Jürgen Habermas is one of the most important thinkers of this century. His work has been highly influential not only in philosophy, but particularly in the fields of politics, sociology and law. This is the first collection that explores the connections between his body of work and North America's biggest philosophical movement, pragmatism. Habermas and Pragmatism investigates the influences of pragmatism on Habermas' thought in a collection of stellar essays with contributions by Habermas himself, leading representatives of pragmatism, as well (...) as critical and legal theorists. The essays cover a range of subjects including philosophy of language, democracy, nature of rationality and social theory as well as the relation of major figures such as Hegel, Pierce, Mead and Dewey to Habermas and pragmatism. (shrink)

Pragmatism’s naturalism is inconsistent with the phenomenological tradition’s anti-naturalism. This poses a problem for the methodological consistency of phenomenological work in the pragmatist tradition. Solutions such as phenomenologizing naturalism or naturalizing phenomenology have been proposed, but they fail. As a consequence, pragmatists and other naturalists must answer the phenomenological tradition’s criticisms of naturalism.

After delineating the distinguishing features of pragmatism, and noting the resources that pragmatists have available to respond effectively as pragmatists to the two major objections to pragmatism, I examine and critically evaluate the various proposals that pragmatists have offered as a solution to the problem of induction, followed by a discussion of the pragmatic positions on the status of theoretical entities. Thereafter I discuss the pragmatic posture toward the nature of explanation in science. I conclude that pragmatism has (a) a (...) generally compelling solution to Hume's problem of induction; (b) no specific position on the status of theoretical entities, although something like the non-realism of the sort developed by van Fraassen seems a defensible candidate for most pragmatists in general, even though there are non-trivial objections to van Fraassen's position; and (c) central to the pragmatic conception of scientific explanation is the abandonment of our common conception of truth as a necessary condition for sentences to provide adequate explanations, and a drift in the direction of a contextualist account of explanation. (shrink)

This paper represents the first installment of alarger project devoted to the relevance of pragmatism forbioethics. One self-consciously pragmatist move would be toreturn to the classical pragmatist canon of Peirce, James andDewey in search of substantive doctrines or methodologicalapproaches that might be applied to current bioethicalcontroversies. Another pragmatist (or neopragmatist) move wouldbe to subject the regnant principlist paradigm to Richard Rorty'ssubversive assaults on foundationalism in epistemology andethics. A third pragmatist method, dubbed ``freestandingpragmatism'' by its proponents, embraces a ``pragmatist'' approachto practical (...) reasoning without discernable moorings either to theclassical canon or to Rorty's neopragmatism. This thirdpragmatist approach to method in practical ethics is the subjectof this article. I begin with an examination of freestandingpragmatism in the theory of judicial decision making. I arguethat this version of legal pragmatism – so described on account ofits commitments to contextualism, instrumentalism, eclecticism,and freedom from grand theory – bears a striking resemblance tomuch self-described pragmatist work in bioethics today. Ifurther argue that if this is what we mean by ``pragmatism,'' thenin a certain sense ``we are all pragmatists now.''. (shrink)

Classical American pragmatism: the pragmatist -- Enlightenment-and its problematic semantics -- Analyzing pragmatism: pragmatics and pragmatisms -- A Kantian rationalist pragmatism: pragmatism -- Inferentialism, and modality in Sellars's arguments against -- Empiricism -- Linguistic pragmatism and pragmatism about norms: an arc of -- Thought from Rorty's eliminative materialism to his pragmatism -- Vocabularies of pragmatism: synthesizing naturalism and -- Historicism -- Towards an analytic pragmatism: meaning-use analysis -- Pragmatism, expressivism, and anti-representationalism: -- Local and global possibilities.

