The tradition of pragmatism has, especially since Dewey, been characterized by a commitment to nonreductive naturalism. The notion of emergence, popular in the early decades of the twentieth century and currently re-emerging as a central concept in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, may be useful in explicating that commitment. The present paper discusses the issue of the reality of emergent properties, drawing particular attention to a pragmatic way of approaching this issue. The reality of emergents can be defended as (...) a pragmatically-useful ontological commitment; hence, pragmatism can be employed as a tool in the debate over the structure and reality of emergence. This strategy of justifying ontological commitments is examined through historical and systematic discussions of the pragmatist tradition. It turns out, among other things, that while classical pragmatists did not specify any technical notion of emergence in the contemporary sense, their non-reductively naturalist views are relevant to the more recent emergence discussions -- especially because they rejected the metaphysical realism typical of today’s ontologically-oriented emergence theories. (shrink)

Science seems generally to aim at truth. And governmental support of science is often premised on the instrumental value of truth in service of advancing our practical objectives, both as individuals and as communities, large and small. While there is some political expediency to this view, it is not correct. The value of truth is nowise that it helps us achieve our aims. In fact, just the contrary: truth deserves to be believed only on the condition that its claim upon (...) us is orthogonal to any utility it might have in the service of (any and all) practical ends. (shrink)

This essay examines critically a number of characteristics of transcendental philosophy. The question, ?What, if anything, distinguishes transcendental philosophy and transcendental arguments from other types of philosophy and argument??, is given a negative answer: nothing, no essential thing, demarcates transcendental argumentation or philosophy from other kinds of philosophical reflection. In particular, argumentative structure alone is not a defining feature of transcendental philosophy. Illustrative examples of recent debates on the meaning and philosophical relevance of the ?transcendental? are discussed in the essay: (...) e.g., attempts to ?naturalize? the transcendental, Wittgensteinian reflections on the limits of meaningful language, and ?merely methodological? interpretations of Kantian transcendental idealism. Through these case studies, it is shown how transcendental inquiry can be rearticulated in a pragmatist context. (shrink)

Was W. E. B. Du Bois a pragmatist? Does it matter? This essay argues that reading Du Bois as a pragmatist highlights aspects of his work and life that might otherwise go unnoticed, while also highlighting aspects of pragmatism that often go unappreciated. In addition, this double revelation may help restore to us some important resources for dealing with current social problems.

A constructivist thesis of worldmaking is characterized and some misinterpretations of its claims are dispelled. An attempt is then made to reply to various common criticisms of the thesis. Although this defense of worldmaking takes into account general challenges to the thesis, the focus of the paper is narrower. It is aimed primarily at those critics who typically accept related pragmatic assumptions and themes, but still think it necessary to resist the idea of worldmaking.

The paper discusses the relation between chess and philosophy, examining, among other things, how far chess might reveal important features of philosophical problemanalysis and argumentation. There is a plurality of scientific, philosophical, and other perspectives from which chess can be viewed. Some attention must be drawn to these various ways of conceptualizing the game, but the main emphasis of the paper lies in uncovering certain philosophically- and metaphilosophically- relevant basic assumptions of chess. It is argued that the thought patterns and (...) reasoning procedures typical of chess seem to merge into those practised in philosophy. Moreover, we face in the common area of chess and other disciplines a multifarious possibility of research programmes, which promise to turn out useful both for the scientific and aesthetic understanding, and perhaps also for the chess tournament practice. Certain philosophical insights inspired by the practice of chess may lead us to transform our views about various complex human phenomena: not only about the nature of calculatory problem-solving and the relation between human intelligence and artificial intelligence, but also about ethical reasoning and even philosophical argumentation itself. (shrink)

To view a work knowingly gives understanding but not hope Rorty, "The Necessity of Inspired Reading" I cannot count one. I know not the first letter of the alphabet. Thoreau, Walden.

