American legal realism is commonly treated as a theory-pariah. The article exposes certain reasons explaining such a treatment. Generally, it seems that such an attitude is a result of many misunderstandings of realist aims and ambitions, some of which pertain to the theoretical status of legal realism and its relation to so called general jurisprudential theories, such as legal positivism. In the first part of the article I explain generally what these aims were and how one should see these relations. (...) In the second part I briefly analyze B. Leiter’s famous claim that legal realism is conceptually dependent on hard legal positivism (as a general theory of law). The critique of this claim opens the possibility for some alternative understanding of legal realism. (shrink)

This paper argues for a view described as risk-limited indulgent permissivism. This term may be new to the epistemology of disagreement literature, but the general position denoted has many examples. The paper argues for the need for an epistemology for domains of controversial views, and for the advantages of endorsing a risk-limited indulgent permissivism across these domains. It takes a double-edge approach in articulating for the advantages of interpersonal belief permissivism that is yet risk-limited: Advantages are apparent both in comparison (...) with impermissivist epistemologies of disagreement, which make little allowance for the many distinct features of these domains, as well as in comparison with defenses of permissivism which confuse it with dogmatism, potentially making a virtue of the latter. In an appropriately critical form of interpersonal belief permissivism, the close connections between epistemic risk-taking and our doxastic responsibilities become focal concerns. (shrink)

In Toward a Pragmatist Philosophy of the Humanities (Pihlström 2022) Sami Pihlström argues that the humanities are truth-aiming and knowledge-producing. Reductive ontological and narrow epistemological views, and “post-truth” views in the humanities, have devalued their cognitive contributions as knowledge-producing research programs. Pihlström argues that a pragmatic approach to knowledge in a Peircean vein suggests a broader ontological and epistemological framework that avoids the Scylla a...

Sami Pihlström’s latest book (Pihlström 2022) deserves praise for directing our attention to a long-neglected field of study. In laying out the foundations of a new philosophy of the humanities, he rekindles a discussion that had its finest hour in the early twentieth century, particularly within neo-Kantian and hermeneutic philosophy. In doing so from a pragmatist angle, he embraces the spirit of John Dewey’s writings on culture and criticism, along with the more recent contributions of Mort...

Charles Stein discovered a paradox in 1955 that many statisticians think is of fundamental importance. Here we explore its philosophical implications. We outline the nature of Stein’s result and of subsequent work on shrinkage estimators; then we describe how these results are related to Bayesianism and to model selection criteria like AIC. We also discuss their bearing on scientific realism and instrumentalism. We argue that results concerning shrinkage estimators underwrite a surprising form of holistic pragmatism.

In comparing his conception of empiricism with that of other like-minded philosophers at the end of his 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism,' W. V. Quine famously emphasized the broader scope of his pragmatist commitment in these terms:Carnap, Lewis, and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism.Such remarks have (...) resulted in Quine's work being associated with the American pragmatist tradition, where he is viewed as either continuing or reviving some of the main themes and issues representative of.. (shrink)

As Professor of Philosophy at the University of Sydney for over 20 years (1978–2001), György Márkus exerted a profound influence on a generation of philosophers and students from many disciplinary backgrounds. His legendary lecture courses, spanning the history of modern philosophy from the Enlightenment through to the late 20th century, were memorable for their breadth, erudition, and philosophical drama. Always modest despite his mastery of the tradition, Márkus’s approach to this history of philosophy never failed to emphasize its continuing role (...) in shaping our inherited understanding of philosophy as ‘its own time comprehended in thoughts’ (Hegel). This is especially true of his contribution to the philosophical discourse of modernity, which we could summarize as comprising an original philosophy of cultural modernity. In what follows, I briefly reconstruct Márkus’s account of the adventures of the concept of culture, focusing on his definitive essay ‘The Path of Culture: From the Refined to the High, From the Popular to Mass Culture’ (2013) but also referring to other relevant Márkus texts, offering some critical remarks on his account of culture and its relationship with modern aesthetics, both classical and contemporary. (shrink)

