Hi everyone! Welcome to the William James discussion list.
Let's each introduce ourselves over email. It's sounds a bit put on, I know, but if we don't do it, we'll each eventually wonder "Who is that person anyway? Should I know them? Am I unpopular? I wish I were popular."
And you can be! Just send out an email saying who you are, which city you live in, anything you'd like to say about your interest in James, and any academic background or life experience that may be relevant*.*
I'll start. I live in Oakland, CA, and I have no training in philosophy or psychology. Most of my knowledge of James comes from chats and emails with Jesse, and occasional wikipedia reading.
I got the idea to start this list when I was listening to NPR last week, and some neuroscientist was saying how things William James wrote are relevant to the modern understanding of the brain. I thought to myself, "I should really read William James. I know a bunch of people who might want the same. And Jesse knows as much about James as I know about stealing rides on freight trains. Let's make a reading group."
--AC
Hey, I'm Eric. I live in Berkeley and work in Mountain View, but Chicago is still my spiritual home.
I have a Ph.D. in computer science. My thesis was on computer vision, which is related to theories about how humans process images. So I'm interested in the brain and what has been said about it.
In terms of the essay-writing fields (i.e., humanities and social studies), I'm sort of a late bloomer. I had a lot of trouble in college with passing those classes.
I'm a big fan of readings@moomers.org, if anyone on this list isn't on it. As someone (possibly Mr. Raber?) said, readings is my religion.
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 10:45 PM, Andrew Cone andrew.p.cone@gmail.comwrote:
Hi everyone! Welcome to the William James discussion list.
Let's each introduce ourselves over email. It's sounds a bit put on, I know, but if we don't do it, we'll each eventually wonder "Who is that person anyway? Should I know them? Am I unpopular? I wish I were popular."
And you can be! Just send out an email saying who you are, which city you live in, anything you'd like to say about your interest in James, and any academic background or life experience that may be relevant*.*
I'll start. I live in Oakland, CA, and I have no training in philosophy or psychology. Most of my knowledge of James comes from chats and emails with Jesse, and occasional wikipedia reading.
I got the idea to start this list when I was listening to NPR last week, and some neuroscientist was saying how things William James wrote are relevant to the modern understanding of the brain. I thought to myself, "I should really read William James. I know a bunch of people who might want the same. And Jesse knows as much about James as I know about stealing rides on freight trains. Let's make a reading group."
--AC
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Hey all! I'm Hannah. I live in Ann Arbor now, and am studying epidemiology and infectious diseases, mostly bacteria. Until August, I lived in the famous Moomers.
Like Andrew and Eric, I don't really have a background in the humanities. I'm interested in reading some of James (when school permits) because I'm interested in people's interactions with religion. As an atheist who grew up in a Christian family with a mother who in my adolescence turned to Buddhism and then Native American religions, and a father who recently adopted Messianic Judaism, religion just really interests me.
Hannah
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 2:25 AM, Eric Purdy epurdy@uchicago.edu wrote:
Hey, I'm Eric. I live in Berkeley and work in Mountain View, but Chicago is still my spiritual home.
I have a Ph.D. in computer science. My thesis was on computer vision, which is related to theories about how humans process images. So I'm interested in the brain and what has been said about it.
In terms of the essay-writing fields (i.e., humanities and social studies), I'm sort of a late bloomer. I had a lot of trouble in college with passing those classes.
I'm a big fan of readings@moomers.org, if anyone on this list isn't on it. As someone (possibly Mr. Raber?) said, readings is my religion.
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 10:45 PM, Andrew Cone andrew.p.cone@gmail.comwrote:
Hi everyone! Welcome to the William James discussion list.
Let's each introduce ourselves over email. It's sounds a bit put on, I know, but if we don't do it, we'll each eventually wonder "Who is that person anyway? Should I know them? Am I unpopular? I wish I were popular."
And you can be! Just send out an email saying who you are, which city you live in, anything you'd like to say about your interest in James, and any academic background or life experience that may be relevant*.*
I'll start. I live in Oakland, CA, and I have no training in philosophy or psychology. Most of my knowledge of James comes from chats and emails with Jesse, and occasional wikipedia reading.
