William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910)
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William James is one of three American Philosophers highlighted in The Story of Philosophy by Will Durant. The other two American philosophers are George Santayana and John Dewey. I commented on George Santayana’s philosophy in the Comment section of the essay CREATION.
This essay intoduces William James very briefly. For full introduction please refer to this Wikipedia article.
It is interesting to note that William James’ education had a cosmopolitan background. He had an early artistic bent, but, at the age of 19, he switched to scientific studies. Later he studied medicine but never practiced it.
In his early adulthood, James suffered from a variety of physical ailments. After an extended period of philosophical searching he finally resolved in 1872 what he called his “soul-sickness.” In 1873 he joined the faculty at Harvard University where he spent almost his entire academic career. He retired from Harvard in 1907. In 1882 he also joined the Theosophical Society.
He was one of the strongest proponents of the school of functionalism in psychology and of pragmatism in philosophy. He was a founder of the American Society for Psychical Research, as well as a champion of alternative approaches to healing. He challenged his professional colleagues not to let a narrow mindset prevent an honest appraisal of those beliefs.
I shall be commenting on the philosophy of William James (as summarized in the Wikipedia and in The Story of Philosophy) in the Comment section below.
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Comments
(Wikipedia) James defined true beliefs as those that prove useful to the believer. His pragmatic theory of truth was a synthesis of correspondence theory of truth and coherence theory of truth, with an added dimension. Truth is verifiable to the extent that thoughts and statements correspond with actual things, as well as the extent to which they “hang together,” or cohere, as pieces of a puzzle might fit together; these are in turn verified by the observed results of the application of an idea to actual practice.
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I agree that for a belief to be steadfast it must be useful to the believer.
Per James, “the ‘true’ is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the ‘right’ is only the expedient in our way of behaving.” He is making truth a function of the viewpoint.
My view of truth is much more objective. I believe that the degree of “truth” depends (regardless of the viewpoint) on the consistency of that “truth” within the framework it is being used. An inconsistency indicates presence of arbitrary assumptions.
(Wikipedia) “The most ancient parts of truth . . . also once were plastic. They also were called true for human reasons. They also mediated between still earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations. Purely objective truth, truth in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience with newer parts played no role whatsoever, is nowhere to be found. The reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for ‘to be true’ means only to perform this marriage-function,” he wrote.
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I believe that there is no absolute truth, and that all truths are relative and consistent.
. . . and depending on the set that comprises our existence, if there is a superset to this existence, there may be a truth that is uniform for all of this existence. The problem is that we would never know it with a mind that is comprised only of the things which are a part of this set of existence.
Possibly mind is evolving as well? Body evolves through changes in genetic code. Can mind evolve through changes in mental code and if so is any part of that under our control?
We may only speculate at the higher truths, but we may zero in to those higher truths gradually by recognizing “inconsistencies” (cracks in current level of existence) and resolving them one by one through keener obervation.
This is called the Scientific Method. More broadly, it is referred to as Mindfulness.
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Yes, and . . . if there is a superset to this existence, there may be a truth that is uniform for all of this existence.
. . . and at that superset, its own set of truths may also be relative. From where we look, I see no reason to think otherwise, though my mind is open and looking without expectation except to resolve those inconsistencies which may from time to time – arise.
Instead of superset I think in terms of depth of abstraction.
https://vinaire.me/2013/08/01/khtk-model-of-universe/
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“Instead of superset I think in terms of depth of abstraction.”
Ah! Then you do not believe in unknowable? “Depth of abstraction” sounds more like something I would say! hahaha
Think of the bottom of the rabbit hole…
Bottom?
Oh Vinay! You are a closet optimist! 🙂
The bottom of the rabbit hole is unknowable. 🙂
(Wikipedia) James held a world view in line with pragmatism, declaring that the value of any truth was utterly dependent upon its use to the person who held it. Additional tenets of James’s pragmatism include the view that the world is a mosaic of diverse experiences that can only be properly interpreted and understood through an application of “radical empiricism.” Radical empiricism, not related to the everyday scientific empiricism, asserts that the world and experience can never be halted for an entirely objective analysis, if nothing else the mind of the observer and simple act of observation will affect the outcome of any empirical approach to truth as the mind and its experiences, and nature are inseparable.
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We observe people having misperceptions about their experiences. Therefore, how the truths are expressed needs to be carefully examined. While I agree with James’ pragmatism, I may question the expression of those truths, especially when expressed on a broad basis.
