- Pragmatism: An Old Name for Some New Ways of Thinking? 101 well, it is ubiquitous.2 References to pragmatism occur with dizzying frequency from philosophy to social science, from the study of literature to that of ethnicity, from feminism to legal theory. As Hollinger predicted, much of this pragmatism looks very different from the original version.
- American Pragmatism An Introduction to Classic American Pragmatism Raymond Pfeiffer, who edited this issue, takes a look at the scope of the Pragmatic tradition. If pragmatism has meant different things to different people, which it has, then our current issue.
French pragmatism has more recently made inroads into American sociology as well. 27 28 29 Philosophers John R. Shook and Tibor Solymosi said that 'each new generation rediscovers and reinvents its own versions of pragmatism by applying the best available practical and scientific methods to philosophical problems of contemporary concern'. As a new paradigm, pragmatism disrupts the assumptions of older approaches based on the philosophy of knowledge, while providing promising new directions for understanding the nature of social research.
Recent papers in American Pragmatism (William James)
- by Sarah Demmrich
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British Association of Modernist Studies Panel 2019
- by charlotte de Mille
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This chapter compares the radical empiricism of William James and Charles Fort. Despite being contemporaries in the early twentieth century in America, and despite their shared interest in the data of psychical research, these two.. more
This chapter compares the radical empiricism of William James and Charles Fort. Despite being contemporaries in the early twentieth century in America, and despite their shared interest in the data of psychical research, these two philosophers have not been read together despite their deep methodological compatibility.
- by Timothy Grieve-Carlson
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William James, one of America’s most original philosophers and psychologists, was concerned above all with the manner in which philosophy might help people to cope with the vicissitudes of daily life. Writing around the turn of the.. more
William James, one of America’s most original philosophers and psychologists, was concerned above all with the manner in which philosophy might help people to cope with the vicissitudes of daily life. Writing around the turn of the twentieth century, James experienced firsthand, much as we do now, the impact upon individuals and communities of rapid changes in extant values, technologies, economic realities, and ways of understanding the world. He presented an enormous range of practical recommendations for coping and thriving in such circumstances, arguing consistently that prospects for richer lives and improved communities rested not upon trust in spiritual or material prescriptions, but rather on clear thinking in the cause of action. This volume seeks to demonstrate how James’s astonishingly rich corpus can be used to address contemporary issues and to establish better ways for thinking about the moral and practical challenges of our time. In the first part, James’s theories are applied directly to issues ranging from gun control to disability, and the ethics of livestock farming to the meaning of “progress” in race relations. The second part shows how James’s theories of ethics, experience, and the self can be used to “clear away” theoretical matters that have inhibited philosophy’s deployment to real-world issues. Finally, part three shows how individuals might apply ideas from James in their personal lives, whether at work, contemplating nature, or considering the implications of their own habits of thought and action.
- by Clifford S . Stagoll
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- 5
The very name 'pragmatism' suggests it as appropriate for use in philosophy of management. But how might we realize this suggestion without pragmatist philosophy being misappropriated in the cause of crass instrumentalism, wholly.. more
The very name 'pragmatism' suggests it as appropriate for use in philosophy of management. But how might we realize this suggestion without pragmatist philosophy being misappropriated in the cause of crass instrumentalism, wholly inconsistent with pragmatism's conception of the world? I propose that the answer lies in using resources from William James to engage directly with the demands of management practice and with practitioners, using them to improve how managers decipher and draw lessons from their professional experiences. Unlike much traditional management theory, where abstraction is the price paid for general applicability, pragmatism can provide individual managers with tools for coping with disorderly, complicated, and fast-paced work environments. I go on propose ways to implement a Jamesian philosophy of management.
- by Clifford S . Stagoll
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- 4
- by Nir Evron
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- by Michela Bella
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- 4
- by Frederick Ruf
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- by Frederick Ruf
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- 4
Buck, Christopher. “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism.” Search for Values: Ethics in Baha’i Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004. Pp. 94–158. African American philosopher Alain Locke is.. more
Buck, Christopher. “Alain Locke and Cultural Pluralism.” Search for Values: Ethics in Baha’i Thought. Edited by Seena Fazel and John Danesh. Los Angeles: Kalimat Press, 2004. Pp. 94–158.
African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important Western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for one 1979 article in a Bahá’í periodical, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor the Faith’s influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, contributes to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. It examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.”
African American philosopher Alain Locke is arguably the most profound and important Western Bahá’í philosopher to date. Except for one 1979 article in a Bahá’í periodical, scholarship on Locke has neither seriously taken into account his Bahá’í identity nor the Faith’s influence on his work. The present study, based largely on archival sources, contributes to research on this “missing” dimension of Locke’s complex life and thought. It examines Locke’s worldview as a Bahá’í, his secular perspective as a philosopher, and the synergy between his confessional and professional essays. This study also argues that Locke had a fluid hierarchy of values—of loyalty, tolerance, reciprocity, cultural relativism and pluralism (the philosophical equivalent of “unity in diversity”)—and that this hierarchy represents a progression and application of quintessentially Bahá’í ideals. Locke’s distinction as a “Bahá’í philosopher” may therefore be justified on ideological as well as historical grounds. Locke “translated” Bahá’í ideals “into more secular terms” so that “a greater practical range will be opened up for the application and final vindication of the Bahá’í principles” in order to achieve “a positive multiplication of spiritual power.”
- by Christopher Buck
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![Pragmatism Pragmatism](https://i1.rgstatic.net/publication/280292675_Pragmatism_A_Lived_and_Living_Philosophy_What_Can_it_Offer_to_Contemporary_Organization_Theory/links/56decccb08aedf2bf0c9c8d3/largepreview.png)
- by Jennifer Hansen
- •
The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of.. more
The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of technological innovations, flexibility, and breadth. The two fields have not really caught up with each other. It will be interesting to see what arises as they do — especially as both fields have become more concerned with the role of the body and embodied cognition. Framed in terms of contrasting epistemological orientations, this essay considers some relevant developments in IMSs, music cognition, and music theory and analysis, leading up to the present. The most popular approaches to music cognition and to IMS design are rationalist (Ashby 2010), exploiting the ‘correct’ embodiments of music (Godøy 2004, Leman 2007, Paine 2009) based on affordances (Gibson 1977, Kelso 1998). This essay, however, advocates a pragmatist (Ashby 2010) approach inspired by music analysis and exploiting the potential of kinesthetic learning (associative learning). Prompted by a progressive approach to music analysis, theory, perception, and cognition (Dubiel 1999, Mailman 2007), interactive music technology can also be constructive, flexible, and progressive, by exploiting kinesthetic learning from immersion in new and unusual motion-to-sound mappings derived from dynamic formal processes in analysed music. In this way, immersive interactive systems offer an opportunity systematically to learn new associations based on principles theorised in response to analysis. Experience of these systems essentially ‘rewires the brain’, thereby exemplifying what Korsyn (2004) has attributed to Lewin’s (1986, 1987) approach to music perception: the ironist approach, as formulated by Rorty (1989). Thus a pragmatist ironist experimental (PIE) approach is articulated. Rather than committing to any particular ways music is already embodied, this approach acknowledges the flexible nature of embodied musical experience. It forges and uses interactive music technologies continually to redescribe and therefore reform how music is embodied, thereby disembodying to re-embody music, expanding how music is heard, contemplated and experienced.
- by Joshua B Mailman
- •
This work, Chapter 4 from the 'Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory' (2016), gives a historical overview of the intersection of liberalism with environmental political thought, distinguishing the 'old liberalism' of the.. more
This work, Chapter 4 from the 'Oxford Handbook of Environmental Political Theory' (2016), gives a historical overview of the intersection of liberalism with environmental political thought, distinguishing the 'old liberalism' of the Lockean school from the expressive 'new liberalism' that begins with John Stuart Mill. Examining the ways in which broadly environmental concerns have been intertwined with liberal political thought from an early stage, I identify the essence of liberalism with the value of individual liberty, argue for the supremacy of 'new liberalism' over 'old liberalism' in dealing with environmental problems, and conclude with an argument that attempts to defend the protection of nonhuman nature precisely by reference to its importance to the value of human liberty.
- by Piers Stephens
- •
Read throughout the world, H. G. Wells was one of the most famous political thinkers in the early twentieth century. During the early 1900s he elaborated a bold, idiosyncratic, and controversial cosmopolitan socialist vision. In this.. more
Read throughout the world, H. G. Wells was one of the most famous political thinkers in the early twentieth century. During the early 1900s he elaborated a bold, idiosyncratic, and controversial cosmopolitan socialist vision. In this article I offer a new reading of Wells’s political thought. I argue that he developed a distinctive pragmatist philosophical orientation, which he synthesised with his commitments to evolutionary theory. His pragmatism had four main components: a nominalist metaphysics; a verificationist theory of truth; a Jamesian “will to believe”; and a vision of philosophy as an exercise oriented to improving practice. His political thought was shaped by this philosophical orientation. Wells, I contend, was the most high-profile pragmatist political thinker in the opening decades of the twentieth century. Such an understanding requires a re-evaluation of both Wells and the history of pragmatism.
