Conversations With William James

Conversations with William James presents six original philosophical papers by John-Michael Kuczynski, paired with a series of imagined dialogues in which their arguments are tested against William James and other major thinkers. Each paper-on Benjamin Libet's free-will experiment, the secular logic of Alcoholics Anonymous, pragmatism, the nature of knowledge, religion and the limits of rationalism, and the role of projection in religious belief-is followed by spirited exchanges drawing in Freud, Russell, Hume, Mill, Marx, Kuczynski, and others. The result is rigorous analytic philosophy delivered in an accessible, dramatic form, moving from consciousness and agency to truth, faith, and the psychology of belief. A book for anyone who likes ideas argued, not just asserted.