Last Call for William James: On Pragmatism, Piper, and the Value of Psychical Research

“william james had always been attracted to interesting women,” writes biographer Robert D. Richardson. “Women found him attractive too.” He quickly notes that “there has never been so much as a breath of scandal about these friendships. . . . But even if James never ran off for a fling . . . James’s women friends were an important part of his life.” Yet James was spontaneous and reckless, “a natural philanderer, with a philanderer’s lack of interest in settled arrangements” (Richardson 353). What follows is not addressed to any potential scandal in James’s personal life; it is, however, a response to what some might consider a scandal in James’s professional life, namely, the close relationship that he had with medium research. It is natural to regard James’s psychical research as if it were an affair he was having on his marriage to pragmatism. Bringing up the topic of medium communication among a group of intellectuals—particularly academics—often leads to uncomfortable moments. If one introduces the topic, the default response will be skepticism, if not derision. The reflex among many intellectuals is to regard medium research as a scandal to the kinds of inquiry traditionally undertaken in the academy. If pragmatism is thought to involve fidelity to the rigidly defined scientific method involving discrete phenomena and clear rational categories, then psychical investigation, which is undertaken with seemingly unscientific, emotional attitudes, is indeed a scandal. The case can be made, however, that James’s psychical research involves no particular problem for James’s pragmatism, and in fact is continuous with it to the point where, if one is embarrassed by psychical research, one is correspondingly unsure about pragmatism. The pragmatic method, as James understands it, involves an extraordinary fidelity to the consideration of unorthodox experience that is not fixed and discrete, but rather continuous with the flow of emotion and the vagaries