- by Duncan Bell
- •
Sadly, most of the foundational history of the talk of hypnosis is based on the nearly comical and primitive behaviorism of academic researchers more at home the learning of rats in the laboratory than having anything to do with real.. more
Sadly, most of the foundational history of the talk of hypnosis is based on the nearly comical and primitive behaviorism of academic researchers more at home the learning of rats in the laboratory than having anything to do with real life.
The past century of hypnosis 'theorizing' is truly nothing more than an abyss, First dominated by Clark Hull and his laboratory at Yale and then for decades, by another rat aficionado, Ernst Hilgard and his laboratory at Stanford.
Together these two set the tone for not every truly devoting any thought or further depth of consideration to what hypnosis might be, but, rather instead going to various vaudefilll shows or grade B movies.and collecting 'behaviors' seen in those contexts..and then producing a motley and incoherent assemblage of 'task' scored by superficial measurements of movement..which they call 'behavior'
Perversely enough the measurement of these behaviors became the implicit definition of hypnosis..leaving it without any conceptual or theoretical understanding for the past many decades.
The patently nonsensical notion of the 'domain of hypnosis' was concocted by Hilgard..to somehow claim that hypnosis was not just hypnosis but more than hypnosis..and indeed that hypnotic induction was not even a necessary part of hypnosis.
So we have been left with a still used measurement of 'hypnotic 'susceptibility'..the Stanford Scales.used all the time by researchers to speak about hypnosis.but the measure itself has no underlying theoretical model or foundation..it just 'is what it is'. And oh yes..since hypnosis has been spotted in certain contexts.then everything else in that context is also part of the 'domain of hypnosis'..even thought it is only by association in the context.
It is refreshing to see a writer like James deal with it and without the clap trap and primitive behaviorist approach that has characterized academia for the past century or so..
The past century of hypnosis 'theorizing' is truly nothing more than an abyss, First dominated by Clark Hull and his laboratory at Yale and then for decades, by another rat aficionado, Ernst Hilgard and his laboratory at Stanford.
Together these two set the tone for not every truly devoting any thought or further depth of consideration to what hypnosis might be, but, rather instead going to various vaudefilll shows or grade B movies.and collecting 'behaviors' seen in those contexts..and then producing a motley and incoherent assemblage of 'task' scored by superficial measurements of movement..which they call 'behavior'
Perversely enough the measurement of these behaviors became the implicit definition of hypnosis..leaving it without any conceptual or theoretical understanding for the past many decades.
The patently nonsensical notion of the 'domain of hypnosis' was concocted by Hilgard..to somehow claim that hypnosis was not just hypnosis but more than hypnosis..and indeed that hypnotic induction was not even a necessary part of hypnosis.
So we have been left with a still used measurement of 'hypnotic 'susceptibility'..the Stanford Scales.used all the time by researchers to speak about hypnosis.but the measure itself has no underlying theoretical model or foundation..it just 'is what it is'. And oh yes..since hypnosis has been spotted in certain contexts.then everything else in that context is also part of the 'domain of hypnosis'..even thought it is only by association in the context.
It is refreshing to see a writer like James deal with it and without the clap trap and primitive behaviorist approach that has characterized academia for the past century or so..
- by Castalia Francon
- •
It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special.. more
It is often thought that consciousness has a qualitative dimension that cannot be tracked by science. Recently, however, some philosophers have argued that this worry stems not from an elusive feature of the mind, but from the special nature of the concepts used to describe conscious states. Marc Champagne draws on the neglected branch of philosophy of signs or semiotics to develop a new take on this strategy.
- by Marc Champagne
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- by Julia Novakowski
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- 3
The paper aims to show that, even though Nietzsche strongly criticizes the value of ordinary truths (both on the theoretical and on the moral plane), he nevertheless considers that a practical assessment of them is still possible. This.. more
![Philosophy Philosophy](/uploads/1/2/4/8/124856644/365310068.jpg)
The paper aims to show that, even though Nietzsche strongly criticizes the value of ordinary truths (both on the theoretical and on the moral plane), he nevertheless considers that a practical assessment of them is still possible. This view can be compared with William James's pragmatist approach to truth. As will be shown, that approach is grounded on the conception of knowledge developed by Ernst Mach, one of the main representatives of post-kantian epistemology, whose 1886 work Nietzsche read in his late years.
- by pietro gori
- •
Nel suo 'Il canone minore', Rocco Ronchi descrive il tentativo compiuto da quelle figure, sovente eretiche del pensiero rispetto a quello che l’autore individua come canone maggiore, che nel corso della storia della filosofia hanno.. more
Nel suo 'Il canone minore', Rocco Ronchi descrive il tentativo compiuto da quelle figure, sovente eretiche del pensiero rispetto a quello che l’autore individua come canone maggiore, che nel corso della storia della filosofia hanno pensato davvero l'immanenza dell’assoluto o, che è lo stesso, l’univocità dell’essere sul piano degli enti di natura. Nell’esigenza fondamentalmente speculativa e per ciò stesso anti-moderna della filosofia, ciò che si dà a vedere quale dato immediato dell’intuizione è un'equivalenza solo apparentemente innocua, ma in realtà profondamente perturbante e traumatica: immanenza assoluta = natura.
- by Fabio Vergine
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« A systemic reading of Whitehead's organic philosophy », Illuminating Biological Systems from a Network Perspective, International Interdisciplinary Round Table, University of Namur, Faculty of philosophy and letters, September 8th, 2017.
- by Michel Weber
- •
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Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.[1] Its origins are often attributed to the philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Peirce later described it in his pragmatic maxim: 'Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.'[2]
Pragmatism considers words and thought as tools and instruments for prediction, problem solving and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.[3] Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. The philosophy of pragmatism 'emphasizes the practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences'.[4] Pragmatism focuses on a 'changing universe rather than an unchanging one as the idealists, realists and Thomists had claimed'.[4]
- 2Core tenets
- 3In other fields of philosophy
- 5Legacy and contemporary relevance
- 7List of pragmatists
- 7.2Analytic, neo- and other pragmatists (1950–present)
- 11Further reading
Origins[edit]
Charles Peirce: the American polymath who first identified pragmatism
Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the United States in the 1870s. Charles Sanders Peirce (and his Pragmatic Maxim) is given credit for its development,[5] along with later twentieth century contributors, William James and John Dewey.[6] Its direction was determined by The Metaphysical Club members Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and Chauncey Wright, as well as John Dewey and George Herbert Mead.
The first use in print of the name pragmatism was in 1898 by James, who credited Peirce with coining the term during the early 1870s.[7] James regarded Peirce's 'Illustrations of the Logic of Science' series (including 'The Fixation of Belief' (1877), and especially 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' (1878)) as the foundation of pragmatism.[8][9] Peirce in turn wrote in 1906[10] that Nicholas St. John Green had been instrumental by emphasizing the importance of applying Alexander Bain's definition of belief, which was 'that upon which a man is prepared to act'. Peirce wrote that 'from this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism'. John Shook has said, 'Chauncey Wright also deserves considerable credit, for as both Peirce and James recall, it was Wright who demanded a phenomenalist and fallibilistempiricism as an alternative to rationalistic speculation.'[11]
Peirce developed the idea that inquiry depends on real doubt, not mere verbal or hyperbolic doubt,[12] and said, in order to understand a conception in a fruitful way, 'Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object',[2] which he later called the pragmatic maxim. It equates any conception of an object to the general extent of the conceivable implications for informed practice of that object's effects. This is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of experimentational mental reflection arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and disconfirmatory circumstances—a method hospitable to the generation of explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the employment and improvement of verification. Typical of Peirce is his concern with inference to explanatory hypotheses as outside the usual foundational alternative between deductivist rationalism and inductivist empiricism, although he was a mathematical logician and a founder of statistics.
Peirce lectured and further wrote on pragmatism to make clear his own interpretation. While framing a conception's meaning in terms of conceivable tests, Peirce emphasized that, since a conception is general, its meaning, its intellectual purport, equates to its acceptance's implications for general practice, rather than to any definite set of real effects (or test results); a conception's clarified meaning points toward its conceivable verifications, but the outcomes are not meanings, but individual upshots. Peirce in 1905 coined the new name pragmaticism 'for the precise purpose of expressing the original definition',[13] saying that 'all went happily' with James's and Schiller's variant uses of the old name 'pragmatism' and that he nonetheless coined the new name because of the old name's growing use in 'literary journals, where it gets abused'. Yet in a 1906 manuscript he cited as causes his differences with James and Schiller.[14] and, in a 1908 publication,[15] his differences with James as well as literary author Giovanni Papini. Peirce in any case regarded his views that truth is immutable and infinity is real, as being opposed by the other pragmatists, but he remained allied with them on other issues.[15]
Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after Willard Van Orman Quine and Wilfrid Sellars used a revised pragmatism to criticize logical positivism in the 1960s. Inspired by the work of Quine and Sellars, a brand of pragmatism known sometimes as neopragmatism gained influence through Richard Rorty, the most influential of the late twentieth century pragmatists along with Hilary Putnam and Robert Brandom. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict analytic tradition and a 'neo-classical' pragmatism (such as Susan Haack) that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey.
