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Pragmatism as a Mediator – Seeking an Illusory Harmony? Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-12-28 Sami Pihlström
This paper examines the well-known pragmatist claim to mediate between philosophical disputes. While recognizing the reconciliatory and harmonizing role that pragmatism plays in traditional debates between, for example, realism and antirealism, naturalism and culturalism, or science and religion, it is argued that the pragmatist also needs to acknowledge that there are situations in which no such mediation
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Addressing Common Misunderstandings of Somaesthetics Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-11-29 T.J. Bonnet
This article reviews and corrects frequent misunderstandings of somaesthetics, the multidisciplinary field of study of the lived body conceived by Richard Shusterman. After responding to an article published in Contemporary Pragmatism, I extend the discussion to cover larger topics of discussion related to somaesthetics and misapprehensions by its critics, including the nature of somatic experience
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Certainty Beyond a Reasonable Doubt Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Giovanni Tuzet
The paper argues for a pragmatist understanding of the reasonable doubt standard in law. It builds on the idea that our dispositions to act signal the epistemic states we are in. This helps clarify the notion of a reasonable doubt and the idea of being certain beyond it. More specifically, the paper points out three major standards of proof used in legal contexts and the rationale of their distinction
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Dewey’s Notion of Intelligent Habit as a Basis for Ethical Assessment of Technology Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Michał Wieczorek
This paper discusses how John Dewey’s notion of intelligent habit could contribute to technology ethics. For Dewey, intelligent (i.e., desirable) habits are reflective – arising from inquiry into the appropriate courses of action in each situation – and flexible – easily adaptable to the changing circumstances. We should strive to develop intelligent habits as they are the best tools for the achievement
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History and Power in Hume’s ‘Of Miracles’: A Pragmaticist-Historicist Account Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Andre C. Willis
This reconsideration of Hume’s classic essay “Of Miracles” via the lens of American pragmatist ways of thinking about history and power shifts our attention from Hume’s epistemic concerns about the legitimacy of witnesses and testimony to his distaste for sacred history, his critical stance regarding the social force of revelation, and his disdain for religious authority. To view Hume’s essay both
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Neither Wisdom Nor Folly Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Paul Howatt
This paper aims to reframe the debate over the intelligence of democracy by revisiting the classic Dewey/Lippmann debate. I argue that Dewey’s way of addressing this problem is better than both dominant approaches today (as exemplified by Jason Brennan and Hélène Landemore), since it acknowledges the intellectual obstacles democracy faces while keeping faith with democracy as an ethical ideal. I also
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Pirates and Parrots. On the Pragmatics of Reading Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-11-29 Chiel Martien van den Akker
At times we are told that our habitual way of thinking has become obsolete given the new challenge we are facing. Some of the conceptual resources at our disposal are no longer capable of addressing the challenge at hand. Therefore, they lose their appeal and are rejected. But only in contrast to these intellectual resources does the challenge appear as a challenge. So it seems that we are confronted
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The Irrationality of Inter-vocabulary Change: A Reply to Shields Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-07-29 Kate M. Phelan
The pragmatist rejects the possibility that we can step outside our conceptual scheme in order to assess its correspondence to an unconceptualized reality. Consequently, it seems, she can describe a certain sort of conceptual change, namely, inter-vocabulary change, as rational only retrospectively. In a recent paper, Matthew Shields attempts to show otherwise. He argues that the speaker of such change
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Only Words Apart? Talking About “The World” in Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-07-29 Lisa Landoe Hedrick
In his well-known critique of conceptual relativism, Donald Davidson declared that we are not worlds but “only words apart.” His interpretive principle of charity asserts that the transcendental condition of disagreement is agreement. Pragmatist philosophers of religion have relied upon the principle of charity to argue against a framework theory of religion. They use the notion of a scale of observationality
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Organ Trafficking in Africa: Pragmatist Ethical Reconsiderations Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-07-29 Belayneh Taye, Abayneh Atnafu, Yihenew Wubu Endalew, Sisay Demissew Beyene
This article focuses on examining the situation of organ trafficking in Africa from the aspect of pragmatist ethics. In the mainstream thought, the broader ethical dilemma of organ trafficking is viewed within the moral contestation of altruism as a rule for organ procurement and the resulting worldwide organ shortage. The incapability of altruistic transplant orthodoxy to serve as an applicable foundation
