*1. "But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?"*
What does James mean by spiritual significance? Also, spiritual significance to whom?
*2. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."*
This seems to me to sum up James' position on how to determine value of religious ideas. But what makes a fruit desirable or not? How do we tell between good and bad (or useful or non-useful) fruits? Religion is one of the main things that claims to offer judgments on whether fruits themselves are good or bad.
*3. "In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions...Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."*
What logic and experiment can test religious opinions? Also, what are we testing religious opinions for? Truth seems out. Perhaps James would say usefulness? Then, it seems desirable to outline a set of desirable fruits. See (2).
What does he mean by "immediate luminousness" or "philosophical reasonableness"?
--Beth
Galatians 5:22-23
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,23 gentleness, self-control; against such there is no law.
On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Elizabeth Topczewski bethtop@gmail.comwrote:
*1. "But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?"*
What does James mean by spiritual significance? Also, spiritual significance to whom?
*2. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."*
This seems to me to sum up James' position on how to determine value of religious ideas. But what makes a fruit desirable or not? How do we tell between good and bad (or useful or non-useful) fruits? Religion is one of the main things that claims to offer judgments on whether fruits themselves are good or bad.
*3. "In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions...Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."*
What logic and experiment can test religious opinions? Also, what are we testing religious opinions for? Truth seems out. Perhaps James would say usefulness? Then, it seems desirable to outline a set of desirable fruits. See (2).
What does he mean by "immediate luminousness" or "philosophical reasonableness"?
--Beth
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Thoughts:
1. We can take the prevalence of a religion as some sort of weak hint to its usefulness. People presumably get some value out of something that they devote time and other resources to.
2. We can examine the uses which religious people claim to get out their religion. Such accounts seem to be fairly common? The verse that Ruth posted is a good example of such an "emic" account. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic:
"The emic approach investigates how local people think" (Kottak, 2006): How they perceive and categorize the world, their rules for behavior, what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things. "The etic (scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures impartially. When using the etic approach, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she considers important."
). Wikipedia doesn't explain it well in that paragraph, but emic accounts are often incredibly valuable. If anyone has ever been to the "Pacific Spirits" exhibit at the Field Museum, that's a pretty cool example of an emic account: http://fieldmuseum.org/happening/exhibits/pacific-spirits
3. Having some sort of unified framework with which to evaluate everything is itself a pretty useful use for religion.
On 12/15/13, Elizabeth Topczewski bethtop@gmail.com wrote:
*1. "But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?"*
What does James mean by spiritual significance? Also, spiritual significance to whom?
*2. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."*
This seems to me to sum up James' position on how to determine value of religious ideas. But what makes a fruit desirable or not? How do we tell between good and bad (or useful or non-useful) fruits? Religion is one of the main things that claims to offer judgments on whether fruits themselves are good or bad.
*3. "In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions...Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."*
What logic and experiment can test religious opinions? Also, what are we testing religious opinions for? Truth seems out. Perhaps James would say usefulness? Then, it seems desirable to outline a set of desirable fruits. See (2).
What does he mean by "immediate luminousness" or "philosophical reasonableness"?
--Beth
It seems like James is saying (re: Beth's quotes) that even if someone is mentally unstable, that does not necessarily mean that their ideas are wrong (or, in pragmatese, useless?). Could James be subtly defending his own ideas despite his mental difficulties? But the point is well made. Typically we tend to dismiss the ideas of "crazy" people, but in fact they can often have ideas of great value for the rest of us. (In church today we discussed John the Baptist, who no doubt was considered crazy by many, and would be today as well should he reappear.)
Does James advocate dispensing with the idea of truth? That doesn't seem very useful : ) : ).
The "emic" and "etic" ideas are interesting...people often talk in "local" terms without realizing that someone of another culture - or subculture, such as in the U.S. - would have no idea what they are talking about. On the other hand, if we were to take such concepts as love, joy and peace, etc., aren't they universally valued? Not sure if they can truly be called "emic." The concept of "etic" seems to imply an "impartial" observer...can "emic" and "etic" overlap? E.g., it's possible to study another culture, such as Native Americans, and learn to love the people and (some of) their ways.
