The present issue of the EJPAP hosts a symposium on the theme of Pragmatist Ethics: Theory and Practice, exploring the many ways in which the contribution of pragmatism to moral philosophy and the moral life has been thought of and argued for. In particular, the symposium explores the distinctive nature, reaches, and limits of a pragmatist mindset in moral matters: the plurality of voices represented showcases the extent of approaches possible, within pragmatism, to the very question of how m...

The question of a pragmatist justification of religious beliefs appeared in James’s writing in 1898, as an alternative to Royce’s theory of the absolute. This pragmatist justification was repeated in The Varieties of Religious Experiences in 1902 but it failed to give a proper account of the truth of religious beliefs based on private religious experiences and ultimately failed to answer Royce’s arguments. James knows that any possible pragmatist justification of religious belief based on the practical consequences of religious belief (...) must be completed by a metaphysical theory of the non-natural causality of religious experiences. But that would require going beyond the dualistic and naturalistic account of the Varieties. Nevertheless, the difficulties of the monistic theories of the Essays in Radical Empiricism pushed James to defend, in A Pluralistic Universe, a pantheistic theory in which the Absolute is accepted as a logical possibility, which in turn supposes to accept the composition theory of consciousness that he had rejected in The Principle of Psychology. Therefore, James’s final theory isn’t very different to Royce’s theory, since Royce’s theory is not a theory of the necessity of the Absolute but rather a theory of its possibility. (shrink)

In her new book The American Pragmatists Cheryl Misak provides a reading of the history of American Pragmatism in which it is composed of two related yet distinct types of pragmatism. She characterizes the debate between these two types of pragmatism as a debate between those who assert (or whose view entails) that there is no truth and objectivity to be had anywhere and those who take pragmatism to promise an account of truth that preserves our cognitive aspiration of getting (...) things right. O... (shrink)

Much of the ethical theory posit the moral value in the action and believe in the rational systematization of morality. However, these theories are not able to deal with one of the most interesting and relevant questions in our moral lives, namely, moral dilemmas. They argue that moral dilemmas are not possible since they cannot be integrated into an ethical system without accepting inconsistence. On the contrary, moral theories that deny the possibility of systematization recognize the importance of moral dilemmas (...) for ethics and our lives. This relationship between ethics and our moral lives replaces the centrality of the action with the self. One of the philosophers that made this connection between the self and morality was John Dewey. This paper argues that rational moral theories suffer from an existential deficit and that Dewey’s approach acknowledges how humans change themselves through their moral action, and that moral choices are, in some sense, existential choices. (shrink)

Expressed in terms of his categories, Peirce criticized Hegel for having overlooked secondness, “not mere twoness [or duality] but active oppugnancy” (CP 8.291; emphasis omitted), “the sense of shock,” surprise, and especially struggle and conflict (CP 5.45). In particular, he judged his predecessor harshly for having neglected or, at least, downplayed the role secondness, especially in the form of experience, plays in the growth of knowledge. In Peirce’s judgment, then, Hegel’s emphasis on thirdness (mediation, conciliation, integration, and the overcoming of (...) estrangement) tended to eclipse secondness (otherness, opposition, conflict, clash, and direct encounters with irreducible otherness). If one considers what Hegel actually wrote about both experience vis-à-vis reason and, more generally, the role of conflict in the generation of knowledge and indeed of much else, Peirce’s criticism hardly seems fair. My proximate purpose is, however, not so much to defend Hegel’s thought against Peirce’s charge as to show how close Hegel and Peirce are in their understanding of the relationship between experience and reason. Beyond this, my ultimate objective is to illuminate this relationship, by consideration of the nuanced, subtle manner in which these thinkers construe this relationship. That is, my main purpose is not hermeneutic or historical but philosophical. Becoming clearer about how Peirce stands to Hegel is not nearly as important as becoming clearer about how experience stands to reason. As it turns out, however, a philological comparison facilitates our philosophical task. (shrink)