[MD] Free Will-iam James

[MarshaV]

Dmb,

Does James's definition of free will conform to the the standard dictionary definition?  If it does, why did we need all these quotes and explain it?


Marsha



On Jun 27, 2011, at 6:29 PM, david buchanan wrote:

> 
> 
> Charlene wrote: 
> "...The pragmatic method includes directives for validating a belief, whereas the principle of pure experience includes directives for formulating the belief in experiential terms...He [James] calls on the principle of pure experience, for instance, to demonstrate that if activity is to have any meaning at all, it must be derived from 'some concrete kind of experience that can be definitely pointed out' (James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, 81). The first step in the investigation must be to seek 'the original type and model of what it means' in the stream of experience." (Charlene Seigfried in "William James's Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy", page 318.)
> dmb comments:
> Seigfried is explaining James and quoting James. And she is telling us that concrete experience - as opposed to abstract thought - is the only place to look for the meaning of our activity. To find out what words like freedom and causality mean, the first thing to do is return to the stream of experience to see what they are in the originally felt and lived experience. That is where our concepts and abstractions come from and that's where they are tried and tested. That's what our ideas are about; life as it's lived. 
> 
> 
> Charlene wrote:
> "James then develops his concrete description of human activity; 'But in this actual world or ours, as it is given, a part at least of activity comes with definite direction; it comes with desire and sense of goal; it comes complicated with resistances which it overcomes or succumbs to, and with the efforts which the feeling of resistance so often provokes; and it is in complex experiences like these that the notions of distinct agents, and of passivity as opposed to activity arise. Here also the notion of causal activity comes to birth. (ERE, 81-2) James culls from experience original models for understanding not only action, but causality and freedom.    ...He goes into detail about the 'ultimate Qualiia' of 'these experiences of process, obstruction,, striving, strain, or release' and concludes that we cannot conceive of it as lived through except 'in the dramatic shape of something sustaining a felt purpose against felt obstacles, and overcoming or being overcome'."  (Cha
> rlene Seigfried in "William James's Radical Reconstruction of Philosophy", page 319.) 
> 
> ...  


 
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