On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 11:18 PM, Eric Purdy epurdy@uchicago.edu wrote:
Thoughts:
- We can take the prevalence of a religion as some sort of weak hint
to its usefulness. People presumably get some value out of something that they devote time and other resources to.
- We can examine the uses which religious people claim to get out
their religion. Such accounts seem to be fairly common? The verse that Ruth posted is a good example of such an "emic" account. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic:
"The emic approach investigates how local people think" (Kottak, 2006): How they perceive and categorize the world, their rules for behavior, what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things. "The etic (scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures impartially. When using the etic approach, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she considers important."
). Wikipedia doesn't explain it well in that paragraph, but emic accounts are often incredibly valuable. If anyone has ever been to the "Pacific Spirits" exhibit at the Field Museum, that's a pretty cool example of an emic account: http://fieldmuseum.org/happening/exhibits/pacific-spirits
- Having some sort of unified framework with which to evaluate
everything is itself a pretty useful use for religion.
On 12/15/13, Elizabeth Topczewski bethtop@gmail.com wrote:
*1. "But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?"*
What does James mean by spiritual significance? Also, spiritual significance to whom?
*2. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."*
This seems to me to sum up James' position on how to determine value of religious ideas. But what makes a fruit desirable or not? How do we tell between good and bad (or useful or non-useful) fruits? Religion is one of the main things that claims to offer judgments on whether fruits
themselves
are good or bad.
*3. "In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any
one
to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions...Immediate luminousness,
in
short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."*
What logic and experiment can test religious opinions? Also, what are we testing religious opinions for? Truth seems out. Perhaps James would say usefulness? Then, it seems desirable to outline a set of desirable
fruits.
See (2).
What does he mean by "immediate luminousness" or "philosophical reasonableness"?
--Beth
-- -Eric _______________________________________________ WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Hi all,
Sorry for not responding yesterday. I've come down with something flu-ey, but with enough peppermint tea I hope I'll be able to write something intelligible. In lieu of an organized essay, I'll just respond to some specific issues that were raised.
I'll start with* Ruth's question about the quotation from Peirce: "...consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object."*
This is the first formulation of the pragmatists' theory of meaning -- i.e., what it means to say that something "means" something. Peirce, James, and Dewey have slightly different takes on the theory of meaning, which I'll gloss over here for simplicity's sake, and talk instead about a general pragmatist theory of meaning. (I'll use the language developed by Dewey, who -- in this as in many other areas -- brings James's more poetic and elliptical ideas down to the level of prose and system.)
There are two kinds of meaning in pragmatism, the instrumental and the consummatory. (Peirce is only talking about instrumental meaning.) At the instrumental level, the meaning of a thing is equivalent to all the ways in which it can be used to get us something that we want: the instrumental meaning of my coffee machine is that (in combination with other things such as water and coffee beans) it produces a cup of coffee. One corollary of this conception is that meaning is relative to context. What is the meaning of a bucket full of water? That depends. If I'm thirsty it has one obvious meaning, but if my stove is on fire it has a very different meaning. And there are surely contexts in which buckets of water will be used in the future that I can't even imagine right now. So, instrumental meaning is always somewhat open-ended. I might even use my coffee machine in some unforeseen way.
Ideas also have instrumental meanings. The meanings of, say, Newton's laws of motion, cover all of the uses to which they've been put, from putting a man on the moon to calculating a shot in billiards. (Of course, most people play billiards without thinking about Newton's laws, and for them the laws don't have this billiard-related meaning.)
