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 …
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 …
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.” …
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 …
Peirce and James: Beyond the Metaphysical
The Pragmatists in America were modernists coming of age at the height of science’s rise to intellectual supremacy in the west. As such they were biased toward the idea that reason was supreme and that …
Nature Mystics and Scientific Progressives
The European Enlightenment produced two responses; Scientific Rationalism and Romanticism. The Scientific Rationalism represented in the science of Sir Isaac Newton and the philosophy of John Locke. Romanticism produced the writing of Goethe in Germany …
When Two Minds Become One
In response to my last post (see below) someone posed an interesting question. They felt they understood what I was writing regarding William James’ view that we live in creative multiple universes. And they accepted …