ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews James’s arguments about the “positivistic” nature of his “natural scientific” psychology and its purported separation from philosophy, particularly metaphysics. It shows that this separation from philosophy was incomplete despite James’s claims to the contrary, reviews some of the philosophically related topics raised in The Principles of Psychology, and points out inconsistencies in his treatment of certain issues of philosophical significance. It also discusses the basic premises – what James called the basic “data” – underlying his psychology, his views on the correlative vs. causal relation between mind and body, and his distinctively holistic and activistic understanding of consciousness.
