William James

At the center of William James’s pragmatism was a provocative account of mental representation. For James, ideas do not represent in virtue of either resembling or having been caused by their objects. Instead, James developed a voluntaristic, forward-looking approach that explained representation in terms of causal consequences. In this chapter, I offer a brief examination of James’s approach to mental representation, explaining what makes his view “voluntaristic,” what makes it “forward-looking,” and how it sets the tenor for his general approach to philosophy.