William James on the Substance,or: Is Jamesian Pragmatism

Nominalistic?Sami Pihlström

Professor of Practical PhilosophyUniversity of Jyväskylä, Finland

sajopihl@cc.jyu.fi, sami.pihlstrom@helsinki.fi

Introduction: pragmatism and metaphysics

• Pragmatism: between metaphysics and anti-metaphysics.– Pragmatists have been both metaphysicians (e.g.,

Peirce) and critics of traditional metaphysics.

• Anti-metaphysical interpretations of classical and contemporary pragmatism:– Pragmatism as a mere precursor to logical positivism

and verificationism?– Rorty’s neopragmatism: beyond traditional

epistemology and metaphysics?

Aristotelian vs. Kantian metaphysics

• The conception of pragmatism as essentially anti-metaphysical presupposes a traditional Aristotelian, metaphysically realistic conception of metaphysics as an inquiry into the world’s ”own” fundamental categorial structure (as seen from an imagined ”God’s-Eye View”).

• An alternative conception of metaphysics (Kantian instead of Aristotelian): an inquiry into how we (necessarily) structure the world within our conceptual schemes, frameworks, practices, etc. – into our categories instead of the world’s ”own”.

• Pragmatists can be sharply critical of metaphysical realism while maintaining the possibility of metaphysical inquiry in a (historicized, naturalized) Kantian sense.

Metaphysics and ethics

• Traditionally, metaphysics and ethics are regarded as distinct philosophical sub-disciplines.

• However, if we cannot separate the ”human contribution” (cf. James) from the way(s) the world (for us) is – that is, if we can engage in metaphysical inquiry only in a Kantian instead of an Aristotelian sense – the question arises whether our ”human reality” is inevitably value-laden, not just conceptually but morally and valuationally structured by us.

• Pragmatism – insofar as we regard it as metaphysically serious – leads to an entanglement of metaphysics with ethics. (Cf. Putnam’s neopragmatism: the fact/value entanglement.)

Metaphysics and ethics (continued)

• The criticism of metaphysical realism (in pragmatism and more generally, e.g., in Kant) naturally leads to the blurring of the boundary not only between metaphysics and epistemology but also between metaphysics and ethics: since the world is always interpreted in terms of our human categories, based on our practices, it is not ethically irrelevant how we ”structure” it, or which categories we employ.

• Some metaphysical problems are more obviously ethically relevant than others (e.g., the metaphysics of the self, personal identity, etc., vs. the problems of universals and modalities), but in principle the core of every genuine metaphysical dispute is ”practical” – i.e., moral (James, Pragmatism, 1975 [1907], ch. 2).

Metaphysics and ethics (continued)

• Modest (weak) hypothesis: metaphysics and ethics are (deeply, inextricably) entangled, assuming a Kantian-cum-pragmatist conception of metaphysics.

• Radical (strong) hypothesis: metaphysics and ethics are (deeply, inextricably) entangled, assuming any conception of metaphysics (including even metaphysical realism).

• Only the modest hypothesis is examined here. (If there is an independent argument against metaphysical realism, as many pragmatists maintain, then only the modest hypothesis needs to be examined.)

• It is crucial to understand ”entanglement” in a sufficiently deep sense: the claim is not the uncontroversial one that different metaphysical views may have different ethical implications but that metaphysics is impossible without ethics (and vice versa), i.e., that there can be no inquiry into the structure of reality in abstraction of moral values.

Historical examples:James (and Peirce)

• James on ”some metaphysical problems pragmatically considered” (Pragmatism, 1975 [1907], chs. 3-4).– Substance (material & spiritual)?– Materialism vs. theism (spiritualism)?– Design in nature?– Free will vs. determinism?– Monism vs. pluralism?

• Peirce vs. James on realism, nominalism, and the reality of ”generals”.

James on substance

• James begins his treatment of the substance from the commonsense observation that we all use “the old distinction between substance and attribute”, which is “enshrined […] in the very structure of human language” (1907/1975, 45).

• A concrete example: a piece of blackboard crayon. Its whiteness and other properties inhere in the underlying substance, chalk. Some other attributes may be instantiated in other substances, such as wood. These different substances, however, are themselves “modes of a still more primal substance, matter”, which occupies space and is impenetrable. Analogously, our thoughts can be seen as properties of souls, which themselves are “modes of the still deeper substance ‘spirit.’” (Ibid.)

