Are We Automata?

William James, American psychologist and philosopher, was mainly known by his
works on The Principles of Psychology and the Pragmatism. ---
Everyone is now acquainted with the Conscious-Automaton-theory... The theory
maintains that in everything outward we are pure material machines. Feeling is
a mere collateral product of our nervous processes, unable to react upon them
any more than a shadow reacts on the steps of the traveller whom it
accompanies. Inert, uninfluential, a simple passenger in the voyage of life,
it is allowed to remain on board, but not to touch the helm or handle the
rigging. The theory also maintains that we are in error to suppose that our
thoughts awaken each other by inward congruity or rational necessity, that
disappointed hopes cause sadness, premisses conclusions, etc... The feelings
are merely juxtaposed in that order without mutual cohesion, because the
nerve-processes to which they severally correspond awaken each other in that
order.
It may seem strange that this latter part of the theory should be held by
writers, who have openly expressed their belief in Hume's doctrine of
causality. That doctrine asserts that the causality we seem to find between
the terms of a physical chain of events, is an illegitimate outward projection
of the inward necessity by which we feel each thought to sprout out of its
customary antecedent. Strip the string of necessity from between ideas
themselves, and it becomes hard indeed for a Humian to say how the notion of
causality ever was born at all.
Are We Automata?

*[XIXe]: 19e siècle
*[29 janvier]: selon le calendrier julien
*[6e]: Sixième
*[26 mai]: selon le calendrier julien