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     “The regular mystical way of attaining the vision of the One is by ascetic training, fundamentally the same in all religious systems. But this ineffable kind of Oneness is not strictly philosophical, for philosophy is essentially talkative and explicit, so I must pass it by.

     The usual philosophic way of reaching deeper oneness has been by the conception of substance. First used by the Greeks, this notion was elaborated with great care during the Middle Ages. Defined as any being that exists per se, so that it needs no further subject in which to inhere (Ens ita per se existens, ut non indigeat alio tamquam subjecto, cui inhaereat, ad existendum) a ‘substance’ was first distinguished from all ‘accidents’ (which do require such a subject of inhesion—cujus esse inesse). It was then identified with the ‘principle of individuality’ in things, and with their ‘essence’, and divided into various types, for example into first and second, simple and compound, complete and incomplete, specific and individual, material and spiritual substances. God, on this view, is a substance, for he exists per se, as well as a se; but of secondary beings, he is the creator, not the substance, for once created, they also exist per se though not a se. Thus, for scholasticism, the notion of substance is only a partial unifier, and in its totality, the universe forms a pluralism from the substance-point-of-view.

     Spinoza broke away from the scholastic doctrine. He began his ‘Ethics’ by demonstrating that only one substance is possible, and that that substance can only be the infinite and necessary God. This heresy brought reprobation on Spinoza, but it has been favored by philosophers and poets ever since. The pantheistic spinozistic unity was too sublime a prospect not to captivate the mind. It was not till Locke, Berkeley, and Hume began to put in their ‘critical’ work that the suspicion began to gain currency that the notion of substance might be only a word masquerading in the shape of an idea.

     Locke believed in substances, yet confessed that ‘we have no such clear idea at all, but only an uncertain supposition of we know not what, which we take to be the substratum, or support of those ideas we do not know.’ He criticized the notion of personal substance as the principles of self-sameness in our different minds. Experientially, our personal identity consists, he said, in nothing more than the functional and perceptible fact that our later states of mind continue and remember our earlier ones.

     Berkeley applied the same sort of criticism to the notion of bodily substance. ‘When I consider,’ he says, ‘the two parts (’being’ in general, and ‘supporting accidents’) which make the signification of the words ‘material substance,’ I am convinced there is no distinct meaning annexed to them. ... Suppose an intelligence without the help of external bodies to be affected with the same train of sensations that you are, imprinted in the same order, and with like vividness in his mind. I ask whether that intelligence hath not all the reason to believe the existence of corporeal substances, represented by his ideas, and exciting them in his mind, that you can possibly have for believing the same thing.’ Certain grouped sensations, in short, are all that corporeal substances are known-as, therefore the only meaning which the word ‘matter’ can claim is that it denotes such sensations and their groupings. They are the only verifiable aspect of the word.”

— William James, The One and the Many

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“It would make no sense to favor any of these two directions of research; for example to only deem the path to more general laws physical science, since then the stock of physical theorems would depend on the arbitrary starting point of research. More specific theorems than those with which we started would not be theorems of physics. But such arbitrariness should never decide the content of a science. Rather, one has to maintain that physical judgments refer to classes of any breadth or restriction. They always remain classes; it is just as impossible to subsume the whole universe under one physical equation as it is to fully capture the individual case in mathematical relationships. The actual task of physics is the coordination of a class, which is initially given as a system of mathematical theorems, with objects of empirical intuition; this includes the numerical determination of constants.”

— Hans Reichenbach, The Concept of Probability

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“In mathematical judgments the object can be specified initially because it can be fully grasped. There is never a claim of validity par excellence, rather the claim is always conditional on the presence of certain requirements; these requirements completely determine the object and therefore the claim to certainty is secured. However, physical judgments cannot be based on defined conditions, but can only be based on preconditions that are ultimately given by nature; they cannot be fully grasped and determined, but must simply be assumed. For example, a claim is made about the Earth, which I can only perceive and not reconstruct a priori from pure intuition. The two forms of judgment, the hypothetical and the categorical, correspond to these two types. It is possible to give physical judgments the linguistic form of hypothetical judgments, and vice versa, to formulate mathematical judgments as assertions about particular unique objects. But if logic is going to be more than just grammar, one will restrict the term ‘hypothetical judgment’ to such judgments whose preconditions can be determined exhaustively and uniquely and the name ‘categorical judgment’ will only be assigned to such judgments whose conditions of validity cannot be completely determined due to the nature of the judgment. Thus, mathematical judgments are hypothetical and physical judgments are categorical. To avoid all ambiguity in language use we will call the first judgments of definition and the second judgments of reality.”

