Our sense of reality is dominated by things. Things feel real to us. We live in a universe that we experience as empty space filled with things. And some things have relationships between them. But what is a relationship? Is a relationship a thing? Is it real, or is it just a connection between two [...]
All posts tagged William James
Are Relationships Real Things?
Posted by Jeff Carreira on November 10, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/11/10/are-relationships-real-things/
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/
Mead, Mind and World
George Herbert Mead is the fourth major figure in Classical American Pragmatism. Mead studied philosophy at Harvard while William James chaired the department. He taught with John Dewey at the University of Michigan before they both left there to teach at the University of Chicago. Mead is known more as a sociologist than a philosopher [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on September 16, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/09/16/mead-mind-and-world/
Alfred North Whitehead: And the Three Components of Knowledge
This week I wanted to share a quote from the English philosopher Alfred North Whitehead. Whitehead is the originator of what is commonly known as Process Theology. And many of his ideas follow closely in a line that was drawn earlier by William James and Charles Sanders Peirce. Whitehead in a series of lectures collectively [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on July 28, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/07/28/alfred-north-whitehead-and-the-three-components-of-knowledge/
The Subjective World of William James
My last post inspired me to want to do a series of posts in which I share some of my favorite philosophy passages, and this week a passage from William James’ Varieties of Religious Experience compels me. James was on fire with a materialistic vision of subjective experience. He felt that while our experience of outer reality [...]
Posted by Jeff Carreira on July 15, 2011
http://evolutionaryphilosophy.com/2011/07/15/the-subjective-world-of-william-james/
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/
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/
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/
