Knowledge Tree
William James
Also known as: James, W.
Facts (82)
Sources
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2015 Edition) plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 16 facts
quoteWilliam James wrote in a 1909 notebook: “the constitution of reality which I am making for is of the psychic type”.
referenceWilliam Seager argues in his 1999 book that there is a mode of combination in quantum mechanics that goes beyond what William James allows and has an affinity with psychological notions through non-causal information exchange.
quoteWilliam James stated: "we ought … to try every possible mode of conceiving of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature non-existent to then."
referenceWilliam James argued for a pluralistic universe in his 1909 Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College, published as 'A Pluralistic Universe'.
claimWilliam James's panpsychism originated from his 'neutral monism,' which posits that reality is neither inherently mental nor physical but possesses a basic character that can be viewed as either.
claimProminent exponents of distinctive forms of panpsychism in the nineteenth century included Gustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, Rudolf Hermann Lotze, William James, Josiah Royce, and William Clifford.
claimWilliam James (1842-1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who co-founded the philosophy of pragmatism.
claimWilliam James's development of the combination problem presupposes a metaphysics of part-whole reductionism, where the properties of a whole are merely the sum or combined effect of the properties of its parts, and the parts retain their identities.
claimWilliam James advanced objections against a version of panpsychism he labeled the 'mind dust' theory in chapter six of his 1890 work 'The Principles of Psychology'.
quoteWilliam James illustrated his view of part-whole reductionism by stating: "in the parallelogram of forces, the 'forces' themselves do not combine into the diagonal resultant; a body is needed on which they may impinge, to exhibit their resultant effect."
referenceGregg Rosenberg provides a detailed and developed panpsychist view based on the philosophy of William James in his 2005 work.
perspectiveWilliam James supported panpsychism, arguing that consciousness should be conceived in a way that avoids it appearing as the sudden emergence of a new nature that did not previously exist in the universe.
referenceWilliam James explored the nature of consciousness and psychology in his 1890 work 'The Principles of Psychology'.
quoteWilliam James argued that a 101st feeling created by the combination of 100 original feelings would be a totally new fact, stating: "the 100 original feelings might, by a curious physical law, be a signal for its creation, when they came together; but they would have no substantial identity with it, nor it with them, and one could never deduce the one from the others, or (in any intelligible sense) say that they evolved it."
claimGustav Fechner, Wilhelm Wundt, and William James are classified as "parallelist panpsychists" who endorse a Spinozistic parallelism between mind and matter, where every physical entity has mental attributes and vice versa.
claimWilliam James raised the 'combination problem' as an objection to panpsychism, arguing that it still faces a problem of emergence.
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 18, 2017 12 facts
claimProminent historical exponents of distinctive forms of panpsychism include Gustav Fechner (1801–1887), Wilhelm Wundt (1832–1920), Rudolf Hermann Lotze (1817–1881), William James (1842–1910), Josiah Royce (1855–1916), and William Clifford (1845–1879).
claimWilliam James advanced objections against a version of panpsychism he labeled the "mind dust" theory in chapter six of his book, The Principles of Psychology.
claimWilliam James's panpsychism originated from his "neutral monism," which posits that the fundamental nature of reality is neither mental nor physical, but a third form that can be regarded as either mental or physical from different viewpoints.
quoteWilliam James argued: "we ought … to try every possible mode of conceiving of consciousness so that it may not appear equivalent to the irruption into the universe of a new nature non-existent to then."
claimThe "combination problem" in twenty-first-century panpsychism literature is inspired by William James's objections to the "mind dust" theory.
quoteWilliam James wrote in a 1909 notebook: "the constitution of reality which I am making for is of the psychic type."
claimWilliam James argued that there is no mental combination because there are no composite objects in reality, only particles arranged in various ways that create the illusion of composite objects through their effects on human senses.
referenceThe article "William James’s Theory of Mind" by W.E. Cooper was published in the Journal of the History of Philosophy in 1990, volume 28, issue 4, pages 571–593.
referenceThe book "The Unity of William James’s Thought" by W.E. Cooper was published by Vanderbilt University Press in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2002.
claimHistorical proponents of panqualityism include William James (1904), Ernst Mach (1886), Bertrand Russell (1921), and Peter Unger (1999), with more recent defenses by Sam Coleman (2012, 2014, 2015, 2016).
referenceWilliam James published the chapter 'Novelty and Causation: The Perceptual View' in the book 'Some Problems of Philosophy' through Longmans, Green & Co. in 1911.
referenceWilliam James published 'A Pluralistic Universe: Hibbert Lectures at Manchester College on the Present Situation in Philosophy' through Longmans, Green and Co. in 1909.
