What is reality ? How do we test the value of any given philosophical system? Can philosophy be useful ? Why must we reject the notion that there is one concrete truth ? American psychologist and philosopher WILLIAM JAMES (1842-1910), brother of novelist Henry James, was a groundbreaking researcher at Harvard University, author of such works as Principles of Psychology (1890) and The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (1902), and one of the most influential academics of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Here, over a series of eight lectures delivered at the Lowell Institute in Boston in late 1906 and at Columbia University in early 1907, he explores these questions as he discusses: - The Present Dilemma in Philosophy - What Pragmatism Means - Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered - The One and the Many - Pragmatism and Common Sense - Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth - Pragmatism and Humanism - Pragmatism and Religion