WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.299 Welcome to the Deep Dive, where we take on the 00:00:02.299 --> 00:00:04.780 figures who fundamentally reshaped our world, 00:00:04.919 --> 00:00:07.139 sifting through their most influential works 00:00:07.139 --> 00:00:09.650 to extract the insights that Well, that still 00:00:09.650 --> 00:00:12.070 matter today. And for this deep dive, you've 00:00:12.070 --> 00:00:15.109 given us an absolute giant. We really have. We're 00:00:15.109 --> 00:00:17.429 talking about William James. It's just impossible 00:00:17.429 --> 00:00:20.210 to grasp modern American thought. I mean, both 00:00:20.210 --> 00:00:22.890 its philosophy and psychology without going through 00:00:22.890 --> 00:00:26.289 James. He was born in 1842, died in 1910. And 00:00:26.289 --> 00:00:28.390 he really spans that extraordinary period where 00:00:28.390 --> 00:00:30.530 the United States was, you know, transitioning. 00:00:31.120 --> 00:00:33.140 Right. From what, like a post -colonial cultural 00:00:33.140 --> 00:00:36.560 outpost to a major global intellectual power? 00:00:36.880 --> 00:00:38.899 Exactly. And you could argue that James was the 00:00:38.899 --> 00:00:41.700 primary architect of that entire shift. OK, so 00:00:41.700 --> 00:00:43.920 looking at the sources here, we have a huge stack. 00:00:44.100 --> 00:00:46.920 His defining philosophical works like pragmatism, 00:00:47.119 --> 00:00:50.439 his revolutionary psychology text, the principles 00:00:50.439 --> 00:00:52.659 of psychology, and of course, his seminal work 00:00:52.659 --> 00:00:54.939 on faith, the varieties of religious experience. 00:00:54.960 --> 00:00:58.039 A huge body of work. It is. So our mission today 00:00:58.039 --> 00:01:01.140 is to give you, the listener, the complete shortcut. 00:01:01.359 --> 00:01:04.480 We want you to walk away with a thorough, practical 00:01:04.480 --> 00:01:08.019 grasp of the core, transformative ideas that 00:01:08.019 --> 00:01:10.959 changed how Americans understood truth, how we 00:01:10.959 --> 00:01:14.180 experience emotion, and the, well, the multi 00:01:14.180 --> 00:01:16.760 -layered nature of the self. And when you measure 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:19.640 his professional standing, it's genuinely astonishing. 00:01:19.959 --> 00:01:21.340 I mean, he wasn't just part of the revolution. 00:01:21.420 --> 00:01:23.700 In many ways, he started it. He was the first 00:01:23.700 --> 00:01:25.519 person to teach a psychology course in the U 00:01:25.519 --> 00:01:28.739 .S. The very first. And later, a major survey 00:01:28.739 --> 00:01:31.680 of 20th century psychological influence ranked 00:01:31.680 --> 00:01:34.640 him second only to Wilhelm Wundt. Wundt being 00:01:34.640 --> 00:01:36.959 the official founder of experimental psychology. 00:01:36.980 --> 00:01:39.579 The founder, yes. So James earned that title, 00:01:39.640 --> 00:01:41.760 Father of American Psychology, completely on 00:01:41.760 --> 00:01:43.750 merit. But the title doesn't capture the half 00:01:43.750 --> 00:01:45.250 of it. I mean, he was also the philosophical 00:01:45.250 --> 00:01:47.730 force who established the school of pragmatism, 00:01:47.730 --> 00:01:50.299 which fundamentally shifted epistemology. You 00:01:50.299 --> 00:01:52.579 know, how we understand truth itself from this 00:01:52.579 --> 00:01:55.900 world of abstract speculation to a world of practical 00:01:55.900 --> 00:01:59.200 lived consequences. And that pragmatic lens influenced 00:01:59.200 --> 00:02:01.200 everyone. You see his fingerprints all over. 00:02:01.299 --> 00:02:04.180 Oh, absolutely. His work is the common ground 00:02:04.180 --> 00:02:08.620 for figures as intellectually disparate as the 00:02:08.620 --> 00:02:11.120 political scientist Walter Lippmann, the philosopher 00:02:11.120 --> 00:02:13.400 George Santayana. The novelist Gertrude Stein, 00:02:13.599 --> 00:02:15.860 one of his students. And perhaps most critically. 00:02:16.430 --> 00:02:19.069 the sociologist and civil rights pioneer W .E 00:02:19.069 --> 00:02:22.169 .B. DuPois. James really provided the toolkit 00:02:22.169 --> 00:02:25.550 for navigating a rapidly industrializing, modernizing 00:02:25.550 --> 00:02:29.569 world that was actively shedding these old, rigid 00:02:29.569 --> 00:02:32.250 metaphysical certainties. OK, so before we dive 00:02:32.250 --> 00:02:34.110 into the theories, we have to unpack the man 00:02:34.110 --> 00:02:37.469 himself, because James was truly a reluctant 00:02:37.469 --> 00:02:40.129 genius, an academic who, by his own admission, 00:02:40.389 --> 00:02:43.099 ended up in the field almost by accident. The 00:02:43.099 --> 00:02:45.259 context is everything when you're trying to understand 00:02:45.259 --> 00:02:47.400 James's unique perspective. You have to start 00:02:47.400 --> 00:02:49.620 with his family. Extraordinary family. To say 00:02:49.620 --> 00:02:51.580 the least. He was born into extraordinary wealth 00:02:51.580 --> 00:02:55.590 and a kind of hyper intellectual hothouse. His 00:02:55.590 --> 00:02:58.490 father, Henry James Sr., was a wealthy Swedenborgian 00:02:58.490 --> 00:03:00.990 theologian. And his older brother was Henry James, 00:03:01.150 --> 00:03:02.969 the novelist, one of the most celebrated figures 00:03:02.969 --> 00:03:05.610 in literature. So there was this constant pressure 00:03:05.610 --> 00:03:08.469 of intellectual brilliance, but also a lot of 00:03:08.469 --> 00:03:10.629 instability. They were always moving, which gave 00:03:10.629 --> 00:03:13.610 William this truly cosmopolitan transatlantic 00:03:13.610 --> 00:03:16.409 education. So he was fluent in German and French 00:03:16.409 --> 00:03:19.030 from the get -go. Reading philosophy and literature 00:03:19.030 --> 00:03:21.150 from both sides of the Atlantic. He was a global 00:03:21.150 --> 00:03:23.469 thinker from the start. But here's the key friction. 00:03:24.400 --> 00:03:26.680 He didn't want to be an academic at all. No, 00:03:26.759 --> 00:03:29.560 his first love was painting. It was. He actually 00:03:29.560 --> 00:03:31.819 spent time apprenticing in the Newport studio 00:03:31.819 --> 00:03:35.520 of the artist William Morris Hunt. But his father, 00:03:35.639 --> 00:03:40.719 Henry Sr., was, let's say, forceful. He had deep 00:03:40.719 --> 00:03:43.180 suspicions about art as a profession, thought 00:03:43.180 --> 00:03:45.199 it was precarious. And he pushed him toward medicine 00:03:45.199 --> 00:03:48.259 instead, a more stable career. Vigorously. And 00:03:48.259 --> 00:03:50.639 James tried to compromise. He drifted. He earned 00:03:50.639 --> 00:03:53.620 his M .D. from Harvard in 1869. But he hated 00:03:53.620 --> 00:03:55.300 the practical work. He never actually practiced 00:03:55.300 --> 00:03:57.460 medicine. And his studies were constantly being 00:03:57.460 --> 00:03:59.960 interrupted, often by illness. All the time. 00:04:00.000 --> 00:04:02.740 There was chronic stomach and eye trouble, back 00:04:02.740 --> 00:04:05.439 pain, and severe seasickness during that famous 00:04:05.439 --> 00:04:08.120 Amazon expedition in 1865. Right. He had to come 00:04:08.120 --> 00:04:11.259 home early from that. He did. But the physical 00:04:11.259 --> 00:04:14.400 ailments were, you know, compounded by this profound 00:04:14.400 --> 00:04:17.459 psychological distress. He suffered for months 00:04:17.459 --> 00:04:20.160 from severe suicidal depression, which was then 00:04:20.160 --> 00:04:22.660 clinically diagnosed as neurasthenia. A sort 00:04:22.660 --> 00:04:25.079 of catch -all term for nervous exhaustion back 00:04:25.079 --> 00:04:27.759 then? It was, yeah. He described this period 00:04:27.759 --> 00:04:31.129 as his Soul sickness. It was a full blown existential 00:04:31.129 --> 00:04:33.850 crisis that spanned several years, particularly 00:04:33.850 --> 00:04:36.629 in the early 1870s. And this intense internal 00:04:36.629 --> 00:04:39.810 struggle, the sense of having no fixed identity 00:04:39.810 --> 00:04:42.949 or purpose. That was really the forge for his 00:04:42.949 --> 00:04:45.329 greatest intellectual contributions, wasn't it? 00:04:45.389 --> 00:04:48.040 It's the absolute core of his story. He was forced 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:50.139 to find a philosophical way to live and, more 00:04:50.139 --> 00:04:52.879 importantly, to choose. He finally resolved that 00:04:52.879 --> 00:04:55.839 crisis around 1872 after a long career of reading 00:04:55.839 --> 00:04:58.160 philosophers like Charles Renouvier. And that 00:04:58.160 --> 00:05:00.800 personal resolution led directly to his academic 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:03.120 pivot. Yes, and what's fascinating is that James 00:05:03.120 --> 00:05:05.160 entered the field of psychology and philosophy 00:05:05.160 --> 00:05:07.600 from the ground floor of science. He was trained 00:05:07.600 --> 00:05:10.819 in anatomy and physiology. So he approached the 00:05:10.819 --> 00:05:12.939 mind from a biological functional perspective. 