Islands in the Stream of Consciousness

Let me first give credit to the person who coined the phrase used as the title to this post, Jim Reich.  He was a good friend, now dead. It combines the title of Hemingway's Islands in the Stream and a literary technique well known and practiced with some frequency in the first half of the twentieth century and even now.  Knowing him as I did, I don't think he was referring to the Dolly Parton/Kenny Rodgers duet.

Stream of Consciousness is a literary device, but the phrase, or something like it, was used by the psychologist-philosopher William James in this Principles of Psychology to describe states of consciousness, or thoughts or ideas, as being a process, a flow, rather than isolated and distinct from one another.  Efforts were made by certain authors to replicate this flow in their poetry and novels.  Famous practitioners were James Joyce, William Faulkner, Jack Kerouac, Virginia Woolf and others.

I doubt that the literary technique is or can be anything like the process or flow conceived of by James, however.  The fact that it's employed for a purpose--that it is indeed a technique, a contrivance--renders this impossible.  What James and others (like John Dewey) point out is that typically our states of mind or consciousness are non-reflective.  In other words, we don't constantly think; we don't consider means and ends, we don't anticipate events or consequences.  In fact, we seldom do.  We think when we have to do so, or are induced to think by encountering a situation we find problematic or dissatisfying in some sense.  Then, we seek to resolve it.  For the most part, we merely feel, or react thoughtlessly, as a "habit" to use Dewey's terminology.

Stream of consciousness writing is deliberate, and requires thought.  Through thinking, the practitioners of Stream of Consciousness writing attempt to imitate that which isn't thought.

It doesn't work.  If you read examples of it you may find on the internet, I think you'll agree with me.  What you'll see, I believe, is an effort to express thoughts or feelings in an unconventional manner, sometimes disjointed, sometimes juxtaposition is unexpected, sometimes surprising but not as a stream or flow.  In fact, the thoughts, feelings, ideas presented using the Stream of Consciousness technique are staccato.

How could they not be?  It's a limitation imposed by language itself, I think.  Even shorn of such words as pronouns, the description of walking in the woods would be something like:  Walking, exercise, wood smell, sunny, feeling fit, warm, getting tired, etc.  The description is necessarily made up of separate items, independent of one another.

Words, books, poetry, fiction and non-fiction prose aren't part of James' stream of consciousness, because they're read.  A book or books might be when we merely see or encounter them, but reading and understanding them are not. 

It's true that they may serve to evoke a feeling, however.  But that feeling, having been evoked by the effort of reading and comprehending, isn't part of the stream.  Like reading itself, like thinking, like acting for a purpose, they can be thought of as islands in the stream of consciousness as my old friend put it.  They break up the stream, they divert it, for a time.  Then, we get back to simply existing.

Because writing supposed to reflect a Stream of Consciousness clearly does no such thing (or so I think) I wonder whether such writing was more a fad than anything else.  Perhaps Gertrude Stein was reading James on psychology on day and was struck by the idea, and passed it on to her acolytes, who passed it on in turn.  E.E. Cummings is said to be a poet who used the technique.  If so, his poems always strike me as disjointed, deliberately so--staccato, in fact--and perhaps that can be said to prove my point.  His poems have impact, but they can hardly be said to flow.  They don't flow, they jerk from point to point.  It seems odd to me that any writer would think that they were accurately portraying the way our consciousness works using this device.

Ultimately, perhaps, reading prompts us to decide what kind of island in the Stream of Consciousness writing we want to live on or explore, for a time.  The part of the writer is to make the island worth exploring.  What is worth exploring will vary from person to person and time to time, of course, but that's the way of real islands as well.

 

Compared to What

There are more than one versions of the jazz composition Compared to What.  My favorite is the live version performed by Les McCann, Eddie Harris and others at the 1969 Montreux Jazz Festival.  I wish I could say I was there for the performance, obviously because in that case I would have been there for the performance (I'm not sure how or why "wish I could say" came to be used in this manner).  It's a great performance of a great song.

Judging from the lyrics, the song is a social commentary of the kind popular in the late 1960s, which as far as jazz is concerned may have been unusual even then.  Jazz isn't commentary; at least not commentary in the form of comment.  The comments made expressly in the song are rather interesting though, at least to me.  "Tryin' to make it real compared to what?"  Compared to what, indeed.

