In a move characteristic of appropriationist approaches to the history of philosophy, Katzav (Asian Journal of Philosophy 2(47):1–26, Katzav, 2023a) argues that Grace Andrus de Laguna had, already in 1909, developed what is effectively a critique of analytic philosophy (as a form of epistemically conservative philosophy). In response to Katzav’s claim, this symposium paper attempts to pay closer attention to the context of de Laguna’s paper. As Katzav also acknowledges, de Laguna was dialogically engaged with two non-analytic tendencies in her (...) contemporary philosophy, namely pragmatism and absolute idealism. More specifically, her target is Dewey’s, 1905 defence of ‘immediatism’ (and, by extension, James’ ‘radical empiricism’), which was put forward in opposition to absolute idealism. In 1909, de Laguna separates ‘immediatism’ from ‘instrumentalism’ as two distinct tendencies within pragmatism, rejecting the former and embracing the latter. By thus situating her critique, I argue that, while successful against Deweyan non-analytic ‘immediatism’ (and possibly also James’s Bergsonist variant of this view), it cannot, without further ado, be charitably interpreted as applicable against Russell’s analytic theory of sense-data. (shrink)

For the first time in print, this article reports passages from John Rawls’s graduate papers and annotations on books and manuscripts from his personal library. The analysis of this material shows the historical inaccuracy of the widespread assumption that Rawls’s philosophy owes very little to American pragmatism. Peirce’s notion of truth, as well as the holistic critique of pragmatism thatMortonWhite began in the late 1940s, prove significant at the very beginning of Rawls’s philosophical enterprise. In the light of (...) this material, it might be argued that Rawls’s elaboration of ‘reflective equilibrium’ started at least in part as an attempt to overcome the pending problems of pragmatism. (shrink)

In this paper, we investigate similarities and differences between the main neo-Copenhagen (or “epistemic–pragmatist”) interpretations of quantum mechanics, here identified as those defined by the rejection of an ontological nature of the quantum states and the simultaneous avoidance of hidden variables, while maintaining the quantum formalism unchanged. We argue that there is a single general interpretive framework in which the core claims that the various interpretations in the class are committed to, and which they emphasize to varying degrees, can be (...) represented. We also identify, however, remaining differences of a more substantial nature, and we offer a first analysis of them. We also argue that these remaining differences cannot be resolved within the formalism of quantum mechanics itself and identify the more general philosophical considerations that can be used in order to break this interpretation underdetermination. (shrink)

Michel Foucault's thought not only converges with a certain type of pragmatism; it can deepen our understanding of pragmatism. There is an ambivalence in pragmatist thought between an approach that privileges the question of: ”What works?” and ”How does it work?” The former misses the political idea that some practices don't just work, but work for one purpose or another. Foucault's pragmatism does not focus on what works, but instead utilizes the concept of practices as a unit (...) of analysis, and then asks how they work. This reintroduces a political element that sometimes goes missing in pragmatist thought. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

This survey article discusses the pragmatist tradition in twentieth century philosophy of science. Pragmatism, originating with Charles Peirce's writings on the pragmatic maxim in the 1870s, is a background both for scientific realism and, via the views of William James and John Dewey, for the relativist and/or constructivist forms of neopragmatism that have often been seen as challenging the very ideas of scientific rationality and objectivity. The paper shows how the issue of realism arises in pragmatist philosophy of science (...) and how some pragmatists, classical and modern, have attempted to deal with it. Various dimensions of the realism dispute are thus discussed, especially realism as contrasted to instrumentalism and realism as contrasted to relativism/constructivism. It is argued that the pragmatist tradition cannot avoid these tensions but is largely constituted by them. (shrink)

In a well-known passage in chapter V of On Liberty, J. S. Mill notes that while economic competition is generally socially beneficial and should be permitted, this “Free Trade” doctrine does not follow from the liberty or harm principle because “trade is a social act.” In a largely overlooked passage in chapter IV of the same essay, however, Mill contends that for society to coercively prohibit the practice of piecework – paying workers by the unit rather than by the hour (...) or day – does violate this principle. In this short note, I demonstrate that Mill's reasoning in these two passages is contradictory. (shrink)

The article highlights George Herbert Mead’s and Wilfrid Sellars’ reliance on a behaviourally-grounded conception of meaning as strictly related to the possibility of distinguishing mental from non-mental phenomena as both related to the semantic dimension. Mead’s position is in fact akin to Wilfrid Sellars’ argument that the concepts of ‘inner events’ are essentially inter-subjective. Thoughts are displayed as consisting of related linguistic acts linked inferentially through intra-linguistic moves that respond to a particular ‘language practice’ governed by norms. Introspection is an (...) ‘inner conversation’, namely an ‘inner’ speaking analogous to linguistic activity that does not involve actual equivalents of the words in the mind. (shrink)

Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset advanced a number of strong criticisms of American pragmatism, yet some pragmatist notions can also be detected in his own philosophy. Within Ortega’s pragmatist perspectivism one can locate the possibility of overcoming one of the principal perceived problems of pragmatism: namely, its tendency toward relativism. This paper focuses on the ways in which Ortega’s discussion of pragmatism pertains to history and historiography. Ortega’s position that history is written from a select number (...) of perspectives is congenial to pragmatist pluralism. What is recorded and continues to thrive in the annals of history is, within a pragmatist framework, whatever continues to be interesting, relevant, useful, and meaningful because it makes a difference – from and for these perspectives. The more of these perspectives we study, the closer we approach what, on Ortega’s view, constitutes the “eternal truth which every period has lived,” because materials initially gathered and framed for pragmatic reasons can later on provide important opportunities for the reflexive analysis of historical knowledge. (shrink)

There is no doubt about the relevance of Cheryl Misak's Cambridge Pragmatism, the accuracy with which she has brought to light documents, diaries, manuscripts, and letters, the readability of her writing and at the same time the strength of her theses. One of the many merits of her remarkable work is, I think, the light she sheds on how Ludwig Wittgenstein was exposed to pragmatism in 1929, chiefly thanks to Frank Ramsey, and on how pragmatist seeds continued to (...) shape his later work, in spite of his open aversion to the pragmatist Weltanschauung. In what follows, however, I will only briefly touch on the subject of Ramsey and Wittgenstein (on which I expanded elsewhere: Boncompagni 2016a:... (shrink)

Meta-laws, including conservation laws, are laws about the form of more specific, phenomenological, laws. Lange distinguishes between meta-laws as coincidences, where the meta-law happens to hold because the more specific laws hold, and meta-laws as constraints to which subsumed laws must conform. He defends this distinction as a genuine metaphysical possibility, such that metaphysics alone ought not to rule one way or another, leaving it an open question for physics. Lange’s distinction marks a genuine difference in how a given meta-law (...) can be used in explanations. Yet, I argue, it is not simply an empirical matter as to whether a given conservation law is a constraint or a coincidence. There is no set matter of fact about the world that determines this, and physics alone will not be able to return a determinate verdict on a law-by-law basis, even while there is a genuine difference between any given law as constraint and as coincidence. Rather, the difference marks different ways of treating the same law in a theoretical setting: by shifting the explanatory context, treating the same law as part of a different mathematical structure, it can be a genuine constraint and a genuine coincidence. The difference between constraint and coincidence relates to the way in which we use a law in specific theoretical and explanatory settings. Because the same law can appear in multiple contexts, it can be used in these genuinely different ways, without itself ‘‘really’’ being either one or the other as some atomistic empirical fact. Conservation laws as constraints and conservation laws as coincidences are both genuine theoretical roles that the same law can play. I conclude by considering how this pragmatist construal of constraints versus coincidences reveals how two parts of Lange’s work in this section of the book are unexpectedly independent of one another. -/- . (shrink)

It has often been remarked that bioethics is a quintessentially American phenomenon. Broadly speaking, bioethics as a field has tended to enshrine the value of autonomy, it places individual rights above communal well-being, and it has adopted a largely permissive and optimistic view of emerging biotechnologies. In contrast to much European thinking at the intersection of ethics and medicine, American-style bioethics has been resolutely middlebrow, eschewing grand philosophical schemes in favor of pragmatic policy-making and democratic consensus. It was, then, perhaps (...) only a matter of time before various theorists began proposing a marriage between bioethics and pragmatism, which is the homegrown American philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper I aim to lay out the major aspects of a procedural, pragmatist account of objectivity in ethics. This account is “procedural” insofar as it holds that the objectivity of inquiry depends not on what the results of that inquiry are, but rather whether the proper procedure of inquiry was followed to generate the results. The account is “pragmatic” insofar as it coheres with a broader approach to ethics that conceives of ethical inquiry and progress in terms of (...) resolving problems (Roth 2010a, 2012). Why should we want this sort of account of ethical objectivity? In addition to its contribution to a larger pragmatist conception of ethical inquiry, this account has two desirable features. First .. (shrink)

PREFACE The six themes chosen for study in the following text are themes deeply embedded within the respective structures of phenomenology and pragmatism, ...

