Jane Addams (1860-1935), activista y pensadora feminista estadounidense, nos permite reencontrarnos con una perspectiva del feminismo de antaño. Su trabajo intelectual como escritora y filósofa pragmatista fue muy influyente para el sufragio en Estados Unidos y la creación de leyes que buscaban mejorar las condiciones laborales de las mujeres y poblaciones afrodescendientes. También fue cofundadora de la primera residencia social de Estados Unidos que apoyó la población inmigrante europea, conocida como la Hull-House. Además de ser la primera mujer en (...) la Universidad de Yale en recibir un Master of Arts honorario, también fue la primera mujer ganadora del premio Nobel de la Paz en 1931. El presente texto es el primer capítulo de su libro titulado A New Conscience and an Ancient Evil, el cual trata sobre el trabajo sexual y el arduo camino hacia su abolición. Jane Addams es relevante actualmente porque puede sumarse a las voces que configuran el diálogo sobre la prostitución. (shrink)

When William James spoke about belief to the philosophy clubs of Yale and Brown in 1896, he forewarned his audience of the nature of his comments by describing them as a “sermon on justification by faith” (James 13), titling the talk “The Will to Believe.” Although there is disagreement about the substance of James’s remarks, it is fairly innocuous to assert that James thought they were appropriate because of the prevalence of the “logical spirit” of many (...) of those who practiced academic philosophy that led them to the conclusion that religious faith was untenable. Aware of his audience, James presents his view on the permissibility of religious faith on the terms and grounds familiar to professional philosophers. .. (shrink)

This welcome volume offers a rich presentation of the ideas of Jane Addams, with emphases upon her contributions to the Pragmatic movement. It is divided into two parts. Chapters 1–4 “provide a historical and theoretical foundation for Addams’s social philosophy,” and chapters 5–9 “discuss how Addams applied her social theories to a variety of social issues” including pacifism, race and diversity, socialism, education broadly conceived, and religion. There is also an introduction, an afterword, and an extensive bibliography. (...) It is the author’s hope that his study will spur further work on the role of Addams, and other women, in the history of Pragmatism and American philosophy; and I anticipate.. (shrink)

marilyn fischer’s careful historiographical treatment of the ideas and life of Jane Addams deepens our understanding of Addams’s important work as a thinker and practitioner. The paper paints a picture of the ideological and sociological landscape of Addams’s world, paying close attention to the relationships Addams had with other prominent thinkers of the day, such as the African Americans W. E. B. Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett, as well as the pragmatist Josiah Royce. Fischer seems (...) to have doubled aims in the paper. On the one hand, she makes a set of claims that helps us understand Addams better as a historical thinker. On the other hand, the paper advances another set of claims about Addams’s relation to .. (shrink)

This comprehensive encyclopedia entry discusses the life and works of Jane Addams (1860-1935) who influenced contemporaries John Dewey, William James, and George Herbert Mead. Although not traditionally categorized as a philosopher, Addams was a prolific writer who developed a social philosophy of attentiveness and sympathetic knowledge that prefigures contemporary feminist care ethics.

Jane Addams‘ Beitrag zur Philosophie des Pragmatismus wurde lange Zeit neben jenem der klassischen Vertreter*innen wie Peirce, James oder Dewey vernachlässigt. Auch wenn sich dies mittlerweile in eine anhaltende Addams-Rezeption gewandelt hat, so wird bis heute die Verbindung von Philosophie und Sozialer Arbeit, also der Bezug von Theorie und Praxis in Addams‘ Werk ausgeblendet, beziehungsweise ausschließlich getrennt verhandelt. Ihr Pragmatismus kann jedoch nur vor dem Hintergrund der Verschränkung von Philosophie und Sozialer Arbeit in seiner ganzen Tragweite (...) erfasst werden. Eine verschränkte Lesart macht deutlich, dass Addams ihren Pragmatismus dezidiert kritisch und orientiert am sozialen integralen Ideal der Demokratie ausrichtete. Dieser Begriff lässt sich mit zwischen den Konzepten von Solidarität und Vulnerabilität aufspannen. Diese fungieren als zwei zentrale Begrifflichkeiten in Addams‘ Sozialphilosophie, auch wenn diese nicht explizit benannt werden. Addams verknüpft darin nämlich einerseits Vulnerabilität und Solidarität miteinander und bringt beide vor dem Hintergrund ihrer Sozialphilosophie mit Demokratie in Verbindung. Darüber hinaus bringt Addams hier eine machtkritische Perspektive mit ein und ermöglicht damit andererseits auch Anknüpfungspunkte für heutige Konzepte zu Vulnerabilität und Solidarität. (shrink)