Real, compared to what?  It may be a philosophical question, of the kind debated no doubt futilely over the years.  What is real?  What does it mean to be real?  The question "compared to what?" should be asked whenever such "questions" are raised, at least for the purpose of determining what is actually being asked--if anything.  It isn't clear to me anything is being asked if that question is asked in response to the question being asked.  Real compared to a dream?  Real compared to a hallucination?  To make a comparison one must be able to compare one thing with another.  We already know there is a difference, so it's foolish to act or think as if there is none.

Consider what Wild Bill James is saying in the quote appearing at the head of this post.  The use of the words "ought to be" is interesting to me.  Why does he assume we should be what he claims we have the ability to be?  Assume he's right, and we have these resources we fail to use.  Who's to say we can use them to their fullest extent?  If we can, who's to say that we should?  Perhaps we don't for a perfectly good reason.  Perhaps we wouldn't be recognizably human if we did.  

Such a quote (like the quote referring to truth's or an idea's "cash value") suggests that James may have been the American thinker some say he was (in the sense that Bertrand Russell thought the Pragmatists were typically American because they were concerned with what works, not with what is true).  James seems to be complaining that we aren't as productive as we could be.  Just think of what we could accomplish if we tried hard to do as much as we can!  Shoes for industry!  Shoes for the dead! (Does anyone remember the Firesign Theatre?)

Well, he may have meant something like that, but I would guess he refers more to the human condition than human potential.  James was more psychologist than philosopher--some would say, of course, that he was more a novelist than either a psychologist or philosopher.  He said that what we experienced in life was in the nature of a blooming, buzzing confusion, if memory serves.  Dewey made the same sort of point, though in a less felicitous way, when he wrote that we only think when we encounter problems, otherwise living almost automatically, by habit.

Perhaps Compared to What the song wonders just what it meant to say in 1969 that one was trying to make it real.  Real, compared to the president's war, to preachers preaching, to old ladies and their dogs, etc.?  Remeber when people said such things as "I'm trying to find the real me"?  As if they were not what they were.  The unfortunate fact is that all of it was real, just as all of it is real now.  Perhaps we can make it, ourselves, our lives better.  But we're real and other persons and things are real, not dreams or hallucinations, no matter that we are or they are good or bad.

The Stoic and the Ubermensch

Nietzsche famously, or infamously depending on your perspective, condemned the Stoics (in his understated way) thusly:

You desire to LIVE "according to Nature"? Oh, you noble Stoics, what fraud of words! Imagine to yourselves a being like Nature, boundlessly extravagant, boundlessly indifferent, without purpose or consideration, without pity or justice, at once fruitful and barren and uncertain: imagine to yourselves INDIFFERENCE as a power--how COULD you live in accordance with such indifference? To live--is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this Nature? Is not living valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited, endeavouring to be different? And granted that your imperative, "living according to Nature," means actually the same as "living according to life"--how could you do DIFFERENTLY? Why should you make a principle out of what you yourselves are, and must be? In reality, however, it is quite otherwise with you: while you pretend to read with rapture the canon of your law in Nature, you want something quite the contrary, you extraordinary stage-players and self-deluders! In your pride you wish to dictate your morals and ideals to Nature, to Nature herself, and to incorporate them therein; you insist that it shall be Nature "according to the Stoa," and would like everything to be made after your own image, as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism! With all your love for truth, you have forced yourselves so long, so persistently, and with such hypnotic rigidity to see Nature FALSELY, that is to say, Stoically, that you are no longer able to see it otherwise-- and to crown all, some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the Bedlamite hope that BECAUSE you are able to tyrannize over yourselves--Stoicism is self-tyranny--Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over: is not the Stoic a PART of Nature? . . . But this is an old and everlasting story: what happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image; it cannot do otherwise; philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself, the most spiritual Will to Power, the will to "creation of the world," the will to the causa prima.

It's hardly surprising, of course, that Nietzsche, who seems to have been an insistently, deliberately, emotional thinker, wouldn't find Stoicism congenial.  If ever there was someone overwhelmingly disturbed by things not in his control, it was Nietzsche.  It's unfortunate but typical of him (at least from what I've read) that he condemned it in this fashion; delivering yet another rant rather than a serious analysis.

