"We live in an open universe," said William James, "in which uncertainty, choice, hypothesis, novelties and possibilities are natural."

But if the universe is unfinished, so are we. Each one of us is, in fact, an open universe. Each one of us is a microcosm of uncertainty, choice, hypothesis, novelties and possiblities. Each one of us is an unfinished person in this unfinished universe. And each one of us feels an infinite and mysterious obligation to complete ourselves and somehow contribute to the completion of the universe.

The late George Sheehan wrote these words in his book, This Running Life, in 1980, and is the basis for the title of my main blog, an unfinished person (in an unfinished universe). (It sounded better than having as the title of my main blog "a microcosm of uncertainty, choice, hypothesis, novelties and possiblities," don't you think?) Beginning with today's post here on Just A (Running) Fool, I will be starting each post from now on with a quote from Sheehan or other runner gurus such as John Bingham and Jeff Galloway, to name just a couple from whom I might quote in the future.

However, this new addition to my blog isn't the only change that's starting today. It is only one of many, which already have begun before my even writing this post.

On Saturday afternoon, The Wife and I went out to the Pine Creek Trail near the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, which is near where we live. She walked along the trail; I headed up Mount Tom. As I was crawling the last 6/10s of a mile to the top, I suddenly had a few ideas for a new daily schedule that I wanted to write down, but unfortunately, I had nothing on which to write, let alone a writing utensil.

When I sat down on a rock at the top of the mountain, I started scratching out the schedule on one of the large rocks there with a smaller rock.  The problem was I couldn't carry this big stone rock back down the hill. So what to do? I found a smaller rock and scratched out my ideas.

For those of you who can't read my writing, here is what I wrote on the front of the rock:

• 5:30: MP (an abbreviation for Morning Prayer, using the Liturgy of the Hours)
• 6:30: Run (Exercise of some kind, if gym for a couple of days, that also will be good)
• 7:30: Sheehan (read George Sheehan or one of the other aforementioned authors: John Bingham, Jeff Galloway, what I consider the Trinity of Running Writers.
• 8:30 Blog

On the back I wrote only two times:

• 4:30 EP (an abbreviation for Evening Prayer)
• 9:30-10:30: Bed (which would leave me 7-8 hours of sleep)

So this morning I was up at 5:30 and while not out the door by 6:30, I did make it out by 6:40 for a run through the local cemetery and was back by 7:25. Some days, as I go to Mount Tom, which is several miles outside of town -- to which I drive-- and another trail, which is a considerable distance from where I live, the time will be adjusted somewhat. However, for the most part, I'd like to stick as close to the schedule as I can.

Getting up earlier is something toward which I've been working for the last couple of years, with many failed attempts. However, it is something I have decided toward which I need to continue to strive, and hopefully publicly displaying my schedule will help to hold me accountable. The Wife already is on board with this, even asking, "If you don't get up, do you want me to roust you from bed?" And I said, "Yes," because I want this to work.

I know it won't be easy, but I am confident that I can do it. Plus I have all of you (the one or two regular readers of this blog, not that I don't appreciate you, mind you, at least, somebody is reading it -- at least, I hope so, if not que sera, sera ) to hold me accountable.

Note: Along with the new start today, I've added a new theme to the blog. The photo of me in the header is at the top of the Chilkoot at the Bald Eagle Mountain Megatransect last year. I wanted the picture to remind me for what I'm working: to get ready for this year's Megatransect, Oct. 4, only 46 days away!

G.E. Moore, Philosophical Studies (New York: The Humanities Press Inc., 1951), pp. 97-146

The influence of William James (1842-1910) in the American mind evidences itself in the common claim that truth is relative. Today it is often heard that things can be "true for you" and "true for me," but there is no universal, absolute truth. Such feelings have even spread to the Academy, where thinking that truth is the correspondence between our ideas and reality is regarded as western hegemony, intellectual imperialism, authoritarian discourse, or some other sin like using what is (wrongly) believed to be a specifically European construct.

James wrote that true ideas are those that work, can be verified, or are useful. James also had written that truth is mutable and that truths are manmade products. This is roughly what is called the pragmatic theory of truth. A strong criticism of this view, G.E. Moore’s’s essay William James’ "Pragmatism", still stands as an outstanding piece of philosophical analysis.

Moore rapidly decomposed the first claim about true beliefs being useful and/or verifiable into four distinct claims–

1. That we can verify all those of our ideas, which are true.
2. That all those among our ideas, which we can verify, are true.
3. That all our true ideas are useful.
4. That all those of our ideas, which are useful, are true.

Of this set, only the second is true. It is also a commonplace. The first is not, since there exist ideas about past events that have a truth value human beings can never ascertain. The third is false, given useless knowledge exists. And the fourth is false, given many useful ideas may be false– we can give false information to the enemy during war, we can believe in falsehoods from religion for psychological comfort, and so forth.

Is truth mutable? Most, except from extreme idealists, believe that reality is mutable, so the truth of sentences may change as reality changes. However, when we think about not words, but an idea our words express, if the idea is true, it is true for all time. Moore noted if Julius Caesar was murdered in the Senate House is true now, this must be true for all times.

Lastly, it is true that beliefs may come into existence because of a man’s experiences, interests, and purposes. True beliefs are dependent on us in the sense that if we didn’t exist, our true beliefs would not exist either. Moore advanced what ought to be an obvious proposition– that we have no hand in making our beliefs true by virtue of merely believing them to be true.

Pretend what we may, the whole man within us is at work when we form our philosophical opinions. Intellect, will, taste, and passion co-operate just as they do in practical affairs; and lucky it is if the passion be not something as petty as a love of personal conquest over the philosopher across the way. The absurd abstraction of an intellect verbally formulating all its evidence and carefully estimating the probability thereof by a vulgar fraction by the size of whose denominator and numerator alone it is swayed, is ideally as inept as it is actually impossible. It is almost incredible that men who are themselves working phiolosphers should pretend that any philosophy can be, or ever has been, constructed without the help of personal preference, belief, or divination. How have they succeeded in so stultifying their sense for the living facts of human nature as not to perceive that every philosopher, or man of science either, whose initiative counts for anything in the evolution of thought, has taken his stand on a sort of dumb conviction that the truth must lie in one direction rather than another, and a sort of preliminary assurance that his notion can be made to work; and has borne his best fruit in trying to make it work?

William James, "The Sentiment of Rationality," Essays in Pragmatism, p. 24.

Because Jesus is the Way, Truth, and Life. What do I mean? Jesus is the Path, for one thing. It's about becoming, not being. But even as 'Destination,' Jesus is Truth - not a set of propositions about Jesus, God, life, or reality. And this is a way of Life God invites us on, again, not a set of propositions.

Propositions aren't the enemy here. To some degree, they're unavoidable. We all hold images of God in our hearts. For my part, I try to have the best darn images I can - informed by Scripture, the best of our shared story (Tradition), my own life and lives of those around me, and, well, reality. I want a true-to-life picture of God, and a story-honoring Story to live by. But where Pete Rollins is so helpful (and him, taking a cue from Derrida, Levinas and others) is he won't let us rest here...and I never let myself rest there. Because by my early 20s I realized that beliefs are like snake's skin - they protect and keep clean and fit for a season, but then they get old, scaly, and slide right off - to reveal new and supple skin beneath. A snake trying to carry around old skin would be ludicrous...as would living in denial of the natural life-cycle of beliefs. Because Jesus is Truth, I can safely navigate provisional truths that lead me closer to Truth. Because Jesus is also Way - lived in the context of Life.

For this reason, "Orthodoxy" has never been a very helpful idea to me - in the popular understanding, not in terms of "right praise" which really resonates. Not because I'm hell-bent on being unorthodox - no, most of my beliefs might well be pretty staid by most people's standards - but because of the sheer varieties of religious orthodoxies (with apologies to William James). Even within the Christian family, there are just so many to choose from. I think as we enter postmodernity and postchristendom, we're realizing that it's absurd to think we have to choose between 'Orthodoxy A' and 'Orthodoxy X' out of whole cloth; rather, we can, in the apostle Paul's words, hold fast to what is good and helpful, and disregard the rest.

History is a bath of blood. The Illiad is one long recital of how Diomedes and Ajax, Sarpedon and Hector killed. No detail of the wounds they made is spared us, and the Greek mind fed upon the story. Greek history is a panorama of jingoism and imperialism — war for war's sake, all the citizens being warriors. It is horrible reading — because of the irrationality of it all — save for the purpose of making "history" — and the history is that of the utter ruin of a civilization in intellectual respects perhaps the highest the earth has ever seen.

