Pragmatism and Design (II): William James
If Pierce was the misunderstood genius who created the pragmatic method, let’s say that James was the one who capitalized on his ideas, popularizing them to the public.
William James (1842–1910) was the eldest of a family of five brothers, dominated by an individualistic patriarch critical with the established institutions (Henry James). The family spent several years in Geneva and Paris, and were popular for their after-dinner gatherings, which provided James with a good basis for his intellectual and cultural development.
He was a very versatile person intellectually. His father forced him to abandon an artistic career to devote himself to science, entering Harvard to study chemistry and then medicine. He obtained the title of Doctor of Medicine but never practised, since he had no faith in the medicine of the time, preferring instead to dedicate himself to teaching physiology and then psychology at the same university, as an assistant professor. All these rudder strokes in his career would be projected later in his works.
During that time, psychology was beginning to establish itself as an academic discipline, closely linked to the philosophy departments. James established America’s first scientific psychological laboratory, emphasizing unity between the two disciplines.
He was a man in poor health, perhaps this and his knowledge of physiology influenced his special sensitivity towards the body, which was always at the centre of his ideas.
And we give it back to you… the people
After 12 years of work, James became an international success with the appearance of his “Principles of Psychology” in 1890, a 1200-page treatise where he took psychology away from the 19th century metaphysical vein to create modern science. He died being one of the most famous philosophers in the world. The fate of his colleague Peirce was very different. He never managed to publish a philosophy book, he never had a permanent academic position, and he often lived in misery. James “generously” announced to the world in 1898 that Peirce had been the father of pragmatism ideas, but it was not until the 1930s, when his documents and with them his academic recognition began to appear.
James started from Peirce’s ideas by claiming that pragmatism was a method of defining truth, his writings on the subject became very popular as they offered intriguing slogans and claims that often seemed to go against common sense.
“Any idea that takes us prosperously from one part of our experience to any other, that links things together satisfactorily, works safely, saves work; it is very true, certain from now on, certain instrumentally. ”
Any idea that takes us to another place is good. Dangerous.
James never understood the “practical consequences” as fully as Peirce did, and he does not share his restriction on general patterns of behaviour. James stopped being a believer, but argued that if a religious belief makes someone felt better and that contributes to the pragmatic clarification that “God exists”, that idea is good. A belief can come true simply because holding it contributes to our happiness and satisfaction.
It’s easy to see that unless we contextualize a religious belief a lot, it could lead to a host of experimental surprises and disappointments. A “concrete life”, a respectful idea or a consolation, does not have to be logical.
Perhaps it is that populist misunderstanding of pragmatic thought to which James somehow unconsciously contributed, may help us to understand a little better the contradictions of North American society and the objects it produces.
However, it does not seem fair to me to judge James for popularizing the method, since if he was capable of it, it is because he touched our senses.
Mediators between the hard and the soft
In 1907 William James published a series of articles under the title “Pragmatism: a new name for some old ways of thinking”, where he stated that all the problems that until then had had philosophy, were summed up in a shock of temperaments between people with “hard mind” and “soft mind”. Those with a hard mind tend to experience and follow “the facts”, while those with a sensitive mind prefer to appeal to rationalization. The hard-minded are materialistic, pessimistic, dogmatic, and fatalistic, while the soft-minded tend to be idealistic, optimistic, religious, and believe in free will.
Pragmatism is presented as a mediating philosophy between “scientific loyalty to facts” and “old confidence in human values”. Compliance with the hard-minded standards for acquiring knowledge does not prevent us from adopting the kind of the world-view to which the sensitive-minded aspire. By using the “pragmatic method” (clarifying hypotheses by identifying their practical consequences) to get closer to the truth, disputes begin to dissolve. Unless some “practical difference” tips the scales to one side or the other, the dispute will be inactive.
Here I pause to look after number one, to make a little reflection that the role of design has as conflict mediation, as a formal solution that succeeds when there is consensus among all parties. And without needing to illustrate anything, I think everyone will have their own example in mind.
