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date: 08 March 2021

Abstract and Keywords

William James was, by the time of his death in 1910, America's most celebrated psychologist and philosopher. Nevertheless, he is often unfairly portrayed as simply arguing that it is rational for us to believe anything that makes us feel good, since a belief is ‘true’ whenever believing it promotes our interests. However, James is more justly interpreted as attempting to draw out the consequences of a thoroughgoing naturalism about cognition for our understanding of normative notions like truth, goodness, and rationality. James was almost unique in his time in directly facing the problem of finding a place for value in a world that seemed increasingly to demand a naturalistic understanding, and his doing so without giving up on either the naturalism or the value has made his writings of perennial interest.

Keywords: William James, naturalism, cognition, normative notion, rationality, goodness

Henry Jackman

Henry Jackman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Toronto's York University. He works primarily in the philosophies of language and mind, and the history of American philosophy, particularly William James. A full CV, and copies of most of this work can be found at www.jackman.org.

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