There Is a Disciplinary divide between philosophers and historians in how they read Addams’s first book, Democracy and Social Ethics. Philosophers identify Addams primarily as a pragmatist. They often compare and contrast her thinking with that of James and Dewey, and find her a fruitful resource for contemporary discussions about gender, social justice, and peace. Much of this scholarship gives central place to Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics. Except for nods to her 1892 essay “The Subjective (...) Necessity of Settlements,” philosophers rarely discuss whether her religious sensibilities influenced her theorizing.1 While historians debate Addams’s religious identity, many locate her within the social gospel .. (shrink)

I admit that when I think of pragmatism’s contributions to political philosophy, I primarily think of Jane Addams and John Dewey. Their contributions to democratic theory and practice have been extremely important in the United States, Europe, and elsewhere, so much so that “pragmatist politics” and “Deweyan democracy” are virtually synonymous. I also think of W.E.B. Du Bois’s criticisms of anti-Black racism and white supremacy in the United States and across the globe. In any case, my first instincts have (...) never been to turn to William James for political inspiration or insight. I’m not alone in thinking and... (shrink)

Feminist Interpretations of William James is the third volume on a classical pragmatist in the generally excellent Penn State book series, Re-Reading the Canon. The series dedicates itself to a reconstruction of the work of prominent philosophers, and has already brought a critical, feminist perspective to the lives and thought of Jane Addams and John Dewey. This latest installment of the series is a welcome and lively contribution on William James, and adds significantly to the series’ wider (...) reconstructive project, which typically highlights and critiques a philosopher’s problematic, sexist assumptions; examines the effects such assumptions may have had on the thinker’s wider body of work; re-inscribes women’s... (shrink)

This response to insightful commentaries on my book, from Richard Shusterman, Susan Dieleman, Raff Donelson, and Colin Koopman, takes up the recurring theme of the nature of normativity on a Rortyan view. To frame my individual replies, I revisit the Davidsonian account of epistemic interaction that influences Rorty’s mature view and suggest that the norms implicit in Davidsonian triangulation are insufficient to support Rorty’s antiauthoritarianism in ethics and epistemology. To address the resulting question of how to account for norms of (...) responsibility and obligation within Rorty’s thought, I highlight key strands of the pragmatic tradition, originating with Peirce but extending through James, Addams, and Dewey, that Rorty reconstructs in the process of developing the full implications of prioritizing democracy over philosophy. (shrink)

By focusing on the thought of Classical American philosophers, this article addresses the existential problem of the fear of death. Drawing on the experiences and philosophies of Ralph Waldo Emerson, William James, and Jane Addams as a theoretical framework, a prescriptive claim regarding how to confront human mortality is advanced. It is suggested that embracing the notion of experience as a prelude to the disaster of death can be – despite appearances to the contrary – a useful approach (...) to navigating exigencies connected with mortality and, in particular, fear of death. The essay contributes to a small but growing body of literature on the topic of death in American philosophy scholarship, while addressing a perennial problem receiving treatment in contemporary popular discourse. (shrink)

I argue that Classical American Pragmatists—Royce, James, Dewey, Perice, Addams, Du Bois, and Locke subscribed to this view and practiced philosophy by focusing on experience and directing a critical eye to major problems in living. Thus Royce and Dewey explored the nature of genuine community and its role in developing a flourishing individual life but also a public, democratic life. Royce and James engaged in a phenomenological analysis of human experience including religious experience developing a rich understanding (...) of human psychological, social, and religious development. Dewey, Royce and Perice applied the lessons of the scientific communal experience to problem solving in everyday life. Dewey explored life’s aesthetic dimensions. Addams, Du Bois and Locke applied philosophy to problems of living with discrimination as an immigrant or an African American. (shrink)

In Pragmatism’s Evolution, Trevor Pearce demonstrates that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism owes an enormous debt to specific biological debates in the late 1800s, especially those concerning the role of the environment in development and evolution. Many are familiar with John Dewey’s 1909 assertion that evolutionary ideas overturned two thousand years of philosophy—but what exactly happened in the fifty years prior to Dewey’s claim? What form did evolutionary ideas take? When and how were they received by American philosophers? Although the (...) various thinkers associated with pragmatism—from Charles Sanders Peirce to Jane Addams and beyond—were towering figures in American intellectual life, few realize the full extent of their engagement with the life sciences. In his analysis, Pearce focuses on a series of debates in biology from 1860 to 1910—from the instincts of honeybees to the inheritance of acquired characteristics—in which the pragmatists were active participants. If we want to understand the pragmatists and their influence, Pearce argues, we need to understand the relationship between pragmatism and biology. (shrink)

