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 something else. When I was an undergraduate student I studied physics, but my favorite course in four years was one [...]
All posts tagged John Dewey
Everything Exists in Relationship
Posted by Jeff Carreira on December 15, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/12/15/nothing-exists-except-in-relationship/
American Common Sense – or – How to Change the Truth
The American mind has been constructed on a few obvious attitudes and assumptions about life. One is a pronounced idealistic streak. The Europeans that settled in this land believed that they were creating a new world and – for better or worse – they became infused with an almost unshakeable belief in the assumption that progress [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on October 27, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/10/27/american-common-sense-or-how-to-change-the-truth/
Is a Dog Really a Dog?
One of the great philosophical dividing lines has always been the line that separates the particular from the universal – the unique from the general. We live in a world of both particulars and universals and philosophers have long argued over which is more real. Nominalists say that it is only the particulars that are [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on October 20, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/10/20/is-a-dog-really-a-dog/
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 is always a flow that organizes what people do, say and think. And there are local flows that flow into [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on September 29, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/09/29/into-the-human-flow/
The Evolutionary Ethics of John Dewey
The American philosopher John Dewey wrote another of my favorite philosophy passages in the last paragraph of his 1898 essay Evolution and Ethics. Dewey articulates in this paragraph what he sees as a monumental leap that occurs when human beings discover the mechanisms through which the evolutionary process unfolds. Dewey must have been feeling the [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on July 21, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/07/21/the-evolutionary-ethics-of-john-dewey/
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 vision and Don asked the devastatingly simple question “do I believe this?” In response to Don – I am still [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on January 27, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/01/27/the-evolving-truth-of-pragmatism/
The Self and the Social Organism
In my last post I explained that John Dewey believed that our self identity is a learned habit of identification that does not necessarily indicate the existence of any actually existing entity that could be called “a self.” We first learn to act and then we learn to identify those acts with an entity that [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on December 30, 2010
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2010/12/30/the-self-and-the-social-organism/
The Illusion of Freedom and Thought
Inevitably if we start to talk about social conditioning the topic of human freewill comes into play. When you begin to recognize, as John Dewey did, that so much – if not all – of the ways that we act and think and feel are really an outpouring of socially acquired habits, you begin to [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on December 23, 2010
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2010/12/23/the-illusion-of-freedom-and-thought/
The Ego is Not the Cause of Action
The American philosopher John Dewey was against the notion that there is any entity that could be called an ego that is the cause of our choices and actions. Activity happens as a response to the changing environment not as a consequence of decisions made by a willing agent. As I explained in my last [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on December 15, 2010
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2010/12/15/the-ego-is-not-the-cause-of-action/
The Habits of John Dewey
The American philosopher John Dewey described social institutions, customs and norms as habits that develop in society over time. He is quick to point out that habits are not merely passive boundaries that limit activity to certain well worn grooves. Habits he insists are energetic, they drive us to action. Anyone who has ever struggled [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on December 9, 2010
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2010/12/09/the-habits-of-john-dewey/