Those wars were purely piratical. Pride, gold, women, slaves, excitement were their only motives. In the Peloponesian war, for example, the Athenians ask the inhabitants of Melos (the island where the "Venus de Milo" was found), hitherto neutral, to own their lordship. The envoys meet, and hold a debate which Thucydides gives in full, and which, for sweet reasonableness of form, would have satisfied Matthew Arnold. "The powerful exact what they can," said the Athenians, "and the weak grant what they must." When the Meleans say that sooner than be slaves they will appeal to the gods, the Athenians reply, "Of the gods we believe and of men we know that, by a law of their nature, wherever they can rule they will. This law was not made by us, and we are not the first to have acted upon it; we did but inherit it, and we know that you and all mankind, if you were as strong as we are, would do as we do. So much for the gods; we have told you why we expect to stand as high in their good opinion as you." Well, the Meleans still refused, and their town was taken. "The Athenians," Thucydides quietly says, "thereupon put to death all who were of military age and made slaves of the women and children. They then colonized the island, sending thither five hundred settlers of their own."

…

Such was the gory nurse that trained soldiers to cohesiveness. We inherit the warlike type; and for most of the capacities of heroism that the human race is full of we have to thank this cruel history. Dead men tell no tales, and if there were any tribes of other type than this they have left no survivors. Our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow, and thousands of years of peace won't breed it out of us. The popular imagination fairly fattens on the thought of wars. Let public opinion once reach a certain fighting pitch, and no ruler can withstand it.

Although he is a pacifist, James admits that "militarism is the great preserver of our ideals of hardihood, and human life with no use for hardihood would be contemptible." Our most civically important virtues are crystallized in war. These virtues are, of course, present in peacetime, but "the strain is on them, being infinitely intenser in [it], makes war infinitely more searching as a trial. No ordeal is comparable to its winnowings. Its dread hammer is the welder of men into cohesive states, and nowhere but in such states can human nature adequately develop its capacity."

The militarists, contemplating the pacifist's utopia of a "sheep's paradise," are right to scoff: "No scorn, no hardness, no valor any more! Fie upon such a cattleyard of a planet!" Pacifists, then, have no small task before them. They must seek not only to quash the pugnacity displayed by all people throughout history but also find a way to encourage the virtues essential for national cohesion without the eminently unitive effects of war.

So long as antimilitarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of heat, so long they fail to realize the full inwardness of the situation. And as a rule they do fail. The duties, penalties, and sanctions pictured in the utopias they paint are all too weak and tame to touch the military-minded.

And now he comes to his point. Why shouldn't people be proud of their nation for reasons other than military? Are achievements in war the only sort that inspire patriotism? For example, shouldn't we feel the injustice of some people suffering due to no fault of their own while others live in ease due to no merit of their own? The fight against this sort of inequality could be a cause as worthy of our efforts as any military campaign. Here is James' proposal:

If now — and this is my idea — there were, instead of military conscription, a conscription of the whole youthful population to form for a certain number of years a part of the army enlisted against Nature, the injustice would tend to be evened out, and numerous other goods to the commonwealth would remain blind as the luxurious classes now are blind, to man's relations to the globe he lives on, and to the permanently sour and hard foundations of his higher life. To coal and iron mines, to freight trains, to fishing fleets in December, to dishwashing, clotheswashing, and windowwashing, to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke-holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youths be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas. They would have paid their blood-tax, done their own part in the immemorial human warfare against nature; they would tread the earth more proudly, the women would value them more highly, they would be better fathers and teachers of the following generation.

We would object now to the idea of a war against Nature, but what if we took James' idea in another direction? What if we had universal conscription of young people into public works projects instead of military conscription - an idea sometimes proposed by militarists? Our infrastructure is in serious need of repair and updating, as we heard again on the recently passed anniversary of the Minnesota bridge collapse. During the Depression era there were work relief programs like the CCC. Although it did not conscript laborers it might provide a model. Given my localist sympathies I would much rather that young people be conscripted into projects that would improve their home regions, but even an international program like the Peace Corps would not be unreasonable. These programs could serve to inspire the "martial virtues" while training young people in skills of construction rather than destruction. It would turn the militarist model on its head.

What do you think?

William James

William James was a pioneering American psychologist and philosopher trained as a medical doctor. William James wrote influential books on the young science of psychology, educational psychology, psychology of religious experience and mysticism, and the philosophy of pragmatism. William James was the brother of novelist Henry James and of diarist Alice James.

William James was the son of Henry James Sr., an independently wealthy and notoriously eccentric Swedenborgian theologian well acquainted with the literary and intellectual elites of his day. The intellectual brilliance of the James family milieu and the remarkable epistolary talents of several of its members have made them a subject of continuing interest to historians, biographers, and critics.

William James interacted with a wide array of writers and scholars throughout his life, including his godfather Ralph Waldo Emerson, as well as Horace Greeley, William Cullen Bryant, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Charles Peirce, Josiah Royce, George Santayana, Ernst Mach, John Dewey, W. E. B. Du Bois, Helen Keller, Mark Twain, Horatio Alger, Jr., James George Frazer, Henri Bergson, H. G. Wells, G. K. Chesterton, Sigmund Freud, Gertrude Stein, and Carl Jung.

William James, with his younger brother Henry James (who became a prominent novelist) and sister Alice James (who is known for her posthumously published diary), received an eclectic trans-Atlantic education, developing fluency in both German and French languages along with a cosmopolitan character. William James' family made 2 trips to Europe while he was still a child, setting a pattern that resulted in thirteen more European journeys during his life. William James' early artistic bent led to an early apprenticeship in the studio of William Morris Hunt in Newport, Rhode Island, but yielded in 1861 to scientific studies at Harvard University's Lawrence Scientific School.

In his early adulthood, William James suffered from a variety of physical ailments, including those of the eyes, back, stomach, and skin. William James was also subject to a variety of psychological symptoms which were diagnosed at the time as neurasthenia, and which included periods of depression during which he contemplated suicide for months on end. 2 younger brothers, Garth Wilkinson (Wilky) and Robertson (Bob), fought in the Civil War, but the other three siblings (William, Henry, and Alice) all suffered from periods of invalidism.

William James switched to medical studies at Harvard Medical School in 1864. William James took a break in the spring of 1865 to join Harvard's Louis Agassiz on a scientific expedition up the Amazon River, but aborted his trip after eight months, having suffered bouts of severe seasickness and mild smallpox. William James' studies were interrupted once again due to illness in April 1867. William James traveled to Germany in search of a cure and remained until November 1868. (During this period he began to publish, with reviews appearing in literary periodicals like the North American Review.) William James finally earned his M.D. degree in June 1869, but never practiced medicine. What he called his "soul-sickness" would only be resolved in 1872, after an extended period of philosophical searching. William James married Alice Gibbens in 1878.

William James' time in Germany proved intellectually fertile, helping him find that his true interests lay not in medicine but in philosophy and psychology. Later, in 1902 he would write: "I originally studied medicine in order to be a physiologist, but I drifted into psychology and philosophy from a sort of fatality. I never had any philosophic instruction, the first lecture on psychology I ever heard being the first I ever gave".

William James spent his entire academic career at Harvard. William James was appointed instructor in physiology for the spring 1873 term, instructor in anatomy and physiology in 1873, assistant professor of psychology in 1876, assistant professor of philosophy in 1881, full professor in 1885, endowed chair in psychology in 1889, return to philosophy in 1897, and emeritus professor of philosophy in 1907.

William James studied medicine, physiology, and biology, and began to teach in those subjects, but was drawn to the scientific study of the human mind at a time when psychology was constituting itself as a science. William James's acquaintance with the work of figures like Hermann Helmholtz in Germany and Pierre Janet in France facilitated his introduction of courses in scientific psychology at Harvard University. William James taught his first experimental psychology course at Harvard in the 1875-1876 academic year.

During his Harvard years, William James joined in philosophical discussions with Charles Peirce, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and Chauncey Wright that evolved into a lively group known as the Metaphysical Club by the early 1870s. Louis Menand speculates that the Club provided a foundation for American intellectual thought for decades to come.

Among William James' students at Harvard were such luminaries as Boris Sidis, Theodore Roosevelt, George Santayana, W.E.B. Du Bois, G. Stanley Hall, Ralph Barton Perry, Gertrude Stein, Horace Kallen, Morris Raphael Cohen, Alain Locke, C. I. Lewis, and Mary Calkins.

