This essay aims to adumbrate the relationship between ordinary language, history, and cognition in Joseph Margolis’ pragmatist account of the historical constitution of the human, cultural world. It emphasizes the important connections between his arguments for the essentially practical grounding of all forms of cognitive activity; the existential primacy of the historically evolved ordinary language in the formation of aptly socialized human persons as well as of productively functioning human societies; the transformational role of consciousness in history, including the history of cognition; and the insuperable informality inherent in all philosophical attempts to justify our historically articulated norms of cognition and our way of life. Margolis’ analysis of these relationships claims to show that cultural tolerance and historical plasticity deserve to displace the philosophical ideas of invariance and fixity as the favored resources of conceptual and social stability. This recognition, on Margolis’s view, constitutes pragmatism’s distinctive promise and advantage.

中文翻译：

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历史，通俗地说：马戈利斯的文化实用主义

本文旨在阐明约瑟夫·马戈利斯 (Joseph Margolis) 对人类文化世界历史构成的实用主义解释中日常语言、历史和认知之间的关系。它强调了他关于所有形式的认知活动的基本实践基础的论点之间的重要联系；在适当社会化的人类以及生产性运作的人类社会的形成中，历史演变的日常语言的存在首要地位；意识在历史中的变革作用，包括认知史；以及所有哲学尝试中固有的无法克服的非正式性，以证明我们历史上阐明的认知规范和我们的生活方式是正确的。Margolis 对这些关系的分析表明，文化宽容和历史可塑性应该取代不变性和固定性的哲学思想，成为概念和社会稳定的有利资源。在马戈利斯看来，这种认识构成了实用主义独特的前景和优势。