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Jan 25, 2022Liked by Jannik Lindquist

I like how James handled the question.

'William James simply asserted that his will was free. As his first act of freedom, he said, he chose to believe his will was free. He was encouraged to do this by reading Charles Renouvier. In his diary entry of April 30, 1870, he wrote,

'"I think that yesterday was a crisis in my life. I finished the first part of Renouvier's second Essais and see no reason why his definition of free will — 'the sustaining of a thought because I choose to when I might have other thoughts' — need be the definition of an illusion. At any rate, I will assume for the present — until next year — that it is no illusion. My first act of free will shall be to believe in free will."'

(The Thought and Character of William James (Boston, Little, Brown, 1936) vol.1, p.323)

Source: https://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/james/

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