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A Pragmatist Reboot of William Whewell’s Theory of Scientific Progress Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-07-29 Ragnar van der Merwe
William Whewell’s philosophy of science is often overlooked as a relic of 19th century Whiggism. I argue however that his view – suitably modified – can contribute to contemporary philosophy of science, particularly to debates around scientific progress. The reason Whewell’s view needs modification is that he makes the following problematic claim: as science progresses, it reveals necessarily truths
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Vigilant Inquiry and Qualitative Disunity Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-07-29 Devin Robinson Fitzpatrick
John Dewey’s concept of the “problematic situation” is a core component of his epistemology and his social philosophy, grounding his anti-elitist view of inquiry as initially hunch-guided and aiming toward growth in meaning and control. I consider two novel counterarguments to Dewey’s definition of a situation, the “Cunning Manipulator,” which refutes his delimitation of a problematic situation in
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“Yet a New Phase, Wherein the Abstract Become Concrete”. Josiah Royce’s Theory of Experience Between Philosophy and Psychology Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-07-29 Rocco Monti
This paper aims to focus on the concept of experience and reconstruct its evolutions within Royce’s thought. To do so, I divide this paper in three parts. I begin by analysing Royce’s concept of experience, which takes roots in his interpretation of the British empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume, in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892). In the second part I outline Royce’s theory of experience
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Bibliometrics and Qualitative Assessment: a Pragmatist Approach Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Leonard Waks, Eli Orner Kramer
In this essay we explore whether and how we should use bibliometrics in hiring, promoting, and granting in the academy. We suggest a Deweyan-Hickmanian pragmatist approach to reflecting on the technology of bibliometrics as a resource for inherently qualitative judgements in these deliberations. We begin with a literature review of current work evaluating the role and use of bibliometrics in the academy
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Ethics in the Innovation Process: Some Unaddressed Issues for Pragmatists Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Paul B. Thompson
There are now dozens of proposals for integrating ethics into the early planning and assessment of technological innovation. This paper tracks some of Larry Hickman’s contributions to these trends. While Hickman’s suggestions could be incorporated into virtually many of the new proposals for integrating ethics into technological research, development and dissemination, barriers remain. In this paper
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Technologies and Sustainability – Challenges for Democracy and Education in Our Time Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Stefan Neubert, Kersten Reich
In this essay, we discuss some urgent challenges for democracy and education in the Deweyan sense in connection with current developments of technologies and questions of sustainability. We proceed in four major parts, following the systematic distinction of four mutually interrelated levels of technologies in culture found in the late work of Michel Foucault. In part 1, we focus on the technologies
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Hickman, Buddhism, and Algorithmic Technology Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Jim Garrison
This paper is a further reflection on my dialogue with Larry Hickman, director emeritus of the Center for Dewey Studies, and Daisaku Ikeda, president of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (sgi). One surprising outcome of this dialogue is how similar Deweyan pragmatism is to many forms of Mahayana Buddhism such as sgi. Here I survey some similarities between Hickman’s philosophy
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Hickman and Dewey: Naturalism’s Hope? Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Herman J. Saatkamp
Larry Hickman has fostered his own analysis, explication and application of Dewey’s philosophy as well as overseen the critical edition of John Dewey’s works at the Center for Dewey Studies. In America our democracy is struggling, making Hickman’s scholarly work even more important. I attempt to explain some of Hickman’s use of Dewey’s philosophy to address current issues that include the roles of
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Neuropragmatic Tools for Neurotechnological Culture: Toward a Creatively Democratic Cybernetics of Care Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Tibor Solymosi
I address the problem of caring for our body-mind through neuropragmatism, cybernetics, and Larry Hickman’s work on John Dewey and the philosophy of technology. The problems of body-mind health are related to Emma Dowling’s The Care Crisis. I address this crisis by drawing on Jay Schulkin’s conception of viability as the creative tension between stability and precarity. From this, I extend body-mind
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Education for Technological Threats to Democracy Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Eric Thomas Weber