Following his January, 1907 retirement from Harvard, William James continued to write and lecture, publishing Pragmatism, A Pluralistic Universe, and The Meaning of Truth. William James was increasingly afflicted with cardiac pain during his last years. It worsened in 1909 while he worked on a philosophy text (unfinished but posthumously published as Some Problems in Philosophy). William James sailed to Europe in the spring of 1910 to take experimental treatments which proved unsuccessful, and returned home on August 18.

William James was one of the strongest proponents of the school of Functionalism in psychology and of Pragmatism in philosophy. William James was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research, as well as a champion of alternative approaches to healing. William James challenged his professional colleagues not to let a narrow mindset prevent an honest appraisal of those phenomena.

In an empirical study by Haggbloom et al using 6 criteria such as citations and recognition, William James was found to be the 14th most eminent psychologist of the 20th Century.

William James wrote voluminously throughout his life. A fairly complete bibliography of his writings by John McDermott is 47 pages long.

William James gained widespread recognition with his monumental Principles of Psychology (1890), 1200 pages in 2 volumes which took 12 years to complete. Psychology: The Briefer Course, was an 1892 abridgement designed as a less rigorous introduction to the field. These works criticized both the English associationist school and the Hegelianism of his day as competing dogmatisms of little explanatory value, and sought to re-conceive of the human mind as inherently purposive and selective.

William James defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer. Truth, he said, is that which works in the way of belief. "True ideas lead us into useful verbal and conceptual quarters as well as directly up to useful sensible termini. They lead to consistency, stability and flowing human intercourse " but " all true processes must lead to the face of directly verifying sensible experiences somewhere," he wrote.

William James' assertion that the value of a truth depends upon its use to the individual who holds it is known as pragmatism. Additional tenets of William James' pragmatism include the view that the world is a mosaic of diverse experiences that can only be properly understood through an application of "radical empiricism." Radical empiricism, distinct from everyday scientific empiricism, presumes that nature and experience can never be frozen for absolutely objective analysis, that, at the very least, the mind of the observer will affect the outcome of any empirical approach to truth since, empirically, the mind and nature are inseparable. William James' emphasis on diversity as the default human condition — over and against duality, especially Hegelian dialectical duality — has maintained a strong influence in American culture, especially among liberals, and his radical empiricism lies in the background of contemporary relativism. William James' description of the mind-world connection, which he described in terms of a "stream of consciousness," had a direct and significant impact on avant-garde and modernist literature and art.

In What Pragmatism Means, William James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in brief, that "truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it. Truth is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, assignable reasons." Richard Rorty claims that James did not mean to give a theory of truth with this statement and that we should not regard it as such. However, other pragmatism scholars such as Susan Haack and Howard Mounce do not share Rorty's instrumentalist interpretation of William James.

In The Meaning of Truth, William James speaks of truth in relativistic terms: "The critic's [sc., the critic of pragmatism] trouble...seems to come from his taking the word 'true' irrelatively, whereas the pragmatist always means 'true for him who experiences the workings.' "

William James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. William James would seek the meaning of 'true' by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if in the long run it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. William James was anxious to uncover what true beliefs amounted to in human life, what their "Cash Value" was, what consequences they led to. A belief was not a mental entity which somehow mysteriously corresponded to an external reality if the belief were true. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they guided us satisfactorily in this environment. In this sense the pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as biological fitness. If what was true was what worked, we can scientifically investigate religion's claim to truth in the same manner. The enduring quality of religious beliefs throughout recorded history and in all cultures gave indirect support for the view that such beliefs worked. William James also argued directly that such beliefs were satisfying — they enabled us to lead fuller, richer lives and were more viable than their alternatives. Religious beliefs were expedient in human existence, just as scientific beliefs were.

Will to Believe Doctrine
Main article: Will to Believe Doctrine
In William James's lecture of 1897 titled "The Will to Believe," William James defends the right to violate the principle of evidentialism in order to justify hypothesis venturing. Although this doctrine is often seen as a way for William James to justify religious beliefs, his philosophy of pragmatism allows him to use the results of his hypothetical venturing as evidence to support the hypothesis' truth. Therefore, this doctrine allows one to assume belief in God and prove its existence by what the belief brings to one's life.

William James did important work in philosophy of religion. In his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh he provided a wide-ranging account of The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902) and interpreted them according to his pragmatic leanings. Some of the important claims he makes in this regard:

Religious genius (experience) should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than religious institutions—since institutions are merely the social descendant of genius.

The intense, even pathological varieties of experience (religious or otherwise) should be sought by psychologists, because they represent the closest thing to a microscope of the mind—that is, they show us in drastically enlarged form the normal processes of things.

In order to usefully interpret the realm of common, shared experience and history, we must each make certain "over-beliefs" in things which, while they cannot be proven on the basis of experience, help us to live fuller and better lives.

The investigation of mystical experience was constant throughout the life of William James, leading him to experiment with chloral hydrate (1870), amyl nitrite (1875), nitrous oxide (1882), and even peyote (1896). William James claimed that it was only when he was under the influence of nitrous oxide that he was able to understand Hegel. William James concluded that while the revelations of the mystic hold true, they hold true only for the mystic; for others, they are certainly ideas to be considered, but can hold no claim to truth without personal experience of such.

William James is one of the 2 namesakes of the William James-Lange theory of emotion, which he formulated independently of Carl Lange in the 1880s. The theory holds that emotion is the mind's perception of physiological conditions that result from some stimulus. In William James' oft-cited example; it is not that we see a bear, fear it, and run. We see a bear and run, consequently we fear the bear. Our mind's perception of the higher adrenaline level, heartbeat, etc., is the emotion.

This way of thinking about emotion has great consequences for the philosophy of aesthetics. Here is a passage from his great work, Principles of Psychology, that spells out those consequences.

We must immediately insist that aesthetic emotion, pure and simple, the pleasure given us by certain lines and masses, and combinations of colors and sounds, is an absolutely sensational experience, an optical or auricular feeling that is primary, and not due to the repercussion backwards of other sensations elsewhere consecutively aroused. To this simple primary and immediate pleasure in certain pure sensations and harmonious combinations of them, there may, it is true, be added secondary pleasures; and in the practical enjoyment of works of art by the masses of mankind these secondary pleasures play a great part. The more classic one's taste is, however, the less relatively important are the secondary pleasures felt to be, in comparison with those of the primary sensation as it comes in. Classicism and romanticism have their battles over this point. Complex suggestiveness, the awakening of vistas of memory and association, and the stirring of our flesh with picturesque mystery and gloom, make a work of art romantic. The classic taste brands these effects as coarse and tawdry, and prefers the naked beauty of the optical and auditory sensations, unadorned with frippery or foliage. To the romantic mind, on the contrary, the immediate beauty of these sensations seems dry and thin. I am of course not discussing which view is right, but only showing that the discrimination between the primary feeling of beauty, as a pure incoming sensible quality, and the secondary emotions which are grafted thereupon, is one that must be made.

Why do we run away if we notice that we are in danger? Because we are afraid of what will happen if we don't. This obvious (and incorrect) answer to a seemingly trivial question has been the central concern of a century-old debate about the nature of our emotions.

It all began in 1884 when William James published an article titled "What Is an Emotion?" The article appeared in a philosophy journal called Mind, as there were no psychology journals yet. It was important, not because it definitively answered the question it raised, but because of the way in which William James phrased his response. William James conceived of an emotion in terms of a sequence of events that starts with the occurrence of an arousing stimulus {the sympathetic nervous system or the parasympathetic nervous system}; and ends with a passionate feeling, a conscious emotional experience. A major goal of emotion research is still to elucidate this stimulus-to-feeling sequence—to figure out what processes come between the stimulus and the feeling.

William James set out to answer his question by asking another: do we run from a bear because we are afraid or are we afraid because we run? William James proposed that the obvious answer, that we run because we are afraid, was wrong, and instead argued that we are afraid because we run:
Our natural way of thinking about... emotions is that the mental perception of some fact excites the mental affection called emotion, and that this latter state of mind gives rise to the bodily expression. My thesis on the contrary is that the bodily changes follow directly the PERCEPTION of the exciting fact, and that our feeling of the same changes as they occur is the emotion (called 'feeling' by Damasio).

