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 …
Spiritual Realism and Process Philosophy
As I have read through Emerson’s writing I see two aspects to his metaphysics. On the one hand he describes a spiritual Realism in which the collective human soul of humanity exists in a transcendent …
The Holistic Vision of Ralph Waldo Emerson
I am sorry that I missed a post this week due to travel, but I am excited to share more from Ralph Waldo Emerson. As we understand more how Emerson’s thought developed we see the …
The Self-consciousness flow of William James
To understand the thinking of William James I have tried to see the world as I believe he saw it – as one continuous unfolding flow. In my own contemplation of James I have followed …
Cosmos, Consciousness and Culture
It was almost exactly one year ago today that I started this blog so I guess this is my first anniversary post. I started the blog because I wanted to explore the relationship between classical …
John Dewey and Cultural Evolution
What I see in John Dewey’s Instrumentalism is a compelling theory of how the evolution of culture can be consciously guided. Dewey’s ideas about directing the further development of culture rest squarely on his understanding of objects …
Embracing Constant Flux
I am on a roll with John Dewey. I was reading through his book “Experience and Nature” for the second time and something finally clicked and I started to see what he was getting at. …
John Dewey and the “ends” of the Universe
The third of the founding American Pragmatists was John Dewey. In the early 1870’s while Charles Sanders Peirce and William James were busy brewing the original conceptions of what would become Pragmatism; John Dewey was …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
John Dewey and the Unity of Mind and Matter
One of the challenges of the philosophy of Pragmatism is that it is too easy to reduce its complexity and subtlety to simple utilitarianism. Some of the same language that William James used to almost …
Pragmatism – The Western Law of Karma
It occurred to me that now would be as good a time as any to talk a little bit about truth and inquiry. I am reading Charles Sanders Peirce right now so that has given …
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