00:05:13.610 --> 00:05:16.649 Exactly. Not a purely speculative metaphysical 00:05:16.649 --> 00:05:18.870 one like so many before him. He admitted he was 00:05:18.870 --> 00:05:21.490 flying blind at first. There's that famous quote 00:05:21.490 --> 00:05:23.850 of his. I never had any philosophic instruction. 00:05:24.029 --> 00:05:26.290 The first lecture on psychology I ever heard 00:05:26.290 --> 00:05:28.430 being the first I ever gave. He was literally 00:05:28.430 --> 00:05:31.430 inventing the field as he went. In his own academic 00:05:31.430 --> 00:05:34.389 position, moving from teaching comparative anatomy 00:05:34.389 --> 00:05:36.930 to physiology and then eventually settling into 00:05:36.930 --> 00:05:39.509 psychology and philosophy. This scientific turn 00:05:39.509 --> 00:05:42.180 rooted him at Harvard. where she spent almost 00:05:42.180 --> 00:05:45.660 his entire professional life. And in 1872, he 00:05:45.660 --> 00:05:48.259 found the intellectual environment he really 00:05:48.259 --> 00:05:51.300 needed. The informal gathering known as the Metaphysical 00:05:51.300 --> 00:05:53.939 Club. This club is such a pivotal moment in American 00:05:53.939 --> 00:05:56.620 thought. It was like a crucible of ideas, right? 00:05:56.740 --> 00:05:59.459 You have James, the great logician Charles Sanders 00:05:59.459 --> 00:06:01.699 Pierce. And the future Supreme Court Justice 00:06:01.699 --> 00:06:04.740 Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. I mean, what a group. 00:06:05.040 --> 00:06:07.620 So what made this informal club so foundational? 00:06:08.079 --> 00:06:10.230 Well... As the historian Louis Menand suggests, 00:06:10.810 --> 00:06:13.110 this group provided the intellectual foundation 00:06:13.110 --> 00:06:15.850 for American thought for decades because they 00:06:15.850 --> 00:06:18.370 were actively seeking an American solution to 00:06:18.370 --> 00:06:21.050 the problems of truth and certainty. They weren't 00:06:21.050 --> 00:06:23.569 interested in dusty old European metaphysics. 00:06:23.750 --> 00:06:27.370 No. They were grappling with Darwinism, industrialization, 00:06:27.670 --> 00:06:30.230 rapid social change. They were interested in 00:06:30.230 --> 00:06:33.050 consequences, conduct, utility. They were, you 00:06:33.050 --> 00:06:36.569 know. testing the very first ideas of pragmatism 00:06:36.569 --> 00:06:38.810 against each other in real time. And James's 00:06:38.810 --> 00:06:41.209 personality, his character, played a huge role 00:06:41.209 --> 00:06:43.769 in his influence. Oh, massively. He was known 00:06:43.769 --> 00:06:46.350 for his kindness, his humility, and his witty, 00:06:46.410 --> 00:06:49.970 if sometimes irreverent, humor. There's that 00:06:49.970 --> 00:06:51.970 famous story about his philosophical rival at 00:06:51.970 --> 00:06:54.889 Harvard, the absolute idealist, Josiah Royce. 00:06:54.930 --> 00:06:56.970 Right. Royce's whole system was about finding 00:06:56.970 --> 00:07:00.290 this single, unified, perfect reality, the absolute. 00:07:00.509 --> 00:07:03.310 And James delighted in mocking it. During a photography 00:07:03.310 --> 00:07:05.829 session, the story goes, James supposedly shouted 00:07:05.829 --> 00:07:08.129 at Royce, Royce, you're being photographed. Look 00:07:08.129 --> 00:07:10.569 out. I say, Dan, the absolute. And that moment 00:07:10.569 --> 00:07:12.670 just perfectly encapsulates the philosophical 00:07:12.670 --> 00:07:16.970 divide, doesn't it? It does. James rejected systems 00:07:16.970 --> 00:07:20.209 that sought a single, monolithic, preordained 00:07:20.209 --> 00:07:24.410 truth. He embraced plurality and messiness. But 00:07:24.410 --> 00:07:27.170 despite these academic rivalries, his students 00:07:27.170 --> 00:07:30.110 absolutely revered him. Because he offered this 00:07:30.110 --> 00:07:33.110 intellectual freedom. That and his kind and gentle 00:07:33.110 --> 00:07:35.769 teaching style. It attracted an unbelievable 00:07:35.769 --> 00:07:38.189 roster of students who went on to define the 00:07:38.189 --> 00:07:41.189 20th century. Theodore Roosevelt, W .E .B. Du 00:07:41.189 --> 00:07:43.839 Bois. Gertrude Stein, George Santayana. What 00:07:43.839 --> 00:07:46.519 a list. He was an educator who really prioritized 00:07:46.519 --> 00:07:48.160 the experience of learning and the development 00:07:48.160 --> 00:07:50.439 of the individual mind. And his influence didn't 00:07:50.439 --> 00:07:52.459 stop at the University Gates. He was politically 00:07:52.459 --> 00:07:55.879 active. Very. Specifically as a strong opponent 00:07:55.879 --> 00:07:58.680 of American expansionism. He was a deeply vocal 00:07:58.680 --> 00:08:01.319 proponent of the Anti -Imperialist League, formed 00:08:01.319 --> 00:08:03.709 in 1898. And that was a position that risked 00:08:03.709 --> 00:08:06.329 his reputation among many American elites, especially 00:08:06.329 --> 00:08:09.050 after the U .S. annexed the Philippines. It was. 00:08:09.290 --> 00:08:11.829 James wrote these scathing letters and speeches 00:08:11.829 --> 00:08:15.329 arguing that imperialism betrayed American democratic 00:08:15.329 --> 00:08:18.730 ideals. In one letter, he wrote that the U .S. 00:08:18.730 --> 00:08:21.689 had just scuttled the whole moral cargo of our 00:08:21.689 --> 00:08:25.129 history by colonizing the Philippines. He saw 00:08:25.129 --> 00:08:27.089 it as a distraction from the important moral 00:08:27.089 --> 00:08:30.610 work needed at home. So we have this. reluctant, 00:08:30.730 --> 00:08:34.070 brilliant, cosmopolitan doctor who finds his 00:08:34.070 --> 00:08:36.870 purpose by resolving a personal crisis, who then 00:08:36.870 --> 00:08:38.789 surrounds himself with the sharpest minds to 00:08:38.789 --> 00:08:41.070 create an entirely new way of thinking. That's 00:08:41.070 --> 00:08:43.129 the man. Okay, let's transition into the core 00:08:43.129 --> 00:08:44.710 of that thought. We have to start with the foundational 00:08:44.710 --> 00:08:48.190 philosophy. Pragmatism. So let's unpack this. 00:08:48.509 --> 00:08:50.210 When people think of William James, they think 00:08:50.210 --> 00:08:52.610 of pragmatism. But what did he mean precisely 00:08:52.610 --> 00:08:55.549 when he defined it? What is this philosophy established 00:08:55.549 --> 00:08:58.429 with Charles Sanders Pierce that rejected centuries 00:08:58.429 --> 00:09:01.230 of metaphysical certainty? Okay, so James defined 00:09:01.230 --> 00:09:04.590 pragmatism primarily as a method. It's a way 00:09:04.590 --> 00:09:07.009 of clarifying and settling philosophical disputes. 00:09:07.289 --> 00:09:09.830 And it's fundamentally anti -metaphysical because 00:09:09.830 --> 00:09:11.889 it looks forward, not backward. He used that 00:09:11.889 --> 00:09:15.149 great phrase, fruits over roots. Exactly. The 00:09:15.149 --> 00:09:18.139 emphasis is on the fruits. not the roots. So 00:09:18.139 --> 00:09:19.700 what are the fruits? Tell us more about that. 00:09:19.879 --> 00:09:23.179 The fruit is the practical consequence. Pragmatism 00:09:23.179 --> 00:09:26.179 asks a very simple question. If this idea were 00:09:26.179 --> 00:09:29.539 true, what observable, tangible difference would 00:09:29.539 --> 00:09:31.820 it make in our actual lives? And if there's no 00:09:31.820 --> 00:09:34.860 difference? Then the idea or the dispute surrounding 00:09:34.860 --> 00:09:39.139 it is meaningless. He insists that the utility 00:09:39.139 --> 00:09:41.820 of an idea is paramount. If a notion doesn't 00:09:41.820 --> 00:09:44.120 help us interact with the world or, you know, 00:09:44.120 --> 00:09:48.789 navigate our problems, abstract, unproductive 00:09:48.789 --> 00:09:51.370 and not worth the paper it's written on. So it's 00:09:51.370 --> 00:09:53.769 less about the pedigree or origin of an idea, 00:09:53.889 --> 00:09:56.210 the roots, and all about its success in the real 00:09:56.210 --> 00:09:59.230 world, the fruits. Precisely. And this leads 00:09:59.230 --> 00:10:01.789 directly to his revolutionary concept of truth. 00:10:02.029 --> 00:10:04.230 Which was a kind of synthesis, right? A masterful 00:10:04.230 --> 00:10:06.490 synthesis. Traditional philosophy had two main 00:10:06.490 --> 00:10:08.710 concepts, the correspondence theory, which says 00:10:08.710 --> 00:10:11.750 truth matches some external static reality, and 00:10:11.750 --> 00:10:13.830 the coherence theory. That one says truth just 00:10:13.830 --> 00:10:15.669 has to fit logically with all the other beliefs 00:10:15.669 --> 00:10:17.820 we hold. Right. John's accepted both of those, 00:10:17.879 --> 00:10:19.860 but then he added this crucial dynamic dimension. 