I wonder sometimes if his frenzied style was typical of his time rather than a personal quirk. William James was more or less his contemporary, and C.S. Peirce; J. S. Mill was older, dying it seems when Nietzsche was in his thirties.  Imagine any of them writing in this fashion, and you (or at least I) can't help but laugh.  Perhaps this was the style in continental Europe, though, or at least in Germany.

Nietzsche's exclamatory comments are very Dionysian, certainly, but if you like me are unimpressed by mere denunciations--argument by exclamation--it's difficult to see in this excited outpouring much that is coherent or much of significance.  I'll perforce address what he seems to be saying to me.

First, he states that Nature is indifferent and we, by living are otherwise than indifferent; we value, have preferences, are unjust.  Of course the ancient Stoics didn't feel that nature was indifferent in the sense being used by Nietzsche, as it was infused with the Divine Reason and had a purpose, so Nietzsche rather than addressing or even acknowledging that is merely telling us what he thinks Nature to be.

Let that pass, though.  We humans are parts of Nature, however, and so our feelings, desires etc.--which Nietzsche seems to think of as contra Nature--are, therefore, just as much part of Nature, as natural, as we are.  So when the Stoics refer to acting according to Nature they obviously refer to acting according to human nature as well as Nature in general, as human beings interacting with the rest of Nature.  It's not possible for us to live "otherwise" than Nature as Nietzsche claims.  Nietzsche's distinction between us and Nature is thus unsound.  Perhaps, though, he didn't think of us as parts of Nature. 

Next, he equates the Stoic dictum live according to Nature to "live according to life."  It's not clear to me, though, why he does so.  In what sense is Nature "life"?  In the sense that it exists?  It does of course exist, but it has certain characteristics, as do we.   Is Nietzsche seriously claiming that the Stoic dictum in question is simply "exist" or "live"?  That would indeed by silly, and it is silly of Nietzsche to maintain that is the case.  The Stoics clearly refer to living in accordance with certain characteristics of Nature and humanity, i.e. to living in a certain way, not merely living.

Then, he accuses the Stoics of imposing morals and ideals on Nature.  He does not trouble to explain this claim anymore than he did his others, but he seems to be saying that the Stoics purport to see in Nature what to think and how to act. 

This makes no sense either, though, as the Stoics quite consistently insist that what is in our control is very limited, and what is beyond our control is vast.  The great majority of Nature, therefore, is not something with which we should concern or disturb ourselves.  So, we would not "see" Stoicism in Nature.  Instead, being Stoics, we understand that Nature is to a great extent something we lack the ability to impose upon.  Also, Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius state that our lives are what are thoughts make it; that what disturbs us is not what takes place, but our feelings regarding what takes place.

Stoicism doesn't appear in Nature, but Nature and our nature, and our interaction, necessarily figure in how we should act.  We live according to Nature when we live as reasonable human beings, based on what we know of Nature and ourselves.

He also calls Stoicism "self-tyranny", again for no stated reason.  Just what tyranny is involved in not being unduly disturbed but rather tranquil, being calm and reasonable, is not clear.  But Nietzsche may have so committed himself to being full of Romantic sound and fury that even the merely sensible seemed to him vile and evil.

Not content to denounce Stoicism, he proceeds to denounce philosophy in general.  Indeed, why not, being Nietzsche?  What did he do that was not, directly or indirectly, a denunciation of something?  Nietzsche was an extremist, I think, and more an artist (a tortured one, of course) than a philosopher.  The reference to Bedlam in his condemnation of Stoicism is unfortunate in his case.  Perhaps if he had been a Stoic he wouldn't have gone insane in the end, identifying himself so much with Dionysius that he claimed to be the mad god.

Naivete and Naive Realism

"Naivete" is lack of wisdom, judgment, sophistication, experience.  "Naive realism" (a/k/a direct realism) is the view that those things we deal with every day, indeed every instant, taken for granted by all but philosophers and their students, are perceived by us immediately or directly.  Naive realism is apparently referred to as "naive" disparagingly.  It is, after all, the view typically taken by most of us, the untutored common folk, as a matter of common sense (I would maintain that it is for all practical purposes the view actually taken by those of us who consider themselves uncommon, as well).  Being so very common, it perforce is invalid according to those sophisticated in theories of knowledge and perception.

