Alexander Klein - The Death of Consciousness?

The Death of Consciousness ?

 

Descriptif

---

Durant le mois de juin 2017, le labex TransferS et Mathias Girel (CAPHÉS) accueillent Alexander KLEIN, professeur de philosophie à l’Université d’État de Californie, Long Beach (États-Unis)
Cette  troisième lecture d'Alexander Klein est organisée dans le cadre du colloque "La notion de conscience. À partir de William James."
 

---

---

Like heartburn, a pronounced discomfort with the very idea of consciousness followed the early days of experimental psychology. Received wisdom has it that psychologists (and allied philosophers) came to mistrust consciousness for largely behaviorist reasons. But by the time John Watson had published his behaviorist manifesto in 1913, a wider revolt against consciousness was already underway. I begin by canvassing some of the lesser-known, pre-behaviorist angst about consciousness. Then I delve into the case of William James—an important early source of unease about consciousness. James’s rejection of consciousness grew out of his critique of perceptual elementarism in psychology. This is the view that most mental states are complex, and that psychology’s goal is in some sense to analyze these states into their atomic “elements.” Elementarism came in for intense criticism in James’s Principles of Psychology, and I argue that his later rejection of consciousness is an extension of the earlier critique. Just as we cannot (according to James) isolate any atomic, sensory elements in our occurrent mental states, so we cannot distinguish any elemental consciousness from any separate contents.

Thèmes : Philosophie
Catégories: Professeur invité - Labex TransferS
La notion de conscience. À partir de William James, Mot-clés : conscience, William James