ABSTRACT
This chapter covers James’s views on attention and will, two closely related topics for him. It shows how attention is directed by one’s interests and leads to the individualizing selectivity of consciousness. With selectivity the original “objective” nature of conscious experience is transformed, according to James, into a “subjective” understanding of reality. The greater range of human interests, in comparison with that of other animals, facilitates the distinctively wider range of human discrimination and hence greater capacity for association by similarity, the major source of superior human intelligence. This chapter underscores the intimate relation of attention and will by showing their virtual equation in James’s thought. Special attention is paid to James’s analysis of the motor impulses that follow from the ideational and emotional phenomena held in consciousness by effortful and consenting attention. It also reviews James’s analysis of five types of voluntary decision-making and his comments on the “unhealthy” phenomena of both “explosive” and “obstructed” will. As in other chapters, James’s views are related to current psychological research and philosophical analysis.
