[MD] The other side of reified

[david buchanan]

Ham said:
James is hailed for his pragmatism which stemmed largely from his practice in psychology.  The pragmatists of the last two centuries have been scientists (objectivists). Their goal is to explore the physical world for empirical knowledge and principles that can be applied to solving problems and inventing new things.  They have no professional interest in aesthetics, morality, human values, or a transcendent reality.  Indeed, such subjective concepts are only distractions to the experimental method.

dmb says:
None of that is true. Pragmatism as such was invented about a hundred ago, partly as a reaction against positivistic science. Pragmatism is a kind of Humanism and James presented as a moderator between two great rival schools of philosophy, the rationalists and the empiricists, both of which he found lacking for various reasons. James more or less single-handedly invented the psychology of religion and his "Varieties of Religious Experience" is almost entirely comprise of descriptions of so-called subject experience. I mean, Ham, you have just made a series of profoundly ignorant statements, none of which are even close to being correct. 

Ham said:
...I think the category that best fits him is "pragmatic idealist", for he is more interested in anthropology and societal development than in metaphysics.  His ontological paradigm is an evolutionary hierarchy of Quality levels that govern the universe, including mankind (when individuals are fortunate enough to "latch onto" the higher levels.)   There is no Creator in this existential scheme (Quality is utimately self-created), no teleology except for the 'betterness" toward which the universe automatically moves, and no need for a free agent, since the universe is assumed to be inherently moral.  In short, this "empirical reality" which you tout as "the guide to future experience" is no more than interacting patterns of quality carried along in the stream of evolution.


dmb says:
There is no free agent because the universe automatically moves? No, Ham. You're still not getting it. Man is the measure of all things, Man is a participant in the creation of all things. We invented the universe and the gods, the earth and sky. These are concepts we've carved out of experience, in response to experience. Those concepts either agree with experience or they don't. And if they don't, then you've got to get a new set of concepts. Ideas are mutable and secondary. 

Oh, never mind. You don't really care, do you?