Philosophical Pragmatism

2021 ◽  
pp. 23-70
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Pragmatism

scholarly journals Peirce’s Classification of the Sciences

2020 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 267-278
Author(s):  
Torjus Midtgarden
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Life Experience ◽  
Physical Nature ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Empirical Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
Methodological Principles ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Charles Peirce’s classification of the sciences was designed shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. The classification has two main sources of inspiration: Comte’s science classification and Kant’s theoretical philosophy. Peirce’s classification, like that of Comte, is hierarchically organised in that the more general and abstract sciences provide principles for the less general and more concrete sciences. However, Peirce includes and assigns a superordinate role to philosophical disciplines which analyse and provide logical, methodological and ontological principles for the specialised sciences, and which are based on everyday life experience. Moreover, Peirce recognises two main branches of specialised empirical science: the natural sciences, on the one hand, and the social sciences, the humanities and psychology on the other. While both branches share logical and methodological principles, they are based on different ontological principles in studying physical nature and the human mind and its products, respectively. Peirce’s most basic philosophical discipline, phenomenology, transforms his early engagement with Kant. Peirce’s classification of aesthetics, ethics and logic as normative sub-disciplines of philosophy relate to his philosophical pragmatism. Yet his more overarching division between theoretical (philosophical and specialised) sciences and practical sciences may be seen as problematic. Taking Peirce’s historical account of scientific developments into consideration, however, I argue that his science classification and its emphasis on the interdependencies between the sciences could be seen as sustaining and supporting interdisciplinarity and interaction across fields of research, even across the divide between theoretical and practical sciences.

scholarly journals Meaning in the Weaving: Mapping and Texture as Figures of Spatiality and Eventness

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 10 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teemu Paavolainen
Keyword(s):  
Graphic Representation ◽  
Spatial Mapping ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
Ecological Range

Advocating a dramaturgical ontology of events rather than objects – or ecologies rather than cartographies – the article defends the metaphors of texture and weaving as intuitive, non-anthropocentric alternatives to current idioms of becoming and emergence. Already popularized as the very definition of “dramaturgy” by Eugenio Barba, these are specifically traced through Tim Ingold’s recent anthropology of weaving and S. C. Pepper’s philosophical pragmatism: where Ingold’s ecology of lines admits to “no insides or outsides [...] trailing loose ends in every direction”, Pepper’s “contextualistic world” of events admits “no top nor bottom” to its strands and textures. Intended only as a theoretical introduction to the implications of a certain family of metaphors (complete with a graphic representation thereof ), this article distinguishes the eventness of texture from certain notions of spatial “mapping” and discusses the “ecological” range of the metaphor through the concepts of textural fusion and spread.

scholarly journals Pragmatisme og "practice turn"

2018 ◽  
pp. 43-61
Author(s):  
Antje Gimmler
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
John Dewey ◽  
Social Scientist ◽  
The Other ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Practice Turn ◽  
Understanding Of Science ◽  
The One ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism

Practices are of central relevance both to philosophical pragmatism and to the recent ‘Practice Turn’ in social sciences and philosophy. However, what counts as practices and how practices and knowledge are combined or intertwine varies in the different approaches of pragmatism and those theories that are covered by the umbrella term ‘Practice Turn’. The paper tries to show that the pragmatism of John Dewey is able to offer both a more precise and a more radical understanding of practices than the recent ‘Practice Turn’ allows for. The paper on the one hand highlights what pragmatism has to offer to the practice turn in order to clarify the notion of practice. On the other hand the paper claims that a pragmatism inspired by Dewey actually interprets ‘practices’ more radically than most of the other approaches and furthermore promotes an understanding of science that combines nonrepresentationalism and anti-foundationalism with an involvement of the philosopher or the social scientist in the production of knowledge, things and technologies.

Defense Acquisition, Public Administration, and Pragmatism

2019 ◽  
pp. 774-792
Author(s):  
Keith F. Snider
Keyword(s):  
Public Administration ◽  
Minor Role ◽  
Potential Contribution ◽  
Defense Acquisition ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
A Minor ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Administrative Theory ◽  
Acquisition Professionals

This chapter explores the relationship of U.S. defense management to public administration. It argues that public administration, as a field of study, plays a minor role in defense acquisition, because acquisition has unique characteristics that separate it from the mainstream of the field. The tenuous connections between acquisition and public administration have led to an issue of academic legitimacy in that the discipline has failed to respond to the needs of acquisition professionals. The chapter then presents a discussion and illustration of philosophical pragmatism as a potential contribution of administrative theory to acquisition practice, and it concludes with thoughts on the potential for acquisition to adopt pragmatism as a guiding way for thought and practice.

