Yesterday we looked at the parallels between George Kelly's philosophy and William James' Pragmatism. Pre-Postmodernism and Process Epistemology Part I Why pre-Postmodernism?
      I said, in an earlier post, that I would explain why I call Postmodernism Pre-Postmodernism. It is simple. We can't be postmodernists because we are still in the "modern" era, also known as the Cartesian era. Philosophers who are called "postmodernists" are those who understand why (but not always how) we must break away from the dualistic Eith/Or fallacies that plague our critical thinking. Besides Pragmatism, I have already mentioned Existentialism as also being a precursor to postmodernism which, logically, would be Pre-Postmodernism.
      In fact, the whole dichotomy of modernism vs. postmodernism is a totally Cartesian, pre-postmodern concept. In the future, when philosophers become truly postmodernist, they won't call themselves that, because the whole dichotomy of "modern v. postmodern" is a modern, Cartesian concept, not a postmodern concept.
      I also mentioned that, in my personal construct of philosophy, American Pragmatists and European Existentialists are all saying the same things using different philosophic vocabularies. The Existentialists, for instance, may talk about a person's choice of personal constructs as being either "authentic" or "inauthentic", but they would never describe a choice as "having cash value" (William James' term). That is so American.
      This next series of rants will take us from Existentialism/Pragmatism/Constructive Alternativism to what is usually called Postmodernism (to their credit, many Postmodernists do not like to be called that), and then into the most recent developments in philosophy: Process philosophy and process epistemology. To understand that though, we have to explore the precursor to Existentialism, which is Phenomenology.
      For those readers who were skeptical of Kelly's and James' constructs of reality (in yesterday's post) as being both ideal and material at the same time, I might add that the science of quantum mechanics backs them up.
Monday: From Phenominology to Existentialism
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Yesterday we looked Kelly's position on determinism and free will. George A. Kelly: The Psychology of Personal Constructs Part V Constructive Alternativism and Pragmatism
      In section 8 of chapter 1, "Relation to philosophical systems," Kelly says that ontologically his position is a form of substantival Monism but a neutral form, "and, like Spinoza, we are prepared to to apply attributive pluralism to the substance." Furthermore, Kelly says that "the differentiation of its (the substance's) monistic from its pluralistic aspects is hardly worth the effort." Or, as William James would have put it, "If the difference doesn't make any difference, then it has no cash value."
      William James introduced the concept of neutral monism in his essay "Does Consciousness exist?" James' argument was that consciousness does not exist as an entity, but it does exist as a function. Furthermore, abstractions like "function" and "thought" are not made up of any difference kind of "stuff" than is matter. This is what is meant by neutral monism in Kelly's Constructive Alternativism and James' Pragmatism.
       The term Monism is in contrast to Dualism. Dualist philosophers believe that reality is made up of two kind of "stuff"; material things and immaterial things. Monists, on the other hand, believe there is only one kind of stuff; but Materialist Monists believe there is only matter, and Idealist Monists believe there is only ideas. By staking out the pragmatist territory of Neutral Monism, James, Kelly, and others are saying there is both matter and ideas but that they are not different kinds of stuff. This is a breakaway from most philosophy since Descartes left us with the mind/body duality conundrum. It is also where we segue into postmodernism and process philosophy.
Tomorrow: Postmodernism and Process Philosophy.
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Yesterday we looked at the relationship of Kelly's philosophy to Existentailism. Today we continue that theme with a more specific discussion of determinism and free will. George A. Kelly: The Psychology of Personal Constructs Part IV Constructive Alternativism and Existentialism. Deterrminism and free will
      The first thing one must notice is that Kelly uses the word "determinism" and not "pre-determinism". Nowhere does he talk of any teleological forces or processes that inevitably lead from a past event to a future event. Remember, earlier he had said that our constructs are designed to predict and control, but he also said that as scientists we must always test our contructs for their accuracy, and he said that can only be done with immediate events, not far in the future events like life-after-death or anything that depends upon religious faith.