This paper elucidates a key element that is often missing from graduate training in philosophy -- the art of teaching. In the first section, the author details the extent of the training many philosophers receive in the area of teaching. In the second section, the notion of sympathetic understanding (a la William James, Jane Addams, and John Dewey) is introduced. In the last section, the author articulates the role of sympathetic understanding in the classroom and the benefits that (...) arise from it. (shrink)

placed side by side, james’s A Pluralistic Universe and Addams’s Twenty Years at Hull-House seem to have little in common. James’s critique of absolute idealism is written for intellectuals comfortable with philosophical abstractions. Twenty Years is full of stories about the lives of poor people and immigrants. Yet, sometime after April 1909, when A Pluralistic Universe appeared, and before November 1910, when Twenty Years was published, Addams inserted a few telling quotations into her manuscript. I will (...) give a reading of Twenty Years as a presentation in real time of James’s pluralistic universe, with both form and contents conveying the “essential provisionality” of experience in James’s “strung-along”.. (shrink)

i thank denise james and charlene haddock seigfried for their thoughtful comments on my paper. Although they respond in different ways, they both picked up on questions and uncertainties that arose as I wrote the paper.For some years, I have been trying to write about essays Addams addressed to African American audiences. For this paper, I decided to deal only with Addams’s writings between 1900 and 1910 in order to compare her essays for African American audiences with (...) what she wrote at the same time for wider audiences. This approach enabled me to sort out when Addams’s writing aligned with thinking in the dominant culture and when it departed from that.James questions my decision not to use the concept of white .. (shrink)

Jonna Vance and Preston Werner argue that humans’ mechanisms of perceptual attention tend to be sensitive to morally relevant properties. They dub this tendency “Attentional Moral Perception” (AMP) and argue that it can play all the explanatory roles that some theorists have hoped moral perception can play. In this article, I argue that, although AMP can indeed play some important explanatory roles, there are certain crucial things that AMP cannot do. Firstly, many theorists appeal to moral perception to explain how (...) moral knowledge is possible. I argue that AMP cannot put an agent in a position to acquire moral knowledge unless it is supplemented with some other capacity for becoming aware of moral properties. Secondly, theorists appeal to moral perception to explain “moral conversions”, i.e., cases in which an experience leads an agent to form a moral belief that conflicts with her pre-existing moral beliefs. I argue that AMP cannot explain this either. Due to these shortcomings, theorists should turn to emotions for a powerful and psychologically realistic account of virtuous agents’ sensitivity to the moral landscape. (shrink)

Written in a jargon-free way, Body Matters provides a clear and accessible phenomenological critique of core assumptions in mainstream biomedicine and explores ways in which health and illness are experienced and interpreted differently in various socio-historical situations. By drawing on the disciplines of literature, cultural anthropology, sociology, medical history, and philosophy, the authors attempt to dismantle common presuppositions we have about human afflictions and examine how the methods of phenomenology open up new ways to interpret the body and to re-envision (...) therapy. (shrink)

The figure of Richard Rorty stands in complex relation to the tradition of American pragmatism. On the one hand, his intellectual creativity, lively prose, and bridge-building fueled the contemporary resurgence of pragmatism. On the other, his polemical claims and selective interpretations function as a negative, fixed pole against which thinkers of all stripes define themselves. Virtually all pragmatists on the contemporary scene, whether classical or "new," Deweyan, Jamesian, or Peircean, use Rorty as a foil to justify their positions. The resulting (...) internecine quarrels and divisions threaten to thwart and fragment the tradition's creative potential. More caricatured than understood, the specter of Rorty is blocking the road of inquiry and future development of pragmatism. Reconstructing Pragmatism moves beyond the Rortyan impasse by providing what has been missing for decades: a constructive, non-polemical account of Rorty's relation to classical pragmatism. The first book-length treatment of Rorty's intellectual debt to the early pragmatists, it establishes his selective appropriations not as misunderstandings or distortions but as a sustained, intentional effort to reconstruct their thinking. Featuring chapters devoted to five key pragmatist thinkers - Peirce, James, Dewey, Royce, and Addams - the book draws on archival sources and the full scope of Rorty's writings to challenge prevailing misconceptions and caricatures. By illuminating the critical resources, still largely untapped, that Rorty offers for articulating classical pragmatism's ongoing relevance, the book reveals limitations in the received images of the classical pragmatists that predominate in current debates and opens up new modes of understanding pragmatism and why it matters today. (shrink)

