I’ve changed my philosophical positions quite a bit over the years. I don’t see any contradiction in that.
It’s not a question helping or hindering anything. People are likely not to be aware of whatever effects there are. I certainly can’t speak for you.
If you’re asking whether my attraction to James’ ideas described in the OP are influenced by my temperament, definitely. It’s more than just an intellectual attraction.
There’s a whole constellation of terms with similar but different meanings—temperament, personality, character, identity, disposition, constitution…
James wasn’t talking about our ideas being controlled by our temperament, but, as I see it, they certainly are influenced by it. That doesn’t seem like a very controversial statement to me. It’s worth paying attention to.
I’m speaking for myself, not James in this. However I do think that the type of person we are informs the philosophy we pick. I think it’s fair to say to some degree the type of person we are is informed by the life we live.
However, that specific statement was meant to highlight that there are no functional differences between many apparently diametrically opposed philosophical positions.
I reject the James-Lange model of emotion, and any approach to affectivity which treats it as some kind of independent seasoning sprinkled over thought. I support Heidegger and others who view feeling as a function of our engagement with the world, not the effect of some pre-set internal disposition. James thought of emotion as physiological sources of bodily stimulation which shaped perception.
If one person is habitually prone to excitement, confidence, melancholy, anxiety, vigor, or calmness, according to James those recurring bodily-affective tendencies can become part of a stable temperament. I don’t accept that emotion influences thought this way. Instead, emotions are expressions of how adequately we make sense of situations and how effectively we anticipate events. We aren’t prone to reacting in certain ways because of physiologically shaped temperaments, but because of styles of sense-making which only emerge through experience.
Attributing the behaviors of others in part to their ‘temperament’ risks underappreciating the hard work we all put into understanding our world and the wisdom our affective assessments embody. Should we dismiss so and so as ‘hot-tempered’ as though they were mindlessly possessed by some faulty thermostat, or make the effort to see the world through their eyes, maybe to discover certain truths that come with a different perspective?
I like this frame. But how successful can we be trying to see as others see? And where do we find the time and skills to do this?
It would be more accurate to say that the philosopher is driven not by temperament or by psychological features — that would reduce philosophy to naturalism. It would be more accurate to say that the philosopher is driven by his fate, by the fate of his people and culture, by lived life. The philosopher, like the poet, makes a part of himself — as a part of the lived history within a people — into a universal principle. In literature, a similar genre is called epic.
Well, you omit the reason. Did you change positions because your temperament changed like a mood swing, or because of something else?
Right, but again you omit my point, which is that the situation is more influential than temperament.
So do we become pragmatists because we have the same or similar temperament, or do we encounter things in life that seem to confirm the truth of the words of James?
If the latter, then what is the significance of temperament?
I think that’s a very Jamesian way of talking. This also from “Pragmatism.”
What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right.
Temperament is controlled madness. When analyzing something ‘deep’, which happens often in philosophy, good temperament is required to control that data.
The role of temperament in philosophy is the difference between a successful expedition, and an unsuccessful one.
“A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.” is one of my top 10 favorite philosophy quotes.
I’d never considered things centred on or around temperament, but it works, well. So often we pretend, as your quote describes, to ‘objectivity’ <ugh!> and other things. As for the O-word, when we look carefully at its employment, we usually find it’s a fraudulent effort to give one’s (perhaps unfounded?) arguments, the unchallengeable authority of Objectivity.
I, for one, am not so conceited that I won’t say, ‘this is my opinion; it feels right, but I have no formal justification to offer’. In fact, I often say something very close to those words. 
In my life, personal and professional, I have found perspective to be a powerful and useful tool. The more, the merrier. By combining several perspectives, we can reach a more balanced picture in our own minds, often enhancing our understanding. As for how we do it?
Well, we have already been looking at X — very literal analogy, for simplicity — from the North. Another perspective is just looking, for example, from the South-West instead. We do it the same way we looked initially, from the North. Yes? Does that make sense?
I’m only marginally familiar with James’ views in this area, but I don’t think this is an accurate characterization.
I think you’re making emotion a lot more intellectual and rational than it really is.
I think that attitude, unexamined, is exactly the one James is reacting against. One purpose of the lecture is to encourage that examination. A bit of humility is a good thing for a philosopher.
Nowhere does James suggest that. Temperament is not a question of being “hot-tempered.” As I understand it, it is the sum of a person’s persistent and habitual emotional, intellectual, and behavioral nature.
I don’t see any contradiction with James in this. Every fate, people, culture, and lived life supports many possible philosophical approaches. All the people in James’ lecture audience are from similar backgrounds and cultural and class levels, yet some of them are rationalists, some empiricists, some pragmatists, and some other ists entirely.
An example. I have always been drawn to science and fairly early in school I found materialism and determinism convincing, self-evident. Later, and especially after I started working as an engineer, I became more aware of the weaknesses of that way of thinking. Sometimes the uncertainties and ambiguities in the world are more important than the certainties. During the period of those changes, I think my intellectual and emotional attitudes and tendencies remained mostly the same.
I previously acknowledged that temperament does not account for everything and that our lives, culture, and knowledge are also central to our philosophies. I did not make a judgment about which is more influential. I don’t feel any particular need to.
Both.
This is the crux of the
matter for me. I support theories of emotion which integrate them closely with intentionality, such that it is no longer necessary to think in terms of the long-standing philosophical binary situating logic and rationality on one side and irrationality on the other. Intentionality is oriented through affectivity, which is what allows the world to matter to us, to be relevant and meaningful. Affective intentionality is therefore neither strictly ‘logical’ or ‘rational’ nor is it ‘irrational’. Ask your favorite a.i. how enactivist theorists of emotion like Matthew Ratcliffe depart from James (Ratcliffe is a huge fan of James) on emotion and temperament.
Habits of thought and feeling can be both constructed through interactions with the world and persistent. If we view others’ habit that way we don’t have to assume that any aspect of their behavior is ‘irrational’ , nor do we have to treat their actions as following an axiomatic logic.
If instead we look for an irrational feature of personality contributing to our choices, then the concept of temperament leads us to treat motive as at least partially arbitrary and disconnected from what makes sense to us.
Sorry, I’m not familiar with this way of thinking. I guess it’s phenomenology, which I haven’t spent much time with.
Neither James nor I deny interactions with the world are involved with habits of thought and feeling. No one says that temperament is entirely part of our inborn nature. Actually, If I remember correctly, James doesn’t give any account of where temperament comes from. I have speculated that he believes a lot of it is inherited because of his writing on instincts.
Temperament is not irrational, it is non-rational.
I think this is a bit stronger than James would say it, but it’s in the same ballpark.