Episode  

Proud to be part of the very small handful of intellectual elites that have all watched the same youtube video (this one)!

The quote for the week at my work is “act as if what you do makes a difference, it does” I love it

Mr. West I just wanted to say that I really enjoy your works. You discuss the topics in a manner that is easily understandable without talking down to your audience. That basic respect speaks volumes to your character. Thank you for making my life better.

An exquisite presentation.

Amazing. I'm a student of philosophy.

Excellent. I really like this philosophy. Practical truth. Nice. Also a very nice presentation.

This helped immensely. Thank you so much!!!!

Great job P.T.

Really good video, well presented, don’t stop doing them, they’re one of a kind. I like WJ’s way of thinking. He’s not wrong butI don’t think he’s right either. Truth is that which cannot be false. It is divine. The past is truth, the future is truth once it becomes the past. Truth is an absolute. Statements can’t be Truth unless they describe, without objectivity, that which has happened. Our courts use this concept unbeknownst, because in gathering facts for a case they are attempting to reassemble the facts of the case in order to get to the........truth. I’ll absolutely continue to watch your videos. Thank you.

What about occam's razor?! Sure, two explanations can have the same consequence but, if nothing else is known but the consequence, isn't there a principle of only stating what is necessary and what is likely? It seems judging the accuracy theories based on the consequence opens the gates to all sorts of fanciful explanations as long as at the end of the explanation we end up the consequence we are studying. For example: When u have the consequence receiving a burger from the drive-thru window u can have several theories how they made the burger: 1) their are elves making them with fairy dust 2) their is a hamburger tree in the kitchen that is blocked 3) people are cooking the hamburger meat on a grill All these explanations result in the consequence of recieving a hamburger from the drive- thru. But only the 3rd explanation seems likely. Anyways great summary. You really captured james' meaning.Im currently half-way through reading pragmatism. I find it thought provoking but all i can think of is that occam's razor pushes against pragmatism.

Good video. I am a big fan of pragmatism and James was a great writer. Thank you!

The truth is something like the centre of town

If I believe in somethings,I believe it because it's useful to me and gives me more opportunities to prosper - kinda nietzschean will to power

I'm definitely returning to this. Even though it's extremely puzzling. A sphere is simply the closest perfect geometrical approximation of the Earth's shape. In practice it IS NOT FLAT. It is more like a squashed tomato in shape. At least I had an amateur astronomer who was a professional philosophy professor told me this(my brain must be tired from philosobinging) . It's most useful for me to think of it as a sphere because it makes more sense to me as a layperson.

"Socratic Method.exe"

It seems to me after an initial affair of mine with this theory it is better as an epistemological theory of justification. Justification as reliability and as evidence has always been my favorites. It seems most similar to reliability. It's useful for life to assume we're free not determined - this belief reliably produces better social results than its opposites, so our belief in free will is justified. But true? That is a much stronger claim I'm tempted to affirm but I just see this more sober way to incorporate the insight. Similarly coherence has been assimilated under theory of justification by analytic phil.

What I mean by that is science at its core is an empirical realm.

What does pragmatism say about a situation in which we discover something that makes accurate predictions yet contradicts one or more established "truths"; do we reject the new thing or the old thing(s)? What if we can't find a way to disprove either one?

The Earth is neither round nor a sphere, but rather an oblate spheroid.

A diamond ring is a token of submission... lol

I would go even further than William James, and state that it is because it is useful to believe that facts about triangles are "just there", that one holds such a belief. Pragmatism that is not rooted in irrationalism, simply doesn't work.

I guess I'm a hard minded person because I'm very skeptical of what I see as a redefining of the word truth. I wonder how a conversation with William James would go if the word factual was used instead of the word truth?

What is the relationship between pragmatism and objective truth? Is it safe to say that pragmatism almost doesn't care either way? I'm thinking of the idea of the world being thought flat; objectively it wasn't and isn't, but it may have been useful for a time to think that way; likewise, the Earth is not objectively a sphere, due to the provisionality of all knowledge. So does pragmatism say, well we can't ever possibly know what is objectively true, so thinking about it and especially trying to get at it is futile and we shouldn't concern ourselves with it? And how does pragmatism work on an individual level. I mean, if something is widely accepted as "true" (the force of gravity, for example", and an uncontacted tribe have no idea about gravity, is gravity simply not true for them? I know it real terms that they nonetheless experience it, but under pragmatism it is true because they don't believe in it. They might believe that a supernatural being is responsible, so is that true for them? Either way, doesn't gravity exist independently of human thought? Whether I know about it or not, its effects control what I can and can't do to a large degree. I'm just struggling to get my head around it.

Like adjust your belief in a personal deity and know youre at the mercy of the hand life has dealt you. Try begging Jesus for bodily pain relief even just enough to help you apply some solutions and discover he is deaf or just a dead mystic. Then try to cope alone with the reality that most people dont care to help you either. Even worse some will laugh at your suffering

Thoreau was inspiring, James is more ......I can't put my finger on it.

Decent volume on this episode, have to skip the episodes that are hard to hear. Given up on hearing the podcasts.

A little too like word games, semantics. A theory, not the "truth." Oh boy ... think it and it will be? Nah.

Not a convincing argument by william james. Equating religious beliefs with secular beliefs is ridiculous. It is completely ignoring the dogmatism of religion and skepticism of secularism/atheism.

Wake up people! The earth is a triangle on Tuesdays, square on Sundays and a parallelogram on Friday nights and rectangular on all other days.