00:10:20.220 --> 00:10:22.039 The human element. The human element, exactly. 00:10:22.440 --> 00:10:26.539 For James, a thought or statement is true only 00:10:26.539 --> 00:10:29.720 if it fulfills three criteria. One, it has to 00:10:29.720 --> 00:10:32.080 correspond with actual facts. Okay. Two, it has 00:10:32.080 --> 00:10:34.740 to cohere or hang together with existing truths. 00:10:35.259 --> 00:10:37.879 And three, and this is the big one, it has to 00:10:37.879 --> 00:10:41.059 lead to observable, satisfactory results in practice. 00:10:41.519 --> 00:10:44.539 It must prove useful to the believer. guiding 00:10:44.539 --> 00:10:46.419 them effectively through their experience. That 00:10:46.419 --> 00:10:49.200 makes truth sound less like a solid object you 00:10:49.200 --> 00:10:51.379 discover and more like a fluid process, something 00:10:51.379 --> 00:10:53.279 we're actively building. That is the radical 00:10:53.279 --> 00:10:55.480 implication. He often used the analogy of truth 00:10:55.480 --> 00:10:57.860 acting like good -for -nothing credit. It's valuable 00:10:57.860 --> 00:10:59.940 because it allows us to operate in the world 00:10:59.940 --> 00:11:02.620 effectively. And he had that essential quote 00:11:02.620 --> 00:11:05.879 about truth being plastic. Yes, that even the 00:11:05.879 --> 00:11:08.639 most ancient parts of truth also once were plastic. 00:11:09.240 --> 00:11:12.059 They were called true for human reasons, performing 00:11:12.059 --> 00:11:14.259 what he called a marriage function of combining 00:11:14.259 --> 00:11:16.600 previous experience with newer observations. 00:11:16.899 --> 00:11:19.700 So the idea of a purely objective truth divorced 00:11:19.700 --> 00:11:21.840 from human application. James said it is nowhere 00:11:21.840 --> 00:11:24.519 to be found. It fundamentally challenges that 00:11:24.519 --> 00:11:27.740 detached philosophical tradition. Truth is linked 00:11:27.740 --> 00:11:30.960 inextricably to human utility and experience. 00:11:31.320 --> 00:11:33.759 And this utility has to be quantifiable in some 00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:36.240 way, which is where we get that. Famous business 00:11:36.240 --> 00:11:40.240 metaphor, cash value. The cash value term was 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:42.240 just a brilliant way to ground this abstract 00:11:42.240 --> 00:11:45.419 philosophy. It refers to the experiential return 00:11:45.419 --> 00:11:48.679 on an intellectual investment. If an idea has 00:11:48.679 --> 00:11:51.580 no cash value, it has no discernible consequences 00:11:51.580 --> 00:11:54.419 when you apply it to empirical reality. He's 00:11:54.419 --> 00:11:56.679 almost applying Darwinian ideas here. Almost 00:11:56.679 --> 00:11:59.940 exactly. A belief is true, he said, if it worked 00:11:59.940 --> 00:12:02.740 for all of us and guided us expeditiously through 00:12:02.740 --> 00:12:06.100 our semi -hospitable world. Intellectual fitness 00:12:06.100 --> 00:12:09.320 in this model is measured by survival and practical 00:12:09.320 --> 00:12:11.639 efficacy. This sounds simple, but it feels like 00:12:11.639 --> 00:12:13.740 it could resolve so many academic arguments that 00:12:13.740 --> 00:12:15.879 just get stuck in semantics. Which is why the 00:12:15.879 --> 00:12:18.279 squirrel analogy is so powerful. It's the perfect 00:12:18.279 --> 00:12:20.320 way to show how the pragmatic method actually 00:12:20.320 --> 00:12:22.519 works. Okay, so let's walk our listener through 00:12:22.519 --> 00:12:26.559 it. All right. The scenario is this. A man is 00:12:26.559 --> 00:12:29.779 endlessly trying to move around a tree, but a 00:12:29.779 --> 00:12:32.539 squirrel on the trunk keeps moving to keep the 00:12:32.539 --> 00:12:34.940 tree between itself and the man. The squirrel 00:12:34.940 --> 00:12:37.700 is always on the opposite side. Right. And so 00:12:37.700 --> 00:12:40.299 the theoretical question arises, does the man 00:12:40.299 --> 00:12:42.840 go around the squirrel or not? And this feels 00:12:42.840 --> 00:12:45.539 like exactly the kind of pointless argument that 00:12:45.539 --> 00:12:47.500 philosophy students could spend weeks debating. 00:12:48.000 --> 00:12:51.220 Precisely. And James says the argument is idle, 00:12:51.399 --> 00:12:55.039 meaning useless, until we define the practical 00:12:55.039 --> 00:12:58.299 consequences of the phrase going around. We have 00:12:58.299 --> 00:13:01.279 to ask, What observable difference do the opposing 00:13:01.279 --> 00:13:03.179 answers make? Because the two people arguing 00:13:03.179 --> 00:13:05.259 probably mean different things by going round. 00:13:05.580 --> 00:13:08.240 They mean completely different things. One might 00:13:08.240 --> 00:13:10.320 mean circling the physical location of the squirrel. 00:13:10.580 --> 00:13:12.799 The other might mean occupying the space directly 00:13:12.799 --> 00:13:15.059 in front of the squirrel's head, then its back, 00:13:15.100 --> 00:13:17.919 then its tail, and so on. Ah, I see. So if going 00:13:17.919 --> 00:13:20.200 round means occupying the space north, east, 00:13:20.259 --> 00:13:22.919 south, and west of the squirrel's body, then 00:13:22.919 --> 00:13:24.940 yes, the man has gone round it. But if going 00:13:24.940 --> 00:13:27.820 round means seeing its belly, then its back, 00:13:28.019 --> 00:13:31.179 then its sides. Then no, the man has not. Once 00:13:31.179 --> 00:13:33.100 you articulate the physical difference between 00:13:33.100 --> 00:13:36.019 these two definitions, the argument just evaporates. 00:13:36.019 --> 00:13:39.000 It's gone. The genius of it is that it forces 00:13:39.000 --> 00:13:41.279 you to stop dealing with conceptual ambiguity 00:13:41.279 --> 00:13:44.120 and start dealing with observable consequences. 00:13:44.799 --> 00:13:48.519 The rule is, if there is, what, no difference 00:13:48.519 --> 00:13:50.620 that doesn't make a difference, then the concept 00:13:50.620 --> 00:13:53.590 is meaningless. And James applied this rigorous 00:13:53.590 --> 00:13:56.350 standard to everything, even the loftiest theological 00:13:56.350 --> 00:13:59.809 disputes. He argued that the truth of the hypothesis 00:13:59.809 --> 00:14:03.070 of God, for example, could be tested pragmatically. 00:14:03.230 --> 00:14:06.629 How so? Well, he stated it very clearly. On pragmatic 00:14:06.629 --> 00:14:09.889 principles, if the hypothesis of God works satisfactorily 00:14:09.889 --> 00:14:11.929 in the widest sense of the word, it is true. 00:14:12.519 --> 00:14:14.019 Okay, but that doesn't mean it's objectively 00:14:14.019 --> 00:14:16.700 true in some Newtonian sense. No, not at all. 00:14:16.740 --> 00:14:19.179 It means it's true in its capacity to generate 00:14:19.179 --> 00:14:22.139 positive human outcomes. If accepting the belief 00:14:22.139 --> 00:14:24.720 provides profound moral comfort, if it generates 00:14:24.720 --> 00:14:27.360 kindness, if it offers the believer a practical 00:14:27.360 --> 00:14:29.940 pathway through suffering, then that utility 00:14:29.940 --> 00:14:32.080 justifies its claim to truth within the human 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:36.200 context. So the idea's efficacy determines its 00:14:36.200 --> 00:14:39.620 truth. It's a powerful defense of belief, but 00:14:39.620 --> 00:14:42.000 it also sounds almost aggressively subjective. 00:14:42.259 --> 00:14:44.919 It does. And that leads us right into the deeper 00:14:44.919 --> 00:14:46.700 questions of how we acquire knowledge in the 00:14:46.700 --> 00:14:49.399 first place. Right into his epistemology. James's 00:14:49.399 --> 00:14:51.899 epistemology went far beyond just pragmatism. 00:14:52.000 --> 00:14:54.940 He developed a position he called radical empiricism. 00:14:55.419 --> 00:14:57.940 And this is essential to understand because it's 00:14:57.940 --> 00:15:01.240 not the dry empiricism of, say, 18th century 00:15:01.240 --> 00:15:03.919 thinkers like Hume or Locke. Right. Traditional 00:15:03.919 --> 00:15:06.740 British empiricism reduced reality purely to 00:15:06.740 --> 00:15:08.860 discrete sense data. You have the objects, you 00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:10.580 have the data, but the relations between them. 00:15:10.659 --> 00:15:12.539 Were often seen as something the mind imposed 00:15:12.539 --> 00:15:14.659 on the data. They weren't seen as real parts 00:15:14.659 --> 00:15:16.539 of the world. So James flipped that. He flipped 00:15:16.539 --> 00:15:19.149 it entirely. Radical empiricism asserts that 00:15:19.149 --> 00:15:21.730 the world is a mosaic of diverse experiences, 00:15:22.049 --> 00:15:24.629 but critically, the experiences between objects, 00:15:24.950 --> 00:15:27.169 the conjunctions, the relationships, the flows, 00:15:27.409 --> 00:15:30.570 are just as real, concrete, and immediate as 00:15:30.570 --> 00:15:32.970 the discrete objects themselves. So the and, 00:15:33.090 --> 00:15:36.070 the but, the if of experience are part of external 00:15:36.070 --> 00:15:38.950 reality, not just mental glue we add. Precisely. 