James was always interested in religion and believed in its importance, encouraging his sons to attend Harvard’s early morning services. He confessed he had no experience of God, but he respected those who did.
- 1 What is William James religion?
- 2 What does William James say about believing in God?
- 3 What did William James believe?
- 4 How did William James justify religious beliefs?
- 5 What did William James believe about consciousness?
- 6 What did William James believe about instincts?
- 7 Was William James a spiritualist?
- 8 What did William James Sidis do?
- 9 What is the meaning of I and me by William James?
- 10 What is William James main thesis in The Will to Believe?
- 11 What is James criticism of Clifford’s Evidentialism?
- 12 Did William James believe in free will?
- 13 Did William Clifford believe in God?
- 14 What is William James theory of truth?
- 15 What is psychology According to William James?
- 16 What is spiritual self according to William James?
- 17 What phrase did James coin?
- 18 Who created the instinct theory?
- 19 What are the 3 components of the self according to William James explain each?
- 20 What Pragmatism Means William James summary?
- 21 What is instinct according to?
- 22 What is arousal theory?
- 23 What was William James Sidis IQ?
- 24 Did William James Sidis invent anything?
- 25 What was Boris Sidis IQ?
- 26 Why was William James important to psychology?
- 27 What is William James response to Clifford?
- 28 Why did Clifford disagree James?
- 29 Is it wrong to believe insufficient evidence?
- 30 What are the 2 aspects of self according to William James?
- 31 What was the primary argument that William James and the Functionalists had against the theories of structuralism?
- 32 Was Kierkegaard a Fideist?
- 33 What is Clifford’s thesis?
- 34 Does Clifford think that all of our beliefs are morally significant?
- 35 What is justified true belief according to Plato?
- 36 What are the 3 theories of truth?
- 37 Do facts equate to truths?
- 38 What is William James religion?
- 39 How did James describe himself?
- 40 What are the 4 constituents of the self according to William James?
- 41 What was William James a professor of?
- 42 What did William James believe about consciousness?
- 43 What advice did William James give about developing good habits?
- 44 What is the difference between the I and me according to William James?
- 45 What did William James believe in?
- 46 Why is William James a pragmatist?
- 47 What did John Dewey believe?
- 48 What did William James believe about instincts?
- 49 What instincts are humans born with?
- 50 Is breathing an instinct?
What is William James religion?
William James believed that individual religious experiences, rather than the precepts of organized religions, were the backbone of the world’s religious life. His discussions of conversion, repentance, mysticism and saintliness, and his observations on actual, personal religious experiences – all support this thesis.
What does William James say about believing in God?
In The Will to Believe, James references Pascal’s wager – the argument that belief in God is rational because, if true, the believer stands to make an infinite gain and, if false, nothing much is lost. James sees the wager for what it is, of course: the logic of “the gaming-table”, as he describes it.
What did William James believe?
His belief in the connection between mind and body led him to develop what has become known as the James-Lange Theory of emotion, which posits that human experience of emotion arises from physiological changes in response to external events.
How did William James justify religious beliefs?
James believed that when evidence was insufficient to determine the truth or falsehood of a proposition, this uncertainty allowed a person to be able to will a belief by acting as if that belief were true.
What did William James believe about consciousness?
James defined psychology as the conscience of the mental life because he thought that consciousness is what makes the mental life possible. He sought to discover the utility of human consciousness and how it is fundamental to survival.
What did William James believe about instincts?
James theorized that behavior was driven by a number of instincts, which aid survival (Figure 1). From a biological perspective, an instinct is a species-specific pattern of behavior that is not learned.
Was William James a spiritualist?
James combined the views of spiritualism and associationism to create his own way of thinking. James discussed tender-minded thinkers as religious, optimistic, dogmatic, and monistic. Tough-minded thinkers were irreligious, pessimistic, pluralists, and skeptical.
What did William James Sidis do?
William James Sidis (/ˈsaɪdɪs/; April 1, 1898 – July 17, 1944) was an American child prodigy with exceptional mathematical and linguistic skills. He is notable for his 1920 book The Animate and the Inanimate, in which he speculates about the origin of life in the context of thermodynamics.
What is the meaning of I and me by William James?
Almost 130 years ago, James (1890) introduced the distinction between “Me” and “I” (see Table 1 for illustrative quotes) to the debate about the self. The former term refers to understanding of the self as an object of experience, while the latter to the self as a subject of experience 1.
What is William James main thesis in The Will to Believe?
James’ thesis is “When our intellect cannot solve a genuine option, emotionally we must decide.” Belief in a state of affairs can help that state of affairs come true. If one believes that one can do well, one probably will do better than if one believes one won’t do well.
