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 …
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the 20th Century
First of all I want to thank everyone for keeping the level of this virtual conversation so high and so philosophically minded. Now that we have opened up a discussion about Science and Spirituality I …
Science vs. Spirituality
My mind is still not up to full speed after being on retreat, but I am thrilled by all of the back and forth on the topic of spirituality. It is, as we can see, …
Spirituality and American Philosophy
Ok so here is where I start getting myself into trouble… I want to open up the question of spirituality. And I think that question can be raised as, “Given our scientific understanding of reality, …
Ralph Waldo Emerson’s Conception of Nature
The Pragmatic definition of truth may have deep roots in American thought, but to uncover the metaphysical conception that is the ground under Pragmatism’s feet we should look one generation earlier into the mind of …
Evolutionary Spirituality and American Philosophy
It is perhaps not surprising that all of the popular contemporary forms of evolutionary spirituality are engaged with the same ethical question that Peirce, James and Dewey attempted to answer. Does the reality of evolution …
If Pragmatism was so great, what happened to it?
Pragmatism was a powerful force in World Philosophy during the early decades of the twentieth century. Then the First World War erupted, followed by the Great Depression, and later the horror of the Second World …
Is Freewill compatable with Determinism? Some thoughts on Jonathan Edwards
I am posting today from the beautiful hills of the Tuscany region of Italy and I am about to start a 20 day spiritual retreat with teacher Andrew Cohen. During my travels here I decided …
William James, B.F. Skinner and the Stream of Consciousness Revisited
In an earlier post I described similarities between the ideas of John Dewey and B.F. Skinner, I now will to do the same with William James. Both James and Skinner dubbed their own philosophies “Radical.” …
Is there any Intelligence in the Universe?
I have been reading more about Behaviorism, including the article that Carl sent us by Robert Epstein, so that we could get a little clearer here about exactly what we are looking into. Maybe I …
Freewill, To Believe or Not To Believe
I saw that both Carl and Brian noticed my use of the phrase “caved in” in expressing the fact that I was not convinced about the Behaviorist view. There is so much fantastic insight in …
The Freewill of a Creative System
I am amazed by all of the insightful comments on my last post. It seems that many of us are comfortable with the idea that perhaps freewill is not a characteristic of an individual, but …
The Indignity of B.F. Skinner
Warning: This post represents my very first thoughts about the Behaviorism of B.F. Skinner and is probably equally likely to offend both fans and foes alike. Those who follow this blog may realize that my …
The Modern Problem of Goodness
American philosophy was a product of the Modern Age that had its precursor with the Italian Renaissance and its birth with the European Enlightenment. The Modern Age is characterized by the development of human reason …
Evolutionary Ethics and Karma
A continuous view of the universe seems to inherently evoke an ethical compulsion. When the boundaries between self and other, individual and society, inner and outer begin to dissolve into a single universe of continuous …
The Feeling of Evolution
Evolutionary Ethics has been a topic of discussion ever since there has been discussion about evolution. In the early 20th century Eugenics was seriously studied at universities. Eugenics is the practice of controlled human breeding …