I agree with radical empiricism in that both physical and metaphysical aspects of reality must be taken into consideration together. Physical and metaphysical aspects cannot be isolated from each other as done in religion. Unlike James I feel that one can also be objective about metaphysical aspects of reality.
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“But I disagree with James in that one can also be objective about metaphysical aspects.”
This was what I thought I was doing when I got involved with Scientology nearly 40 years ago, well any way it was what I was doing. That thrust to embrace all existence objectively is for me still an important key to accomplishing my spiritual and physical goals in life.
That is what I am trying to do in KHTK. One is misled to the degree one is not practicing mindfulness.
James seems to be lacking the perspective of mindfulness.
Mindfulness is the weapon we have.
(Wikipedia) James’s 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 (see Richard Rorty). James’s 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.
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The duality between ‘physics’ and ‘metaphysics’, or between ‘observed’ and ‘observer’, is an apparent condition. A closer look reveals an intimate interaction between the two seemingly opposites. A perception of ‘inconsistency’ is not a conflict between two opposites, but a more involved interaction. It cannot be resolved by a two- or multiple-valued logic. It needs to be approached with infinite-valued logic of mindfulness.
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“The duality between ‘physics’ and ‘metaphysics’, or between ‘observed’ and ‘observer’, is an apparent condition.”
. . . our abstraction. But a closer look reveals something else going on.
(Wikipedia) In What Pragmatism Means, James writes that the central point of his own doctrine of truth is, in brief, that “Truths emerge from facts, but they dip forward into facts again and add to them; which facts again create or reveal new truth (the word is indifferent) and so on indefinitely. The ‘facts’ themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them.” 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 James.
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At one level seeing things “as they are,” or “for what they are” is the truth. But at another level we have an interaction between the observer and the observed. The many “observeds” affect each other, and so do many “observers.” The “equation of truth” appears quite complex.
But this “complexity of truth” may be resolved by accepting the consistencies among what is there, and focusing only on the inconsistencies for closer observation. This will simplify the complexity by revealing new truths.
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“The “equation of truth” appears quite complex.”
Possibly there is a “fractal address” within a matrix which can or could be used to provide the relative frame of reference?
(Wikipedia) In The Meaning of Truth, James seems to speak 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.’ ” However, James responded to critics accusing him of relativism, scepticism or agnosticism, and of believing only in relative truths. To the contrary, he supported an epistemological realism position.
(Wikipedia) Epistemological realism is a philosophical position, a subcategory of objectivism, holding that what you know about an object exists independently of your mind. It opposes epistemological idealism.
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When one practices mindfulness and perceives truth in terms of the degree of consistency or inconsistency, then it doesn’t matter whether what you know about an object exists independently of your mind or not.
These seem to be an advantage.
Cash value
(Wikipedia) From the introduction to William James’s Pragmatism by Bruce Kuklick, p.xiv.
James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of ‘true’ by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. 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. 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.
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James is using a self-centric frame of reference to determine the “truth value” of a belief. Though he is averaging the “truth value” by considering a large number of selves, the approach is still self-centric.
The appropriate “truth value” is determined from a reality-centric approach of mindfulness that involves no self-generated opinion. It simply involves observation of the degree to which a belief is consistent within the wider reality. By removing such inconsistencies the human existence can be improved.
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As well as its cash value! 🙂
Yup!
Will to believe doctrine
(Wikipedia) From main article: The Will to Believe
In William James’s lecture of 1896 titled “The Will to Believe,” James defends the right to violate the principle of evidentialism in order to justify hypothesis venturing. This idea foresaw the demise of evidentialism in the 20th century and sought to ground justified belief in an unwavering principle that would prove more beneficial. Through his philosophy of pragmatism William James justifies religious beliefs by using the results of his hypothetical venturing as evidence to support the hypothesis’ truth. Therefore, this doctrine allows one to assume belief in a god and prove its existence by what the belief brings to one’s life.
[NOTE: Evidentialism is a theory of justification according to which the justification of a belief depends solely on the evidence for it.]
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James is using the hypothesis of pragmatism to justify a belief. This hypothesis stresses practical consequences as constituting the essential criterion in determining meaning, truth, or value. However, this criterion is limited when used from a self-centric viewpoint.
