The author- following his own research on the subject- argues that Wittgenstein ignores argumentation theory and in general, the problems of rhetoric and argumentation. From this point of view, he frames Stephen Toulmin’s reading of Wittgenstein, arguing that the British philosopher- who was a student of the Austrian- advocates precisely the same thesis. He explains that this happens in a very peculiar (rhetorical) context on Toulmin’s part; a context in which, in essence, Wittgenstein’s philosophy is being rehabilitated.

This chapter contains sections titled: Abstract What is Conceptual Relativism? The Kantian Roots of Conceptual Relativism Epistemology or Metaphysics? Conceptual Relativism and Truth The Scheme and Content Relativized? Davidson Against the Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme Empirical Sources: Conceptual Relativism in Linguistics and Psychology References.

Christopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. -/- Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, (...) John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. -/- Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology. (shrink)

I take up two questions raised by Luz Christopher Seiberth's meticulous reconstruction of Wilfrid Sellars's theory of intentionality. The first is whether we should regard Sellars as a transcendental phenomenalist in the most interesting sense of the term: as denying that even an ideally adequate conceptual structure would enable us to represent worldly objects as they are in themselves. I agree with Seiberth that the answer is probably yes, but I suggest that this is due not to Sellars's rejection of (...) the Myth of the Given or appeal to image-models (as Seiberth maintains), but to his view of modality as categorial but as absent from the world an sich. The second is whether, as Richard Rorty complained, Sellars's appeal to picturing lands his theory of intentionality in intractable skepticism. Pace Seiberth, I argue that the transcendental role of picturing does not mitigate this problem, and I suggest that Sellars's most fruitful resource for doing so is not his semantic externalism, but his purely pragmatic response to skepticism. (shrink)

Offers a renovated form of Confucian liberalism that forges a reconciliation between the two extremes of anti-Confucian liberalism and anti-liberal Confucianism.

The history of the methodology of African philosophy can be divided into two periods: the nascent stage that’s characterized by a rigor-demand, and the contemporary stage that’s characterized by a relevance-demand. In this, paper, I argue for one way to strike the appropriate balance between relevance and rigor in African philosophy. Specifically, I argue that the unconscious rejection of conceptual analysis as a philosophical method by contemporary African philosophers played a major role in how African philosophy came to be characterized (...) by a relevance-demand. Consequently, I submit that even though being only or excessively relevance-oriented is not bad, African philosophy would become rich enough to compete with other regional philosophies—Western, Chinese, and so on—if it re-installs conceptual analysis as part of its methodology. (shrink)

A timeless critique holds that the radical is animated by a deep sense of certainty that leads to the worst excesses. By distinguishing essentialist and non-essentialist forms of radicalism, Ernesto Laclau offers a “coalitional” form of radicalism that, in effect, responds to this critique. Laclau deconstructs classical forms of radicalism, such as Marxism, to show how one can use some of their formal components, such as dichotomic rhetoric and a notion of utopia, without assuming that their particular content (e.g., the (...) figure of the proletarian or the socialist utopia) entails the permanent abolition of oppression. Laclau’s radicalism enables political actors to build their own radical front by politicizing and creating linkages between issues. Laclau thus avoids the epistemic certainty of classical radicalisms. However, in the interest of politically effective radicalism, he deploys a localized form of certainty that has an ambivalent potential for intolerance and violence. (shrink)

G. A. Cohen (2000) provided us with a challenging “paradox of conviction” by means of pointing out the fact that, even when we realize that we hold certain beliefs (for example, political or religious ones) only because we have been raised to have them, this discovery does not modify what we believe. This seems to be irrational, but acknowledging that fact would entail that irrationality is much more widespread than we are, in principle, willing to accept. In this article we (...) will focus on the solution proposed by Federico Penelas (2007), according to which the paradox can be dissolved by appealing to Rorty’s “ethnocentrism”. We will try to argue that this solution can work insofar as what supports our choice to retain our “convictions” is not theoretical in character, but practical. The reason why we can continue to support certain positions that lack neutral evidence in their favour is that it would be too costly not to do it—a condition which does not, nonetheless, make it any more probable that the positions in question are theoretically acceptable. (shrink)