— Hans Reichenbach, The Concept of Probability

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“Verbal inflation, like monetary inflation, would have no effect if everyone understood what was happening and could adjust to it immediately. A ten-fold increase in the price level would mean nothing if everyone were free to add a zero to the sums in all contracts, laws, cash on hand, etc., and did so immediately. Inflation has an economic effect precisely because there is no such instantaneous and total flexibility. In the real world of lagging adjustments, borrowers pay back less than they owe, workers are paid less than they were promised, and the government cheats its way out of part of the national debt by paying it off in dollars that are worth less than the dollars that were borrowed. Verbal inflation likewise enables some people to cheat others. When ‘harassment’, ‘discrimination’, or even ‘rape’ are redefined to include things going far beyond the original meanings of these words, there would be no real change if everyone understood what the inflated words now mean and neither social stigmas nor the penalties of the laws applied to the vast range of new things encompassed by these new meanings.”

— Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy

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Naturalistic Metaphysics:

     “Dewey’s naturalistic metaphysics hoped to eliminate epistemological problems by offering an up-to-date version of Locke’s ‘plain, historical method’. But what Green and Hegel had seen, and Dewey himself saw perfectly well except when he was sidetracked into doing ‘metaphysics’, was that we can eliminate epistemological problems by eliminating the assumption that justification must repose on something other than social practices and human needs. To say, as Dewey wants to, that to gain knowledge is to solve problems, one does not need to find ‘continuities’ between nervous systems and people, or between ‘experience’ and ‘nature’. One does not need to justify our claim to know that, say, a given action was the best we could take by noting that the brain is an ‘organ of action-undergoing’, any more than by pointing out that the particles which make up the brain are undergoing some actions themselves. Dewey, in short, confuses two ways of revolting against philosophical dualisms. The first way is to point out that the dualism is imposed by a tradition for specific cultural reasons, but has now outlived its usefulness. This is the Hegelian way—the way Dewey adopts in ‘An Empirical Survey of Empiricisms’. The second is to describe the phenomenon in a nondualistic way which emphasizes ‘continuity between lower and higher processes’. This is the Lockean way—the way which led Locke to assimilate all mental acts to raw feels, thus paving the way for Humean skepticism. It was this assimilation which provoked Kant’s remark that whereas Leibniz ‘intellectualized’ appearances, ‘Locke sensualized all concepts of the understanding’ and which led German thought to turn away from the ‘naturalism’ which Locke seemed to represent. Its reappearance in Experience and Nature led the logical empiricists to accuse Dewey of confusing ‘psychological’ with ‘conceptual’ issues.

     Dewey wanted to be as naturalistic as Locke and as historicist as Hegel. This can indeed be done. One can say with Locke that the causal processes that go on in the human organism suffice, without the intrusion of anything non-natural, to explain the acquisition of knowledge (moral, mathematical, empirical, and political). One can also say, with Hegel, that rational criticism of knowledge-claims is always in terms of the problems that human beings face at a particular epoch. These two lines of thought neither intersect nor conflict. Keeping them separate has the virtue of doing just what Dewey wanted to do—preventing the formulation of the traditional, skeptically motivated ‘problems of epistemology’. But it also leaves ‘systematic philosophy’ or ‘metaphysics’ with little to do. Dewey never quite brought himself to adopt the Bouwsma-like stance that philosophy’s mission, like that of therapy, was to make itself obsolete. So he thought, in Experience and Nature, to show what the discovery of the true ‘generic traits’ of experience could do.”

— Richard Rorty, Dewey’s Metaphysics

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John Dewey on Introverted Feeling:

“Belief in magic did not cease when the coarser forms of superstitious practice ceased. The principle of magic is found whenever it is hoped to get results without intelligent control of means; and also when it is supposed that means can exist and yet remain inert and inoperative. In morals and politics such expectations still prevail, and insofar the most important phases of human action are still affected by magic. We think that by feeling strongly enough about something, by wishing hard enough, we can get a desirable result, such as virtuous execution of a good resolve, or peace among nations, or good will in industry. We slur over the necessity of the cooperative action of objective conditions, and the fact that this cooperation is assured only by persistent and close study. Or, on the other hand, we fancy we can get these results by external machinery, by tools or potential means, without a corresponding functioning of human desires and capacities. Often times these two false and contradictory beliefs are combined in the same person. The man who feels that his virtues are his own personal accomplishments is likely to be also the one who thinks that by passing laws he can throw the fear of God into others and make them virtuous by edict and prohibitory mandate.”