[H. de Regt is ‘co-supervisor’ of the current UvT PhD project ‘Consciousness: Science Says It All?’ (drs. A. Frantzen; supervisor: prof. em. dr. A. A. Derksen). This project (in which the problem of phenomenal consciousness is approached via the work of the American pragmatist John Dewey) is absorbed in the programme Pragmatism: Living versus Paper Doubt. In order to realize the project described below he has provisionally planned (a) further collaboration with prof. dr. C.J.M. Schuyt (University of Amsterdam) to realize (...) a Pragmatism Center at Tilburg University, (b) international contacts with prof. dr. Nathan Houser & prof. dr. André De Tienne at the Peirce Project Research Center, and with dr. Timothy Lyons (Faculty of Philosophy) (all at Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis, United States), he will also visit the Center for Peirce Studies at the Texas Tech University, Lubbock, where the well known Peirce scholar professor Ken Ketner hosts the complete electronic available Peirce Archives; for the establishment of a Pragmatism Center in Tilburg the support of prof. Ketner will be sought, and (c) to organize two international congresses on Peircean pragmatism and contemporary philosophy of science and mind (including proceedings)]. (shrink)

Hamner seeks to discover what makes pragmatism uniquely American. She argues that the inextricably American character of pragmatism of such figures as C.S. Peirce and William James lies in its often understated affirmation of America as a uniquely religious country with a God-given mission and populated by God-fearing citizens.

This paper attempts to defend pragmatic approaches to bioethics against detractors, showing how particular critics have failed or succeeded. The paper divides bioethics from a pragmatic point of view into three groups. The first group is called "bioethical pragmatism" that will be represented by two book-chapters from the anthology, Pragmatic Bioethics . The second group is called "clinical pragmatism" championed by Fins, Baccetta, and Miller. Finally, a third group, which has roots in the legal tradition, has been called "freestanding pragmatism" (...) and is portrayed by Grey, Posner, and Wolf. Each group has been criticized in journal articles, and, in turn, this paper critiques some of the (mis)understandings put forth by Tollefsen, Jansen, and Arras about the capabilities and status of pragmatism in bioethical discussions. Finally, it concludes with cautionary notes about pragmatic bioethics in hopes that pragmatists will learn from their own insights about the human condition and the discipline of bioethics. (shrink)

Mark Johnston claims the pragmatist theory of truth is inconsistent with the way we actually employ and talk about that concept. He is, however, sympathetic enough to attempt to rescue its respectable core using ‘response-dependence’, a revisionary form of which he advocates as a method for clarifying various philosophically significant concepts. But Johnston has misrepresented pragmatism; it does not require rescuing, and as I show here, his ‘missing explanation argument’ against pragmatism therefore fails. What Johnston and other critics including Putnam (...) have overlooked is the distinctive nature of the pragmatist strategy, specifically, that it is non-reductive, a characteristic it shares with a more promising form of response-dependence; what Johnston calls ‘Descriptive Protagoreanism’ (DP). In this paper I offer a defence of pragmatism and show how it might be re-articulated as a form of DP. (shrink)

University of Turku, Finland In this article, relationalist approaches to social sciences are analyzed in terms of a conceptual distinction between "philosophizing sociology" and "sociologizing philosophy." These mark two different attitudes toward philosophical metaphysics and ontological commitments. The authors’ own pragmatist methodological relationalism of Deweyan origin is compared with ontologically committed realist approaches, as well as with Bourdieuan methodological relationalism. It is argued that pragmatist philosophy of social sciences is an appropriate tool for assisting social scientists in their methodological work, (...) especially as regards problem-driven case studies. Key Words: metaphysics • pragmatism • realism • relationalism. (shrink)