I find myself wondering, though, whether those who disparage naive realism are themselves naive, and whether their disparagement of it is a result of their own naivete.

We began to insert (as it were) something between us and the "external world" some centuries ago, for reasons I find difficult to understand.  It may all have begun with Descartes' insistence on the use of faux doubt to establish knowledge.  It may have begun with Hume.  It may have begun earlier, but I think not that much earlier at least as far as the modern forms of insertion as we know it are concerned.  Since ancient times there has been a tendency among the wise to doubt the quality, worth and even in some cases the reality of the universe--especially those parts of it that are not human--and it's possible the more modern reliance on sense-data or qualia to separate ourselves from the non-human, and perhaps our fellow humans as well, is an outgrowth of this tendency.  But if that is the case those who more recently doubt what the common folk believe are more specific in their doubt.

It's claimed philosophers frequently ask why we should believe what we believe.  Lawyers are known to ask why we do as well, but in my case and in this post I ask why philosophers (some of them, in any case) disparage naive realism.  For me, the old claims that we have reason to doubt the veracity of our senses because of hallucinations, sticks in water and such, are unimpressive.  J.L. Austin pretty well laid waste to those claims, as far as I am concerned; but there is also the fact that our senses seem to serve us very well in most cases.  Not being committed to a need for absolute certainty, I think our successful interaction with the rest of the world in most cases indicates our senses function quite well in perceiving the various "external objects" we cannot exist without.  Then again, the fact that, e.g., the perceptions of people who are distant from something may differ from those close to it is something I find unsurprising.  I'm inclined to believe that such differences are more the result of distance than anything else.

But I suppose it is the fact that we cannot exist without that portion of the rest of the universe with which we interact which makes me wonder why we're inclined to separate ourselves from the rest of the universe in this fashion and in other respects.  We're living organisms and like other living organisms we've been formed by our interaction with each other and the rest of the world over time.  As we are part of the world, the idea that we are incapable of knowing what other parts of it really are doesn't make much sense.  If we didn't have that knowledge, we wouldn't exist.  Of course, there's much about the universe we don't know, and our knowledge in some cases is based on instruments we create or inferences we make.  But it doesn't follow from these facts that we in all cases cannot experience the rest of the world as it exists apart from us. 

Perhaps those who disparage naive realism suffer from their own lack of knowledge and wisdom.  They seem to believe that we are in some sense detached from the rest of the world, different from or superior to a living creature in the world.  They fail to recognize our dependence on the world, being convinced that the world is dependent on us, an astonishingly unsophisticated, parochial view given the vastness of the universe.

It isn't necessary to posit the existence of sense data or some kind of "representation" of what's out there to explain or justify perception or knowledge.  It is necessary, however, to recognize what we are as creatures of the universe.  We have our limitations, but such is to be expected; to expect otherwise is to claim and seek for a godlike ideal of perception or knowledge.  We perceive and know just as human beings, formed over time through evolution, are equipped to see and know.  The fact we don't perceive and know as other creatures do merely means we're human and they are not.  It doesn't mean that there is something between us and the rest of the universe on which we're fated to rely.

If there is such a thing as sense data (or whatever) which is what we experience directly, it would seem that is the case for other creatures as well.  So presumably other creatures are similarly incapable of experiencing the world directly, perhaps even less capable than humans, being less sophisticated organisms.  All living things incapable of immediate experience of the universe, yet living in it.   It's a remarkable belief indeed.

Of course, the claim is sometimes made that we can know enough about the rest of the world, or can rely on our perception, just enough to survive and function, but even so we cannot know fully what "external objects" are or what characteristics they really have (or if they are?), being limited to that something or other, the insertion, which is all we can experience.  But that is to say that there is a difference which doesn't make a difference, and so is no difference at all as William James said as noted in a different post. 

We test the precision with which our senses function as we must test everything, by judging the results of our interaction with the rest of the world.  There is no other justification for our knowledge and perception.  But our interaction with the rest of the world establishes that our perception of it
is valid enough for there to be no concern, except perhaps for those who are naive enough to think otherwise.

