The leap that occurred in human consciousness from the time known as The Middle Ages to the Age of Enlightenment is nothing short of miraculous. Imagine being alive during The Middle Ages. Your entire understanding …
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 …
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 …
Communication and the Mind
I still have a few more thoughts about John Dewey’s profound book “Experience and Nature” to develop in this post and the next before I get to explain what hit me while I was reading …
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. …
Multi-dimensional Fun
Let’s continue our thought about dimensionality in the upbeat spirit of the holidays by visiting one of the great books about multiple dimensions, Edwin Abbott’s 1884 novella “Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions.” If you …
Multiple Dimensional Reality
I want to take up this matter of non-duality and the split of mind and matter. Brian has accused me of being a dualist – a Cartesian (gasp) – and I must defend myself for …
The Thirdness of Peirce, the Worlds of Heidegger and Conscious Evolution
I want to go in a little deeper into Peirce’s conception of the three modes of being, Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. By Firstness Peirce is referring to pure being. Firstness is the unseen, imperceptible essence …
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 …
Science vs. Scientism
I spent my last post explaining how the philosophy of Pragmatism was shaped by hard science and now I am going to explain how one of the ironies of Pragmatism is that although it was …
Chauncey Wright and the Strong Arm of Science
Over my last two posts I have been reflecting on some of the ideas of Kant and Hegel and how they were picked up by the early Pragmatists. The German Idealism of Kant and Hegel …
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 …
Cosmic Evolution
I have been thinking about something that came up in the discussion around my last post. It was something that Carl had said early on when he remarked about how a large part of the …
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 …
Science vs. Spirituality
My mind is still not up to full speed after being on retreat, but I am thrilled by all of the back and forth on the topic of spirituality. It is, as we can see, …
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 …