: The revival of philosophical pragmatism has generated a wealth of intramural debates between neopragmatists like Richard Rorty and contemporary scholars devoted to explicating the classical pragmatism of John Dewey and William James. Of all these internecine conflicts, the most divisive concerns the status of language and experience in pragmatist philosophy. Contemporary scholars of classical pragmatism defend experience as the heart of pragmatism while neopragmatists drop the concept of experience in favor of a thoroughly linguistic pragmatism. I argue that both (...) positions engender formidable risks. After discussing the present impasse, I describe a third version of pragmatism which involves a reconstruction of the classical pragmatist concept of experience in light of the criticisms of foundationalism crucial to the neopragmatist linguistic turn. This third version of pragmatism does justice to both Rorty and Dewey by focusing on experience as a temporal field. (shrink)

Environmental pragmatism is a new strategy in environmental thought: it argues that theoretical debates are hindering the ability of the environmental movement to forge agreement on basic policy imperatives. This new direction in environmental philosophy moves beyond theory, advocating a serious inquiry into the practical merits of moral pluralism. Environmental pragmatism, as a coherent philosophical position, connects the methodology of classical American pragmatist thought to the explanation, solution and discussion of real issues.

There is a tendency among contemporary epistemologists to call every social or existential theory of knowledge pragmatism or neopragmatism. In this paper, I hope to show that this tendency is an error. In the first section, I will explore and attempt to define epistemic pragmatism. In the second section, I will explicate an existential alternative to pragmatism, epistemic contextualism, and differentiate it from pragmatism. In conclusion, I will apply my definition of pragmatism and the pragmatism-contextualism distinction in an attempt to (...) codify the theories of knowledge of some of the popular so-called neopragmatists. Epistemic Pragmatism The term "pragmatism" (and indeed, the term "contextualism") refers to much more than simply a theory of knowledge. Pragmatism can rightly be described as a complete philosophical Weltanschauung, a plenary and exhaustive view of the world and the human animal's relationship to it. Furthermore, pragmatism is a holistic, organic system in which every part and parcel coheres with and relies upon every other. Thus, it may be in some way inappropriate or illegitimate to partition off pragmatism's epistemology or metaphysics or... (shrink)

In his Locke Lectures Brandom proposes to extend what he calls the project of analysis to encompass various relationships between meaning and use. As the traditional project of analysis sought to clarify various logical relations between vocabularies so Brandom’s extended project seeks to clarify various pragmatically mediated semantic relations between vocabularies. The point of the exercise in both cases is to achieve what Brandom thinks of as algebraic understanding. Because the pragmatist critique of the traditional project of analysis was precisely (...) to deny that such understanding is appropriate to the case of natural language, the very idea of an analytic pragmatism is called into question by that critique. My aim is to clarify the prospects for Brandom’s project, or at least something in the vicinity of that project, through a comparison of it with what I will suggest we can think of as Kant’s analytic pragmatism as developed by Peirce. (shrink)

The recent growth of whiteness studies has brought whiteness under increasing scrutiny as a racial category that is both constructed and morally problematic. Two approaches dominate this relatively new discourse on the proper approach to whiteness. The first approach is eliminativism , which starts from the insight that the discursive categories of race, including whiteness, lack the biological ground that Enlightenment era theorists thought they had, and therefore calls for the elimination of the idea of race. The other, more heterogeneous, (...) approach is that of the critical conservationists who agree with the general spirit of the eliminativists (namely that the idea of whiteness lacks a biological referent) but for various reasons do not think that racial categories should be eliminated. This article suggests an alternative to these two models of whiteness studies. The alternative is grounded in the pragmatism of W. E. B. Du Bois and John Dewey. It reconciles the two dominant approaches by showing how white folk can develop a determinate, historical critique of whiteness. The pragmatist method advocated here fragments whiteness into more authentic and liberatory cultural categories that recognize the unwarranted privileges associated with whiteness and takes action to relinquish them. Key Words: critical conservationism • John Dewey • W. E. B. Du Bois • eliminativism • Terrance MacMullan • pragmatism • race • whiteness • Naomi Zack. (shrink)

Pragmatism's advantage -- Reclaiming naturalism -- Vicissitudes of transcendental reason -- Pragmatism and the prospect of a rapprochement within Eurocentric philosophy.