What is James criticism of Clifford’s Evidentialism?
James sees the danger in rejecting evidentialism. He holds that when properly deployed, the will-to-believe is not self-confidence or wishful thinking run amok. The question then is what the conditions for the proper deployment of the will-to-believe are.
Did William James believe in free will?
William James simply asserted that his will was free. As his first act of freedom, he said, he chose to believe his will was free.
Did William Clifford believe in God?
In his article “The Ethics of Belief”, W. K. Clifford argues that it is wrong to believe in God if one does not have evidence that God exists. 1 As he puts it near the end of his article, “…it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” (p. )
What is William James theory of truth?
William James’s version of the pragmatic theory is often summarized by his statement that “the ‘true’ is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the ‘right’ is only the expedient in our way of behaving.” By this, James meant that truth is a quality the value of which is confirmed by its effectiveness when …
What is psychology According to William James?
Psychology is the description and explanation . . . that is, the study of the causes, conditions, and immediate consequences.
What is spiritual self according to William James?
(c) By the Spiritual Self, so far as it belongs to the Empirical Me, I mean a man’s inner or subjective being, his psychic faculties or dispositions, taken concretely; not the bare principle of personal Unity, or ‘pure’ Ego, which remains still to be discussed.
What phrase did James coin?
Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact. “Is Life Worth Living?”
Who created the instinct theory?
William McDougall’s Instinct Theory of Motivation
One of the pioneers of the instinct theory is English-born social psychologist, William McDougall, who formed the Hormic Psychology, with ‘hormic’ meaning animal impulse or urge.
What are the 3 components of the self according to William James explain each?
James went on to distinguish between three aspects of selfhood: the material self, consisting of one’s body, family relations, and possessions; the social self — essentially oneself as viewed by others; and. the spiritual self, consisting of one’s emotions and drives.
What Pragmatism Means William James summary?
Pragmatism is the doctrine that the meaning of truth or a belief is synonymous with the practical results of accepting it. Pragmatism is, for both Peirce and James, a sort of antidote to traditional metaphysics.
What is instinct according to?
What Is Instinct Theory? According to the instinct theory of motivation, all organisms are born with innate biological tendencies that help them survive. This theory suggests that instincts drive all behaviors. So, what exactly is instinct?
What is arousal theory?
The arousal theory of motivation suggests that people are driven to perform actions in order to maintain an optimum level of physiological arousal. What exactly is the optimal level of motivation? Well, it varies from one individual to the next.
What was William James Sidis IQ?
To those who knew of his son, William James Sidis was quite possibly the smartest man who ever lived. Born in Boston in 1898, William James Sidis made the headlines in the early 20th century as a child prodigy with an amazing intellect. His IQ was estimated to be 50 to 100 points higher than Albert Einstein’s.
Did William James Sidis invent anything?
At the age of eight, William James Sidis invented a language which he called Vendergood.
What was Boris Sidis IQ?
Sidis applied his own psychological approaches to raising his son, William James Sidis, in whom he wished to promote a high intellectual capacity. His son has been considered among the most intelligent people ever (with a ratio IQ broadly estimated at 250–300, though this claim has been contested).
Why was William James important to psychology?
William James is famous for helping to found psychology as a formal discipline, for establishing the school of functionalism in psychology, and for greatly advancing the movement of pragmatism in philosophy.
What is William James response to Clifford?
In the Will to Believe, James is partly responding to Clifford’s The Ethics of Belief (1877) in which Clifford defends an evidentialist theory: which holds that you can only rationally hold a belief if there is enough evidence to support it, and you should only be as confident in the belief as your evidence warrants.
Why did Clifford disagree James?
Clifford holds that believing is always morally impermissible unless one has sufficient evidence. James holds that there are conditions under which it is morally permissible to believe a proposition that is not supported by sufficient evidence.
Is it wrong to believe insufficient evidence?
Clifford sums up: …it is wro ng always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. The consequences for religion should be clear: if Clifford is right, then believing in God without sufficient evidence — holding the belief as a matter of faith, as some people put it — is wrong.
What are the 2 aspects of self according to William James?
James described two aspects of the self that he termed the “I Self” and “Me Self.” The I Self reflects what people see or perceive themselves doing in the physical world (e.g., recognizing that one is walking, eating, writing), whereas the Me Self is a more subjective and psychological phenomenon, referring to …
What was the primary argument that William James and the Functionalists had against the theories of structuralism?
William James rejected Titchener’s idea that psychology should be concerned with understanding the basic components of the mind. After all, he argued, our consciousness is always changing and therefore does not have a basic structure.