00:15:39.149 --> 00:15:41.889 He viewed the world as fundamentally continuous, 00:15:42.190 --> 00:15:45.529 and that continuity is reflected in how we perceive 00:15:45.529 --> 00:15:48.330 things. which is where we get his most famous 00:15:48.330 --> 00:15:50.289 psychological concept. The stream of consciousness. 00:15:50.690 --> 00:15:53.570 The stream of consciousness. And this concept 00:15:53.570 --> 00:15:56.090 really revolutionized the study of the mind. 00:15:56.450 --> 00:16:00.230 Before James, you had psychologists using structuralism, 00:16:00.269 --> 00:16:03.230 trying to break consciousness down into these 00:16:03.230 --> 00:16:06.210 discrete, static, measurable elements. Like atoms 00:16:06.210 --> 00:16:08.769 of thought. Exactly. And James argued this was 00:16:08.769 --> 00:16:11.590 futile. You cannot halt consciousness for objective 00:16:11.590 --> 00:16:14.110 analysis. It flows like a river. You can't just 00:16:14.110 --> 00:16:16.610 stop it. And what are the key characteristics 00:16:16.610 --> 00:16:19.730 of this stream? He identified four. First, it's 00:16:19.730 --> 00:16:21.850 personal. It always belongs to oneself. Second, 00:16:22.009 --> 00:16:23.750 it's constantly changing. You can never step 00:16:23.750 --> 00:16:26.669 in the same river twice. Third, it's sensibly 00:16:26.669 --> 00:16:29.429 continuous. The mind perceives itself as whole, 00:16:29.570 --> 00:16:31.710 flowing from past to present. And the last one? 00:16:31.889 --> 00:16:34.250 It's elective and transactional. It chooses what 00:16:34.250 --> 00:16:37.049 to focus on and is always in motion towards some 00:16:37.049 --> 00:16:39.730 practical end. And this concept you know, had 00:16:39.730 --> 00:16:41.590 a massive and direct influence on literature. 00:16:41.830 --> 00:16:44.250 It inspired modernist writers like James Joyce 00:16:44.250 --> 00:16:46.409 and Virginia Woolf to structure their novels 00:16:46.409 --> 00:16:49.429 around it. So if reality is this flowing, subjective 00:16:49.429 --> 00:16:52.690 mosaic, how can we possibly justify committing 00:16:52.690 --> 00:16:56.049 to a belief, especially if the evidence is incomplete? 00:16:56.730 --> 00:16:59.789 This brings us to his most controversial essay. 00:17:00.029 --> 00:17:02.500 The Will to Believe. And here's where it gets 00:17:02.500 --> 00:17:04.420 really interesting. It's one of his most debated 00:17:04.420 --> 00:17:07.859 works. Oh, for sure. This 1896 doctrine defends 00:17:07.859 --> 00:17:10.059 the right to choose to believe in unproven hypothesis 00:17:10.059 --> 00:17:13.440 to violate the standard principle of evidentialism, 00:17:13.500 --> 00:17:16.519 but only when faced with a choice that is momentous, 00:17:16.539 --> 00:17:19.900 live and forced. OK, let's break that down. What 00:17:19.900 --> 00:17:22.579 qualifies as a momentous, live and forced choice? 00:17:22.819 --> 00:17:25.299 All right. So live means the option is intellectually 00:17:25.299 --> 00:17:27.440 plausible to you. It's a real possibility in 00:17:27.440 --> 00:17:29.779 your mind. Forced means you cannot avoid making 00:17:29.779 --> 00:17:32.299 a choice. Even inaction or skepticism is itself 00:17:32.299 --> 00:17:35.059 a choice with consequences. And momentous. Momentous 00:17:35.059 --> 00:17:37.759 means the results of your choice are unique and 00:17:37.759 --> 00:17:40.900 significant. James argues that in these situations, 00:17:41.160 --> 00:17:43.119 particularly in matters of faith or morality, 00:17:43.799 --> 00:17:46.640 The intellectual risk of believing before all 00:17:46.640 --> 00:17:49.519 the evidence is in is justified if that belief 00:17:49.519 --> 00:17:52.380 brings positive moral and psychological cash 00:17:52.380 --> 00:17:55.000 value to your life. So it's like if I believe 00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:57.400 in myself, I might actually succeed. And that 00:17:57.400 --> 00:18:00.079 success then generates the evidence that my original 00:18:00.079 --> 00:18:02.740 belief was true. You've got it. But if I don't 00:18:02.740 --> 00:18:04.940 believe in myself, I'll probably fail. And then 00:18:04.940 --> 00:18:07.619 my lack of belief becomes retrospectively justified. 00:18:07.940 --> 00:18:11.819 The belief or lack of it creates the truth. Exactly. 00:18:12.250 --> 00:18:14.089 The act of believing can generate the necessary 00:18:14.089 --> 00:18:17.349 positive conditions, the fruits, that then verify 00:18:17.349 --> 00:18:19.730 the belief. The classic example is the man on 00:18:19.730 --> 00:18:21.470 the mountainside. If he believes he can leap 00:18:21.470 --> 00:18:23.809 the chasm, he might succeed. If he sits down 00:18:23.809 --> 00:18:26.069 and waits for proof that he can succeed, he fails 00:18:26.069 --> 00:18:29.109 by inaction. But this doctrine drew immediate 00:18:29.109 --> 00:18:31.710 and heavy fire. Bertrand Russell, for example, 00:18:31.809 --> 00:18:34.069 was deeply critical. What was the intellectual 00:18:34.069 --> 00:18:36.329 tension there? Well, Russell and many others 00:18:36.329 --> 00:18:40.039 advocated for strict fallibilism. The idea that 00:18:40.039 --> 00:18:42.000 we must always maintain an objective, detached 00:18:42.000 --> 00:18:45.299 skepticism, examining all sides, recognizing 00:18:45.299 --> 00:18:47.259 that none of our current beliefs are perfectly 00:18:47.259 --> 00:18:50.099 true. For Russell, certainty only comes after 00:18:50.099 --> 00:18:52.700 the evidence is in. So the risk for critics was 00:18:52.700 --> 00:18:54.480 that James was just giving a license to wishful 00:18:54.480 --> 00:18:57.140 thinking, to superstition. That was the charge. 00:18:57.380 --> 00:18:59.980 But James's defense was that strict skepticism 00:18:59.980 --> 00:19:02.460 is simply inappropriate in certain vital areas 00:19:02.460 --> 00:19:04.799 of human experience, like forming relationships 00:19:04.799 --> 00:19:08.329 or engaging in moral action. Sometimes the only 00:19:08.329 --> 00:19:10.589 way to gain the evidence like trust or success 00:19:10.589 --> 00:19:13.839 is by making that leap of faith first. He felt 00:19:13.839 --> 00:19:16.339 the skeptic sacrifices the potential for a deeper, 00:19:16.420 --> 00:19:19.000 richer life by refusing to act where evidence 00:19:19.000 --> 00:19:21.380 is scarce. And this choice, the choice to believe, 00:19:21.539 --> 00:19:23.740 is the cornerstone of his profound engagement 00:19:23.740 --> 00:19:27.299 with the concept of free will. It is. James really 00:19:27.299 --> 00:19:29.359 set the terms for the modern free will debate 00:19:29.359 --> 00:19:31.720 by developing what we now call the two -stage 00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:34.319 model. He separated decision -making into two 00:19:34.319 --> 00:19:37.279 distinct causal steps. Which are? Chance, which 00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:40.220 is indeterministic, and choice, which is deterministic. 00:19:40.559 --> 00:19:42.559 Okay, let's break down the role of chance first. 00:19:42.839 --> 00:19:45.680 What did he mean by that? Chance is the free 00:19:45.680 --> 00:19:48.740 element. It represents the pool of possibilities 00:19:48.740 --> 00:19:51.839 available to us that are not necessitated by 00:19:51.839 --> 00:19:54.220 everything that came before. When you're standing 00:19:54.220 --> 00:19:56.519 at a fork in the road Divinity Avenue and Oxford 00:19:56.519 --> 00:20:00.099 Street, to use his example, both paths are called 00:20:00.789 --> 00:20:03.609 So it's not chaos. No, and he was careful to 00:20:03.609 --> 00:20:05.809 stress that. This indeterminism isn't irrational. 00:20:06.170 --> 00:20:08.769 It just means the possibilities are not controlled, 00:20:08.950 --> 00:20:12.410 secured, or necessitated by other things external 00:20:12.410 --> 00:20:15.230 to the decision maker. So external reality doesn't 00:20:15.230 --> 00:20:17.730 dictate the exact outcome. It just provides the 00:20:17.730 --> 00:20:20.269 menu of possibilities. A perfect way to put it. 00:20:20.309 --> 00:20:23.369 The second stage, choice, is where determination 00:20:23.369 --> 00:20:26.480 comes in. This stage is causally based on the 00:20:26.480 --> 00:20:29.140 individual's character, their values, their accumulated 00:20:29.140 --> 00:20:31.920 memories, their feelings. This is the stage where 00:20:31.920 --> 00:20:33.599 we determine the outcome from that available 00:20:33.599 --> 00:20:36.359 menu. So our freedom is found in the effort we 00:20:36.359 --> 00:20:39.279 exert to sustain one choice over another. Yes. 00:20:39.680 --> 00:20:42.400 And he also very clearly defined the philosophical 00:20:42.400 --> 00:20:45.940 opposition. Hard determinism, which is just fatalism, 00:20:46.039 --> 00:20:48.720 soft determinism, and his own indeterminism. 