Abstract

: William James never completed "The Many and the One," the systematic metaphysical work that he began writing in 1903. Most scholars attribute this failure to illness, temperament and/or distraction. In this paper, I argue that this does not get it quite right. I show, instead, that there is a flaw in James's radical empiricism, as he originally conceived of it, that he became aware of and which prevented him from completing "The Many and the One." James believed that a successful defense of his radical empiricism required that he show that it could provide a satisfactory account of how two minds can simultaneously perceive the same thing. However, as he tried to work out this philosophy systematically, he came to doubt that it could provide this account. I show in the paper that it was this doubt that ultimately kept him from completing "The Many and the One."