This survey article discusses the pragmatist tradition in twentieth century philosophy of science. Pragmatism, originating with Charles Peirce's writings on the pragmatic maxim in the 1870s, is a background both for scientific realism and, via the views of William James and John Dewey, for the relativist and/or constructivist forms of neopragmatism that have often been seen as challenging the very ideas of scientific rationality and objectivity. The paper shows how the issue of realism arises in pragmatist philosophy of science and (...) how some pragmatists, classical and modern, have attempted to deal with it. Various dimensions of the realism dispute are thus discussed, especially realism as contrasted to instrumentalism and realism as contrasted to relativism/constructivism. It is argued that the pragmatist tradition cannot avoid these tensions but is largely constituted by them. (shrink)

En partant de la théorie des émotions développée par Mead et Dewey dans les années 1890, les aspects centraux de la théorie gestuelle de Mead, qui sous-tend sa théorie de l’émergence de la signification, du langage et de la cognition humaine, seront mis en évidence. L’article souligne, en outre, comment la théorie de Mead s’inscrit dans une perspective sociobiologique sur la naturalisation du langage qui gagne en intérêt aujourd’hui, notamment dans le domaine des théories évolutionnistes du langage et parmi les (...) neuroscientifiques. (shrink)

What is the core of the distinctiveness of Homo sapiens? Some of the most famous hypotheses include tool use and tool making, language, free will and moral agency, self-consciousness, mind itself, and reason or rational problem-solving. All these answers are partly true. But recent work in comparative psychology, primatology, and cognitive science have converged on a conception of human distinctiveness that underlies these. Remarkably, it was explored a century ago by George Herbert Mead. The American pragmatists played a special role (...) in the development of non-reductive naturalism. But among them, Mead uniquely endorsed the notion of “emergence” developed by the British Emergentists. This led him to an analysis of the emergence of the human self and mind out of social processes, most famously employing his concept of “significant gesture.” In recent decades both notions have been buttressed by philosophical and scientific work. Emergence has returned in the sciences of nonlinear dynamics and complexity, and has been re-conceptualized by philosophers like Wiliiam Wimsatt. Mead’s social conception of the human mind and self have been repurposed by a host of scientists, as in Michael Tomasello’s conception of “joint intentionality” and Antonio Damasio’s analysis of self-consciousness. These developments show that Mead was remarkably prescient in his core insights. (shrink)