The “Cambridge pragmatists”, Charles S. Peirce, William James and Josiah Royce, are at least in two respects significantly indebted to Kant: first, as von Kempski, Apel and Murphey have shown, with regard to the epistemological issues investigated in pragmatism; secondly, with regard to the various pragmatic approaches to religion, something which has been long overlooked. These approaches are best understood as innovative re-readings of Kant’s postulates of freedom, immortality, and God. Since Hilary Putnam pointed out — in his 1992 book (...) Renewing Philosophy — that James’s essay, “The Will to Believe”, in spite of having received a great deal of hostile criticism, is in “its logic, in fact, precise and impeccable”, James’s thoughts are considered by many contemporary philosophers as particularly inspiring. James’s approach is based on the modern experience of secularism and interprets Kant’s “postulate” as the “option” to believe. A deepening of the debate on the relevance of Kant’s analysis of the horizon of religious hope with regard to human praxis for a pragmatism-inspired philosophy of religion can be expected from a detailed discussion of the thoughts of Peirce and Royce, of thoughts, which, in complex ways, relate to, as well as criticise, James’s individuum-focused interpretation of religious faith. (shrink)

This article raises questions about what it means to be a diverse academic community and about why such diversity is worth struggling to achieve. The controversial arguments of Walter Benn Michaels are critically examined as a stimulus and prelude to considering the more constructive perspectives supplied by Amartya Sen and Josiah Royce. Royce's early 20th century philosophical writings, in particular, are evaluated as resources for thinking about the ideal nature of a college or university community in the 21st century.

In this dissertation I examine the topics of ethics, religion, and their relationship in the work of Charles Taylor. I take Taylor's attempt to confront modern disenchantment by seeking a kind of re-enchantment as my guiding thread. Seeking re-enchantment means, first of all, defending an `engaged realist' account of strong evaluation, i.e., qualitative distinctions of value that are seen as normative for our desires. Secondly, it means overcoming self-enclosure and achieving self-transcendence, which I argue should be understood in terms of (...) transcending a `lower' mode of selfhood for a `higher' one in concern for `strong goods'. One of the main issues that Taylor raises is whether re-enchantment requires theism for its full adequacy. He advances - often as `hunches' - controversial claims regarding the significance of theism (1) for defending strong evaluative realism and (2) for motivating an ethic of universal human concern. I seek to fill out his hunches in terms of a theistic teleological perspective that is centered on the `telos of communion'. I argue that such a view is important for overcoming the problem of what Bernard Williams calls the `radical contingency' of ethical beliefs, which seems to undermine their normative authority. However, I argue that if a non-theistic view of cosmic purpose (e.g., Thomas Nagel's view) can be regarded as a viable option, then it could also help to address this problem and support a kind of re-enchantment. Taylor also advances the controversial view that (3) there is an ineradicable draw to `transcendence' in human life in connection to the quest for the meaning of life. Here he opposes certain mainstream theories of secularization that see it as a process involving the ineluctable fading away of the relevance of religion. I seek to fill out and defend Taylor's view in this matter. Besides providing a reading of Taylor's work as a whole and advancing further some of the issues he raises, I also examine his general evaluative framework based on his account of strong evaluation. In doing so I show how he provides a distinct and important perspective among contemporary moral philosophers. (shrink)

Research indicates that greater involvement in religion may be associated with better physical health. The purpose of this study is to see if the satisfaction of spiritual needs is associated with health. This model that contains the following core hypotheses: Individuals who attend church more often are more likely to receive spiritual support from fellow church members than people who attend worship services less frequently ; receiving more spiritual support is associated with stronger feelings of belonging in a congregation; individuals (...) who feel they belong in their congregations are more likely to feel their spiritual needs have been met; and people who feel their spiritual needs have been met are more likely to rate their health in a favorable manner. The data provide support for each of these relationships. (shrink)

This work emphasizes the influence in Apel of the named Critique of Meaning developed by Wittgenstein and Peirce. We reconstruct the foundations of the recognitionof a linguistic a priori, and of the semiotic-anthropological radicalization, that leads to the conception that man can be understood as thought-sign. It also shows the way Apel believes that such thought-sign is inscribed in the context of a supraindividualenviroment, where it develops its own individuality. From that approach, a transformation of the subject function in the (...) interpreter function of the signs has to be done in order to create a new answer to the problem of intersubjectivity. (shrink)

Is pragmatism, as focused on a future considered producible by our finite actions, ill equipped to analyze religion (or “Erlösungswissen”, as Max Scheler said); is it unable, as Stanley Cavell writes, to sufficiently explore “skepticism” and negativity? This paper argues that William James succeeds in pragmatically re-thematizing “Erlösungswissen”, and that Josiah Royce—who develops a post-pragmatic, pragmaticist concept of; religion—carefully re-investigates “negativity”, in a Peirce-inspired mode, by focusing on the “mission of sorrow”.

This paper aims to focus on the concept of experience and reconstruct its evolutions within Royce’s thought. To do so, I divide this paper in three parts. I begin by analysing Royce’s concept of experience, which takes roots in his interpretation of the British empiricists, such as Locke, Berkeley and Hume, in The Spirit of Modern Philosophy (1892). In the second part I outline Royce’s theory of experience from a philosophical and psychological point of view. My claim is that, in (...) his philosophical writings, Royce argues that cognitions are not abstract ideas but plans of actions: meanings and concepts are embodied, situated and time-oriented. I refer also to Royce’s contribution to the psychological field, with regard to embodied aspects of cognitions. According to Royce, cognitions are enriched with elements related to sensorimotor, imaginative and perceptual faculties. Action and perception are no separated aspects of cognitions, because perception implies sensorimotor dynamics. At the same time, the perception of the object is entangled with the imagination of the would be, i.e., the result of doing different actions with the object. (shrink)

My thesis is that contemporary ethics needs to reconceptualize its notion of the "ethical subject/agent." In developing this argument, I draw on three sources: (1) the field of moral psychology, (2) philosophical explorations of the concepts of "moral responsibility" and "moral community, and (3) the work of American philosophers such as Josiah Royce and John Dewey. Primary attention will be given to the latter two sources, though, given the short span of this essay, only brief references to Royce and Dewey (...) are possible, even though these philosophers provide the foundational theoretical framework for any reconceptualization efforts. Indeed, these philosophers, as well as William James, engaged in and drew upon .. (shrink)

Acknowledging the negative impact poverty and violence can have on the educational process, I explore ways in which a pragmatic interpretation of hope can guide us in formulating preventive and responsive measures that are not intrusive on the normal curriculum. I draw on key pragmatic ideas presented by John Dewey to emphasize habits central to a pragmatic theory of hope. Equally important is the notion of a community of hope that fosters the development of hope's habits. A hopeful pedagogy enables (...) us to fund students with habits that help them resist the disconnection and despair that can come from living and learning amid impoverished or violent conditions. I argue that teachers can emphasize hope's relevance to achieving the goals of the curriculum; they can also promote students' self-knowledge through personal narratives that identify past accomplishments and explore possible means to desired goods. To begin ameliorating the tenacious conditions that foster poverty and violence, we need to look beyond the confines of the classroom and school to the resources and coordinated efforts made possible by the larger community. A pragmatic interpretation thus focuses our attention on individual and communal habits that help us secure desired goods. My discussion demonstrates at least some of the ways in which hope is a valuable resource for actively responding to circumstances that impede the educational process. (shrink)

In recent years there has been widespread interest in assimilating forgiveness into a rational conception of the moral life. This project usually construes forgiveness as a way of “moving past” evil and resuming the moral narrative it disrupted. But to develop a philosophical sound conception of forgiveness, we must recognize that moral evil is world-shattering and cannot be assimilated into the moral narrative of our lives. It is not an event that happens in one’s world but to one’s world. In (...) this respect it is similar to death as Heidegger has described it. But, contrary to what Heidegger implies, evil is more traumatic than death because, unlike the latter, it shatters moral reasoning and moral narrative. Evil is a monstrosity; it traumatizes historical existence by impossibilizing the future. A philosophical account of forgiveness must therefore be traumatological: recognizing the traumatizing impact that evil has on historicity, it has provide us a heuristic that will help us to imagine the unimaginable possibility of transforming historical horror into good. (shrink)

Christianity has recently undergone historic demographic and cultural shifts: it has expanded significantly in the global south while declining in the west. In an age of World Christianity, these changes bring diversity and competition, and renewed Christian witness. The global context for the faith reveals unavoidable tensions between missional expansion and the call to be one in Christ Jesus. Amid plurality and rapid changes in identity, Christians are challenged to re-appropriate the classic marks of the church – one, holy, catholic, (...) and apostolic. Engagement with all four marks, reframed for the contemporary situation, will help to maintain the creative tension between mission and unity, to connect Christians across geography and generations, and to forge a common vision of salvation in an interconnected world. (shrink)

The work of Gabriel Marcel is retrieved and set in relation to the question of moral epistemology. I begin by surveying Marcel’s long-running critique of a false dilemma with implications for the nature of our knowledge of values. According to this dilemma, a person’s knowledge of something is either objective, and therefore transcendent but impersonal, or it is subjective, and therefore personal but immanent, reaching only one’s inner states. Applied to the knowledge of values, this false dilemma leaves philosophy with (...) a choice between accounts of value-knowledge as scientific/objective knowledge or value-knowledge as self-knowledge. Building on Marcel’s critique of this false dilemma, I suggest a program for a Marcelian moral epistemology that identifies the comportments by which human person are receptive to values and hence to knowledge of values. Two examples of such comportment are discussed in relation to the problem of value-knowledge: exigence and fidelity. (shrink)

En este trabajo se reconstruye la idea de consenso en la filosofía de K. O. Apel. Partiendo del origen de este concepto en Ch. S. Peirce, fundador del pragmatismo americano, se muestra su papel de puente entre cuestiones filosóficas de tipo teórico y práctico. Esta es una de las razones por las que la idea de “consenso” ocupa un lugar central en el pensamiento del filósofo alemán This paper reconstructs the idea of “consensus” in K.-O. Apel´s philosophy. Starting from the (...) origin of this concept in Ch. S. Peirce, founder of American pragmatism, his role as bridge between theoretical and practical philosophical question is shown. This is one of the reasons why the idea of “consensus” occurs a central place in the thinking of the German philosopher. (shrink)

I argue that Classical American Pragmatists—Royce, James, Dewey, Perice, Addams, Du Bois, and Locke subscribed to this view and practiced philosophy by focusing on experience and directing a critical eye to major problems in living. Thus Royce and Dewey explored the nature of genuine community and its role in developing a flourishing individual life but also a public, democratic life. Royce and James engaged in a phenomenological analysis of human experience including religious experience developing a rich understanding of human psychological, (...) social, and religious development. Dewey, Royce and Perice applied the lessons of the scientific communal experience to problem solving in everyday life. Dewey explored life’s aesthetic dimensions. Addams, Du Bois and Locke applied philosophy to problems of living with discrimination as an immigrant or an African American. (shrink)

Practical wisdom enables moral decision-making and action by aligning one’s apprehension of proximate goods with a distal, socially embedded interpretation of a more ultimate Good. A focus on purpose within the overall process mutually informs human moral psychology and moral AI development in their examinations of practical wisdom. AI practical wisdom could ground an AI system’s apprehension of reality in a sociotechnical moral process committed to orienting AI development and action in light of a pluralistic, diverse interpretation of that Good. (...) Defining AI purpose in terms of the human struggle to determine the moral “ought” (versus the way reality is) can overcome practical and normative limitations of principle-based approaches to AI ethics without requiring idiosyncratic moral reasoning or a premature commitment to a single ethical theory, which could hinder navigating the moral implications of future unknowns. Dividing practical wisdom into proximate, mediating, and distal processes enables each division to incorporate the moral dimensions of the situation, individual AI system, and sociotechnical community, respectively. Drawing upon externalist (4E) and ecological cognitive psychology theories to extend Xavier Zubiri’s sentient intelligence, proximate apprehension of what an object affords the perceiver includes affordances for practical and moral purposes. Those apprehensions are structured by moral and other social-cognitive schemas that mediate moral constructs, the apprehended situation, and individual commitments and other motivating identifications in a process Ignacio Ellacuria calls historical reality. Distally, Josiah Royce’s community of interpretation characterizes one way of organizing a sociotechnical process to synthesize diverse interpretations of the Good, orient AI moral practice, and align AI development with human and AI moral purpose. (shrink)

This paper follows a trend in engineering ethics away from universal moral theories towards more contingent/contextual approaches such as pragmatist and care ethics. These methodological considerations are treated in the context of the Volkswagen Diesel Emissions scandal as a case study in the “paradox of loyalty,”. Building upon a combined pragmatist-care ethics approach, the article outlines an “ethics of commitment,” inspired by the moral philosophy of Josiah Royce. The ethics of commitment locates the site of moral value in an individual’s (...) “commitment to a cause,” where a “cause” refers to a purposive community of persons oriented by a shared end or ideal. The ethics of commitment improves upon a pragmatist-care ethics in two notable ways: first, addressing the problem of determining wrongdoing via pragmatist ethics, and second, by emphasizing the costly nature of moral action as a critical part of ethical deliberation, rather than appealing to empathy or moral sentiment. This process—described metaphorically as “centrifugal commitment”—remains contingent and fallible, but in a way that does justice to the broad scope of moral responsibility incumbent upon engineers. (shrink)

