PHILOSOPHICAL ROOTS 43
final conclusion; consciousness is
not a thing but a process, which
is constantly evolving.
James also drew attention to the
personal nature of consciousness,
stating that thoughts do not exist
independently of a thinker—they
are your thoughts or mine. Each one
is “owned” by someone, and never
“comes into direct sight of a thought
in another personal consciousness
than its own.” And it is these
thoughts “connected as we feel
them to be connected” that form
the self. As thoughts cannot be
divided from the self, James said
that investigating this self should
be the starting point of psychology.
Experimental psychologists did not
agree, because “the self” cannot be
offered up for experimentation, but
James thought it was enough to
work with our understanding of a
self that does certain things and
feels in certain ways. He called this
the “empirical self,” which
manifests itself through its
behavior, and suggested that it
consists of several parts—the
material self, spiritual self, and
social self—each of which can be
studied through introspection.
Theory of emotion
In the early stages of his research
into consciousness, James realized
that the emotions play an important
role in our daily lives, and went on to
develop, with his colleague Carl
Lange, a theory about how they
relate to our actions and behavior.
What was to become known as the
James–Lange Theory of Emotion
states that emotions arise from your
conscious mind’s perception of your
physiological condition. To illustrate
this theory, James used the example
of seeing a bear, then running away.
It is not the case that you see the
bear, feel afraid, and then run away
because of the fear. What is really
happening is that you see the bear
and run away, and the conscious
feeling of fear is caused by the
action of running. This contradicts
what most people might think, but
James’s view was that the mind’s
perception of the physical effects of
running—rapid breathing, increased
heartbeat, and perspiring heavily—
is translated into the emotion of fear.Another example, according to his
theory, would be that you feel happy
because you are conscious that you
are smiling; it is not that you feel
happy first, and then smile.Pragmatism
Related to James’s theories about
consciousness is his approach to the
way we believe things to be true or
not. He stated that “truths emerge
from facts... but... the ‘facts’
themselves are not true; they simply
are. Truth is the function of the
beliefs that start and terminate
among them.” ❯❯Dots of pure color make up this work
by the French Post-Impressionist
painter Georges Seurat. Yet our brain
combines these separate elements so
that what we see is a human figure.