Whether we live in a world of autonomous things, or a world of interconnected processes in constant flux, is an ancient philosophical debate. Modern biology provides decisive reasons for embracing the latter view. How does one understand the practices and outputs of science in such a dynamic, ever-changing world - and particularly in an emergency situation such as the COVID-19 pandemic, where scientific knowledge has been regarded as bedrock for decisive social interventions? We argue that key to answering this question (...) is to consider the role of the activity of reification within the research process. Reification consists in the identification of more or less stable features of the flux, and treating these as constituting stable things. As we illustrate with reference to biological and biomedical research on COVID-19, reification is a necessary component of any process of inquiry and comes in at least two forms: means reification, when researchers create objects meant to capture features of the world, or phenomena, in order to be able to study them; and target reification, when researchers infer an understanding of phenomena from an investigation of the epistemic objects created to study them. We note that both objects and phenomena are dynamic processes and argue that have no reason to assume that changes in objects and phenomena track one another. We conclude that failure to acknowledge these forms of reification and their epistemic role in scientific inquiry can have dire consequences for how the resulting knowledge is interpreted and used. (shrink)

The state of computing science and, particularly, software engineering and knowledge engineering is generally considered immature. The best starting point for achieving a mature engineering discipline is a solid scientific theory, and the primary reason behind the immaturity in these fields is precisely that computing science still has no such agreed upon underlying theory. As theories in other fields of science do, this paper formally establishes the fundamental elements and postulates making up a first attempt at a theory in this (...) field, considering the features and peculiarities of computing science. The fundamental elements of this approach are informons and holons, and it is a general and comprehensive theory of software engineering and knowledge engineering that related disciplines (e.g., information systems) can particularise and/or extend to take benefit from it (Lakatos’ concepts of core theory and protective belt theories). (shrink)

One of Mill's primary targets, throughout his work, is intuitionism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of intuitionism, against which Mill offers separate arguments. The first strand, a priorism, makes an epistemic claim about how we come to know norms. The second strand, ‘first principle pluralism’, makes a structural claim about how many fundamental norms there are. In this paper, I suggest that one natural reading of Mill's argument against first principle pluralism is incompatible with the naturalism that drives (...) his argument against a priorism. It must, therefore, be discarded. Such a reading, however, covertly attributes Mill realist commitments about the normative. These commitments are unnecessary. To the extent that Mill's argument against first principle pluralism is taken seriously, I suggest, it is an argument that points towards Mill as having an antirealist approach to the normative. (shrink)

In this dissertation, I argue that we should be pluralists about truth and in turn, eliminativists about the property Truth. Traditional deflationists were right to suspect that there is no such property as Truth. Yet there is a plurality of pluralities of properties which enjoy defining features that Truth would have, were it to exist. So although, in this sense, truth is plural, Truth is non-existent. The resulting account of truth is indebted to deflationism as the provenance of the suspicion (...) that Truth doesn't exist. But it would be hasty to simply classify the account as deflationary. Each of the 'truth-like' properties that it recognizes is highly substantive--that is, complex and explanatorily potent. So we should deflate Truth by recognizing that it doesn't exist, but we should also recognize that one of the most vital tasks in truth theory is to discover the essences of the many truth-like properties. My aim here is to do precisely this. (shrink)

This paper explicates and defends Morton White’s holistic pragmatism, the view that descriptive and normative statements form a “seamless web” which must be tested as a “unified whole”. This position, originally formulated as a methodological and epistemic principle, can be extended into a more general philosophy of culture, as White himself has shown in his book, A Philosophy of Culture (2002). On the basis of holistic pragmatism, the paper also offers a pragmatist conception of metaphilosophy and defends the need for (...) interdisciplinary inquiry. (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)

Abstract: This article defends a controversial metaphilosophical thesis: it is not immediately obvious that "the best argument wins" in philosophy. Certain philosophical views, for example, extremely controversial ethical positions, may be intolerable and impossible to take seriously as contributions to ethical discussion, irrespective of their argumentative merits. As a case study of this metaphilosophical issue, the article discusses David Benatar's recent thesis that it is, for everyone, harmful to exist. It is argued that ethical and cultural "unthinkabilities" set limits to (...) philosophical reasoning that even the most insightful arguments cannot transcend. (shrink)

This article discusses and argues for a ‘new’ and inclusive umbrella concept for varieties of experiences that have been called, inter alia, religious, spiritual, existential, paranormal, extraordinary or inexplicable. The umbrella concept to be explored is seen as a means of capturing one kind of ‘lived religion’ in contemporary society and simultaneously expanding the field of the sociology of religion. The discussion is theoretical and anchored in contemporary theories and traditions in sociology of religion, but it is also of pragmatical, (...) methodological, empirical, and ethical concern. The main concepts that are currently in use and considered as offering a possible umbrella term for this cluster of often overlapping experiences, which are difficult to clearly define and distinguish, are summarized, and the main concepts, such as religious, spiritual and paranormal experiences, are elaborated in more detail. Thereafter follows a definition and in-depth discussion of the suggested concept of mystical experiences. In conclusion, I argue that William James’s concept of mystical experiences, with an upgraded and inclusive understanding considering religious, cultural and societal change, has the potential to work on etic, interdisciplinary and emic levels, without offending the experiencers or violating their interpretations and the meaning-making of their experiences. (shrink)