The best of Peirce, James, and Dewey has thus resurfaced in deep, interesting, and fruitful ways, explored in this volume by David Bakhurst, Arthur Fine, Ian ...

The pragmatist view of politics is at its very heart epistemic, for it treats morals and politics as a kind of deliberation or inquiry, not terribly unlike other kinds of inquiry. With the exception of Richard Rorty, the pragmatists argue that morals and politics, like science, aim at the truth or at getting things right and that the best method for achieving this aim is a method they sometimes call the scientific method or the method of intelligence – what would (...) now be termed deliberative democracy. Hence, the pragmatists offer an argument for democracy which appeals to the quality of the decisions supplied by democratic procedure. Why should we value decisions that are the products of voting after open debate over private decision-making and then voting, over bargaining, or over elimination of those who disagree with us? We should value them because the deliberative democratic method is more likely to give us true or right or justified answers to our questions. Rorty, of course, thinks that no inquiry aims at the truth and that nothing about pragmatism speaks in democracy’s favor. This paper will show how his brand of pragmatism betrays what is good and deeply interesting in the pragmatist tradition. (shrink)

In this work Paul Murray explores which style of rationality is most appropriate to Christian theology in the contemporary pluralist, postfoundationalist, ...

Using the work of pragmatists Peirce andWhitehead in particular to ground his philosophy of religion, Neville surveys a wide swath of twentieth-century theology ...

Interest in Barack Obama’s status as a philosophical pragmatist has recently surged in scholarly circles, particularly within the disciplines of Philosophy and Political Science, as well as among policy pundits and conspiracy theorists. Arguments and speculation concerning Obama’s pragmatist credentials can be found in philosophers’ blogs (e.g. Michael Eldridge’s “Barack Obama’s Pragmatism” and Mitchell Aboulafia’s “Obama’s Pragmatism”), political commentators’ blogs (e.g. Robert Reich’s “Obama and Pragmatism: Thinking Through Values” and Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten’s “Barack Obama: Pragmatic Progressive”) and even (...) academic papers (e.g. Bart Shultz’s “Obama’s Political Philosophy" and Michael Eldridge’s “Adjectival and Generic Pragmatism: Problems and Possibilities"). One could dismiss the phenomenon as equivalent to the surge of speculation during the past eight years that philosophical Straussians (or followers of the late Leo Strauss, such as Paul Wolfowitz) had captured the Bush administration’s policy agenda: that is, a species of conspiracy theory with only circumstantial evidence supporting it. Yet, more evidence seems to confirm the Obama-as-pragmatist hypothesis than the Straussian-capture theory. However, the lacunae in these Obama-as-pragmatist accounts, whether in the scholarly journals, the blogosphere or the traditional news media, concerns whether his pragmatist approach extends beyond domestic affairs. Some only address his pragmatism in the realm of domestic politics; others uncritically assume that it does carry over to international politics. So, is Obama also a pragmatist in international affairs? Although pragmatism does not fit nicely into any of the traditional theoretic frameworks in foreign policy/international relations (realism, liberalism and constructivism), I argue that it represents a mixed-methods approach that floats freely between multiple frameworks, tailoring them to the conditions of the international situation and crafting tools to resolve or ameliorate particular global problems. In defending this thesis, I rely on two papers authored by the classic American Pragmatist John Dewey: “Three Independent Factors in Morals” and “Imperialism is Easy.”. (shrink)