Panpsychism - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 7 facts
claimIn the 19th century, panpsychism was advocated by philosophers such as Schopenhauer and William James, but the theory saw a decline in the mid-20th century due to the rise of logical positivism.
claimMarcus P. Ford characterizes William James as a panpsychist and metaphysical realist in his 1981 article 'William James: Panpsychist and Metaphysical Realist' published in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society.
claimPanpsychism is one of the oldest philosophical theories and has been historically ascribed to philosophers including Thales, Plato, Spinoza, Leibniz, Schopenhauer, William James, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell.
claimPhilosophers Arthur Schopenhauer, C.S. Peirce, Josiah Royce, William James, Eduard von Hartmann, F.C.S. Schiller, Ernst Haeckel, William Kingdon Clifford, and Thomas Carlyle promoted panpsychist ideas during the 19th century.
quoteWilliam James wrote in his lecture notes: "Our only intelligible notion of an object in itself is that it should be an object for itself, and this lands us in panpsychism and a belief that our physical perceptions are effects on us of 'psychical' realities"
claimThe combination problem in panpsychism, which relates to the binding problem, was traced to William James but was given its current name by William Seager in 1995.
claimWilliam James espoused a form of panpsychism.
Panpsychism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 Edition) plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 4 facts
quoteWilliam James argued that consciousness should be conceived in a way that avoids it appearing as a 'new nature' suddenly erupting into the universe.
quoteWilliam James argued that if we treat our own experiences of causal agency as the model for causation, we must ascribe an inwardly experiential nature to physical causation outside of our own lives.
claimWilliam James (1904), Ernst Mach (1886), Bertrand Russell (1921), David Armstrong (1961), and Peter Unger (1999) held versions of the panqualityist view.
claimItzhak Shani (2010) argues that William James' position is that there is no mental combination because there is no combination of any kind, as James believed reality consists only of particles arranged in various ways.
Dualism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Winter 2016 Edition) plato.stanford.edu Aug 19, 2003 4 facts
claimWilliam James argued that 'pulses of thought' are united over time because each pulse appropriates past thoughts, leading to a sense of self-identity.
claimThe debate over whether William James's position on consciousness improves upon David Hume's or merely mystifies it remains unresolved.
claimWilliam James proposed that each present moment contains a 'pulse of thought' (or 'the Thought'), which serves as the vehicle for judgment of identity, choice, and cognition.
referenceRobert H. Wozniak authored the work 'Mind and body, René Descartes to William James'.
Critique of Panpsychism: Philosophical Coherence and Scientific ... thequran.love May 7, 2025 3 facts
perspectiveWilliam James ultimately denied that any genuine combination of feelings occurs in nature, opting instead for a radical metaphysics of 'pure experiences' to bypass the combination problem.
quoteWilliam James wrote: “Take a hundred [feelings]… pack them as close together as you can… still each remains the same feeling it always was, shut in its own skin… There would be a hundred-and-first feeling [emerging]… but it would be a totally new fact… one could never deduce the one from the others.”
claimWilliam James anticipated the combination problem in 1890 by ridiculing the 'mind-dust' theory, arguing that merely summing or aggregating elementary feelings could never produce a higher-level feeling.
Consciousness, Physicalism, and Panpsychism - R Discovery discovery.researcher.life May 1, 2013 3 facts
claimWilliam James adhered to specific varieties of panpsychism, including panexperientialism and panqualityism, at different periods of his philosophical career.
claimNeutral monism, as analyzed in the context of William James's philosophy, does not provide complete independence of a substance from mental and physical properties, which may lead the theory toward panpsychism unless it is an idealistic variety.
referenceThe research article titled 'Consciousness, Physicalism, and Panpsychism' (published December 30, 2020) introduces William James's philosophy of mind, specifically examining his views on panpsychism, neutral monism, and the combination problem.
Hard problem of consciousness - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 3 facts
claimWilliam James's objections to the 'mind dust' theory in 'The Principles of Psychology' serve as the inspiration for the 'combination problem', which is a central focus of twenty-first-century literature on panpsychism.
referenceThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy notes that William James's commitment to panpsychism is controversial because he also advanced objections against a version of the view he labeled the 'mind dust' theory in chapter six of 'The Principles of Psychology' (1890).
claimWilliam James, Alfred North Whitehead, Arthur Eddington, and Bertrand Russell defended forms of panpsychism and neutral monism in the early twentieth century.
Resolving the evolutionary paradox of consciousness link.springer.com Apr 1, 2024 3 facts
perspectiveWilliam James proposed that the correlations between the valence of sensations and their fitness consequences are explainable by the action of natural selection on efficacious consciousness.
perspectiveWilliam James argued against epiphenomenalism (also known as automaton-theory), which is the metaphysical perspective that consciousness is not efficacious and does not affect the physical world.
claimWilliam James argued in 1890 that the alignment between the character and structure of sensations and their ancestral fitness contingencies is adaptive and likely resulted from natural selection.
Attention and consciousness - SelfAwarePatterns selfawarepatterns.com Jun 12, 2022 3 facts
claimWilliam James claimed that volition and attention are identical, a perspective that aligns with modern predictive coding views.
quoteWilliam James claimed in the late 1800s that, “Volition is nothing but attention”.
quoteWilliam James noted that humans cannot turn up the light to get a better look at the dark, illustrating the difficulty of observing unconscious states.