James on substance:against dualism

• On a single page, James has opened up an abyss of metaphysical issues. Beginning from the blackboard chalk, he introduces us to the Cartesian metaphysical theory that there are two fundamental substances (or two basic kinds of substance), material and spiritual

• James’s argumentation is not as clear as one might hope. For example, he seems to be implying that the step from the inherence of properties such as whiteness in the chalk, and thoughts in human souls, to the inherence of chalk in matter and souls in spirit is unavoidable.– However, a traditional Aristotelian substance metaphysician

might simply resist this move, defending the ontological independence of all basic substances, be they pieces of chalk or souls.

– A contemporary Aristotelian might, alternatively, give up ontological commitments to substances altogether, at least if the latter are understood as mere “substrates”, bearers of attributes, and postulate only “thick” particulars that have properties, no “thin” ones. (Cf. Armstrong.)

James on substance: how are substances ”known as”?

• James moves on to an epistemic level: all we know about the chalk is its whiteness and other sensible properties; all we know about the wood is its combustibility and other sensible properties. In a Berkeleyan manner – James saw Berkeley as one of the most important historical precursors of the pragmatic method (1907/1975, 30, 47) – he argues:– “A group of attributes is what each substance here is known-as, they form

its sole cash-value for our actual experience. The substance is in every case revealed through them; if we were cut off from them we should never suspect its existence; and if God should keep sending them to us in an unchanged order, miraculously annihilating at a certain moment the substance that supported them, we never could detect the moment, for our experiences themselves would be unaltered. Nominalists accordingly adopt the opinion that substance is a spurious idea due to our inveterate human trick of turning names into things. […] [T]he phenomenal properties of things, nominalists say, surely do not really inhere in names, and if not in names then they do not inhere in anything. They adhere, or cohere, rather, with each other, and the notion of a substance inaccessible to us, which we think accounts for such cohesion by supporting it, as cement might support pieces of mosaic, must be abandoned. The fact of the bare cohesion itself is all that the notion of the substance signifies. Behind that fact is nothing.” (Ibid., 46.)

James on substance: the ”pragmatic” British empiricists

• James observes, ironically, that the only genuinely pragmatic application of the notion of a substance he is familiar with is the “mystery of the Eucharist” (an example also used by Peirce in “How to Make Our Ideas Clear”, 1878), but that one must already believe “in the ‘real presence’” of Christ’s body in the wafer served at Lord’s Supper “on independent grounds” in order to be able to treat this case seriously. (James 1907/1975, 46-47.)

• James describes Berkeley’s criticism of the material substance as “absolutely pragmatistic”: “Matter is known as our sensations of colour, figure, hardness and the like. They are the cash-value of the term. […] Berkeley doesn’t deny matter, then; he simply tells us what it consists of. It is a true name for just so much in the way of sensations.” (Ibid., 47.)

• Locke and Hume criticized the notion of spiritual substance in a similarly pragmatic manner. James reads Locke as arguing that our personal identity consists “solely in pragmatically definable particulars”: “Whether, apart from these verifiable facts, it also inheres in a spiritual principle, is a merely curious speculation.” James, thus, rejects the view, often taken for granted, that personal identity should be traced back to the persistence of an underlying metaphysical substance, whether spiritual or material.

James on substance:personal identity

• In addition to Berkeley, Locke, and Hume, James may be claimed to follow Kant in condemning “pre-critical” metaphysical theories about a spiritual entity underlying our experiences – the kind of postulation of reason Kant attacked in the “Paralogisms” section of the First Critique.

• More generally, James would presumably extend this critical attitude to discussions of the persistence of the identity of any other things as well. Personal identity, for a Jamesian pragmatist, is an irreducibly ethical matter, never purely metaphysical (which does not make it non-metaphysical, though).

• Among the sensible qualities we may come up with in experience – the qualities that any alleged substances are known as, according to James – there may, crucially, be ethical experiences. There is no a priori reason to divorce potentially ethical qualities from the pragmatic effects of either material or spiritual substances. Whether we are dealing with pieces of chalk or with thoughts of (other) human souls, we are committed to treating the objects of our experiences as at least potentially ethically significant.

James’s ethical criticism of speculative substance metaphysics• Instead of being committed to any substance metaphysics (of either

materialist or spiritualist – or dualist – variety), we are invited to consider the experiences or sensible attributes in terms of which any substances worth the name may be “known as”. We are, thus, invited to examine the ethical cash value of our basic philosophical notions.

• If this is correct, we should bear in mind that ethical qualities may be present in whatever we encounter in our pragmatic experiences of the world around us. As was pointed out by James in the posthumously published work, Some Problems of Philosophy (ch. 7), substance metaphysics may lead not only to a dualism of matter and spirit but also, even more problematically, to metaphysical monism, which seems to be, for James, an ethically undesirable philosophical system. Pluralism, encouraging the power of individuals to make a difference in the world’s scheme of things, is morally better for us, because it energizes us into ethically relevant action much better than a monistic theory ever can. Therefore, we have to adjust our conception of the pragmatic merits of the substance accordingly.

