If we think of political progress as indexed to some permanent standard, and then agree that it is Nietzsche who dispels the authority of any such standard, then we may perhaps conclude that after Nietzsche, progress is ruled out. I want to show, however, that we find in Nietzsche comfort for a continued vision of human progress through engaged political action. I suggest that we look to Derrida and Rorty as offering a view of a post-Nietzschean democracy the engine of (...) which is an account of ameliorative progress that is at home in the Enlightenment tradition while avoiding its universalist pretensions. (shrink)

Linking specific nursing actions to outcomes in the healthcare setting is challenging. Patient outcomes are varied and influenced by a myriad of factors, and always involve a wider team than any one nurse. It is difficult to control for a single action or set of actions of a particular nurse. Furthermore, practice is seldom about any ‘one’ action, for one thing leads to another, all within a complex interplay of influencing factors. In this article, we outline a research method which (...) combined Dewey's pragmatism with Gadamer's hermeneutics to explore the consequences of the nurse's use of advanced assessment skills in the acute care setting of medical and surgical wards. This pragmatic hermeneutic methodological approach allowed the complex interplay of influences to be revealed in the unfolding story. Reflection of the nurse brought insights that may otherwise have been passed over. The philosophical notions of Dewey drew attention to the play of ‘means’ and ‘ends’. A hermeneutic approach that calls for ‘thinking’ extends understanding and raises insights that can inform education and practice. (shrink)

The title of this book is misleading. Its topic is pragmatism according to Rorty, and Prado intends only "to consider the new pragmatism, as present in Rorty's views, in one particular but elemental dimension: that of truth". Prado seeks to offer a sympathetic reading of Rorty's attack on the correspondence theory of truth and the key conclusions Rorty draws from this attack: that we have no access to truth other than that found in specific forms of discourse, and (...) that all cognitive endeavors are no more than conversations. Prado then offers some mild criticisms of Rorty. (shrink)

In recent years, religious studies has undergone an ethnographic turn. More and more, scholars attend to the social location and significance of religious practice. This approach foregrounds the self-understandings of religious communities and practitioners and raises the question of the relation between ethnography and philosophical analysis. For instance, Saba Mahmood, in The Politics of Piety, draws from ethnographic study so as to critique philosophy’s universalizing claims regarding subjectivity, enabling a recognition of the diverse forms feminist subjectivity and political agency may (...) take within religious traditions and practice.2 Jeffrey Stout’s Blessed are the Organized likewise shifts the terrain of .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: American Pragmatism: An Introduction by Albert R. Spencer. Polity Press, 2020. Reviewed by: Lee A. McBride III -/- American Pragmatism: An Introduction is a judicious and stimulating read, comprising an introduction and five numbered chapters. The introduction orients the book, offering various ways of conceiving American Philosophy and American pragmatism. Spencer explains that it is difficult to discern the national and cultural variables that make (...) a philosophy an American philosophy. Not all philosophers who practice philosophy in the United States claim the descriptor "American Philosophy." And, within the group that embraces the descriptor, some take American pragmatism to be, in essence, a theory of truth (or a method by which we can make our ideas clear); others take pragmatism to be a method of experience, a pluralistic approach to knowledge creation and social amelioration (2). It is a complicated picture, and Spencer affords ample care and attention to the disparate camps of pragmatism. Chapter 1: "Fallibilism and the Classical Pragmatists" is largely devoted to Charles S. Peirce and William James. Peirce and James, as fallibilists, are contrasted against Descartes and Hume, respectively. Peirce and James diverge in regard to style and their commitments to (scholastic) realism. Spencer discusses Josiah Royce briefly at the closing of the chapter, noting how Royce's work can serve as a foil for both Peircean and Jamesian pragmatisms. Chapter 2: "Meliorism and the Chicago Pragmatists" highlights the pragmatist philosophical contributions of Jane Addams and John Dewey. In this chapter, Spencer emphasizes sympathetic knowledge, cooperative intelligence, the pattern of experimental inquiry, and social amelioration. Spencer deserves kudos for introducing Addams's pragmatist contributions first, then explaining the ways in which her work in community-building and social amelioration influenced Dewey. Chapter 3: "Pluralism and the Harvard Pragmatists" highlights the work of a motley crew: George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke. This chapter draws attention to the pluralism one can detect in Santayana's detached cosmopolitanism, Du Bois's double consciousness, Kallen's cultural pluralism, and Locke's democratic pluralism. We are introduced to a Spaniard, two African American men, and a Jewish man, all of whom had spent time abroad. Each offers a critical perspective that falls outside the conventional view of the purported democratic culture of the United States. Chapter 4: "Verification and the Analytic Pragmatists" turns to the philosophers of the logico-linguistic turn, [End Page 108] featuring C. I. Lewis, W. V. O. Quine, and Richard Rorty. Here, we see a pronouncedly analytic approach to the analysis of propositions, inference, and semantic content—a heightened attention to shoring up defensible conceptions of truth and the real. The goal is to articulate a coherent conceptual pragmatic position that evades both scientistic reductionism and Fregean transcendental presuppositions, all the while offering a feasible conception of truth. Chapter 5: "Hope and the Contemporary Pragmatists" surveys how pragmatists have engaged with various traditions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to potentially bolster their positions and find hope. Spencer highlights three promising strands. The first strand is that of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas arose out of Frankfurt School critical theory but appropriated pragmatist insights from Peirce, Dewey, and Mead to formulate his conceptions of communicative action and communitive rationality (208). Habermas reconstructed the reductive dialectical materialism of the Frankfurt School, developing a sophisticated theory of democracy as public discourse. Spencer asserts that "ultimately Habermas is the best demonstration of pragmatism's potential when compared with critical theory during the Cold War" (208). Spencer also finds the work of Huw Price promising. Price, in an effort to defuse the tension between neopragmatism's antirealism and scientific realism, offers a tenable theory of truth: truth as a (postulated) practical norm, or "truth as a convenient fiction" (217). Truth, as a practical norm, gives normative structure and impetus to various forms of inquiry. And, to close this chapter on hope and contemporary pragmatism, Spencer delineates a third promising strand. He writes that "perhaps the most promising development among pragmatists results from their increasing engagement with American Indian philosophy and other philosophical traditions throughout the Americas" (219). American pragmatists, following Scott L. Pratt and Bruce Wilshire, are increasingly recognizing... (shrink)