The essence of William James' proposal was simple. It was premised on the fact that emotions are often accompanied by bodily responses (racing heart, tight stomach, sweaty palms, tense muscles, and so on; sympathetic nervous system) and that we can sense what is going on inside our body much the same as we can sense what is going on in the outside world. According to William James, emotions feel different from other states of mind because they have these bodily responses that give rise to internal sensations, and different emotions feel different from one another because they are accompanied by different bodily responses and sensations. For example, when we see William James' bear, we run away. During this act of escape, the body goes through a physiological upheaval: blood pressure rises, heart rate increases, pupils dilate, palms sweat, muscles contract in certain ways (evolutionary, innate defense mechanisms). Other kinds of emotional situations will result in different bodily upheavals. In each case, the physiological responses return to the brain in the form of bodily sensations, and the unique pattern of sensory feedback gives each emotion its unique quality. Fear feels different from anger or love because it has a different physiological signature {the parasympathetic nervous system for love}. The mental aspect of emotion, the feeling, is a slave to its physiology, not vice versa: we do not tremble because we are afraid or cry because we feel sad; we are afraid because we tremble and are sad because we cry.

One of the long-standing schisms in the philosophy of history concerns the role of individuals in social change.

One faction sees individuals ("heroes" as Thomas Carlyle called them) as the motive power of history, and the broader society as the page on which they write their acts. The other sees society as moving according to holistic principles or laws, and sees individuals as its more-or-less willing pawns. In 1880, William James waded into this controversy with "Great Men and Their Environment," an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly. William James took Carlyle's side, but without Carlyle's one-sided emphasis on the political/military sphere, upon heroes as the founders or overthrowers of states and empires.

"Rembrandt must teach us to enjoy the struggle of light with darkness," William James wrote. "Wagner to enjoy peculiar musical effects; Dickens gives a twist to our sentimentality, Artemus Ward to our humor; Emerson kindles a new moral light within us."

In 1909 William James published Expériences d'un Psychiste, a book which he relates many experiments that he had with the medium Leonora Piper. William James' first commentary about Piper, however, was published in Science:

In the trances of this medium, I cannot resist the conviction that knowledge appears which she has never gained by the ordinary waking use of her eyes and ears and wits.

William James gave more detailed informations about his first experiments with Piper in the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research:

I made Mrs. Piper's acquaintance in the autumn of 1885. My wife's mother, Mrs. Gibbens, had been told of her by a friend, during the previous summer, and never having seen a medium before, had paid her a visit out of curiosity. Mrs Piper returned with the statement that Mrs. P. had given her a long string of names of members of the family, mostly Christian names, together with facts about the persons mentioned and their relations to each other, the knowledge of which on her part was incomprehensible without supernormal powers. My sister-in-law went the next day, with still better results, as she related them. Amongst other things, the medium had accurately described the circumstances of the writer of a letter which she held against her forehead, after Miss G. had given it to her. The letter was in Italian, and its writer was known to but 2 persons in this country. [I may add that on a later occasion my wife and I took another letter from this same person to Mrs. P., who went on to speak of him in a way which identified him unmistakably again. On a third occasion, 2 years later, my sister-in-law and I being again with Mrs. P., she reverted in her trance to these letters, and then gave us the writer's name, which she said she had not been able to get on the former occasion.] But to revert to the beginning. I remember playing the esprit fort on that occasion before my feminine relatives, and seeking to explain, by simple considerations the marvellous character of the facts which they brought back. This did not, however, prevent me from going myself a few days later, in company with my wife, to get a direct personal impression. The names of none of us up to this meeting had been announced to Mrs. P., and Mrs. J. and I were, of course, careful to make no reference to our relatives who had preceded. The medium, however, when entranced, repeated most of the names of " spirits" whom she had announced on the 2 former occasions and added others. The names came with difficulty, and were only gradually made perfect. My wife's father's name of Gibbens was announced first as Niblin, then as Giblin. A child Herman (whom we had lost the previous year) had his name spelt out as Herrin. I think that in no case were both Christian and surnames given on this visit. But the facts predicated of the persons named made it in many instances impossible not to recognise the particular individuals who were talked about. We took particular pains on this occasion to give the Phinuit control no help over his difficulties and to ask no leading questions. In the light of subsequent experience I believe this not to be the best policy. For it often happens, if you give this trance-personage a name or some small fact for the lack of which he is brought to a standstill, that he will then start off with a copious flow of additional talk, containing in itself an abundance of " tests." My impression after this first visit was, that Mrs. P. was either possessed of supernormal powers, or knew the members of my wife's family by sight and had by some lucky coincidence become acquainted with such a multitude of their domestic circumstances as to produce the startling impression which she did. My later knowledge of her sittings and personal acquaintance with her has led me absolutely to reject the latter explanation, and to believe that she has supernormal powers.

Keep visiting: www.lifechums.com more Celebrities featuring Shortly .............

Anyway, if inspiration can come from the chance encounter, maybe the real question is how this benefit can be systematized. The reform of methodology and the questioning of assumptions reminded me of a couple of mathematician philosophers turned operations researchers I ran into in my dissertation work: West Churchman (right) and Russell Ackoff, who were students of Edgar A. Singer, who was a student of William James and a proponent of a little-known philosophy of science called “experimentalism” (which will be the subject of a talk at HSS this year by Alan Richardson; update: he's also on the PSA program, which is joint with HSS this year, talking about Churchman and Ackoff as well: good times).

Before their turn to OR around 1950, Churchman and Ackoff proposed establishing Institutes of Experimental Method or Methodology Departments in universities, which would train multi-disciplinary "methodologists" and subject current experimental methods to systematic scrutiny to make sure they made use of the most advanced theories and methods. They felt such extra-experimental scrutiny was necessary, because specialization threatened to cut scientists off from potentially important ways forward.

The institutes were supposed to have four sections: general methodology, mathematical statistics (which guarded against statistical fallacy), sampling techniques (which examined the validity of experimental presuppositions), and history of science. The history of science section was included bearing in mind that even though certain paths were taken over others in science, rejected paths were not necessarily invalidated and ought to be available for future work. Churchman and Ackoff turned to OR and "management science", because they saw it as a path for generalizing their philosophy beyond scientific work to all problems of management and decision. (And they later turned away from OR out of frustration, but that's another story--see my dissertation, or wait a couple years for the book!)

Bringing us back full-circle, clearly it is true that historians of science have the ability to inform current scientific methodology. But our ability seems to be incidental rather than systematic. More rigorous programs have been proposed in the past. In fact, Jon Agar was telling me a couple years ago that there have been other, similar attempts to create generalized disciplines of methodology. The main take-away point, it seems to me, is that it is always good for scientists to maintain a methodological vigilance, and to cultivate broader interests, whether historical or not

"Creativity is the willingness to think in unhabitual ways."  -William James, pioneering American psychologist and philosopher

MANAGING YOUR CREATIVITY- http://potentmind.com/  *******This video has some great tips on how to bring about inspiration and manage your creativity.  I've been meaning to create a montage of the people and things that inspire me and I think it's high time I get 'er done already.  :) *******

WORD OF THE DAY

XANADU

• \ZAN-uh-doo\ • noun

: an idyllic, exotic, or luxurious place

Example Sentence:

To Arthur, the beach house was a Xanadu, the perfect spot for the romantic tropical vacation he had dreamed of for years.

Did you know?

"In Xanadu did Kubla Khan / A stately pleasure-dome decree." Those lines are from the poem "Kubla Khan" (published in 1816) by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Coleridge's fantastic description of an exotic utopia fired public imagination and ultimately contributed to the transition of "Xanadu" from a name to a generalized term for an idyllic place. The Xanadu in the poem was inspired by Shang-tu, the summer residence of Mongolian general and statesman Kublai Khan (grandson of Genghis Khan). You might also recognize "Xanadu" as the name of the fantastic estate in Orson Welles's 1941 film Citizen Kane.