A model of metaphysics associated with EJ Lowe and Tuomas Tahko sees metaphysics as involving a priori knowledge of possible essences, or at least modal facts, and delimiting the actual ‘ontological categories,’ the ultimate and essential divisions of what exists, based on the results of a posteriori scientific investigation. Their approach to metaphysics has been criticized by those who argue that such metaphysics is unsuitably a priori, disconnected with empirical research in natural science, and ends up failing to provide meaningful (...) constraints on metaphysical theorization. I present different epistemological and semantic worries about these accounts to motivate an alternative perspective on which metaphysics centers on form, rather than possibility. This scholastic perspective is shown to incorporate the skeptical insights as constitutive of its approach to existence, by way of the position that ‘being’ is not a genus. Rather, ‘being’ is a determinable. The scholastic approach can thus provide responses to the skeptics, since it denies that ontological categories – in the Lowe/Tahko sense – are what metaphysicians investigate and proposes a different view of ontological categories as classes of forms. (shrink)

This article defends the use of interventionist counterfactuals to elucidate causal and explanatory claims against criticisms advanced by James Bogen and Peter Machamer. Against Bogen, I argue that counterfactual claims concerning what would happen under interventions are meaningful and have determinate truth values, even in a deterministic world. I also argue, against both Machamer and Bogen, that we need to appeal to counterfactuals to capture the notions like causal relevance and causal mechanism. Contrary to what both authors suppose, counterfactuals (...) are not "unscientific" - a substantial tradition within statistics and the causal modelling literature makes heavy use of them. (shrink)

Why may not our acts be "the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making?"1I find it difficult to respond to Peter H. Hare's writings because we come from different universes of discourse and have presumably different intentions. Whereas Peter translates James's writings into traditional philosophical issues as expressed through analytic discourse, I tend to follow James's quirky re-working of these issues to see where they lead and use his own vocabulary rather than translating it into (...) another one. We bring our intellectual backgrounds with us, though, and my way of understanding James—or Dewey or Addams, for that matter—is no more a transparent reading than is his. Although I choose to read and .. (shrink)

Parfit argues that naturalistic theories that seek to understand normative concepts either as simply descriptive of certain natural facts about our desires or as expressive of our desires commit us to a bleak normative nihilism whereby nothing matters. I here defend such naturalism, in particular its expressivist variety, against this charge. It is true that such views commit us to there being no reasons as Parfit understands them. But for Parfit to suppose that equivalent to there being no reasons leaves (...) him begging the question where the relative credibility of these rival understandings is just what is at issue.1. (shrink)

In this article I address the neglected question of what kind of act keeping a secret is, and what Kant had to say about secret keeping. First, I provide a definition of keeping a secret, improving upon Sissela Bok's definition. I distinguish between keeping a secret and deception, incorporating Thomas Nagel. Then, I discuss what Kant had to say about keeping a secret, and advance an Kantian argument for the moral permissibility of secret-keeping.

James O. Young seeks to explain why we value music so highly. He draws on the latest psychological research to argue that music is expressive of emotion by resembling human expressive behaviour. The representation of emotion in music gives it the capacity to provide psychological insight--and it is this which explains a good deal of its value.

Despite drives’ importance for Nietzsche’s explanation of individuals’ values, controversies persist over how to interpret Nietzsche’s attribution of normative capacities to the drives themselves. On one reading, drives evaluate their aims and recognize the normative authority of other drives’ aims. On another, drives’ normative properties reduce to nonnormative, causal properties. Neither approach is satisfying. The former commits Nietzsche to the homuncular fallacy by granting drives complex cognitive capacities. The latter reading either commits Nietzsche to the naturalistic fallacy, having him derive (...) normative conclusions from descriptive premises, or eliminates normativity from his thought altogether. In response to this impasse, this article advances a Leibniz-informed interpretation of Nietzsche’s drive psychology. By construing the normative and efficient causal orders as parallel modes of explanation distinguished by one’s perspective, a Leibniz-informed reading captures the benefits of extant interpretations while avoiding their drawbacks. (shrink)

