Let It Snow

In the book Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, William James gives this rough distinction of types of philosophers:

THE TENDER-MINDED	THE TOUGH-MINDED
Rationalistic (going by ‘principles’), Intellectualistic, Idealistic, Optimistic, Religious, Free-willist, Monistic, Dogmatical.	Empiricist (going by ‘facts’), Sensationalistic, Materialistic, Pessimistic, Irreligious, Fatalistic, Pluralistic, Sceptical.

Further in the text James says

The tough think of the tender as sentimentalists and soft-heads. The tender feel the tough to be unrefined, callous, or brutal. Their mutual reaction is very much like that that takes place when Bostonian tourists mingle with a population like that of Cripple Creek. Each type believes the other to be inferior to itself; but disdain in the one case is mingled with amusement, in the other it has a dash of fear.

I guess those who have read some parts of this blog, know what group I fall into. Most of the time, I carefully hold my ‘tender-mindedness’ under control, but it is that time of the year that probably even the most ‘tough-minded’ will give some space to “romantic spontaneity”. And for me, it is through the top!
Enjoy!
Dean Martin:


Diana Krall:


Christina Aguilera:


Frank Sinatra:

Why Should We Care?

Richard at Philosophy Et Cetera has a post here, were he cites The Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan saying:

Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous.

Sarcastically Richard notes that “Islamic fundamentalists fly planes into buildings. Christian fundamentalists blow up abortion clinics. But most frightening of all is the atheistic variant:”, and there he quotes BBC, “He said it led to situations such as councils calling Christmas “Winterval”, schools refusing to put on nativity plays and crosses removed from chapels.”

While I agree with Richard that those actions of the “fundamental atheists” don’t sound dangerous, I wonder why is flying planes into buildings a big deal also? Or blowing abortion clinics? We are merely very specific configurations of molecules – why should we care if a particular configuration ‘disconfigurate’ today, tomorrow, or after 50 years?