Inspiration for various pragmatists[citation needed] included:
- Francis Bacon who coined the saying ipsa scientia potestas est ('knowledge itself is power')
- David Hume for his naturalistic account of knowledge and action
- Thomas Reid, for his direct realism
- Immanuel Kant, for his idealism and from whom Peirce derives the name 'pragmatism'
- G. W. F. Hegel who introduced temporality into philosophy (Pinkard in Misak 2007)
- J. S. Mill for his nominalism and empiricism
- George Berkeley for his project to eliminate all unclear concepts from philosophy (Peirce 8:33)
- Henri Bergson who influenced William James to renounce intellectualism and logical methods
Core tenets[edit]
A few of the various but often interrelated positions characteristic of philosophers working from a pragmatist approach include:
- Epistemology (justification): a coherentist theory of justification that rejects the claim that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. Coherentists hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by foundationalist theories of justification.
- Epistemology (truth): a deflationary or pragmatic theory of truth; the former is the epistemological claim that assertions that predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a property called truth to such a statement while the latter is the epistemological claim that assertions that predicate truth of a statement attribute the property of useful-to-believe to such a statement.
- Metaphysics: a pluralist view that there is more than one sound way to conceptualize the world and its content.
- Philosophy of science: an instrumentalist and scientific anti-realist view that a scientific concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality.
- Philosophy of language: an anti-representationalist view that rejects analyzing the semantic meaning of propositions, mental states, and statements in terms of a correspondence or representational relationship and instead analyzes semantic meaning in terms of notions like dispositions to action, inferential relationships, and/or functional roles (e.g. behaviorism and inferentialism). Not to be confused with pragmatics, a sub-field of linguistics with no relation to philosophical pragmatism.
- Additionally, forms of empiricism, fallibilism, verificationism, and a Quinean naturalist metaphilosophy are all commonly elements of pragmatist philosophies. Many pragmatists are epistemological relativists and see this to be an important facet of their pragmatism, but this is controversial and other pragmatists argue such relativism to be seriously misguided (e.g. Hilary Putnam, Susan Haack).
Anti-reification of concepts and theories[edit]
Dewey, in The Quest For Certainty, criticized what he called 'the philosophical fallacy': philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are nominal concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems.[16] This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the 'ultimate Being' of Hegelian philosophers, the belief in a 'realm of value', the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete thought, has nothing to do with the action of concrete thinking.
David L. Hildebrand summed up the problem: 'Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts of knowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience.'[16]:40
Naturalism and anti-Cartesianism[edit]
From the outset, pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in line with the scientific method as they understood it. They argued that idealist and realist philosophy had a tendency to present human knowledge as something beyond what science could grasp. They held that these philosophies then resorted either to a phenomenology inspired by Kant or to correspondence theories of knowledge and truth.[citation needed] Pragmatists criticized the former for its a priorism, and the latter because it takes correspondence as an unanalyzable fact. Pragmatism instead tries to explain the relation between knower and known.
In 1868,[17] C.S. Peirce argued that there is no power of intuition in the sense of a cognition unconditioned by inference, and no power of introspection, intuitive or otherwise, and that awareness of an internal world is by hypothetical inference from external facts. Introspection and intuition were staple philosophical tools at least since Descartes. He argued that there is no absolutely first cognition in a cognitive process; such a process has its beginning but can always be analyzed into finer cognitive stages. That which we call introspection does not give privileged access to knowledge about the mind—the self is a concept that is derived from our interaction with the external world and not the other way around (De Waal 2005, pp. 7–10). At the same time he held persistently that pragmatism and epistemology in general could not be derived from principles of psychology understood as a special science:[18] what we do think is too different from what we should think; in his 'Illustrations of the Logic of Science' series, Peirce formulated both pragmatism and principles of statistics as aspects of scientific method in general.[19] This is an important point of disagreement with most other pragmatists, who advocate a more thorough naturalism and psychologism.
Richard Rorty expanded on these and other arguments in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in which he criticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out a space for epistemology that is entirely unrelated to—and sometimes thought of as superior to—the empirical sciences. W.V. Quine, instrumental in bringing naturalized epistemology back into favor with his essay Epistemology Naturalized (Quine 1969), also criticized 'traditional' epistemology and its 'Cartesian dream' of absolute certainty. The dream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguided in theory, because it separates epistemology from scientific inquiry.
Hilary Putnam asserts that the combination of antiskepticism and fallibilism is a central feature of pragmatism.
Reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism[edit]
Hilary Putnam has suggested that the reconciliation of anti-skepticism[20] and fallibilism is the central goal of American pragmatism.[citation needed] Although all human knowledge is partial, with no ability to take a 'God's-eye-view,' this does not necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude, a radical philosophical skepticism (as distinguished from that which is called scientific skepticism). Peirce insisted that (1) in reasoning, there is the presupposition, and at least the hope,[21] that truth and the real are discoverable and would be discovered, sooner or later but still inevitably, by investigation taken far enough,[2] and (2) contrary to Descartes' famous and influential methodology in the Meditations on First Philosophy, doubt cannot be feigned or created by verbal fiat to motivate fruitful inquiry, and much less can philosophy begin in universal doubt.[22] Doubt, like belief, requires justification. Genuine doubt irritates and inhibits, in the sense that belief is that upon which one is prepared to act.[2] It arises from confrontation with some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey called a 'situation'), which unsettles our belief in some specific proposition. Inquiry is then the rationally self-controlled process of attempting to return to a settled state of belief about the matter. Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academic skepticism in the wake of Descartes. The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative is quite congenial to the older skeptical tradition.
Pragmatist theory of truth and epistemology[edit]
Pragmatism was not the first to apply evolution to theories of knowledge: Schopenhauer advocated a biological idealism as what's useful to an organism to believe might differ wildly from what is true. Here knowledge and action are portrayed as two separate spheres with an absolute or transcendental truth above and beyond any sort of inquiry organisms used to cope with life. Pragmatism challenges this idealism by providing an 'ecological' account of knowledge: inquiry is how organisms can get a grip on their environment. Real and true are functional labels in inquiry and cannot be understood outside of this context. It is not realist in a traditionally robust sense of realism (what Hilary Putnam would later call metaphysical realism), but it is realist in how it acknowledges an external world which must be dealt with.[citation needed]
Many of James' best-turned phrases--truth's cash value (James 1907, p. 200) and the true is only the expedient in our way of thinking (James 1907, p. 222)—were taken out of context and caricatured in contemporary literature as representing the view where any idea with practical utility is true. William James wrote:
It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our critics to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history. Schiller says the truth is that which 'works.' Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest material utilities. Dewey says truth is what gives 'satisfaction'! He is treated as one who believes in calling everything true which, if it were true, would be pleasant. (James 1907, p. 90)
In reality, James asserts, the theory is a great deal more subtle. (See Dewey 1910 for a 'FAQ.')
The role of belief in representing reality is widely debated in pragmatism. Is a belief valid when it represents reality? Copying is one (and only one) genuine mode of knowing, (James 1907, p. 91). Are beliefs dispositions which qualify as true or false depending on how helpful they prove in inquiry and in action? Is it only in the struggle of intelligentorganisms with the surrounding environment that beliefs acquire meaning? Does a belief only become true when it succeeds in this struggle? In Pragmatism nothing practical or useful is held to be necessarily true, nor is anything which helps to survive merely in the short term. For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it doesn't accord with the facts (and is therefore not true).
In other fields of philosophy[edit]
While pragmatism started out simply as a criterion of meaning, it quickly expanded to become a full-fledged epistemology with wide-ranging implications for the entire philosophical field. Pragmatists who work in these fields share a common inspiration, but their work is diverse and there are no received views.
Philosophy of science[edit]
In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments and progress in science cannot be couched in terms of concepts and theories somehow mirroring reality. Instrumentalist philosophers often define scientific progress as nothing more than an improvement in explaining and predicting phenomena. Instrumentalism does not state that truth does not matter, but rather provides a specific answer to the question of what truth and falsity mean and how they function in science.
One of C. I. Lewis' main arguments in Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge (1929) was that science does not merely provide a copy of reality but must work with conceptual systems and that those are chosen for pragmatic reasons, that is, because they aid inquiry. Lewis' own development of multiple modal logics is a case in point. Lewis is sometimes called a proponent of conceptual pragmatism because of this.[23]
Another development is the cooperation of logical positivism and pragmatism in the works of Charles W. Morris and Rudolf Carnap. The influence of pragmatism on these writers is mostly limited to the incorporation of the pragmatic maxim into their epistemology. Pragmatists with a broader conception of the movement do not often refer to them.
