William James on Religion and the Sense of Reality 

I can attest from my personal experience, raised as an atheist, taught to engage in socrating thinking from a young age, that the process of philosophy can indeed lead to profoundly uplifting emotions. The only thing I can agree with is that those profoundly uplifting emotions usually came after a lot of contemplative work. Also I said I was taught socrating thinking, but I also did something else that just sort of happened without me realizing what I was doing; I engaged in something very much akin to Eugene Gendlin's Thinking at the Edge technique, and or his Focusing technique. As such I would argue that what separates philosophy from religion is only that a religious person is not required to take their experience, and or their knowledge and map it out for maximal clarity of understanding. Also that a philosopher is not required to have uplifting emotions or some form of the divine, BUT i would argue that a philosopher must tap into the underlying felt-experience and understand it, as such a philosopher must have uplifting feelings (as apposed to emotions). Further to be a philosopher you must be doing the work of taking any knowledge that is important to you and mapping it out in such a way that is conducive to maximal clarity of understanding.. there are other criteria I feel define a philosopher, but this is all we need in this context. Gendlin is an amazing philosopher that gets entirely too little attention, I'd love to see this channel discuss any of his work.

I wonder how the sense of reality, as a concept, can dialogue with concepts like: episteme (Foucault), paradigm (Kuhn), cosmovisions (with relation of indigenous beliefs), rationality (as concept rooted in modernity), ontology (as a concept rooted in philosophy), pluriverse (Blaser, de la Cadena, Escobar), intrapersonal world or innerworld (i think these may be concept from psychology, but I'm just guessing). There may be other concept and ideas that I may be forgetting.

I really like the discussion of religion religion on this channel and would love to see more of it

Thank you

#3. Higher emotions. "My heart was strangely warmed." - Wesley

Excellent introduction. You certainly have motivated me to put the book on my list!

Hi, I am time limited so didn't take well the first half of the video, doing political correctness, setting the context, etc-like layering around what David (if I can, instead of Dr. Guzman) wanted us to tell about his taking on William James' concept of Religion. But then (maybe less when he started enumerating types of Religion with and w/o God, etc) at the half of video it started being interesting for me b/c of concepts of Reality, Seriousness, Joy and slightly neglected one of Solitude. That and the mechanism of incorporating/embedding (?) ideas into Reality.. Now, my understanding: Yeah, it might be possible to perceive any Concept as a part of Reality providing that the act of perception is consistent enough. That consistence can be delivered indeed by stiff rules of one of religions. And I disagree that Philosophy (according to W. James, or maybe according to James?) is different from Religion in that sense; the experience of Joy comes from our basic need of having a working model of Social and Physical Reality, and those consistent recognitions of Divine while perceiving its various aspects, evokes Joy and Intellectual Satisfaction. And the final observation, unlike David it is more important to me that the source of the above mentioned Joy comes from the act of braking overwhelming sense of individual Solitude. .. with added aspect of Security. :-) ... knowing James very shallowly I think he might agree that the sense of belonging, security, and community provided by religious or philosophical systems can indeed counteract the existential solitude and insecurity faced by individuals, thereby contributing to a deeper sense of Joy and fulfillment.

As a Buddhist minister in France, this is a topic that really interests me. Thank you for your lecture, can't wait to read this book 😊

I find today we think the opposite, every intractable medical problem presented to a gp is consistently diagnosed as “ stress” or “ depression”

lectures 1st given in Bonnie Scotland

Great talk, thanks for sharing this

An interesting discourse by David on James analysis of the reality of religion. Whenever I hear American pragmatism applied to philosophy I reach for some analgesic to shut out the blather. Such pragmatism has to be used discussing James opinion on religion. Yet for me James thesis does seem entirely useful to explore realism in the context of religion. Consequently, it’s clear enough to me as David talks and his updated vocabulary of neuroscience references shows James seems anchored in a time of scientific ignorance about reality in how the brain works. One can’t talk of religion in psychological terms now without reference to AI networks and the prolonged debate from the 1950s to the Nvidia chips now what is cognition. James is insensitive to the science that has altered what we mean by realism. The 19th century especially in the U.S. founded Analytic Philosophy. Can we honestly accept the ‘logic’ of James’ stance? I think not. His realism is for example in a period quite before mass media news. Obviously news print was shaping U.S. consciousness via war imperialism, but the photographic realism of the later media is almost completely absent from James concept of reality. Nor can James envision Stone Age tools, cave paintings, and the earliest agricultural cultures as to religion. Rather James is rooted in the logic of reality that became Analytic Philosophy, not the performance of making realism via mass media.

I’ll add to my rant below, at this same decade James’ book Picasso and Braque invented cubism. James could no more address such visual challenges to realism, than he could anticipate the impact of movies upon the 20th century.

Love the pragmatists

I have read a lot of texts by the pragmatists, both classical and "neo", but not James' "Varieties" jet. Only references to and excerpts from the book. Thank you for your great summary!

Can we definitly establish that an orgasm is a religious expierience ?, if not how do we demarcate?

A) What if you take psychedelics & your cat presents as God? B) Who's this guy to tell me what's a valid religious experience? Bah humbug. tavi.