S
Sciborg_S_Patel
Note - I'm basing this on others' criticisms from other threads, figure this is a good centralized thread for discussion.
On a mundane level does this sense of "All is One" promote a collectivist ideology? Personally I don't think so and leave it to others to make that case.
There is another level of criticism, that post-mortem survival in sense that one reunites with Mind @ Large is as much a journey to oblivion as brain-death in materialism would be.
Beyond Physicalism goes into some other issues James had with Oneness:
"Encouraged by Myers, Fechner, and Bergson, as described above, James now postulates the existence of still higher-order integrations, expressions of an ongoing, evolving process, the current highest stage of which is a tremendous conscious reality of some sort corresponding to the common person’s notion of God. But James’s is a finite, incomplete, and imperfect God that falls short of total integration and thus has some sort of external environment of its own. This allows, in James’s view, both for the possibility of evil that does not originate within God himself, and for the possibility of its eradication over time through the ethically grounded efforts of human beings equipped with free will. That highest-level reality might also be in some respects like us, for example in ignoring, forgetting, or failing to notice things going on at lower levels, thus affording a desirable sort of “intimacy.” For all these reasons James prefers his pluralistic doctrine to its main contemporary rival, absolute idealism as conceived by philosophic colleagues such as Royce and Bradley. Their doctrine just cannot be right, James (1909/ 1971) thinks: its “thin,” abstract, timeless, static, all-encompassing and already perfect One—“ the unintelligible pantheistic monster” (p. 271)— seems to him an abominable and alien fiction remote from real experience, the pernicious result of abstract intellectualizing unconstrained by empirical data."
(2015-02-19). Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality (Kindle Location 9748). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.
And also:
For Bradley, the rationalist, what is ultimately real is the eternal Absolute, to which all experience past, present, and future is simultaneously present. The idea that time is real and the future genuinely open therefore seems an illusion, along with that of genuinely free will. For James, the empiricist, lived experience in the world of temporal becoming is the ultimate reality, and purposeful actions of his human players are both needed and not fully determined.[
(2015-02-19). Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality (Kindle Locations 9795-9799). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.
On a mundane level does this sense of "All is One" promote a collectivist ideology? Personally I don't think so and leave it to others to make that case.
There is another level of criticism, that post-mortem survival in sense that one reunites with Mind @ Large is as much a journey to oblivion as brain-death in materialism would be.
Beyond Physicalism goes into some other issues James had with Oneness:
"Encouraged by Myers, Fechner, and Bergson, as described above, James now postulates the existence of still higher-order integrations, expressions of an ongoing, evolving process, the current highest stage of which is a tremendous conscious reality of some sort corresponding to the common person’s notion of God. But James’s is a finite, incomplete, and imperfect God that falls short of total integration and thus has some sort of external environment of its own. This allows, in James’s view, both for the possibility of evil that does not originate within God himself, and for the possibility of its eradication over time through the ethically grounded efforts of human beings equipped with free will. That highest-level reality might also be in some respects like us, for example in ignoring, forgetting, or failing to notice things going on at lower levels, thus affording a desirable sort of “intimacy.” For all these reasons James prefers his pluralistic doctrine to its main contemporary rival, absolute idealism as conceived by philosophic colleagues such as Royce and Bradley. Their doctrine just cannot be right, James (1909/ 1971) thinks: its “thin,” abstract, timeless, static, all-encompassing and already perfect One—“ the unintelligible pantheistic monster” (p. 271)— seems to him an abominable and alien fiction remote from real experience, the pernicious result of abstract intellectualizing unconstrained by empirical data."
(2015-02-19). Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality (Kindle Location 9748). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.
And also:
For Bradley, the rationalist, what is ultimately real is the eternal Absolute, to which all experience past, present, and future is simultaneously present. The idea that time is real and the future genuinely open therefore seems an illusion, along with that of genuinely free will. For James, the empiricist, lived experience in the world of temporal becoming is the ultimate reality, and purposeful actions of his human players are both needed and not fully determined.[
(2015-02-19). Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation of Science and Spirituality (Kindle Locations 9795-9799). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.
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