The author examines the history of pragmatism and maintains that a thematic continuity runs through the classical pragmatists, neopragmatitsts and contemporary pragmatists. This continuity can be vaguely characterized as an integration of theory and practice, but experience gives theory its content such that action is always guiding the formation of knowledge. There are four implications of this continuity. Pragmatists are centrally concerned with the human relationship to a process-oriented and evolving conception of nature. For pragmatists, our beliefs are regarded not (...) as propositions that map onto a separate and fixed reality, but instead their truth emerges out of the habits beliefs generate. Pragmatism emphasizes an openness to possibility since our access to the world of experience is mediated by a variety of selective interests, intellectual histories, varying linguistic and discursive practices. Pragmatists are deeply concerned with the social and political problems that confront us on a daily basis. The author also examines the manner in which James understands the term “metaphysics” given that pragmatism is a method for settling “metaphysical disputes.” Jamesian existential pluralism implies to maximize all possibilities that can satisfy everyone as much as possible without impeding and harming another's capacity to experience a rich and novel world. The author analyzes Todd May’s approach to the analytic-continental divide and concludes that if settlement embraces James’s thick conception of experience, then the resulting ontological pluralism is the best settlement possible, and this commitment to pluralism requires dissolving the exclusionary practices the analytic-continental divide suggests philosophically. (shrink)

G. F. Stout is famous as an early twentieth century proselyte for abstract particulars, or tropes as they are now often called. He advanced his version of trope theory to avoid the excesses of nominalism on the one hand and realism on the other. But his arguments for tropes have been widely misconceived as metaphysical, e.g. by Armstrong. In this paper, I argue that Stout’s fundamental arguments for tropes were ideological and epistemological rather than metaphysical. He moulded his scheme to (...) fit what is actually given to us in perception, arguing that our epistemic practices would break down in an environment where only universals were given to us. (shrink)

Reid had a theory of the human mind containing a theory of truth, both of our evidence of truth and the conditions of truth, fully consistent with empiricism. The justification and evidence of first principles is something felt in consciousness rather than some external relation. This is the result of our faculties, original and natural powers of our constitution. Original convictions and conceptions arise from our faculties in response to experience as a result of our natural development. Reid combines elements (...) of foundationalism, coherentism, falliblism and nominalism. I distinguish and compare Reid to Hume, Moore, Quine, James and Wittgenstein. (shrink)

Adopting Murdoch’s pragmatist reading of Bohr’s theory of meaning with regard to Bohr’s notion of complementarity, in this paper I try to see Bohr’s post-Como and, in particular, post-EPR philosophy of quantum mechanics in the light of Peircean pragmatism with the hope that such a construal can shed more light to Bohr’s philosophy. I supplement Murdoch’s position on Bohr’s pragmatism by showing that in addition to his complementarity, Bohr’s correspondence principle, instrumentalism and realism can be read on the basis of (...) Peirce’s pragmatic maxim and his notion of indeterminism has commonalities with Peirce’s tychism. Also, Bohr’s practice of applying the correspondence principle can be interpreted in the light of Peirce’s fallibilism. However, when it comes to Bohr’s understanding of the symbolic character of quantum mechanics, Bohr’s philosophy deviates from Peircean pragmatism. Bohr’s philosophy distinguishes between the symbolic language of quantum formalism, which counts as a tool practically useful for prediction, and observation sentences which are visualizable in space and time and refer to the so-called individual phenomena. Such an epistemologically significant distinction is not recognized by Peircean pragmatism. (shrink)

Many teachers struggle to maintain or build hope among themselves and their students in today’s climate of high anxiety and low morale. This article describes and responds to those challenging conditions. It offers teachers and scholars of education a philosophically sophisticated and feasible understanding of hope. This notion of hope is grounded in pragmatism and grows out of the pragmatist commitment to meliorism. Hope is described as a way of living tied to specific contexts that brings together reflection and intelligent (...) action alongside imagination and gratitude. Such hope is realistic and generative, rendering it well suited for teachers struggling in schools today. The article does account for some school conditions, including fatalism, passivity, and lack of persistent motivation, that pose obstacles for achieving pragmatist hope. The article closes by describing specific actions teachers can take to build and sustain hope in their schools, including developing supportive communities of inquiry, cultivating habits of hope among students, and practicing confirmation. (shrink)

