Paul Kurtz’s Integrated Vision in Quotes- Part 2

By Gary Berg-Cross

Sept 8^th from 2-4 WASH MDC hosts a panel on the life and work of philosopher Paul Kurtz.

Here are a few of the thoughts that make up part of his Integrated Philosophy and his life’s work at the same.

Scientific Naturalism (Paul follows his mentor Sidney Hook)

There is a second meaning of naturalism, which is as a generalized description of the universe. According to the naturalists, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry. This is a non-reductive naturalism, for although nature is physical-chemical at root, we need to deal with natural processes on various levels of observation and complexity: electrons and molecules, cells and organisms, flowers and trees, psychological cognition and perception, social institutions, and culture.

Paul Kurtz, "Darwin Re-Crucified: Why Are So Many Afraid of Naturalism?" Free Inquiry (Spring 1998)

The Role of Intelligence

Reason and intelligence are the most effective instruments that humankind possesses. There is no substitute: neither faith nor passion suffices in itself. The controlled use of scientific methods, which have transformed the natural and social sciences since the Renaissance, must be extended further in the solution of human problems. But reason must be tempered by humility, since no group has a monopoly of wisdom or virtue. Nor is there any guarantee that all problems can be solved or all questions answered. Yet critical intelligence, infused by a sense of human caring, is the best method that humanity has for resolving problems.

]The Humanist Manifesto II, http://paulkurtz.net/Articles/the%20human%20manifesto%20II.htm

Pragmatic Naturalism

 "Science is not interpreted as an esoteric method of inquiry, but is continuous with standards of critical intelligence used in common, ordinary life." Kurtz, Paul, 1990, Philosophical Essays in Pragmatic Naturalism, Prometheus Books.

Free Inquiry

Free inquiry means that any effort to prevent the mind from exercising its right to pose questions is unwarranted. Skepticism is a vital principle of inquiry. This principle implies that the reliability of a hypothesis, theory, or belief is a function of the evidence, by which it is supported. If a claim is not justified by verification,
we ought to be cautious in holding fast to it. Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit: The Ethics of Humanism

Eupraxsophy

There is no word in the English language that adequately conveys the meaning of secular humanism. Secular humanism is not a religion; it represents a philosophical, scientific, and ethical outlook. I have accordingly introduced a new term, eupraxsophy, in order to distinguish humanistic convictions and practices from religious systems of faith and belief. Affirming Life - Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 24, Number 6. Editorial

New, Positive, Rational Skepticism

New Skepticism encompasses inquiry rather than doubt. It is Positive and constructive. The transformation of negative critical analysis of claims to knowledge into a positive contribution. The key principle of skeptical inquiry is to seek, when feasible, adequate evidence and reasonable grounds for any claim to truth in any context (paraphrase)

Secular Humanism

The secular humanist paradigm has six main characteristics: (1) it is a method of inquiry, (2) it provides a naturalistic cosmic outlook, (3) it is nontheistic, (4) it is committed to human ethics, (5) it offers a perspective that is democratic, and (6) it is planetary in scope. I should point out that many allies within the freethought or rationalist movement may accept one or more of these characteristics without accepting them all. Some mistakenly consider secular humanism to be equivalent with atheism, others with methodological naturalism, and still others with humanistic ethics. Secular humanism, however, is broader than any of these views; for it provides an integrated scientific-philosophical synthesis that encompasses all of these and more. This is sometimes called "naturalistic humanism." Ultimately, secular humanism proposes nothing less than the complete implementation of the agenda of modernism. This agenda in fact has yet to be fully implemented; what is necessary for it to occur is a post-modernist New Enlightenment.
-- Paul Kurtz, What is Secular Humanism (2007) page 23

Planetary Vision of Humanism

The overriding need is "to develop a new Planetary Humanism" that will seek to preserve human rights and enhance human freedom and dignity and will emphasize our commitment "to humanity as a whole." The underlying ethical principle "is the need to respect the dignity and worth of all persons in the world community." Thinkers as diverse as Peter Singer and Hans Küng also emphasize the need for a new global ethic beyond nationalistic, racial, religious, and ethnic chauvinism.
-- Paul Kurtz, What is Secular Humanism (2007) page 53, quoting from the Humanist Manifesto 2000

Joyful Exuberance

Humanists find exuberance to be intrinsically worthwhile for its own sake. This is usually identified with happiness. The Greeks called it eudaimonia, or well-being; this meant the actualization of a person’s nature, with pleasure as a by-product, not for the solitary moment, but in a complete life. This entails some moderation of a person’s desires. But I add that, in joyful exuberance, there is high excitement, the intensity of living, throbbing with passion, engaging in daring activities of enterprise and adventure.

Joyful exuberance is enhanced when we not only fulfill our needs and wants, but creatively express our goals and aspirations. It denotes some degree of excellence, nobility, even perfectibility, of a person’s talents and achievements. It comes to fruition for those who find life intensely worth living and at times exhilarating. Free Inquiry magazine, Volume 24, Number 6.s

Affirmative Stance

I believe that a person should take an affirmative outlook. There are always problems in life, old and new, uncertainties, and unexpected contingencies. The optimal way to deal with this is not to give up in despair, but to move ahead using the best intelligence and resources that we have to overcome adversity.
-- Paul Kurtz, from snowy Buffalo, NT, "New Year's Message from Paul Kurtz" (December 31, 2001) from http://www.positiveatheism.org/hist/quotes/quote-k2.htm

Image Credit

Top Graphic – created by Gary Berg-Cross

Forbidden Fruit: http://ebookstore.sony.com/ebook/paul-kurtz/forbidden-fruit/_/R-400000000000000301151

Affirmations: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/295112.Affirmations

A Philosopher for our Times - John Dewey

By Gary Berg-Cross

John Shook will be talking Saturday Dec. 7^th at the WASH MDC chapter about "The Psychology of Religion, the Sociology of Theology, and the Humanist Strategic Response." As part of this we are likely to hear a bit about John Dewey and Pragmatism as evidenced by his recent book, John Dewey's Philosophy of Spirit by John R. Shook and James A. Good, published by Fordham University Press, in 2010.

