| James's Naturalistic Account of Concepts and his 'Rejection of Logic' |
| Henry Jackman |
| Presented at the 1999 Meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, February 1999. |
| Area 1 American Pragmatism |
| Area 2 Epistemology |
| Keywords James Logic Concepts Rationality |
| http://www.yorku.ca/hjackman/papers/James-logic.pdf |
| Logic is viewed by many as inseparable from rationality, and James' 'rejection of logic' in A Pluralistic Universe may be the most flagrantly 'irrational' strand in his philosophy. Nevertheless, when viewed in the context of the psychological naturalism developed in The Principles of Psychology, James' 'rejection of logic' can seem both plausible and, crucially, rational. James' rejection of conceptual logic is deeply connected to his naturalism about concepts, and his belief that there is no reason to think that an intellect "built up of practical interests" need develop concepts that accurately mirror the structure of reality. James position is, then, not so much that we should give up logic, but rather that (given the practical rather than theoretical nature of our concepts) we should give up the assumption that we are rationally obligated to accept all the apparent logical consequences of all the claims that we accept. |
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