In this chapter I argue that writers on metaphor have misunderstood Aristotle on metaphor. Aristotle is not an elitist about metaphor and does not consider metaphors to be merely ornamental. Rather, Aristotle believes that metaphors are ubiquitous and believes that people can express themselves in a clearer and more attractive way through the use of metaphors and that people learn and understand things better through metaphor. He also distinguishes between the use of metaphor and the coinage of metaphor, and believes (...) that the ability to coin marvelous new metaphors is a form of literary genius, and he provided an entirely natural origin of metaphor coinage. (shrink)

In this paper I describe a novel application of contemplative techniques to software engineering with the goal of augmenting the intellectual capabilities of knowledge workers within the field in four areas: flexibility, attention, creativity, and trust. The augmentation of software engineers’ intellectual capabilities is proposed as a third complement to the traditional focus of methodologies on the process and environmental factors of the software development endeavor. I argue that these capabilities have been shown to be open to improvement through the (...) practices traditionally used in spiritual traditions, but now used increasingly in other fields of knowledge work, such as in the medical profession and the education field. Historically, the intellectual capabilities of software engineers have been treated as a given within any particular software development effort. This is argued to be an aspect ripe for inclusion within software development methodologies. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that the non-cognitivists of the first half of the twentieth century - the emotivists – were internalists about moral motivation. It is also commonly assumed that they were prompted to choose emotivism over other cognitivist positions in ethics because of their commitment to internalism. Finally, it is also commonly assumed that they used an internalist argument to argue for emotivism. -/- In this article I argue that the connection between emotivism and internalism is far more tenuous (...) than is commonly assumed. I focus on two of the most important and influential emotivists: A. J. Ayer and Charles L. Stevenson. While it is true that Stevenson was an internalist, Ayer refused to endorse internalism. Neither of them was originally prompted to choose emotivism over cognitivist positions in ethics by internalist considerations. Finally, Ayer never used an internalist argument to argue for emotivism; Stevenson did once borrow an internalist argument from another philosopher in order to argue for emotivism, but he later abandoned it. (shrink)

There is a theological puzzle concerning the way in which Satan – an angel – was able to sin, despite lacking knowledge of no relevant fact about the world. Anselm and Aquinas explain Satan’s sin as malicious in virtue of Satan’s indifference to what mattered. I appeal to their account of Satan’s sin as a paradigm case clarifying the way in which those who intentionally engage in nonconsensual sex are always acting maliciously. Assuming competence, those who engage in nonconsensual sex (...) fail to attend to what matters and are willing to harm others merely for their own gratification. Such attitudes are diabolical. (shrink)

Almost all of us would agree that the experience of art is deeply rewarding. Why this is the case remains a puzzle; nor does it explain why many of us find works of art much more important than other sources of pleasure. Art and Knowledge argues that the experience of art is so rewarding because it can be an important source of knowledge about ourselves and our relation to each other and to the world. The view that art is a (...) source of knowledge can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Horace. Artists as various as Tasso, Sidney, Henry James and Mendelssohn have believed that art contributes to knowledge. As attractive as this view may be, it has never been satisfactorily defended, either by artists or philosophers. Art and Knowledge reflects on the essence of art and argues that it ought to provide insight as well as pleasure. It argues that all the arts, including music, are importantly representational. This kind of representation is fundamentally different from that found in the sciences, but it can provide insights as important and profound as available from the sciences. Once we recognise that works of art can contribute to knowledge we can avoid thorough relativism about aesthetic value and we can be in a position to evaluate the avant-garde art of the past 100 years. Art and Knowledge is an exceptionally clear and interesting, as well as controversial, exploration of what art is and why it is valuable. It will be of interest to all philosophers of art, artists and art critics. (shrink)

During the years leading up to World War I, America experienced a crisis of civic identity. How could a country founded on liberal principles and composed of increasingly diverse cultures unite to safeguard individuals and promote social justice? In this book, Jonathan Hansen tells the story of a group of American intellectuals who believed the solution to this crisis lay in rethinking the meaning of liberalism. Intellectuals such as William James, John Dewey, Jane Addams, Eugene V. Debs, and (...) W. E. B. Du Bois repudiated liberalism's association with acquisitive individualism and laissez-faire economics, advocating a model of liberal citizenship whose virtues and commitments amount to what Hansen calls cosmopolitan patriotism. Rooted not in war but in dedication to social equity, cosmopolitan patriotism favored the fight against sexism, racism, and political corruption in the United States over battles against foreign foes. Its adherents held the domestic and foreign policy of the United States to its own democratic ideals and maintained that promoting democracy universally constituted the ultimate form of self-defense. Perhaps most important, the cosmopolitan patriots regarded critical engagement with one's country as the essence of patriotism, thereby justifying scrutiny of American militarism in wartime. (shrink)

