There might not be a specific nano-ethics, but there definitely is an ethics of new & emerging science and technology (NEST), with characteristic tropes and patterns of moral argumentation. Ethical discussion in and around nanoscience and technology reflects such NEST-ethics. We offer an inventory of the arguments, and show patterns in their evolution, in arenas full of proponents and opponents. We also show that there are some nano-specific issues: in how size matters, and when agency is delegated to smart devices. (...) Our overall approach is a pragmatist ethics, and we conclude that struggle (and learning) might be more productive than models emphasizing consensus. (shrink)

Enrique Dussel and John Dewey share commitments to philosophical theory and practice aimed at addressing human problems, democratic modes of inquiry, and progressive social reform, but also maintain productive differences in their fundamental starting point for political philosophy and their use of the social sciences. Dussel provides a corrective to Dewey’s Eurocentrism and to his tendency to underplay the challenges of incorporating marginalized populations by insisting that social and political philosophy begin from the perspective of the marginalized and excluded. Simultaneously, (...) Dewey encourages a modest experimental and fallibilist approach to social transformation that promises more feasible social reforms than Dussel’s approach rooted in phenomenology and the critical social sciences. (shrink)

For the past thirty years, the Transitional Justice (TJ) research program has been undergoing a period of transition, simultaneously expanding and consolidating; in one sense, expanding its scope to encompass the measurement of TJ’s impact and the redefinition of ‘transitional’ to include societies afflicted by deep social and economic injustice; and in a second sense, consolidating its practical approach to promoting democracy and peace by developing best practices for institutionalizing TJ. While there have been advances in designing new TJ mechanisms (...) and remedying the concept’s under-theorization, little comparative progress has been made to date in offering a guiding framework for TJ’s push to institutionalize. The thesis of this article is that philosophical pragmatism, specifically Deweyan pragmatism, offers a bevy of resources—a virtual tool-kit—for scholars and practitioners wishing to design TJ-friendly institutions within transitional societies. (shrink)

: In this paper we wish to give a short introduction to the programme of interactive constructivism, an approach founded by Kersten Reich and under further development at the University of Cologne. This introduction will be combined with a discussion about the importance of pragmatism as a source of a socially oriented constructivism. For the Cologne programme, especially the philosophy of John Dewey has been very helpful in this respect. We will try to show this relation in two main steps. (...) In the first part we will venture to reconsider Dewey's concept of experience from the standpoint of interactive constructivism. In the second part we will do the same with Dewey's concept of communication. Although we will not be able to explicate all the diverse and complex theoretical perspectives contained in both approaches, we will at least try to give you an impression of how pragmatism and constructivism might mutually enrich each other from our point of view. Please allow us to use a somewhat unconventional form of talk for this purpose. We will introduce in both parts the role of a hypothetical Dewey who discusses and exchanges ideas with us. Contrary to the way that Richard Rorty sometimes resorts to a hypothetical Dewey in his writings, we will use this figure to give Dewey the chance to quote from his own works in order to pose questions to us and criticize our views. Nevertheless, we are aware of the potential traps that such a procedure implies, and it's up to the reader to criticize our ways of selection and omission. (shrink)

Most environmental philosophers have had little use for 'conventional' philosophical and political thought. This is unfortunate, because these traditions can greatly contribute to environmental ethics and policy discussions. One mainstream concept of potential value for environmental philosophy is the notion of the public interest. Yet even though the public interest is widely acknowledged to be a powerful ethical standard in public affairs and public policy, there has been little agreement on its descriptive meaning. A particularly intriguing account of the concept (...) in the literature, however, may be found in the work of the American pragmatist John Dewey. Dewey argued that the public interest was to be continuously constructed through the process of free, cooperative inquiry into the shared good of the democratic community. This Deweyan model of the public interest has much to offer environmental philosophers who are interested in making connections between normative arguments and environmental policy discourse, and it holds great promise for enhancing environmental philosophy's role and impact in public life. (shrink)

As a philosophical position, pragmatism can be critiqued to distinguish truth only with methods that bring about desired results, predominantly with scientific enquiry. The article hopes to dismiss this oversimplification and propose that within mental health nursing, enquiry enlightened by pragmatism can be anchored to methods helping to tackle genuine human problems. Whilst pragmatists suggest one reality exists, fluctuating experiences and shifting beliefs about the world can inhabit within; hence, pragmatists propose reality has the potential to change. Moreover, pragmatism includes (...) being cognisant of what works to whom reality concerns, making reality context‐driven, with a view to understand how actions shape experiences so what is generated has usefulness. Hence, it somewhat follows pragmatism can inform mental health nursing, after all, nursing is a discipline of action, and awareness is needed in how actions produce experiences that patients find helpful. Given the principles of recovery are preferably adopted in mental health care, the paper will explore how pragmatism can help nurses move towards that goal; specifically, with patients voicing their experiences. This is because like pragmatism, recovery subscribes to hope that reality can progress, and through meaningful experiences and beliefs, patients have expertise about personal difficulties alongside how life may flourish, despite mental illness. (shrink)