According to the 'incompatibility thesis,' tenets of Marxist and Pragmatist ethics are incompatible at a very basic level. An opening move in the strategy of defending the incompatibility thesis is to summon the ghosts of Pragmatists and Marxists past, such as John Dewey and Leon Trotsky, and recount how their positions in a debate concerning ethics proved to be fundamentally at odds. The central claim of the paper is that despite the initial promise of this strategy, scholars should be wary (...) of citing the 1930s debate between Dewey and Trotsky and the differences revealed in this exchange as evidence in support of the incompatibility thesis. Significant areas of agreement between the two thinkers, both in their exchange and in the events surrounding it, ought to make us question the claimed incompatibility between Marxist and Pragmatist ethics. After presenting its standard interpretation, the ethical dimension of the debate is brought to the fore. Two versions of the debate - one offered by a Trotskyite and contemporary of Dewey and Trotsky's (George Novack) and the other by a recent Dewey biographer (Alan Ryan) - are reviewed. Both, it is argued, exaggerate Dewey and Trotsky's differences. Next, four areas of agreement between the two thinkers' ethical views are identified, each drawing support from the content of their debate as well from select events in the years preceding and following it. By way of reconstructing the Trotsky-Dewey debate, it is possible to trace a vital thread between Pragmatist and Marxist ethics - or so it is argued. (shrink)

It is commonplace in cognitive science that concepts are individuated in terms of the roles they play in the cognitive lives of thinkers, a view that Jerry Fodor has recently been dubbed ‘Concept Pragmatism’. Quinean critics of Pragmatism have long argued that it founders on its commitment to the analytic/synthetic distinction, since without such a distinction there is plausibly no way to distinguish constitutive from non-constitutive roles in cognition. This paper considers Fodor’s empirical arguments against analyticity, and in particular his (...) arguments against lexical decomposition and definitions, and argues that Concept Pragmatists have two viable options with respect to them. First, Concept Pragmatists can confront them head-on, and argue that they do not show that lexical items are semantically primitive or that lexical concepts are internally unstructured. Second, Pragmatists may accept that these arguments show that lexical concepts are atomic, but insist that this need not entail that Pragmatism is false. For there is a viable version of Concept Pragmatism that does not take lexical items to be semantically structured or lexical concepts to be internally structured. Adopting a version of Pragmatism that takes meaning relations to be specified by inference rules, or meaning postulates, allows one to accept the empirical arguments in favor of Concept Atomism, while at the same time deny that such arguments show that there are no analyticities. The paper concludes by responding to Fodor’s recent objection that such a version of Concept Pragmatism has unhappy consequences concerning the relation between concept constitution and concept possession. (shrink)

This paper is a reaction to an article by John Arras published earlier in this journal. In this article Arras argues that freestanding pragmatism has little new to offer to bioethics. We respond to some of Arras' arguments and conclude that, although he overstates his case at certain points, his critique is, broadly speaking, correct. We then introduce and discuss an alternative approach to pragmatist ethics, one which puts to work the ideas and insights of pragmatism conceived as a broad (...) philosophical movement, without lapsing into a canon dependent approach. The approach we propose exhibits a number of characteristics that differ from Arras'saccount of freestanding pragmatism and offers something new to bioethics. (shrink)

In early work, I argued that Barack Obama, the 44th president of the United States, often represented, in his political speeches and writings, a form of philosophical pragmatism with special relations to the University of Chicago and its reform tradition. That form of pragmatism, especially evident in the work of such early figures as John Dewey and Jane Addams, and such later figures as Saul Alinsky, Abner Mikva, David Greenstone, Richard Rorty, Danielle Allen, and Cass Sunstein, contributed greatly to the (...) intellectual atmosphere that Obama breathed during his many years in Chicago as a community organizer, senior lecturer in the University of Chicago Law School, and emerging figure in Illinois politics. And that form of pragmatism has, from Dewey to Obama, been keenly concerned to appropriate for its purposes the legacy of Abraham Lincoln. My purpose in this essay is to set out these filiations in ways more accessible to a global audience, and to carry the story forward through the opening moves of the Obama presidency. Key Words: Obama • pragmatism • optimism • pessimism • community • rhetoric • political philosophy. (shrink)

