Concept
William James Lectures
Overview
The William James Lectures are a series of invited lectureships at Harvard University sponsored by the Departments of Philosophy and Psychology, who alternate in the selection of speakers. The series was created in honor of the American pragmatist philosopher and psychologist William James, a former faculty member at that institution. It was endowed through a 1929 bequest from Edgar Pierce, a Harvard Alumnus, who also funded the prestigious Edgar Pierce Chair in Philosophy and Psychology. Pierce stipulated that the delivered lectures be open to the public and subsequently published by the Harvard University Press. The program was initiated in 1930 and has continued to the present. Its invited lecturers have included some of the most influential thinkers of the 20th century. In some cases, the selection of lecturer has generated considerable controversy. It is not to be confused with the William James Lectures on Religious Experience, which is a different lecture series conducted in the Harvard Divinity School.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
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Twenty-three years have elapsed since William James startled the world with his article entitled “Does ‘consciousness’ exist?” In this article, reprinted in the volume called _Essays in Radical Empiricism_, he set out the view that “there is only one primal stuff or material in the world”, and that the word “consciousness” stands for a…
Bertrand Russell, Philosophy
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Dunlap asserts (to return to James) that the real ground for James's original belief in introspection was his belief in two sorts of objects, namely, thoughts and things. He suggests that it was a mere inconsistency on James's part to adhere to introspection after abandoning the dualism of thoughts and things.
Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind
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As a teacher at Harvard for thirty-five years, he influenced the lives and thoughts of more than a generation of students who sat in his classes. To many of them he was an adviser as well as a teacher, and to some he was a lifelong friend. Such was the character of his books and public discourses that people of all sorts and conditions from outside the University came to him or wrote to him for encouragement and…
William James, The Letters of William James, Vol. 1
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Philosophers who discussed William James Lectures
Related ideas
- Étienne Gilson
- Ned Block
- Harvard University Press
- Philosophy
- Herbert A. Simon
- John Dewey
- Harvard University
- A. J. Ayer
- Psychology
- J. L. Austin
- Allen Newell
- Michael Dummett
- Richard Wollheim
- Bertrand Russell
- B. F. Skinner
- Gabriel Marcel
- Arthur Oncken Lovejoy
- William James
- Pragmatism
- How to Do Things with Words
- Donald Broadbent
- Art as Experience
Place in the tradition
Part of Bertrand Russell.