Autism fiction has become a genre of novel‐writing in its own right. Many examples are given in the essay. What does this activity do for us? There used to be no language in which autistic experience could be described. One characteristic difficulty for autistic people is understanding what other people are doing. So absence of a discourse of autistic experience is to be expected. Analyses advanced by Wolfgang Köhler and Lev Vygotsky already made plain long ago that social interaction is (...) a precondition for a language of the inner life. One role for the wave of autism stories now being published, is to create such a language of autism. This in turn affects how autistic people think of themselves. It certainly affects how nonautistic, “neurotypical,” individuals think about autism. Not all of this is a good thing, for all too many stories foster images of “the” autistic person as having special gifts that ordinary people lack. (shrink)

This article examines public opinion as it relates to the primary tenets of the pragmatic philosophy. Anti-foundationalism, fallibilism, and an emphasis on practical consequences are observed in American public opinion. In addition, there is strong support for pragmatic politics in America. The evidence suggests that pragmatism is a common cultural attribute in American society.

This essay takes a rhetorical pragmatist perspective on current questions concerning educational goals and pedagogical practices. It begins by considering some challenges to rhetorical approaches to education, placing those challenges in the theoretical context of their posing. The essay then describes one current rhetorical approach—based on Kenneth Burke’s dramatism and logology—and uses it to understand and redescribe another rhetorical approach—Jesuit teaching of eloquentia perfecta. Proceeding in this way, the essay presents both a general theoretical framework for discussing educational aims and (...) a specific practical example of how such aims might be achieved. (shrink)

This paper explains the discipline of somaesthetics, which emerges from pragmatism's concern with enhancing embodied experience and reconstructing the aesthetic in ways that make it more central to key philosophical concerns of knowledge, ethics, and politics. I then examine Beauvoir's complex treatment of the body in The Second Sex, assessing both her arguments that could support the pragmatic approach of somaesthetics but also those that challenge its bodily focus as a danger for feminism.

This article reviews John Dewey and Our Educational Prospect, A Critical Engagement with Dewey's Democracy and Education, edited and spearheaded by David T. Hansen, with contributions by Gert Biesta, Reba N. Page, Larry A. Hickman, Naoko Saito, Gary D. Fenstermacher, Herbert M. Kliebard, Sharon Fieman-Nemser and Elizabeth Minnich. This review will not only praise and evaluate the merits of this book, but will also attempt to frame this new study of Dewey within the challenges that continue to engage education in (...) the realms of democracy, as the latter continues to strive for its own survival. While highlighting salient aspects of Hansen et al.'s rereading of Dewey's great work, this review seeks to frame both Dewey's text and this Deweyan study within the breadth of those other challenges by which education—and in turn philosophy of education—has come to take on issues such as: the nexus between theory and practice, the prevalent domination of the social scientific paradigm in education and the continuous threat of the standardisation and institutionalisation of human learning. It will be argued that, to meet this challenge, philosophy of education must sustain a continuous engagement with Dewey's work. A rereading of Dewey also involves a revaluation of his pragmatic theory of education and its lineage, moving from Emerson's metaphilosophy to Cavell's ethics. As Hansen et al. invariably engage with the latter, this review will question, through Adorno and Horkheimer's critique of pragmatisation, whether Deweyan pragmatism can still challenge the current state of affairs by which education is not only systematised away from learning, but also subsumed into a more institutionalised state—a condition that immediately jars with Dewey's own philosophical instincts and pedagogical labours. (shrink)

A comprehensive account of human kindness.

The problem of unifying knowledge represents the frontier between science and philosophy. Science approaches the problem analytically bottom-up whereas, prior to the end of the nineteenth century, philosophy approached the problem synthetically top-down. In the late nineteenth century, the approach of speculative metaphysics was rejected outright by science. Unfortunately, in the rush for science to break with speculative metaphysics, synthetic or top-down philosophy as a whole was rejected. This meant not only the rejection of speculative metaphysics, but also the implicit (...) rejection of empirically-led synthetic philosophy and the philosophy of nature. Since a change in the paradigm of science requires a change in the philosophy of nature underpinning science, the rejection of the philosophy of nature closes science to the possibility of a paradigm change. Given the foundational problems faced by science, there is a need for empirically-led synthetic philosophy in order to discover a new empirically-based philosophy of nature. Such a philosophy of nature may open science to the possibility of a paradigm change. (shrink)