Can we conceive of a philosophy of technology that is not technophobic, yet takes seriously the problem of alienation and human meaning-giving? This paperretrieves the concern with alienation, but brings it into dialogue with more recent philosophy of technology. It defines and responds to the problem of alienation in a way that avoids both old-style human-centered approaches and contemporary thingcentered or hybridity approaches. In contrast to the latter, it proposes to reconcile subject and object not at the ontic level but (...) at the ontological, transcendental level and at the level of skilled activity. Taking inspiration from Dreyfus’s reading of Heidegger and engaging critically with the work of Borgmann and Arendt, it explores a phenomenology and ethics of skill. It is concluded that new and emerging technologies must be evaluated not only as artifacts and their consequences, but also in terms of the skills and activities they involve and require. Do they promote engagement with the world and with others, thus making us into better persons? (shrink)

This dissertation addresses a debate about the proper relationship between democratic theory and institutions. The debate has been waged between two rival approaches: on the one side is an aggregative and economic theory of democracy, known as constitutional economics, and on the other side is deliberative democracy. The two sides endorse starkly different positions on the issue of what makes a democracy legitimate and stable within an institutional setting. Constitutional economists model political agents in the same way that neoclassical economists (...) model economic agents, that is, as self-regarding, rational maximizers; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and stability depend on the extent to which the design of institutional rules and practices maximize individual utility by promoting efficient schemes of collective choice. Deliberative democrats, on the other hand, understand political agents as communicative reason-giving subjects who justify their preferences and positions on issues that jointly affect them in a process of consensus-directed discourse, or deliberation; so that evaluations of democratic legitimacy and order depend on the degree to which institutional norms and practices promote deliberation and draw upon deliberated public judgment. I argue that despite the numerous incompatibilities between constitutional economics and deliberative democracy—which amount to a 'deep divide'—an opportunity to produce a genuine synthesis of the two approaches arises inasmuch as it is possible to overcome several points of opposition in their separate research programmes. The central thesis of the dissertation is that it is possible to construct a bridge spanning the divide between constitutional economists and deliberative democrats, and that Dewey and Bentley's transactional view can facilitate this bridge-building project. Pursuant to this end, the points of opposition between the v research programmes are mediated by way of five concepts which, on balance, favor deliberative democracy and its feasible institutionalization. (shrink)

In this contribution I outline some ideas on what the pragmatist model of habit ontology could offer us as regards the appreciation of the constitutive role that imagery plays for social action and cognition. Accordingly, a Deweyan understanding of habit would allow for an understanding of imagery in terms of embodied cognition rather than in representational terms. I first underline the motor character of imagery, and the role its embodiment in habit plays for the anticipation of action. Secondly, I reconstruct (...) Dewey's notion of imaginative rehearsal in light of contemporary, competing models of intersubjectivity such as embodied simulation theory and the narrative practice hypothesis, and argue that the Deweyan model offers us a more encompassing framework which can be useful for reconciling these approaches. In this text I am mainly concerned with sketching a broad picture of the lines along which such a project could be developed. For this reason not all questions are given equal attention, and I shall concentrate mainly on the basic ideas, without going directly into the details of many of them. (shrink)

This paper provides a critique of one of the more pivotal aspects of Judge Richard Posner’s legal pragmatism: his interpretation of John Dewey’s account of the relationship between democracy and knowledge, what I call the democracy-knowledge relationship. For Dewey, knowledge and action, including political action, are part of the same continuous process. Posner argues Dewey fails to make a convincing argument on this point. According to Posner, Dewey offers an incoherent democratic theory that is fragmented into what he calls “epistemic” (...) and “deliberative” democratic theories. I argue Posner is wrong in at least three ways: first, Posner exaggerates the extent to which Dewey believed his suggested reforms could actually be implemented; second, he misinterprets Dewey’s understanding of knowledge, both its origin and its function; and finally, Posner commits a classic straw man fallacy in that he presents a distorted account of Dewey’s democratic theory that is readily subject to his own criticisms. (shrink)

This paper explores two different strategies that may be useful to give substance to Deweyan democracy’s claim that in order for democratic associations to develop into communities, citizens need to learn how to conduct inquiry in a social setting. The two strategies reflect a principal division among views of public deliberation. The first strategy, the separation strategy, closely resembles Rawls’ political liberalism by advocating the development of a separate sphere of public deliberation, guided by factual and normative assumptions that we (...) need not accept anywhere outside that sphere. Comprehensive doctrines are to be held outside of public deliberation, a move which makes possible a rather straightforward application of Dewey’s theory of inquiry. The second strategy, the embeddedness strategy, stresses the fact that public deliberation is inevitably embedded in broader spheres of social life, and that the development towards community must be piecemeal, and go hand in hand with developments in social life as a whole. I argue that there are weighty reasons for doubting the feasibility of the separation strategy, and I also argue that these reasons are relevant for our evaluation of all versions of the separation strategy, including political liberalism. I conclude that one of Deweyan democracy’s most important assets, which deserves further examination, is its insight that reflection on public deliberation needs to take its embedded character into account. (shrink)