Lucy (Marsha) said one and all: From the abstract of dmb's exalted thesis. "I conclude by making a case that James and Pirsig are offering an empirically based form of philosophical mysticism that is comparable to a non-theistic religion like Buddhism." I wonder if he actually made a convincing case for such a statement...
dmb says: 1) There are only two people who've received a copy of my thesis, Pirsig and McWatt. Since McWatt says he hasn't read it and Pirsig doesn't participate in this forum, I wonder why you've posed the question here and addressed it to "one and all". 2) Since successfully defending one's thesis is the most important requirement for graduating and I did graduate, doesn't your question fly in the face of common sense? As is the case with every student, each of the thesis committee members had to read my thesis, grill me about it in person and then decide whether or not I get to graduate. If a student fails to make a convincing case for their thesis statement, they don't get a diploma, not even those who earned perfect scores up to that point. 3) I don't believe that your question is sincere and if you were given an answer you'd just find a way to mock it or dismiss it. I believe you have no interest in any answer to your question and no capacity to understand it even if you were sincere. If you really wanted to know about the connections between pragmatic empiricism and Buddhism, I guess it would only be fitting to go take a look for yourself. B. Alan Wallace is a huge fan of Buddhism and William James. YouTube makes it easy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4wso7hpd-24 The Varieties of Pure Experience: William James and Kitaro Nishida on Consciousness and Embodiment by Joel W. Krueger http://williamjamesstudies.org/1.1/krueger.html "The notion of "pure experience" is one of the most intriguing and simultaneously perplexing features of William James's writings. There seems to be little consensus in the secondary literature as to how to understand this notion, and precisely what function it serves within the overall structure of James's thought. Yet James himself regards this idea as the cornerstone of his radical empiricism. And the latter, James felt, was his unique contribution to the history of philosophy; he believed that philosophy "was on the eve of a considerable rearrangement" when his essay "A World of Pure Experience" was first published in 1904. While Western philosophy is still perhaps awaiting this "considerable rearrangement," James's notion of pure experience was quickly appropriated by another thinker who in fact did inaugurate a considerable rearrangement of his own intellectual tradition: the Japanese philosopher Kitaro Nishida (1870—1945), the founder and most important figure of the Kyoto School of modern Japanese philosophy." William James and Buddhism: American Pragmatism and the Orient by David Scott http://www.thescotties.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/james-buddhism.pdf "William James pursued far ranging enquiries in America across the fields of psychology, philosophy and religious studies between 1890 and 1910. Historical and comparative overlaps emerge between James and Buddhism from these pursuits. This article first sets out James’ own nineteenth-century American context. There follows James’ own more explicit references to Buddhism, which particularly focused on the meaning of the term ‘religion’ and on specific elements of Buddhist teachings. In turn comes a substantive comparative look at certain themes in both James and Buddhism, namely, ‘consciousness’, ‘integration’ and ‘criteria of truth claims’. The common functionalist tendencies in James and Buddhism are highlighted. Finally, the article attempts a wider look at the interaction between American thought and Buddhism during the twentieth century. This interaction is exemplified by John Dewey, Charles Hartshorne, Daisetz Suzuki, Kitaro Nishida and David Kalupahana, and also across the fields of psychology, pragmatism and process philosophy. In all of these areas James emerges as a model for studying American thought and Buddhism." William James and Yogaacaara philosophy: A comparative inquiry By Miranda Shaw http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw/FULLTEXT/JR-PHIL/shaw2.htm INTRODUCTION "A general kinship between the philosophy of William James and certain aspects of Buddhist thought is immediately apparent and frequently noted.(1) This kinship is most apparent in their shared conviction that the self is not a permanent entity or "soul-substance,'' but is rather an aggregate of processes (Buddhism's skandhas) including a momentary series of states of consciousness (James' "stream of consciousness" and Buddhism's cittasa.mtaana) .(2) There are, however, deeper comparisons that can be made between James and specific Buddhist thinkers. For instance, the concept of "pure experience'' in the philosophies of James and Nishida Kitaroo have much in common. David Dilworth has written a splendid essay on this,..." William James and the Medecine Buddha: The Middle Way of Pragmatism http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes/marriage.pdf "It is a curious fact of history that the psychology practiced in India two thousand years ago was more like the psychology taught at Harvard in the 1890's under James than the psychology taught today in academic universi ties is like the psychology taught in America one hundred years ago." -- Eugene Taylor "Sometime during his tour of America in 1902-1904 Anagarika Dhannapala attended a lecture by William James at Harvard. Dharmapala was the Sinhalese Buddhist who had been one of the most popular speakers at the World Parliament of Religions held during the 1893 Chicago Columbian Exposition. He had been working in association with Colonel Olcott and Madame Blavatsky to renew Buddhism in the modern world, and, from their point of view, spread the theosophical light in the Occident. Professor James, upon recognizing the saffron robed Dharmapala in the class, invited him up to speak. "Take my chair," he said. "You are better equipped to lecture on psychology than 1," After Dhannapala had given a short talk on Buddhist doctrines James turned to his students and remarked, "This will be the psychology everybody will be studying twenty-five years from now."1This anecdote, assuming its reliability, is most suggestive for anyone who has thought about the resemblances between James and Buddhism. ..." Intimate distances: William James’ introspection, Buddhist mindfulness,and experiential inquiry by Steven Stanleyhttp://www.academia.edu/1535110/Intimate_Distances_William_James_Introspection_Buddhist_Mindfulness_Experiential_Inquiry a b s t r a c t "The recent and growing interest in ‘mindfulness’ and ‘mindfulness meditation’ across disciplines in the West presents us with a unique opportunity to reconsider whetherBuddhism has anything to offer our contemporary psychological investigations. I arguethat the Buddhist-inspired practice of mindfulness has potentially profound implica-tions for the ways in which we conduct our investigations as psychologists, and that, asa style of experiential inquiry, it has at least one Western antecedent in the earlyintrospectionist method of William James. Both are practices of becoming aware of experience; and paradoxically becoming intimately distant with our experience.I present a non-dualistic approach in which introspection and mindfulness are seen notonly as psychological but also as social practices, operating simultaneously at theboundary of the individual/inner and social/outer, collapsing such distinctions inpractice, and radically undermining the distinction between self and other. While thereare similarities between James’practice of introspection and mindfulness, there arealso differences, and I suggest that they should not be easily conflated. Clarifying theirrelationship should be helpful, not only in distinguishing them from one another, but also in pointing to how mindfulness might allow a broader application than James’ introspection once did." 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