The American Pragmatists outlined in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a profound evolutionary process philosophy. The view of reality they explored was one in which all of reality was seen as an unending …
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 …
Belief and Fact
The worst speculative Skeptic ever I knew, was a much better Man than the best superstitious Devotee & Bigot. —David Hume (Letter to Gilbert Elliot of Minto, March 10, 1751) Before I go on to …
The Conscious Evolution of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Part 1
The influence of Ralph Waldo Emerson on the future trajectory of American philosophy probably cannot be over-estimated. He held a metaphysical vision of an evolving universe. His idealism with its dualistic character would be largely …
Consciousness is not a “stuff”
I pulled two quotes from Chuck to respond to. We may be the “conscious part of the universe” (possibly not the *only* conscious part – life on other planets?) but that doesn’t inexorably lead to …
The Experience Train of William James: Part 2
As James developed his philosophy of Radical Empiricism that philosophy rested on the idea that reality is made up of “pure experience.” It was a philosophy of subjectivity and with it he was able to …
The Experience Train of William James: Part 1
I seem to gain the best insight into the ideas of William James when I start by going back to some of his original work in psychology when he was formulating his unique ideas about …
Truth, Knowing and Human Activity according to William James
William James tied the expereince of knowing directly to human activity. His version of Pragmatism was largely based on this “integral” (if I may use the term so loosely) connection between mind and matter. In …
Plato, Aristotle and William James
Before continuing to examine the ideas of William James lets look at the origins of metaphysical dualisms in Western thought by comparing the two big thinkers of ancient Greece, Plato and Aristotle. Plato was in …
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 …
Rational Mechanics and the Mind
I want to post one more time before getting back to a few last words on John Dewey and conscious evolution. I have been doing a little research into the development of modern physics because …
Does anything like a mind exist?
I still have a few more posts on Dewey that I want to put up that lead to an exciting model of cultural evolution, but Carl’s comment to my last post inspired me to write …
Riding the Currents on the Ocean of Mind
I can describe the beautiful image that built in my mind as I read John Dewey’s book “Experience and Nature” by describing a vision of reality as currents in the ocean of mind. Think of …
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 …
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 …