W. V. Quine's paper 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', published 1951, is one of the most celebrated papers of twentieth-century philosophy in the analytic tradition. The paper is an attack on two central tenets of the logical positivists' philosophy. One is the distinction between analytic statements (tautologies and contradictions) whose truth (or falsehood) is a function of the meanings of the words in the statement ('all bachelors are unmarried'), and synthetic statements, whose truth (or falsehood) is a function of (contingent) states of affairs. The other is reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms which refers exclusively to immediate experience. Quine's argument brings to mind Peirce's insistence that axioms are not a priori truths but synthetic statements.
Logic[edit]
Later in his life Schiller became famous for his attacks on logic in his textbook, Formal Logic. By then, Schiller's pragmatism had become the nearest of any of the classical pragmatists to an ordinary language philosophy. Schiller sought to undermine the very possibility of formal logic, by showing that words only had meaning when used in context. The least famous of Schiller's main works was the constructive sequel to his destructive book Formal Logic. In this sequel, Logic for Use, Schiller attempted to construct a new logic to replace the formal logic that he had criticized in Formal Logic. What he offers is something philosophers would recognize today as a logic covering the context of discovery and the hypothetico-deductive method.
Whereas F. C. S. Schiller dismissed the possibility of formal logic, most pragmatists are critical rather of its pretension to ultimate validity and see logic as one logical tool among others—or perhaps, considering the multitude of formal logics, one set of tools among others. This is the view of C. I. Lewis. C. S. Peirce developed multiple methods for doing formal logic.
Stephen Toulmin's The Uses of Argument inspired scholars in informal logic and rhetoric studies (although it is an epistemological work).
Metaphysics[edit]
James and Dewey were empirical thinkers in the most straightforward fashion: experience is the ultimate test and experience is what needs to be explained. They were dissatisfied with ordinary empiricism because in the tradition dating from Hume, empiricists had a tendency to think of experience as nothing more than individual sensations. To the pragmatists, this went against the spirit of empiricism: we should try to explain all that is given in experience including connections and meaning, instead of explaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimate reality. Radical empiricism, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away as subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.
The 'Chicago Club' including Mead, Dewey, Angell, and Moore. Pragmatism is sometimes called American Pragmatism because so many of its proponents were and are Americans.
William James gives an interesting example of this philosophical shortcoming:
[A young graduate] began by saying that he had always taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic classroom you had to open relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one you left behind you in the street. The two were supposed, he said, to have so little to do with each other, that you could not possibly occupy your mind with them at the same time. The world of concrete personal experiences to which the street belongs is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy-professor introduces you is simple, clean and noble. The contradictions of real life are absent from it. .. In point of fact it is far less an account of this actual world than a clear addition built upon it .. It is no explanation of our concrete universe (James 1907, pp. 8–9)
F. C. S. Schiller's first book, Riddles of the Sphinx, was published before he became aware of the growing pragmatist movement taking place in America. In it, Schiller argues for a middle ground between materialism and absolute metaphysics. These opposites are comparable to what William James called tough-minded empiricism and tender-minded rationalism. Schiller contends on the one hand that mechanistic naturalism cannot make sense of the 'higher' aspects of our world. These include free will, consciousness, purpose, universals and some would add God. On the other hand, abstract metaphysics cannot make sense of the 'lower' aspects of our world (e.g. the imperfect, change, physicality). While Schiller is vague about the exact sort of middle ground he is trying to establish, he suggests that metaphysics is a tool that can aid inquiry, but that it is valuable only insofar as it does help in explanation.
In the second half of the twentieth century, Stephen Toulmin argued that the need to distinguish between reality and appearance only arises within an explanatory scheme and therefore that there is no point in asking what 'ultimate reality' consists of. More recently, a similar idea has been suggested by the postanalytic philosopherDaniel Dennett, who argues that anyone who wants to understand the world has to acknowledge both the 'syntactical' aspects of reality (i.e., whizzing atoms) and its emergent or 'semantic' properties (i.e., meaning and value).[citation needed]
Radical empiricism gives answers to questions about the limits of science, the nature of meaning and value and the workability of reductionism. These questions feature prominently in current debates about the relationship between religion and science, where it is often assumed—most pragmatists would disagree—that science degrades everything that is meaningful into 'merely' physical phenomena.
Philosophy of mind[edit]
Both John Dewey in Experience and Nature (1929) and half a century later Richard Rorty in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979) argued that much of the debate about the relation of the mind to the body results from conceptual confusions. They argue instead that there is no need to posit the mind or mindstuff as an ontological category.
Pragmatists disagree over whether philosophers ought to adopt a quietist or a naturalist stance toward the mind-body problem. The former (Rorty among them) want to do away with the problem because they believe it's a pseudo-problem, whereas the latter believe that it is a meaningful empirical question.[citation needed]
Ethics[edit]
Pragmatism sees no fundamental difference between practical and theoretical reason, nor any ontological difference between facts and values. Both facts and values have cognitive content: knowledge is what we should believe; values are hypotheses about what is good in action. Pragmatist ethics is broadly humanist because it sees no ultimate test of morality beyond what matters for us as humans. Good values are those for which we have good reasons, viz. the Good Reasons approach. The pragmatist formulation pre-dates those of other philosophers who have stressed important similarities between values and facts such as Jerome Schneewind and John Searle.
William James tried to show the meaningfulness of (some kinds of) spirituality but, like other pragmatists, did not see religion as the basis of meaning or morality.
William James' contribution to ethics, as laid out in his essay The Will to Believe has often been misunderstood as a plea for relativism or irrationality. On its own terms it argues that ethics always involves a certain degree of trust or faith and that we cannot always wait for adequate proof when making moral decisions.
Moral questions immediately present themselves as questions whose solution cannot wait for sensible proof. A moral question is a question not of what sensibly exists, but of what is good, or would be good if it did exist. .. A social organism of any sort whatever, large or small, is what it is because each member proceeds to his own duty with a trust that the other members will simultaneously do theirs. Wherever a desired result is achieved by the co-operation of many independent persons, its existence as a fact is a pure consequence of the precursive faith in one another of those immediately concerned. A government, an army, a commercial system, a ship, a college, an athletic team, all exist on this condition, without which not only is nothing achieved, but nothing is even attempted. (The Will to Believe James 1896)
Of the classical pragmatists, John Dewey wrote most extensively about morality and democracy. (Edel 1993) In his classic article Three Independent Factors in Morals (Dewey 1930), he tried to integrate three basic philosophical perspectives on morality: the right, the virtuous and the good. He held that while all three provide meaningful ways to think about moral questions, the possibility of conflict among the three elements cannot always be easily solved. (Anderson, SEP)
Dewey also criticized the dichotomy between means and ends which he saw as responsible for the degradation of our everyday working lives and education, both conceived as merely a means to an end. He stressed the need for meaningful labor and a conception of education that viewed it not as a preparation for life but as life itself. (Dewey 2004 [1910] ch. 7; Dewey 1997 [1938], p. 47)
Dewey was opposed to other ethical philosophies of his time, notably the emotivism of Alfred Ayer. Dewey envisioned the possibility of ethics as an experimental discipline, and thought values could best be characterized not as feelings or imperatives, but as hypotheses about what actions will lead to satisfactory results or what he termed consummatory experience. A further implication of this view is that ethics is a fallible undertaking, since human beings are frequently unable to know what would satisfy them.
During the late 1900s and first decade of 2000, pragmatism was embraced by many in the field of bioethics led by the philosophers John Lachs and his student Glenn McGee, whose 1997 book 'The Perfect Baby: A Pragmatic Approach to Genetic Engineering' (see designer baby) garnered praise from within classical American philosophy and criticism from bioethics for its development of a theory of pragmatic bioethics and its rejection of the principalism theory then in vogue in medical ethics. An anthology published by The MIT Press, 'Pragmatic Bioethics' included the responses of philosophers to that debate, including Micah Hester, Griffin Trotter and others many of whom developed their own theories based on the work of Dewey, Peirce, Royce and others. Lachs himself developed several applications of pragmatism to bioethics independent of but extending from the work of Dewey and James.
A recent pragmatist contribution to meta-ethics is Todd Lekan's 'Making Morality' (Lekan 2003). Lekan argues that morality is a fallible but rational practice and that it has traditionally been misconceived as based on theory or principles. Instead, he argues, theory and rules arise as tools to make practice more intelligent.
Aesthetics[edit]
John Dewey's Art as Experience, based on the William James lectures he delivered at Harvard, was an attempt to show the integrity of art, culture and everyday experience (IEP). Art, for Dewey, is or should be a part of everyone's creative lives and not just the privilege of a select group of artists. He also emphasizes that the audience is more than a passive recipient. Dewey's treatment of art was a move away from the transcendental approach to aesthetics in the wake of Immanuel Kant who emphasized the unique character of art and the disinterested nature of aesthetic appreciation. A notable contemporary pragmatist aesthetician is Joseph Margolis. He defines a work of art as 'a physically embodied, culturally emergent entity', a human 'utterance' that isn't an ontological quirk but in line with other human activity and culture in general. He emphasizes that works of art are complex and difficult to fathom, and that no determinate interpretation can be given.
