Roger's Re-think: PLOVER - Philosophy - Pragmatism

Highlights of book: Talks to Teachers on Psychology - and to Students on some of Life's Ideals by William James, Dover 1962 (originally Henry Holt 1899), no ISBN. Full text is available on some websites.

Introduction

This is probably one of the oldest (in terms of when it was written) book I have highlighted, and it was one I first read a very long time ago. I thought it was good then, and on re-reading it this year I think it is even better. Of course it can be said that William James (then a professor at Harvard) was also a leader of the philosophy of Pragmatism - something that not everyone would boast about being associated with.

However as talks to students (Harvard student teachers, and in the last 3 chapters, students at local women's colleges in their final university year), I think it is hard to better them, even today.

I have not colour-coded each chapter differently; the chapters are grouped as follows:
  * Chapters 1 - 14 of the Talks to Teachers
  * Chapter 15 of the Talks to Teachers - "The Will"
  * Chapter 1 of the Talks to Students - "The Gospel of Relaxation" - which I feel is especially important
  * Chapters 2 and 3 of the Talks to Students - which are closely related

Chapter	Page	Highlight
Teachers 1	4	Psychology and the Teaching Art. Teaching is like war - you corner the learner and leave him/her no way out, then you move in for the kill. The mind of the learner is working away from you, just like an enemy commander.
2	7	The Stream of Consciousness is a succession of states or waves in the mind - something is always going on (RT: even when sleeping, to some extent). But 'Soul' doesn't really explain this [RT: the word has been hi-jacked by religion!].
	8	Each such state contains a mix of ingredients, e.g. immediate bodily sensations passed to the brain, memories, satisfaction (or the opposite), desires and aversions, determination of will, odd ideas etc.
	9	At any time, some are more central, some more marginal. But trying to impose an exact science on all this isn't worthwhile.
3	11	The Child as a Behaving Organism. Modern psychology has shifted the emphasis on human goals from contemplation and rational search for universal truth, to the practical life, 'usefulness'. Plato and Aristotle were of the old school. The Theory of Evolution may have been partly responsible for this shift.
	12	This shift make things more 'continuous' between humans and other animals.
	13-14	Speech, writing, judgment etc all count as actions; they may affect future conduct - or not acting.
4	15	Education and Behavior. Education is "the organization and acquired habits of conduct and tendencies to behavior".
	16	E.g., German universities train one to be a researcher, Oxford to be an English gentleman.
5	17	The Necessity of Reactions. The educator must aim to get a reaction from the learner; and purely verbal reactions are insufficient.
	18	One should use notebooks, diagrams, maps, artefacts.
	19	One should always give feedback.
6	20	Native Reactions and Acquired Reactions. Acquired reactions are modifications of, or substitution for, natural reactions. But one needs to get some reaction first, or there's nothing to modify or replace.
	22	One needs to create the links that short-cut the bad natural reactions.
7	24-30	What the Native Reactions Are. They are: Fear (e.g. of punishment etc), Love, Curiosity, Imitation and Emulation, Ambition, Pride and Pugnacity (RT: Grit), Ownership (e.g. collecting things), Constructiveness [RT: shouldn't one include Destructiveness?].
	26	There is here a discussion of 'Competition against others' versus 'improving one's personal best'.
	31	A few observable tendencies are Vanity, Love of Approbation, Shyness, Secretiveness.
		Most instincts are transitory - and they peak at various different times in one's life.
8	33	The Laws of Habit. Habits make things easier as we develop. 99% or more of what we do is habitual.
	34	We should make our nervous system our ally, not our enemy.
	35	We may need to make pledges in order to successfully change our habits.
	37	Early Indian visitors thought Harvard types were all contracted in the face, with over-intensity - there was no 'switching off'.
	38	We all may need half an hour per day to restore our balance.
	39	"Every smallest stroke of virtue or vice leaves its never so little scar."
		Young people should know that they are building up the power of judging well by their work and acquisition of good habits.
9	40-41	The Association of Ideas happens through the 'Law of Contiguity', the 'Law of Similarity' and through analogies.
	42	It's all about building up useful systems of association, and breaking up bad ones.
	45	A good idea is to think of everyone as "little systems of associating machinery" and "types of character".
10	46	Interest. Native interests in children lie in 'sensation', maybe involving blood, drama etc.
	47	The teacher needs to build on this, to relate what one wants the learner to be interested in to their natural interests.
	48	One should use anecdotes and reminiscences.
11	51	Attention. Voluntary attention can't be continuously sustained - it comes in beats [RT: waves?].
	52	So the subject must be made to show new aspects of itself, to prompt new questions.
	53	A lot of keeping learners' or listeners' attention is down to the educator's personality, which is not easily classified.
	56	One needs to show that one cares for the subject matter.
	57	The best results may still come from letting the mind wander, rather than forcing it into ruts.
12	58	Memory. The 'associationist psychology' is the best view of memory.
	59	Memory needs cues; recency and relevance to action also help.
	60	Memory is not the same as having a philosophic mind, but having both is best.
