From 2009: [a serial review of Robert Richardson's bio of James, William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism]
Last week time in Robert Richardson's James bio, our budding philosopher "just about touched bottom." He'd lost his dearest friend, possibly the love of his life. He couldn't commit to anything. He couldn't envision his own future. He needed something solid and reliable to hold onto, something to embolden his will and get him up and doing.On the last day of April, 1870, young William James recorded a new diary entry: " I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. [He'd been having a lot of those!] I finished the first part of Renouvier's 2nd Essay and saw no reason why his definition of free will-- the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts-- need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present-- until next year-- that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."
And: "Today has furnished the exceptionally passionate initiative... needful for the acquisition of habits." Young Willy already knows what older William will make so much of in Principles of Psychology, where habit is christened "the enormous fly-wheel of society."
And, explicitly rejecting suicide as an un- "manly" choice, he writes: "(I will) believe in my individual reality and creative power... I will posit life (the real, the good) in the self-governing resistance of the ego to the world. Life shall be built on doing and creating and suffering." *
He's firmly rounded the corner on his darkest days, and is moving towards the light-- or at least trying to talk himself into it.
Originally published 10.2.09
Charles Renouvier (Information Ph'er)... How I Arrived At This Conclusion: A Philosophical Memoir
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I agree that the discussion could do well to be shifted towards a more practical lens. No determinist would claim that people cannot make choices, just that they are influenced greatly in their choices. No free will-proponent would claim that ideas and actions of each individual come to their head from the ether, just that they take their influences and create their own decision with the information they have. The irony is that when analysing the practical reality, these two positions effectively agree on the same things, but the determinist is pessimistic and the free-will advocates are optimistic about the role of influence. The only worthwhile discussion in my view is when does influence stop being external and start being internal will, and, additionally, what are the ways that influence exists, as well as when is influence effective versus ineffective.
ReplyDeleteWarning- Rant incoming:
ReplyDeleteI am intensely pragmatic, and I think my philosophical mind turns off at the mention of the word "consciousness" or "soul" because they are simply not there! "There" meaning in the human body. This is not to say there isn't something beyond our perceptions, but that we throw all our uncertainties into vague superstitions such as "soul", "consciousness", (one could also include "gods" into the mix) and the like, things that can't be reasoned out and ends many good philosophical conversations, in my opinion.