This essay examines the concept of "truth" from empiricist and pragmatist perspectives. This not without reference to other theories. The concern is to see how the ascendancy of pragmatism has affected humanity and may continue to affect humanity, the so-called objectivity in the practice of science and philosophy and the relationships between the diverse peoples of the world. An analysis of the pragmatist's preference for usefulness, rather than truth, it is argued, accounts for the deleterious consequences of pragmatism (...) for humankind in its almost irrational substitution of usefulness for truth. (shrink)

Nevertheless it is unfortunate that the great "sophist" has been cast into the outer darkness. Much of Plato's polemic becomes puzzling if it is not realized that the partisans of "opinion" as against "knowledge" were neither straw men nor the uncultured Many, but the leader and members of a vigorous and influential school, well-matched in their war with the Academy. Furthermore, Isocrates' philosophical views are of interest both intrinsically and as anticipations, sometimes astonishing, of various contemporary movements which profess allegiance (...) to "common sense.". (shrink)

In this article I discuss the advantages of a theory of political representation for a prag- matist theory of (global) democracy. I first outline Dewey’s disregard for political rep- resentation by analyzing the political, epistemological and aesthetic underpinnings of his criticism of the Enlightenment ideal of democracy and its trust in the power of the detached gaze. I then show that a theory of political representation is not only com- patible with a pragmatist Deweyan-pragmatist perspective on democratic politics but also (...) that Dewey’s concept of “publics”, if applied to contemporary circumstances of globalized politics, requires such a theory. I suggest a pragmatic theory of political rep- resentation that combines elements of Dewey’s aesthetics, particularly his own theory of vision, with Michael Saward’s conception of representative claim-making into the notion of aesthetic democratic representation. (shrink)

Richard Rorty is well known as a propagandist of pragmatism and of a "post-philosophical" culture in which many traditional philosophical debates are dismissed as outrightly fruitless. The paper is mainly concerned with Rorty's dismissal of the realism-antirealism debate. The shift from argument to propaganda which is typical of much of Rorty's reasoning is critically investigated from different perspectives. In particular, it is argued that Rorty cannot convincingly establish a pragmatist position beyond realism and antirealism, and that pragmatism seems (...) to be inadequate with respect to scientific practice. Finally, the fruitfulness of the realism-antirealism debate is defended. (shrink)

