What moves us? Why do we keep going, always striving to better ourselves, our circumstances and the conditions of others? It isn’t completely rational. We all die in the end anyway so why does it …
Everything Exists in Relationship
Things do not exist unless they exist in relationship with something else. In fact, things do not exist at all. Relationships exist. There are no individual things. The existence of anything is always contingent upon …
We don’t create time – we freeze it in its tracks.
We have learned to see time as if it appears in chunks – minutes, hours, days, and years. But if time comes in chunks how do we experience past memories in the present? How does …
Experience and Understanding
There are two kinds of knowing – experience and understanding – and the confusion between them is the cause of all sorts of trouble for any thinking person. Experience is the knowing of things. It …
Are Relationships Real Things?
Our sense of reality is dominated by things. Things feel real to us. We live in a universe that we experience as empty space filled with things. And some things have relationships between them. But …
Into The Human Flow
I am currently completely captivated by the image of a Human Flow. The American Pragmatist philosophers developed a view of humanity as a constant flow of activity and society was a flow of flows. There …
Mead, Mind and World
George Herbert Mead is the fourth major figure in Classical American Pragmatism. Mead studied philosophy at Harvard while William James chaired the department. He taught with John Dewey at the University of Michigan before they …
Alfred North Whitehead: And the Three Components of Knowledge
This week I wanted to share a quote from the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead is the originator of what is commonly known as Process Theology. And many of his ideas follow closely in …
The Subjective World of William James
My last post inspired me to want to do a series of posts in which I share some of my favorite philosophy passages, and this week a passage from William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience compels me. …
A Field of Pure Knowing
What is the human soul? Is it some phantom-like part of us or is it a living dimension of the universe from which all life flows? The later is what Samuel Taylor Coleridge taught and …
Breaking the Bonds of Language
Have you ever tried to have an original thought – or worse – had a truly original thought that you tried to put into language? That is when you realize that you are trapped in …
Vicious Intellectualism and the Reality of the Unknown
There are things that we know. And there are things that we know that we don’t know. And there are things that we don’t know that we don’t know. These last are the “unknown unknowns” …
The Truth is Out There: Pragmatism and The X-files
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 …
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 …
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 …
Emerson & James in Defense of Individual Greatness
In 1850 Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote a book that he called Representative Men. In this book he explains that great individuals represent possibilities of higher ways of being. These extraordinary individuals have the power to …
A Philosophy of Pure Experience
Here is my second post exploring some of the ideas that are informing me as I prepare for my presentaion at the Science and Nonduality Conference. William James over the course of his life developed …
Life without the Background
On Friday October 22nd I will be presenting at the Science and Nonduality Conference in San Rafael, California. The topic of my presentation will be Evolutionary Non-duality, and I will introduce people to the same …
William James and social trust
James’ decidedly Existentialist leanings may have resulted from his own existential crisis. Soon after completing his medical degree from Harvard, while in a psychiatric ward, James noticed a severely mentally ill patient and was suddenly …
William James, American Existentialist
William Barrett introduced the philosophy of Existentialism to American academia with the publication of his book Irrational Man. In the book he is clear to state that Existentialism is strictly Continental European philosophical movement. Although …