This paper examines Larry A. Hickman’s warnings about the dangers of algorithmic technologies for democracy and then considers educational policy initiatives that are important for combatting such threats over the long term. John Dewey’s philosophy is considered both in Hickman’s work and in this paper’s review of what Dewey called the “Supreme Intellectual Obligation.” Dewey’s insights highlight crucial
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Philosophical Tools for Educational Culture: Reconstructing Data and Assessment Practices Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2023-04-18 Mark Tschaepe
Assessment practices have come to dominate much of formalized education, especially within the United States. Currently, learning analytics (la) and educational data mining (edm) are purported by many educational companies and institutions to successfully improve learning through what are often considered as objective collection, classification, and analysis of educational data. Enthusiasm about big
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“Experience, Language, and Behavior in Pragmatism: A Response to Voparil’s Reconstructing Pragmatism” Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Colin Koopman
Chris Voparil’s Reconstructing Pragmatism builds the best case to date that the neopragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty decisively and productively reshaped the lineage of pragmatist philosophy. In developing new directions for pragmatism, the book seeks to press past a number of recent debates. One such debate concerns the relative priority of experience and language as methodological starting points
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Philosophical Definitions: A Pragmatic Approach Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Gustavo Arroyo
In this paper, I argue for a pragmatic theory of the motivations behind the practice of defining concepts in philosophy. The “correct” definition in philosophy is not, as is usually supposed, the definition that accurately describes some pre-philosophical meaning, but the definition which is useful for the achievement of certain theoretical goals. I consider different examples of definitional debates
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Pragmatism about Truth-Makers Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 John Capps
Truth-makers are the dark matter of metaphysics. On the one hand, truth-makers seem obvious and necessary: if there are truths then there must be something that makes these truths true. On the other hand, it’s proven difficult to say exactly what these truth-makers are. Even defenders disagree about what sort of entity truth-makers are or whether all truths have truth-makers. Skeptics have questioned
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Pragmatism and the Pluralism of Paths: Reflections on Voparil’s Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Richard Shusterman
After noting Rorty’s rhetorical use of binary oppositions, which belies important continuities (and which is even reflected in the problem of radically opposing classical pragmatism to neopragmatism), I question the idea that progress in pragmatism must go through engagement with Rorty. I do so by arguing that Rorty failed to treat or outright rejected some important philosophical issues. I consequently
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Rorty and the Question of Normativity: Replies to Commentators on Reconstructing Pragmatism Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Chris Voparil
This response to insightful commentaries on my book, from Richard Shusterman, Susan Dieleman, Raff Donelson, and Colin Koopman, takes up the recurring theme of the nature of normativity on a Rortyan view. To frame my individual replies, I revisit the Davidsonian account of epistemic interaction that influences Rorty’s mature view and suggest that the norms implicit in Davidsonian triangulation are
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Traveling with a Reconstructed Pragmatist Map: A Commentary on Chris Voparil’s Reconstructing Pragmatism Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Susan Dieleman
Chris Voparil’s Reconstructed Pragmatism provides an opportunity to reconsider existing debates from a new pragmatist vantage point, one that takes seriously Rorty’s contribution to the tradition. In this commentary, I take advantage of this vantage point to briefly reconsider debates about deliberative democracy, including pragmatist contributions to them. Typically, such debates revolve around either
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A Trilemma for Voparil Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Raff Donelson
This short review raises a trilemma for Chris Voparil’s reading of Richard Rorty. Voparil must deny one of three things. He must deny that Rorty affirmed a Jamesian approach to metaethics; he must deny that Rorty affirmed a version of Peircean realism; or, he must deny that Rorty treated all domains of discourse roughly the same. Because Rorty is quite clear in his commitment to the first and third
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The Operation of Peirce’s Pheme in Narrative Contexts Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-11-18 Donna E. West
Peirce’s Pheme directs interpretation of narratives via a “series of surprises” (ep2:154). The indexical and iconic elements inherent in Phemes are particularly potent in forcing attention and depicting relevant events. Index intrudes upon interpreters’ consciousness to notice the unexpected consequence; but icons exploit vividness. As imperatives, Phemes compel particular behaviors (1906: ms295).