How Japan affects the international system

1990 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 553-588 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Schmiegelow ◽  
Michèle Schmiegelow
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Structural Changes ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Paradigm Change ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
International Environment ◽  
Global Welfare ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
Fiscal Conservatism

To cope with more than incremental change in the international system, the neorealist concept of structure and the neoliberal concept of process must be complemented by a third analytically distinguished element: the concept of action. All three concepts can be used on the systemic level of analysis of international relations theory. Their obvious differentiation is the degree of systemic consolidation, with structure at the highest, action at the lowest, and process at unstable intermediate degrees. Without analyzing prevailing models of action of important units of the international system, it is impossible to predict the possible range of outcomes of processes and structural changes in the international system.This article offers Japan's “strategic pragmatism” as a model of action. The model, representing a functional cut across contending economic doctrines, combines relative fiscal conservatism with “progressive” provision of credit, dynamic capitalism with public policy activism, and critical rationalism with philosophical pragmatism. Japan's strategic pragmatism has not only enabled its government and enterprises to cope with uncertainty and change in their domestic and international environment but has also increased global welfare and changed the balance of strategic components of power in the international system. The spread of this model of action both within and beyond Japan's control points to a paradigm change in economic and international relations theory—that is, to the most pervasive form of systemic consolidation.

scholarly journals Educating American Lawyers: The New Haven School’s Jurisprudence of Personal Character

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ríán Derrig
Keyword(s):  
American Foreign Policy ◽  
Social Planning ◽  
Social Critique ◽  
New Haven ◽  
American Modernism ◽  
Legal Realism ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Intellectual Origins ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
The Cold War

Abstract Using previously unexploited archival sources and unpublished teaching materials, this article rereads Harold Lasswell and Myres McDougal’s earliest 1943 statement of policy-oriented jurisprudence – what would become known as the ‘New Haven School’ – and examines their wartime careers in government and academia. It breaks with widely held current understandings of the New Haven School. First, Lasswell and McDougal’s work is re-periodized. Instead of a reactionary answer lawyers offered to international relations realists in the 1940s, I argue that policy-oriented jurisprudence was a product of interwar insecurities and the rising culture of American modernism from the 1920s. Second, notwithstanding frequent associations of the jurisprudence with interventionist, anti-communist American foreign policy during the Cold War, the article emphasizes Lasswell and McDougal’s engagement with progressive politics of the early 20th century – New Deal social planning and redistribution; psychoanalytically inspired social critique; Marxism and socialism. Third, I argue that the school’s primary intellectual origins are to be found not in American legal realism or positivist social science, but in philosophical pragmatism and psychoanalysis.

Two Problematic Foundations of Neuroethics and Pragmatist Reconstructions

2018 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 566-577 ◽  
Author(s):  
ERIC RACINE ◽  
MATTHEW SAMPLE
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Psychiatric Conditions ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
Problematic Situations

Abstract:Common understandings of neuroethics, that is, of its distinctive nature, are premised on two distinct sets of claims: (1) neuroscience can change views about the nature of ethics itself and neuroethics is dedicated to reaping such an understanding of ethics, and (2) neuroscience poses challenges distinct from other areas of medicine and science and neuroethics tackles those issues. Critiques have rightfully challenged both claims, stressing how the first may lead to problematic forms of reductionism whereas the second relies on debatable assumptions about the nature of bioethics specialization and development. Informed by philosophical pragmatism and our experience in neuroethics, we argue that these claims are ill founded and should give way to pragmatist reconstructions; namely, that neuroscience, much like other areas of empirical research on morality, can provide useful information about the nature of morally problematic situations, but does not need to promise radical and sweeping changes to ethics based on neuroscientism. Furthermore, the rationale for the development of neuroethics as a specialized field need not to be premised on the distinctive nature of the issues it tackles or of neurotechnologies. Rather, it can espouse an understanding of neuroethics as both a scholarly and a practical endeavor dedicated to resolving a series of problematic situations raised by neurological and psychiatric conditions.

scholarly journals Epistemology and social work: Integrating theory, research and practice through philosophical pragmatism

2016 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 33-67
Author(s):  
Steve J Hothersall
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Knowledge Creation ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Research And Practice ◽  
Theoretical Paper ◽  
Context Dependent ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
Theory Research

Debates regarding theory and practice in social work have often avoided detailed discussion regarding the nature of knowledge itself and the various ways this can be created. As a result, positivistic conceptions of knowledge are still assumed by many to be axiomatic, such that context-dependent and practitioner-oriented approaches to knowledge creation and use are assumed to lack epistemological rigor and credibility. By drawing on epistemology, this theoretical paper outlines the case for a renewed approach to knowledge definition, creation and use within social work by reference to pragmatism. Pragmatism has the potential to act as an organizing theoretical framework, taking account of the role of both ontology and epistemology, acting as a functional methodology for the further enhancement of practice-based knowledge.

Jazz

2020 ◽  
pp. 577-599
Author(s):  
Garry L. Hagberg
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Representational Content ◽  
Collective Intention ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Harmonic Language ◽  
Philosophical Pragmatism ◽  
American Contribution ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines the practices that define jazz as an art form, including its rhythmic character, its harmonic language, and its distinctive approach to melody. Issues of swing, of the creativity of jazz that is found within its harmonic realization and chord voicings, and of the character of melodic invention in jazz are all considered. The nature of improvisation as a form of pathfinding is also discussed, with particular foci including ethical issues in performance and the artistic obligations under which jazz players perform, group attention and the way attention is distributed across players, jazz as a representational art and the ways we can see representational content within it, the special way that collective intention and distributed creativity work within an improvising ensemble, and relations between jazz and another great American contribution, philosophical Pragmatism.

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