Philosophy of religion[edit]
Both Dewey and James investigated the role that religion can still play in contemporary society, the former in A Common Faith and the latter in The Varieties of Religious Experience.
From a general point of view, for William James, something is true only insofar as it works. Thus, the statement, for example, that prayer is heard may work on a psychological level but (a) may not help to bring about the things you pray for (b) may be better explained by referring to its soothing effect than by claiming prayers are heard. As such, pragmatism is not antithetical to religion but it is not an apologetic for faith either. James' metaphysical position however, leaves open the possibility that the ontological claims of religions may be true. As he observed in the end of the Varieties, his position does not amount to a denial of the existence of transcendent realities. Quite the contrary, he argued for the legitimate epistemic right to believe in such realities, since such beliefs do make a difference in an individual's life and refer to claims that cannot be verified or falsified either on intellectual or common sensorial grounds.
Joseph Margolis, in Historied Thought, Constructed World (California, 1995), makes a distinction between 'existence' and 'reality'. He suggests using the term 'exists' only for those things which adequately exhibit Peirce's Secondness: things which offer brute physical resistance to our movements. In this way, such things which affect us, like numbers, may be said to be 'real', although they do not 'exist'. Margolis suggests that God, in such a linguistic usage, might very well be 'real', causing believers to act in such and such a way, but might not 'exist'.
Neopragmatism[edit]
Neopragmatism is a broad contemporary category used for various thinkers that incorporate important insights of, and yet significantly diverge from, the classical pragmatists. This divergence may occur either in their philosophical methodology (many of them are loyal to the analytic tradition) or in conceptual formation: for example, conceptual pragmatist C. I. Lewis was very critical of Dewey; neopragmatistRichard Rorty disliked Peirce.
Important analytic pragmatists include early Richard Rorty (who was the first to develop neopragmatist philosophy in his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979),[24]Hilary Putnam, W. V. O. Quine, and Donald Davidson. Brazilian social thinker Roberto Unger advocates for a radical pragmatism, one that 'de-naturalizes' society and culture, and thus insists that we can 'transform the character of our relation to social and cultural worlds we inhabit rather than just to change, little by little, the content of the arrangements and beliefs that comprise them'.[25] Late Rorty and Jürgen Habermas are closer to Continental thought.
Neopragmatist thinkers who are more loyal to classical pragmatism include Sidney Hook and Susan Haack (known for the theory of foundherentism). Many pragmatist ideas (especially those of Peirce) find a natural expression in the decision-theoretic reconstruction of epistemology pursued in the work of Isaac Levi. Nicholas Rescher advocates his version of methodological pragmatism, based on construing pragmatic efficacy not as a replacement for truths but as a means to its evidentiation.[26] Rescher is also a proponent of pragmatic idealism.
Not all pragmatists are easily characterized. With the advent of postanalytic philosophy and the diversification of Anglo-American philosophy, many philosophers were influenced by pragmatist thought without necessarily publicly committing themselves to that philosophical school. Daniel Dennett, a student of Quine's, falls into this category, as does Stephen Toulmin, who arrived at his philosophical position via Wittgenstein, whom he calls 'a pragmatist of a sophisticated kind' (foreword for Dewey 1929 in the 1988 edition, p. xiii). Another example is Mark Johnson whose embodied philosophy (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) shares its psychologism, direct realism and anti-cartesianism with pragmatism. Conceptual pragmatism is a theory of knowledge originating with the work of the philosopher and logician Clarence Irving Lewis. The epistemology of conceptual pragmatism was first formulated in the 1929 book Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge.
French pragmatism is attended with theorists such as Bruno Latour, Michel Crozier, Luc Boltanski, and Laurent Thévenot. It is often seen as opposed to structural problems connected to the French critical theory of Pierre Bourdieu. French pragmatism has more recently made inroads into American sociology as well.[27][28][29]
Philosophers John R. Shook and Tibor Solymosi said that 'each new generation rediscovers and reinvents its own versions of pragmatism by applying the best available practical and scientific methods to philosophical problems of contemporary concern'.[30]
Legacy and contemporary relevance[edit]
In the twentieth century, the movements of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy have similarities with pragmatism. Like pragmatism, logical positivism provides a verification criterion of meaning that is supposed to rid us of nonsense metaphysics; however, logical positivism doesn't stress action as pragmatism does. The pragmatists rarely used their maxim of meaning to rule out all metaphysics as nonsense. Usually, pragmatism was put forth to correct metaphysical doctrines or to construct empirically verifiable ones rather than to provide a wholesale rejection.
Ordinary language philosophy is closer to pragmatism than other philosophy of language because of its nominalist character (although Peirce's pragmatism is not nominalist[15]) and because it takes the broader functioning of language in an environment as its focus instead of investigating abstract relations between language and world.
Pragmatism has ties to process philosophy. Much of their work developed in dialogue with process philosophers such as Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, who aren't usually considered pragmatists because they differ so much on other points. (Douglas Browning et al. 1998; Rescher, SEP)
Behaviorism and functionalism in psychology and sociology also have ties to pragmatism, which is not surprising considering that James and Dewey were both scholars of psychology and that Mead became a sociologist.
Utilitarianism has some significant parallels to Pragmatism and John Stuart Mill espoused similar values.
Pragmatism emphasizes the connection between thought and action. Applied fields like public administration,[31]political science,[32]leadership studies,[33]international relations,[34] conflict resolution,[35] and research methodology[36] have incorporated the tenets of pragmatism in their field. Often this connection is made using Dewey and Addams's expansive notion of democracy.
Effects on social sciences[edit]
In the early twentieth century, Symbolic interactionism, a major perspective within sociological social psychology, was derived from pragmatism, especially the work of George Herbert Mead and Charles Cooley, as well as that of Peirce and William James.[37]
Increasing attention is being given to pragmatist epistemology in other branches of the social sciences, which have struggled with divisive debates over the status of social scientific knowledge.[6][38]
Enthusiasts suggest that pragmatism offers an approach which is both pluralist and practical.[39]
Effects on public administration[edit]
The classical pragmatism of John Dewey, William James, and Charles Sanders Peirce has influenced research in the field of Public Administration. Scholars claim classical pragmatism had a profound influence on the origin of the field of public administration.[40][41] At the most basic level, public administrators are responsible for making programs 'work' in a pluralistic, problems-oriented environment. Public administrators are also responsible for the day-to-day work with citizens. Dewey's participatory democracy can be applied in this environment. Dewey and James' notion of theory as a tool, helps administrators craft theories to resolve policy and administrative problems. Further, the birth of American public administration coincides closely with the period of greatest influence of the classical pragmatists.
Which pragmatism (classical pragmatism or neo-pragmatism) makes the most sense in public administration has been the source of debate. The debate began when Patricia M. Shields introduced Dewey's notion of the Community of Inquiry.[42] Hugh Miller objected to one element of the community of inquiry (problematic situation, scientific attitude, participatory democracy): scientific attitude.[43] A debate that included responses from a practitioner,[44] an economist,[45] a planner,[46] other public administration scholars,[47][48] and noted philosophers[49][50] followed. Miller[51] and Shields[52][53] also responded.
In addition, applied scholarship of public administration that assesses charter schools,[54] contracting out or outsourcing,[55] financial management,[56]performance measurement,[57] urban quality of life initiatives,[58] and urban planning[59] in part draws on the ideas of classical pragmatism in the development of the conceptual framework and focus of analysis.[60][61][62]
The health sector's administrators' use of pragmatism has been criticized as incomplete in its pragmatism, however,[63] according to the classical pragmatists, knowledge is always shaped by human interests. The administrator's focus on 'outcomes' simply advances their own interest, and this focus on outcomes often undermines their citizen's interests, which often are more concerned with process. On the other hand, David Brendel argues that pragmatism's ability to bridge dualisms, focus on practical problems, include multiple perspectives, incorporate participation from interested parties (patient, family, health team), and provisional nature makes it well suited to address problems in this area.[64]
Pragmatism Research Philosophy Pdf
Effects on feminism[edit]
Since the mid 1990s, feminist philosophers have re-discovered classical pragmatism as a source of feminist theories. Works by Seigfried,[65] Duran,[66] Keith,[67] and Whipps[68] explore the historic and philosophic links between feminism and pragmatism. The connection between pragmatism and feminism took so long to be rediscovered because pragmatism itself was eclipsed by logical positivism during the middle decades of the twentieth century. As a result, it was lost from femininist discourse. The very features of pragmatism that led to its decline are the characteristics that feminists now consider its greatest strength. These are 'persistent and early criticisms of positivist interpretations of scientific methodology; disclosure of value dimension of factual claims'; viewing aesthetics as informing everyday experience; subordinating logical analysis to political, cultural, and social issues; linking the dominant discourses with domination; 'realigning theory with praxis; and resisting the turn to epistemology and instead emphasizing concrete experience'.[69] These feminist philosophers point to Jane Addams as a founder of classical pragmatism. In addition, the ideas of Dewey, Mead, and James are consistent with many feminist tenets. Jane Addams, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead developed their philosophies as all three became friends, influenced each other, and were engaged in the Hull-House experience and women's rights causes.