— John Dewey, Human Nature and Conduct

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There is no picture which is a priori true.

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

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“’Truth’ in the sense of ‘truth taken apart from any theory’ and ‘world’ taken as ‘what determines such truth’ are notions that were (like the terms ‘subject’ and ‘object’, ‘given’ and ‘consciousness’) made for each other. Neither can survive apart from the other.

— Richard Rorty, The World Well Lost

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“Pragmatists hold that semantic concepts have no role beyond their role in predicting properties of use.”

— John MacFarlane, Pragmatism and Inferentialism

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Nitrogen Fixation by Prokaryotes:

“Nitrogen fixation by prokaryotes is another metabolic process that is essential for the function of the biosphere. Nitrogen (N₂) is the principal atmospheric gas and the element is part of the structure of proteins, nucleotides, chlorophyll, bacteriochlorophyll, and other vital molecules. Atmospheric nitrogen is useless for plants and cannot be assimilated by the majority of organisms. This is why nitrogen-fixing bacteria and archaea are so important. They enrich soils and aquatic habitats by converting N₂ into ammonia (NH₃). Free-living prokaryotes and symbiotic prokaryotes fix N₂ using the enzyme nitrogenase. This is a metabolically ‘expensive’ process because the nitrogen atoms in N₂ are connected via a strong triple bond that must be broken to reduce the molecule. Free-living cyanobacteria derive the necessary energy for nitrogen fixation from their photosynthetic activity, whereas non-photosynthetic bacteria that fix nitrogen within the root nodules of clover, soybean, and other legumes are supplied with energy by their plant hosts.”

— Nicholas P. Money, Microbiology: A Very Short Introduction

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“Being a pragmatic metavocabulary is the simplest species of the genus I want to introduce here. It is a pragmatically mediated semantic relation between vocabularies. It is pragmatically mediated by the practices-or-abilities that are specified by one of the vocabularies (which say what counts as doing that) and that deploy or are the use of the other vocabulary (what one says by doing that). The semantic relation that is established thereby between the two vocabularies is of a distinctive sort, quite different from, for instance, definability, translatability, reducibility, and supervenience. My basic suggestion for extending the classical project of analysis so as to incorporate as essential positive elements the insights that animate the pragmatist critique of that project is that, alongside the classical semantic relations between vocabularies that project has traditionally appealed to, we consider also pragmatically mediated ones—of which the relation of being a pragmatic metavocabulary is a paradigm. I will introduce an apparatus that recursively generates an infinite set of such pragmatically mediated semantic relations. In fact, I will eventually argue that unless we take steps along these lines, we cannot properly understand the expressive roles played by some of the kinds of vocabulary with which the analytic tradition has been most centrally concerned: logical, modal, normative, and intentional vocabularies.”

— Robert B. Brandom, Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism

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The Unconscious Attitude of Introversion:

     “The predominance of the subjective factor in consciousness naturally involves a devaluation of the object. The object is not given the importance that belongs to it by right. Just as it plays too great a role in the extraverted attitude, it has too little meaning for the introvert. To the extent that his consciousness is subjectivized and excessive importance attached to the ego, the object is put in a position which in the end becomes untenable. The object is a factor whose power cannot be denied, whereas the ego is a very limited and fragile thing. It would be a very different matter if the self opposed the object. Self and world are commensurable factors; hence a normal introverted attitude is as justifiable and valid as a normal extraverted attitude. But if the ego has usurped the claims of the subject, this naturally produces, by way of compensation, an unconscious reinforcement of the influence of the object. In spite of the positively convulsive efforts to ensure the superiority of the ego, the object comes to exert an overwhelming influence, which is all the more invincible because it seizes on the individual unawares and forcibly obtrudes itself on his consciousness. As a result of the ego’s unadapted relation to the object—for a desire to dominate it is not adaptation—a compensatory relation arises in the unconscious which makes itself felt as an absolute and irrepressible tie to the object. The more the ego struggles to preserve its independence, freedom from obligation, and superiority, the more it becomes enslaved to the objective data. The individual’s freedom of mind is fettered by the ignominy of his financial dependence, his freedom of action trembles in the face of public opinion, his moral superiority collapses in a morass of inferior relationships, and his desire to dominate ends in a pitiful craving to be loved. It is now the unconscious that takes care of the relation to the object, and it does so in a way that is calculated to bring the illusion of power and the fantasy of superiority to utter ruin. The object assumes terrifying proportions in spite of the conscious attempt to degrade it. In consequence, the ego’s efforts to detach itself from the object and get it under control become all the more violent. In the end it surrounds itself with a regular system of defences (aptly described by Adler) for the purpose of preserving at least the illusion of superiority. The introvert’s alienation from the object is now complete; he wears himself out with defence measures on the one hand, while on the other he makes fruitless attempts to impose his will on the object and assert himself. These efforts are constantly being frustrated by the overwhelming impressions received from the object. It continually imposes itself on him against his will, it arouses in him the most disagreeable and intractable affects and persecutes him at every step. A tremendous inner struggle is needed all the time in order to ‘keep going’. The typical form his neurosis takes is psychasthenia, a malady characterized on the one hand by extreme sensitivity and on the other by great proneness to exhaustion and chronic fatigue.