I got the idea to start this list when I was listening to NPR last week, and some neuroscientist was saying how things William James wrote are relevant to the modern understanding of the brain. I thought to myself, "I should really read William James. I know a bunch of people who might want the same. And Jesse knows as much about James as I know about stealing rides on freight trains. Let's make a reading group."
--AC
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
-- -Eric
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Hi, I'm Mike. I am an incredibly slow writer so you might not hear a lot from me, but I'm very grateful to read all of your thoughts. I'm a 10-year phd student in sociology at the uchicago, but I work full time in philly for psychologists at upenn. I'd hardly say that having a better understanding of James is a priority for my career, but James and pragmatism have had a pretty big influence on sociology so this is plausibly career-relevant for me. I used to be happy to describe myself as a consequentialist and a rationalist, but I'm less happy with those labels now. I'm an atheist who thinks religion can be great for people. I'm 33 and married to Canadian born social-worker.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 2:25 AM, Eric Purdy epurdy@uchicago.edu wrote:
Hey, I'm Eric. I live in Berkeley and work in Mountain View, but Chicago is still my spiritual home.
I have a Ph.D. in computer science. My thesis was on computer vision, which is related to theories about how humans process images. So I'm interested in the brain and what has been said about it.
In terms of the essay-writing fields (i.e., humanities and social studies), I'm sort of a late bloomer. I had a lot of trouble in college with passing those classes.
I'm a big fan of readings@moomers.org, if anyone on this list isn't on it. As someone (possibly Mr. Raber?) said, readings is my religion.
On Sat, Dec 7, 2013 at 10:45 PM, Andrew Cone andrew.p.cone@gmail.comwrote:
Hi everyone! Welcome to the William James discussion list.
Let's each introduce ourselves over email. It's sounds a bit put on, I know, but if we don't do it, we'll each eventually wonder "Who is that person anyway? Should I know them? Am I unpopular? I wish I were popular."
And you can be! Just send out an email saying who you are, which city you live in, anything you'd like to say about your interest in James, and any academic background or life experience that may be relevant*.*
I'll start. I live in Oakland, CA, and I have no training in philosophy or psychology. Most of my knowledge of James comes from chats and emails with Jesse, and occasional wikipedia reading.
I got the idea to start this list when I was listening to NPR last week, and some neuroscientist was saying how things William James wrote are relevant to the modern understanding of the brain. I thought to myself, "I should really read William James. I know a bunch of people who might want the same. And Jesse knows as much about James as I know about stealing rides on freight trains. Let's make a reading group."
--AC
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
-- -Eric
WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard sciences before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking forward to this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read more books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual reading wagon once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot of other places.
Steven
Hi, my name is Wang and I live in Fort Lee. I studied sciences and then went to EMT school, so my academic background is pretty irrelevant. I'm generally interested in categorizing things and studying different variations of the same phenomenon because that often distinguishes the fundamentals from the incidentals.
Wang
2013/12/8 Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard sciences before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking forward to this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read more books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual reading wagon once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot of other places.
Steven _______________________________________________ WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Oh, no. I just realized everybody on this list knows me from Chicago. So my name is Damon and I live in New Jersey near New York City. Sorry for the confusion.
Wang
2013/12/8 Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu:
Hi, my name is Wang and I live in Fort Lee. I studied sciences and then went to EMT school, so my academic background is pretty irrelevant. I'm generally interested in categorizing things and studying different variations of the same phenomenon because that often distinguishes the fundamentals from the incidentals.
Wang
2013/12/8 Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard sciences before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking forward to this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read more books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual reading wagon once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot of other places.
Steven _______________________________________________ WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Hi all,
I guess everyone here knows me at least a little. After seven years in Boston, I'm back in Hyde Park for this year; where I am next year depends on the vagaries of the academic job market. I'm finishing up a Ph.D. in English, and my thesis focuses on the relationship between literature and education reform around the turn of the twentieth century. John Dewey, a pragmatist who comes after James, is sort of my project's presiding spirit. While I've thought and written a lot about Dewey, our group will be my first really sustained engagement with James -- certainly my first attempt to "teach" him. I couldn't imagine a better way to get my feet wet!
