Invited Speaker: Matyáš Moravec (Queen’s University Belfast), ‘James, Bergson, Mrs Piper, and the Ghost of Richard Hodgson’

Matyáš Moravec (Queen’s University Belfast) will be giving a talk on Thursday 16th October 2025, 3:15 to 5:00 pm, in Philosophy Seminar Room D520 in the Newman (Arts) Building.

Abstract

For over a decade, William James, together with his colleague Richard Hodgson, studied the Boston trance medium Mrs Piper, publishing hundreds of pages of records regarding her ability to access information about séance-sitters seemingly via supernatural means. This paper suggests links between James’s work on Mrs. Piper and his doctrine of radical empiricism.

William James was widely known for his interest in “psychical research,” the study of “psychic phenomena” including telepathy, clairvoyance, apparitions, or communication with spirits of the dead. For over a decade, James, together with his colleague Richard Hodgson, studied the Boston trance medium Mrs Piper, publishing hundreds of pages of records regarding her ability to access information about séance-sitters seemingly via supernatural means. James and Hodgson were both particularly interested in the question of spirit survival, since Mrs. Piper, when in trance, claimed to be possessed by various spirits of the dead communicating all this information to her. When Hodgson died in 1905, he joined the ranks of these spirits—seemingly getting in touch with his (ex)colleague James from the beyond in séances with Mrs. Piper. James scholars have systematically studied James’ interest in psychical research and the way in which it shaped his views in psychology. However, the suggested links between psychical research and his philosophy remain rather tenuous.

This paper, appealing to recent archival research, will suggest intricate links between James’s work on Mrs. Piper (and the purported spirit of Richard Hodgson) and his doctrine of radical empiricism. Firstly, it argues that James’s emphasis on “pure experience” in the Essays on Radical Empiricism is closely linked to his struggle between the refusal to postulate an independently existing soul on the one hand, and the evidence for the presence of the Hodgson-spirit in the séances with Mrs Piper on the other hand. Secondly the paper demonstrates a new route through which James’ philosophy was influenced by the French philosopher Henri Bergson, also involved in psychical research. A curious letter from Bergson suggests that whatever was happening in the séances with Mrs Piper was a hidden vector behind James and Bergson’s discussions about consciousness and its relation to the brain.