William James and the Evolutionary Explanation of Belief by Louis Menand

By Louis Menand[1]

Translated by Rouhollah Mahmoudi

This piece has been selected and translated from section 4, chapter 13 of the book The Metaphysical Club by Louis Menand. The title has been chosen by the translator.

Pragmatism explains how people think—how they arrive at opinions, form beliefs, and what their decision-making process is like. How is it that we decide to do a certain thing when we could do something else? This question is difficult to answer, because life is filled with a great many kinds of choices, and one cannot expect a single explanation for all of these choices...

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[1] Louis Menand