This is the final post of a "philosophy week" and this is a blog with the phrase "Jamesian Philosophy" in its name. So we come around to James' philosophy today. To his mind, I am sure, the relationship of mind and body was THE snaggiest and most consequential of philosophical issues. In 1904, James wrote an introduction to an English translation to a work of Fechner, THE LITTLE BOOK OF LIFE AND DEATH, He (James) wrote in the introduction that energy fluctuations "can be superimposed and compounded, the smaller on the greater, as wavelets upon waves. This is as true in the mental as in the physical sphere. Speaking psychologically, we may say that a general wave of consciousness rises out of a subconscious background, and that certain portions of it catch the emphasis, as wavelets catch the light." A lot is happening in this brief passage. One part of it is that James had a history of hostility to the idea of the compounding of consciousness....