This chapter explores perspectivism in the American Pragmatist tradition. On the one hand, the thematization of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science can benefit from resources in the American Pragmatist philosophical tradition. On the other hand, the Pragmatists have interesting and innovative, pluralistic views that can be illuminated through the lens of perspectivism. I pursue this inquiry primarily through examining relevant sources from the Pragmatist tradition. I will illustrate productive engagements between pragmatism and perspectivism in three areas: in (...) the pragmatists’ fallibilistic theories of inquiry and truth, in their pluralistic metaphysics, and in their views on cultural pluralism. While there are some potential sticking points between pragmatism and perspectivism, particularly around the visual metaphor of perspective, these philosophical approaches nonetheless have much to learn from each other. Perspectivism is in danger of falling between the horns of pernicious relativism and a platitudinous view of the limits of human perception and cognition. The pragmatists accounts of truth and reality open the possibility of a more thoroughgoing perspectivism. I will follow this thread through Charles S. Peirce’s, William James’, and John Dewey’s theories of inquiry and truth, Peirce’s evolutionary metaphysics, James’ radical pluralism, Dewey’s cultural naturalism, Richard Rorty’s anti-essentialism, Jane Addams’ standpoint epistemology, W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of race consciousness, Horace Kallen’s and Alain LeRoy Locke’s cultural pluralism, and Mary Parker Follett’s account of pluralistic integration. (shrink)

Drawing upon work in evolutionary game theory and experimental philosophy, I argue that one of the roles the concept of knowledge plays in our social cognitive ecology is that of enabling us to make adaptively important distinctions between different kinds of blameworthy and blameless behaviors. In particular, I argue that knowledge enables us to distinguish which agents are most worthy of blame for inflicting harms, violating social norms, or cheating in situations of social exchange.

Truth-talk exhibits certain features that render it philosophically suspect and motivate a deflationary account. I offer a new formulation of deflationism that explains truth-talk in terms of semantic pretense. This amounts to a fictionalist account of truth-talk but avoids an error-theoretic interpretation and its resulting incoherence. The pretense analysis fits especially well with deflationism’s central commitment, and it handles truth-talk’s unusual features effectively. In particular, this approach suggests an interesting strategy for dealing with the Liar paradox. This version of deflationism (...) has advantages over the formulations currently available in the literature, mainly because it offers a more satisfying account of the generalizing role deflationary views take as truth-talk’s central function. Explaining the notion of truth in terms of pretense generates some special concerns, but none we cannot address through careful consideration of how pretense operates in truth-talk and of the attitudes instances of pretending involve. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Pragmatist Philosophy of History by Marnie BinderPiers H. G. StephensA Pragmatist Philosophy of History Marnie Binder. Lexington Books, 2023.Looking at current scholarship and opinion in American philosophy, one can easily conclude that there has been much more work done on studying the history of pragmatist philosophy than there has been on what pragmatist philosophy can give to the study of history. Ever since the resurrection of interest (...) in pragmatism in the late twentieth century, we have seen a range of publications offering new interpretations for the ideas of the classical pragmatists, as well as important new applications for philosophical pragmatism and the moving to center stage of historically sidelined individuals and groups. What we have seen relatively little of, however, aside from a 2016 symposium in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, is sustained engagement with the question of what a classically pragmatist approach to historical inquiry might contribute, entail, or imply. It is this important niche in the ecosystem of American philosophy that Marnie Binder's A Pragmatist Philosophy of History seeks to partially fill in.Binder, who is perhaps best known for her past writings on José Ortega y Gasset, is at pains from the start to indicate both the humility and the utility of her project. As befits the tradition, there are no grandiose philosophical pretensions here, with the "goal in presenting a pragmatist philosophy of [End Page 112] history" merely being "to add another apparatus to the toolkits of the philosopher and the historian," an extra perspective that is "meant to complement other methodologies" (xi; emphasis in original), as she explains in her introduction. At the same time, pragmatism can offer something distinctive, firstly through asking the pragmatic question of what difference is meant by the accepting of particular presumed facts as being true, and secondly, being able to better understand why certain historical details have relevance, value, and meaning for us as a result of answering the first question. A pragmatist philosophy of history is helpful then, Binder maintains, as it "is in a unique position to bridge the speculative analytic divide" (xiii), and her approach to doing this is to draw upon the resources found in the works of a succession of the familiar classical pragmatists, building toward a synthesis and a cashing out of insights in her concluding reflections.Structurally the work consists of an explanatory introduction followed by six chapters, each dedicated to a particular pragmatist and their insights, leading finally to an extended concluding section drawing the component parts together and answering possible objections to the project. Pragmatism, as Binder recognizes, is seldom thought of as a historically orientated philosophy, but she argues that for each of these thinkers—William James, John Dewey, F. C. S. Schiller, Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and Jane Addams—there is at least the germ of a philosophy of history that can be unearthed and developed, eventually helping to inform understanding of what is needed to bring a pragmatist ethics into practical reality, the last of which is manifested primarily by Addams. Thus, the treatment of William James in chapter 1 homes in on James's psychological insights into the way that experienced reality forms a temporal continuum; our consciousness necessarily selects from the experiences of the past, ascribing interpretations and assuming levels of facticity and relevance, since no individual can know all the facts or select among them with perfect impartiality. The continuum will be one that speaks to the inquirer's concerns with accuracy, practicality, meaningfulness, and coherence, as all knowledge comes about through temporal processes, and since past events are continuously added to and can be continuously reinterpreted, it can have no real or ultimate beginning or end. Accordingly, for a Jamesian pragmatist account, the "continuum of history is the way in which we construct a meaning for history of the connected past experiences with the present and in view of the future—this is what we call 'history'" (7; emphasis in original), and Binder draws upon José Medina's recent work to further illuminate how such history can and will be continuously critically reconstructed. In addition, she observes, such reconstruction [End Page... (shrink)

