"Today, Bethany wonders why she gets into a fighting stance whenever she reads a seminal work by William James. Aaron and Jp set her straight--as far as that's possible!" ~ Bethany

In this episode, our conversation revolves around a line from James' chapter "Stream of Thought" in Principles of Psychology. We investigate the following excerpt: "The only states of consciousness that we naturally deal with are found in personal consciousness, minds, selves, concrete particular I's and you's. Each of these minds keeps its own thoughts to itself. There is no giving or bartering between them. No thought even comes into direct sight of a thought in another personal consciousness than its own. Absolute insulation, irreducible pluralism, is the law. It seems as if the elementary psychic fact were not thought or this thought or that thought, but my thought, every thought being owned...The breaches between such thoughts are the most absolute breaches in nature."

What do we make of this? What are the implications of this? Does this mean that Bethany will have to suspend her belief in her psychoanalytic powers to read the mind's of others? 

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