      Kelly's position is that the facts do not determine our constructs, but our constructs determine how we live with the facts and that is the only kind of determinism that concerns him. He also says that freedom and determinism are two sides to the same coin. He is not concerned with the freedom of chaos, only the freedom of humans to chose. Our constructs may determine our lack of freedom, but we can always free ourselves from past constructs by constructing new ones.
      Years ago, in one of my own essays on free will, I stated that the problem of free will, for most people, is that they frame it as an absolute. If I say "I have free will," you can counter with "No, you do not have free will because you aren't more powerful than a locomotive, you can't leap tall buildings at a single bound, and you aren't faster than a speeding bullet." My bad. I framed it as an absolute and you were right to call me on it. So then I say, "I don't have free will," and your rebuttal is that maybe I don't, but it doesn't follow that nobody else has free will. Again, the mistake was in fram,ing it as an absolute.
      Free will is relative on a scale of zero to some non-zero finite number. Some people really do not have any free will at all, some have more than others, some have lots and lots of free will but usually not as much as they would like to have and/or as much as they think they have. Nobody has absolute free wiil, but that argument does not negate the probability of some free will.
      Kelly backs me up on this. Our choices of constructs, he says, and our choice to test, reevaluate, or change our constructs will eventually gain us more free will than we started with. I like to use a card game as a metaphor. In the first place, you can't win if you don't play the game. Then, the cards in your hand may be dealt to you by the Cosmic Coinkydink, but it is your turn to play them with the goal of improving your hand. That's Basic Existentialism 1A, If you don't play the game, The Cosmic Coinkydink will make the choices for you and you are still responsible for the consequences of whatever happens next.
       Tomorrow: Constructve alternativism and Pragmatism
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Yesterday we looked at Kelly's philosophical system George A. Kelly: The Psychology of Personal Constructs Part III Constructive Alternativism and Existentialism
      As an undergraduate philosophy major I developed a theory that American Pragmatists and European Existentialist were really saying the same thing in different languages. Pucture yourself sitting in a cosmopolitan restaurant near two other tables and you can overhear the conversations going on at the other tables. Now let us suppose that by a very strange coincidence, the people at one table speak French but not German, and the at the other table the conversationalists speak German but not French. And by an even wierder coincidence they are both having the exact same conversation. And you are able to know this because you happen to speak both German and French.
      My point is that Pragmatists, having arrived at their constructs by specifically American experiences, and using their specific philosophic vocabulary in their dialect of English are discussing their philosophy of life, while the Existentialists, having arrived at their constructs by the specifically European experience (Russian, German and French), and having their own philosophical vocabulary, do not realize that they are mostly saying the same things.
      George Kelly, being an American, understood how his philosophy was in line with Pragmatism, but we can also see in his work many parallels with Existentialism. Existentialism begins with the notion that existence precedes essence. That is, first we are born and we just exist. But our essence, that which makes us human, has to be deliberately developed by ourselves. Existentialists also have a concept called "choice by default." If some of us are not alert to the absurdity of our human condition, and do not consciously make choices that will give us freedom from deterministic forces, then Reality has a way of making choices for us that, in all probability, will not result in freedom. In other words, if you do not choose, then you have made a choice, by default, not to choose, and you are still held responsible for the consequences of your choice not to choose.
       You do not even have to believe in free will, you just have to act as though you had free will. Many people think of Existentialism as an atheist philosophy, and many Existentialists are atheists, but many other important Existentialists were/are Christians and Jews.
      As you can see, I find George Kelly to be a convenient link between Existentialism and Pragmatism. Read yesterday's (Mon. Aug. 10th) blog again and see how Kelly views the consequences of our choices. Remember, just as not all choices are good ones, so not all personal (and social) constructs are good ones. We have to live by the ones that Reality chooses for us, or we can choose better ones.
       Tomorrow: More about Constructive Alternativism and Existentialism. Determinism and free will
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last week we began with Kelly's overall personal construct about personal constructs. George A. Kelly: The Psychology of Personal Constructs Part II Kelly's Philosophical Position
      George Kelly called his philosophy "Constructive alternativism." It assumes that the universe is constantly changing. In trying to figure out our changing environments we try out different constructs of reality to see how well they work for us, i.e. how accurate they are at predicting events so that we can control them rather than being enslaved to our past experiences. There are always alternative constructs and since, as amateur scientists, our experiences are also experiments, we can change the variables in our environments if our original constructs (hypotheses) prove to be unsound.
