Buddhaghosa, James, and Thompson on Conscious Flow

Journal of the American Philosophical Association ◽

10.1017/apa.2020.24 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 1-13

Author(s):

MARK FORTNEY

Keyword(s):

Binocular Rivalry ◽

William James ◽

Third Way ◽

Special Challenge

Abstract This paper is about whether consciousness flows. Evan Thompson (2014) has recently claimed that the study of binocular rivalry shows that there are some moments where consciousness does not flow, contra William James (1890). Moreover, he has claimed that Abhidharma philosophers reject James's claim that consciousness flows. I argue that binocular rivalry poses no special challenge to James. Second, I argue that because Thompson did not take up the question of how James and Abhidharma philosophers analyze or define flow, he underdescribed their disagreement in a way that obscures an important conceptual contribution that Abhidharma philosophers make to the study of flow. They reject James's claim that there are only two conceivable ways for consciousness to fail to flow and suggest that there is a third way for consciousness to fail to flow—a way that James's imagination did not reveal to be possible.

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William James

10.5149/northcarolina/9781469631240.001.0001 ◽

2017 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Krister Dylan Knapp

Keyword(s):

William James ◽

Professional Relationships ◽

Central Position ◽

Religious Thought ◽

Psychical Research ◽

Third Way ◽

American Psychologist ◽

The Third ◽

Modern Age ◽

The Will

In this insightful new book on the remarkable William James, the American psychologist and philosopher, Krister Dylan Knapp provides the first deeply historical and acutely analytical account of James's psychical research. While showing that James always maintained a critical stance toward claims of paranormal phenomena like spiritualism, Knapp uses new sources to argue that psychical research held a strikingly central position in James's life. It was crucial to his familial and professional relationships, the fashioning of his unique intellectual disposition, and the shaping of his core doctrines, especially the will-to-believe, empiricism, fideism, and theories of the subliminal consciousness and immortality. Knapp explains how and why James found in psychical research a way to rethink the well-trodden approaches to classic Euro-American religious thought, typified by the oppositional categories of natural vs. supernatural and normal vs. paranormal. He demonstrates how James eschewed these choices and instead developed a tertiary synthesis of them, an approach Knapp terms tertium quid, the third way. Situating James's psychical research in relation to the rise of experimental psychology and Protestantism's changing place in fin de siècle America, Knapp asserts that the third way illustrated a much broader trend in transatlantic thought as it struggled to navigate the uncertainties and religious adventurism of the modern age.

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A pragmatist philosophy of psychological science and its implications for replication

Behavioral and Brain Sciences ◽

10.1017/s0140525x18000626 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 41 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

Ana Gantman ◽

Robin Gomila ◽

Joel E. Martinez ◽

J. Nathan Matias ◽

Elizabeth Levy Paluck ◽

...

Keyword(s):

William James ◽

Mental Processes ◽

Psychological Science ◽

Behavioral Measurement ◽

The World ◽

Pragmatist Philosophy

AbstractA pragmatist philosophy of psychological science offers to the direct replication debate concrete recommendations and novel benefits that are not discussed in Zwaan et al. This philosophy guides our work as field experimentalists interested in behavioral measurement. Furthermore, all psychologists can relate to its ultimate aim set out by William James: to study mental processes that provide explanations for why people behave as they do in the world.

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