Different cultures may judge “practical consequences” differently based on their circumstances. A reality-centric approach may provide a practical criterion that is broader than the self-centric considerations of one’s culture. In a reality-centric view the “gods” of different cultures are not in conflict with each other.
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Free Will
(Wikipedia) In The Will to Believe, James simply asserted that his will was free. As his first act of freedom, he said, he chose to believe his will was free. He was encouraged to do this by reading Charles Renouvier, whose work convinced James to convert from monism to pluralism. In his diary entry of April 30, 1870, James wrote,
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Will is a product of self. Self is bound by its structure of beliefs. Therefore, there is no free will even when one asserts his will to be free.
The reality of a body-centric person is being filtered through the belief that he is a body. He is not aware of this belief or filter. Thus, he is not aware how his “free will” is being limited. One day he discovers this limitation through an “out-of-body” experience. He suddenly gains a lot more “free will.”
The reality of a self-centric person is being filtered through a narrow set of communal and cultural ideas. He is not aware of this filter because he has not been exposed broadly to other communities and cultures. One day he gets the opportunity to really get exposed to another culture through an open interaction and his eyes open to new realities. This could keep happenning over a period of time through similar education. He self-centric filter starts to reduce. He then gains more “free will” as a result. The person then starts to get increasingly reality-centric. His free will expands as a result.
The “free will” is then restricted by the beliefs that are filtering one’s reality. As one becomes aware of these beliefs and no longer uses them as a filter, his free will increases.
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FREE WILL basically boils down to whether a person is free to make a choice under given circumstances. If a person is restricted by his beliefs then does he have a free will?
Members of Scientology’s Sea Org tend to stay in the Sea Org in spite of being treated very badly in that organization. Do they really have a free will to leave?
If they are constrained to stay in the Sea Org by their fears of the outside world, and by their beliefs in ultimately getting freedom through Scientology, then do they have a free will to leave?
In such cases, free will to leave Sea Org shall require going against, or giving up, certain beliefs. If a person is unable to do so, does he have a free will?
Freewill or, “the truth of choice,” is obviously relative, conditioned, and impermanent.
Yup!
Looks like a person’s free will is constrained by
(1) One’s own beliefs
(2) Justice considerations imposed by others
(3) Ethical considerations held by oneself
(4) Lack of education and misinformation
All the four factors above can be manipulated from outside.
Not only constrained but inspired by belief. We are not very far along on this one yet! 🙂
It seems that neither free will nor determinism exist the way they are defined with absolutism. Both are dud terms.
All we have is a matrix of considerations interacting with each other resulting in this vector here and that vector there.
Yes, that is the way I see it. These two words have their consistency within their particular frames of reference – context such as choose behind door #1 or door #2, and determinism the same. We are getting close to needing better language, as soon as we understand what we are trying to describe. You’ve stated this blended and diffused idea of free will v determinism very well.
…and (5) Physics. (largest reason)
That is true. How can I miss that!
I’m thinking it has to do with concentrating on self-centric thoughts and one’s attention is turned inward so one doesn’t see outward, or reality-centric things, like everything! hahaha
Other factors could be
(5) Lack of experience to make a decision (being a minor)
(6) Cultural factors that one grew up with
(7) Communal factors
(8) Mental capacity (mental development, insanity)
Always.
Looks like a person is defined by certain rights and duties. Normally, it is a human being (natural person). Law extends this definition to legal entities made up of a group of human beings (artificial person or juristic person). Can the definition of a person be extended to a robot operating on artificial intelligence?
“Can the definition of a person be extended to a robot operating on artificial intelligence?” Not yet. It’s taken over 400 years in America to extend this legal definition to the Negro. This question is entertainingly explored in the movie, “I, Robot.” (A must see, for anyone who hasn’t.)
Yes, I have seen that movie.
That movie depicts a possible future in my estimation.
Freewill seems to exist within a narrow band of thought frequency but this narrow spectrum of thought comprises an important proportion of human bandwidth.
Free will is actually the freedom to assess and evaluate the situation. It is bringing into awareness, with its correct importance factor, what is already out there.
Thus, the free will is the ability to see through the filters.
Does freewill exist within the spectrum of thought?
Freewill is thought. Like a fractal it exists throughout the spectrum of thought.
(Wikipedia) In 1884 James set the terms for all future discussions of determinism and compatibilism in the free will debates with his lecture to Harvard Divinity School students published as “The Dilemma of Determinism.” In this talk he defined the common terms “hard determinism” and “soft determinism” (now more commonly called “compatibilism”).