     An analysis of the personal unconscious reveals a mass of power fantasies coupled with fear of objects which he himself has forcibly activated, and of which he is often enough the victim. His fear of objects develops into a peculiar kind of cowardliness; he shrinks from making himself or his opinions felt, fearing that this will only increase the object’s power. He is terrified of strong affects in others, and is hardly ever free from the dread of falling under hostile influences. Objects possess puissant and terrifying qualities for him—qualities he cannot consciously discern in them, but which he imagines he sees through his unconscious perception. As his relation to the object is very largely repressed, it takes place via the unconscious, where it becomes charged with the latter’s qualities. These qualities are mostly infantile and archaic, so that the relation to the object becomes primitive too, and the object seems endowed with magical powers. Anything strange and new arouses fear and mistrust, as though concealing unknown perils; heirlooms and suchlike are attached to his soul as by invisible threads; any change is upsetting, if not positively dangerous, as it seems to denote a magical animation of the object. His ideal is a lonely island where nothing moves except what he permits to move.”

— Carl Jung, Psychological Types

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Maranasati:

“Such a spiritual exercise implies the ‘exit from time’, for not only is the shaman, by means of an interior vision, anticipating his physical death, but he is finding again what one might call the non-temporal source of Life, the bone. Indeed, for the hunting peoples the bone symbolizes the ultimate root of animal Life, the matrix from which the flesh is continually renewed. It is starting with the bones that animals and men are re-born; they maintain themselves awhile in carnal existence, and when they die their ‘life’ is reduced to the essence concentrated in the skeleton, whence they will be born anew according to an uninterrupted cycle that constitutes an eternal return. It is duration alone, time, which breaks and separates, by the intervals of carnal existence, the timeless unity represented by the quintessence of Life concentrated in the bones. By contemplating himself as a skeleton, the shaman does away with time and stands in the presence of the eternal source of Life. So true is this, that in the ascetic technique of mysticisms as highly developed as Tantric Buddhism and Lamaism, meditation upon the image of one’s skeleton, or divers spiritual exercises done in the presence of corpses, skeletons or skulls, still play an important part; such meditations, among others, reveal the evanescence of temporal duration and, consequently, the vanity of all incarnate existence. But evidently this ‘going out of time’ by means of the contemplation of one’s own skeleton is differently evaluated among the shamans of hunting and pastoral peoples, and among the Indo-Tibetan ascetics; for the former, its aim is to re-discover the ultimate source of animal life and thence to participate in Being; while, for the Indo-Tibetan monks, it is to contemplate the eternal cycle of existences ruled by karma; and hence to dispel the Great Illusion (mâyâ) of Cosmic Life, striving to transcend it by placing oneself in the unconditioned, symbolized by Nirvâna.”

— Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities

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“The images of ‘flight’ and of ‘ascension’, so frequently appearing in the world of dreams and imagination, become perfectly intelligible only at the level of mysticism and metaphysics, where they clearly express the ideas of freedom and transcendence.”

— Mircea Eliade, Myths, Dreams, and Mysteries: The Encounter Between Contemporary Faiths and Archaic Realities

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“In the wake of a minimum wage increase, the possible adjustment paths include the following:

1. Capital could be substituted for labor intentionally by individual employers buying machinery and laying off workers.

2. Capital could be substituted for labor systemically by a loss of profits and market share by the more labor-intensive firms, which are more hard hit by the minimum wage increase than the capital-intensive firms are.

3. Higher-skilled and higher-priced labor could be substituted for lower-priced labor intentionally by individual employers.

4. Higher-skilled and higher-priced labor could be substituted for lower-priced labor systemically by the greater loss of business by those firms more heavily dependent on the lower-skilled labor whose costs have been increased.

5. Marginally profitable firms could be forced out of existence, reducing industry employment, even without any reduction in employment by any of the surviving employers.”

— Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy