>>24826046
Read anglo philosophy.
Hume, Reid, Russell, Sellars, Quine, Wittgenstein, Ayer, JL Austin and so on

>>24826598
Russell
>[T]he greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and of mysticism: the attempt to harmonise the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.

Sellars
>There was one major area, however, where Wilfrid and I diverged. I am now fully convinced of the ontological primacy of consciousness, and I know that ordinary waking consciousness, of the sort that most philosophers assume is merely epiphenomenal to brain, is actually only a fraction of the full reality of human consciousness, which is, in its fullness, entirely independent of brain. "Cosmic consciousness" is not only "real", but it gives a truer sense of the objective universe, and it will eventually play a prominent role in everyone's life. It is Mind which gives rise to Matter, not the other way around. Matter is merely the stuff with the lowest frequencies, while consciousness spans the whole continuum from the very narrow, self-enclosed consciousness of unevolved people to the full-fledged cosmic consciousness of the Monad, in its purity.

>Ultimately, consciousness is infinite, omniscient, and omnipresent, and we all partake of it. Not only does individual consciousness survive "death", but all of us have had many lifetimes on this earth, and will have many more. You, dear reader, are far more interesting and grand than you ever imagine, and you have a wonderful surprise awaiting you when you finally drop your physical body. And yes, you will meet Wilfrid again, if you wish. Just think, you can dialogue philosophically into eternity, if you both still want to after you see how many other options there are.

>Wilfrid knew about my beliefs, since I developed a lot of them over my years with him and I always talked things over with him when new experiences and new pieces of the puzzle inclined me to re-engage him in metaphysical talk. He was not only respectful of my intellectual inquiries and integrations, he was very interested, because they challenged his own ideas. He was actually quite open, and was very cagey about committing himself to a theory of consciousness that precluded all that I was slowly piecing together in the way of an expanded and, to me, more adequate theory of human nature. He maintained a kind of "Wait and see" attitude when my speculations ranged "too far."

Wittgenstein
>The sense of the world must lie outside the world. In the world everything is as it is and happens as it does happen. ... What makes it non-accidental cannot lie in the world, for otherwise this would again be accidental. It must lie outside the world. ... How the world is, is completely indifferent for what is higher. God does not reveal himself in the world.

>>24827249
Reid
>It is likewise a law of our nature, that we perceive not external objects, unless certain impressions be made by the object upon the organ, and by means of the organ upon the nerves and brain. But of the nature of those impressions we are perfectly ignorant and though they are conjoined with perception by the will of our Maker, yet it does not appear that they have any necessary connection with it in their own nature, far less that they can be the proper efficient cause of it. We perceive, because God has given us the power of perceiving, and not because we have impressions from objects. We perceive nothing without those impressions, because our Maker has limited and circumscribed our powers of perception, by such laws of nature as to his wisdom seemed meet and such as suited our rank in his creation.

Ayer
>The only memory that I have of an experience, closely encompassing my death, is very vivid.

>I was confronted by a red light, exceedingly bright, and also very painful even when I turned away from it. I was aware that this light was responsible for the government of the universe. Among its ministers were two creatures who had been put in charge of space. These ministers periodically inspected space and had recently carried out such an inspection. They had, however, failed to do their work properly, with the result that space, like a badly fitting jigsaw puzzle, was slightly out of joint. A further consequence was that the laws of nature had ceased to function as they should. I felt that it was up to me to put things right. I also had the motive of finding a way to extinguish the painful light. I assumed that it was signaling that space was awry and that it would switch itself off when order was restored.

>Unfortunately, I had no idea where the guardians of space had gone and feared that even if I found them I should not be able to communicate with them. It then occurred to me that whereas, until the present century, physicists accepted the Newtonian severance of space and time, it had become customary, since the vindication of Einstein’s general theory of relativity, to treat space-time as a single whole. Accordingly, I thought that I could cure space by operating upon time. I was vaguely aware that the ministers who had been given charge of time were in my neighborhood and I proceeded to hail them. I was again frustrated. Either they did not hear me, or they chose to ignore me, or they did not understand me. I then hit upon the expedient of walking up and down, waving my watch, in the hope of drawing their attention not to my watch itself but to the time which it measured. This elicited no response. I became more and more desperate, until the experience suddenly came to an end.