Attention - Open Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science - MIT oecs.mit.edu Jul 24, 2024 2 facts
claimWilliam James described attention as a form of selection specifically for guiding behavior, where a person mentally selects a target to respond to it, such as reaching for it or committing it to memory.
quoteWilliam James described attention in 1890 as follows: "Everyone knows what attention is. It is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence. It implies withdrawal from some things in order to deal effectively with others, and is a condition which has a real opposite in the confused, dazed, scatterbrained state which in French is called distraction, and Zerstreutheit in German."
Consciousness (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy/Fall 2025 ... plato.stanford.edu Jun 18, 2004 2 facts
referenceWilliam James coined the term "stream of consciousness" in 1890 to describe the coherent order of the ever-changing process of flow and self-transformation in consciousness.
claimAt the beginning of modern scientific psychology in the mid-nineteenth century, the mind was largely equated with consciousness, and introspective methods dominated the field, as seen in the work of Wilhelm Wundt (1897), Hermann von Helmholtz (1897), William James (1890), and Alfred Titchener (1901).
Quantum Approaches to Consciousness plato.stanford.edu Nov 30, 2004 2 facts
Non-physicalist Theories of Consciousness cambridge.org Dec 20, 2023 2 facts
claimWilliam James questioned why specific conscious states, such as pain and pleasure, evolved as by-products of specific physical states rather than others, such as why pain evolved with harmful processes like burning and pleasure with beneficial processes like eating.
accountWilliam James illustrated the problem of combining micro-units into a unified consciousness by comparing it to twelve men each thinking of one word in a sentence; even if they stand together, there is no consciousness of the whole sentence.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness | Springer Nature Link link.springer.com 2 facts
claimScholars including Rorty (1979), Dennett (1991), Varela et al. (1993), James (1996), and Nietzsche (2002) have refused the notion of the conscious self.
claimThe term "combination problem" was coined by William Seager in 1995, though William James may have been the first to articulate the problem in 1895.
Panpsychism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu May 23, 2001 2 facts
referenceThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Panpsychism lists related entries including George Berkeley, consciousness, René Descartes, dualism, emergent properties, epiphenomenalism, Charles Hartshorne, William James, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, mereology, monism, neutral monism, pantheism, physicalism, qualia, quantum theory and consciousness, Josiah Royce, Baruch Spinoza, Alfred North Whitehead, and Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt.
claimThere is a mode of combination in the world that exceeds the limits of what the philosopher William James allows.
The evolution of human-type consciousness – a by-product of ... frontiersin.org 2 facts
Classification Schemes of Altered States of Consciousness - ORBi orbi.uliege.be 1 fact
referenceWilliam James authored 'The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature', originally published in 1902.
Consciousness and Cognitive Sciences journal-psychoanalysis.eu 1 fact
referenceWilliam James coined the phrase "the specious present" to describe the experience of immediate time and the structure of nowness.
Self-Consciousness - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy plato.stanford.edu Jul 13, 2017 1 fact
claimWilliam James distinguishes between the 'I' (or pure ego) and the 'me' (or empirical self).
(PDF) Levels of consciousness and self-awareness - Academia.edu academia.edu 1 fact
referenceJames, W. (1890/1952) authored 'The Principles of psychology', originally published in 1890 by H. Holt & Co. and reprinted in 1952 by Encyclopedia Britannica.
Mind, Self, and Human-Animal Joint Action - jstor jstor.org 1 fact
referenceWilliam James authored 'Psychology: Briefer Course', published by Henry Holt and Company in 1892.
A Synergistic Workspace for Human Consciousness Revealed by ... elifesciences.org 1 fact
claimThe breakdown of Default Mode Network (DMN) connectivity within the synergistic workspace is associated with a failure to integrate an individual's self-narrative into the stream of consciousness, a concept originally described by William James.
Evolutionary psychology - Wikipedia en.wikipedia.org 1 fact
claimCharles Darwin's evolutionary psychological publications influenced William James's functionalist approach to psychology.
Psychedelics and Consciousness: Distinctions, Demarcations, and ... ouci.dntb.gov.ua 1 fact
referenceWilliam James authored 'The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature'.
Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART) frontiersin.org 1 fact
referenceIn the S-ART framework, the experiential enactive self (EES) is conceptualized similarly to William James's 'physical self' (1890) and Antonio Damasio's 'proto-self' (1999), while the experiential phenomenological self (EPS) is described similarly to Antonio Damasio's 'core-self' (1999).
Quantum Approaches to Consciousness plato.stanford.edu Nov 30, 2004 1 fact
claimNiels Bohr believed that central conceptual features of quantum theory, such as complementarity, held significance beyond the domain of physics, an idea he encountered through psychologist Edgar Rubin and William James.