Year: 2005

  • Points on which I agree with William James

    by Jason Stotts “I cannot understand the willingness to act, no matter how we feel, without the belief that acts are really good and bad. I cannot understand the belief that an act is bad, without regret at it’s happening. I cannot understand regret without the admission of real, genuine possibilities in the world. Only…

  • Eudaimonia

    by Jason Stotts As I study the idea of Eudaimonia for my senior research, I’m struck by how this concept has been lost in our language: we do not even have a word for it in our language. You see, Eudaimonia means something like “human flourishing,” it’s the state of “happiness” that proceeds from being a…

  • A Sad Day

    by Jason Stotts It’s quite a sad day for me to know that we as a race have retrogressed so far that we are no longer able to shine light upon our own actions and see them for what they are. People have become so pragmatic that they have lost the ability to think in…

  • A Few Good Men

    by Jason Stotts I was recently was having a conversation with one of my friends, Sandy, and we were talking about whether you should care what others think of you. This got me thinking about whether there is any role for outside evaluation to enter into your conception of yourself or whether your idea of…

  • Merciful Mirth

    by Jason Stotts I must thank Matt Morrell heartily for introducing my to Despair which is perhaps the funniest website that I have seen in a long time. For example look at this: They have all sorts of amazing posters that will make you think “Wow…” 😉

  • William James on Habit

    by Jason Stotts The following if from William James’ The Principles of Psychology (1890), Chapter 4 – “On Habit”; their appearance here is not me condoning Pragmatism, but I think that there is some very useful information here. Note that these passages are not contiguous in the piece and have been excerpted so the relevant…

  • STOP THIS!

    by Jason Stotts Okay, boys and girls, here’s another important distinction that you should make when you speak or write. “I feel” means that you are telling someone about your feelings or sensations…the next words out of your mouth had better be “happy”, “sad”, “cold”, “tired” or some other such feeling or sensation. “I think”…

  • An All Too Common Confusion

    by Jason Stotts I often hear people make a silly and obvious equivocation between two terms that mean drastically different things: namely Intelligence and Knowledge. I think though, that we must do as The Philosopher suggests, and start with that which is first. Intelligence is a capacity (potentiality) for thinking and reasoning, analogous to a…