Criticisms[edit]
In the 1908 essay 'The Thirteen Pragmatisms', Arthur Oncken Lovejoy argues that there's significant ambiguity in the notion of the effects of the truth of a proposition and those of belief in a proposition in order to highlight that many pragmatists had failed to recognize that distinction.[70] He identified thirteen different philosophical positions that were each labeled pragmatism.
British philosopher Bertrand Russell devoted a chapter each to James and Dewey in his book A History of Western Philosophy; Russell pointed out areas in which he agreed with them but also ridiculed James's views on truth and Dewey's views on inquiry.[71]:17[72]:120–124 Hilary Putnam later argued that Russell 'presented a mere caricature' of James's views[71]:17 and a 'misreading of James',[71]:20 while Tom Burke argued at length that Russell presented 'a skewed characterization of Dewey's point of view'.[72]:121 Elsewhere, in Russell's book The Analysis of Mind, Russell praised James's radical empiricism, to which Russell's own account of neutral monism was indebted.[71]:17[73] Dewey, in The Bertrand Russell Case, defended Russell against an attempt to remove Russell from his chair at the College of the City of New York in 1940.[74]
Neopragmatism as represented by Richard Rorty has been criticized as relativistic both by other neopragmatists such as Susan Haack (Haack 1997) and by many analytic philosophers (Dennett 1998). Rorty's early analytic work, however, differs notably from his later work which some, including Rorty, consider to be closer to literary criticism than to philosophy, and which attracts the brunt of criticism from his detractors.
List of pragmatists[edit]
Classical pragmatists (1850–1950)[edit]
Important protopragmatists or related thinkers 2. Free korg i30 styles. If file is multipart don't forget to check all parts before downloading!. Click download file button or Copy korg pa styles URL which shown in textarea when you clicked file title, and paste it into your browsers address bar.
Additional figures
| Analytic, neo- and other pragmatists (1950–present)[edit]
Pragmatists in the extended sense[edit]
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See also[edit]
References[edit]
- ^Hookway, Christopher (August 16, 2008). 'Pragmatism'. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2010 ed.).
- ^ abcdPeirce, C. S. (1878), 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear', Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, 286–302. Reprinted often, including Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 388–410 and Essential Peirce v. 1, 124–41. See end of §II for the pragmatic maxim. See third and fourth paragraphs in §IV for the discoverability of truth and the real by sufficient investigation.
- ^William James (1909). The Meaning of Truth. Retrieved March 5, 2015.
- ^ abGutek, Gerald (2014). Philosophical, Ideological, and Theoretical Perspectives On Education. New Jersey: Pearson. pp. 76, 100. ISBN978-0-13-285238-8.
- ^Susan Haack; Robert Edwin Lane (April 11, 2006). Pragmatism, old & new: selected writings. Prometheus Books. pp. 18–67. ISBN978-1-59102-359-3.
- ^ abBiesta, G.J.J. & Burbules, N. (2003). Pragmatism and educational research. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.
- ^James, William (1898), 'Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results', delivered before the Philosophical Union of the University of California at Berkeley, August 26, 1898, and first printed in the University Chronicle 1, September 1898, pp. 287–310. Internet ArchiveEprint. On p. 290: I refer to Mr. Charles S. Peirce, with whose very existence as a philosopher I dare say many of you are unacquainted. He is one of the most original of contemporary thinkers; and the principle of practicalism or pragmatism, as he called it, when I first heard him enunciate it at Cambridge in the early [1870s] is the clue or compass by following which I find myself more and more confirmed in believing we may keep our feet upon the proper trail.James credited Peirce again in 1906 lectures published in 1907 as Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, see Lecture 2, fourth paragraph.
- ^See James (1897), Will to Believe (which James dedicated to Peirce), see p. 124 and footnote via Google BooksEprint:
See also James's 1907 Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Lecture 2, fourth paragraph.Indeed, it may be said that if two apparently different definitions of the reality before us should have identical consequences, those two definitions would really be identical definitions, made delusively to appear different merely by the different verbiage in which they are expressed.¹
¹ See the admirably original 'Illustrations of the Logic of Science,' by C. S. Peirce, especially the second paper, 'How to make our Thoughts clear,' [sic] in the Popular Science Monthly for January, 1878. - ^In addition to James's lectures and publications on pragmatist ideas (Will to Believe 1897, etc.) wherein he credited Peirce, James also arranged for two paid series of lectures by Peirce, including the 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. See pp. 261–4, 290–2, & 324 in Brent, Joseph (1998), Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life, 2nd edition.
- ^Peirce, C. S., 'The Founding of Pragmatism', manuscript written 1906, published in The Hound & Horn: A Harvard Miscellany v. II, n. 3, April–June 1929, pp. 282–5, see 283–4, reprinted 1934 as 'Historical Affinities and Genesis' in Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 11–13, see 12.
- ^Shook, John (undated), 'The Metaphysical Club', the Pragmatism Cybrary. Eprint.
- ^Peirce, C. S. (1877), The Fixation of Belief, Popular Science Monthly, v. 12, pp. 1–15. Reprited often, including Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 358–87 and Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 109–23).
- ^Peirce, on p p. 165–166 in 'What Pragmatism Is', The Monist, v. XV, n. 2, April 1905, pp. 161–81, reprinted in Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 411–37, see 414.
- ^Manuscript 'A Sketch of Logical Critics', Essential Peirce v. 2, pp. 451–62, see pp. 457–8. Peirce wrote:I have always fathered my pragmaticism (as I have called it since James and Schiller made the word [pragmatism] imply 'the will to believe,' the mutability of truth, the soundness of Zeno's refutation of motion, and pluralism generally), upon Kant, Berkeley, and Leibniz. ..
- ^ abcPeirce, C. S. (1908) 'A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God', Hibbert Journal 7, reprinted in Collected Papers v. 6, paragraphs 452–85, Essential Peirce v. 2, 434–50, and elsewhere. After discussing James, Peirce stated (Section V, fourth paragraph) as the specific occasion of his coinage 'pragmaticism', journalist, pragmatist, and literary author Giovanni Papini's declaration of pragmatism's indefinability (see for example 'What Is Pragmatism Like', a translation published in October 1907 in Popular Science Monthly v. 71, pp. 351–8, Google BooksEprint). Peirce in his closing paragraph wrote that 'willing not to exert the will (willing to believe)' should not be confused with 'active willing (willing to control thought, to doubt, and to weigh reasons)', and discussed his dismay by that which he called the other pragmatists' 'angry hatred of strict logic'. He also rejected their nominalist tendencies. But he remained allied with them about the falsity of necessitarianism and about the reality of generals and habits understood in terms of potential concrete effects even if unactualized.
- ^ abHildebrand, David L. (2003). Beyond realism and antirealism: John Dewey and the neopragmatists. The Vanderbilt library of American philosophy. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN082651426X. OCLC51053926.
- ^Peirce, C. S. (1868) 'Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed For Man', Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 2, n. 2, pp. 103–114. Reprinted Collected Peirce v. 5, paragraphs 213–263, Writings v. 2, pp. 193–211, Essential Peirce v. 2, pp. 11–27, and elsewhere. Peirce.orgEprint. Google BooksEprint.
- ^Kasser, Jeff (1998), 'Peirce's Supposed Psychologism' in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, v. 35, n. 3, summer 1999, pp. 501–527. ArisbeEprint.
- ^Peirce held that (philosophical) logic is a normative field, that pragmatism is a method developed in it, and that philosophy, though not deductive or so general as mathematics, still concerns positive phenomena in general, including phenomena of matter and mind, without depending on special experiences or experiments such as those of optics and experimental psychology, in both of which Peirce was active. See quotes under 'Philosophy' at the Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms. Peirce also harshly criticized the Cartesian approach of starting from hyperbolic doubts rather than from the combination of established beliefs and genuine doubts. See the opening of his 1868 'Some Consequences of Four Incapacities', Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 2, n. 3, pp. 140–157. Reprinted Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 264–317, Writings v. 2, pp. 211–42, and Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 28–55. Eprint.
- ^Skeptcism and Content Externalism provides a definition of anti-skepsis
- ^Peirce (1902), The Carnegie Institute Application, Memoir 10, MS L75.361-2, ArisbeEprint.
- ^Peirce, C. S. (1868), 'Some Consequences of Four Incapacities', Journal of Speculative Philosophy v. 2, n. 3, p p. 140–57, see opening pages. Reprinted Collected Papers v. 5, paragraphs 264–317, Writings v. 2, pp. 211–42, Essential Peirce v. 1, pp. 28–55. Peirce.org Eprint.