Was Kierkegaard a Fideist?
Historically, fideism is most commonly ascribed to four philosophers: Blaise Pascal, Søren Kierkegaard, William James, and Ludwig Wittgenstein; with fideism being a label applied in a negative sense by their opponents, but which is not always supported by their own ideas and works or followers.
What is Clifford’s thesis?
290-291). Clifford’s main argument for his two theses appeals to instrumental considerations. He claims that beliefs held on insufficient evidence and beliefs held without earning them through patient investigation are harmful in a variety of ways: When acted upon, they directly lead to harm.
Does Clifford think that all of our beliefs are morally significant?
Clifford’s theory throughout the essay was “It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” Clifford thinks that it is a moral obligation for you to confirm each of your beliefs with sufficient proof, no matter how questionable or insignificant the beliefs may be.
What is justified true belief according to Plato?
Thus, for Plato, knowledge is justified, true belief. Since truth is objective, our knowledge of true propositions must be about real things. According to Plato, these real things are Forms. Their nature is such that the only mode by which we can know them is rationality.
What are the 3 theories of truth?
The three most widely accepted contemporary theories of truth are [i] the Correspondence Theory ; [ii] the Semantic Theory of Tarski and Davidson; and [iii] the Deflationary Theory of Frege and Ramsey. The competing theories are [iv] the Coherence Theory , and [v] the Pragmatic Theory .
Do facts equate to truths?
Facts are part of truths. Unfortunately, facts are malleable by context; that is, facts taken out of context can result in a different narrative, which leads to a different truth.
What is William James religion?
William James believed that individual religious experiences, rather than the precepts of organized religions, were the backbone of the world’s religious life. His discussions of conversion, repentance, mysticism and saintliness, and his observations on actual, personal religious experiences – all support this thesis.
How did James describe himself?
James (1890) distinguished two understandings of the self, the self as “Me” and the self as “I”. This distinction has recently regained popularity in cognitive science, especially in the context of experimental studies on the underpinnings of the phenomenal self.
What are the 4 constituents of the self according to William James?
William James used the term “the empirical self” to refer to all of the various ways people answer the question “Who am I?” His analysis is very broad. James went on to group the various components of the empirical self into three subcategories: (a) the material self, (b) the social self, and (c) the spiritual self. 1.
What was William James a professor of?
After graduating from Harvard Medical School in 1869, James continued to sink into depression. Following a period of inactivity, the president of Harvard offered James a position as an instructor of comparative physiology in 1872. Three years later, James began teaching psychology courses.
What did William James believe about consciousness?
James defined psychology as the conscience of the mental life because he thought that consciousness is what makes the mental life possible. He sought to discover the utility of human consciousness and how it is fundamental to survival.
What advice did William James give about developing good habits?
As the father of American psychology, William James said on the psychology of habit; “every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort”. I remember 20 years ago or more, I was a smoker.
What is the difference between the I and me according to William James?
Almost 130 years ago, James (1890) introduced the distinction between “Me” and “I” (see Table 1 for illustrative quotes) to the debate about the self. The former term refers to understanding of the self as an object of experience, while the latter to the self as a subject of experience 1.
What did William James believe in?
His belief in the connection between mind and body led him to develop what has become known as the James-Lange Theory of emotion, which posits that human experience of emotion arises from physiological changes in response to external events.
Why is William James a pragmatist?
William James thus presented pragmatism as a ‘method for settling metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable. ‘ (1907: 28) Unless some ‘practical difference’ would follow from one or the other side’s being correct, the dispute is idle.
What did John Dewey believe?
John Dewey believed that a democratic society of informed and engaged inquirers was the best means of promoting human interests. To argue for this philosophy, Dewey taught at universities and wrote influential books such as Democracy and Education (1916) and Experience and Nature (1925).
What did William James believe about instincts?
James theorized that behavior was driven by a number of instincts, which aid survival (Figure 1). From a biological perspective, an instinct is a species-specific pattern of behavior that is not learned.
What instincts are humans born with?
- Rooting reflex. This is a basic survival instinct. …
- Moro (“startle”) reflex. Your baby will be placed in a seated stance (with his or her head supported). …
- Step reflex. …
- Grasp reflex. …
- Asymmetrical tonic neck (“fencing”) reflex. …
- Babinski reflex. …
- Galant (truncal incurvation) reflex. …
- Trembling.
Is breathing an instinct?
Breathing is so instinctive, you may have developed habits you are not aware of. Start by monitoring your breathing for 48 hours, particularly at moments when you are stressed or anxious.