Emotions, the glue of our ideas
In line with Pierce’s ideas, he considered our experiences as a fundamental reality and the basis of everything we can know. But how do we acquire knowledge? How do we think?
Although the objects we perceive may seem different or separate, our awareness of them is continuous, as if they floated in a stream. Things themselves are discrete and discontinuous, but they pass before us like a chain of events. Only when things are violently contrasted with each other, “like the thunder against the silence”, is when we ignore our association of thoughts and are aware of the previous silence.
“We believe that thunder itself abolishes and excludes silence; but the feeling of thunder is also the feeling of the absence of silence that has just disappeared.”
Although we do not always pay attention to it, our body posture, attitude and condition invariably also influences our entire experience: “We think, and as we do we feel our body as the seat of our thinking.” So James blames our tendency to focus on things through language rather than experiencing them with our bodies.
We do not perceive the experiences as real unless we live them in person. When we drive, we don’t perceive the rest of the vehicles as people in metal boxes. When we interact with someone through a device, we always have a vague feeling of unreality, something dreamed.
I make another circumstantial pause. I write one of these lines sitting on a park bench and it is quite hot. Several South American domestic workers help older people to take a walk. An old man who walks with great difficulty remains half stuck when walking, as if blocked. When he stands up he can barely speak and stutters a lot. “Walk, Mr. Martin, walk,” the girl blurts out. And then, after a little push as she accompanies him by the arm, the poor man suddenly recovers the cadence of the march, and with it, the thread of the conversation they had started “Now. You see? Very good.”
For James, emotions have a guiding function, which is the axis of everything we think and do. The vast majority of potential impressions for the senses never end in an experience “Why? Because they have no interest to me. My experience is what I choose to pay attention to. Only the elements of which I’m aware of shape my mind. Without selective interest, experience is pure chaos.”
In essence, James argues that It is the perception of exciting facts that causes a change in the body, and we perceive these bodily reactions through emotions. In fact, emotions become the central axis of our decision-making, as they provide us with a guide to the consequences The practices of our particular actions. The body becomes a blackboard where all our perceptions are projected, so there is no point in separating it from our thinking. But neither does it justify some tattoos…
Emotions provide us with the necessary information to take action in complex situations where logic and calculus are not enough. In fact, this occurs in most social situations, where actions are taken without considering the most appropriate path. In that sense, it’s impossible to separate reason and emotion, since they are intertwined in the process of experience.
I return to the park where I am writing part of this text. Now another South American girl passes, this time walking a blond 2 years old boy. They play by going up and down a small mound of earth. She encourages him to climb what a mountain must look like to the boy. When he goes down the ramp, the typical tickling of his stomach comes in, and he laughs out loud.
Our society has quite abandoned the body and emotions when it comes to proposing design solutions. We have a tendency to be frivolous and childish when we use an emotional component. Perhaps we lack a lot of knowledge, and surely values, to be able to use these resources more intelligently.
We will continue to talk about social situations, learning, emotions and childhood with our next pragmatist. The teacher that we all dreamed to have.
Keep reading
This post is the second in a series of four on Pragmatism and Design:
- Charles Sanders Pierce (I)
Practical consequences, abduction and semiotics. - William James (II)
Mediation, body and emotions. - John Dewey (III)
Learning, experience and closure. - George Herbert Mead (IV)
Identity, social relations and objects.
Bibliography
Brag M. “Pragmatism”. In Our Time. BBC Radio 4.
Dalsgaard, P. (2014). Pragmatism and design thinking. International Journal of Design, 8 (1), 143–155.
Legg C., Hookway C. “Pragmatism”. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
James. W. (1907) “Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking”.
White. M. (1969) “The Power of Positive Pragmatism”. The New York Review of Books.
This piece was originally written in Spanish at Guindo’s blog:
“Pragmatismo y diseño (II): William James”
