The Stream of Consciousness: V. William James's Change of View

Abstract

This is the fifth in a series of articles that compile and critically spell out what is known or knowledgeably held about the stream of consciousness. Discussed here are two aspects of James's conception: 1) the kind of mental-occurrence instance that is the stream's basic durational component, and 2) the change in James's explicit account of the temporal structure of the stream, from The Principles to his later understanding. James's stream consists of “consciousnesses” (“states of consciousness”) as defined in the second half of the OED's fourth entry for consciousness. All such components of the stream are conscious: that is, actual or potential objects of inner apprehension. James had held that the consciousnesses constituting the stream are not distinct occurrences, being phases, rather, of a single protracted process that goes on, except for “time gaps” when all mentality stops. However, he argued later that the stream consists of adjacent drops of experience with nothing in between them.