This paper proposes an alternative perspective on the question of the relationship between German Idealism and American Pragmatism through attention to the philosophy of Josiah Royce. Despite being seen as a Hegelian, Royce declared himself a pragmatist. However, he also called his position Absolute Voluntarism. This paper suggests that the real issue between Idealism and Pragmatism is Intellectualism vs. Voluntarism. This distinction both parallels and cuts across the traditions of German Idealism and American Pragmatism, and promises to open up a (...) view broader than the traditional accounts of the qualified appreciation of Hegel seen in Peirce and Dewey, or the outright antipathy of James. With Peirce, we see that his continual call for Royce to study logic includes, or complements, his criticisms that Royce neglects Secondness. Regarding James, we see his influence on Royce is mediated also in their mutual study of Wundt’s voluntaristic psychology, which has its own roots in the pre-Kantian German Idealism of Leibniz. As for Dewey, he acknowledges Royce’s voluntarism, but rejects Royce’s claim that his Absolute Pragmatism/Voluntarism is pragmatism at all. Nonetheless, even if Royce failed to fuse his idealism and pragmatism, the very effort suggests he saw them as distinct enough to need fusion. (shrink)

Josiah Royce (1855-1916) was the leading American proponent of absolute idealism, the metaphysical view (also maintained by G. W. F. Hegel and F. H. Bradley) that all aspects of reality, including those we experience as disconnected or contradictory, are ultimately unified in the thought of a single all-encompassing consciousness. Royce also made original contributions in ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion and logic. His major works include The Religious Aspect of Philosophy (1885), The World and the Individual (1899-1901), The (...) Philosophy of Loyalty (1908), and The Problem of Christianity (1913). Royce's friendly but longstanding dispute with William James, known as "The Battle of the Absolute," deeply influenced both philosophers' thought. In his later works, Royce reconceived his metaphysics as an "absolute pragmatism" grounded in semiotics. This view dispenses with the Absolute Mind of previous idealism and instead characterizes reality as a universe of ideas or signs which occur in a process of being interpreted by an infinite community of minds. These minds, and the community they constitute, may themselves be understood as signs. Royce's ethics, philosophy of community, philosophy of religion, and logic reflect this metaphysical position. (shrink)

Scientific communities as social groupings and the role that such communities play in scientific change and the production of scientific knowledge is currently under debate. I examine theory change as a complex social interaction among individual scientists and the scientific community, and argue that individuals will be motivated to adopt a more radical or innovative attitude when confronted with striking similarities between model systems and a more robust understanding of specialised vocabulary. Two case studies from the biological sciences, Barbara McClintock (...) and Stanley Prusiner, help motivate the idea that sharing of models and specialised vocabulary fill the gap between discovery and scientific change by promoting the dispersal of important information throughout the scientific community. (shrink)

Advocates of dialogic communication have promoted two-way symmetrical communication as the most effective and ethical model for public relations. This article uses John Durham Peters's critique of dialogic communication to reconsider this infatuation with dialogue. In this article, we argue that dialogue's potential for selectivity and tyranny poses moral problems for public relations. Dialogue's emphasis on reciprocal communication also saddles public relations with ethically questionable quid pro quo relationships. We contend that dissemination can be more just than dialogue because it (...) demands more integrity of the source and recognizes the freedom and individuality of the source. The type of communication, such as dialogue or dissemination, is less important than the mutual discovery of truth. Reconciliation, a new model of public relations, is proposed as an alternative to pure dialogue. Reconciliation recognizes and values individuality and differences, and integrity is no longer sacrificed at the altar of agreement. (shrink)

In asking to what extent the interaction between pragmatism and phenomenology offers a valuable resource for re-imaging the limits and potentialities of philosophical inquiry, one needs to acknowledge, first, that pragmatist philosophers, beginning with Josiah Royce, actively contributed to the re-elaboration of the issues and strategies of phenomenology in the American context. Secondly, it will be argued that the philosophies of the classical pragmatists, Peirce, Royce, James, and Dewey, contain important resources for creating a new understanding of the human self (...) and of the role of philosophy. We will discuss contributing elements from each of the Classical Pragmatists but focus on the neglected contributions of Josiah Royce. We argue that Royce posits important theses that are valuable to our inquiry: his view of self as “expressive,” i.e. through facial and bodily gestures, through cooperative activities such as art, language, custom, religion, understood via a study of the “expressive signs of mental life”; his idea of science as a thoroughly human enterprise; his belief that habits are common to both physical and mental phenomena; his views on knowledge of other minds and how two minds can know the same thing; and his belief in the social grounding of physical knowledge. (shrink)