One area of the East–West comparative philosophy that has received a good deal of attention in recent years is the relationship between Confucianism and American Pragmatism. Scholars engaging these traditions have argued that they are mutually elucidating and mutually reinforcing. Often, upon locating resonance between a Confucian philosopher and an American Pragmatist philosopher, scholars combine the conceptual resources of the two, developing a Confucian–Pragmatist hybrid concept or theory. Some critics have been skeptical of the alleged compatibility between Confucian and (...) American Pragmatism, holding that proper understanding of Confucian and American Pragmatist traditions reveals an unbridgeable incommensurability between the two. This article describes the state of the comparative scholarship on Confucianism and American Pragmatism, identifying thematic trends and areas of debate. In addition, some lines of scholarship that might augment this area of comparative philosophy are suggested. (shrink)

_Beyond Solidarity_ is an impassioned argument for a sharable morality in a world increasingly fractured along lines of difference. Giles Gunn asks how human solidarity can be reconceived when its expressions have become increasingly exceptionalist and outmoded, and when the pressures of globalization divide as much as they unify. He finds the terms for answering these questions in a more inclusive, cosmopolitan pragmatism—one willing to explore fundamental values without recourse to absolutist arguments. Drawing on the work of William and (...) Henry James, John Dewey, Primo Levi, Richard Rorty, and many others, as well as postcolonial writing, Jewish literature of the Holocaust, and the cultural and religious experience of African Americans in slavery, Gunn points pragmatism in a transnational direction and shows how it can better account for the consequences of diversity. _Beyond Solidarity_, then, is a study of the difference that difference makes in a globalized world. (shrink)

Liberalism sanctions both democracy and capitalism, but incorporating the two into a coherent intellectual system presents difficulties. The anti-foundational pragmatism of Richard Rorty offers a way to describe and defend a meaningful democratic capitalism while avoiding the problems that come from the more traditional liberal justification. Additionally, Rorty's rejection of the search for extra-human grounding of social and political arrangements suggests that democracy is entitled to a philosophical support that capitalism is not. A viable democratic capitalism therefore justifies its (...) use of markets on the consent of the governed, rather than appeals to liberal notions of individualism, liberty, and property. (shrink)

Abstract. Focusing on part one of Tales of the Mighty Dead and on its relation to the afterword to Between Saying and Doing, I illustrate what reconstructive methodology is and argue that theoretical thinking is one of its instances. I then show that the historical understanding involved in telling the story of a philosophical tradition is another case of reconstruction: one that deepens our understanding of the retrospective character of reconstruction itself, adding something new to our conception of rationality. I (...) then explore a further instance of reconstructive rationality, that is what Brandom calls “reconstructive metaphysics”, i.e. a reconstructive theory whose aspiration is global rather than local. Finally, I argue that Brandom’s reconstructive metaphysics is basically a pragmatist metaphysics. (shrink)

Many believe some version of all three of the following. It is strongly presumptively wrong to kill children intentionally. Modern war involves killing children intentionally. Most modern wars are morally justified. These three sentences comprise an inconsistent triad. War Realism denies 1. Just War Theory denies 2. Pragmatic or Conditional Pacifism denies 3. Scrutiny reveals that one can justify, depending on the rest of what one believes, any one of the three positions but they cannot all be true. I suggest (...) that the solution lies with pragmatic pacifism and relies upon James's sentiment of rationality. (shrink)

