In: Mind 4 (1879 ), pp. 1-22.
• What is an emotion? In: Mind 9 (1884 ), pp. 188-205.
• The Principles of Psychology. 2 vols. Holt and Macmillan, New York / London 1890.
• Psychology: Briefer Course. Holt, New York 1892. (Translated excerpt 148-174 )
• Human Immortality: two Supposed Objections to the doctrine ( Ingersoll Lecture ). Houghton Mifflin & Co., New York, 1893.
• Talks to teachers on psychology: and to students on some life's ideals. Holt and Longmans, Green & Co., New York / London 1899.
• The varieties of religious experience. Longmans, Green and Co., New York / London 1902.
• Pragmatism: a new name for some old ways of thinking. Longmans, Green & Co., London / New York, 1907.
• The meaning of truth: a sequel to " Pragmatism ". Longmans, Green and Co., New York / London 1909.
• Essays on radical empiricism. Longmans, Green and Co., New York / London 1912.

Werkausgaben

• The Works of William James. 17 volumes, Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Mass. ) from 1975 to 1988.
• The Writings of William James. A comprehensive edition. Edited by John J. McDermott. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1977.
• Frederick J. Down Scott ( eds): William James: Selected Unpublished Correspondence, 1885-1910. Ohio State University Press, Columbus OH, 1986, ISBN 0814203795 (full-text digitized on kb.osu.edu ).

Translations

• The will to believe and other philosophical essays by William James, translated by Ch Lorenz, Fromanns, Stuttgart 1999 (excerpt on gleichsatz.de )
• Psychology. Translated by Marie Dürr with notes by Ernst Dürr (1909 ), 2nd edition, Quelle & Meyer, Leipzig 1920 ( excerpt on gleichsatz.de )
• The Varieties of Religious Experience. A study of human nature., Translated by Eilert Herms and Christian Stahlhut, island Paperback, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3- 458-33484 -X.
• Pragmatism. Translated by Wilhelm Jerusalem, ed. by Klaus Oehler, 2nd ed Meiner, Hamburg 1994, ISBN 3-7873-1150-5.
• Pragmatism: A new name for some old ways of thinking. Translated and edited with an introduction. by Klaus Schubert and Axel Spree, University Press, Darmstadt 2001, ISBN 978-3534129997.
• The will to believe. In: Philosophy of Pragmatism: Selected texts. Edited and introduced by Ekkehard Martens, Reclam, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 978-3-15-009799-1.
• Pragmatism and radical empiricism. ed. with an afterword by Claus Langbehn, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-29375-3.
• The pluralistic universe: Lectures on the current situation of philosophy. Translated by Julius Goldstein, edited with a new introduction. by Klaus Schubert and Uwe Wilkesmann, WBG, Darmstadt 2009, ISBN 978-3534189748 ( special edition reprint 1994 edition Leipzig 1914).
• Felicitas Krämer, Helmut Pape ( ed.): The meaning of life. Selected texts. Translated by Andrew Hetzel. WBG, Darmstadt 2010, ISBN 978-3-534-22055-7.