Pluralistic Monism: William James as Closet-Heraclitean

Autor: Tolman, Charles
Zdroj: Psychological Record; April 1989, Vol. 39 Issue: 2 p177-194, 18p
Abstrakt: Pluralistic monism is an attractive solution to problems raised by debates on pluralism and monism in present-day psychology. It is a position to which William James was attracted and one which appears to have been entirely consistent with his pragmatism, though he was reluctant to openly embrace it. An examination of the pluralistic monism of Heraclitus and its historical context indicates that it is coherent only when supported by a distinction between contradiction in nature and logical contradiction. James’s failure explicitly to recognize this distinction-though much of his thinking is marked by an implicit recognition of it-is one of several reasons examined here for his ambivalence on the question. It is concluded that pluralistic monism is not only more characteristically “Jamesian,” but provides a workable resolution to the long-standing debate over the one versus the many.
Databáze: Supplemental Index
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