Russell Goodman, who was our guest a couple of weeks ago, for our威廉·詹姆斯集发送以下评论作为我们直播谈话的后续。他们在他的允许下张贴在这里。

I wanted to comment on that squirrel going around the tree story with which James opens the second chapter of Pragmatism. It's a great story, but it seems, from my experience, to itself provoke as much disagreement and puzzlement as the squirrel and the man themselves do.

乍一看，这似乎是一个很好的验证主义者的故事——关于具有相同实证结果的两个术语或假设的争论。詹姆斯的观点是，这场争论毫无意义(正如你在引言中所说的，营员们“毫无意义地争论”。)这似乎是詹姆斯在第二段中的结论，他写道:“如果找不到任何实际的差异，那么其他选项实际上意味着同样的事情，所有的争论都是毫无意义的。”这很好，而且这句话也符合皮尔斯(在《如何使我们的想法清晰》一书中)的例子:一杯据说是基督之血的酒，但所有的迹象都表明它只是普通的酒。

但詹姆斯的结论并不符合他在第一段中所说的，在第一段中，重点不是两种情况之间没有“实际区别”，而是如果有人区分“绕”的两种意思(即从北边、东边、南边、西边穿过，与面对松鼠的腹部，然后是侧面，然后是背面，然后是另一边)，就没有必要产生分歧。这是因为每一种感觉都决定了一系列不同的、可由经验验证的结果，要么是对男人自己(如果他能看到松鼠的肚子，等等，这是一棵狭窄的树)，要么肯定是对观察者(谁能分辨出男人是面对着松鼠的背还是肚子(松鼠是站着的吗?)，或者只是绕着一只肚子面对男人的松鼠转一圈)。

所以，詹姆斯错误地把他自己的例子解释为两个假设之间没有实际区别，而实际上有。然而，无论从哪一种解释来看，这个例子都是为了描绘一幅传统哲学的图景，正如(用詹姆斯的英雄之一乔治·伯克利的话说)扬起灰尘，然后抱怨人们看不到。在这种伪装下，实用主义是一种批判哲学或治疗哲学，它把我们从伪问题中解放出来。还有一个积极的方面(例如他的“人本主义认识论”)，这个例子似乎不能说明。

Another puzzling thing about James's example is the question of what it has to do with pragmatism, or why we need pragmatism to tell us this? As James points out, the idea of making a distinction when we encounter a (seeming) contradiction is an old one in philosophy. It's a funny idea to invoke at the beginning of a chapter where one expects to learn about what is distinctive about pragmatism.

From years of teaching this chapter I've learned not to start with the squirrel example, but to pass to other points he makes in this really quite amazing piece of writing. Last spring I gave a seminar on the chapter in North Carolina and we had a very lively discussion about the squirrel example for most of an hour, with people disagreeing about whether James really did misinterpret his own example! We didn't get much further however. What do you think?