James called compatibilism a “quagmire of evasion,” just as the ideas of Thomas Hobbes and David Hume that free will was simply freedom from external coercion were called a “wretched subterfuge” by Immanuel Kant.
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(Wikipedia) Determinism is the philosophical movement that for every event, including human action, exist conditions that could cause no other event. Free will is the ability of agents to make choices unconstrained by certain factors. Incompatibilists think that determinism is at odds with free will, whereas compatibilists think the two can coexist. People who have moral responsibility for an action are called moral agents. Agents are capable of reflecting on their situation, forming intentions about how they will act, and then carrying out that action.
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The trouble with words like free will and determinism is that they are constructed with short-sighted absolutism. They do not apply to reality.
Free Will and Determinism are not something black and white. There seems to a gradient between them. As choices are made and kept, they act as constraints for subsequent choices. As more choices are made and kept, greater constraints come about and they leave lesser room to maneuver for future choices.
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“(Wikipedia) Determinism is the philosophical movement that for every event, including human action, exist conditions that could cause no other event. ” I believe in this precisely as stated. What I also believe is that human understanding of inception is so very rudimentary as to be laughable! 🙂 In fact I will. Hahahahaha! 🙂 I believe the universe to be so complicated as to defy prediction and to be so complicated as to produce the abstract idea of randomness.
Yup!
(Wikipedia) James described chance as neither hard nor soft determinism, but “indeterminism”. He said
James asked the students to consider his choice for walking home from Lowell Lecture Hall after his walk.
With this simple example, James was the first thinker to enunciate clearly a two-stage decision process (others include Henri Poincaré, Arthur Holly Compton, Karl Popper), with chance in a present time of random alternatives, leading to a choice which grants consent to one possibility and transforms an equivocal ambiguous future into an unalterable and simple past. There is a temporal sequence of undetermined alternative possibilities followed by also undetermined choices.
James’ two-stage model effectively separates chance (undetermined alternative possibilities) from choice (the free action of the individual, on which randomness has no effect).
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This is a good and obvious example, which is interpreted from a self-centric viewpoint. When looked at from a reality-centric viewpoint, self is looked at as part of the reality. One simply sees a matrix of consideration vectors interacting with each other as the time flows. The cause-effect relationships are hard to determine with infinity of interactions going on. The vectors just come to be that way on a dynamic basis. The appearances at the macro level, however, may be different.
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“(Wikipedia) James described chance as neither hard nor soft determinism, but “indeterminism”. He said” I like this indeterminism. It is the atheism of determinism.
Philosophy of religion
(Wikipedia) 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:
The investigation of mystical experience was constant throughout the life of James, leading him to experiment with chloral hydrate (1870), amyl nitrite (1875), nitrous oxide (1882), and even peyote (1896). James claimed that it was only when he was under the influence of nitrous oxide that he was able to understand Hegel. He 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.
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Religions are outgrowth of certain type of experiences, which should be studied as such. These kind of experiences can be intense and pathological. They can reveal how the mind works. Ideas when actually experienced take a different quality.
This seems to be a very intersting avenue to explore.
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Instincts
(Wikipedia) Like Sigmund Freud, James was influenced by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. At the core of James’ theory of psychology, as defined in Principles of Psychology (1890), was a system of “instincts.” James wrote that humans had many instincts, even more than other animals. These instincts, he said, could be overridden by experience and by each other, as many of the instincts were actually in conflict with each other. In the 1920s, however, psychology turned away from evolutionary theory and embraced radical behaviorism.
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Instinct is a natural or innate impulse expressed as some pattern of activity or tendency to action. It may be described in terms of vectors associated with the physical and mental forces or energies that make up an organism. Instinct vectors may interact with experience vectors and undergo transformations.
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Theory of emotion
(Wikipedia) James is one of the two namesakes of the 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 James’s 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:
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James is emphasizing that it is the perception itself, which provides the primary emotion. There is no separation between the two. Primary emotion is the immediate reaction that accompanies the perception. Harmonics may then arise as repercussions from this perception. These harmonics are then felt and they linger as secondary emotion.
I am now wondering if sexual sensation qualifies as a primary emotion or secondary.
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It seems that sexual sensation as primary emotion has a unique quality that is not felt very often. It is something like love at the first sight.
There are secondary emotions that may be termed ‘sexual’ but those are very different.