"XANADU" MOVIE TRAILER-OLIVIA NEWTON-JOHN AND MICHAEL BECK  *******I remember being absolutely OBSESSED with this movie when I was a young whipper snapper.  I would conjure up fantasies of magically coming through a wall (I thought that's what happened!) and roller skating while singing with my hair blowing in the breeze.   Then, I'd find the man of my dreams and we'd live happily ever after!  A bit far-fetched one may say, but it's just a fantasy!  Minus the wall part (no, I'm not crazy) I haven't given up hope of that fantasy becoming a reality.  Cheesy much?  You bet your sweet goodness it is!  ;) ******* 

One of the many quotes I like, and I'll share a few are these:

"There are no victories at bargain prices"  General Dwight D. Eisenhower

"You hit home runs not by chance, but by preparation"  Roger Maris

"Human beings can alter their lives by altering their attitudes"  William James

"Leadership is not a right -- it's a responsibility"  John Maxwell

"You can't build a reputation on what you're going to do"  Henry Ford

"There is only one you.  God wanted you to be you.  Don't you dare change just because you're outnumbered!" Charles(chuck) Swindoll

Have a Blessed Day!

2. Csak ma megpróbálok alkalmazkodni az adott helyzethez, és nem vágyaimhoz igazítani mindent. Úgy veszem családomat, üzleti ügyeimet és szerencsémet, ahogy jön, és én alkalmazkodok hozzájuk.

3. Csak ma törődni fogok testemmel. Megdolgoztatom, vigyázok rá, táplálom, nem élek vele vissza, és nem hanyagolom el, hogy tökéletesen engedelmeskedjen parancsaimnak.

4.Csak ma megpróbálom csiszolni az elmémet. Tanulok valami hasznosat. Nem leszek szellemileg tunya. Olvasok valamit, ami erőfeszítést, gondolkodást és figyelmet kíván.

5. Csak ma edzeni fogom a lelkemet háromféle módon; jót teszek valakivel és titokban tartom. Megcsinálok két dolgot, amihez nincs igazán kedvem, ahogy William James mondja, csak az edzés kedvéért.

6. Csak ma kedves leszek. Olyan jól fogok kinézni, ahogyan csak tudok, csinosan öltözködöm, halkan szólok, udvariasan viselkedem, bőkezű leszek a dicséretekkel, senkit sem bírálok, nem találok hibát semmiben, és nem próbálok meg senkit sem megrendszabályozni vagy megjavítani.

7. Csak ma megpróbálok csak a mai napnak élni, nem akarom életem minden gondját egyszerre megoldani. Tizenkét órán keresztül képes vagyok megtenni olyan dolgokat, amelyeken egy életen át képtelen lennék.

8. Csak ma programot készítek. Leírom, mit akarok csinálni minden egyes órában. Lehet, hogy nem tartom be, de meglesz. Ez megszabadít két nyűgtől. A sietségtől és a bizonytalanságtól.

9. Csak ma szakítok magamnak egy fél órát, és pihenni fogok. Ebben a fél órában néha Istenre fogok gondolni, hogy egy kicsit távlatokban is gondolkodjak.

10. Csak ma nem fogok félni, főleg attól nem, hogy boldog legyek, hogy élvezni tudjam a szépet, hogy szeressek és higgyem, hogy akiket szeretek viszontszeretnek.

(Dale Carnegie - Sikerkalauz 2)

Morality, practicality, emotions—religiosity—derives from objective states of consciousness, which are not in doubt, as they are part of the human experience. These mental objects cause us to react in ways every bit as strong, if not more powerful, than more tangibly sensory objects. In terms of pragmatics, "material sensations actually present may have a weaker influence on our action than ideas of remoter facts."

Divinity is always idealistic in the abstract never ideological. For the believer, this is a reciprocating attitude influenced by the determination of belief in divine beings, a matter purely of ideas, which cannot directly correspond to anything in the past history of a particular person: Objective idealism. However, there are also a number of abstract concepts equal in importance. These are qualities and states of being guaranteed attributes, the almighty; a means of making apprehendable truths higher than mere sense-perception affords. Such metaphysical potentialities, it is said, can not be the objects of knowledge because they do not have actual signification; they refer to no ascertainable and cannot said to either be or beyond existence. For purposes of practicality, one acts as though difference in conception as to what these may mean is fixed intuitively in determining what form they could take in the instance of particular circumstances. "The sentiment of reality can indeed attach itself so strongly to our object of belief that our whole life is polarized through and through, so to speak, by its sense of the existence of the thing believed in, and yet that thing, for purpose of definite description, can hardly be said to be present to our mind at all."

[that aether thing really didn't pan out]

The timeless abstractions of ideal philosophical concepts—truth, justness, the Good (pizza)—form the backround to which our recognition of facts adheres taking shape in. They allow us, as mental objects, to grasp the meaning of a subjective world and afford grounds for classification as a means to rationalize it. This must simply be granted as a fundamental truth of human experience; what they actually are, obviously, is quite controversial. But the "absolute determinability of our mind by abstractions" is as real as mere transitory objects of perception's sense. But more often it's easier to laud the achievements of science as if sprung from God (really, just what s/he left for us to see) and the pathetic fallacy abounds in "Laws of Nature" given intentionality.

Should one conceive of ability to sense 'the real' in one's psychical consciousness, an objective presence made manifest, that does entail greater attention to the modes and expressions of one's conscience—not Matt Damon to the Sister, 'Do it, do it and I'll fucking spank you!'—but by curiosity in sense of alert reality made sharper through substituting ideas for truth in proceeding infinitely, believed in spite of criticism and made stronger for addressing such: To arrive at the presence of unimaginable and vague abstraction.

The most immediate example of this phenomenon is that of hallucination in which the presence intuited constitutes "an undifferentiated sense of reality" but solely as the a-religious instance of this same experience, albeit one of folly. This can, at times, approach states of sublimity, quite a positive experience for the subject. They need not even be interpreted as experiences of the divine, though they of course can be, perhaps could have been; but the subject of mystical experience takes on a fully different character in analyzing its qualities. These span the spectrum from visualizations (if not, "visitations") to the fully subjective knowledge of connection with ideas and their referents. Medicine, however, tends not to lend itself to the non-quantifiable presence of objective states; even if these have saved far more lives than pills.

So even if it's not deluded apparitions, certain people hold their belief content as a personally sensible realism.

But no one can sustain "lively and difficult" faith uniform forever; sometimes things start to go south and even then everyone may know how it's like to feel swept up and awash in the direct recognition of actual truth. The always verging on not quite having arrived ("meaning: 'God is with us'") presence immanent of a spiritual feeling—which as stated before need not derive solely from traditional belief in god—a form of perception beyond visibly testable evidence to know.

This is most often called a variety of mystical conception when it is not of a particularly lasting duration of which feeling endures. In particular cases these need not even be prefaced with suggestions of the transition to inspired state. This does, of course, consist of feeling oneness in the egotism's melting self away that gives rises to the awareness of deeper, a more rich and fully sensible meaning by which one communes with a universal entity beyond ordinary experience to such extent its absence of all time would make meaning away. Or the experience need not be quite so abstract often taking the form of practical impetus to care of one's self in habit or thought, practices of various formal devotions, it's commitment, derived from a deeply held conviction of their innate and goodly worth sprung of forceful impressions in the mind. Their differences, though vast, are comprehended from within the realm of a non-delusional (because entirely subjective) process in order to arrive at total synthes's of thought as felt in one's metaphorical relation to a sense of divine purpose, intention or significance in excess of the self but which is, nevertheless, wholly contained within it even if this is not the belief which is held (i.e. one may imagine, and even hold God's own platonic firm conviction in the realitly of non-verifiable mental states without these being subjected to delusional interpretation) as it were, a factual occurrence.

People have a capacity for conceiving abstractly, imagine!, which guarantees its own belief in certain truths. Things need not be picturable, or even things, in order for us to grasp the essence of their idea mentally. It is a sense developed with familiarizing intimacy over time in which two beings come to associate with one an-other while remaining their own stable identity reinforced by the unforgetting image of truth proposed of their divination to each either's reality. "They are as convincing to those who have them as any direct sensible experiences can be, and they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are." Those who deny, or refuse to acknowledge the possibility of experiencing, these sublimated states of life-as-force generally tend to object to any and every occurrence of their expression; the motivation for evil, however, remains a bottomless chasm. Rationalism does have its place in mediating experience and determining the truth from its appearance, even in cases of religious and/or its mystical incarnations; but you'd better be able to justify that with recourse to what is practicably logical by means of a damn fine explanation from abstract principles, some definable facts of senses' perception, a way of mitigating the copiousness of such acts, inferentially, some method to make sense of conjectures formed thereby: Otherwise your 'rationalism' is really just relativistic under Enlightened-'meant' cover of false positivism's tyranny—at best only a really aestheticizing logical construct bearing no relation whatsoever to the real world except under incredibly controlled circumstances which are a major problem to make adhere to your hypotheses. "The truth is that in the metaphysical and religious sphere, articulate reasons are cogent for us only when our inarticulate feelings of reality have already been impressed in favor of the same conclusion."

