It occurred to me the other day that the American Philosophy of Pragmatism shares some remarkable similarities with the television series The X-files. Let’s start with the TV show’s moto – “the truth is out …
Interpreting the Signs of Reality
The concept of signs is so common to us that we hardly think about it. (Of course many of the most profound ideas are disguised as common ones that we don’t need to think about.) …
The Many Layers of Reality or “Is a Fire Truck Really a Fire Truck?”
Is a fire truck really a fire truck? Is a truck really a truck? Is anything really what it is? We assume that things really are what they appear to us to be. This assumption …
Escape From The Myth of the Given
One way to think about the existential dilemma of postmodernism is that we began to realize that our perception of reality is a hopeless tangle of sensation and interpretation. What we assume to be reality as we …
The Myth of the Given – or – Marooned on Mount Assumption
We all believe in an outdated myth. It is the unconscious belief that something is given – that we are standing on some solid ground of truth from which the rest of our understanding of …
The Assumption of Reality
When we think about reality or talk about reality the big assumption we almost always make is that there is a reality to think and talk about. When Rene Descartes drew an astonishingly original distinction …
“To Thing”: A New Verb
Thing (v). to thing, thinging. 1. To create an object by defining a boundary around some portion of reality separating it from everything else and then labeling that portion of reality with a name. One …
Embedding Consciousness Back Into The World
It seems to me that one of the great philosophical projects of our age is the effort to re-embed human consciousness into nature. This would be the antidote to some negative ramifications of another great …
Are We On the Outside of the Universe Looking In?
It might be that the representational model of mind is the source of the existential feelings of separation, isolation and alienation that are so common in our world. Let me explain, most of us would …
The Reality of the Immediately Present – William James and Rudolf Steiner
Some things in reality force themselves upon us immediately. They appear spontaneously without provocation and they impress themselves upon our senses in ways that we cannot withstand. These things surely must be real. Direct sense …
Do we ever Know Anything for Sure? – The Fallibalism of Charles Sanders Peirce
When we say something is true, what we usually mean is that the words that we are using or the idea that we are holding in our head corresponds to some actual event or thing …
The Evolving Truth of Pragmatism
In response to my last two posts a number of good points have been raised that I would like to start to address. Catherine has championed the idealism of Plato and Steiner against the Pragmatic …
The Integral Assumption of American Philosophy
Mind cannot exist without matter; matter cannot exist without mind. This is what I have come to see as perhaps the most essential theme that runs through American philosophy. In the modern western world it …
Integral Emergence vs. Co-evolution
Integral Emergence is a term you might hear used to describe how multiple aspects of reality arise simultaneously. This idea is important to any understanding of Pragmatism; and it is also central to Ken …
Nothing Exists Independently
One of the foundational insights of Pragmatism is that reality only exists in relationship. Nothing that is absolutely independent is real. Absolute Oneness is identical with absolute nothingness. Any concept of oneness that exists can …
The Self and the Social Organism
In my last post I explained that John Dewey believed that our self identity is a learned habit of identification that does not necessarily indicate the existence of any actually existing entity that could be …
The Illusion of Freedom and Thought
Inevitably if we start to talk about social conditioning the topic of human freewill comes into play. When you begin to recognize, as John Dewey did, that so much – if not all – of …
The Ego is Not the Cause of Action
The American philosopher John Dewey was against the notion that there is any entity that could be called an ego that is the cause of our choices and actions. Activity happens as a response to …
The Habits of John Dewey
The American philosopher John Dewey described social institutions, customs and norms as habits that develop in society over time. He is quick to point out that habits are not merely passive boundaries that limit activity …
Are We All Institutionalized?
We might be. I wanted to share some more thoughts as I read John Searle’s new book “Making the Social World“And one of the things that has struck me profoundly about social reality is the …