William James’ bear
(Wikipedia) From Joseph LeDoux’s description of William James’s Emotion
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 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 James phrased his response. He 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.
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? He proposed that the obvious answer, that we run because we are afraid, was wrong, and instead argued that we are afraid because we run:
The essence of James’s 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 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 James’s 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.
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It is the premise of KHTK that metaphysical factors cannot be separated from physical factors. They occur together. For example, spiritual and physical are two different aspects of the same universal phenomena. If there is a God then it is part of the universe. God does not stand on its own separate from the universe.
The same premise applies to emotion. The primary emotion cannot be separated from the primary perception. It is a part of the perception. Perception is the immediate response at any moment to what is there. Secondary reactions and emotions may then follow.
However, I would not give precedence to physiology over emotion as James does. To me they are two different aspect of the same reaction. There is primary physiological and emotional response; and then there are secondary physiological and emotional reactions and repercussions.
Bringing primary emotions into focus at all time gives a lovely charm to living.
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The following video has the charm of highlighting primary ‘sexual’ emotion.
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Philosophy of history
(Wikipedia) One of the long-standing schisms in the philosophy of history concerns the role of individuals in social change.
One faction sees individuals (as seen in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities and Thomas Carlyle’s The French Revolution, A History) 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, James waded into this controversy with “Great Men, Great Thoughts, and the Environment,” an essay published in the Atlantic Monthly. He 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.
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I would take the middle position. I see the society moving according to holistic principles or laws, but I do not see individuals as willing pawns. The individuals are part of the forces and their interactions that express themselves in the movement of the society.
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(Wikipedia) A philosopher, according to James, must accept geniuses as a given entity the same way as a biologist accepts as an entity Darwin’s ‘spontaneous variations.’ The role of an individual will depend on the degree of its conformity with the social environment, epoch, moment, etc.
James introduces a notion of receptivities of the moment. The societies’ mutations from generation to generation are determined (directly or indirectly) mainly by the acts or examples of individuals whose genius was so adapted to the receptivities of the moment or whose accidental position of authority was so critical that they became ferments, initiators of movements, setters of precedent or fashion, centers of corruption, or destroyers of other persons, whose gifts, had they had free play, would have led society in another direction.
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Individuals who influence the movement of the society are themselves part of that movement. Their formation is influenced by the movement already in progress in the society. Individuals are like a resonance that develops with the interaction of forces in that movement.
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View on spiritualism and associationism
(Wikipedia) James studied closely the schools of thought known as associationism and spiritualism. The view of an associationist is that each experience that one has leads to another, creating a chain of events. The association does not tie together two ideas, but rather physical objects. This association occurs on an atomic level. Small physical changes occur in the brain which eventually form complex ideas or associations. Thoughts are formed as these complex ideas work together and lead to new experiences. Isaac Newton and David Hartley both were precursors to this school of thought, proposing such ideas as “physical vibrations in the brain, spinal cord, and nerves are the basis of all sensations, all ideas, and all motions…” James disagreed with associationism in that he believed it to be too simple. He referred to associationism as “psychology without a soul” because there is nothing from within creating ideas; they just arise by associating objects with one another.
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In KHTK theory the ideas and objects exist intertwined with each other and not in isolation from each other. Awareness is a pattern that is expressed through electromagnetic phenomenon. As the electromagnetic phenomenon condenses to form atoms and molecules, the awareness condenses along with it to form thoughts at atomic amd molecular levels. Associations are formed as a network rather than in terms of a simple linear progression. There are experiences that interact with other experiences to set up the conditions for new experiences.
Thoughts are formed through such associations through the brain/mind phenomenon and lead to new experiences. The soul is itself a phenomenon generated through such associations that span a spectrum of frequencies that is infinite in proportion. The basic postulates of KHTK theory are available at KHTK Postulates for Metaphysics – Part 1
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(Wikipedia) On the other hand, a spiritualist believes that mental events are attributed to the soul. Whereas in associationism, ideas and behaviors are separate, in spiritualism, they are connected. Spiritualism encompasses the term innatism, which suggests that ideas cause behavior. Ideas of past behavior influence the way a person will act in the future; these ideas are all tied together by the soul. Therefore, an inner soul causes one to have a thought, which leads them to perform a behavior, and memory of past behaviors determine how one will act in the future.