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Confidence in Pragmatism: An Invitation to Public Dialogue Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-09-13 Julius Crump
Richard Rorty’s idealization of public dialogue pits literature and narrative against objectivity and ethics, thus leaving non-intellectual practitioners in the lurch. The evolutionary arc of Rorty’s oeuvre merits an assessment of the historiography he uses to prevent figures like Michel Foucault and Cornel West from being full participants in public dialogue. Miranda Fricker’s account of the collective
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Richard Rorty and the Epistemic Defense of Democracy Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Susan Dieleman
Richard Rorty has been taken to task for his apparent inability to defend democracy to the anti-democrat. Cheryl Misak, for example, in developing her own epistemic defense of democracy, argues that because he abjures truth, Rorty cannot provide any argument to show that democracy is superior to other political arrangements. In this paper, I agree with Misak that Rorty is unable to provide an argument
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Self-Creation and Solidarity: Psychoanalysis as Self-Aesthetics Redescription in Richard Rorty Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-08-23 Marcelo Martins Barreira
The article went deeper into Richard Rorty’s texts that address the self as “a set of beliefs and desires.” In an imbrication of philosophy with psychoanalysis, Rorty’s hermeneutics accompanies the critique of psychoanalysis regarding the self-centralization from Metaphysical tradition, one of the strategies of self-redescription. The other strategy is aesthetic redescription. This redescription is
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Healthcare, Healthcare Resource Allocation, and Rationing: Pragmatist Reflections Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-08-16 Belayneh Taye, Andebet Hailu Assefa
This article approaches the ethical dilemma of healthcare allocation and rationing from the perspective of pragmatist ethics, mainly following John Dewey’s ethics. The moral dilemma of healthcare allocation arises whenever we allocate limited resources, and rationing is a necessary option for distributing available resources. In a broader sense, the moral problems of healthcare allocation also encompass
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Anti-Authoritarianism as a Liberal Culture: Richard Rorty Between Communitarian and Liberal Criticism Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Lucas von Ramin
In recent years, Rorty’s anti-authoritarianism has been repeatedly associated with the loss of truth and a post-factual age. At the same time, Rorty is presented as a strict opponent of such positions. How is it that the same thinker who is held responsible for a postmodern decline is also to be understood as the most severe critic? To answer this question, this paper reconstructs Rorty’s anti-authoritarianism
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Buddhist Ethics: A Pragmatist Account Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Takaharu Oda
This article will consider how and why a pragmatist way of thinking is inferred in the Buddhist ethical discourse of curing the sick. This medical analogy, where the Buddha as a medical doctor acts upon the sick, contains a profound implication that the sick need not understand the reason for their sickness, insofar as they are cured or enlightened. What is taken to be pragmatism is critically clarified
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A Deweyan Ethic for Human/Nonhuman Animal Relationships Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-08-10 Emily Humbert
In this article, I propose that the ethical work of John Dewey can better evaluate, enhance, and nurture human/nonhuman animal relationships. While Peter Singer’s utilitarianism and Tom Regan’s deontology are considered the dominant ethical theories in the field of animal ethics and have provided indispensable scholarship to the field, I argue that they cannot fully attend to the complexities of human/nonhuman
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History, Informally Speaking: Margolis’ Cultural Pragmatism Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-06-30 Serge Grigoriev
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
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Joseph Margolis – Pragmatist Realism Viewing Human Culture and Historicity Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-06-30 Jale N. Erzen
In his long and productive life Joseph Margolis approached many subjects that had been the concern of philosophy all through history. However, when his texts are read carefully it is clear that his main interest was to understand humanity and its cultural values. In my text I will first introduce Margolis philosophy in general and the underlying premises that he defended throughout his work, moving
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The Point of Margolis’ Dissatisfaction with Peirce (and Pragmatism) Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-06-30 R.W. Main