00:20:48.819 --> 00:20:51.500 He reserved his most colorful language for soft 00:20:51.500 --> 00:20:54.779 determinism or compatibilism. He was merciless 00:20:54.779 --> 00:20:57.019 toward it. Absolutely. He called it a quagmire 00:20:57.019 --> 00:20:59.579 of evasion. Why did he find that reconciliation 00:20:59.579 --> 00:21:04.180 so philosophically intolerable? What was the 00:21:04.180 --> 00:21:07.319 evasion? For James, the crucial practical consequence 00:21:07.319 --> 00:21:10.390 of free will is the concept of regret. and moral 00:21:10.390 --> 00:21:12.670 judgment if the universe is fully determined 00:21:12.670 --> 00:21:15.890 then all evil all suffering all regret must happen 00:21:15.890 --> 00:21:17.710 it's all baked in which means you can't really 00:21:17.710 --> 00:21:20.210 condemn them you can't If they must happen, we 00:21:20.210 --> 00:21:22.609 cannot morally condemn them. The universe is 00:21:22.609 --> 00:21:25.690 a single, beautiful, terrible, inevitable whole, 00:21:25.809 --> 00:21:28.289 and any feeling of I should have done otherwise 00:21:28.289 --> 00:21:31.130 becomes an illusion. So self -determinism is 00:21:31.130 --> 00:21:33.190 essentially telling us we feel free, but that 00:21:33.190 --> 00:21:35.109 feeling is meaningless because the choice was 00:21:35.109 --> 00:21:37.990 inevitable, and that completely removes the practical 00:21:37.990 --> 00:21:41.230 function of moral accountability. Exactly. It 00:21:41.230 --> 00:21:44.069 tries to reconcile necessity with freedom by 00:21:44.069 --> 00:21:47.289 stripping freedom of its moral weight. James 00:21:47.289 --> 00:21:49.789 argued that the free will option is pragmatically 00:21:49.789 --> 00:21:52.230 truer because it better accommodates the reality 00:21:52.230 --> 00:21:55.210 of moral regret and the practical necessity of 00:21:55.210 --> 00:21:57.509 holding ourselves and others accountable for 00:21:57.509 --> 00:22:00.450 choosing between possibilities. And his own commitment 00:22:00.450 --> 00:22:03.069 to this principle was intensely personal. Absolutely. 00:22:03.109 --> 00:22:05.210 The philosophical breakthrough that helped him 00:22:05.210 --> 00:22:07.730 emerge from his soul sickness was recorded in 00:22:07.730 --> 00:22:11.109 his diary in 1870. Drawing on Renouvier's work, 00:22:11.269 --> 00:22:13.410 James made this ultimate commitment, declaring, 00:22:13.630 --> 00:22:16.069 My first act of free will shall be to believe 00:22:16.069 --> 00:22:18.309 in free will. He chose it because it was the 00:22:18.309 --> 00:22:20.210 belief that delivered the greatest moral and 00:22:20.210 --> 00:22:22.329 practical satisfaction. Proving its own truth 00:22:22.329 --> 00:22:24.910 in his own life. That concept of choice and action 00:22:24.910 --> 00:22:27.670 leading to a psychological reality leads us perfectly 00:22:27.670 --> 00:22:29.990 into his revolutionary contribution to psychology, 00:22:30.369 --> 00:22:33.730 the James Lange theory of emotion. This theory 00:22:33.730 --> 00:22:35.930 takes that philosophical idea of action first 00:22:35.930 --> 00:22:38.630 and applies it directly to human feeling, flipping 00:22:38.630 --> 00:22:40.609 common sense on its head. This is one of the 00:22:40.609 --> 00:22:43.730 most famous theoretical reversals in all of psychological 00:22:43.730 --> 00:22:47.220 history. The traditional common sense view says 00:22:47.220 --> 00:22:51.559 event leads to emotion, which leads to a physical 00:22:51.559 --> 00:22:54.660 reaction. For example, I see a dangerous snake, 00:22:54.839 --> 00:22:58.079 I feel terror, then I run and scream. Right. 00:22:58.559 --> 00:23:01.059 James, formulating this simultaneously with the 00:23:01.059 --> 00:23:04.000 Danish physiologist Carl Lange, said that sequence 00:23:04.000 --> 00:23:06.740 is completely backward. Let's use the classic 00:23:06.740 --> 00:23:08.900 bear example to illustrate the James Lange theory. 00:23:09.200 --> 00:23:11.920 Okay, the bear example. We do not see a bear, 00:23:12.059 --> 00:23:15.049 fear it, and then run. James argued the process 00:23:15.049 --> 00:23:18.089 is we see the bear, the stimulus, and consequently 00:23:18.089 --> 00:23:20.809 our body initiates a physiological defense mechanism. 00:23:21.109 --> 00:23:24.130 We run, our heart races, we tremble, and it is 00:23:24.130 --> 00:23:26.089 the mind's perception of those physical changes 00:23:26.089 --> 00:23:28.410 that constitutes the emotion of fear. So wait, 00:23:28.450 --> 00:23:31.470 we feel afraid because we are trembling and running, 00:23:31.490 --> 00:23:33.349 not the other way around. That's the theory. 00:23:33.430 --> 00:23:35.650 It still causes cognitive dissonance for a lot 00:23:35.650 --> 00:23:37.390 of people. Yeah, it does. So if I want to feel 00:23:37.390 --> 00:23:39.190 confident, should I just start walking like I'm 00:23:39.190 --> 00:23:41.609 confident and the feeling will follow? In a sense, 00:23:41.650 --> 00:23:44.809 yes. James stressed that the mental aspect of 00:23:44.809 --> 00:23:47.710 emotion, the feeling, is largely a perception 00:23:47.710 --> 00:23:51.230 of its physiology. This idea has enormous implications 00:23:51.230 --> 00:23:54.369 for clinical psychology even today. If you want 00:23:54.369 --> 00:23:56.670 to change an emotion, you must change the physical 00:23:56.670 --> 00:23:58.829 signature. So different emotions feel different 00:23:58.829 --> 00:24:00.750 because they have different physiological signatures. 00:24:01.109 --> 00:24:03.430 Precisely. Fear involves the sympathetic nervous 00:24:03.430 --> 00:24:06.420 system, fight or flight. Love or contentment 00:24:06.420 --> 00:24:08.799 often involves the parasympathetic system rest 00:24:08.799 --> 00:24:12.140 and digest. Our unique emotional life is simply 00:24:12.140 --> 00:24:15.039 this subjective experience of unique patterns 00:24:15.039 --> 00:24:17.619 of internal physical feedback. And this physical 00:24:17.619 --> 00:24:20.019 first view also had consequences for how James 00:24:20.019 --> 00:24:23.380 viewed aesthetics, art, and beauty. It did. He 00:24:23.380 --> 00:24:25.279 distinguished between how we appreciate things, 00:24:25.480 --> 00:24:28.589 breaking aesthetic pleasure into two types. Primary 00:24:28.589 --> 00:24:30.730 and secondary. Okay, so what's primary sensation? 00:24:31.250 --> 00:24:34.109 Primary sensation is the pure, immediate, and 00:24:34.109 --> 00:24:36.549 direct pleasure we take in sensory inputs. A 00:24:36.549 --> 00:24:38.890 perfect musical chord, the ideal symmetry of 00:24:38.890 --> 00:24:41.650 a line, a vibrant color arrangement. He linked 00:24:41.650 --> 00:24:44.910 this to classical taste. Immediate, unadulterated 00:24:44.910 --> 00:24:47.170 sensation. And secondary pleasures are what comes 00:24:47.170 --> 00:24:49.990 after. They're the added or repercussion backwards. 00:24:50.640 --> 00:24:52.759 Pleasures. They aren't inherent in the sensation 00:24:52.759 --> 00:24:55.200 itself, but are tied to what the sensation reminds 00:24:55.200 --> 00:24:58.019 us of, or the subsequent emotional and physical 00:24:58.019 --> 00:25:00.619 reactions it generates. For instance, finding 00:25:00.619 --> 00:25:02.160 a certain color beautiful because it reminds 00:25:02.160 --> 00:25:03.920 you of your childhood home. That makes sense. 00:25:04.220 --> 00:25:06.400 James noted that the endless battles between 00:25:06.400 --> 00:25:09.259 classicism and romanticism often boil down to 00:25:09.259 --> 00:25:11.700 which of these two types of pleasure, the pure 00:25:11.700 --> 00:25:14.400 sensation or the subsequent emotional fallout 00:25:14.400 --> 00:25:17.839 one, prioritizes. Moving beyond singular feelings, 00:25:18.180 --> 00:25:20.599 James gave us an immensely complex and useful 00:25:20.599 --> 00:25:23.539 framework for personal identity, dividing the 00:25:23.539 --> 00:25:26.640 self into the observer and the observed, the 00:25:26.640 --> 00:25:29.660 I and the me. This division is foundational to 00:25:29.660 --> 00:25:32.539 modern self -psychology. The I, or the pure ego, 00:25:32.779 --> 00:25:35.940 is the thinking, acting self, the subject. It's 00:25:35.940 --> 00:25:38.119 indivisible and linked, James suggested, to the 00:25:38.119 --> 00:25:40.619 mind or the soul. And its function is to provide 00:25:40.619 --> 00:25:43.200 continuity. Exactly. The thread of continuity. 