Episode 322: A Theater of Simultaneous Possibilities (William James' "The Stream of Thought")

Very Bad Wizards · Dec 9, 2025 · 1h 21m

David and Tamler return to William James' monumental "Principles of Psychology", this time wading through his famous chapter "The Stream of Thought." We talk about his rejection of empiricist theories of consciousness in favor of a view that consciousness is a continuous stream of thoughts, sensations, and emotions without any elements (atoms) that repeat or appear in other people's streams. We talk about how vividly James captures certain features of consciousness, like trying to recall a forgotten name, or the ways that the subjective per of two people differ radically in the same…