The advantage of being a materialist is that so much of our experience seems to point to a material basis for reality. Idealists usually have to appeal to some inner knowing as the justification of their faith that mind, not matter, is the foundation of reality. Unfortunately the appeal to inner knowing is exactly what [...]
All posts tagged Charles Sanders Peirce
Scientific Evidence for Indeterminism
Posted by Jeff Carreira on June 23, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/06/23/scientific-evidence-for-indeterminism/
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 his brilliant description of this living soul was so powerful that it ignited a vision that entranced the American Transcendentalists [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on June 2, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/06/02/a-field-of-pure-knowing/
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 a prison constructed of words and sentences and syntax and grammar. You know something, in the recesses of your perceptual [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on May 26, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/05/26/breaking-the-bonds-of-language/
The Bible, Poetry and Mental Sensations
By the early part of the nineteenth century the Age of Reason had made it increasingly difficult for progressive religious thinkers to accept a literal interpretation of the Bible. It was clear that many passages of that sacred text could no longer be accepted at face value. There was a rush of interest in biblical criticism [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on May 19, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/05/19/the-bible-poetry-and-mental-sensations/
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” made famous in a comment by former US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The two originators of the philosophy of [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on April 21, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/04/21/vicious-intellectualism-and-the-reality-of-the-unknown/
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 there.” If you never saw the show it revolves around two FBI agents, Mulder and Scully, a man and woman [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on April 15, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/04/15/the-truth-is-out-there-pragmatism-and-the-x-files/
Interpreting the Signs of Reality
The concept of signs is so common to us that we hardly think about it. (Of course many of the most profound ideas are disguised as common ones that we don’t need to think about.) The idea of a sign is just such an example. A sign is something that points to or indicates something [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on April 7, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/04/07/interpreting-the-signs-of-reality/
The Many Layers of Reality or “Is a Fire Truck Really a Fire Truck?”
Is a fire truck really a fire truck? Is a truck really a truck? Is anything really what it is? We assume that things really are what they appear to us to be. This assumption is yet another form of the Myth of the Given. Unfortunately it isn’t true. Most of us have already realized [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on March 31, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/03/31/the-many-layers-of-reality-or-is-a-fire-truck-really-a-fire-truck/
“To Thing”: A New Verb
Thing (v). to thing, thinging. 1. To create an object by defining a boundary around some portion of reality separating it from everything else and then labeling that portion of reality with a name. One of the greatest human skills is the ability to thing. We are thinging beings. We thing all the time. We [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on March 2, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/03/02/to-thing-a-new-verb/
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 impressions – smells, tastes, sensations, sounds and sights – simply appear in awareness. We don’t call them into being and [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on February 10, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/02/10/the-reality-of-the-immediately-present/