00:25:43.259 --> 00:25:45.500 That persistent feeling that you, the perceiver, 00:25:45.579 --> 00:25:48.240 are the same person you were yesterday. It arises 00:25:48.240 --> 00:25:51.059 from that continuous flowing stream of consciousness. 00:25:51.460 --> 00:25:54.819 The I is the knower. And the me, or the empirical 00:25:54.819 --> 00:25:58.220 me, is the self as an object of personal experience. 00:25:58.400 --> 00:26:01.039 What we know about ourselves. Precisely. The 00:26:01.039 --> 00:26:03.460 me is the known. And James broke it down into 00:26:03.460 --> 00:26:06.200 three concentric spheres, moving from the most 00:26:06.200 --> 00:26:09.990 external... The material self, the social self, 00:26:10.170 --> 00:26:12.750 and the spiritual self. The material self sounds 00:26:12.750 --> 00:26:15.430 simple, but James gave it much more weight than 00:26:15.430 --> 00:26:17.750 just our physical body. He did. The material 00:26:17.750 --> 00:26:20.190 self includes everything a person owns or belongs 00:26:20.190 --> 00:26:23.569 to. The body is the core, but extending outward 00:26:23.569 --> 00:26:26.690 are our clothes, which James specifically noted 00:26:26.690 --> 00:26:28.990 are crucial because they express identity and 00:26:28.990 --> 00:26:32.089 status, our money, our house, and even our immediate 00:26:32.089 --> 00:26:35.250 family. So he argued that losing a family member 00:26:35.250 --> 00:26:37.450 is devastating because it's experienced as losing 00:26:37.450 --> 00:26:40.630 a part of one's own material self. Yes. Our possessions, 00:26:40.750 --> 00:26:43.049 our relations, they're extensions of who we are. 00:26:43.170 --> 00:26:45.750 Okay. Next, the social self, which explains why 00:26:45.750 --> 00:26:47.509 we behave differently in different contexts. 00:26:47.910 --> 00:26:50.410 The social self is relational. It's who we are 00:26:50.410 --> 00:26:53.109 in a given social situation. And James famously 00:26:53.109 --> 00:26:55.529 argued that people have as many social selves 00:26:55.529 --> 00:26:57.750 as social groups they participate in. So you 00:26:57.750 --> 00:26:59.670 act differently with your boss than you do with 00:26:59.670 --> 00:27:02.500 your best friend. Of course. Consider how you 00:27:02.500 --> 00:27:04.680 speak to a colleague during a formal meeting 00:27:04.680 --> 00:27:07.299 versus how you interact with your closest friends 00:27:07.299 --> 00:27:10.599 at a bar. Both are genuine versions of you, but 00:27:10.599 --> 00:27:13.539 they are distinct social selves operating simultaneously. 00:27:14.599 --> 00:27:17.559 This concept is immensely valuable today for 00:27:17.559 --> 00:27:19.819 understanding things like identity presentation 00:27:19.819 --> 00:27:22.799 on social media. And finally, the deepest layer, 00:27:23.000 --> 00:27:26.319 the spiritual self. The spiritual self is the 00:27:26.319 --> 00:27:29.420 most intimate and durable part of the me. This 00:27:29.420 --> 00:27:32.329 is the subjective core. Our personality, our 00:27:32.329 --> 00:27:34.589 core values, our conscience, our capacity for 00:27:34.589 --> 00:27:37.289 reason. It's the seat of introspection where 00:27:37.289 --> 00:27:39.569 we look inward to grapple with moral and intellectual 00:27:39.569 --> 00:27:42.470 questions. And he believed achieving self -understanding 00:27:42.470 --> 00:27:45.089 here was the most rewarding. Far more rewarding 00:27:45.089 --> 00:27:47.589 and permanent than satisfying the demands of 00:27:47.589 --> 00:27:50.289 the material or social selves. This synthesis 00:27:50.289 --> 00:27:52.890 is what makes James truly unique. He was wrestling 00:27:52.890 --> 00:27:55.369 with two great opposing schools of thought in 00:27:55.369 --> 00:27:58.630 the 19th century, spiritualism and associationism. 00:27:58.650 --> 00:28:00.569 Right, and he pragmatically combined them. He 00:28:00.569 --> 00:28:02.990 took the usable parts of both. So associationism 00:28:02.990 --> 00:28:05.710 was the hard mechanistic theory. Very mechanistic. 00:28:06.069 --> 00:28:09.089 Favored by early psychologists, suggesting complex 00:28:09.089 --> 00:28:11.789 ideas form from simple physical changes in the 00:28:11.789 --> 00:28:14.269 brain associations happening on a purely atomic 00:28:14.269 --> 00:28:17.569 or physiological level. James criticized this 00:28:17.569 --> 00:28:20.569 as psychology without a soul. It lacked the capacity 00:28:20.569 --> 00:28:23.529 to explain choice. And spiritualism was the opposite 00:28:23.529 --> 00:28:25.849 extreme, arguing that everything was tied together 00:28:25.849 --> 00:28:28.829 by an indivisible soul, enabling moral and unified 00:28:28.829 --> 00:28:31.150 behavior. And James recognized that both were 00:28:31.150 --> 00:28:34.670 incomplete. The brain needed a mechanism, which 00:28:34.670 --> 00:28:37.369 associationism explained, but the person needed 00:28:37.369 --> 00:28:40.250 an agent, which spiritualism explained. So he 00:28:40.250 --> 00:28:42.329 integrated them. He solved it by integrating 00:28:42.329 --> 00:28:44.809 the I, the soul, the will, with the mechanism 00:28:44.809 --> 00:28:47.380 of the brain. The brain offers a set of associated 00:28:47.380 --> 00:28:50.119 options, but it is the I, the conscious self, 00:28:50.299 --> 00:28:52.539 that decides which part of that association to 00:28:52.539 --> 00:28:55.000 focus on, thus determining the direction of future 00:28:55.000 --> 00:28:57.700 behavior. The conscious will acts as the decisive 00:28:57.700 --> 00:29:00.440 filter on the mechanism. That synthesis is the 00:29:00.440 --> 00:29:02.519 functional framework that made his work so foundational. 00:29:03.000 --> 00:29:05.579 James's desire to accommodate experience that 00:29:05.579 --> 00:29:08.619 mechanistic science couldn't fully explain led 00:29:08.619 --> 00:29:11.099 him to write one of his masterpieces, The Varieties 00:29:11.099 --> 00:29:14.519 of Religious Experience, in 1902. He approached 00:29:14.519 --> 00:29:17.579 religion not as a theologian, but as a psychologist 00:29:17.579 --> 00:29:20.220 and pragmatist. That is the crucial distinction. 00:29:20.579 --> 00:29:23.119 He was interested in the experience of religion, 00:29:23.359 --> 00:29:26.519 not the dogmas or institutions. He emphasized 00:29:26.519 --> 00:29:29.680 what he called religious genius. The raw, intense 00:29:29.680 --> 00:29:32.319 personal encounter with the divine. Exactly. 00:29:32.759 --> 00:29:34.720 over the formal structures that later develop 00:29:34.720 --> 00:29:37.480 around that genius. Institutions, he argued, 00:29:37.640 --> 00:29:40.220 are merely the second -hand social descendant 00:29:40.220 --> 00:29:42.599 of that original primary experience. He also 00:29:42.599 --> 00:29:44.920 believed that psychologists should actively seek 00:29:44.920 --> 00:29:47.920 out the extreme, the intense, even the pathological 00:29:47.920 --> 00:29:50.099 varieties of human experience. Why? That seems 00:29:50.099 --> 00:29:51.740 counterintuitive to the study of the average 00:29:51.740 --> 00:29:54.599 mind. Because, he argued, they act as a microscope 00:29:54.599 --> 00:29:57.200 of the mind. By studying the intense emotional 00:29:57.200 --> 00:30:00.039 or intellectual peaks, pathologies, conversion 00:30:00.039 --> 00:30:02.980 experiences, mystical states, they reveal the 00:30:02.980 --> 00:30:05.480 normal processes of the mind in a drastically 00:30:05.480 --> 00:30:08.140 enlarged, exaggerated, and easier to observe 00:30:08.140 --> 00:30:11.220 form. So they let us see the fundamental machinery 00:30:11.220 --> 00:30:14.220 of belief and perception that's too subtle in 00:30:14.220 --> 00:30:17.180 everyday life. You've got it. And to interpret 00:30:17.180 --> 00:30:20.220 those amplified experiences, he argued we need 00:30:20.220 --> 00:30:24.960 overbeliefs. An overbelief being. The necessary 00:30:24.960 --> 00:30:27.680 assumption we make to live a fuller, better life, 00:30:27.799 --> 00:30:30.240 even if it cannot be absolutely proven by our 00:30:30.240 --> 00:30:33.480 empirical experience. For instance, the overbelief 00:30:33.480 --> 00:30:35.819 that the universe is fundamentally moral or that 00:30:35.819 --> 00:30:38.480 your efforts will ultimately pay off. They're 00:30:38.480 --> 00:30:40.720 essential, pragmatic assumptions that give life 00:30:40.720 --> 00:30:43.680 structure and purpose. This pursuit of the extreme 00:30:43.680 --> 00:30:46.059 led James himself to experiment with various 00:30:46.059 --> 00:30:48.880 substances, chloral hydrate, peyote, and the 00:30:48.880 --> 00:30:51.339 famous nitrous oxide experiments. Yes, to access 00:30:51.339 --> 00:30:53.859 what he called the great subliminal or transmartinal 00:30:53.859 --> 00:30:56.039 region of consciousness. And his notes on nitrous 00:30:56.039 --> 00:30:59.180 oxide are legendary. They are. James was a lifelong 00:30:59.180 --> 00:31:01.680 anti -Hegelian, fighting against the philosophy 00:31:01.680 --> 00:31:04.259 of absolute unity. Yet under the influence of 00:31:04.259 --> 00:31:06.720 the gas, he claimed he achieved a tremendously 00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:10.200 exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination. 