Anti-representationalism is the hallmark of Richard Rorty's critique of the epistemological tradition. According to it, knowledge does not "mirror" reality and the human mind is not a representational device. Anti-representationalism is a family of philosophical theses, respectively dealing with the notion of "representation" in different ways. Though prima facie one may feel entitled to think about anti-representationalism as a kind of uniform philosophical movement, things stand quite differently. In fact, among many anti-representationalist options, we can identify two main versions: a (...) global anti-representationalism that entirely rejects the philosophical uses of the notion of "representation", and a local version that just removes the notion of "representation" from the explanatory toolbox. In this chapter I try to compare Rorty's global anti-representationalism and Robert Brandom's local version, exploiting a recent discussion by Brandom and a famous exchange between Rorty and Bjørn Ramberg about Donald Davidson's take on the special role of the intentional vocabulary. (shrink)

The article develops and justifies, on the basis of the epistemological argumentation theory, two central pieces of the theory of evaluative argumentation interpretation: 1. criteria for recognizing argument types and 2. rules for adding reasons to create ideal arguments. Ad 1: The criteria for identifying argument types are a selection of essential elements from the definitions of the respective argument types. Ad 2: After presenting the general principles for adding reasons (benevolence, authenticity, immanence, optimization), heuristics are proposed for finding missing (...) reasons, for deductive arguments, e.g., semantic tableaux are suggested. (shrink)

This article engages Richard Rorty’s controversial concept of ethnocentrism with the help of Randolf (Randy) S. David’s writings. The first section defines Rorty’s concept of ethnocentrism and responds to the general criticisms of relativism and divisiveness that have been made against it. The second section suggests a conceptual replacement for Rorty’s notion of a vicious ethnocentrism: egotism. Egotism is a kind of cultural ethnocentrism that is resistant to openness, creativity, and social transformation. Inspired by David’s work, the third and final (...) section suggests how the concepts of ethnocentrism and egotism might be of some use as conceptual tools for articulating contemporary social issues in the Philippines. (shrink)

Moral relativism is an important topic in metaethics. It is also widely discussed outside philosophy (for example, by political and religious leaders), and it is controversial among philosophers and nonphilosophers alike. This is perhaps not surprising in view of recent evidence that people's intuitions about moral relativism vary widely. Though many philosophers are quite critical of moral relativism, there are several contemporary philosophers who defend forms of it. These include such prominent figures as Gilbert Harman, Jesse J. Prinz, J. David (...) Velleman and David B. Wong. The term ‘moral relativism’ is understood in a variety of ways. Most often it is associated with an empirical thesis that there are deep and widespread moral disagreements and a metaethical thesis that the truth or justification of moral judgments is not absolute, but relative to the moral standard of some person or group of persons. Sometimes ‘moral relativism’ is connected with a normative position about how we ought to think about or act towards those with whom we morally disagree, most commonly that we should tolerate them. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is to highlight the fact that the Philosophy for Children Approach can be used to stimulate pupil’s reflection within the framework of school subjects such as mathematics. First we situate P4C within the field of socio-constructivist epistemology. Then, P4C as adapted to mathematics is introduced. Finally, we describe an experiment linked to five types of exchanges, manifested between the beginning and the end of a school year while the pupils were learning to philosophize about mathematics. (...) In the discussion, emphasis is placed on the educational interventions of the teachers who facilitate the P4CM workshops. (shrink)

This paper revisits some of the arguments in Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country, twenty years after the book first appeared. Not only are many of Rorty’s diagnoses and predictions eerily prescient in the wake of the rise of Donald Trump to the US presidency, but there is also perceptive political advice in Rorty’s book that I argue the contemporary American Left would do well to heed. While many post-election commentators have tended to read Achieving Our Country as an admonishment of (...) so-called “identity politics” in favor of an “old Left” politics of redistribution and economic justice, I argue that the main distinction on which the analysis in Achieving Our Country hangs is between what Rorty calls “real politics” and “cultural politics”, a conclusion that is confirmed, I argue, by examining the three concrete suggestions for the American Left that together form the core positive argument in Rorty’s book. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to show that a comprehensive account of the role of representations in science should reconsider some neglected theses of the classical philosophy of science proposed in the first decades of the 20th century. More precisely, it is argued that the accounts of Helmholtz and Hertz may be taken as prototypes of representational accounts in which structure preservation plays an essential role. Following Reichenbach, structure-preserving representations provide a useful device for formulating an up-to-date version of (...) a (relativized) Kantian a priori. An essential feature of modern scientific representations is their mathematical character. That is, representations can be conceived as (partially) structure-preserving maps or functions. This observation suggests an interesting but neglected perspective on the history and philosophy of this concept, namely, that structure-preserving representations are closely related to a priori elements of scientific knowledge. Reichenbach’s early theory of a relativized constitutive but non-apodictic a priori component of scientific knowledge provides a further elaboration of Kantian aspects of scientific representation. To cope with the dynamic aspects of the evolution of scientific knowledge, Cassirer proposed a re-interpretation of the concept of representation that conceived of a particular representation as only one phase in a continuous process determined by pragmatic considerations. Pragmatic aspects of representations are further elaborated in the classical account of C.I. Lewis and the more modern of Hasok Chang. (shrink)

This article addresses the problem of inter-normative engagement, of constructing dialogical interaction across substantive normative difference. Focusing on how this affects democratic and pluralistic contexts, it argues that a social-practice-based approach to normativity and reasoning offers unique resources to understand and frame such encounters. It specifically draws on pragmatism and the work of Richard Rorty to reframe normativity, authority, identity, and reason, linking these understandings to recent trends to deliberative political inclusivism in democratic theory. The upshot is that framing inter-normative (...) engagement as calls to responsive engagement between diverse systems of normative authority offers real insights for constructing and maintaining ongoing democratic engagements in a non-hierarchical manner. This, the article argues, extends emerging methodological trends in the broader literature while overcoming the morass between conflict- and consensus-oriented approaches in democratic th... (shrink)

Virtue liberalism holds that the success of liberal politics and society depends on the citizenry possessing a set of liberal virtues, including traits like open-mindedness, toleration, and individual autonomy. Virtue liberalism is thus an ethically demanding conception of liberalism that is at odds with conceptions, like Rawlsian political liberalism andmodus vivendiliberalism, that attempt to minimize liberalism’s ethical impact in order to accommodate a greater range of ethical pluralism. Although he claims to be a Rawlsian political liberal, Richard Rorty’s pragmatic liberalism (...) is best understood as a version of virtue liberalism that, in particular, recommends a controversial civic virtue of irony for good liberal citizenship. Indeed, Rorty ultimately joins Dewey in conceiving of liberal democracy as a “way of life,” rather than merely a set of political relations that have a minimal effect on our characters or on the shape of our private commitments and projects. (shrink)

Ethnocentrism, it is said, involves believing certain things to be true: that one's culture is superior to others, more deserving of respect, or at the ‘centre’ of things. On the alternative view defended in this article, ethnocentrism is a type of bias, not a set of beliefs. If this is correct, it challenges conventional wisdom about the scope, danger, and avoidance of ethnocentrism.

open journal of Philosophical Investigations (PI) is an international journal dedicated to the latest advancements in philosophy. The goal of this journal is to provide a platform for academicians all over the world to promote, share, and discuss various new issues and developments in different areas of philosophy. -/- All manuscripts to be prepared in English or Persian and are subject to a rigorous and fair peer-review process. Generally, accepted papers will appear online. The journal publishes papers including the following (...) fields: -/- · Analytic Philosophy · Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy · Art Aesthetics · Comparative Philosophy West and Chinese · Eastern Philosophy . Islamic philosophy · Epistemology · Ethics · Hermeneutics · History of Religious Thought · History of Western Philosophy · Language Logic . (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive psycho-dynamics and, (...) focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

Applying the insights of Donna Haraway (1989, 1991) and Helen Longino (1989, 1990), this paper reviews Sandra Harding's (1986a) tripartite model of feminist critiques of science-empiricist, standpoint, and postmodern-and argues that it is based on misunderstandings of the relationship between scientific inquiry, objectivity, and values. An alternative view of scientific inquiry makes it possible to see feminist scientists as postmodern and postmodern feminists as having standpoints.

This paper develops a pragmatist approach to ethical business decision-making. It draws primarily on the work of John Dewey and applies his deliberative approach to ethics to the challenges of business practitioners. In particular the paper proposes the value of Dewey’s concept of dramatic rehearsal in emphasizing the task of “constructing the good” in ethical decision-making. The contribution of the paper is, first, to build on recent foundational work to bring American pragmatism into the mainstream business ethics literature; second, to (...) offer a perspective that is accessible to practitioners and integrates ethics into their daily tasks; and third, to identify a number of related research imperatives – in particular the importance of focusing efforts on gaining a deeper understanding of the deliberative process itself. (shrink)

It is argued here that understanding John Dewey's thought as that of a prodigal liberal or a fellow traveller does not capture the complexity of his work. It is also important to recognise the portion of his work that is historie morale. In the very best sense it is epic, encapsulating the hopes and dreams of a history of the American people in the early 1900s. It is a work that simultaneously pursues modernity and the past — for the sake (...) of coping with the present. It also calls attention to an unnoticed element in his work 'inexperience'. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Richard Rorty’s “justice as larger loyalty” proposal. While Rorty is right, I argue, to reject the Kantian idea of a strict bifurcation between justice and loyalty, the former corresponding to reason the latter corresponding to sentiment, my argument is that it is nevertheless a mistake to follow Rorty in conceiving of justice as he recommends we should. This is not an endorsement of the rationalistic Kantian view Rorty rejects. Rather, I argue that there are compelling Rortyan (...) reasons for rejecting the “justice as larger loyalty” proposal, and that the argument against that proposal is paradoxically very much in the spirit of Rorty’s moral and political thought. (shrink)

The philosophy of biomimicry, I argue, consists of four main areas of inquiry. The first, which has already been explored by Freya Mathews, concerns the “deep” question of what Nature ultimately is. The second, third, and fourth areas correspond to the three basic principles of biomimicry as laid out by Janine Benyus. “Nature as model” is the poetic principle of biomimicry, for it tells us how it is that things are to be “brought forth”. “Nature as measure” is the ethical (...) principle of biomimicry, for it tells us that Nature places ethical limits or standards on what it is possible for us to accomplish. And “Nature as mentor” is the epistemological principle of biomimicry, for it affirms that Nature is the ultimate source of truth, wisdom, and freedom from error. Within this overall framework, I argue that seeing Nature as physis—understood as “self-production” or “self-placing-into-the-open”—constitutes the requisite ground for the poetic, ethical, and epistemological principles of biomimicry, and that biomimicry thus conceived involves a new philosophical paradigm, which I call “enlightened naturalism”. (shrink)

Rawls’ primary legacy is not that he standardised a particular view of justice, but rather that he standardised a particular method of arguing about it: justification via reflective equilibrium. Yet this method, despite such standardisation, is often misunderstood in at least four ways. First, we miss its continuity across his various works. Second, we miss the way in which it unifies other justificatory ideas, such as the ‘original position’ and an ‘overlapping consensus’. Third, we miss its fundamentally empirical character, given (...) that it turns facts about the thoughts in our head into principles for the regulation of our political existence. Fourth, we miss some of the implications of that empiricism, including its tension with moral realism, relativism, and conservatism. (shrink)

Innovative modes of collaboration between archaeologists and Indigenous communities are taking shape in a great many contexts, in the process transforming conventional research practice. While critics object that these partnerships cannot but compromise the objectivity of archaeological science, many of the archaeologists involved argue that their research is substantially enriched by them. I counter objections raised by internal critics and crystalized in philosophical terms by Boghossian, disentangling several different kinds of pluralism evident in these projects and offering an analysis of (...) why they are epistemically productive when they succeed. My central thesis is that they illustrate the virtues of epistemic inclusion central to proceduralist accounts of objectivity, but I draw on the resources of feminist standpoint theory to motivate the extension of these social -cognitive norms beyond the confines of the scientific community. (shrink)

En el presente trabajo haré uso del cambio conceptual gestado en la primera parte del siglo XX con el nacimiento de la teoría cuántica y su interpretación basada en el principio de complementariedad e indeterminación, elaborados por Niels Bohr y Werner Heisenberg respectivamente, para argumentar a favor de la demarcación de la ciencia que defiende Richard Rorty. Con este propósito retomaré algunos elementos del desarrollo histórico y características de las nuevas explicaciones de la ciencia cuántica respecto de la física clásica (...) para diluir la diferencia entre búsqueda de la verdad y deliberación práctica. Con ello defenderé una relación causal entre el mundo y nuestras descripciones en oposición a una representacional, así como una concepción pragmatista del conocimiento, siguiendo la propuesta del!lósofo norteamericano. Como consecuencia, defenderé que no existe una distinción de tipo epistemológica entre la ciencia y otros discursos; no hay diferencia metodológica que marque una distinción ontológica o viceversa entre ciencia y otras cosas. Sosteniendo así, una indiferencia o pluralidad ontológica, es decir, que todos los discursos están en pie de igualdad.In this paper I will use the conceptual change between Quantum and Classical Mechanics to support the science demarcation proposed by Richard Rorty. I will rescue some characteristics of the historical development on Quantum Mechanics until the Prnciple of Complementarity´s formulation to dissolve the di"erence between the search of the truth and practical deliberation. #en I will to criticize a representational conception of knowledge to defend a pragmatist one, such as the american philospher does. As a conesequence, I will dissolve the epistemological distinction between science and other speeches, and so, the ontological one too. (shrink)

This essay explicates and assesses Yeshayahu Leibowitz's axiology, and its relation to the value he claims halakhic practice instantiates: service of God. It argues that, while Leibowitz often affirms a relativist “polytheism of values,” he sometimes implies that the religious value is the “most valuable value.” However, this is not due to its material content, because serving God is objectively best; rather it is because, consonant with his negative theology, it most fully instantiates the formal properties of a value. The (...) essay concludes by assessing the tenability of Leibowitz's metaethics as well as the argument for positing this contentless value as an intention and reason for halakhic practice. (shrink)

The paper argues that metaphysical thought, or thought in whose context our general framework of sense is under scrutiny, involves, legitimates, and requires a variety of informal analogues of the ‘true contradictions’ supported in some paraconsistent formal logics. These are what we can call informal ‘legitimate logical inadequacies’. These paradoxical logical structures also occur in deeply pluralist contexts, where more than one, conflicting general framework for sense is relevant. The paper argues further that these legitimate logical inadequacies are real or (...) inherent in sense itself rather than conventional, shows how they can feature in argumentative practice in these metaphysical and pluralist contexts, and discusses some of their implications for metaphysical truth and for philosophical inquiry and disagreement. (shrink)

The controversy over the old ideal of “value-free science” has cooled significantly over the past decade. Many philosophers of science now agree that even ethical and political values may play a substantial role in all aspects of scientific inquiry. Consequently, in the last few years, work in science and values has become more specific: Which values may influence science, and in which ways? Or, how do we distinguish illegitimate from illegitimate kinds of influence? In this paper, I argue that this (...) problem requires philosophers of science to take a new direction. I present two case studies in the influence of values on scientific inquiry: feminist values in archaeology and commercial values in pharmaceutical research. I offer a preliminary assessment of these cases, that the influence of values was legitimate in the feminist case, but not in the pharmaceutical case. I then turn to three major approaches to distinguish legitimate from illegitimate influences of values, including the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic values and Heather Douglas’ distinction between direct and indirect roles for values. I argue that none of these three approaches gives an adequate analysis of the two cases. In the concluding section, I briefly sketch my own approach, which draws more heavily on ethics than the others, and is more promising as a solution to the current problem. This is the new direction in which I think science and values should move. (shrink)

Summary. I do not think there is one true answer to the question What is logic?. There are, clearly, good and less good answers, and there are answers which are plainly wrong; but the term 'logic' has been employed, throughout the history of the subject matter, in such diverse ways that no single one of the uses can be said to be the correct one. However, even among the answers which are acceptable on historico-semantical grounds there are still, without doubt, (...) good and less good ones, in the sense of more and less useful. In this paper, I will argue for a certain, rather narrow conception of logic; and I am going to argue that it is not only an acceptable answer, but also one which is more useful and fruitful than its alternatives. (shrink)

This essay surveys three prominent trends in current pragmatist political philosophy: Deweyan Democratic Perfectionism, Rortyan Ironism, and Pragmatist Epistemic Deliberativism. After articulating the main commitments of each view, the author raises philosophical problems each must confront. The essay closes with the more general criticism that pragmatist political theory has been nearly exclusively focused on democracy, but needs to address additional topics.

Woosuk Park’s paper “Misrepresentation in Context” is a useful plea for a theory of representation with promising interaction between cognitive science, philosophy of science, and aesthetics. In this paper, I argue that such a unified account is provided by Charles S. Peirce’s semiotics. This theory puts Park’s criticism of Nelson Goodman and Jerry Fodor in context. Some of Park’s pertinent remarks on the problem of misrepresentation can be illuminated by the account of truthlikeness and idealization developed by philosophers of science.