Differences that Make no Difference

"A difference that makes no difference is no difference at all."   This neat little sentence is one of many neat little sentences William James (I fondly call him "Wild Bill"), came up with while rampaging through philosophy and psychology.  He was a wordsmith, and also a great teacher, so it's said, and a popularizer (if there is such a word) of pragmatism and other things.  Not the most precise thinker, though, and that prompted C.S. Peirce to call his philosophy "pragmaticism" to distinguish it from that of James.  It also prompted, if it did not require, John Dewey to step in to tone down James' exuberance in response to criticism by such as Bertrand Russell.  Being a Lord, and British, Russell had no tolerance for exuberance of any kind.

But though rambunctious, James could be most insightful, and one of his insights was that purported differences, some of which have occupied great minds far too much, make no difference.  That is to say they do not result in any change to how we live.  They don't satisfy any desire or urge, they don't serve to solve any question or problem we encounter in living, they don't impact what we do, how we react.  They accomplish nothing, and cannot accomplish anything, unless perverted.

The perversion can result when a difference which makes no difference in itself is accepted as the fanciful grounds for or basis of a system or unwarranted inferences.  For example, because we can't know what the world really is, and what it seems to be to us is all that we can know and perhaps even all that really is, the world is ours to make or shape; we are the masters of the world and may do with it what we will.  This perversion is similar in some respects to religious beliefs; it breeds a kind of righteousness as it is founded on something which cannot be challenged. 

Unfortunately, we persist in considering that which makes no difference, practically speaking, to be of greater worth than that which does.  Too many feel truth and what is good are founded in something having an existence separate from the world, the world being fundamentally flawed.  A holdover from Plato, perhaps, or religious beliefs.  Whether or not there are ideal Forms or a transcendent divinity or absolute spirit, the world will be what it is and we will live in it as it is and we will be as we are, and so such creations of thought and belief make no difference themselves.  But some of us take such speculations and impose them on ourselves and others

Differences which make no difference seem peculiar to philosophy and religion.  Law has its share of fictions, but those fictions serve a purpose or at least make a difference in the sense that they must be treated or used in a certain fashion, may do certain things and not others.  It may be said that philosophy seeks to explain life or aspects of living, and in that sense is not concerned necessarily in making a difference to how we live.  That in itself is a noble and significant enterprise.  The function of explanation, though, is being preempted more and more by science, and given the fact that philosophical explanations never seem to be accepted by most philosophers, even, it is unclear that explanations will ever be forthcoming from philosophers.

Making a difference is significant because the failure to make a difference indicates that what is being touted as a difference is at best trivial and of no account, at worst subject to perversion or malicious manipulation.  Thus, while it may be the case that what we perceive as X is not what Kant would call the X in itself, we cannot know and have no reason to care whether it is or is not.  We will keep on perceiving X as we perceive X and will do or not do what we always have and always will do or not do regarding X.

The consideration of whether what is claimed a difference makes a difference is, I think, a most effective way of determining whether some idea or theory is worth any interest or concern.  If it makes no difference to how we live, then plainly we are best advised to devote real time and effort to something that does.  Something that makes no difference is also something that cannot be tested or observed, and in that sense will always be speculative.

Pragmatism's focus on consequences, on effects, is one of its most attractive aspects to me.  Although such as Russell insisted that it wrongly confuses what is true with what works, that seems to me a very simple-minded criticism.  It isn't a question of proposing that what works is true.  It's more an insistence that unless something has effects or consequences, i.e. makes a difference, it is not something which can be made use of, tested and judged as good or bad, right or wrong, useful or useless.  Most of all, it should not and cannot reasonably be used for any purpose.  Those who seize upon such things in making decisions make decisions for no good reason.

So it may well be that William James wrote philosophy like a novelist, and his brother Henry wrote novels like a philosopher.  I can't speak to Henry James, though, as I've never been able to read him.  I get the same impression reading him as I get when I read Henry Adams--the overwhelming impression of artifice, contrivance.  It may have been the style of the time.

However, William James must be respected as someone who, with Peirce and Dewey and others, sought to make philosophy pertinent to how we live by judging it by its effects on how we live and disregarding it when it has no effects.

The Appeal of Santayana

I'm given to speculate regarding just what it is that attracts me to this philosopher, this man who was, I think, more than a philosopher--a kind of Renaissance Man to the extent someone who lived most of his life in the 20th Century can be considered such.  Not "just" a philosopher, but a noted poet and novelist.  I wonder sometimes if there is something of the old Catholic in him which speaks to the old Catholic in me, or something of the Latin in him that speaks to the Latin in me.

