Despite an attempt to break with the hierarchical picture in traditional emergentist thought, non-standard accounts of emergence are often still committed to a premise that ontology is prior to epistemology. This paper aims to topple this last remnant of the traditional hierarchy by explicating a pragmatic view of emergence based on John Dewey’s work. Dewey argued that the traditional notion of ontology is premised on a view of existence as complete. Through a discussion of Dewey’s work it is argued that (...) this premise results in a process of reification that unduly excludes from ontology many precarious and indeterminate aspects involved both in everyday life and in philosophic and scientific inquiry. Building on a recent explication of transformational emergence the paper proposes a diachronic and non-hierarchical account of emergence, called pragmatic emergence. According to that account the relation between ontology and epistemology is a temporally reciprocal one. This means that ontological and epistemological features co-determine each other over time. Determinacy and continuity become historical features of a multitude of unfinished processes that we view from within. (shrink)

This essay contrasts Richard Rorty’s the low-key, naturalistic handling of ontological concerns with the metaphysical approach that has recently become predominant within philosophy. It identifies some features of the latter approach that will surprise many outsiders who sympathise with the anti-metaphysical turn taken since Hume. The essay suggests that while Rorty does not provide a theoretical antidote to metaphysically-laden ontology, he does offer pragmatic advice that its advocates would do well to heed.