This essay attempts to confront one of the major problems associated with multiculturalism, namely the hostile divisiveness stemming from newly articulated constructs of difference. Synthesizing hermeneutic concepts derived from Gadamer and Rorty, I develop an approach called xenologica which, unlike the problematic universalism associated with the Enlightenment, values difference but, at the same time, promotes mutual recognition, tolerance and solidarity. Xenologica, for illustrative purposes, is applied to one of the most contentious domains of difference, race, with the aim of overcoming (...) some of the theoretical and practical limitations of classic antiracism. (shrink)

Evidence‐based practice (EBP) first appeared on the healthcare horizon just over a decade ago. In 2003 its presence has intensified and extended beyond its initial relation to medicine embracing as it does now, nursing and the allied health disciplines. In this paper, I contend that its appearance and subsequent growth and development are the effects of potent ‘regimes of truth’, four of which bear the names: positivism, empiricism, pragmatism and economic rationalism. My aim is to show how EBP generates the (...) controversy it does because its nature and methods are inextricably interwoven with the way it has become politicised and professionalised. This exegesis is an attempt to outline how the combined effects of the four forms of rationality mentioned above allow for both the methods and objectives of EBP to be constructed as they are, while at the same moment producing the particular effects of knowledge and power in terms of who sells and who buys the idea of EBP in the culture of contemporary healthcare. (shrink)

Anthropologists, through participant observation, play a large role in creating the very locus of their research: socio-cultural context. Challenges to the social-scientific ‘objectivity’ of this process draw strength from historical precedent, and serve a vital role in the larger anthropological project of confronting, as both critic and product of Western thought, its inherent tensions. In this paper, I focus on two types of epistemological bias that construct and reinforce the validity of objective knowledge: objectivism and literalism. An analysis of ethnographic (...) treatments of the philosophical concerns of metaphor theory and phenomenology of the senses illustrates both the difficulty and utility of taking on the epistemological underpinnings of social science. (shrink)

El presente trabajo tiene dos objetivos centrales. Primero caracterizaré una variante de pragmatismo conceptual según la cual algunos conceptos deben entenderse como habilidades para identificar sustancias e identificar propiedades del entorno, y mostraré que quien cuenta con esas dos habilidades satisface, en grados diversos en cada caso, distintos requisitos centrales para la posesión de conceptos. Posteriormente defenderé la viabilidad de extender este enfoque a los animales no humanos, apelando a evidencia empírica que indica que distintas especies son capaces de identificar (...) sustancias de su entorno y que sugiere la presencia de habilidades para identificar propiedades en algunos primates y pájaros. (shrink)

Rorty claims argument is inherently conservative and philosophical progress comes from "sparkling new ideas," not argument. This assumes an untenable opposition between the generation and the evaluation of ideas, with argument relegated to evaluation. New ideas that contribute to progress arise from critical reflection on problems posed by the tradition, and constrained by the criteria governing evaluation. Thinking directed toward the criticism and evaluation of ideas or products is not algorithmic; it has a generative, creative component. An overall assessment in (...) any complex circumstance requires constructing a new view from the questioning, weighing, rejecting, reconciling, and integrating of numerous divergent points of view. Thus, the process of argumentation can issue in new ideas. (shrink)

Acknowledging the power of the id-drives, Freud held on to the authority of reason as the ego’s best tool to control instinctual desire. He thereby placed analytic reason at the foundation of his own ambivalent social theory, which, on the one hand, held utopian promise based upon psychoanalytic insight, and, on the other hand, despaired of reason’s capacity to control the self-destructive elements of the psyche. Moving beyond the recourse of sublimation, post-Freudians attacked reason’s hegemony in quelling disruptive psycho-dynamics and, (...) focusing upon the social domain, they sought strategies to counter the oppressive (repressive) social restrictions and conformist impositions impeding individual freedom that result from thwarted desire. Postmodern celebration of desire at the expense of reason and sublimation leaves the Enlightenment prospects altogether and moves psychoanalysis into a new terrain, where the very notion of rationality and an autonomous ego upon which much of Freudianism rests has been deconstructed. Thus the debate that begins with Freud’s social theories reflects the deeper divisions, which arose with postmodern ethics and discarded Cartesian–Kantian notions of personal identity. Here we consider the moral framework in which Freudian social theory sits and a contrasting understanding of agency that confronts his modernist conception. In that debate, we discern the larger humanist confrontation with postmodernity. Yet, all who engaged Freud shared some version of his utopian ethos, albeit radically restructuring the theory upon which social reform might occur. (shrink)

This essay offers an account of Rorty's version of pragmatism after the so-called linguistic turn, including his attack on epistemology and metaphysics, his metaphilosophy, his theory of morality, and his political philosophy. Woven into this account of Rorty are some of the most important criticisms made of Rorty, and considerations about how Rorty has responded or could have responded.