Lecture 1 - Religion and Neuralogy Flashcards
Where did William James study at university in the US?
Harvard
DEPRECATORY
1) (disparaging) despectivo
2) (attitude, gesture) de desaprobación; [smile] de disculpa
What does William James announce as the main object of his psychological study?
To offer a descriptive survey of the religious propensities of man; of which religious impulses and religious feelings are its subject.
To pursue his study, which type of documents does James endeavor to consult?
They will be those of the men who were most accomplished in their respective religious lives. Those able to give an inteligible account of their ideas and motives. They include both modern writers and religious classics.
DELECTABLE
1) (delicious, appetizing) delicioso; exquisito
The seafood appetizers looked delectable.
Los aperitivos de mariscos se veían deliciosos
2) (appealing, delightful) atractivo;encantador; apetecible
The candy-colored shoes looked delectable to the shoppers.
Los zapatos de colores eran atractivos para los compradores.
3) figurative (person: sexually attractive) atractivo; (informal) sexi
My dear, you look absolutely delectable in that dress.
Querida, te ves muy atractiva con ese vestido.
What are the two questions Williams urges the listener to not conflate (from the logical point of view)?
What are the religious propensities?
What is their philosophic significance?
In books of Williams’s period on Logic, a distinction is made between two orders of inquiry. What are they?
(The questions are later combined in the mind.)
1) What is the nature of it? How did it come about? What is it’s constitution; origin and history?
The answer to this question results in an existential proposition or judgment. This basically refers to historical fact.
2) What is its importance, meaning or significance now that it is once here?
The answer to this question results in a “spiritual judgement”. Or, in other words, answers the question, “What use to us is the holy book or fact in question?” Or “What value does “religious revelation” generate?
Given that William James plans to treat religious texts from an existential viewpoint and also discuss mankind’s religious propensities from a biological and psychological standpoint, what does James reassure his audience that he does not intend to do?
He proclaims he does not intend to discredit religion as an objective of his study. (And he proceeds to recognize that a “religious lifestyle” tends to make the person “exceptional and eccentric”. )
What type of religious observer does he announce he’ll focus on and which type will he not focus o ?
We must study those who had the original experiences were were the “pattern setters” for all this mass of feeling and imitated conduct
He will not focus on the ordinary religious believer who follows the conventional religious observances of his country. “His religion has been made for him be others; communicated to him by tradition; determined to fixed forms of imitation; and retained by habit.”
Name a few things that seem to distinguish religious leaders o religious “geniuses”?
Abnormal psychic visitations.
Exalted emotional sensibility.
Often subject to a discordant inner life, and tend to display “melancholy” in a part of their career.
Liable to obsessions and fixed ideas.
Claim to have heard voices or seen visions which would “be ordinarily classed as pathological”.
What is the first example of such a religious leader cited by William James?
George Fox. The founder of the Quaker religion. Although nobody of his time in England would dare question his heightened spiritual “sagacity”, from the point of view of his nervous constitution, a psychologist would classify him as a psychopath.
Briefly describe James’ narration of George Fox’s behavior?
He saw 3 steeple house spires. It was Litchfield. He claimed the voice of the Lord ordered him to go there. He took off his shoes (although it was winter) before the astonishment of some shepards. He claimed the Lord ordered him to walk around the town and its market crying “woe to Litchfield”. He later claimed to have discovered that in Diocletian’a time, a group of 1,000 Christians were martyred in Litchfield.
If studied from a non religious perspective, what pathological aspects did George Fox display? What does scrutiny from “the intellect” reveal?
He affirms “we must describe and name them as if they had occurred in non religious men”.
First, the intellect attempts to classify the subject or object.
Second, discover the causes. James lists various possible causes for:
Belief in immortality: due to emotional temperament
Extraordinary conscientiousness: due to over instigated nerves.
Melancholy about the universe: due to bad digestion.
Delight while at church: due to hysterical constitution
Concern about one’s soul: due to a lack of exercise; maybe a “torpid” liver.
TORPID
1) (sluggish, slow) aletargado; letárgico
The group of men were all torpid and exhausted after their long night of partying.
William James references the fact that some writers see a connection between religious emotions and the sexual life.
In what sense?
CONVERSION would equate to:
a crisis of puberty and adolescence.
THE MACERATIONS OF SAINTS AND THE DEVOTION OF MISSIONARIES would equate to:
Instances of the parental instinct of self sacrifice “gone astray”
THE HYSTERICAL NUN STARVING FOE NATURAL LIFE would equate to:
An imaginary substitute for a more earthly object of affection.
William James appears to lend credence to the sexual origin of religious emotion theory by giving what examples?
1) the REFORMATION might be better understood from the perspective of Luther’s desire to marry a nun.
2) in other religions we observe sex deities, “obscene rites” in polytheism
William James observes that in addition to considering sexual impulses as the origin for religious propensities, we might also consider which factors?
1) Emotions related to eating and drinking.
2) Emotions as “a perversion if the respiratory function”. He then cites Eastern religions’ emphasis on “inspiration and expiration”.
In the end, according to James, to interpret religion, what must one look at?
One must look at the immediate content of the religious conscienceness.
William James offers a number of examples of taking “Medical Materialism” to its ultimate consequences. Recall some of them:
ST PAUL’S VISION ON THE ROAD TO DAMASCUS:
discharging lesion of the oxypital cortex, he being an epileptic.
ST THERESA:
hysteria
FRANCIS OF ASSISI:
hereditary degenerate
GEORGE FOX:
a symptom of a disordered colon
Etc
What does Williams say about psychological conditions and and organic processes?
He affirms that “Modern psychology” postulates there is not one single state of mind that has not some organic process as its condition.
What does William affirm is at the root of both religious and non religious states of mind?
Organic processes.
In what sense does Williams urge his audience to be candid with themselves and with the facts?
?
William James recognizes that often when someone attempts to reduce another’s “soul flight” or religious experience to “nothing but expressions of our organic disposition”, the person may feel outraged and hurt. Why?
Because whatever the cause may be, he recognizes that our mental states are have “substantive value as revelations of the living truth”
Does William James consider medical materialism to be the be all and all of psychology?
No. He actually finds it much too simplistic.
William James asks rhetorically whether or not we ever consider “organic antecedents” as causation when analyzing “superior mental states”? What does he then respond to this question.
No. He affirms we generally attribute such mental states to 1) the fact that “we find immediate delight in them” or 2) because we believe them to bring us “good consequential fruits”
Give examples of how “inner happiness” and “serviceability” do not always agree. That is, demonstrate how what immediately feels most good is not always most true when measured by the verdict of the rest of experience.
If merely feeling good were the ultimate mental state, drunkenness could easily be the “supremely valid human experience”.
William
James draws a parallel between “neuralogical states” and “religious states”. What do they have in common?
Opinions on such matters should always be tested by logic and by experiment, and not by other means.
What is the main problem William James encounters with medical materialists?
Basically that the medical materialists substitute one type of dogma for another; that of religious dogma. The former use the notion of origin in a destructive instead of an accreditive way.
