[MD] JTB

[Ian Glendinning]

DMB posted a large quote of James writings in this thread ... which
very much reinforce the poetic neither / nor position ... but made no
actual comment himself.
Selections snipped here :

"The poetics of transition," suits William James's "radical
empiricism," which assumes "a pluralistic universe" and is mainly
concerned with the connections and transitions between things or
states, rather than the things themselves. Jamesian philosophy is all
about how things "hang together"

"At the outset of my essay, I called it a mosaic philosophy. In actual
mosaics the pieces are held together by their bedding, for which
bedding the substances, transcendental egos, or absolutes of other
philosophies may be taken to stand. In radical empiricism there is no
bedding; it is as if the pieces clung together by their edges, the
transitions experienced between them forming their cement."

"Of course such a metaphor is misleading, for in actual experience the
more substantive and the more transitive parts run into each other
continuously; there is in general no separateness needing to be
overcome by an external cement; and whatever separateness is actually
experienced is not overcome."

For reasons like these I fail to see (again) why there is any
disagreement between say Matt and DMB and Marsha, other than an
attitude / will to disagree.

Life's a "metaphorical mosaic" old chum,
But don't forget (reify) the metaphor please !

Ian

On Sat, Jan 1, 2011 at 4:47 PM, david buchanan <dmbuchanan at hotmail.com> wrote:
>