      Kelly mentions several philosophical positions that have many elements in common with his own Constructive Alternativism including American Pragmatism. He does not mention European Existentialism by name but his section on free will and determinism seems, to this writer, to be very much in keeping with existential philosophy and, more to the point, Existentialist Psychology.
      Kelly is not only a Pragmatist and an Existentialist, but his philosophy also fits perfectly into framework of Process Epistemology. Kelly was so far ahead of his time (he died in 1965) that he didn't seem to be aware of the newest, developing field of process philosophy, at least not by that name. Since Process philosophy and Process Epistemology are my specialty, I will talk more about them later, but first I want to discuss how Kelly's Constructive Alternativism ovrlaps with Pragmatism and Existentialism. Tomorrow: Kelly and Existentialism.
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Friday, Aug. 7, 2015)
George A. Kelly: The Psychology of Personal Constructs Part I What is a construct and how does it work?
      Dr. Kelly wrote this two volume book in 1955 but I believe his work is more important now than it was then. He died in 1965 so he was not able to witness the vast and complex changes in social and cultural constructs (he called them "public constructs") that have developed since then, due to the internet and the ubiquitness of digital social media.
      Dr. Kelly was a psychotherapist and his work is always referenced as psychology but this writer will always think of him as a great philosopher. Ironically, he emphasized that his theory of constructs, as well as people's personal constructs, are interdisciplenarian. He devotes a whole section in chapter one to pointing out the overlapping of psychology and philosophy, so he would probably call me to task for labelling him as either one. My bad. My own papers on process epistemology stress that same point, but it is hard not to fall back into the language pre-postmodernism. After all, our schools still divide up our areas of study into discrete disciplines whereas all knowledge is analog, not digital.
      Kelly is more specific when he talks about the difference between physiology (how our bodies work) and psychology (how our minds work). Using the quantum mechanics analogy again, our physiology operates by digital particles and our psychology is driven by analog waves. But our minds and our psychological constructs are just as real as are our livers and hearts. Plus, (since postmodeernism rejects Descartes mind/body duality) our minds and our bodies do interact. Or, as we "pre-postmodernists" (ha ha I'll explain that term in a later blog post.) always say "You cannot separate ontology from epistemology."
      The main point of Dr. Kelly's work is that we are all amateur scientists. The goal of science is to predict and control, and all of us, no exceptions, are always creating our constructs of what we think reality is all about. Through our experiences we try to predict how our lives will turn out and control our environments to create more beneficial outcomes. Not all personal constructs are practical or benefsicial, so the more alert we are, the more often we test our constructs for accuracy and predictability, and either discard or modify those ideas that do not work. Kelly even goes so far as to say that a bad personal construct is still better than no construct at all. (In later posts I will be discussing how many social and cultural constructs are also harmful and need replacing or modifying.)
Monday: George Kelly's Philosophical Position
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Yesterday we finished up our rant on private property with a conclusion, including a page of cited references. Getting & Putting It All Together       Previously we covered racial identity and private property. Tomorrow we will be looking at personal (psychological) constructs, and culture (social constructs). We will then go into the areas of process philosophy and process epistemology and see how they are informed by neuroscience and quantum mechanics. Eventually we will be designing a meta-algorithm; an algorithm for creating other algorithms. And this is where you, the reader, can participate.
      No matter who you are, where in the world you live, or what culture you grew up in, you will be able to design your own World Peace Algorithms in your own local areas. You will be thinking both globally and locally as you network with all the other agents of the World Peace Algorithm.
      So stay tuned to this blog and tell all your friends that, not only is world peace a possibility, but you will be able to make it happen!
Tomorrow: I begin a series on Psychologist Dr. George Kelly and his work on personal constructs.
Alert all your friends who won't give up their racial identities and/or who make money from owning private property that this blog challenges their personal and social constructs.

For those of you who have only recently joined us, my rants began on January 1, 2011. Scroll down to that date to begin.
My rants on racial identity began on July 9, 2015
My rants on private property began on July 14, 2015 My website