סמינר מחקר 11 במרץ - Alfred I. Tauber (Boston University) - Subjectivity at Risk: James vs. Freud

Alfred I. Tauber

Boston University

Subjectivity at Risk: James vs. Freud

Self-consciousness à la Descartes carries the same gaze that had been directed towards the external world inwards to look at oneself, as if me is something to be observed. With such objectification, the I becomes a thing to myself. According to William James, this so-called “psychologist’s fallacy” confused what is experienced from within with the knowledge of an external observer (i.e., including the retro-introspective agent) may have about it by “substituting what we know the consciousness is, for what it is a consciousness of….” (James, Principles of Psychology, [1890 I:197]).  James sought to overcome this subject-object dualism by emphasizing the indivisibility of the “stream of consciousness.” In contrast to depictions of the mind composed of “bits” that might interact by associative mechanisms (e.g., the psychic dynamics assumed by Freud), James sought to characterize the subjective on its own terms with a new model of the mind, “radical empiricism.” The philosophical consequences of James’s formulation are far-ranging and highly pertinent to contemporary debates in philosophy of mind and psychology.

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