00:31:10.400 --> 00:31:12.559 Where all the opposites vanished. He wrote of 00:31:12.559 --> 00:31:15.740 experiencing the dissolution of all binary oppositions, 00:31:15.779 --> 00:31:17.960 subject to object, good, evil, past, present, 00:31:18.079 --> 00:31:22.099 where every opposition vanished in a higher unity. 00:31:22.259 --> 00:31:24.859 It sounds like a profoundly jarring yet temporary 00:31:24.859 --> 00:31:27.759 spiritual experience that directly contradicted 00:31:27.759 --> 00:31:30.940 his lifelong philosophy. It was. And that is 00:31:30.940 --> 00:31:34.220 exactly why he focused on it. He used these chemically 00:31:34.220 --> 00:31:36.900 induced states and spontaneous mystical experiences 00:31:36.900 --> 00:31:39.660 to try and categorize the phenomena scientifically, 00:31:40.059 --> 00:31:42.660 which led to his articulation of the four criteria 00:31:42.660 --> 00:31:44.779 of mysticism. Okay, let's walk through those 00:31:44.779 --> 00:31:46.759 criteria, which are still used in religious and 00:31:46.759 --> 00:31:49.039 psychological studies today. First is ineffability. 00:31:49.359 --> 00:31:51.720 The mystical experience cannot be adequately 00:31:51.720 --> 00:31:55.640 described in normal words or language. It necessitates 00:31:55.640 --> 00:31:58.579 direct, first -hand experience for true understanding. 00:31:58.900 --> 00:32:00.680 The mystic can't really explain it to the non 00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:02.960 -mystic. Not fully. Second is the noetic quality. 00:32:03.240 --> 00:32:05.960 This is critical. The experience is not just 00:32:05.960 --> 00:32:08.880 a feeling. It is experienced as a state of knowledge. 00:32:09.619 --> 00:32:11.920 The mystic feels they have gained authoritative 00:32:11.920 --> 00:32:15.440 insight into fundamental truths that are inaccessible 00:32:15.440 --> 00:32:18.420 to ordinary rational reasoning. It feels like 00:32:18.420 --> 00:32:20.519 being taught something profound about reality. 00:32:21.000 --> 00:32:24.420 Third, transiency. These states cannot be sustained 00:32:24.420 --> 00:32:26.799 for long periods. They are fleeting, lasting 00:32:26.799 --> 00:32:29.279 only minutes or hours, though they leave a profound 00:32:29.279 --> 00:32:33.019 lasting impression. And finally, passivity. During 00:32:33.019 --> 00:32:35.319 the experience, the individual feels as if their 00:32:35.319 --> 00:32:38.180 personal will is suspended. They feel grasped 00:32:38.180 --> 00:32:41.299 by a superior power or external force. They're 00:32:41.299 --> 00:32:43.900 undergoing an experience, not creating it. So 00:32:43.900 --> 00:32:46.680 on a pragmatic level, what weight did James grant 00:32:46.680 --> 00:32:49.480 these unique individual experiences? He established 00:32:49.480 --> 00:32:52.259 a clear pragmatic boundary. The epistemological 00:32:52.259 --> 00:32:54.559 authority of a mystical experience is justified 00:32:54.559 --> 00:32:56.980 for the individual who has it. It changes their 00:32:56.980 --> 00:32:59.140 life, and for them, it's a truth with massive 00:32:59.140 --> 00:33:01.829 cash value. But James stressed that others, the 00:33:01.829 --> 00:33:04.230 rest of the world, are under no obligation to 00:33:04.230 --> 00:33:06.769 accept that truth uncritically. That is such 00:33:06.769 --> 00:33:09.369 a classic Jamesian middle ground. It's true for 00:33:09.369 --> 00:33:11.109 the individual, but not universally imposed. 00:33:11.490 --> 00:33:14.910 Exactly. However, he did argue that the mere 00:33:14.910 --> 00:33:17.849 existence of these phenomena suggests an intrinsic 00:33:17.849 --> 00:33:21.349 incompleteness in non -mystical, purely rational 00:33:21.349 --> 00:33:24.289 epistemology. He was asserting that there might 00:33:24.289 --> 00:33:27.230 be a subliminal world or an unseen world that 00:33:27.230 --> 00:33:29.789 produces real, tangible effects within human 00:33:29.789 --> 00:33:32.190 consciousness, and therefore must be treated 00:33:32.190 --> 00:33:34.869 as a kind of reality. This desire to reconcile 00:33:34.869 --> 00:33:37.349 real -world problems with theological concepts 00:33:37.349 --> 00:33:40.009 also led him to advocate for a specific view 00:33:40.009 --> 00:33:42.990 of God regarding the problem of evil. Yes, he 00:33:42.990 --> 00:33:45.940 was an advocate of theistic finitism. This concept 00:33:45.940 --> 00:33:48.519 seeks to pragmatically solve the problem of evil. 00:33:48.640 --> 00:33:51.339 How can an all -good, all -powerful God allow 00:33:51.339 --> 00:33:54.099 suffering? By arguing that God is not omnipotent, 00:33:54.119 --> 00:33:56.539 omniscient, or pervasive, but is rather finite. 00:33:56.819 --> 00:33:59.099 How does finitude solve the problem? A finite 00:33:59.099 --> 00:34:02.259 God struggles. This God is good, but is wrestling 00:34:02.259 --> 00:34:04.579 against the forces of evil and chaos in the universe, 00:34:04.779 --> 00:34:07.519 rather than being responsible for them. This 00:34:07.519 --> 00:34:09.599 means that evil is a real existential battle, 00:34:09.780 --> 00:34:12.340 not just a necessary part of an omnipotent plan. 00:34:12.760 --> 00:34:15.880 And pragmatically, that encourages human cooperation 00:34:15.880 --> 00:34:19.380 with God against evil. Precisely. Our efforts 00:34:19.380 --> 00:34:22.360 matter in the cosmic struggle. It makes God a 00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:25.440 partner, not a remote master. And his curiosity 00:34:25.440 --> 00:34:27.780 about the limits of reality also led him to the 00:34:27.780 --> 00:34:30.579 scientific edges of the time. Psychical research. 00:34:31.210 --> 00:34:33.989 James was intensely involved. He was a founder 00:34:33.989 --> 00:34:35.869 and vice president of the American Society for 00:34:35.869 --> 00:34:38.449 Psychical Research. He was convinced that the 00:34:38.449 --> 00:34:41.150 strict materialist framework of science was incomplete, 00:34:41.349 --> 00:34:44.610 and he saw psychical phenomena like telepathy 00:34:44.610 --> 00:34:47.090 as his way of proving it. He used the concept 00:34:47.090 --> 00:34:49.510 of the white crow to explain his methodology. 00:34:49.710 --> 00:34:52.869 Yes, it's a fantastic metaphor. The rule is that 00:34:52.869 --> 00:34:54.949 if you wish to upset the law that all crows are 00:34:54.949 --> 00:34:57.409 black, it is enough to prove that one crow is 00:34:57.409 --> 00:35:00.230 white. James believed the medium Leonora Piper 00:35:00.230 --> 00:35:03.369 was his white crow. He was incredibly impressed 00:35:03.369 --> 00:35:05.909 by her. He was. She seemed to possess knowledge 00:35:05.909 --> 00:35:07.710 she couldn't have gained through normal means. 00:35:08.110 --> 00:35:11.590 But even James, the believer in the unseen, maintained 00:35:11.590 --> 00:35:14.190 his scientific skepticism about the explanation. 00:35:14.789 --> 00:35:17.630 Absolutely. He was a pragmatist first. While 00:35:17.630 --> 00:35:20.349 he accepted the phenomenon was real, he personally 00:35:20.349 --> 00:35:23.469 found the popular spirit control hypothesis incoherent. 00:35:23.719 --> 00:35:26.460 He suggested rational sources for Piper's knowledge 00:35:26.460 --> 00:35:29.239 could include telepathy, tapping into the collective 00:35:29.239 --> 00:35:32.800 unconscious, or, most mundanely, information 00:35:32.800 --> 00:35:36.599 gleaned through gossip of servants. He noted 00:35:36.599 --> 00:35:38.619 that a maid in his own household was friendly 00:35:38.619 --> 00:35:41.440 with a maid in Piper's house, and mundane information 00:35:41.440 --> 00:35:43.780 gathering needed to be ruled out before leaping 00:35:43.780 --> 00:35:47.000 to spirits. He demanded rigorous testing, even 00:35:47.000 --> 00:35:48.960 for the phenomena he personally wanted to be 00:35:48.960 --> 00:35:51.860 true. James's pragmatism extended into his views 00:35:51.860 --> 00:35:54.679 on history and society, wading into the classic 00:35:54.679 --> 00:35:56.679 debate about whether historical change is driven 00:35:56.679 --> 00:35:59.800 by exceptional individuals or by broad sociological 00:35:59.800 --> 00:36:02.380 laws. This was the classic great man theory, 00:36:02.500 --> 00:36:05.159 championed by Thomas Carlyle versus sociological 00:36:05.159 --> 00:36:08.179 determinism. James tackled this in his 1880 essay, 00:36:08.360 --> 00:36:10.420 Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment. 00:36:10.639 --> 00:36:13.099 And typically, he fed a synthesis. So who did 00:36:13.099 --> 00:36:15.179 he side with, the great man or the great forces? 