Alfred Tarski a joué un rôle déterminant dans la déconstruction du clivage classique de l’analytique et du synthétique alors même que les ouvrages consacrés à ce chapitre de la philosophie restent, en général, relativement discrets au sujet de son rôle au profit de W. V. O. Quine. La critique de Tarski, qui s’articule dès 1930, s’organise le long de deux axes principaux. Le premier a trait à la difficulté de définir objectivement la notion de logicité ; le second, qui s’appuie (...) sur une conception holiste de la science, admet la possibilité d’une rectification des principes logiques au nom de l’expérience. Sur ce point, les objections ponctuelles de Tarski anticipent la critique plus systématique que Quine adressera à la notion de l’analyticité. L’analyse des principales étapes de la critique de Tarski révèle toutefois que sa pensée n’est pas toujours exempte de tensions internes. Alfred Tarski has played a decisive role in the refutation of the classic cleavage between analytic and synthetic truths, though the studies which deal with this chapter of philosophy generally stress the role of W. V. O. Quine in this question and omit to mention Tarski’s name. Tarski’s critique, which has been expressing itself since 1930, is developed along two main lines. The first concerns the difficulty of giving an objective definition of logical notions ; the second, based on a holistic conception of science, maintains the possibility of the refutation of logical principles by experience. In this question the selective objections of Tarski anticipate the more systematic critique of analyticity by Quine. However, the analysis of the different steps in Tarski’s critique shows that his way of thinking is not free of inner tensions. (shrink)

Did the pragmatic turn encompass the linguistic turn in the history of philosophy? Or was the linguistic turn a turn away from pragmatism? Some commentators identify the so-called “eclipse” of pragmatism by analytic philosophy, especially during the Cold War era, as a turn away from pragmatist thinking. However, the historical evidence suggests that this narrative is little more than a myth. Pragmatism persisted, transforming into a more analytic variety under the influence of Quine and Putnam and, more recently, a continental (...) version in the hands of Richard Rorty and Cornel West. In this paper, I argue that proof of the linguistic turn’s presence as a moment in a broader pragmatic turn in philosophy can be garnered from close examination of a single article, W. V. O. Quine’s “Two Dogmas of Empiricism,” and a single issue: whether the analytic-synthetic distinction is philosophically defensible. (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)

Mortality as a Philosophical-Anthropological Issue: Thanatology, Normativity, and "Human Nature" This paper examines mortality—the fact that we humans are all going to die—as an issue in philosophical anthropology, by applying a fourfold typology of some key forms of philosophical anthropology to the topic of death and mortality. First, this typology, originally suggested by Heikki Kannisto, is outlined; the mortality issue is, then, viewed from the perspective it opens. Finally, the challenges to our understanding of death and mortality that this perspective (...) may help us meet are discussed. The treatment of mortality from the perspective of philosophical anthropology may make it more understandable in a manner that will highlight the importance of the concept of normativity in the philosophical examination of any such humanly relevant issue. (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)

This essay reconsiders Wittgenstein’s relation to the pragmatist tradition. I first discuss, from a pragmatist perspective, three key issues of Wittgenstein studies: the distinction – invoked in recent discussions of On Certainty, in particular – between the propositional and the non-propositional (section 2); the tension between anti-Cartesian fallibilism and what has been called the ‘truth in skepticism’ in Wittgenstein (section 3); as well as the relation between metaphysics and the criticism of metaphysics in Wittgenstein’s philosophy, and Wittgensteinian philosophy more generally (...) (section 4). I then proceed to a more metaphilosophical consideration of yet another problematic dichotomy, the one between deconstructive (therapeutic) and (re)constructive or systematic, argumentative philosophy – which, I argue, the pragmatist, together with Wittgenstein, ought to overcome rather than rely on (section 5). After having gone through these open issues in Wittgenstein scholarship at a general level, I briefly apply my considerations to the philosophy of religion, which is an important field of inquiry for both Wittgensteinian and pragmatist thinkers (section 6). (shrink)

Interpreting John Rawls’ ‘reflective equilibrium’ method from the perspective of Morton White’s holistic pragmatism entails both an epistemological and a methodological dimension. In this article, I reconsider White’s perspective regarding Rawls’ ‘reflective equilibrium’. This requires a critical examination of the method’s origins and development, with an emphasis on Nelson Goodman’s process of justification and the Duhem-Quine thesis. In order to examine the origins and development of the ‘reflective equilibrium’ method, I also draw upon the writings of Pierre Duhem, Willard Van (...) Orman Quine, Nelson Goodman, Stephen P. Stich and Donald Gillies, among others. Subsequently, I interpret the criticisms that have been formulated against the process of justification elaborated by Goodman and adapted by Rawls. Afterwards, I explain the conceptual links between the ‘Duhem-Quine thesis’ and the ‘reflective equilibrium’ method. In the last chapter, I analyse White’s assertion that Rawls’ theory of justice is a variant of holistic pragmatism. I emphasize how White’s holistic theses coincide to a significant extent with the ideas devised by Rawls regarding the method of ‘reflective equilibrium’ in social justice, and in a more general sense, in ethics. Also, I expound why White’s doctrine is epistemologically holistic and methodologically monistic. (shrink)