There is another facet to the instrumental meaning of ideas that brings us to *Beth's question about "philosophical reasonableness." *The pragmatists reject the idea of capital-R Reason as some objectively existing thing in the universe. Rather, they see reason as a set of mental habits that have proven themselves effective over time for a wide range of instrumental purposes. The rules of logic and mathematics just seem to work, although we can never guarantee that we have come up with the best formulations of them. If we were to accept an idea that required us to suspend these rules, we would forfeit their advantages in the future, when it might be very useful to maintain the idea that math and logic can be applied in a consistent way. So, if an idea maintains or violates our canons of reasonableness, that is also one of its instrumental meanings. That is, instrumental meanings can ripple through the world of ideas and reach their "practical" fruits only indirectly. (For Peirce and Dewey, science is the practice of streamlining these ripples.)
If instrumental meanings were all there were, then pragmatism would be a bloodless system. Everything would be significant only so far as it gets us to something else, which would be significant only so far as it gets us to something else, and so on. We would always be going somewhere and never arriving. With consummatory meaning, on the other hand, we arrive at the full-blooded moment of present experience. Something's consummatory meaning is the effect it has on our immediate, qualitative state of mind -- that is, how it makes us feel. My cup of coffee has various instrumental meanings -- it fits into various plans I might make, such as how to consume enough water to survive, or enough caffeine to concentrate -- but it also has a consummatory meaning, which is captured in the "aaahh" (or "blech") reaction I have when I take a sip. In the case of an idea, aside from its instrumental meanings we may also simply find it beautiful, elegant, ugly, etc. -- *this is what James means when he talks about an idea's "immediate luminousness." *
*Beth also asks what James has to say about how to tell whether something's fruits are good or bad.* The simple answer, but one that may not fully satisfy, is that we do this in the same way we evaluate actual fruits -- by their "taste." If we find the "fruit of the Spirit" -- love, joy, peace, and the rest -- delicious, then that's all we need to know. A more complex answer involves evaluating these fruits in terms of a larger project of self-realization: we find things good, according to this more complex answer, to the extent that they help us become more self-possessed, and this self-possession may involve a certain spiritual reconciliation with the cosmos that involves both ethics and aesthetics, two notoriously thorny areas of pragmatism. Philosophers today are still trying to work out the details of this more complex answer. (Victor Kestenbaumhttp://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/G/bo3615797.html is doing the best work in this area, for my money.)
OK, that's all I can manage for now ... stay tuned for this week's thinksheet!
- Jesse
On Mon, Dec 16, 2013 at 1:28 AM, Ruth Raubertas ruthraubertas@gmail.comwrote:
It seems like James is saying (re: Beth's quotes) that even if someone is mentally unstable, that does not necessarily mean that their ideas are wrong (or, in pragmatese, useless?). Could James be subtly defending his own ideas despite his mental difficulties? But the point is well made. Typically we tend to dismiss the ideas of "crazy" people, but in fact they can often have ideas of great value for the rest of us. (In church today we discussed John the Baptist, who no doubt was considered crazy by many, and would be today as well should he reappear.)
Does James advocate dispensing with the idea of truth? That doesn't seem very useful : ) : ).
The "emic" and "etic" ideas are interesting...people often talk in "local" terms without realizing that someone of another culture - or subculture, such as in the U.S. - would have no idea what they are talking about. On the other hand, if we were to take such concepts as love, joy and peace, etc., aren't they universally valued? Not sure if they can truly be called "emic." The concept of "etic" seems to imply an "impartial" observer...can "emic" and "etic" overlap? E.g., it's possible to study another culture, such as Native Americans, and learn to love the people and (some of) their ways.
On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 11:18 PM, Eric Purdy epurdy@uchicago.edu wrote:
Thoughts:
- We can take the prevalence of a religion as some sort of weak hint
to its usefulness. People presumably get some value out of something that they devote time and other resources to.
- We can examine the uses which religious people claim to get out
their religion. Such accounts seem to be fairly common? The verse that Ruth posted is a good example of such an "emic" account. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emic_and_etic:
"The emic approach investigates how local people think" (Kottak, 2006): How they perceive and categorize the world, their rules for behavior, what has meaning for them, and how they imagine and explain things. "The etic (scientist-oriented) approach shifts the focus from local observations, categories, explanations, and interpretations to those of the anthropologist. The etic approach realizes that members of a culture often are too involved in what they are doing to interpret their cultures impartially. When using the etic approach, the ethnographer emphasizes what he or she considers important."