James on substance: respecting our ”ordinary” notions

• James is not saying that we should reject the notion of substance completely. On the contrary, he respects its commonsense usage, the ordinary way of talking about attributes inhering in things. What he urges us to reject is speculative metaphysical theories about the true and ultimate substance of reality, whether materialist or spiritualist. It is because such theories may be morally deteriorating that he urges us to abandon them. It is an ethical imperative to remain at the level of the sensible effects, moral ones especially included, in terms of which substances are known as.

• Metaphysics, including metaphysical reflection on the kind of issues that the notion of substance was originally designed to cover, is serious philosophy worth pursuing; however, metaphysics must be conducted in a correct – ethically responsible – way. For the pragmatist, metaphysical inquiry ought to remain in close touch with ethical reflection on the practices and habits of action within which our ontological commitments arise and without which no metaphysical account of the world’s being one way or another is even possible for us.

Peirce vs. James

• Realism vs. nominalism – a key metaphysical dispute in classical pragmatism.

• Peirce’s reason for rejecting nominalism and for favoring “scholastic realism”: a true pragmati(ci)st, focusing on our habits of action, is a realist about what the medievals called universals. In order to invoke the “conceivable practical effects” that the objects of our conceptions may (conceivably) have, we must postulate “real generals”: habits, dispositions, and “would-be’s”.

• James was more interested in the concrete, particular, experienceable effects that our ideas may have in actual practices.

• Is this a crucial division within pragmatism?

Realism vs. nominalismin Peirce and James

• Peirce resisted nominalism because it committed the worst of philosophical sins, “blocked the road of inquiry”. He even came to resist his own early formulations of pragmatism as too nominalistic, and described himself as “a scholastic realist of a somewhat extreme stripe”.

• Scholastic realism, the doctrine that there are “real generals” (universals, dispositions, laws, habits), is required in any adequate formulation of scientific philosophy and metaphysics, including pragmatism itself. In Peirce’s view, if generality were “dependent upon what we happened to be thinking”, science “would not relate to anything real”.

• James focused on particular experiences and practical consequences of actions, whereas the consequences Peirce insisted on were general patterns and habits.

• Yet, James also acknowledge generality (cf. Haack, Rosenthal, Seigfried, Cormier): dichotomous readings of classical pragmatism in terms of the realism vs. nominalism contrast are misleading.

James on generality• James argues, in Pragmatism, that any abstractions we may find

pragmatically useful must do real practical work for us: pragmatism “has no objection whatever to the realizing of abstractions, so long as you get about among particulars with their aid and they actually carry you somewhere” (1907/1975, 40).

• “We are like fishes swimming in the sea of sense [sensible facts], bounded above by the superior element [abstract ideas], but unable to breathe it pure or penetrate it” (ibid., 64).

• James seems to maintain that we need abstractions in order to act in the world of experiential facts and that this is all we need them for, but he never says that the former are nothing but complexes of the latter. There must, it seems, be a fair amount of Peircean-like generality involved in the cash value of both substances and abstractions, because the crucial issue always is what kind of experiential, practical results can be expected to arise in connection with a given metaphysical conception.

Generals: ”ready-made” or humanly constructed?

• Perhaps the more important conflict is between Peirce’s strict antipsychologism and James’s more psychological admission of general ideas.

• For James, “generals” are human classifications of reality through human experiences and practices, rather than anything ready-made in reality itself. Generals do not cut the world at its own joints, because there are, from our perspective, no such joints; and we do not even know what we talk about if we postulate them. The crucial issue is what kind of use we can make of the generals we (pragmatically need to) postulate. Here, again, the ethical aspects of whatever abstract and general metaphysical commitments we make must be taken into account.

• Orthodox Peirceans will probably see this as mere nominalism. Still, the realism vs. nominalism division is much less clearly a dividing line between the two great pragmatists than is often thought. The key issue is how to apply pragmatism, or the pragmatic method, to resolve this metaphysical tension.

James on generality: the pragmatic method in metaphysics

• Since there is a place for generality and universal concepts (“ideas”) in James, it would be mistaken to perceive two radically different pragmatisms here.

• A more general conclusion also emerges: Jamesian pragmatism is not simply an anti-metaphysical philosophy but also a critical method of metaphysical inquiry. Just as we can apply pragmatism (or the “pragmatic method”) to such issues as substance, we may apply it to the issue of realism vs. nominalism, without dogmatically assuming either realism or nominalism as our starting point.