>>24827251
Ayer (continued)
>This experience could well have been delusive. A slight indication that it might have been veridical [objectively real] has been supplied by my French friend, or rather by her mother, who also underwent a heart arrest many years ago. When her daughter asked her what it had been like, she replied that all that she remembered was that she must stay close to the red light.

>On the face of it, these experiences, on the assumption that the last one was veridical, are rather strong evidence that death does not put an end to consciousness. Does it follow that there is a future life? Not necessarily.

>[These] recent experiences have slightly weakened my conviction that my genuine death, which is due fairly soon, will be the end of me, though I continue to hope that it will be. They have not weakened my conviction that there is no god.

James
>>My thesis now is this: that, when we think of the law that thought is a function of the brain, we are not required to think of productive function only; we are entitled also to consider permissive or transmissive function. And this the ordinary psycho-physiologist leaves out of his account.

>Suppose, for example, that the whole universe of material things—the furniture of earth and choir of heaven—should turn out to be a mere surface-veil of phenomena, hiding and keeping back the world of genuine realities. Such a supposition is foreign neither to common sense nor to philosophy. Common sense believes in realities behind the veil even too superstitiously; and idealistic philosophy declares the whole world of natural experience, as we get it, to be but a time-mask, shattering or refracting the one infinite Thought which is the sole reality into those millions of finite streams of consciousness known to us as our private selves.

>"Life, like a dome of many-colored glass,
>Stains the white radiance of eternity."

>Suppose, now, that this were really so, and suppose, moreover, that the dome, opaque enough at all times to the full super-solar blaze, could at certain times and places grow less so, and let certain beams pierce through into this sublunary world. These beams would be so many finite rays, so to speak, of consciousness, and they would vary in quantity and quality as the opacity varied in degree. Only at particular times and places would it seem that, as a matter of fact, the veil of nature can grow thin and rupturable enough for such effects to occur. But in those places gleams, however finite and unsatisfying, of the absolute life of the universe, are from time to time vouchsafed. Glows of feeling, glimpses of insight, and streams of knowledge and perception float into our finite world.

>>24827252
James (continued)
>Admit now that our brains are such thin and half-transparent places in the veil. What will happen? Why, as the white radiance comes through the dome, with all sorts of staining and distortion imprinted on it by the glass, or as the air now comes through my glottis determined and limited in its force and quality of its vibrations by the peculiarities of those vocal chords which form its gate of egress and shape it into my personal voice, even so the genuine matter of reality, the life of souls as it is in its fullness, will break through our several brains into this world in all sorts of restricted forms, and with all the imperfections and queernesses that characterize our finite individualities here below.

>According to the state in which the brain finds itself, the barrier of its obstructiveness may also be supposed to rise or fall. It sinks so low, when the brain is in full activity, that a comparative flood of spiritual energy pours over. At other times, only such occasional waves of thought as heavy sleep permits get by. And when finally a brain stops acting altogether, or decays, that special stream of consciousness which it subserved will vanish entirely from this natural world. But the sphere of being that supplied the consciousness would still be intact; and in that more real world with which, even whilst here, it was continuous, the consciousness might, in ways unknown to us, continue still.

>You see that, on all these suppositions, our soul's life, as we here know it, would none the less in literal strictness be the function of the brain. The brain would be the independent variable, the mind would vary dependently on it. But such dependence on the brain for this natural life would in no wise make immortal life impossible,—it might be quite compatible with supernatural life behind the veil hereafter.

>>24827249
who is talking about sellars?

>>24826046
this book is currently sitting on my coffee table.

>>24828968
His widow. It's an interesting obit, she talks about how he drank himself to death. Very sad.