PRAGMATIC ADVICE FOR MODERATION

The following advice is found in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 7:15 -17)

IN THIS MEANINGLESS LIFE....

                                                                                                                                                                    

A good human being may die while another lives on, even though he or she is evil. So don't be too good or too wise--why kill yourself?

But don't be too wicked or too foolish, either--why die before you have to?

AVOID BOTH EXTREMES.

PROCESSES THAT DEFINE A RATIONAL, INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEING

PERCEPTION provides us with information.

MEMORY stores the information from perception for future use.

THINKING utilizes the knowledge provided by perception and memory and combines and organizes it into new patterns and combinations.

PERCEPTION represents the present.

MEMORY reinstates past experiences.

THINKING reaches toward the future, toward something that has yet to be brought into existence.

Customarily, all three of these processes (PERCEPTION, MEMORY, & THINKING) are going on at the same time; together they constitute what is called COGNITION, a group of processes by which a person achieves knowledge and command of his or her external and internal worlds.

If a person possessed only the ability to perceive, he or she would be bound to the immediate present. Add memory to perception, and a person becomes a creature with a past as well as a present. By adding the power of thought, a person is able to project himself or herself into the future. Through thought, a person can rearrange both his or her internal and external worlds to suit his or her fancy and his or her needs.

THERE IS NO MORE IMPORTANT MENTAL PROCESS THAN THINKING, UNLESS IT BE THAT OF TRANSFORMING THOUGHT INTO APPROPRIATE ACTIVITY.

Thinking is an active search for something that the person wants and needs. It is an internal trying-out process, a testing of and an experimenting with reality. It reflects a need to explain and to understand, and a desire to create.

TO PERCEIVE THE WORLD CORRECTLY, TO REMEMBER ACCURATELY, TO THINK EFFECTIVELY, AND THEN TO ACT APPROPRIATELY--THESE ARE PROCESSES THAT DEFINE A RATIONAL, INTELLIGENT HUMAN BEING.

FAITH AND FACT ARE TRUE

PERMAN WILSON'S DISCOVERY

Because we live in two worlds (one mental and the other material), each one of us has its own truth--one real and the other ideal.

For something to be deemed true in one's mental world, one has only to believe it.

For something to be deemed true in one's material world, it has to be observable and verifiable.

In the mental world a mere belief may be called a faith.

In the material world a verifiable observation is called  a fact.

PRAGMATISM

William James (January 11, 1842 - August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher and psychologist who trained as a physician who trained as a physician and earned his M.D. degree at Harvard. He was the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States. He also wrote influential books on pragmatism, psychology, educational psychology, the psychology of religious experience, and mysticism.

In his book, published in 1907, entitled Pragmatism, James suggested the division of philosophers into two distinct groups:

(1) "TENDER-MINDED" and
(2) "TOUGH-MINDED."

To the first group belong the rationalists, those "going by principles," the idealists, believers in free will, religious and optimistic thinkers.

To the second belong the empiricists, those "going by fact," the materialists, determinists, and irreligious and pessimistic ones.

James himself was striving for a philosophical position which would satisfy both types of philosophers, and the pragmatic method he proposed was meant "primarily as a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise may be interminable."

It consists in asking, "What practical difference would it make to anyone if this rather than that notion were true?"

If there is no practical difference, then the dispute is idle.

But it is obvious, for instance, that belief in a benevolent Creator and ruler of the universe makes a tremendous difference in the life of the believer. In this way theological and metaphysical statements were given a kind of respectability through James' "pragmatic" theory of truth.

According to it, A BELIEF IS TRUE WHEN IT IS "SATISFYING," "USEFUL," "EXPEDIENT."

In other words, IT IS THE RESULT OF THE BELIEF THAT COUNTS. IF WE ACT UPON A BELIEF AND IT "WORKS," THEN IT IS TRUE.

Unfortunately, the pragmatic theory of truth has only a limited application. It clearly does not apply to such statements as "The earth revolves around the sun," even though it might be more satisfying to believe that we are at the center of the universe and not inhabitants of a minor planet.

JAMES OBVIOUSLY CONFUSED ONE OF THE WAYS OF FINDING TRUTH WITH WHAT TRUTH IS. UTILITY IS MERELY ONE OF THE TESTS OF TRUTH, NOT TRUTH ITSELF.

The philosophical position that James presented in his book 'A Pluralistic Universe (1909) is the expression of his being a composite of the two types into which he divided philosophers. He was a mixture of tough-mindedness and tender-mindedness, trying to satisfy the demands of reason and scientific matter-of-factness with the demands of the heart. He projected this inner conflict onto the universe, which for him was not a harmonious whole, not a 'uni-' but a 'pluri-verse'; conflicting purposes and cross-currents seem so obvious that he considered "the religion of common people, polytheism," closer to the truth than monotheism.

THE ADVANTAGE OF VIEWING THE UNIVERSE AS "UNFINISHED" AND GOD AS NOT OMNIPOTENT IS THAT IT ALLOWS US TO SEE HUMANS AS FREE TO SHAPE OUR OWN FUTURE, AND AS CO-WORKERS OF GOD.

This view of the universe and of God was what William James called "the melioristic type of theism" (in Latin 'melior' means 'better'); this view adumbrates the possibility of gradual improvement of the human condition; IT IS A MIDDLE POSITION BETWEEN 'CRUDE NATURALISM' AND 'SUPERNATURAL ABSOLUTISM.'