He writes so well and in such a fashion I think it's sometimes difficult to think of him as writing philosophy.  He doesn't seem to write of things as a philosopher would, though it is clear that he is engaged in a most piercing analysis of the subject matter he addresses.  Perhaps that in itself is the basis for his appeal.  He seems both rigorous and artful, even artistic, in his approach to things.

In certain ways it seems that his concerns and assertions are contradictory, but I think this is part of a universalism which perhaps may be said to have characterized Catholicism at one point, paganism as well, at one point; that can even be said to have been pretended to by Rome, or dreamt of by it's more noble exponents, like Virgil, who wrote of the skill of the Roman being that of ruling the various and dissimilar nations in peace.  He respects and acknowledges the place of ritual, ceremony, art, mysticism in human life, but he also subjects them to analysis--and thereby elucidates their flaws and limitations--even while honoring them and although he seems to believe that they are necessary aspects of the way we live.  He does the same, I think, to science and philosophy.  He is a proponent of reason but speaks of its limitations as well, and accepts them.

As should be apparent, I find it hard to think of him without thinking of Wallace Stevens' poem about him, To an Old Philosopher in Rome.  In that poem we see glimpses of the Catholic and the Roman, sometimes as day to day appearances and perhaps sometimes more than that.  "Total grandeur of total edifice, Chosen by an inquisitor of structures, For himself...."  It amazes me that such a man should have been so completely devoted to naturalism and yet devoted to those characteristics of humanity and those works of humanity which evoke seemingly the desire if not the claim that there is something more, something greater, than nature.  One feels as if he noted and painstakingly studied what it is to be human in all respects, without bias and even coldly and with no illusions, and yet at the same time appreciative of a certain grandeur or at least the capacity for grandeur.

There is something of the stoic in him, I think, that comes with the acknowledgement of limitations and even to a certain extent the inevitability if not appropriateness of those limitations.  Something of the pragmatist as well, though it seems a very individual pragmatism, more like Peirce than James or Dewey.  Dewey's philosophy was a very social philosophy, and Santayana does not strike me as a social thinker.

But there's something else as well, and I think that something may well be the better, or at least the singular, part of him  I'm finding it very hard to define let alone describe just what that is, though I suspect that if I ever do so I'll have discovered what it is that makes him such a unique and--to me at least--fascinating figure.

The Magnificent Seven (American Philosophers)

There was quite a bit going on in American philosophy, starting in the late 19th century and extending well into the 20th.  These names stand out, I think:  C.S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, Josiah Royce, Ralph Barton Perry, George Santayana and Roy Wood Sellars.

Santayana was actually born in Spain, of course, but spent only his early years there; his philosophical career can fairly be called American.  And, I don't mean to discount other American philosophers of prominence in the 20th century, some in the pragmatic tradition, some not.  But these seven seem to me to be of particular significance.  Perry and Sellars, unfortunately, are mostly forgotten, it seems.

They were all, naturally enough, influenced by the theory of evolution.  They were all not religious in any traditional sense.  They all had concerns which related to practical and social (science, education, politics, art, law) matters in addition to any concern they may have had with the "special" metaphysical or epistemological concerns of philosophy which seem, to me at least, so apart from the way we live our lives (Peirce perhaps can be said to have had more of an interest in certain of the "special" concerns than the others, but as the creator of the pragmatic method he was something of a revolutionary and turned the focus of those concerns to us and the world in which we live, and away from futile speculations induced by the tendency to "doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts").  And, they all felt philosophers could, as philosophers, address those concerns; and they addressed them.

One wonders if the time in which they worked contributed to their emphasis on the real.  There were great changes being made in technology, the character of America was changing with massive immigration, there was the Great War, the new movements in art, music and literature.  The world was rather hard to ignore.  Some think we live in a similar time.  Perhaps we'll be fortunate, and we'll encounter similar minds.

Of course, they differed in very significant respects as well.  But they were all participants in an effort to "recover" philosophy, to use Dewey's word, to addressing the "problems of men" to use Dewey's phrase.  I think that philosophy may have returned to the contemplation of the practically useless for a time.  But there are indications that might be changing.  In any case, I hope that's changing.