The Dilemma Of Determinism Summary

In the essay “The Dilemma Of Determinism,” James states that “first when we make theories about the world and discuss them with one another, we do is in order to attain a conception of things which shall give us a subjective satisfaction; and second, if there be two conceptions and the one seems to us, on the whole, more rational than other, we are entitled to suppose that the more rational one is the truer of the two.” The author also stated that people who do not agree with his statement would find the rest of what he has to say a little difficult to understand. He defended his statement by saying that he believes all the magnificent achievements of mathematical and physical science which where; the doctrines of evolution, uniformity of law,
But, our only means of finding out is to try and the author feels as free to try conceptions of moral as of mechanical or of logical rationality. The author also talked about the principle of causality which is simply a demand that the sequence of events shall someday manifest a deeper kind of belonging of one thing with another than mere arbitrary juxtaposition which now phenomenally appears? It is as much an altar to an unknown god as the one that Saint Paul found at Athens. All of our scientific and philosophic ideals are altars to unknown gods. James also stated that uniformity is as much so as is freewill and if anyone pretends that while freedom and variety are, in the first instance, subjective demands, necessity and uniformity are something altogether different and James does not see how a debate can be made at all with
He gave an analogy of two men before a chessboard, one a novice and the other an expert. The expert intends to beat the novice, but he cannot foresee what any one actual move of his adversary maybe. He know however all the possible moves of the latter; and he know how to meet each of them in advance by a move of his own which leads in the direction of victory. The victory unfailingly arrives, after no matter how devious a course, in the one predestined form of check-mates to the novice’s king. James helps to explain the context by saying, the novice stands for us free agents, and the experts for the infinite mind in which the universe lies. Suppose the latter to be thinking out his universe before he actually creates it, suppose he says, I will lead things to a certain end, but I will not now decide on all the steps before hand. At various points, ambiguous possibilities shall be left open, either of which at a given instant may become actual. But whichever branch of these bifurcations become real, he knows what he shall do at the next bifurcation to keep things from drifting away from the final results he intended. What he does here is selecting or choosing the option that gives him subjective satisfaction or seems more rational than the