Recently Kenneth Kendler and Peter Zachar have raised doubts about the correspondence theory of truth and scientific realism in psychopathology. They argue that coherentist or pragmatist approaches to truth are better suited for understanding the reality of psychiatric disorders. In this article, I show that rejecting realism based on the correspondence theory is deeply problematic: It makes psychopathology categorically different from other sciences, and results in an implausible view of scientific discovery and progress. As an alternative, I suggest a robustness-based (...) approach that can accommodate the significance of coherence and pragmatic factors without rejecting scientific realism and the correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

American psychologist and pragmatist philosopher James (1842- 1910) is generally considered too individualistic to have had any interest in politics, but Miller argues that political concerns were in fact central to his intellectual work. He finds in James a theorist of action, explores the complexities of his theory, and related his thought to Miller's own experience as a political activist and scholar. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Despite its substantial influence, there is surprisingly little agreement about how to read C.I. Lewis’s Mind and the World Order. Lewis has historically been read as a reductionist attempting to g...

Strange as it may seem today—especially given James’s reputation as a brilliant psychologist, an astute writer on religious life, and the eminent founder of pragmatism—no facet of James’s career received more ink in the general press than psychical research, at least during his lifetime.in his masterful introduction to Essays in Psychical Research, Robert McDermott observes that 1896 was a significant year for William James. He writes of James as a “weaver of intellectual and experiential threads” who “labored for the (...) removal of those ideas, beliefs, and habits of mind that block insight and imagination” and that, on this account, “[t]he year 1896 is instructive” . This paper attempts to shed .. (shrink)

While C. I. Lewis’s most celebrated logical innovation is by no means neglected, strict implication features in Rosenthal’s discussion in a fashion parallel, one comes to understand, to its role in his broader philosophical efforts, viz., as one component of a much more ambitious philosophical enterprise. Were one pressed to apply a label to Lewis’s broader project, “epistemological” is perhaps the most fitting term, with his accomplishments in logic paving the way to this broader effort. As with Lewis, Rosenthal sets (...) for herself an ambitious project. She offers a meticulous explication of Lewis’s philosophical development, ranging from his logical investigations to his treatment of a priori knowledge, and, eventually, to a pragmatic understanding of moral imperatives. But always in her sights is the promise of a bridge between traditions, one might say, in which Lewis’s work is relevant both to analysts and to continentalists . Similarly, but more narrowly, Rosenthal’s Lewis manages to plaster over many of the cracks in the work of other classical pragmatists. For example, in response to James’s apparent commitment to the notion of degrees of truth whereby new systems of thought are judged. (shrink)

C. I. Lewis was one of the most important thinkers of his generation. In this book, Sandra B. Rosenthal explores Lewis’s philosophical vision, and links his thought to the traditions of classical American pragmatism. Tracing Lewis’s influences, she explains the central concepts informing his thinking and how he developed a unique and practical vision of the human experience. She shows how Lewis contributed to the enrichment and expansion of pragmatism, opening new paths of constructive dialogue with other traditions. (...) This book will become a standard reference for readers who want to know more about one of American philosophy’s most distinguished minds. (shrink)

An intellectual biography of the American philosopher C. I. Lewis.

Contemporary American medical ethics was born during a period of social ferment, a key theme of which was the espousal of individual rights. Driven by complex cultural forces united in the effort to protect individuality and self-determined choices, an extrapolation from case law to rights of patients was accomplished under the philosophical auspices of ‘autonomy’. Autonomy has a complex history; arising in the modern period as the idea of self-governance, it received its most ambitious philosophical elaboration in Kant's moral philosophy. (...) In examining the Kantian construction, it is evident that neither his universal moral imperative nor his rigorous application of self-legislated ethical action can sustain our own notions of moral agency in a pragmatic, pluralistic society. But the Kantian position is useful in highlighting that self-governance is not equivalent to ‘autonomy’, and this distinction defines the limits of autonomy in the clinical setting. A critique of Engelhardt's idea of ‘principle of permission’ is used to illustrate autonomy's eclipse as a governing principle for medical ethics. (shrink)

This collection is an attempt by a diverse range of authors to reignite interest in C.I. Lewis’s work within the pragmatist and analytic traditions. Although pragmatism has enjoyed a renewed popularity in the past thirty years, some influential pragmatists have been overlooked. C. I. Lewis is arguably the most important of overlooked pragmatists and was highly influential within his own time period. The volume assembles a wide range of perspectives on the strengths and weaknesses of Lewis’s contributions to metaphysics, (...) epistemology, semantics, philosophy of science, and ethics. (shrink)