Margolis’ philosophical thought and career is framed by the pragmatism that dominated his early education and his vision of a “resurgent” pragmatism as the most promising direction for an increasingly eclectic Western philosophical tradition. This version of pragmatism is based on Peirce’s formulation of the pragmatic maxim, but Margolis sees the implications of that maxim as running counter to a central
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Pragmatism and Interpretation: Radical, Relativistic, but not Unruly Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-06-30 Richard Shusterman
Interpretation has been a key theme in pragmatist aesthetics, but its centrality in neopragmatist thinking goes far beyond the field of art. Its influence extends into epistemology, ontology, and the philosophies of language, history, selfhood, and culture. Joseph Margolis devoted many articles and even an entire book to this topic, which he titled Interpretation Radical but Not Unruly. My critical
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The Significance of Joseph Margolis to Late 20th and Early 21st Century Pragmatism Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-06-30 Jay Schulkin
Joseph Margolis’ philosophical work is both sanguine and fair. It is sanguine because much of it captures the inherent worth and dignity of the human condition. This includes aesthetics, anthropological diversity and history, the diversity of cognitive orientations and objectivity without foundations. Margolis embraces science and naturalism without reductionism. His pragmatism, though, is rooted more
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Tuesdays (and Thursdays [and Sometimes Fridays or Saturdays]) with Joe Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-06-30 Austin Rooney
The piece shares reminiscences of the recently deceased Joseph Margolis. Margolis’s character, pedagogy, and contribution to the philosophical world are considered. Margolis was an important, maverick thinker whose impact on the philosophical community has yet to be fully understood.
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Throntveit, Marchetti, and the Secularization of James’s Ethical Thought Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Michael R. Slater
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The American Republic: William James on Political Leadership Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Jacob L. Goodson, Quinlan C. Stein
Since Plato’s Republic, philosophers have outlined their expectations for political leaders and have offered judgments on the actions and decisions made by political leaders in their given context. It turns out that the American philosopher, William James, participates in this philosophical tradition. Although it has been assumed by professional philosophers—and even scholars of William James’s work—that
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Ethics at the Crossroads: Replies to Koopman, Livingston, and Slater Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Sarin Marchetti
In this article I address a number of issues raised by Colin Koopman, Alex Livingston, and Michael Slater to my reading of James’s ethics as defended in my 2015 book having to do with, in turn, the relationship between ethics and politics, ethics and psychological types, and ethics and religion. In accounting for these charges, I vindicate and further qualify my interpretation of James as a moral therapist
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In Extremis: The Wildness of William James Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Alexander Livingston
William James advocates strenuousness as the key to the moral life yet his hunger for extreme experiences sometimes leads him to risk sacrificing morality in their pursuit. This paradox is best represented by James’s fascination with soldiers and warfare as exemplars of the strenuous life. This essay examines the tension between strenuousness and morality in James’s ethical thought through the lens
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The Relationship between Moral Philosophy and Political Philosophy in William James Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-03-29 Colin Koopman
This review essay is occasioned by two books on the moral and political thought of William James. Sarin Marchetti’s Ethics and Philosophical Critique in William James and Trygve Throntveit’s William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic pose crucial questions for how we are to frame, interpret, and assess the philosophical contributions of William James more than one hundred years after his passing
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Jamesian Ethics: A Working Model Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2022-03-04 Trygve Throntveit
In this essay I respond to critical readers of my book, William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic. I argue that James’s ultimate preoccupations are ethical, and that his ethical and moral writings constitute a rich resource for pluralistic societies seeking democratic tools for negotiating deep ideological, cultural, and religious differences, and for building a thriving commons.