So to review: Religious experience is the solemn and quintessentially distinctive form of joy in self-surrender derived from its sensibility that the various configurations can never be fully prescripted a priori because, in its relation to the universe (if not universal divinity Almighty—whether or not made flesh), the actual totality of religious experience is far too vast for one human being to fully conceive. However, thereupon it follows that, although impossible to fully uncover in all its knowable depths, therefore the motivation for reflection of the religious and their modal conceptions of reality is oriented not towards the end of systematic or ultimately definable knowledge with which one might seek to classify and judge the various mystical empiricities as subjective rationales of human mentalities and acts, but merely as the more worthily practical means to derive some solace from infinity's divine and realizing transcendence—going afield of construed and present categories beyond definitions of sense—in order to arrive at the true appearance of one's metaphysical self, soul related to the universal all.

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture_III

There however remains a gulf between the institutional and personal sides of religion. Formal concerns of doctrine and precsriptions of practice, devotion comprise the former of which their latter involves in the human equation dispositions of attitude, moral and feelings of despair, unfulfillment. These are interpersonal and private between one soul and another, god. The philsophy of religion ought appropriately confine itself to the latter; for this is the sole aspect of religion questionable in terms of its social character (i.e. it isn't true by definition with reference to its own rules of theological speculation); there's room for a believer and even one not of their faith to discuss and debate over these experiences.

Beyond a simple morality, the religious subjectivity goes deeper than institutions because spirituality must always function on a personal level of communication with the divine. Sociologically, piety is rooted in cult and magical charm; but these are primal urges of a generally archaic nature. Religion then is, in fact, the actions and states of mind taken individually of people in relation to themselves contemplating 'what is divine'? This is the source of which theology, philosophy and ideology comes to draw from itself. Since functional definition which temporarily fix a working sense to their term can be useful so long as one recalls their arbitarily assigned value, this religious meaning is not dogmatic. And they can be "religious" but also free from positing traditional ideas of God to exist.

Facts are subject to changing circumstance; the only one that's not is that certain ideas of them aren't. Sometimes dualist oppositions are the truth of the matter. They tell me god loves and also justice. Eventually your innate character must reveal itself; apparently because it's there and you can't forever hide. If you both are and do right, that is true, attains religious sentiment; jury's still out on " highest happiness" [I'll forego requisite pot joke]. These are the defintion of blessedness (which is a more permanent and achievable state than 'happy'). Certain obligations of right, that of choice, being good and doing great are all a form of the almighty, wisdom and expressions of that fact attain a timeless character so long as they are of pure intent and meaning. Even the muslims dig Christ; not to mention Judaic Christmas Eve [Emerson really was the prototypical American: You have to be as open-minded as zealous, brilliant without really working at it—treat all speech as scripted, your writings like you speak—crazier than a cat in a shithouse, go be highly esteemed]!

Religion as a reaction to life is the sense, beyond existence, to the paradoxical sense of immanent presence everyone possess to a degree. Even seemingly non-religious reactions are often related in such was as to class them religiously, though they—technically speaking—are outside of this category of experience. The stoical sense of pragmatists or rationalism, for example, though including an ethics and an ideology, is similar, though hardly religion. Accordingly there is nothing wrong in disposing oneself to mutually satisfy seemingly contradictory dictates through creatively conceiving of a problem's particular method of solution. The element of irreverence found in good humour is not improper when oriented to make light of nature's universal:  'We are resigned in advance to losing the interest on our investments of virtue, but we wish not to appear ridiculous by having counted on them too securely.'

But people do agree 'religion' does always intend seriousness in the universality of meaning; the gravity to silence inanity and sharp wit together at once (though no one likes it equally when too weighty and taxing of depressing complaint). "There must be something solemn, serious, and tender about any attitude which we denominate religious." Divinity does not inspire cursing or jokes.

Trying to systematize terminology of religious understanding distorts the subjective nature of the experience to be learned of empirically. Heirarchy of the holy ought not over-define boundaries "and it is everywhere a question of amount and degree." They are beyond doubt in dealing with what can only be called as such. But tend to be evidenced more in the extreme instance of complex and touching submission to grace. A matter of personal religion, in fact (though the sentiment is innately human).

At heart, religion and its morality is a matter of accepting the universe (in philosophy, this is a question of determining its conditional existence and modes of representation). Dull submission is forsaken in favor of glad peacefulness of enthusiasm. There do, however, result two general ways of this in application, namely, the detachment of the stoic and the happy suffering of the saint [think of Mason & Dixon]. It's a critical matter to try and overcome that apparent split. 'And so accept everything which happens, even if it seem disagreeable, because it leads to this, the health of the universe and to the prosperity and felicity of Zeus."I choose rather to be a pilgrim upon the earth with thee, than without thee to possess heaven. Where thou art, there is heaven; and where thou art not, behold there death and hell.' "The essence of religious experiences, the thing by which we finally must judge them, must be that element or quality in them which we can meet nowhere else." But in the intensity of expression, philsophy and religions come to look indistinguishable: At heart it comes down to energy, its direction and motivations.

The ecstacy of a religious-type rapture, that "is the result of the excitement of a higher kind of emotion," in whose throes one's own will ceases to have any valid relevance. The powerless and despairing don't care much to hear of personal will and trying; they want someone to console with the reassurance that universe's divine will both knows how to understand and keep you safe. "Well, we are all such helpless failures in the last resort." True, religious types know the state of mind that is silence in awe's respect. Not as a continual act of repressing intention, but of relaxing breathes too deep and present meant to last: Without fright.

Emotions. Are. Not. Rational: They're relational too. They can be analyzed according to their effects, but not ultimately in terms of meaning, means, motivation. "Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the Subject's range of life." Religion thus is made the dimension of added meaning to emotion; a context which gives their expression form in its power, so to speak: Whose struggle's end represents our freedom.

Some people, no doubt, are wholly lacking the awareness of this sense; but deep down there is some knowledge of this truth, as this most keen sense—that of human feeling—is present, in degrees, amongst us all. "This sort of happiness in the absolute and everlasting is what we find nowhere but in religion." Even every culture has some form of worship to unite personal with communality. Laughter can be seen as an outgrowth of this drive. Whenever the response to adversity has taken shape as the expanded form of joy or hope in one's own soul is the definition of religious. This is not at all purely escapism because it does not deny or ignore the challenges, choosing instead to meet their evil head-on. Perhaps a societal means of preserving life through faith. Religious individuals are not purely all happy and just, rather, they are able to maintain a higher consciousness of fulfillment which moderates a "lower unhappiness" held itself in check. "No other emotion than religious emotion can bring [one] to this peculiar pass."

If you think that having to consider it in depth such like this makes it mean less, perhaps you might read—again.

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture_II

A psychological explanation of the will to religion, in terms of its subject, is best done with reference to those documents prepared by the most accomplished and expressively descriptive authors of the subjective experience to reveal their idea of motivation. Religion and philosophy do not immediately lend themselves to speculation in each other's logic, either synchronic or historically. But both can be thought of in terms diachronically and of descriptive questions in significance. The former is of a fairly ascertainable, factual nature; the other requires theoretical framework needed to orient its various details observed in order to form a spiritual judgment (rather than the existential one). So they both lend themselves variously to differing forms of judging.

The proper treatment of the matter lends itself to the original feelings experienced which are the foundation for more widespread manifestations of experience, those passionate about their religion. Now any existential examination into the conditions of religion's experiences must also have recourse to the feelings of the masses. Oftentimes people are averse to seeing an intellectual treatment of something they hold dear; conversely, the intellectualizing mind tends to compare objects as if of a class. This becomes complicated infinitely when handling an object which is both important and unique. From there are causes assigned according to recognizable traits. But people who tend to make things all question of historical origin and existence inspire the contempt of their arrogance—in belief of such as sole cause—as well as that they threaten one's subjective mental state by means of their constant, equivocal negation in reducing the totality of reality experience to their preferred form.

There are always those who wish to denigrate the sacred and pious by pointing out it comes of humble origins: The psychopaths who killed and torture Christ, for example. Our expressions and metaphors must, especially in abstract matters of religion, derive from somewhere immediate so that, when appropriate, their new sense may be applied to one's daily life but also spiritually. However, on the supposed link essential to conceptions of religious sentiment as an outgrowth of sexuality, recommended by its novelty; as if one's spiritual growth were innately akin to that of an adolescent reaching the age of sexual maturity. This elides the mental development of the individual in the formative period. The interpretation of any religion thus occurs within the context of a consciousness of the religious (i.e. it must remain a phenomenological process of empirical affairs).

