Monism or Pluralism? | William James Pragmatism Lecture 4

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In lecture 4 of his pragmatism series, William James tackles the issue of “the one and the many” which compares monism and pluralism using the pragmatic method. Obviously both monism and pluralism have a long history of debate and specificity, but James chooses to talk about them more generally.
He starts by acknowledging the importance of this debate for people and the tendency for us to value monism. When someone comes across a unifying monistic theory of the world, it might be an emotionally powerful experience.
He then lists out eight possible consequences that believing in monism can result in: 1. We can talk about the world as a whole 2. There is continuity in terms of space and time 3. Acquaintances can form networks of unity 4. Causal unity 5. Genetic unity 6. A unity of human purpose 7. Aesthetic unity (a unity of human history) 8. The One Knower (God or an Absolute) #philosophy #pragmatism #williamjames

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12 сен 2024

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Комментарии : 14

@itsawonderfullife4802 2 года назад

Great video and congratulations on the good coverage of James on Monism. You see, if you read comments you will be congratulated. Monism, in the sense of reducibility of everything to one single fundamental substance, seems to be the favored view in fundamental physics and its constant pursuit of symmetry (fundamental unchangedness with superficial change) and unification (of forces and minimalism of description). Also the idea of fields in quantum mechanics (QM) are related. In early QM, particles were studied in their plurality, as separate entities which only interact through forces but nothing more, their fundamental similarity and identity uncounted for. But the later field approach to QM, regards fields (think of it as a substance or fluid which can have weird waves in it and filling all of spacetime) as the fundamental entity and all particles as just waves in that field, thus reducing and unifying all those particles into a monistic being and substance. Just like the sea is more fundamental than the waves. Or the wind is more fundamental than the chimes, ....

@PhilosophyToons 2 года назад

I feel like theres a lot of interesting connections between physics and metaphysics in philosophy that are out there to be discovered, but I barely passed physics back in 10th grade so I'm not to confident in my ability to understand it all lol.

@itsawonderfullife4802 2 года назад

@@PhilosophyToons You are too humble. And yes! They have been mostly working on the same fundamental things and basic problems for the last 2.5 millennia across metaphysics and philosophy and natural philosophy (physics) and even religion/theology, with different approaches, and they mostly don't realize it. The famous 13th century Persian mystical poet Rumi masterfully portrays this grand scheme of things and the universal and eternal human endeavor to understand the nature of reality and the Oneness of being with the story of "elephant in the dark room". The "elephant" is Nature/God/Universe/Substance/The One and the visitors are philosopher/scientist/theologian/priest/mathematician/etc. Having experienced different parts (its muscular trunk, its long tail, its column like legs, ...) of the animal which they have never seen before, in the dark of the room, they come out giving vastly different descriptions of it to other people, not realizing the underlying unity of all those differing descriptions.