Free will does not exist, nor can it be explained, outside the confines of subjective experience. William James, whose talent for depicting subjective experience was equal to his brother Henry's, desperately wanted to believe in free will. But his introspections did not support it.

'Is consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation of reality?' William James asked in one of his last published essays, 'A Suggestion About Mysticism'. The answer, he said, would not be known 'by this generation or the next'. By separating what James wanted to believe about commonsense reality, from what his 'dispassionate' insights and researches led him to believe, I show how James himself, in collaboration with a few friends, laid the groundwork for adopting (...) his mystical suggestion as veridical. 'Consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered' not 'generated de novo in a vast number of places' but existing 'behind the scenes, coeval with the world' is consistent with James's 'neutral monism', his belief that Newtonian, objective, even-flowing time does not exist, and his belief that parapsychological and other transpersonal phenomena had 'broken down the limits of the admitted order of things'. Specific parallels between James's veridical revelation and the veridical revelation of his young contemporary Einstein, are also considered. (shrink)

Discusses how William James’s work suggests a world without will, self, or time and how research supports this perspective. William James is often considered a scientist compromised by his advocacy of mysticism and parapsychology. Jonathan Bricklin argues James can also be viewed as a mystic compromised by his commitment to common sense. James wanted to believe in will, self, and time, but his deepest insights suggested otherwise. “Is consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered and is it a veridical revelation (...) of reality?” James asked shortly before his death in 1910. A century after his death, research from neuroscience, physics, psychology, and parapsychology is making the case, both theoretically and experimentally, that answers James’s question in the affirmative. By separating what James passionately wanted to believe, based on common sense, from what his insights and researches led him to believe, Bricklin shows how James himself laid the groundwork for this more challenging view of existence. The non-reality of will, self, and time is consistent with James’s psychology of volition, his epistemology of self, and his belief that Newtonian, objective, even-flowing time does not exist. (shrink)

I should like to convey to you some doubts which have occurred to me on the subject of the notion of consciousness that prevails in all our treatises on psychology.