To be successful, collaboration at work requires its participants to have a common sense about what is happening and where things are heading. But how can collaborators have such a sense in common if what is going on continuously changes? This study investigates the joint communicative work participants in collaborative activity do to remain aligned on how things are going and where things are at for the purpose of maintaining a ground in common. Our test case for illustrating this joint (...) work is the fluid and constantly changing world of software development. Our study uses a transactional approach to show how software developers working together continuously make available what they are attuned to, which constitutes their common ground that allows actions and talk to make sense. The common ground enables a common, inherently shared sense of what is happening and how things are going. Rather than having “meaning” in themselves, signifiers (words, gestures, body movements, cursor movements) create and are part of the common ground against which they make sense. Signifiers are motivated by and produce an accented visible that is available to all group members; and this accented visible (including the signs) makes for the common ground. (shrink)

Alexis de Tocqueville is known for his strange liberalism. One of the reasons therefore has to be found in his lesser known strange religious belief. The three main elements that determined his belief were his aristocratic and profoundly religious education, the dramatic loss of his faith after reading eighteenth century French philosophers and his conviction that the stability of the American democracy was mainly due to religious mores. These elements explain why Tocqueville appeared in his publications as an obvious believer, (...) hardly bothered by any dubiety, while internally he was a restless doubter, sometimes a panicky infidel and occasionally some sort of believer anyway. The focus of this article is a meticulous dissection of Tocqueville’s personal belief by contrasting it with approaches of religion that look familiar at first sight. Although Tocqueville had the highest esteem for Pascal, his wager was not really tempting to him. James’ will to believe seemed far more attractive, yet Tocqueville’s thinking was too empirical to fit with it. Kant furnished strong arguments to overcome this obstacle, and in that respect he offered a solid philosophical ground to consider Tocqueville’s outlook on religion as an authentic religious belief. But what Tocqueville has never found was a religious ground to Christianity. As a matter of fact, Christianity was Tocqueville’s philosophical belief, rather than his religious belief. (shrink)

This paper examines the metaphysical status of the fact-value entanglement. According to Hilary Putnam, among others, this is a major theme in both classical and recent pragmatism, but its relevance obviously extends beyond pragmatism scholarship. The pragmatic naturalist must make sense of the entanglement thesis within a broadly non-reductively naturalist account of reality. Two rival options for such metaphysics are discussed: values may be claimed to emerge from facts (or normativity from factuality), or fact and value may be considered continuous. (...) Thus, pragmatic naturalism about fact and value may be based on either emergentism or Peircean synechism. This is a crucial tension not only in pragmatist philosophy of value but in pragmatically naturalist metaphysics generally. (shrink)

This paper explores the integral relationship between philosophy and nursing practice. The discussion begins by suggesting that philosophy is more than a set of abstract ideas or an intellectual activity; that it is a way of living and being in practice. The author contends that philosophical inquiry can improve the adequacy and relevance of family and nursing theories by promoting the examination and expansion of those theories in light of the experiences and intuitions of nurses. Offering a personal example the (...) author exemplifies how philosophical activity can directly and experientially enhance everyday nursing practice. (shrink)

The diversity of learning differences in today's college classrooms raises an array of difficult questions that pedagogical theory and practice have yet to address. The trend toward more individualized instruction presents a puzzle when considered alongside this new diversity, particularly in the context of classical ideals of liberal education. Drawing on the surprisingly timely educational writings of John Dewey, this essay attempts to sketch a pedagogical vision for the 21st century that shifts the focus back toward the process of learning (...) itself, and that grounds learning in the personal experience of the learner without compromising the larger goals of liberal education. Meeting the challenges presented by diverse learners may hold the key to reinvigorating higher education as a whole. (shrink)

A notable feature of classical American pragmatism is its close association with the birth of experimental psychology. In particular, William James’ work as a psychologist influenced, and was influenced by, his pragmatism. This paper seeks to support this reading of the relation between Jamesian psychology and pragmatism, particularly through his “Sentiment of Rationality” and the later contention that the true is the satisfactory. In addition, James’ insights are tested and expanded through reference to contemporary research on processing fluency, as well (...) as concepts of ecological rationality. (shrink)

This article seeks to defend and develop a stakeholder pragmatism advanced in some of the work by Edward Freeman and colleagues. By positioning stakeholder pragmatism more in line with the democratic and ethical base in American pragmatism (as developed by William James, John Dewey and Richard Rorty), the article sets forth a fallibilistic stakeholder pragmatism that seeks to be more useful to companies by expanding the ways in which value is and can be created in a contingent world. A dialogue (...) between a defence company and peace and arbitration society is used to illustrate the main plot of this article. (shrink)