	62-3	Some systems in which to weave things in order to help memory are: 1) rational, e.g. scientific laws, deduction; 2) philosophic, e.g. cause and effect [RT: as long as it really is that simple!]; 3) artificial mnemonics.
	65	Learning by heart can work to an extent and with some people; but it's still best to have some thinking to help strengthen the links.
	66	Humans are too complex to regard just one facility, e.g. memory, IQ etc, as everything.
	68	Each human has their best combination of channels.
	69	Ebbinghaus: the rate of forgetting is highest in the first hour.
	70	The "long examination of life" is more important than one exam.
13	71	The Acquisition of Ideas. We acquire 'ideas', both individual objects/concepts and classes. Relationships are themselves part of these acquired ideas.
	72	Constructiveness is the best approach early on - trying to force in an abstract view too early may make the learner too detached from normal living.
	73	Abstract concepts are really only for teenagers and older.
	74	There's a danger of parrot-like quoting back, rather than understanding.
	75	Children can often remember words but misunderstand their meanings.
14	77	Apperception is the act of taking into the mind, receiving a stimulus and fitting it into one's network of associations.
	78	We overlook misprints; the law of economy says that we try to disturb the existing network as little as possible.
	79	Old-fogeyism begins at 25!
		It's pointless trying to subdivide apperception into types.
	80	Apperception varies between persons, and in the same person between different occasions.
		Nature is too subtle for many 'A or B' judgments, e.g. sane/insane, so we keep needing to add new terms to our network structures, in order to avoid the too-constraining pigeonholes that things might get put into.
	81	The more adequate our stock of ideas [RT: more importantly, I'd say, the relationships between them], the more able we will be to cope with the challenges and emergencies we face.
		Can humans cope with completely new topics after age 50? [RT: e.g. computers!]. It's hard [RT: but, in my experience, possible if one gets a change to a less stressful general life and more free time].
Teachers 15	83	The Will. 'Reflex action' exploded the idea that conscious thought is needed in order to trigger any action, movement or other bodily change in a human (or other) animal.
	84-5	It's usually a tussle between different nerve centres, some 'impulsive' or 'excitatory' wanting to trigger change, others wanting to inhibit the change. 'Higher' [RT: on what scale?] centres usually win out.
	85	"Volition, in the narrower sense, takes place only when there are a number of conflicting systems of ideas."
	86	A lot of the 'results' of volition are hidden - one would need biometrics [RT: e.g. heart rate monitors] to detect them.
	88-9	"Balky will" = digging in heels, not wanting to try to get to grips with some trick thing. The teacher should drop it and divert attention for a while. Don't label it as sinful, or try to break the will directly.
	90	One usually hesitates and deliberates when consciously applying will.
	91	" ... the mind flinches from looking at considerations hostile to the reigning mood of feeling."
		A moral act needs "the effort of attention to hold fast" to the good idea, however unpalatable; an excuse takes the form "I never thought ..." (of these consequences).
	92	The total time taken by our fully voluntary acts is very small compared with the rest of our acts, but the importance is often greater.
	92-3	James wonders if all this process of volition is completely mechanical.
	93	Maybe it is in part, but the amount of 'attention' is still our choice, although we can't prove this one way or another.
	93-4	There are 2 types of the inhibitive side of the will: 1) by negation or repression; 2) by substitution. The first tends to cause inward tension, so it's better to go for substitution.
	94	"He whose life is based on the word 'no, who tells the truth because a lie is wicked ... is inferior to your 'born gentleman'.
		Spinoza: "Anything a man can avoid under the notion that it is bad, he may also avoid under the notion that something else is good. He called this 'slave' versus 'freeman'.
	95	" ... to apperceive your pupil as a little sensitive, impulsive, associative and reactive organism, partly fated and partly free, will lead to a better intelligence of all his ways."
Students 1	99	The Gospel of Relaxation. Lange-James theory says that we (as bodies that include a nervous system and brain) react instinctively before we experience the resulting emotion.
	100	So, if we act cheerfully, bravely and faithfully, that's how we will feel.
	101	Actively participating in sport actually seems to change a person's style. This was especially notable when women started in sport.
	102	James wondered if sport in English schools explained the success (RT: in the1890s!) of the British Empire!
	103	Thomas Clouston (a Scot) felt American faces showed too much excitement, with not enough 'strength in reserve', compared with Europeans.
	104	The ideal US woman's character was described as "bottled lightning". Can such persons totally relax?
	105	Maybe that's just a fashion, like Scottish 'dourness' or English 'gentility'.
	106	There is an "absurd feeling of hurry and having no time" and we are "overflowers of our measure of wear and tear and fatigue". The "voice ... has a tired and plaintive sound". [RT: sounds like today's world!]
		"It is your relaxed and easy worker, who is in no hurry, who is your efficient worker." Tension and anxiety are a drag on steady progress and success.
	107	"We must change ourselves from a race that admires jerk and snap for their own sake, and looks down on low voices and quiet ways as dull, to one that ... has calm as its ideal and ... loves harmony, dignity and ease."
	108	"Don't imitate - become the imitable thing."
