Turn the page, to a new month, a new old dead philosopher (Pyrrho was no Aristotle), another visit with Wendell and his old Kentucky home, and then a new class: Fall '22's rendition of MALA 6050, the Master of Liberal Arts team-taught course which this year tackles Experience.
I should enjoy it, I proposed the theme. It's one of my perennial subjects, as a Jamesian-variety empiricist. My proposal was somewhat self-interested in a more immediate sense too, since I'll be teaching an entire semester-length course on the subject in the Spring. I wanted a leg-up on preparation and recruiting.
Last summer's Rationality course was a prequel, hence the blogsite host: Rationality and Experience, "exploring what it means to be rational and human, what EXPERIENCE has to do with that, and whether human (ir)rationality is sustainable."
"The really vital question for us all is, What is this world going to be? What is life eventually to make of itself? The centre of gravity of philosophy must therefore alter its place. The earth of things, long thrown into shadow by the glories of the upper ether, must resume its rights." --William James, Pragmatism III
I interpret James's bold statement as an invitation to reflect not only on the varieties and significance of past personal and individual experience, but on the prospects facing an ameliorated experience for individuals, communities, and all life going forward. We're not just in it for ourselves, and they're not alien to us. We're all branches of the same tree.
So we'll begin that work of experiential reflection and prospective anticipation tonight with James's Gifford Lectures, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and in a week we'll bookend the experience with Carl Sagan's Gifford Lectures Varieties of Scientific Experience.
Variety, after all, is the spice of life.
What a fascinating topic. Experience is after all one of the few things we can say is "real", right? The MALA 6050 seems like my fantasies of ancient schools where people were encouraged to learn and decoded the universe and our existence one interpretation at a time. A great theme too, experience to me is a great networking of pathways in your brain, and the pattern recognition system that creates familiarity when a pathway is stimulated. The human brain is so beautiful, isnt it? To me, Experience is emotional and rational, it's all connected through your decision making, so I believe your experience must be operated properly; it's more useful through your other teachings like morality and ethics. The earth has experience, and as for what may become of the earth, I think to trust it's experience and its connection to its children. A wise Dr. Oliver once told me he found it safe to assume that experience is more or less relevant to reality until he found a reason not to think so. I've found his layed-back perspective to bring me closer to the equations that are reality, simplifying the equation for what my existence really is.
ReplyDeleteJames' statement to me provokes thoughts of what is to come of me, my future, transition, and passing, which is a very self-centered thought I come back to at some point during a major change in my life. Coming to this again with a brand new idea of experience I wonder why animals are not worried about our seemingly unexplainable processes as humans, as humans continue to wonder about the impossible processes of Time. This quote brings me to think about Time and our binding to it, and the more I think of it I wonder why we should be trying to decode such a force, if the life we define with on earth chooses not to "spend its time" on such ideas. Is it a lost cause to wonder about the future as humans?