In 1914, on the eve of the Great War, the eminent scholar and polymath, Theodore Merz, published what would be the final volume of his magisterial history of nineteenth-century European thought. A belated review of this volume appeared in the April 1918 issue of the American Historical Review. This particular review, though favorable, was inexplicably unsigned. Our paper offers compelling evidence that the author of this unsigned review was George H. Mead, the pragmatist philosopher from the University of Chicago. The (...) paper is organized in the following fashion. First, several types of documentary evidence are cited in support of the claim that Mead authored the unsigned review. Second, content analysis is used to identify themes in the review that reflect the distinctive intellectual concerns of Mead. One such concern was the ability of research-based science to address and rectify problematic aspects of social life. The concluding section of the paper reprints in its entirety Mead’s 1918 review. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.4 (2001) 602-603 [Access article in PDF] Paul B. Thompson and Thomas C. Hilde, editors. The Agrarian Roots of Pragmatism. The Vanderbilt Library of American Philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Pp. ix + 342. Cloth, $39.95. If "racial memory" is a viable concept, then the enduring paradigm of human productivity is agriculture, whose seventy-century dominion Western industry and urbanization have eclipsed (...) only within the last two hundred years. The fifteen essays collected here explore America's distinctive form of agrarianism: where individualism, democracy, and a seemingly endless frontier transcended European quarrels over "commons" versus "containment." These values also helped forge our indigenous philosophy—pragmatism—and it is the confluence of these two distinctive American forms that intrigues each of these authors.The essays fall roughly into three groups: 1) historical queries whose connection to pragmatism is marginal, 2) expositions of the agrarian roots of pragmatism, and 3) estimates of the influence of classical pragmatism on the recent rise of neoagrarianism. The first category offers sparkling essays by Charles Taliaferro, James Campbell, Paul B. Thompson, Robert S. Corrington, and Douglas R. Anderson. Together these scholars sketch a history from colonial times to the mid-twentieth century—from Jefferson's "noble agrarian" to the agony of reconstruction, which hastened the split between Northern transcendentalists and Southern romantics. There are some surprises: Franklin outshines even Jefferson with his balanced vision of self-improvement and community weal, and Jefferson's correspondent Crèvecoueur emerges as a visionary who foresaw farming as a wholesome and integrated way of life a century before Emerson and Thoreau. Thomas C. Hilde finds an engagingly pragmatic notion of community in Josiah Royce, and Richard E. Hart discovers Dewey's sense of concrete experience in the novels of John Steinbeck. The contributions of neglected figures such as Francois Quesnay, Liberty Hyde Bailey, John Brewster, and A Whitney Griswold are also recovered.Turning to the second group, though obviously an irresistible title the notion that classical pragmatism is robustly "rooted" in agrarianism is slightly disingenuous. Peirce and James have no direct ties to agrarianism. And though Dewey's themes of innovation, social intelligence, community, and a conception of experience broadly inclusive of organisms and environments reflect obvious affinities, they do not show that pragmatism grew directly from or is a variant of agrarianism. Happily, the pieces on Dewey contributed by Larry A. Hickman and Armen Marsoobian harbor no such illusions, [End Page 602] and Dewey is specifically disassociated from the claim that agriculture is a privileged form of experience.The third, and perhaps most significant, aim of the volume is to bring pragmatic insights into the recent groundswell toward neoagrarianism. Where traditional agrarianism was polarized between the domination of nature and its romantic beatification, the movement pioneered by Wendell Berry in the 1970s portrays the farmer as a nurturer whose goal is to seek an optimal harmony in the health of the land, the family, the community, and the country. In this James A. Montmarquet finds a Deweyan respect for an encompassing "situation," a unity of fact and value in stark opposition to the "corporate" mentality of specialization and success measured in economic gain alone. For Jeffrey Burkhardt, land grant universities must renew their original commitment to the family farm by distancing themselves from the forces of positivism and scientism—the technocrats and bio-chemical engineers who have imperiled both the land and the communities who depend upon it. Neither Montmarquette nor Burkhardt are looking for handouts, or for a return to the "idyllic" life of the one-horse plow. They emphasize moral training and a combination of practices designed to support the sustainability of the smaller farm in a competitive marketplace.One author compares the mention of agrarianism in philosophical discourse to committing a rude act in public. Clearly, however, mere "respectability" is not enough. If the contributors to this volume are correct, agrarianism is a lantern that may illuminate our ongoing search for wholeness and integrity. Frank X. Ryan Kent State University... (shrink)

This paper discusses the pragmatic world view and philosophy of education. It argues that it is possible to integrate certain elements of pragmatic education which are actually Islam’s pragmatism into Muslim education as a tool for the development of the Muslim community. The Islamic world view would not object topragmatic aims of education for understanding and helping the child to think, for preparation for life in society, and education as a scientific and experimental enterprise. It argues that these pragmatic (...) aims which are urgently needed in Muslim education today, are coherent with the Islamic world view but has beenneglected. Hence, they should be revived and integrated to complement the traditional aims of Islamic education and to enhance the development of the Muslims for the present century. (shrink)

The story of the rise and fall of pragmatism is sometimes called the eclipse narrative. This paper addresses a specific version of this narrative that the logical empiricists arrived in North America in the 1930s and within 30 years had supplanted the pragmatists as the dominant philosophy there. Philosophers such as Alan Richardson and Cheryl Misak have challenged this view by emphasizing the similarities between these two movements. While both seem to admit that there is a distinction between the (...) two when it comes to values, I point out that the issue of values feeds into all aspects of pragmatist thinking, and so despite what seems on the surface to be agreements between the two movements, they were still quite different in all areas of their thinking. I challenge the degree of similarities by arguing that there were some sharp distinctions between the two movements, with the most important being the fact-value distinction and its impact on how each conceived of the term “practical.” I close by addressing how these distinctions should affect how we conceive of the eclipse narrative. (shrink)