As I'll explain a little in this week's thinksheet and introductory "lecture," I think James lends himself particularly well to extra-academic discussion. He resists the disciplinary constraints that make most philosophy unreadable to non-specialists. He is also one of America's finest prose stylists -- second only to Emerson, if you ask me. Aside from the intellectual illumination he offers, I also believe that immersion in James's prose permanently improves one's writing style.
I'm already having a blast doing the reading and preparing my comments. I hope you will too!
- Jesse
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu wrote:
Oh, no. I just realized everybody on this list knows me from Chicago. So my name is Damon and I live in New Jersey near New York City. Sorry for the confusion.
Wang
2013/12/8 Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu:
Hi, my name is Wang and I live in Fort Lee. I studied sciences and then went to EMT school, so my academic background is pretty irrelevant. I'm generally interested in categorizing things and studying different variations of the same phenomenon because that often distinguishes the fundamentals from the incidentals.
Wang
2013/12/8 Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard
sciences
before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking
forward to
this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read
more
books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual
reading wagon
once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot
of other
places.
Steven _______________________________________________ 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
Hello all, I'm Michael. I'm currently an undergraduate at the University of Chicago finishing up a degree in English Literature. I went to Deep Springs college for a couple of years (26 guys in the desert studying the classics, doing farm and ranch work, and tasked with college governance and administration) where I learned how to read and got a pretty good foundation in the history of philosophy and some classics of literature. I now study a lot of poetry and literature but have kept up dabbling in philosophy by chatting up first and second years regarding their sosc papers (they're a lot more tolerable than most philosophy undergrads who think they know it all or who regurgitate the same old cud) . Other than that I do a bit of work with magazines and publishing, and most recently have been doing administrative works for coops. More generally I'm interested in education, and my thesis work has been on the problems of humanism--how can we learn how to live from fiction or philosophy?
I've only read a little bit of William James for a class I took on his brother, Henry James--a few of his essays refuting traditional conceptions of consciousness in favor of radical or pure experience. I found it compelling but felt he didn't sufficiently account for memory, at least in the stuff I read, as well as his brother or their friend Henri Bergson. I'm interested in delving further, especially now that I've gotten a firmer grasp on the turn-of-the-century phenomenology scene by way of a class on Levinas. In general I like seeing how different smart thinkers depict our our experience of the world, and find it helpful to figure our the stakes of their claims or depictions. Once I understand what an author is worried about, I find it easier to situate and comprehend the thrust of what they're saying. In particular, I've noticed that psychologists and philosophers in the wake of the "discovery of the unconscious" have a lot to try to explain, and a lot at stake in how they do so.
Thanks! Michael --
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu wrote:
Oh, no. I just realized everybody on this list knows me from Chicago. So my name is Damon and I live in New Jersey near New York City. Sorry for the confusion.
Wang
2013/12/8 Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu:
Hi, my name is Wang and I live in Fort Lee. I studied sciences and then went to EMT school, so my academic background is pretty irrelevant. I'm generally interested in categorizing things and studying different variations of the same phenomenon because that often distinguishes the fundamentals from the incidentals.
Wang
2013/12/8 Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard
sciences
before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking
forward to
this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read
more
books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual
reading wagon
once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot
of other
places.
Steven _______________________________________________ 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
Hello, I'm Fedya, I live in Chicago. I feel like I should, but I've pretty much never read any philosophy, and only the sort of psychology that comes in papers, not books. The name of this list makes me think of algebraic varieties. I don't have any a priori reason to favor James; Andrew told me about this thing and I decided to take the plunge. I expect to do a lot of listening and not have many opinions.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 1:24 PM, Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu wrote:
Oh, no. I just realized everybody on this list knows me from Chicago. So my name is Damon and I live in New Jersey near New York City. Sorry for the confusion.
