I remember once
putting a question on this subject to Professor James; and his answer
was one which I am glad to be able to record. In relation to his
having said that "as far as the past facts go, there is no difference
... be the atoms or be the God their cause,"[7] I asked whether, if
God had been the cause, apart from the value of the idea of him in our
calculations, his existence would not have made a difference to him,
as he would be presumably self-conscious. "Of course," said Professor
James, "but I wasn't considering that side of the matter; I was
thinking of our idea." The choice of the subjective point of view,
then, was deliberate here, and frankly arbitrary; it was not intended
to exclude the possibility or legitimacy of the objective attitude.
And the original reason for deliberately ignoring, in this way, the
realistic way of thinking, even while admitting that it represents the
real state of affairs, would have been, I suppose, that what could be
verified was always some further effect of the real objects, and never
those real objects themselves; so that for interpreting and predicting
our personal experience only the hypothesis of objects was pertinent,
while the objects themselves, except as so represented, were useless
and unattainable.
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