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The KHTK theory neatly combines associationism and spiritualism together. The source of the infinite spectrum of frequencies is unknowable as explained in KHTK postulates. These frequencies have the property of awareness expressed through the electromagnetic phenomenon. With increasing frequencies both awareness and electromagnetic phenomenon gains more complex forms that ultimately appear as ideas and objects. The ideas are innate to objects and are expressed as their properties. As different ideas and objects associate and network together, new ideas and objects are created.
Thus, ideas at the level of basic atoms and molecules are essentially their properties. There is an awareness vector that is innate to the object. This is its “center of awareness” which expresses the resultant of the awareness vectors of all the atoms and molecules that make up that object. This concept is similar to the concept of “center of mass” which expresses the resultant of the mass vectors of all the atoms and molecules that make up that object. The “soul” of an object may be viewed through its “center of awareness” the way mass of an object is viewed through its “center of mass.”
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Possibly “source” is a macro concept only. Possibly in QM there is not an equivalent.
I am thinking of this in terms of abstraction such as when Korzibsky says, “we see a disk where there is no disk.” In QM, we try to talk about something like a photon as a packet. At the macro, packet is meaningful. But possibly “we are seeing ‘packet’ where there is no packet.”
This is consistent with Feynman’s teaching that QM cannot be understood as an analogy. He says that QM is “not like” anything else.
Possibly we are seeing Source where there is no source. “And so it goes with God.”
What came out of the above subject clearing was that the awareness of an object is equivalent to its properties. A ball is aware of itself as a ball. A body is aware of itself as a body. An inanimate object is aware of itself as an inanimate object. An animated organism is aware of itself as an animated organism.
When we are aware of our surroundings, we are actually a larger object aware of “itself”. The self would be an object made up of body and its neural network of thoughts, which is aware of itself.
So, there is a macro view of the whole, and there is the micro view of the parts. So there are various levels of awareness.
A “source” would be a macro view.
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Considering something a “source” would simply be a consideration carried by the self, which may have nothing to do with the properties of the object, which is being considered the “source”.
What I mean is an ok term, it’s just never more than a relative term like the number one of a sequence.
A mother is the source of a baby in a macro sense, if we do not look deeper. If we look further, we see a zygote is the source of a baby, until we look deeper.
If we continue to look, it seems we can always find a relative source and a yet deeper source, but never an ultimate source.
I’m only saying that the notion of source may not be physically useful for understanding.
Hubbard had a Power Process for “Source”.
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Right! I forgot about this.
Aside from relative descriptions of things such as geography (source of a river), etc., Is there any time that the consideration of source makes a significant contribution to understanding the world?
I see considerations as part of a network or matrix. So, one may find sequences or prograssions of considerations from one point to some other point. But there would not be an absolute starting point or “source” of a particular consideration.
Yes very good. I see that I can spot moments when considerations erupt and come into being, however, the underlying and ongoing processes are always there.
(Wikipedia) These two schools of thought are very different, and yet James had a strong opinion about the two. He was, by nature, a pragmatist and therefore believed that one should use whatever parts of theories make the most sense and can be proven. Therefore, he recommended breaking apart spiritualism and associationism and using the parts of them that make the most sense. James believed that each person has a soul, which exists in a spiritual universe, and leads a person to perform the behaviors they do in the physical world. James was influenced by Emmanuel Swedenborg, who first introduced him to this idea. James states that, although it does appear that humans use associations to move from one event to the next, this cannot be done without this soul tying everything together. For, after an association has been made, it is the person who decides which part of it to focus on, and therefore determines in which direction following associations will lead. Associationism is too simple in that it does not account for decision-making of future behaviors, and memory of what worked well and what did not. Spiritualism, however, does not demonstrate actual physical representations for how associations occur. James therefore chose to combine the views of spiritualism and associationism to create his own way of thinking that he believed to make the most sense.
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James saw some truth in both associationism and spiritualism. He was on the right track but he was constrained by a self-centric filter. The self-centric filter sees soul as an “uncaused cause,” as the final decision maker above and beyond the associations. The soul is believed to belong to a spiritual universe that is separate and animates the physical universe.
But associations go much deeper than the external physical appearance. They go deep into the internal structure of the mind. They go even deeper to reveal the spiritual structure of the soul. Is there a limit to how deep these associations may go?
Not really… one can indeed go deeper than the depths our past assumptions have limited us to. KHTK postulates reveal that.
https://vinaire.me/2014/03/06/khtk-postulates-for-metaphysics-part-1/
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