This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the a priori and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge form the core of Lewis’s masterpiece _Mind and the World-Order_. While Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the _a priori_ as constraining the mind and experience, it also emphasizes the inalterability and the unavoidability of the given that remains the same (...) through any interpretation of it by the mind. The essays in this volume probe Lewis’s new account of the relation between the a priori and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in 20 th -century philosophy, including Carnap, Friedman, Goodman, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Sellars, and Sheffer. _C.I. Lewis’s Conceptual Pragmatism_ __represents a focused treatment of a long-neglected figure in 20 th -century American philosophy. (shrink)

Despite numerous published writings on China's regional role, the world still knows very little about Beijing's perception and strategy. This article seeks to make an intellectual contribution in understanding China's foreign policy and its efforts to participate in East Asian integration. This article argues that under the rhetoric of peaceful development and community building, China's foreign policy is pragmatic and changes with the tide of events in international relations. China's participation in regional integration serves as a good case for examining (...) changes in Beijing's strategy. In the past two decades, China has moved from a reluctant participant of regional affairs to an active participant and potential future leader. China's adjusting role is a consequence of Beijing's pragmatism in policy and its growing economic confidence. Pragmatism has led China to and wait for the proper timing to step onto the world stage. (shrink)

Clarence I. Lewis (1883-1964) delineated the structure of mind based on his “conceptual pragmatism.” Human mind grounds itself on the ongoing dynamic interaction of relational processes, which is essentially mediated and structural. Lewis’s pragmatism anchors itself on the theory of knowledge that has the triadic structure of the given or immediate data, interpretation, and the concept. Lewis takes the a priori given as a starting point of meaningful experience. The interpretative work of mind is the mediator of the (...) a priori given and the concepts. The a priori given is the principle that determines the application of concepts in our interpretative process. Our mind interprets the given in relating to other possible experience. In other words, the meaning of the a priori given is determined by mind, the subject of interpretative process, which performs constructive and legislative activity, and allows room for the existence of alternatives. Lewis’s theory of knowledge calls for pragmatic justification of value experience. In his ethical theory, Lewis pursues to find answers for how to build up the objectivity of value experience regarding the work of mind as conceptual apparatus. For Lewis, knowledge is a claim about valuation and normativity. In our value experience, the normative significance of our empirical assessments for action comprises objective significance for future experience. Mind is “principle- content apparatus” composed of imperatives as the a priori given principles and the contents of experience as a whole.Imperatives are the result of lessons accumulated from the past and function as rules for the future. Individuals start their experience from imperatives and organize their own experience by doing based on the inferential process, which is directional from the past to the future. (shrink)

I explore three points about the relationship between C.I. Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and W.V. Quine’s naturalized epistemology inspired by Robert Sinclair’s Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction. First, I highlight Lewis’s long-standing commitment to Platonism about meaning and its connection to his reflective philosophical method and rejection of a linguistic account of analyticity. Second, I consider Sinclair’s claim that “Lewis’s epistemology provides no indication concerning how, despite different sensory experiences, we still come to agree on what we (...) are talking about and what counts as evidence” (2022, 113). I find more hints, especially in Lewis’s account of how we verify that two people share meaning in common. However, some of the pragmatic and broadly empirical factors Lewis appeals to are not part of Quine’s naturalized epistemology. Finally, I relate these points to Quine’s (1953/1980) claim to advance a more “thorough pragmatism” than Lewis. Quine does not say much about action, value, and ethics, but these are central parts of Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism and a source of his reluctance to abandon those parts of his epistemology that Sinclair argues Quine found dispensable. (shrink)

In Democracy and Education, in the midst of the pivotal chapter on “The Democratic Conception in Education,” Dewey juxtaposes his educational aims with those of Plato, Rousseau, Fichte and Hegel. Perhaps Dewey believed that an account of their views would help elucidate his own, or he intended to suggest that his own ideas rivaled or bested theirs. I argue that Dewey’s discussion of historical philosophers’ aims of education was also designed to critique his contemporaries subtly and by analogy. My analysis (...) of Dewey’s critique supports a second argument: one of the reasons Dewey’s legacy has been long debated (particularly his relationship to pedagogical progressivism) derives from his reluctance to criticize his contemporaries explicitly and directly. Had Dewey critiqued his fellow American progressives in the same way he did historical European philosophers of the past, his readers would have better understood his relationship to progressive American educational ideas and practices. Yet Dewey’s subtle approach also accounts for the creation of a work that genuinely warrants being called a classic – it rises above the educational debates of the early twentieth century to enter into a conversation with its educational ancestry, a conversation that Dewey propelled forward. (shrink)