		"Strong feeling about one's self tends to arrest the free association of one's objective ideas and motor processes" - as happens in melancholia. One can also be fuddled by ecstatic joy as well as by painful emotion.
	109	We should free ourselves from always reflecting on things - we should "unclamp", and care less about the possible distress of failure. [RT: as some people say, we should just get on with it. However management must take some blame for imposing workplace cultures that place more importance on avoiding failure or censure on making the best job that one can.]
		Prepare yourself for action well in advance, then rely on spontaneity at the time for action.
		Like a bicycle chain, one can be too 'tight'.
	110	Similarly, carefulness and conscientiousness can be too tense. "One ounce of good nervous tone in an examination is worth many pounds of anxious study." "Fling away the book the day before."
		Annie Payson Call (who preached the gospel of relaxation in a book entitled 'Power through Repose') wrote a sequel which included the idea of "dropping things from the mind", and practising "not caring".
	110-2	Religious faith can work as a cure for worry, for some people. Brother Lawrence (c 1666) escaped from habitual awkwardness by going to a monastery for religious reasons, and finding that by de-selfing he became competent.
	112	It doesn't work to strenuously resolve to relax, or to try too hard. One just has to develop the habit of not caring [RT: so much!].
Students 2	113	On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings. [RT: this blindness is failure to see that someone else's perspective on things is probably different and can be just as valid as your own perspective.]
		We each feel that our own duties and situations are intensely important, but that's 'our secret'. We can't see into other people's mind, nor they into ours. So our judgments are often false, because we assume that our value system is paramount.
	114-29	Anecdotal examples: between a man and his dog, poor whites, RL Stevenson's lanterns, Senancour's Obermann in Paris, Wordsworth, Walt Whitman, Richard Jefferies, Benvenuto Cellini, Tolstoy's War and Peace and WH Hudson's Idle Days in Patagonia.
	118	In the poets (RLS says), we catch some glimpse of the heaven in which they live. "To miss the joy is to miss all."
	126	"We are stuffed with abstract conceptions, and glib with verbalities and verbosities ... (but) ... we grow stone-blind and insensible to life's more elementary and general goods and joys."
	129	Each of us should "be faithful to his own opportunities and make the most of his own blessings, without presuming to regulate the rest of the vast field".
3	130	What Makes a Life Significant?
		"The pretension to dogmatize about (one's ideals) ... is the root of most human injustices and cruelties." But one can understand a lot better than normal when one continually interacts with a close partner (Jack and Jill).
	131	"The vice of ordinary Jack and Jill affection is not its intensity, but its exclusions and jealousies."
	131-4	Chautauquas (retreat-style camps by a lake), James felt, were too bland - he missed the challenge of everyday life. [RT: surely an occasional short retreat can't be that bad?]
	134-41	He agrees with Tolstoy and Stevenson about the heroism of the common working man (or soldier).
	139-42	But, common working life can be spoilt by a 'labour market', where each side acts mechanically towards their own self-interest. [RT: clearly an issue when James wrote this, and at times since.]
	142	One needs at least one internal ideal, but this ideal should incorporate some degree of novelty [RT: or change for the better?].
	143	"The more ideals a man has, the more contemptible ... you ... deem him", if none of the labouring man's values are called into action.
		Progress (from one moment to another) is nice, but it may also be valid to "cling ... to the older more familiar good".
		'Fighting virtue' [RT: fighting as a virtue] is more basic than "intellectual breadth".
	144	There must be some sort of fusion between ideals and grit.
	144-5	Back to the labour market - an example of much mutual blindness.
	145	Even if we solve all our pressing problems doesn't mean that we will reach a society which has any "genuinely vital difference". [RT: there'll still be ratbags, pushy types, shy types, generous souls etc.]
	146	Our life will always (despite whatever progress, e.g. super transatlantic liners) be a rough ocean, but with compensations.
		Competing humans should look at each other sub specie aeternitatis, i.e. as just other players in the continuing history of mankind over time. [RT: 'eternity' is perhaps optimistic; the human race might die out before the universe dissolves into nothing.]

An odd thought that came up while I was doing these highlights

SBS TV recently aired a programme titled "What Makes a Genius". One contributor suggested that a key thing was 'latent inhibition' - an unconscious ability to screen out all the (ir)relevancies that threaten to divert one's mind from creative tasks.

Reflections

Most of this is good stuff, but I particularly like The Gospel of Relaxation. That's not because it is anything so new, but because so many of us seem to have forgotten about it, or are too stressed to do anything to restore their mental balance. It may be that this was a big issue in places like Harvard, Boston, New York etc in the 1890s - and I reckon it is certainly rampant in most western cities 100 years and more later. But in between, I'd say many Americans succeeded in giving out a much more 'laid-back', 'chilled out' air.

It could be that societies that don't sort this out will gradually deteriorate, and countries with a better balance will gradually usurp the west's dominance. At least that would be preferable to abdicating to fanatical jihadists.

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This version updated on 17^th January 2011