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Paradoxes of Pure Experience: From the Radical to the Transcendental with James and Deleuze Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Russell J Duvernoy
This paper investigates the relationship between James’ radical empiricism and Deleuze’s study of the genesis of sense without a transcendental subject as necessary condition. It shows that James’ concept of pure experience changes the form of relation between mind and world. Considering how to conceptualize experience without a fixed metaphysical or transcendental subject destabilizes ontological
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Radical Empiricism: William James and Gilles Deleuze Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-29 John J. Stuhr
Both William James and Gilles Deleuze labeled their philosophies "radical empiricism." In this context, this essay explores the similarities and differences between James's radical empiricism (particularly as it is present early inches Principles of Psychology) and Deleuze's "transcendental empiricism" (particularly as set forth in The Logic of Sense). These accounts then inform a view of philosophy
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Revisiting Rorty’s Notion of Truth Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-23 Rahul Kumar Maurya
This paper is intended to explore the Rorty’s notion of truth and its vicinity and divergences with Putnam’s notion of truth. Rorty and Putnam, both the philosophers have developed their notion of truth against the traditional representational notion of truth but their strength lies in its distinctive characterization. For Putnam, truth is the property of a statement which cannot be lost but the justification
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James and Deleuze: Trains and Planes Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-22 Megan Craig
This essay examines the relationship between William James’s radical empiricism and Gilles Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism by considering how dominant technologies of locomotion and travel in their respective historical times influenced their thinking and the style of their prose. Highlighting the imagery of trains and ground movement in James and planes and flight in Deleuze, I suggest that each
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Cultural Politics, Critical Reflexivity, and Post-Truth Politics: A Response to Clayton Chin’s The Practice of Political Theory: Rorty and Continental Thought Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-10 Susan Dieleman
In this response to Chin’s The Practice of Political Theory: Rorty and Continental Thought, I complete two tasks. First, I clarify that Chin’s project is a metatheoretical one, aiming to reconstruct Rorty’s account of political theory as practice. Second, I claim that this reconstruction makes it possible to respond, on Rorty’s behalf, to charges that his position is complacent and acquiescent, especially
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Testing the Ethos of Tolerance: Chin’s Interpretation of Rorty’s Political Theory: For Contemporary Pragmatism symposium on Clayton Chin, The Practice of Political Theory: Rorty and Continental Thought Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-10 Matthew Festenstein
In The Practice of Political Theory, Clayton Chin puts Richard Rorty’s pragmatism in dialogue with a range of contemporary political theorists, particularly focusing on how his notion of cultural politics can speak to the ontological turn in political theory. This article focuses on Chin’s claim that Rorty’s cultural politics provides an ethos of inclusive and tolerant political engagement. After exploring
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Reply to Comments (Contemporary Pragmatism, 2021) Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-29 Roberto Frega
These are the replies to critics on my book Pragmatism and the wide view of democracy.
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Pushing Social Philosophy to Its Democratic Limits Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-26 Brendan Hogan
Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy reformulates the question of democracy posed by our current historic conjuncture using the resources of a variety of pragmatic thinkers. He brings into the contemporary conversation regarding democracy’s fortunes both classical and somewhat neglected figures in the pragmatic tradition to deal with questions of power, ontology, and politics.
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Inferentialism is as Compositional as it Needs to be Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-17 Nicholas Tebben
Normative inferentialism is a semantic theory according to which the meaning of an expression is, or is determined by, its proper inferential role. Critics of inferentialism often argue that it violates the principle of compositionality, and that it is therefore unable to explain some important linguistic data. I have two tasks in this paper: the first is to demonstrate that inferentialism, appearances
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Attention and Meaning in the Democratic Group Life Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-10 Ruth Yeoman
Bringing Simone Weil into conversation with Roberto Frega’s Pragmatism and the Wide View of Democracy
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The Epistemic Role of Consciousness from a Practical Point of View Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-10 Sean M. Smith
This paper concerns the way that phenomenal consciousness helps us to know things about the world. Most discussions of how consciousness contributes to our store of knowledge focus on propositional knowledge. In this paper, I recast the problem in terms of practical knowledge by reconstructing some neglected strands of argument in William James’s analyses of bodily affect and habitual action in The
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Pragmatism and the Importance of Truth Contemporary Pragmatism Pub Date : 2021-11-10 Albert Piacente
This paper develops a position I call “apathetic pragmatism.” Apathetic pragmatism is a form of pragmatism that, through advocating “apathy” about the topic of truth, avoids the troubled identification of utility and truth found in classical and neo pragmatist theories of truth. Initially explored by Stephen Stich, I argue Stich’s case for apathetic pragmatism relies upon a theory of truth that causes