William James is remembered as the philosopher of pragmatism, but he was principally the founder of modern scientific psychology. During the period of his most intense scientific involvement James developed a trenchant critique of science. This was not a rejection of science but an attempt to identify limitations of the contemporary conceptualization of science. In particular, James emphasized the failure of science to understand its basis in human emotions. James developed a scientific theory of emotions in which the importance of (...) emotion in cognition and decision-making is central. James’ appreciation of the significance of emotions in science has continuing value. Nevertheless, his characterization of science in terms of its method introduces tensions in his account that an emphasis on the social dimensions of science, which he implicitly acknowledged, tends to resolve. (shrink)

This article introduces and critically analyses Richard Rorty’s neo-pragmatism as a contribution to the philosophy of social sciences. Although Rorty has written little about philosophy of social sciences as such, it is argued that his overall philosophical position has significant ramifications for this subject area. The first part of the article sets out the implications of Rorty’s neo-pragmatism for various issues in the philosophy of social sciences, for instance, the doctrine of naturalism, the nineteenth-century Methodenstreit, the philosophical tenets of Marxism, (...) and the relatively recent wave of post-structuralism. The second part presents a constructive critique of Rorty’s neopragmatist philosophy of social sciences. Although critical of some aspects of Rorty’s argument, it is argued that his stance could provide a base for a fruitful view of social sciences, aiming at enlarging human potentialities rather than representation. (shrink)

This book attempts to explicate and expand upon Frank Ramsey's notion of the realistic spirit. In so doing, it provides a systematic reading of his work, and demonstrates the extent of Ramsey's genius as evinced by both his responses to the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus , and the impact he had on Wittgenstein's later philosophical insights.

This article distinguishes two ways in which a pragmatist might approach the relation between Obama's politics and the resources furnished by pragmatist political philosophy. The first way, conceptual pragmatism, specifies pragmatism in terms of conceptual commitments in order to find out whether or not those commitments can be found in Obama. The second path, methodological pragmatism, works to better understand what Obama stands for in terms of the practical consequences of his actions, speeches, and policies. It is argued that contemporary (...) pragmatists too often neglect the methodological approach. (shrink)

This chapter explores perspectivism in the American Pragmatist tradition. On the one hand, the thematization of perspectivism in contemporary epistemology and philosophy of science can benefit from resources in the American Pragmatist philosophical tradition. On the other hand, the Pragmatists have interesting and innovative, pluralistic views that can be illuminated through the lens of perspectivism. I pursue this inquiry primarily through examining relevant sources from the Pragmatist tradition. I will illustrate productive engagements between pragmatism and perspectivism in three areas: in (...) the pragmatists’ fallibilistic theories of inquiry and truth, in their pluralistic metaphysics, and in their views on cultural pluralism. While there are some potential sticking points between pragmatism and perspectivism, particularly around the visual metaphor of perspective, these philosophical approaches nonetheless have much to learn from each other. Perspectivism is in danger of falling between the horns of pernicious relativism and a platitudinous view of the limits of human perception and cognition. The pragmatists accounts of truth and reality open the possibility of a more thoroughgoing perspectivism. I will follow this thread through Charles S. Peirce’s, William James’, and John Dewey’s theories of inquiry and truth, Peirce’s evolutionary metaphysics, James’ radical pluralism, Dewey’s cultural naturalism, Richard Rorty’s anti-essentialism, Jane Addams’ standpoint epistemology, W.E.B. Du Bois’ theory of race consciousness, Horace Kallen’s and Alain LeRoy Locke’s cultural pluralism, and Mary Parker Follett’s account of pluralistic integration. (shrink)

This article discusses the ‘computer game’ as a pragmatic concept. A dual nature of the computer game as both a pragmatic idea and a pragmatic meaning is introduced. Practical meanings of the computer game correspond with the concrete effects that engaging with computer games produces in an individual. Practical ideas of the computer game correspond with the subjectively constituted conceptual families concerning the computer game’s assumed practical meaning. Individual computer games can be considered flat or round depending on the range (...) of their practical meanings. Thus, the article contributes to the study of cultural objects by offering a framework for examining the evolution and existence of such objects as cross-cultural practical entities – less in terms of communication, media, and materiality, and more in terms of concrete actions and events that individuals across societies commence and conceptualize. (shrink)