John has woven together the threads of some of Dewey philosophical concepts and values into a poem.

A Philosopher's Faith
Inspired by John Dewey

My person returns to unwind all its threads,
Woven by language into the habits of heads;
An old wearied head must bow down one final eve,
But my lively thought shines in cloth I helped to weave.

Your gift by my leave is but some seeds yet to grow,
Whose value was found in times of need long ago;
Sow all of these seeds in our vast garden with care,
Protect and defend the greater harvest to share.

To view such swift change, see truths melt under new suns,
To watch how scared souls kept on refining their guns;
My nation was home despite such strife with no cease,
My freedom was here while humbly searching for peace.

By trial did I live, by more trial find my thought’s worth,
My death you will get if you conceive no new birth;
No life without doubt, for the best fail now and then,
No rest for my faith, that each new day tests again.

--John Shook

It’s fair to say that I’m a fan or John Dewey’s life and thoughts. I was dimly aware of him as one of America's premier "public intellectuals,". I had run into philosophic and pragmatic influence on progressive education, which served as a testing ground for some of his psychological-philosophical thinking.Some of that was readily available

“It was no accident”, he observed in Philosophy of education (see Middle works of John Dewey 1912-13, “that like himself many great philosophers had taken a keen interest in the problems of education because there was ‘an intimate and vital relation between the need for philosophy and the necessity for education.’ If philosophy was wisdom, a vision of ‘the better kind of life to be led’, then consciously guided education was the praxis of the philosopher. ‘If philosophy is to be other than an idle and unverifiable speculation, it must be animated by the conviction that its theory of experience is a hypothesis that is realized only as experience is actually shaped in accord with it. And this realization demands that man’s dispositions be made such as to desire and strive for that kind of experience.’ The shaping of dispositions might take place in various institutions, but in modern societies the school was the most crucial, and as such it was an indispensable arena for the shaping of a philosophy into a ‘living fact’ “(Dewey, 1912-13, p. 298, 306-7 quoted in JOHN DEWEY (1859-1952) by Robert B. Westbrook).

My formal education didn’t include much of Dewey’s thinking but his unifying concept critiquing the simple Reflex Arc concept. In his "Reflex Arc Concept in Psychology" (1896) paper, Dewey advanced a Functional School of Psychology by integrating his early Hegelianism with William James' recent take on evolutionary naturalism. Dewey's critique argues made the point that the idea of a stimulus based reflex arc account of human action fails because it contains an apparent logical paradox based on physical-mental dualism. What really is needed is an intentional level of analysis including feedback as the R of response affects the environment and changes the stimulus situation - see Figure on the left).

An "explanatory" account of animal or human action, he argues, needs to include this larger, intentional unit of analysis, which reconceptualized sensori-motor coordination.

Thus he added a cognitive, coordinating aspect that transcended and reformed old dualistic theories. A more thoughtful reflex arc provided the space and structure to reconceptualize stimulus-response behavior into a cognitive theory of habit. It emphasized active conceptualization and adaptive reconstruction as part of learning, an idea pursued in his experimental educational endeavors.

As a graduate student dating a Teacher’s College student at Columbia I got a bit closer to Dewey, whose name I could see along with other famous educators on engraved on the building. I had time later in life to select one of Dewey’s works as vacation reading and there I discovered that Dewey’s middle and later books were all on topics of interest to me (How we think ,1910, Democracy and education, 1916, Experience and Nature, 1925 etc.).

It was only more recently that I learned enough to see Dewey life and progression as a whole and understand how his early work and teaching in Psychology (e.g. pushing social theory beyond an instincts explanation) became an adjunct to his philosophy and work on broader public problems. His reconstruction idea for philosophy reflected his own life’s journey. When asked if he would update a book for a 2^nd edition he was known it say, “it will be a different book.” His ideas were always evolving.

Coming from an idealist background of Kant and Hegel, Dewey intellectual life was tempered by the pragmatist influence of Charles Peirce and William James. Trained in emerging experimental psychology Dewey constructed a natural philosophy in which vague concepts of mind were forged into more defined cognitive models. In these human thought was understood as instrumental practical problem-solving, which advances incrementally by testing rival hypotheses against experience in order to achieve the "warranted assertability" that grounds coherent action.

Dewey continually updated to his ideas in a search for truth and progress. The process of inquiry was central to his stance addressing the problems of society that consumed him. We can also say that he provided many good ideas to the modern Secular Humanism movement along with scientific/pan-objectiveness. In the 50s his voice could still be heard on cultural controversies and Dewey still provides a good model for the combined role of philosophy and philosophy to address the larger problems of society. Updated psychological models of human bias are one type of experimental result that Dewey might have appreciated and used to guide coherent action to make us a better society.