When in Doubt, Start with William James

When in doubt, start with William James

            The vastness of literature on consciousness presents a problem of selection, especially a starting point. In this case, I will follow a personal maxim: “When in doubt, start with William James.”  In his Principles of Psychology (1890), James writes extensively about the meaning of consciousness. He points out that no one can deny that they have “states of consciousness,” although finding an adequate vocabulary to describe them poses enormous problems. Everyone who thinks about thought, including those in what was then the new science of psychology, can distinguish between the object of the thought and the thought itself. If they turn to reflective introspection, thinking about the thought itself, they can distinguish between the thought and the thinker. The thought is part of what James calls the empirical self, the “me.” But the thinker is the “I.” When I try to think of the thinker, I make it an object, part of the empirical me. While I cannot deny that there is a subjective thinker, its nature eludes me. For the sake of creating a naturalistic psychology, James defers the metaphysical question of what the thinker is, and limits himself to describing the most recent thought as the thinker. If I introspectively try to capture this thought, it is now a part of empirical me, which consists of all the thoughts of which I am aware. A new thought is now making this judgment. 

In his later works, James takes on the metaphysical question of consciousness.

The “Conclusions” to his 1909 work, A Pluralistic Universe, describes “religious experiences of a specific nature.” Significantly, James calls them “experiences,” rather than objects of faith or reason. These experiences reveal a range of happiness and power that supersedes our naturalistic thinking and “seem to show a world that is wider than either physics or philistine ethics can imagine.” He describes these experiences as a kind of life after death. Here James does not mean our biological death, but rather, “…death of hope death of strength…death of everything that paganism, naturalism, and legalism pin their faith on and tie their trust to.”  James contends that reasoning would never have inferred these experiences of a larger world revealing itself after the experience of despair.  But once they reveal themselves, anyone trying to develop a more complete philosophy must a take them into account. These experiences give individuals a sense that their own consciousness is continuous with a wider self from which the experience flows in. Describing an individual life as being “continuous with a more of the same quality, which is operative in the universe outside of him,” James refers to “words which I have used elsewhere,” an allusion to the “Conclusions” of his 1901 Gifford Lectures, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

            In Varieties of Religious Experience James provides more insights on consciousness than this post can accommodate. The experiences that he describes in terms of expanded consciousness include unifying the divided soul, conversion, saintliness, and mysticism. In his chapter “Mysticism,” he expresses what he calls a truth that had earlier forced itself on his mind:

It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special types of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. 298.

Throughout the Varieties, James offers such experiential evidence that consciousness consists of much more than the awareness of any single human organism.

In the “Conclusions” he offers a way to interpret the larger consciousness. These experiences; conversion, saintliness, and mysticism, reveal a larger world from which our ordinary consciousness draws its significance. On the near side, it seems to be an extension of the conscious individual self. But it may extend further to include what religious believers call God. Based on the real impact that the larger consciousness has on human lives, often leading to heroic work and saintly behavior toward others, James infers that what seems to be a higher consciousness is in fact higher and greater than the individual, rather than something that the individual brain secretes.

            If James’s interpretation holds true, then consciousness is prior to matter, specifically prior to the matter of any individual brain. As the brain develops in human evolution and in the maturing of the individual, it becomes a vessel of what we call consciousness. In this interpretation, growth in consciousness, manifested in greater awareness, intelligence, and love, stands out as the goal of human life. From this point of view, whatever promotes the development of consciousness is good; whatever inhibits it is evil.