- ^Sandra B. Rosenthal, C. I. Lewis in Focus: The Pulse of Pragmatism, Indiana University Press, 2007, p. 28.
- ^Pragmatism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- ^Unger, Roberto (2007). The Self Awakened: Pragmatism Unbound. Harvard University Press. pp. 6–7. ISBN978-0-674-03496-9.
- ^Nicholas Rescher, 'Methodological Pragmatism', Journal of Philosophy76(6):338–342 (1979).
- ^Simko, Christina (2012). 'Rhetorics of Suffering'. American Sociological Review. 77 (6): 880–902. doi:10.1177/0003122412458785.
- ^Dromi, Shai M.; Stabler, Samuel D. (2019). 'Good on paper: sociological critique, pragmatism, and secularization theory'. Theory and Society. Online First. doi:10.1007/s11186-019-09341-9.
- ^Cohen, Andrew C.; Dromi, Shai M. (February 15, 2018). 'Advertising morality: maintaining moral worth in a stigmatized profession'. Theory and Society. 47 (2): 175–206. doi:10.1007/s11186-018-9309-7. Retrieved February 18, 2019.
- ^Shook, John R.; Solymosi, Tibor (April 2013). 'Pragmatism: key resources'. Choice. 50: 1367–1377 (1367).
- ^Patricia M. Shields. 2008. 'Rediscovering the Taproot: Is Classical Pragmatism the Route to Renew Public Administration?' Public Administration Review 68(2), 205–221
- ^Ansell, Christopher. 2011. Pragmatist Democracy: Evolutionary Learning as Public Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press
- ^Weber, Eric Thomas. 2013. Democracy and Leadership: On Pragmatism and Virtue. New York: Lexington Books.
- ^Ralston, Shane (Ed). 2013. Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations: Essays for a Bold New World. New York: Lexington.
- ^Caspary, William. 2000. Dewey on Democracy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
- ^Shields, Patricia and Rangarjan, N. 2013. A Playbook for Research Methods: Integrating Conceptual Frameworks and Project Management. [1]. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press. Shields relies primarily on Dewey's logic of Inquiry.
- ^Stryker, S. (1980). Symbolic Interactionism: A Social Structural Version.. Benjamin/Cummings Publishing.
- ^Baert, P. (2004). 'Pragmatism as a philosophy of the social sciences.' European Journal of Social Theory, 7(3), 355–369.
- ^Cornish, F. & Gillespie, A. (2009). A pragmatist approach to the problem of knowledge in health psychologyJournal of Health Psychology, 14(6), 1–10.
- ^Patricia M. Shields. 2008. Rediscovering the Taproot: Is Classical Pragmatism the Route to Renew Public Administration? Public Administration Review 68(2), 205–221
- ^Hildebrand, David L. 2008. Public Administration as Pragmatic, Democratic and Objective. Public Administration Review. 68(2), 222–229
- ^Shields, Patricia 2003. The community of Inquiry: Classical Pragmatism and Public Administration.' Administration & Society 35(5): 510–538. abstract
- ^Miller, Hugh. 2004. 'Why Old Pragmatism Needs an Upgrade. Administration & Society 36(2), 234–249.
- ^Stolcis, Gregory 2004. 'A view from the Trenches: Comment on Miller's 'Why Old Pragmatism needs and upgrade' Administration & Society 36(3):326–369
- ^Webb, James 'Comment on Hugh T. Miller's 'Why old Pragmatism needs and upgrade'. Administration & Society 36(4), 479–495.
- ^Hoch C. 2006. 'What Can Rorty teach an old pragmatist doing public administration or planning? Administration & Society. 38(3):389–398. abstract
- ^Evans, Karen. 2005. 'Upgrade or a different animal altogether?: Why Old Pragmatism Better Informs Public Management and New Pragmatism Misses the Point.' Administration & Society 37(2), 248–255.
- ^Snider, Keith. 2005. Rortyan Pragmatism: 'Where's the beef' for public administration.' Administration & Society 37(2), 243–247.
- ^Hildebrand, David. 2005. 'Pragmatism, Neopragmatism and public administration.' Administration & Society 37(3): 360–374. abstract
- ^Hickman, Larry 2004. 'On Hugh T. Miller on 'Why old pragmatism needs an upgrade.' Administration & Society 36(4):496–499.
- ^Miller, Hugh 2005. 'Residues of foundationalism in Classical Pragmatism.' Administration & Society. 37(3):345–359.
- ^Patricia M. Shields. 2004. 'Classical Pragmatism: Engaging practitioner experience.' Administration & Society, 36(3):351–361
- ^Patricia M. Shields. 2005. 'Classical Pragmatism does not need an upgrade: Lessons for Public Administration.' Administration & Society. 37(4):504–518. abstract
- ^Perez, Shivaun, 'Assessing Service Learning Using Pragmatic Principles of Education: A Texas Charter School Case Study' (2000). Applied Research Projects. Texas State University Paper 76. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/76
- ^Alexander, Jason Fields, 'Contracting Through the Lens of Classical Pragmatism: An Exploration of Local Government Contracting' (2009). Applied Research Projects. Texas State University. Paper 288. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/288
- ^Bartle, John R. and Shields, Patricia M., 'Applying Pragmatism to Public Budgeting and Financial Management' (2008). Faculty Publications-Political Science. Paper 48. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/polsfacp/48
- ^Wilson, Timothy L., 'Pragmatism and Performance Measurement: An Exploration of Practices in Texas State Government' (2001). Applied Research Projects. Texas State University. Paper 71. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/71
- ^Howard-Watkins, Demetria C., 'The Austin, Texas African-American Quality of Life Initiative as a Community of inquiry: An Exploratory Study' (2006). Applied Research Projects. Texas State University. Paper 115. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/115
- ^Johnson, Timothy Lee, 'The Downtown Austin Planning Process as a Community of inquiry: An Exploratory Study' (2008). Applied Research Projects. Paper 276. http://ecommons.txstate.edu/arp/276.
- ^Patricia M. Shields and Hassan Tajalli (2006), 'Intermediate Theory: The Missing Link in Successful Student Scholarship,' Journal of Public Affairs Education 12(3):313–334. https://digital.library.txstate.edu/handle/10877/3967
- ^Patricia M. Shields (1998). 'Pragmatism as a Philosophy of Science: A Tool for Public Administration,' Research in Public Administration. Volume 4: 195–225. (Online.)
- ^Patricia M. Shields and Nandhini Rangarajan (2013). A Playbook for Research Methods: Integrating Conceptual Frameworks and Project Management. Stillwater, OK: New Forums Press.
- ^Gillespie, A. & Cornish, F. (2009). A pragmatist approach to the problem of knowledge in health psychology. Journal of Health Psychology, 14, 800–809
- ^Brendel, David. 2006. Healing Psychiatry: Bridging the Science/Humanism Divide. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
- ^Seigfried, C.H. (2001). Feminist interpretations of John Dewey. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press; Seigfried, C.H. (1996). Pragmatism and feminism: Reweaving the social fabric. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; Seigfried, C. H. (1992). Where are all the pragmatists feminists? Hypatia, 6, 8–21.
- ^Duran, J. (2001). A holistically Deweyan feminism. Metaphilosophy, 32, 279–292. Duran, J. (1993). The intersection of pragmatism and feminism. Hypatia, 8
- ^Keith, H. (1999). Feminism and pragmatism: George Herbert Mead's ethics of care. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, 35, 328–344.
- ^Whipps, J. D. (2004). Jane Addams social thought as a model for a pragmatist-feminist communitarianism. Hypatia, 19, 118–113.
- ^Seigfried, C.H. (1996). Pragmatism and Feminism: Reweaving the Social Fabric. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. p. 21
- ^'The Thirteen Pragmatisms, The Journal of Philosophy, Psychology, and Scientific Methods, now The Journal of Philosophy, Part I, 2 January 1908, pp. 5–12. Part II, 16 January 1908, pp. 29–39
- ^ abcdPutnam, Hilary (December 1992). 'The permanence of William James'. Bulletin of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 46 (3): 17–31. doi:10.2307/3824783. JSTOR3824783.
- ^ abBurke, F. Thomas (1994). Dewey's new logic: a reply to Russell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN0226080692. OCLC29844394.
- ^Goodman, Russell (October 20, 2017). 'William James'. In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2017 ed.).
- ^Edwards, Paul (1957). 'How Bertrand Russell was prevented from teaching at the College of the City of New York'. In Russell, Bertrand (ed.). Why I am not a Christian, and other essays on religion and related subjects. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 207–259. ISBN0671203231. OCLC376363.
- ^In: Stanley Fish, There's No Such Thing as Free Speech, Oxford University Press, 1994.
- ^Ed. Morris Dickstein, Duke University Press, 1998
Sources[edit]
- Baldwin, James Mark (ed., 1901–1905), Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 3 volumes in 4, Macmillan, New York, NY.
- Dewey, John (1900–1901), Lectures on Ethics 1900–1901, Donald F. Koch (ed.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1991.
