Posts Tagged William James

Episode 22: More James’s Pragmatism: Is Faith Justified? What is Truth?

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on July 18, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:38:26 — 90.2MB)

Discussing William James’s “The Will to Believe” and continuing our discussion from Episode 20 on James’s conception of truth as described in his books Pragmatism and The Meaning of Truth, again featuring guest podcaster Dylan Casey.

Does pragmatism give ground for religious belief, like if I say it feels good for me to believe in God, is that in any sense a legitimate grounds for that belief? Is belief in science or rationality itself a form of faith? Is religious belief a “forced choice,” or does it just not matter what you believe?

Also, we sort further through James on truth: truth is created by us, but what does that mean? That only statements actually verified or otherwise useful are true, or can have a truth value (true of false) at all? In saying that we create truth, does that make James a relativist, and if so, is that bad?

Read “The Will to Believe,” Pragmatism, and The Meaning of Truth (the most useful chapters for our purposes are 3, 5, 8, 9, 12, and 15).

End song: “Who Cares What You Believe?” by Madison Lint (2001).

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Episode 20: Pragmatism – Peirce and James

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Podcast Episodes on June 9, 2010

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 2:07:51 — 234.2MB)

Reading Pragmatism by William James and “The Fixation of Belief” and “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” by Charles Sanders Peirce.

Is truth a primitive relation between our representations and things objectively in the world, or is it an analyzable process by which propositions “prove their worth” by being useful in some way, like by fitting well with other portions of our experience or being delicious?

Peirce, the inventor of pragmatism, focuses on the philosophy of science and thinks of inquiry as a way for us to just settle on any belief we can stomach. James, who popularized pragmatism, has a wider view that applies not only to science but to religious beliefs. If it makes you feel nice to believe in Hogwarts, should you do so?

The episode features guest podcaster Dylan Casey (previously from our quantum physics episode).

Read Pragmatism online or purchase it.

End Song: “Friend” from 1998’s Mark Lint and the Fake Johnson Trio; the whole album is now free online.

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David Chalmers on “Merely Verbal” Disputes

Posted by Mark Linsenmayer in Other (i.e. Lesser) Podcasts on May 25, 2010

Here’s a talk by philosopher David Chalmers presenting a general framework to determine whether a dispute is “merely verbal.” This process also helps to unearth core disagreements and concepts, e.g. commitments by one party to the existence of normativity, consciousness, truth, or other fundamentals that the other side may wish to simply deny.

I found this helpful both for the pragmatism discussion (he even talks about William James a bit here) that I’m currently editing and on the philosophy of mind discussion (Chalmers is a significant voice in that area) that we’ll be having next.

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