William James
1842-1910 · American Philosophy · Renowned
The American pragmatist James helped found modern psychology, then turned the same eye on religion, gathering first-hand accounts of conversion and mysticism for The Varieties of Religious Experience. An idea counts as true, he held, when believing it pays off. Where the evidence cannot settle a question either way, you are entitled to choose, a right he called the will to believe.
Signature
The position James is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Meaning
- mildly leans Inherent
- Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
Positions on the 6 axes the sources answer
- Mind
- leans Beyond Brain (75 on a 0–100 scale from Brain Only to Beyond Brain)
- Identity
- leans Changing (79 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- mildly leans Inherent (65 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- strongly leans Multiplicity (92 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Ground of Being
- leans Transcendence (75 on a 0–100 scale from Immanence to Transcendence)
- Conviction
- leans Uncertain (25 on a 0–100 scale from Uncertain to Certain)
14 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or James refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Panentheism / Process Theism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Government
- Representative Democracy
What is your ideal form of government? - Highest Good
- Freedom / Other
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Personal Judgment / Natural Emergence
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - Perception
- Non-Dual Awareness / Direct Realism
What do we directly perceive? - Knowledge
- Pragmatic Test
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Relational / Other
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Libertarian Free Will
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Time
- Phenomenological Time
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Death
- Agnostic
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Evolved Animal
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- Humanity
What is your primary bond and loyalty?