• The problem with Peirce’s extreme realism, from a Jamesian perspective, is that Peirce regards realism (about “real generals”) as a metaphysical view more fundamental than pragmatism. This is the (or at least a) basic difference between the two. For James, any metaphysics, including the postulation of real generals, must be subordinated to pragmatism, in order to determine whether it can be of any use.

Metaphysics and ethics (again)• To subordinate a metaphysical view (e.g., realism about generality)

to pragmatism, to approach it by means of the pragmatic method, is to let ethical values – which themselves are inherent in our natural practices and experiences – determine the ultimate status of our metaphysical postulations.

• In this regard, pragmatism is, like ethics, “transcendental” in the sense of being constitutive of metaphysical inquiry into generality – and everything else.

• Investigating the core pragmatic meaning of the realism vs. nominalism problem may lead us to a via media between these extremes (and others). We should not be dogmatic realists, because the standard realist notions, including the one of substance, fail to do the job they were intended to do; nor should we dogmatically stick to nominalistic restrictions. The pragmatic kernel of this, as any other, metaphysical issue is ethical. The Jamesian way of applying the pragmatic method more broadly than Peirce’s primarily scientific applications highlights this ineliminable ethical context of metaphysics.

Problems, open questions• A form of nominalism – the need to take seriously individual human

beings’ interests and experiences without reducing them to any general essence of humanity – is clearly an ethical requirement for James. Is it, then, an ethical “must” prior to any metaphysics of generality (a metaphysics that may also be needed for pragmatic reasons) that individuals ought to be respected as ends in themselves, not as mere elements of general patterns or structures?

• Again, contrasting James’s views with Peirce’s theory of generals and continuity – especially with the Peircean “synechistic” denial that individuals are absolutely discontinuous from each other – a Peircean argues that continuity (synechism) is a necessary metaphysical condition of ethics.

• Is this a crucial tension between James and Peirce? Or might we argue, instead, that one way of respecting the individual is to view her/him as fundamentally continuous with other individuals, equally precious? A middle path between individuality and sociality, particularity and generality, Jamesian concreteness and Peircean abstractness, is worth striving for, though not easily attainable.

A metaphilosophical lesson• James shows us the deep ethical relevance of the apparently

ethically irrelevant controversy over realism and nominalism.• Pragmatist metaphysicians cannot, and must not, approach this

controversy in terms of alleged ethical neutrality. Instead of seeing synechism, or any metaphysical view, as prior to ethical commitments, the Jamesian pragmatist will see the pragmatic method as itself an inherently ethical ground for any metaphysics worthy of human pursuit (or transcendentally constitutive of metaphysical inquiry).

• We should defend not “ethics without ontology” (Putnam) but ontology, or metaphysics, with an ethical grounding. That “grounding” is, however, always provisional, fallible, thoroughly pragmatic – as it should be, because it is to be found in the pragmatic method itself, specifically in its Jamesian applications. That grounding is metaphysical, too, because ethics is metaphysics of the humanly structured reality, and vice versa, with every value realized in facts and every fact laden with values (cf. Putnam).

Connections to neopragmatism

• We should reject Rorty’s thoroughly non- or anti-metaphysical construal of pragmatism as ”anti-representationalism”.

• We should follow Putnam in defending a pragmatic realism about both facts and values.– The Putnamian fact/value entanglement is a close relative of the

metaphysics/ethics entanglement I have defended here.• We should not, however, follow Putnam in his rejection

of ontology altogether.• We should (re)connect our (neo)pragmatist

investigations with the views of the classical pragmatists (especially James’s version of the pragmatic method).– Historical and systematic issues are also entangled here, as

deeply as ethical and metaphysical ones.

References• James, W. (1907/1975), Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of

Thinking, eds. F.H. Burkhardt, F. Bowers, and I.K. Skrupskelis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

• James, W. (1911/1977), Some Problems of Philosophy, eds. F.H. Burkhardt, F. Bowers, and I.K. Skrupskelis, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

• Pihlström, S. (2005), Pragmatic Moral Realism, Amsterdam: Rodopi.• Pihlström, S. (2008), ”The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything”:

Jamesian Perspectives on Mind, World, and Religion, Lanham, MD: UP of America (Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group).

• Peirce, C.S. (1931-58), The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (8 vols), eds. C. Hartshorne and P. Weiss (vols 1-6), and A.W. Burks (vols 7-8), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

• Peirce, C.S. (1992-98), The Essential Peirce 1-2, The Peirce Edition Project, Bloomington: Indiana UP.

• Putnam, H. (1990), Realism with a Human Face, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

• Putnam, H. (2002), The Collapse of the Fact/Value Dichotomy and Other Essays, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.

• Putnam, H. (2004), Ethics without Ontology, Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.