- Dewey, John (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA, 1910. Reprinted, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1991.
- Dewey, John (1929), The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action, Minton, Balch, and Company, New York, NY. Reprinted, pp. 1–254 in John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 4: 1929, Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Harriet Furst Simon (text. ed.), Stephen Toulmin (intro.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1984.
- Dewey, John (1932), Theory of the Moral Life, Part 2 of John Dewey and James H. Tufts, Ethics, Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1908. 2nd edition, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1932. Reprinted, Arnold Isenberg (ed.), Victor Kestenbaum (pref.), Irvington Publishers, New York, NY, 1980.
- Dewey, John (1938), Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1938. Reprinted, pp. 1–527 in John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 12: 1938, Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Kathleen Poulos (text. ed.), Ernest Nagel (intro.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1986.
- James, William (1902), 'Pragmatic and Pragmatism', 1 paragraph, vol. 2, pp. 321–322 in J.M. Baldwin (ed., 1901–1905), Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 3 volumes in 4, Macmillan, New York, NY. Reprinted, CP 5.2 in C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers.
- James, William (1907), Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy, Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, NY.
- James, William (1909), The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism, Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, NY.
- Lundin, Roger (2006) From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
- Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para.
- Peirce, C.S., The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 1 (1867–1893), Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1992.
- Peirce, C.S., The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913), Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1998.
- Putnam, Hilary (1994), Words and Life, James Conant (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
- Quine, W.V. (1951), 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism', Philosophical Review (January 1951). Reprinted, pp. 20–46 in W.V. Quine, From a Logical Point of View, 1980.
- Quine, W.V. (1980), From a Logical Point of View, Logico-Philosophical Essays, 2nd edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
- Ramsey, F.P. (1927), 'Facts and Propositions', Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7, 153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990.
- Ramsey, F.P. (1990), Philosophical Papers, David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
- Rescher, N. (1977), Methodological Pragmatism, Oxford: Blackwell, 1977.
- Rescher, N. (2000), Realistic Pragmatism, Albany, SUNY Press, 2000.
Further reading[edit]
- Surveys
- John J. Stuhr, ed. One Hundred Years of Pragmatism: William James's Revolutionary Philosophy (Indiana University Press; 2010) 215 pages; Essays on pragmatism and American culture, pragmatism as a way of thinking and settling disputes, pragmatism as a theory of truth, and pragmatism as a mood, attitude, or temperament.
Important introductory primary texts
Note that this is an introductory list: some important works are left out and some less monumental works that are excellent introductions are included.
Note that this is an introductory list: some important works are left out and some less monumental works that are excellent introductions are included.
- C. S. Peirce, 'The Fixation of Belief' (paper)
- C. S. Peirce, 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear' (paper)
- C. S. Peirce, 'A Definition of Pragmatism' (paper as titled by Menand in Pragmatism: A Reader, from Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce v. 8, some or all of paragraphs 191–195.)
- William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (especially lectures I, II and VI)
- John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy
- John Dewey, 'Three Independent factors in Morals' (lecture published as paper)
- John Dewey, 'A short catechism concerning truth' (chapter)
- W. V. O. Quine, 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism'. (paper)
- Secondary texts
- Cornelis De Waal, On Pragmatism
- Louis Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America
- Hilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open Question
- Abraham Edel, Pragmatic Tests and Ethical Insights
- D. S. Clarke, Rational Acceptance and Purpose
- Haack, Susan & Lane, Robert, Eds. (2006). Pragmatism Old and New: Selected Writings. New York: Prometheus Books.
- Louis Menand, ed., Pragmatism: A Reader (includes essays by Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, others)
- For a discussion of the ways in which Pragmatism offers insights into the theory and practice of urbanism, see: Aseem Inam, Designing Urban Transformation New York and London: Routledge, 2013.ISBN978-0415837705.
- Criticism texts
- Edward W. Younkins, Dewey's Pragmatism and the Decline of Education.
- Pragmatism, Ayn Rand Lexicon.
- Albert Schinz, Anti-Pragmatism: An Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and Social Democracy. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1909.
Additional bibliography[edit]
- IEP – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- SEP – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- James Sloan Allen. William James on Habit, Will, Truth, and the Meaning of Life. 2014.
- Elizabeth Anderson. Dewey's Moral Philosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Douglas Browning, William T. Myers (Eds.) Philosophers of Process. 1998.
- Robert Burch. Charles Sanders Peirce. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- F. Thomas Burke. What Pragmatism Was. 2013.
- John Dewey. Donald F. Koch (ed.) Lectures on Ethics 1900–1901. 1991.
- Daniel Dennett. Postmodernism and Truth. 1998.
- John Dewey. The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action. 1929.
- John Dewey. Three Independent Factors in Morals. 1930.
- John Dewey. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays. 1910.
- John Dewey. Experience & Education. 1938.
- Cornelis De Waal. On Pragmatism. 2005.
- Raff Donelson. 'Ethical Pragmatism'. Metaphilosophy 48(4): 383-403. 2017.
- Abraham Edel. Pragmatic Tests and Ethical Insights. In: Ethics at the Crossroads: Normative Ethics and Objective Reason. George F. McLean, Richard Wollak (eds.) 1993.
- Michael Eldridge. Transforming Experience: John Dewey's Cultural Instrumentalism. 1998.
- Lorenzo Fabbri. The domestication of Derrida: Rorty, pragmatism and deconstruction. 2008
- Richard Field. John Dewey (1859-1952). Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Peter H. Hare, Michel Weber, James K. Swindler, Oana-Maria Pastae, Cerasel Cuteanu (eds.), International Perspectives on Pragmatism, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 (ISBN978-1-4438-0194-2).
- David L. Hildebrand. Beyond Realism & Anti-Realism. 2003.
- David L. Hildebrand. The Neopragmatist Turn. Southwest Philosophy Review 19(1). 2003.
- William James. Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy. 1907.
- William James The Will to Believe. 1896.
- George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh : The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. 1999.
- Todd Lekan. Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction in Ethical Theory. 2003.
- C.I. Lewis. Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge. 1929.
- David Macarthur. 'Pragmatism, Metaphysical Quietism and the Problem of Normativity,' Philosophical Topics Vol. 36 no.1, 2009.
- Keya Maitra. On Putnam. 2003.
- Joseph Margolis. Historied Thought, Constructed World. 1995.
- Louis Menand. The Metaphysical Club. 2001.
- Cheryl Misak (ed.) The New Pragmatists. Oxford University Press, 2007
- Hilary Putnam Reason, Truth and History. 1981.
- W.V.O. Quine. Two Dogmas of Empiricism. Philosophical Review. January 1951.
- W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. 1969.
- N. Rescher. Process Philosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Richard Rorty Rorty Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers. Volume 3. 1998.
- Stephen Toulmin. The Uses of Argument. 1958.
- Michel Weber (ed.), After Whitehead: Rescher on Process Metaphysics, Frankfurt / Paris / Lancaster, Ontos Verlag, 2004 (ISBN3-937202-49-8).
- Michel Weber, Whitehead's Pancreativism. Jamesian Applications, Frankfurt / Paris, Ontos Verlag, 2011.
- William Egginton/Mike Sandbothe (Eds.) The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy. Contemporary Engagement between Analytic and Continental Thought. 2004.
- Mike Sandbothe. Pragmatic Media Philosophy. 2005.
- Papers and online encyclopedias are part of the bibliography. Other sources may include interviews, reviews and websites.
- Gary A. Olson and Stephen Toulmin. Literary Theory, Philosophy of Science, and Persuasive Discourse: Thoughts from a Neo-premodernist. Interview in JAC 13.2. 1993.
- Susan Haack. 'Vulgar Rortyism'. Review in The New Criterion. November 1997.
- Pietarinen, A. V. 'Interdisciplinarity and Peirce's classification of the Sciences: A Centennial Reassessment,' Perspectives on Science, 14(2), 127–152 (2006).
External links[edit]
Look up pragmatism in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pragmatism. |
- General sources
- Pragmatism at PhilPapers
- Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). 'Pragmatism'. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- 'Pragmatism'. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
- Pragmatism at the Indiana Philosophy Ontology Project
- Pragmatism on In Our Time at the BBC
- A short film about the pragmatist revival on YouTube
- Journals and organizations
There are several peer-reviewed journals dedicated to pragmatism, for example
- Contemporary Pragmatism, affiliated with the International Pragmatism Society
- European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, affiliated with the Associazione Culturale Pragma (Italy)
- Nordic Studies in Pragmatism, journal of the Nordic Pragmatism Network
- Pragmatism Today, journal of the Central European Pragmatist Forum (CEPF)
- Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, journal of the Charles S. Peirce Society
- William James Studies, journal of the William James Society
- Other online resources and organizations
- Centro de Estudos sobre Pragmatismo (CEP) — Center for Pragmatism Studies (CPS) (Brazil)
- Helsinki Peirce Research Center (Finland), including:
- Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms — see Pragmatism, Pragmaticism, and Pragmatism: Maxim of
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