Mental states are not subject to knowledge like doubtable facts.

In deferring all questions of psychological activity to the facts of organic, testable matter the reduction reaches the absurdity of denying, eventually, in some way we are conscious; or casts doubt on the assertions of sanity for anyone opposed. The simple fact is that existential questions are insufficient for describing answers to metaphysical categories of experience. But pleading all states of mind have a physiological basis, that they therefore cannot be of a great value spiritually or for one's mind, is to impose arbitrary norms of pseudo-judgment upon a non-commensurate mode of understanding which leads to self-contradiction in the extreme application of negating abstraction. So materialism as well, though useful for ascertaining certain facts, is not the end of truth.

The proper approach for dealing with spiritual subjectivity is always with reference to a pragmatic goal of internal or external description. When these break down or become over-complicated it is best to look at one's history in order to arrive at a contextual understanding. However, the relegation of any idiosyncrasy to apparent instance of aberrant illness itself misses this point in looking at the behavior and not into its effects in terms of themselves and surrounding facts. Basically, if your theories guiding practicality cause one to draw more inferences than are warranted to explain something which could be discoverable in less complicating, unfamiliar terms—for the sake of logical consistency—one has crossed into delusion in considering that theories and beliefs are the sole constituent element of reality: Those of a mind's healthy constitution prefer rather to address the statements in argument rather than impugn the mental capacity, neuroses or character of whose arguments one hopes to refute.

Being immediately bright, open-minded and reasonable, helpful but moral—philosophical—are noble enough for theoretical practices.

Because 'empiricism' is a kind of theory too. Positivists want best to be right by excluding all error; this is, to be sure, insanity since one is incapable of conceiving all the variable possibilities in complex realife situtations: Just knowing where 'it' comes from, or even how it went before you got there to look at, does not guarantee your conclusions as correct even if you've always been right before. The difference of course lies in whether differences are elided to destructive, immediate ends or being addressed sensitively in order to build anew upon foundations from the past. Origins are only relevant in how they work relating to the whole of which they are, admittedly often synecdoche, but a part; hence the affiliation of pragmatism to empiricists. Even DesCartes had problems distinguishing between his genius, an evil one, god's. But if you believe in Christ, some prophet, even God: I doubt they'll argue against.

Religious life, assuming adherence to its moral foundation, ought to be judged according to its results, solely. But the capacity to do this with sensitivity to context presupposes comprehension of its existential conditions (i.e. "what set of circumstances made possible development of this faith &/or in this particular way (instead of some contra-factual other)?"). Well, first you've got to want to know and next is the totality of picture derived from looking at phenomena in both real and more normative, then prospective modalities—if not, actualities—of deviant or supranormal instances. "To understand a thing rightly we need to see it both out of its environment and in it, and to have acquaintance with the whole range of its variations."

Especially capable individuals often share many traits common with total psychopaths; but one must not defer to merely facile,  metaphorical equivocation in collapsing the distinction: As with religious feeling and philosophical argument; but most schiz's are not the most particularly penetrating of intellect (the brightest among them are most studied in penetration of a sorts, but in a relentlessly focused way that excludes all but the most immediate, 'intended' goal).  Sensitive people are extremely susceptible to observation and sentiment, but are often unable to re-assess their assumptions and can persist, for it, in error. Sometimes you get a genuine genius who is also a total and raving nutbag; ol' W.J. here seems to suggest these are the types most likely to make it on A & E - Biography. Maybe he's advertising his wiki-?

One might claim all religious experience is derived from a mass delusion, even if God were to come down and approve some faith or belief.—since that's basically what Christians say was done. It is impossible for any mortal creation to conceptually encompass the entire universality of Truth. You have to be a little crazy to have emotions and perceive, observe moral standards because these are non-logical; so if every other aspect of life is based around some locus of rationality, you're going to end up pretty far off from either of those. They may even be the a-rational foundation of the love for ideas or of that which is beyond physicality (metaphysics) and the nature of religious experience (mysticism): You have to use your neuroses to get around themselves. A wider concept of context is most salutory toward that end.

en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Varieties_of_Religious_Experience/Lecture_I

Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task. -- William James

Racism is a curious issue because self-hate is also a twisted form of a desire for certainty and security. For example, there is quite a bit of self-hate on part of Asians raised in Western society (or having lived in the West for as long as they remember). In particular, they internalize the images of Asians by whites and not only begin to act like that, but hate themselves for it. Having witnessed this phenomenon personally, and amongst Asian females mostly, I admit that it is quite curious (since blacks and Hispanics don't exhibit this self-racism), because self-hate is also grounded in certainty; in a dogmatic belief that one is inherently inferior to someone else, and the more one copies that superior human, the further one will travel in life. Certainty, therefore, is dogmatism not only in things that are good, but things that are bad as well.

And what of my own certainty? I'm no nationalist. There is no specific pride in my Chinese origins (there are many who a proud to be Chinese because they are of Chinese blood. I'm not one of them). But nor would I prefer to be American, or Spanish, or Japanese. Why?

If I wished I was of another origin, that would imply I thought something about me was missing as an Asian Chinese. And because I am a human being as it is, nothing is missing to begin with.

Still, there's the cultural biases, the negativity of the media and society that continues to favour the dominant class (white males), the risk of internalizing these negative images, etc., but if I copped out on my current humanity simply because of these unscrupulous realities, doesn't that make me a coward? Doesn't that make the Chinaman worse than the limey?

But enough about sociology and Western society. What of my lifeblood, religion? I am not certain if everything in the Buddhist tradition should necessarily be adhered to dogmatically for all eternity. In fact, some of it I think is kind of strange. But as William James wrote, the most fulfilling religious experiences come from a person who is of a 'sick soul'. The sick soul is someone who sees something fundamentally wrong with the world; potentially leading to depression and a view that evil saturates existence. James believed that the only way for a sick soul to cure itself is to undergo a powerful mystical experience, or religious conversion. He argues these so-called "twice born" souls turn out to be the most healthy in the end, since they have seen life from both perspectives.

The only certain 'certainty' I have, then, is that when I was young, I possessed a 'sick soul'. I am grateful for that, because it led me to a more authentic life of experiencing life and religion.

Oh, and the certainty of the benevolent aid of the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas... that's a pretty powerful certainty of mine too. ;-)

Postscript: I’ve also noticed a disturbing trend in which many Asian guys are posting tons of photos of themselves and the white girls they’ve dated around various sites. As proud as I am that my relations with white girls, is this really necessary on our part? Do we really need to play the part of the ‘underdog’, or can we be satisfied with our identity, and our identity alone?

Sciousness
by Jonathan Bricklin, editor

A review by Jerry Katz

Eirini Press is a new publisher of nonduality books, filling the niche of the Western contribution. Sciousness is their only title at this time. If Sciousness exemplifies, in both content and design, the quality of their forthcoming books, Eirini Press is positioned for serious success.

Beyond "The Varieties of Religious Experience"

Those who have enjoyed James's The Varieties of Religious Experience, will discover what James could not talk about in that series of lectures: the truth of "pure experience" or nondual awareness. The following quotation is an example of about how far James could go in "Varieties" toward approaching nonduality:

"It is evident that from the point of view of their psychological mechanism, the classic mysticism and these lower mysticisms spring from the same mental level, from that great subliminal or transmarginal region of which science is beginning to admit the existence, but of which so little is really known."

"Varieties" was a series of lectures delivered in 1901-1902. In 1890, James first suggested the nonduality thesis but did not develop it until 1904. This book collects James's nondual writings published during 1904 -1905, with short writings from 1890 and 1912. The intended audience is students, scholars, readers of Western philosophy as well as followers of the literature of nonduality.

Sciousness

If sciousness sounds to you like "suchness," that's the point. James recognized that nondual experience knows no "with-suchness," only suchness, or pure experience, or the essence of Zen. Con-sciousness is suchness accompanied by the sense of "I," or a "me," a "myself." A great effort is made in this book to describe the "I."

Radical Empiricism

James called his nondualism radical empiricism. His empiricism is radical because it absorbs what is directly experienced and ALL that is directly experienced, including unifying experiences and nondual experience.