00:36:15.659 --> 00:36:17.820 He cited firmly with a view that individuals 00:36:17.820 --> 00:36:21.260 are the motive power of history. He borrowed 00:36:21.260 --> 00:36:24.119 a concept directly from Darwin, arguing that 00:36:24.119 --> 00:36:27.059 a philosopher must accept genius as a spontaneous 00:36:27.059 --> 00:36:29.940 given entity like Darwin's spontaneous variations 00:36:29.940 --> 00:36:33.639 in biology. So societal mutations, he argued, 00:36:33.719 --> 00:36:36.079 are initiated by these individuals. The ones 00:36:36.079 --> 00:36:38.280 whose genius or accidental position of authority 00:36:38.280 --> 00:36:41.559 makes them ferments or initiators of movements. 00:36:41.800 --> 00:36:44.610 But the genius can't succeed in a vacuum. the 00:36:44.610 --> 00:36:48.010 environment has to be ready. Exactly. The success 00:36:48.010 --> 00:36:50.550 of the ferment is contingent on the receptivities 00:36:50.550 --> 00:36:53.710 of the moment. The social environment, the epoch, 00:36:53.710 --> 00:36:56.670 the culture, must be ready to receive that particular 00:36:56.670 --> 00:36:59.969 idea. So for James, history is the result of 00:36:59.969 --> 00:37:02.920 chance, the appearance of genius. and choice, 00:37:03.079 --> 00:37:05.380 the social environment choosing to adopt and 00:37:05.380 --> 00:37:07.320 amplify that genius. It's interesting that a 00:37:07.320 --> 00:37:09.820 man who borrowed so much from Darwin vehemently 00:37:09.820 --> 00:37:12.019 rejected the most popular social extension of 00:37:12.019 --> 00:37:14.000 Darwinian thought at the time. You mean social 00:37:14.000 --> 00:37:17.139 Darwinism. His rejection was categorical. While 00:37:17.139 --> 00:37:19.460 he accepted biological evolution and applied 00:37:19.460 --> 00:37:21.880 its principles to intellectual fitness, James 00:37:21.880 --> 00:37:24.920 regarded social Darwinism, popularized by Herbert 00:37:24.920 --> 00:37:28.840 Spencer, as a sham. So he rejected the cutthroat 00:37:28.840 --> 00:37:30.960 survival of the fittest application to human 00:37:30.960 --> 00:37:33.400 society. Completely. He was deeply skeptical 00:37:33.400 --> 00:37:36.059 of its use, especially when deployed to justify 00:37:36.059 --> 00:37:39.340 notions of Anglo -Saxon superiority or the oppression 00:37:39.340 --> 00:37:41.400 of the working class. And this wasn't a popular 00:37:41.400 --> 00:37:43.880 stance among the Harvard elite in the 1870s and 00:37:43.880 --> 00:37:46.599 80s. It was a minority opinion, and it speaks 00:37:46.599 --> 00:37:49.960 to James's unwavering moral commitment. He saw 00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:52.780 social Darwinism as a morally bankrupt justification 00:37:52.780 --> 00:37:55.840 for inequality, lacking the practical moral cash 00:37:55.840 --> 00:37:58.679 value he demanded from any true philosophy. Finally, 00:37:58.679 --> 00:38:00.780 we have to look at his lasting legacy on civic 00:38:00.780 --> 00:38:03.239 life and virtue, which is captured in his essay, 00:38:03.400 --> 00:38:06.159 The Moral Equivalent of War. Derived from a 1906 00:38:06.159 --> 00:38:08.860 speech, this essay grappled with a core political 00:38:08.860 --> 00:38:11.940 problem. How do you maintain essential martial 00:38:11.940 --> 00:38:15.119 virtues, discipline, loyalty, tenacity, sacrifice, 00:38:15.500 --> 00:38:17.980 in a society that is not actively engaged in 00:38:17.980 --> 00:38:20.619 war? He recognized that war, while horrific, 00:38:20.860 --> 00:38:23.280 channels collective energy and instills civic 00:38:23.280 --> 00:38:25.539 commitment. He didn't want the death and destruction, 00:38:25.860 --> 00:38:28.760 but he recognized the moral force that war provided. 00:38:29.019 --> 00:38:32.119 So he looked for a pragmatic solution, his moral 00:38:32.119 --> 00:38:34.800 equivalent. And what was it? He proposed a national 00:38:34.800 --> 00:38:37.579 civilian service, specifically a term of public 00:38:37.579 --> 00:38:40.829 labor for all young men and women. This service 00:38:40.829 --> 00:38:43.090 would involve difficult, uncomfortable labor 00:38:43.090 --> 00:38:46.030 working in coal mines, fishing fleets, or road 00:38:46.030 --> 00:38:49.010 construction. So a kind of rite of passage. Exactly. 00:38:49.329 --> 00:38:51.389 Designed to instill discipline, responsibility, 00:38:51.789 --> 00:38:54.650 and civic virtue, or as he put it, to get the 00:38:54.650 --> 00:38:57.010 childishness knock out of them. He wanted to 00:38:57.010 --> 00:38:59.210 channel that aggressive, youthful energy and 00:38:59.210 --> 00:39:01.909 the need for collective sacrifice into productive, 00:39:02.050 --> 00:39:04.949 constructive goals. And that essay was enormously 00:39:04.949 --> 00:39:08.099 influential. It was. It lent its name and theme 00:39:08.099 --> 00:39:10.539 decades later to President Jimmy Carter's 1977 00:39:10.539 --> 00:39:13.960 speech on the energy crisis, where Carter equated 00:39:13.960 --> 00:39:15.920 the national challenge and sacrifice needed for 00:39:15.920 --> 00:39:18.980 energy independence with a moral equivalent of 00:39:18.980 --> 00:39:22.079 war. James was seeking a productive, peaceful, 00:39:22.340 --> 00:39:25.139 yet rigorous way for society to channel its energies 00:39:25.139 --> 00:39:27.670 toward the common good. William James left us 00:39:27.670 --> 00:39:30.909 a monumental intellectual gift. He was a thinker 00:39:30.909 --> 00:39:33.170 who just refused the easy boundaries, moving 00:39:33.170 --> 00:39:35.929 seamlessly between neurological science, rigorous 00:39:35.929 --> 00:39:38.429 philosophy, and the deepest questions of religious 00:39:38.429 --> 00:39:41.760 faith. He really gave us the tools for navigating 00:39:41.760 --> 00:39:44.460 uncertainty, a definition of truth that demands 00:39:44.460 --> 00:39:47.579 practical, verifiable results, a radical new 00:39:47.579 --> 00:39:49.539 way to understand our feelings as physiological 00:39:49.539 --> 00:39:52.699 perceptions, and a complex, practical framework 00:39:52.699 --> 00:39:55.019 for the multiple selves we embody. His triumph 00:39:55.019 --> 00:39:57.980 really was the synthesis. He took the mechanistic, 00:39:58.000 --> 00:40:01.119 physical ideas of associationism and integrated 00:40:01.119 --> 00:40:03.920 them with the spiritual view of an indivisible 00:40:03.920 --> 00:40:06.889 will. He created a functional, usable psychology 00:40:06.889 --> 00:40:10.010 that recognized both the physical mechanism and 00:40:10.010 --> 00:40:12.389 the agent of choice. He showed that mind and 00:40:12.389 --> 00:40:14.869 body, spirit and science weren't necessarily 00:40:14.869 --> 00:40:17.550 warring concepts. Not at all. They could be integrated 00:40:17.550 --> 00:40:19.909 into a single framework that helps us live a 00:40:19.909 --> 00:40:22.929 better, fuller life. His insistence that an idea 00:40:22.929 --> 00:40:25.289 must work is the ultimate American contribution 00:40:25.289 --> 00:40:28.219 to philosophy. And his most profound pragmatic 00:40:28.219 --> 00:40:31.760 choice was that personal declaration. Choosing 00:40:31.760 --> 00:40:34.159 to believe in free will because it was the belief 00:40:34.159 --> 00:40:36.480 that would yield the highest moral and personal 00:40:36.480 --> 00:40:38.719 satisfaction. It was the belief that made his 00:40:38.719 --> 00:40:42.320 world work better. So if the truth of any concept 00:40:42.320 --> 00:40:44.940 hinges on its practical consequences, if its 00:40:44.940 --> 00:40:47.039 worth is determined by its cash value in your 00:40:47.039 --> 00:40:50.000 life, then the necessary final question for this 00:40:50.000 --> 00:40:52.980 deep dive is this. Considering the choices and 00:40:52.980 --> 00:40:55.380 challenges immediately ahead of you, what foundational 00:40:55.380 --> 00:40:57.980 belief if you chose to embrace it entirely and 00:40:57.980 --> 00:41:00.639 act upon it today would yield the greatest cash 00:41:00.639 --> 00:41:03.460 value in your own life? What belief would make 00:41:03.460 --> 00:41:05.900 your world fundamentally and practically truer? 00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:08.960 A truly practical thought to end on. Thank you 00:41:08.960 --> 00:41:11.380 for joining us for this deep dive into the transformative 00:41:11.380 --> 00:41:13.619 thought and radical utility of William James. 00:41:13.840 --> 00:41:16.239 We hope you feel thoroughly informed and armed 00:41:16.239 --> 00:41:17.539 with new intellectual tools.