Abstract

Graham Bird’s ‘A Comment on Timothy Sprigge’s Account of William James’, in the last issue of Bradley Studies might have better been called ‘A Comment on Timothy Sprigge’s Account of Graham Bird on William James’ True, that would identify its topic as a somewhat limited one as, if the index is correct, there are just nine sentences on this topic in my book James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality. But it appears to be the matter which has mainly fired Bird’s article. Bird believes that I have read his own book, William James, carelessly and misrepresent what he said, claiming to illustrate this with copious quotations from his own book. He dismisses ‘the unworthy thought that one who treats my [Bird’s] text so carelessly might not be a very reliable guide to James’s’. My own view is that ‘unworthy thoughts’ are better not expressed and I shall keep quiet about any of mine which might be deemed such. I don’t think that I read either Bird or James himself carelessly. If I was at all misleading, by failing to emphasise that Bird’s position was that James was attempting to unite the cognitive and the affective, I apologize; the offending remark was my response to his presupposing throughout his commentary the prima facie relevance of this distinction to the interpretation of James’s pragmatism. As for my not having read James carefully, his work has been my favourite philosophical reading for more than forty years, and I have puzzled endlessly over parts of it which I found problematic. I read Bird’s book thoroughly when I reviewed it, and my copy of it is covered in detailed pencil comments.