Wang
2013/12/8 Wang D damonwang@uchicago.edu:
Hi, my name is Wang and I live in Fort Lee. I studied sciences and then went to EMT school, so my academic background is pretty irrelevant. I'm generally interested in categorizing things and studying different variations of the same phenomenon because that often distinguishes the fundamentals from the incidentals.
Wang
2013/12/8 Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard sciences before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking forward to this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read more books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual reading wagon once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot of other places.
Steven _______________________________________________ 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
Hi everyone, I'm Gabi, and I live in Toronto, but have mostly lived in New York City and Chicago. At U. of C., I majored in Law, Letters, and Society, and now am in an M.A. in Human Geography program.
I'm here for a deeper philosophical exploration of topics I've explored informally for years. I've never studied religion or psychology academically, but discuss them a lot with friends of all faiths--atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Messianic Jews, etc.--and psychological philosophies. I've participated in worship and informal study practices of many faiths, but identify as Jewish and go to synagogue regularly for a mix of spiritual and cultural (but not really faith-related) reasons. I also lived, worked, and shared religious practices at an interfaith retreat centre for much of last year. I've always been fascinated by, but can't fathom, the religious experiences of people with real faith in God or the supernatural. That's part of what intrigues me about the title of the book we'll be reading.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard sciences before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking forward to this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read more books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual reading wagon once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot of other places.
Steven _______________________________________________ WilliamJames mailing list WilliamJames@moomers.org http://mailman.moomers.org/mailman/listinfo/williamjames
Hi everyone, I'm Beth. I live in Oakland (with Mr. Cone, my husband) and work at a real estate consulting firm in SF. I graduated from U of C last year in geography, and my academic background is pretty social sciences-heavy. I'm mostly interested in James as an example of psychological thinking, which I have always found fascinating but nothing about. As others have mentioned, I don't read as much as I used to and am looking forward to flexing those muscles.
My family is devoutly Catholic, and my dad works for the Catholic church. I grew up pretty close to being a preacher's daughter, for a religion with celibate clergy. I was a devout and sincere practicer, too, until I had an abrupt break of faith at age 15. I'm still not sure what brought that on, but it hasn't reversed and ever since I have tried to avoid thinking about religion much. Honestly, I'm nervous about reopening this can of worms, but what the hell. Opportunity knocks or something.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 5:07 PM, Gabriela Russek grussek@gmail.com wrote:
Hi everyone, I'm Gabi, and I live in Toronto, but have mostly lived in New York City and Chicago. At U. of C., I majored in Law, Letters, and Society, and now am in an M.A. in Human Geography program.
I'm here for a deeper philosophical exploration of topics I've explored informally for years. I've never studied religion or psychology academically, but discuss them a lot with friends of all faiths--atheists, Buddhists, Muslims, Messianic Jews, etc.--and psychological philosophies. I've participated in worship and informal study practices of many faiths, but identify as Jewish and go to synagogue regularly for a mix of spiritual and cultural (but not really faith-related) reasons. I also lived, worked, and shared religious practices at an interfaith retreat centre for much of last year. I've always been fascinated by, but can't fathom, the religious experiences of people with real faith in God or the supernatural. That's part of what intrigues me about the title of the book we'll be reading.
On Sun, Dec 8, 2013 at 12:51 PM, Steven Lucy slucy@moomers.org wrote:
Hi everyone,
I spent my academic career waffling between social sciences and hard sciences before saying fuck it all to start a produce store. I'm looking forward to this group because (spoiler alert) my new year's resolution is to read more books. It's amazing how easy it is to fall off the intellectual reading wagon once you exit academia.
I live in Chicago and have for a long time, but I've also lived a lot of other places.
Steven _______________________________________________ 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
participants (11)
-
Andrew Cone -
Elizabeth Topczewski -
Eric Purdy -
Fedor Manin -
Gabriela Russek -
Hannah Maier -
J. Michael Eugenio -
Jesse Raber -
Michael Bishop -
Steven Lucy -
Wang D