The problems and the keys to their solutions -- Ontology of artworks -- Copyright and its limits -- Token appropriation -- Pattern appropriation -- Appropriation of artistic elements.

Over a career spanning American history from the 1880s to the 1950s, John Dewey sought not only to forge a persuasive argument for his conviction that "democracy is freedom" but also to realize his democratic ideals through political activism. Widely considered modern America's most important philosopher, Dewey made his views known both through his writings and through such controversial episodes as his leadership of educational reform at the turn of the century; his support of American intervention in World War I (...) and his leading role in the Outlawry of War movement after the war; and his participation in both radical and anti-communist politics in the 1930s and 40s. Robert B. Westbrook reconstructs the evolution of Dewey's thought and practice in this masterful intellectual biography, combining readings of his major works with an engaging account of key chapters in his activism. Westbrook pays particular attention to the impact upon Dewey of conversations and debates with contemporaries from William James and Reinhold Niebuhr to Jane Addams and Leon Trotsky. Countering prevailing interpretations of Dewey's contribution to the ideology of American liberalism, he discovers a more unorthodox Dewey—a deviant within the liberal community who was steadily radicalized by his profound faith in participatory democracy. Anyone concerned with the nature of democracy and the future of liberalism in America—including educators, moral and social philosophers, social scientists, political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians—will find John Dewey and American Democracy indispensable reading. (shrink)

This paper defends the notion of downward causation. I will seek to elucidate this notion, explain why it is a useful way of thinking, and respond to criticisms attacking its intelligibility. My account of downward causation will be in many respects similar to the account recently advanced by Ellis. The overall framework I will adopt is the interventionist treatment of causation I have defended elsewhere: X causes Y when Y changes under a suitable manipulation of X. When X is at (...) a higher “level” than Y this allows for the possibility of downward causation from X to Y. True claims of downward causation must meet certain additional conditions, some of which have already been discussed by Ellis. These include the condition that X must have a homogenous effect on Y in the sense that the effect of X on Y must be the same regardless of how X is “realized” at lower levels. In addition, the most plausible examples of downward causation will involve causes X, that in a sense that I will try to specify, are capable of being manipulated by macro-level interventions that have a coordinated or organized impact on them, as when one manipulates the temperature of a gas by placing it in a heat bath.Three common criticisms of the notion of downward causation that I will consider are: the claim that this involves a whole acting downward on its parts which is an objectionable idea because wholes and parts are not sufficiently distinct to stand in causal relationships, that downward causation commits us to the existence of causal cycles in which X causes Y which in turn causes X and that the asymmetric nature of the causal relation rules out such cycles, and causal exclusion type worries, according to which all of the causal action occurs among “low level” variables, so that upper level variables are deprived of causal efficacy. In response I will argue that plausible examples of downward causation in the scientific literature do not involve whole to part causation, there is nothing wrong with causal cycles, which are common in, for example, biological contexts, exclusion type worries do not arise within the interventionist framework that I favor. (shrink)

