To anyone vaguely aware of Feyerabend, the title of this paper would appear as an oxymoron. For Feyerabend, it is often thought, science is an anarchic practice with no discernible structure. Against this trend, I elaborate the groundwork that Feyerabend has provided for the beginnings of an approach to organizing scientific research. Specifically, I argue that Feyerabend’s pluralism, once suitably modified, provides a plausible account of how to organize science. These modifications come from C.S. Peirce’s account of the economics of (...) theory pursuit, which has since been corroborated by empirical findings in the social sciences. I go on to contrast this approach with the conception of a ‘well-ordered science’ as outlined by Kitcher (Science, truth, and democracy, Oxford University Press, New York, 2001), Cartwright (Philos Sci 73(5):981–990, 2006), which rests on the assumption that we can predict the content of future research. I show how Feyerabend has already given us reasons to think that this model is much more limited than it is usually understood. I conclude by showing how models of resource allocation, specifically those of Kitcher (J Philos 87:5–22, 1990), Strevens (J Philos 100(2):55–79, 2003) and Weisberg and Muldoon (Philos Sci 76(2):225–252, 2009), unwittingly make use of this problematic assumption. I conclude by outlining a proposed model of resource allocation where funding is determined by lottery and briefly examining the extent to which it is compatible with the position defended in this paper. (shrink)

Ernst Mach and Wilhelm Jerusalem may be considered exponents of a homegrown European version of pragmatism. The purpose of this paper is to highlight the strongly social orientation Jerusalem gave to his. Particular attention will be paid to some of his predecessors to exhibit the relevance of a pioneering but largely forgotten type of social science for the development of his version of European pragmatism. Broadly speaking, considerations from Völkerpsychologie played the role for the development of Jerusalem’s views that considerations (...) from the history of science played for the views of Mach. Of particular interest to us here is how these broadly sociological ideas fed into Jerusalem’s philosophy and his understanding and appreciation of pragmatism. (shrink)

According to W. V. Quine, science advocates a physicalist ontology and an empiricist epistemology. However, Quine’s ontological physicalism includes the abstract objects of mathematics, such as numbers or sets. So, Quine’s commitments to empiricism are firm but not permanent. Quine has incorporated various elements of pragmatic thought into his philosophical outlook, that is why I advocate that Quine’s philosophy decidedly gives to the pragmatic view of empiricism.

The paper defends the idea that Jamesian pragmatism, Nietzschean perspectivism, and philosophical anthropology represent a consistent triad, for the similarities and connections between the first two positions rest in their engagement with the anthropological question. As will be argued, a) pragmatism is concerned with anthropology and that it deals with a fundamental issue of Nietzsche’s late thought; b) the problem of the type of man (der Typus Mensch) is involved in Nietzsche’s questioning the value of truth, and perspectivism is an (...) alternative view to Platonic and Christian metaphysics which arises from the same phenomenalist conception of knowledge defended by James ; c) Nietzsche’s interest in developing a philosophy that affirms the perspectival character of existence is primarily anthropological, and this is in fact the pragmatic criterion of validity that one can attribute to Nietzschean perspectivism. (shrink)

Broad consensus exists in development studies that development involves achieving and sustaining a so-called “good life.” Considerably less agreement exists, however, as to what the goal of such a life consists in and what the best practices are for bringing such a life about. The varying and competing types of approaches to development currently on offer, including cultural-economic approaches, capabilities approaches, and happiness approaches, are the conceptual by-products of this discord. The impasse between these approaches owes in part to the (...) vagueness and seeming incommensurability of value judgments. It owes in equal part to three common and interwoven tendencies when it comes to how values are approached in development theory and practice. These include: the tendency to view values as fixed and final; the tendency to formulate and evaluate means distinctly from ends; and the tendency to equate the individual character of value experience with value subjectivism, though it is wholly compatible with value objectivism. The purpose of this paper is to critically analyze these value tendencies while offering a theoretical reconstruction of each utilizing conceptual resources from philosophical pragmatism, especially John Dewey’s version it. It is argued that, by adopting a more pragmatic approach to values, development theorists and practitioners can constructively move past the present impasse in development studies. (shrink)

“If you will listen to me, I will say, do not involve yourselves in any –ism. Study every –ism. Ponder and assimilate what you have read and try to practice yourself what appeals to you out of it. But for heaven’s sake do not set out to establish any –ism.”William James’s 1907 treatise Pragmatism is the book in which James most clearly lays out the core tenets of pragmatism and makes arguments for pragmatism over against rival schools of philosophy. Precisely (...) for this reason, I argue, it may very well be his least persuasive case for pragmatism.To understand why, we will need to analyze the distinctive grammar of pragmatism. According to James, pragmatism is a method and “a method only,”2 specifically a method that... (shrink)

In what follows I shall investigate how the notions of truth and invention inform our moral life. In particular, I will show how this idea has been explored by William James in his seminal essay The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life (MPML), by far his most clear-cut piece of moral philosophy. I will claim that the dialectics of the essay cannot be apprehended independently from the understanding of the moral psychology and epistemology James elaborates in his writings on pragmatism (...) and the philosophy of mind. In fact, once framed in the relevant perspective, the essay conveys a very different and more radical position that the one usually acknowledged. In MPML James engages in an inquiry into the nature of moral thought and its ability to meet the difficulties of the moral life it should address. The essay criticizes a certain image of moral reflection by questioning its underlying assumptions about the nature of mindedness and the place of truth in the moral life. I shall thus articulate the discussion of James’ essay along two directions, one methodological and one substantive. They are, respectively, the anti-foundational and anti-theoretical character of moral reflection, and the rethinking of the relationship we have with our interiority that is relevant for ethics as informed by the notion of truth. (shrink)

