Or it would be, if omens were real. And maybe they are, in the natural non-mystical way that light prepares sight. Mercury and Mars are right there in Skyview's frame too, less nakedly visible but no less real.
That's also the view from the pragmatic corridor, where I still find myself these days. Haven't made it to Rorty's bazaar yet, but I'll check it out soon. Like the star, the corridor invites expectation of hopeful hours ahead, hours of peaceable productivity and social amity. Expectation is not a promise, a guarantee, a specification of conditions, or a definition. But it is an inducement to get up and move, to risk a statement or two, to essay a thought and even dart to an aim.
The morning star for a corridor-roaming pragmatic mediator, just trying to keep all the tenants in Hotel Pragmatismo happy, is a symbol of civility. That's something sometimes hard to summon, when negotiating with adamantly insistent and demanding parties across the hall. But that's the mission, when you've taken the job of mediator. Pragmatism in that respect stands for no definite results save sustainable co-residency.
So what are we talking about? We could be talking about definitions. Richard Rorty wonders about the best pragmatist definition of religion, and finds James deficient by comparison to the surprisingly militant Dewey who (he says) more adamantly forswears non-human undemocratic incursions from outside the natural and social bounds of the establishment (the "hotel").
Maybe. But from a mediator's circumscribed unpedantic perspective the best definition is probably none at all. "Most books on the philosophy of religion try to begin with a precise definition of what its essence consists of. Some of these would-be definitions may possibly come before us in later portions of this course, and I shall not be pedantic enough to enumerate any of them to you now." VRE II
Second-best would be the least disruptive of peace all along the corridor. It would be maximally inclusive, and would not presuppose contentious metaphysical supernatural entities or powers.
Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine...the immediate personal experiences will amply fill our time, and we shall hardly consider theology or ecclesiasticism at all.
There is nothing in the known universe more natural than immediate personal experiences, nor anything more promising of happiness. So that's what a good pragmatic hotelier will fill the time with. Definitions aren't really so crucial, but experience is. Experience of the divine, whatever you may consider it and however you define it, is (for a radical empiricist) a natural phenomenon. "Any total reaction upon life is a religion," a tie that binds an individual to life. There's no need to get militant about that. Is there? Except, at least, when individuals become imperious and authoritarian in their "reaction"?
The corridor is long, tidy, and lit. We should enjoy our stay.
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