This paper explores some issues concerning the nature and structure of causal explanation in psychiatry and psychology from the point of view of the “interventionist” theory defended in my book, Making Things Happen. Among the issues is explored is the extent to which candidate causal explanations involving “upper level” or relatively coarse-grained or macroscopic variables such as mental/psychological states (e.g. highly self critical beliefs or low self esteem) or environmental factors (e.g. parental abuse) compete with explanations that instead appeal to (...) underlying, “lower level” or more fine gained neural, genetic, or biochemical mechanisms. (shrink)

This book examines the contributions of William James, John Dewey, F.C.S. Schiller, C.S. Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and Jane Addams to a case for a pragmatist philosophy of history. Together, they expand our understanding on how we process the past, which impacts our present and our future.

In their recent book, Oreskes and Conway ([ 2010 ]) describe the ‘tobacco strategy’, which was used by the tobacco industry to influence policymakers regarding the health risks of tobacco products. The strategy involved two parts, consisting of (i) promoting and sharing independent research supporting the industry’s preferred position and (ii) funding additional research, but selectively publishing the results. We introduce a model of the tobacco strategy, and use it to argue that both prongs of the strategy can be extremely (...) effective—even when policymakers rationally update on all evidence available to them. As we elaborate, this model helps illustrate the conditions under which the tobacco strategy is particularly successful. In addition, we show how journalists engaged in ‘fair’ reporting can inadvertently mimic the effects of industry on public belief. 1Introduction 2Epistemic Network Models 3Selective Sharing 4Biased Production 5Journalists as Unwitting Propagandists 6Conclusion Appendix. (shrink)

The essays in this collection demonstrate American philosopher John Dewey's wide-ranging influence on rhetoric in an intellectual tradition that addresses the national culture's fundamental conflicts between self and society, freedom and responsibility, and individual advancement and the common good. Editors Brian Jackson and Gregory Clark propose that this influence is at work both in theoretical foundations, such as science, pragmatism, and religion, and in Dewey's debates with other public intellectuals, such as Jane Addams, Walter Lippmann, James Baldwin, and (...) W.E.B. Du Bois. Jackson and Clark seek to establish Dewey as an essential source for those engaged in teaching others how to compose timely, appropriate, useful, and eloquent responses to the diverse and often-contentious rhetorical situations that develop in a democratic culture. What prepares people to intervene constructively in such situations is instruction in those rhetorical practices of democratic interaction that is implicit throughout Dewey's work. Dewey's writing provides a rich framework on which a distincly American tradition of a democratic rhetorical practice can be built - a tradition that combines the most useful concepts of classical rhetoric with those of modern progressive civic engagement. Jackson and Clark believe Dewey's practice takes rhetoric beyond the traditional emphasis on political democracy to provide connections to rich veins of American thought such as individualism, liberalism, progressive education, collectivism, pragmatism, and postindustrial science and communication. They frame Dewey's work as constituting a modern expression of continuing education for the "trained capacities" required to participate in democratic culture. -- from back cover. (shrink)

_ Source: _Volume 10, Issue 1, pp 1 - 28 We still lack a systematic or complete theory of tradition. By referring to the works of many major figures of the last century – Arendt, Boyer, Eisenstadt, Eliot, Gadamer, Goody, Hobsbawm, Kermode, Leavis, MacIntyre, Oakeshott, Pieper, Pocock, Popper, Prickett, Shils and others – I show that a theory of tradition must include insights taken not only from the study of sociology and anthropology, but also from the study of literature and (...) religion. The proliferation of separate academic subjects does not make it any less necessary for us to attempt to say in general what we are talking about when we talk about tradition. In this article I distinguish three elements which are found in traditions. I call these continuity, canon, and core. The argument is that traditions can be distinguished in terms of whether there is a core in addition to canon and continuity, a canon in addition to continuity, or only mere continuity. Together these form a theory of tradition which enables us to see what is necessary to all traditions and also what it is which distinguishes different types of tradition from each other. (shrink)