He brought ordinary empiricism up to speed by showing that nonseparateness is to be included, along with separateness, along with collectionism and abstraction as part of a description of reality.

In that effort, James brought Rationalism down to earth by showing that nonseparateness, unity, or Truth is not a separate order of reality eventually requiring corrective agencies of unification.

A Definitive Anthology

In Sciousness, Jonathan Bricklin has constructed a definitive anthology that conveys completeness and unity in the presentation of William James's nondual expression. This work is driven by intellectual argument and is based in James's confession of nondual knowing. It is elevated by elements of charm and poetry which arise out of the anthology's design and the writings by all the three authors. Most importantly, this work is founded in Bricklin's understanding of what nonduality is.

This is mainly a collection of James's writings. The book opens with its crowning achievement, without which James's nondual writings on their own would not likely be published for a broad audience of philosophy and spirituality readers. The book's crown is Bricklin's article, Sciousness and Con-sciousness, which introduces and analyzes James's nondual work, making it readily understandable.

The article is followed by six writings by James. The book ends with an article on radical empiricism by Theodore Flournoy, one of the few contemporaries of James who understood and appreciated his thesis, and which served in its day as a crowning (if little known) achievement on behalf of James.

Thus the anthology is balanced: James's writings are located centrally, flanked the writings of Bricklin and Flournoy. The entryways of the book consist of the preface, in which Bricklin elegantly delivers the nugget that James prepared the way for quantum theory expositions on nonduality and for Western seekers, students, and teachers of nonduality; and six pages of an Eastern nondual confession by Seng-t'san (Sosan), Third Zen Patriarch. The exit is a quotation by Rilke.

Zen meets William James

The Seng-t'san selection, On Believing in Mind (Hsin-Hsin-Ming), is a bowing to the East prior to the reader's turning to the West. Most readers and knowers of nonduality will be led into the Western mode of nondual writing through the Eastern description: "All things are the same at their core / but clinging to one and discarding another / Is living in illusion."

Or is it as simple as a bow and a turn to the West? In this book, East and West are not so separate. The turn is not from East to West, but from an emphasis on Eastern to an emphasis on Western thought and influence. Bricklin points out that D.T. Suzuki alerted his teacher Kitaro Nishida to James's writing and Nishida used James's phrase "pure experience" in his scholarly writings intended to bring East and West closer. Suzuki himself is well known as a bringer of Zen to the West. Martha Ramsey has pointed out to me that Zen and Buddhism rode into Western minds and hearts upon literary steeds of Romantic and American Transcendentalist traditions. Bricklin himself extracts the Zen nature of James's nondual writings and in the process he uses a Zen which itself was probably influenced by William James. That is, a Zen that is perhaps thinly infused by James is brought to today to explain James.

Show me the nonduality

How nondual was William James? That's what today's audience wants to know. People today can read a few words and detect whether someone is speaking with authenticity or parroting someone else. Listen and decide for yourself:

"If the passing thought be the directly verifiable existent which no school has hitherto doubted it to be, then that thought is itself the thinker, and psychology need not look beyond."

"...things and thought are not at all fundamentally heterogeneous, but are made of one and the same stuff, a stuff which one cannot define as such, but only experience, and which one can call, if one wishes, the stuff of experience in general."

"I believe that consciousness, as it is commonly represented, either as an entity, or as pure activity, but in any case as fluid, unextended, diaphanous, devoid of all content of its own, but directly self-knowing - spiritual, in short -, I believe, I say, that this consciousness is a pure chimera, and that the sum of concrete realities which the word consciousness should cover deserves a quite different description."

"The instant field of the present is at all times what I call the `pure' experience. ... If the world were then and there to go out like a candle, it would remain truth absolute and objective, for it would be `the last word,' would have no critic, and no one would ever oppose the thought in it to the reality intended."

"The instant field of the present is always experience in its `pure' state, plain unqualified actuality, a simple that, as yet undifferentiated into thing and thought, and only virtually classifiable as objective fact or as someone's opinion about fact."

Here James is on verge of refining "pure experience" into "pure silence:"
"Whatever differing contents our minds may eventually fill a place with, the place itself is a numerically identical content of the two minds, a piece of common property in which, through which, and over which they join. The receptacle of certain of our experiences being thus common, the experiences themselves might some day become common also. If that day ever did come, our thoughts would terminate in a complete empirical identity, there would be an end, so far as those experiences went, to our discussions about truth. No points of difference appearing, they would have to count as the same." Thirteenth century mystic Jnaneshvar (translated by Swami Abhayananda) echoes:

After such a discourse,
That speech is wise
Which drinks deeply of silence.

James's approach was soft

James did not confess his knowings and leave them at that. Not without lengthy philosophical explanation and demonstration. Rather than simply state the way things are - and he knew - he would soften his confessions with phrases such as, "I believe," "I conclude," "I should like to convey," "I feel," "I say," "I am convinced." If someone uses those phrases today, they are deemed halfway up the mountain, even if they are not. "James theorized about pure experience sciousness more than he described instances of it," Bricklin writes.

Were James preaching to a congregation, the language would have been different. There is a sense that James wanted to simply be the preacher and tell it the way it is: In this passage he comes close: "I am as confident as I am of anything that, in myself, the stream of thinking (which I recognize emphatically as a phenomenon) is only a careless name for what, when scrutinized, reveals itself to consist chiefly of the stream of my breathing." Here too: "While still pure, or present, any experience - mine, for example, of what I write about in these very lines - passes for `truth.' The morrow may reduce it to `opinion.'" However, James asserts that this knowing of `truth' is valid: "When the whole universe seems only to be making itself valid and to be still incomplete (else why its ceaseless changing?), why, of all things, should knowing be exempt?"

There's a sense that James wants to leap from declaring his confidence to declaring the truth that he knows. In fact, Bricklin leaps for James - or let's just say he infers -- wonderfully and memorably in his article.

The limits of philosophy

James called philosophy an "ugly study" since if offered no "sublime and simple" Ultimate Reality. Bricklin says, "James never developed his philosophy of pure experience sciousness beyond brief passages and essays. To do so would have made it ugly."

William Samuel, who wrote and taught during the 60s-80s, was himself blunt about philosophy: "God would be a sadist if one's saving grace depended on a detailed knowledge of philosophy. What kind of god would require continual delving into the abstruce and arcane lore of mysticism or metaphysics as a passport to a Reality that is already ONLY and unchallenged?"

The limitlessness of philosophy - direct path

William James offers a direct path nondual teaching. Dennis Waite says in his book Enlightenment, The Path Through the Jungle, that the direct path begins "with one's own experience, and tests one's assumptions against the simplicity of this experience in the moment. It examines the world, body and mind, showing through one's experience how they are nothing other than the awareness, which is the Self." Self is James's "pure experience."

Waite says "The direct-path approach is characterized by an uncompromising, logical approach to the truth (and is) most suitable for those of a philosophical bent."

Waite quotes Sri Atmananda, a teacher of direct path in its purest form: "(the direct path) is removal of untruth by arguments, leaving over the Truth absolute as the real Self."

Though I would not call James's writings the purest direct path teaching, they are historically significant and wondrous to read, considering the the audience for whom they were intended.

Conclusion

In the 60s and 70s, many seekers of spiritual truth learned about mysticism and found affirmation of their nondual intuitions within William James's book, The Varieties of Religious Expression. Now we can discover that James was a nondualist afterall. Sciousness is a superb anthology, the best possible book imaginable for the discovery of the nondual William James.

Sciousness
by Jonathan Bricklin, editor

today:

writing about the "higher and wider universe of abstract ideas" he says "Such ideas, and others equally abstract (abstract and essential goodness, beauty, strength, significance, justice), form the background for all facts, the fountain-head of all the possibilities we conceive of. They give its 'nature,' as we call it, to every special thing. Everything we know is "what' it is by sharing in the nature of one of these abstractions. We can never look directly at them, for they are bodiless and featureless and footless, be we grasp all other things by their means, and in handling the real world we should be stricken with helplessness in just so far forth as we might lose these mental objects, these adjectives and adverbs and predicates and heads of classification and conception" (56)

A marvelous articulation of the sense, when experiencing (what shall we call it?) joy or pleasure that seems like it must be involved with something more than merely the thing that brings joy or pleasure, of the larger thing behind it. Look, I can't even get close enough to look at it askance.

"Quando você precisa tomar uma decisão e não toma, está tomando a decisão de não fazer nada."

Inté