Adopting a communication as constitutive of organization (CCO) perspective on ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) invites us to create the conditions of a dialogue, discussion, or debate between various stakeholders, who can then try to confront their respective positions on a given issue, and possibly come to a decision regarding how a situation should be evaluated and/or responded to. As shown in this article, getting human stakeholders to voice their concerns about a specific situation is a way not only (...) to rationally confront multiple viewpoints on what should be done about it (à la Habermas) but also to allow elements of this situation to reveal themselves in a discussion. This is why any ethical decision has to experience a form of undecidability and surprisability. When beliefs and opinions can be called into question, it means that participants are ready to become attentive to what a situation might surprisingly call for. Communication is therefore a matter of ventriloquism, as human participants should also be considered the means by which elements of a situation manage to express themselves in a discussion, dictating specific courses of action over others. This concretely means that multiple voices can be heard in such a scene: not only the voices of the human stakeholders who speak to each other but also the voices of facts, principles, future generations, ecosystems, populations that are made to say things through these various turns of talk. (shrink)

Aquí nos dedicamos al problema central de pensar cuál sería el motivo de recuperar los vínculos sociales en escenarios de reconciliación, perdón y justicia. Vamos a tratar de mostrar que hacerle frente a la posibilidad de vivir juntos, con todo lo ocurrido en el pasado, es un asunto que compromete criterios de composición social y fuentes de confluencia local que necesitan ser caracterizados teóricamente. Así, pues, nos preguntamos de qué son capaces los sujetos cuando se unen, se organizan, piensan y (...) deciden juntos. ¿Qué es aquello de lo que son capaces los colectivos para superar el pasado? La hipótesis de trabajo es la siguiente: la fraternidad de la existencia alegre, justo en el seno de los dilemas asociados al Terror y la Dolor, constituye la empresa de salvar la vida y las posibilidades que contiene. Al pensamiento de lo colectivo y al élan de la fraternidad nos apegamos para decir que es en el problema de la composición y de la celebración de las capacidades que vamos a encontrar el camino a los motivos de vivir juntos. (shrink)

In investigating Dewey’s theory of the Great community, it is important to first examine closely Dewey’s theory of scientific inquiry and show how it evades the spectator theory of knowledge common to all modern epistemologies as closed systems. Dewey maintained that through controlled experimentalism we engage, and can solve, existential issues facing us for the purpose of expanding human freedom, promoting the democratic way of life and cultivating the institutions which foster these activities. The usage of inquiry to overcome problematic (...) situations therefore stands as one of the first conditions needed to attain the great community. Since Dewey did not view human beings as isolated and passive spectators he engaged in formulating what it means to become an individual with experimental habits. Dewey envisioned humans as organisms operating in a common cultural environment rather than private entities cut off from one another. We are communal by way of communication. The next condition required to bring about the great community is open communication. Dewey held that human beings need to operate through the development of such habits that assist them in overcoming obstacles by means of an education that secures the process of cultural growth. This aspect of his theory became the backbone of Dewey’s conception of ethical value and his political theory. Members of the Great community must trust and freely associate to accomplish the social growth that Dewey advocates therefore free association is another condition for the achievability of the great community. As I argue, for Dewey, any way of life which is oriented toward individual growth can be democratic. A democratic way of life is shown to be superior to any other currently pursued. Thus, any community which cultivates democratic practices throughout its culture can become a participant in the great community. By so doing it allows the individuals of that community to flourish as ethical and cognitive agents. Therefore democracy as a way of life requires that individuals participate within the cultivation of themselves and their community and this is the next condition for achieving the great community. The final condition for achieving the great community is the full integration and usage of individual’s potentialities. If these six conditions are met, Dewey held the conditions would be ripe to bring about a great community. He never completed the social task of what the great community would be once attained, but this dissertation will gather together the materials he did provide on it and trace the steps that would be needed to achieve it. (shrink)

William James’s interest in psychical phenomena spanned his entire career as a scholar, yet is has been largely neglected. Few if any have adequately incorporated this quirky side of James into their critical studies of his scholarly contributions, not only in religious studies but also in philosophy and psychology. Psychical research was nevertheless very much part of James’s intellectual endeavors and, as this article shall argue, sheds light on an evolving, complex, and contradictory Jamesian cosmological realism. I will contextual James’s (...) widely discussed Varieties of Religious Experience, relying on his voluminous correspondence, and will explore various articulations of pragmatism, vis-à-vis James, John Dewey, Hilary Putnam, and Richard Rorty, particularly as those articulations apply to scholarship in religious studies and as they shed light on a Jamesian cosmology. I will then conclude with a discussion of psychical research as it relates to epistemology and the (scientific) study of that cosmos. (shrink)

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law-like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question whether this is possible and what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” (...) that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life. (shrink)

This paper tackles with the issue of the place of comprehensive beliefs within the public space. It tries to strike a middle path between the liberal ban on comprehensive beliefs and the anti-liberal claim that comprehensive beliefs should be given full pride of place in public deliberations. The article relies on arguments that are inspired by the pragmatist tradition. It starts locating the main cause of failures at articulating comprehensive beliefs and public reason in a central feature of liberal epistemology, (...) namely the way it conceives public reason via a preliminary distinction between public and non public beliefs. After criticizing this distinction, the article introduces a distinction between the normative practice of justification and the normative practice of adjudication as a more perspicuous way to establish the place that comprehensive beliefs should play within political forums. It then concludes showing that this approach provides a satisfying answer to the issue of the public role of comprehensive beliefs in a liberal democratic regime that is respectful of citizens’ thick identities while at the same time complying with the requirements of respect set by the liberal tradition. Keywords: public reason and religion - pragmatism - liberalism - communitarianism - normative practices. (shrink)