Unlike our counterparts in Europe who have rewritten their specific cultural philosophical heritage, American feminists have not yet critically reappropriated our own philosophical tradition of classical American pragmatism. The neglect is especially puzzling, given that both feminism and pragmatism explicitly acknowledge the material or cultural specificity of supposedly abstract theorizing. In this article I suggest some reasons for the neglect, call for the rediscovery of women pragmatists, reflect on a feminine side of pragmatism, and point out some common features. The (...) aim is to encourage the further development of a feminist revisioning of pragmatism and a pragmatist version of feminism. (shrink)

In the last decade there has been a pragmatic turn in the work of those doing Christian ethics, especially as represented by the work of Jeffrey Stout and Franklin Gamwell. The pragmatic turn represents a critique of the highly influential work of Stanley Hauerwas and Alasdair MacIntyre, which argues for a strongly intra-church ethics. The pragmatists are correct in arguing that Christian ethics must engage the public sphere. However, I argue that they are deeply mistaken in their claim that this (...) engagement must rest on a weak or non-existent theology. I show that the claim that robust theology adds nothing to ethics, and that we can get along without it, is unsustainable. (shrink)

A Companion to Pragmatism, comprised of 38 newly commissioned essays, provides comprehensive coverage of one of the most vibrant and exciting fields of philosophy today. Unique in depth and coverage of classical figures and their philosophies as well as pragmatism as a living force in philosophy. Chapters include discussions on philosophers such as John Dewey, Jürgen Habermas and Hilary Putnam.

This essay suggests that the U.S.-American Pragmatist tradition could be fruitfully reconstructed by way of a dialogue with Latin American Liberation Philosophy. More specifically, I work to establish a common ground for future comparative work by: 1) gathering and interpreting Enrique Dussel’s scattered comments on Pragmatism, 2) showing how the concept of liberation already functions in John Dewey’s Pragmatism, and 3) suggesting reasons for further developing this inter-American philosophical dialogue and debate.

: In my response to the comments of Vincent Colapietro, Charlene Seigfried, and Gail Weiss on Living Across and Through Skins (Sullivan 2001), I explain pragmatist feminism as an ecological ontology that understands bodies and environments as dynamically co-constitutive. I then discuss the relationship of pragmatist feminism to phenomenology, psychoanalysis, Nietzschean genealogy, and Darwinian evolutionary theory. Some of the specific concepts I examine include the anonymous body, the bodying organism, truth as transactional flourishing, and the preservation of racial and ethnic (...) categories. (shrink)

Although Brandom is critical of some features of narrowly conceived classical pragmatism, at the same time he explicitly embraces a version of pragmatism, both in his overall philosophical outlook, and in his philosophy of language. Brandom’s distinctive theoretical approach is based on what he calls rationalist pragmatism, which is a version of fundamental pragmatism. Within the philosophy of language it takes the form of semantic pragmatism. The paper briefly discusses Brandomian version of fundamental pragmatism and its semantic underpinning, and subsequently (...) formulates a basic dilemma it encounters there. (shrink)

This article explores pragmatism's associationwith relativism, not to rescue it fromrelativism but rather to highlight how aspectsof the classic pragmatists' positions supportqualified relativism. I do so in an effort tohelp restore ``relativism'' as a meaningfulconcept that is nuanced and complex, ratherthan naive and vulgar, as it is regularlyportrayed by more traditional philosophers. This nuanced relativism I call qualifiedrelativism. Qualified relativists insist thatall inquiry are affected by philosophicalassumptions which are culturally bound, andthat all inquirers are situated knowers who areculturally bound as (...) well. However, we cancompensate for our cultural embeddedness byopening our horizons and including others inour conversations. I connect the classicpragmatist points to current feministepistemological work and show that qualifiedrelativists (pragmatists, feminists, andpostmodernists) can claim roots to theirpositions in Peirce, James, and Dewey, some ofthe very scholars others turn to for theirpragmatic realism and their nonvulgar absolutism. (shrink)