). Wikipedia doesn't explain it well in that paragraph, but emic accounts are often incredibly valuable. If anyone has ever been to the "Pacific Spirits" exhibit at the Field Museum, that's a pretty cool example of an emic account: http://fieldmuseum.org/happening/exhibits/pacific-spirits
- Having some sort of unified framework with which to evaluate
everything is itself a pretty useful use for religion.
On 12/15/13, Elizabeth Topczewski bethtop@gmail.com wrote:
*1. "But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?"*
What does James mean by spiritual significance? Also, spiritual significance to whom?
*2. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."*
This seems to me to sum up James' position on how to determine value of religious ideas. But what makes a fruit desirable or not? How do we tell between good and bad (or useful or non-useful) fruits? Religion is one
of
the main things that claims to offer judgments on whether fruits
themselves
are good or bad.
*3. "In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any
one
to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions...Immediate
luminousness, in
short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."*
What logic and experiment can test religious opinions? Also, what are we testing religious opinions for? Truth seems out. Perhaps James would say usefulness? Then, it seems desirable to outline a set of desirable
fruits.
See (2).
What does he mean by "immediate luminousness" or "philosophical reasonableness"?
--Beth
-- -Eric _______________________________________________ WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
f I may jump in here, Beth raises some interesting questions. I think some religious opinions can't be tested by logic and experiment or experience, e.g. the concepts of heaven and hell. But many religious teachings can be tested by experience. For example, one teaching of Christianity (and I assume other religions) is that it is by giving that we receive. Now this is not an obvious or intuitive idea and may seem paradoxical (children usually have to be taught to share their toys). But if we test out this teaching as we go through life we find that it is profoundly and literally true. This is the theme of many works of literature, e.g. it was one of the lessons Scrooge needed to learn in a "Christmas Carol."
I just came across something that may be strangely helpful in our reading. In the intro. to a book on electrical repairs ("Making Everyday Electronics Work") I found the following: "Here's a question that people occasionally ask me, and that baffles me as much as it does them. "What is electricity, *really*?" I'll never forget the day my eighth-grade science teacher showed the class a ... movie of a lecture where a professor concluded by saying, "We learn about electricity not by knowing *what it is*, but by codifying *what it does.*" Sounds like pragmatism. And if we substitute "religion" for "electricity", it might be a good guide for our reading.
On Sun, Dec 15, 2013 at 10:09 PM, Elizabeth Topczewski bethtop@gmail.comwrote:
*1. "But now, I ask you, how can such an existential account of facts of mental history decide in one way or another upon their spiritual significance?"*
What does James mean by spiritual significance? Also, spiritual significance to whom?
*2. "By their fruits ye shall know them, not by their roots."*
This seems to me to sum up James' position on how to determine value of religious ideas. But what makes a fruit desirable or not? How do we tell between good and bad (or useful or non-useful) fruits? Religion is one of the main things that claims to offer judgments on whether fruits themselves are good or bad.
*3. "In the natural sciences and industrial arts it never occurs to any one to try to refute opinions by showing up their author's neurotic constitution. Opinions here are invariably tested by logic and by experiment, no matter what may be their author's neurological type. It should be no otherwise with religious opinions...Immediate luminousness, in short, philosophical reasonableness, and moral helpfulness are the only available criteria."*
What logic and experiment can test religious opinions? Also, what are we testing religious opinions for? Truth seems out. Perhaps James would say usefulness? Then, it seems desirable to outline a set of desirable fruits. See (2).
What does he mean by "immediate luminousness" or "philosophical reasonableness"?
--Beth
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
participants (5)
-
Elizabeth Topczewski -
Eric Purdy -
Jesse Raber -
Michael Raubertas -
Ruth Raubertas