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James's Pragmatism: The Possibility For Meaning, Virginia Bergin Cravens

Philosophy ETDs

The problem of this study was to determine if William James‘s philosophy of Pragmatism offers the possibility for discovering meaning in life for the person who unexplainably suffers depression and melancholia, and a religious explana­tion for the evolutionary scientific person who suffers a religious-scientific crisis.

The methods used were to examine William James’s lectures, letters, and books, and research the literature for his interpretation of Pragmatism as a philosophy. The procedure analyzed the possibilities James offered for finding meaning in life, with or without religion, by using the Pragmatic Theory of truth. This involved a consideration of James's belief that …