I want to go in a little deeper into Peirce’s conception of the three modes of being, Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. By Firstness Peirce is referring to pure being. Firstness is the unseen, imperceptible essence …
Charles Sanders Peirce’s Integrally Evolving Universe
To continue this discussion and approach the evolutionary metaphysics of Charles Sanders Peirce, I first want to return to Kant. As I wrote about earlier, Kant’s big insight was that the world as we perceive …
Scientific Fundamentalism
To finish (at least for the time being) with this idea of Scientism vs. Science. I want to take it a little further so that I hope I am able to make clear what I …
Religion, Science and Perspective: Let the Games Begin
I actually had a different post in my queue, but this conversation got so interesting that I thought that I would throw my two cents in and bring it front and center before continuing with …
Science vs. Scientism
I spent my last post explaining how the philosophy of Pragmatism was shaped by hard science and now I am going to explain how one of the ironies of Pragmatism is that although it was …
Chauncey Wright and the Strong Arm of Science
Over my last two posts I have been reflecting on some of the ideas of Kant and Hegel and how they were picked up by the early Pragmatists. The German Idealism of Kant and Hegel …
The Individual and Society
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770 –1831) was a leading figure in the movement of German Idealism initiated by Immanuel Kant and Hegel’s philosophy expanded on Kant’s theory of knowledge by adding a social and historical …
Commitment and Reality: From Kant to Peirce
There was more implied in Kant’s theory of knowledge than the fact that what we see is not an objective world in itself, but rather a picture that is created by us based on sense …
Kant and the Creation of Reality
The American Philosophers from the Transcendentalists to the Pragmatists were all following in the footsteps of the great German Idealist Immanuel Kant (1724 – 1804). This isn’t too surprising because all of Western Philosophy follows …
The Purpose of Philosophy and Science
The existence of God, the nature of freewill – we just seem to keep running into some of the same BIG questions that have orbited around Western philosophy for centuries. I thought it might be …
Evolutionary Enlightenment and American Philosophy
Before continuing with our fascinating discussion I wanted, in the interest of transparency, to tell a little more about my interest in American Philosophy. The last decades of the 20th century saw a resurgence of …
Cosmic Evolution
I have been thinking about something that came up in the discussion around my last post. It was something that Carl had said early on when he remarked about how a large part of the …
Our Evolutionary Crisis
I certainly want to continue with our discussion and I want to explore the profound ideas of Charles Sanders Peirce further, but first I wanted to say a few words in general that I have been …
Evolutionary Duality and the Limits of Science
Next week I will be giving an afternoon lecture in Philadelphia about the relationship between philosophical inquiry and the challenges of our time, and the roots of Integral Theory and Evolutionary Enlightenment in Classic American …
A Brief Stop at the Human Intersection
If you think about the Universe as a vast unknown then you can think about human knowledge and understanding about the universe as the “human intersection with the universe.” Our knowledge about, and understanding of, …
Test Drive a Worldview
To respond to Andy, I knew that I was getting myself into some trouble by oversimplifying and over-generalizing philosophy and breaking it down into metaphysics, epistemology and ethics. I was lumping things, like logic into epistemology …
Why do worldviews clash?
I am fascinated by the discussion that has ensued based on my last post and I hope to tempt your considerable powers of inquiry in a direction that I have been contemplating in response to …
Faith First
William James was an American Apologist. An Apologist is a defender of faith. The term is most often used associated with Christian thinkers who defend the existence of God. William James was taking on a …
You Gotta Have Faith
The philosophical ideas of the American Pragmatist William James were in many ways foundationally based on a profound realization he had about the nature of human life. James grew up in an eccentric family of …
Ultimate vs. Relative Intelligence
In response to my last post Brian asked, “Does your stated belief in ‘higherness’ include an obligation to live in accordance with it? If so, what does that look like?” It is a fair question …