Expressivists about epistemic modals deny that ‘Jane might be late’ canonically serves to express the speaker’s acceptance of a certain propositional content. Instead, they hold that it expresses a lack of acceptance. Prominent expressivists embrace pragmatic expressivism: the doxastic property expressed by a declarative is not helpfully identified with that sentence’s compositional semantic value. Against this, we defend semantic expressivism about epistemic modals: the semantic value of a declarative from this domain is the property of doxastic attitudes it canonically serves (...) to express. In support, we synthesize data from the critical literature on expressivism—largely reflecting interactions between modals and disjunctions—and present a semantic expressivism that readily predicts the data. This contrasts with salient competitors, including: pragmatic expressivism based on domain semantics or dynamic semantics; semantic expressivism à la Moss [2015]; and the bounded relational semantics of Mandelkern [2019]. (shrink)

Prometheus has grown four years older since its last and highly controversial special issue, published in 2017 on the Shaken Baby Debate. But, as always, Prometheus is committed to open discussion and dissemination of scientific research, regardless of the potential backlash or controversy that may ensue from such a venture, a venture that is at the core of authentic scholarship. Since the beginning of 2020, the world has changed irrevocably, making once-held norms seem obsolete in favour of new ways of (...) being in the world and new technologies emerging to face these new ways of living. Although it has been a long-held insight in the philosophy of technology that technical systems are carriers of values, the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made manifest how these values, and their incarnations in sociotechnical systems, can likewise change. Prometheus has, since its inception, danced in tandem with the critical interpretations, theories, and methods for understanding innovation, and how innovations fundamentally impact and are impacted by the world in which they emerge and are situated. For this reason, Steffen Steinert, Tristan de Wildt, and I chose to guest edit this special issue on designing for value change and chose Prometheus as its home. (shrink)

In addiction, apparently causally significant phenomena occur at a huge number of levels; addiction is affected by biomedical, neurological, pharmacological, clinical, social, and politico-legal factors, among many others. In such a complex, multifaceted field of inquiry, it seems very unlikely that all the many layers of explanation will prove amenable to any simple or straightforward, reductive analysis; if we are to unify the many different sciences of addiction while respecting their causal autonomy, then, what we are likely to need is (...) an integrative framework. In this paper, we propose the theory of “Externalist” or “4E” – for extended, embodied, embedded, and enactive – cognition, which focuses on the empirical and conceptual centrality of the wider extra-neural environment to cognitive and mental processes, as a candidate for such a framework. We begin in Section 2 by outlining how such a perspective might apply to psychiatry more generally, before turning to some of the ways it can illuminate addiction in particular: Section 3 points to a way of dissolving the classic dichotomy between the “choice model” and “disease model” in the addiction literature; Section 4 shows how 4E concepts can clarify the interplay between the addict’s brain and her environment; and Section 5 considers how these insights help to explain the success of some recovery strategies, and may help to inform the development of new ones. (shrink)

The Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) is a suite of interoperable ontology modules that aims to provide coverage of all aspects of the infectious disease domain, including biomedical research, clinical care, and public health. IDO Core is designed to be a disease and pathogen neutral ontology, covering just those types of entities and relations that are relevant to infectious diseases generally. IDO Core is then extended by a collection of ontology modules focusing on specific diseases and pathogens. In this paper we (...) present applications of IDO Core within various areas of infectious disease research, together with an overview of all IDO extension ontologies and the methodology on the basis of which they are built. We also survey recent developments involving IDO, including the creation of IDO Virus; the Coronaviruses Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO); and an extension of CIDO focused on COVID-19 (IDO-CovID-19).We also discuss how these ontologies might assist in information-driven efforts to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, to accelerate data discovery in the early stages of future pandemics, and to promote reproducibility of infectious disease research. (shrink)

The paper proposes a novel understanding of how Aristotle’s theoretical works complement each other in such a way as to form a genuine system, and this with the immediate (and ostensibly central) aim of addressing a longstanding question regarding Aristotle’s ‘first philosophy’—namely, is Aristotle’s first philosophy a contribution to theology, or to the science of being in general? Aristotle himself seems to suggest that it is in some ways both, but how this can be is a very difficult question. My (...) answer is in some respects a version of one that goes back at least to the middle ages—i.e., that first philosophy is concerned with the gods (and to that extent offers a theology) because the gods are causes and principles of beings precisely insofar as they are beings. The more original aspect of my position lies in my claim that the sort of tension found in the Metaphysics is likewise to be found in many of Aristotle’s physical works. Thus, for example, the De caelo is (I argue) concerned generally with natural beings (= beings susceptible of change), but its discussions are focused largely on the heavenly bodies and the Aristotelian elements insofar as they admit of change with respect to place. Here I claim that the particular objects of discussion are dealt with precisely because they are causes and principles of natural beings as such. Something similar goes, I claim, for the De generatione et corruptione, the general concern of which is a particular species of natural being—i.e., natural beings susceptible of generation and corruption. In this way, I argue, Aristotle successively deals in his theoretical works with those causes and principles of (say) a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a being, those causes and principles of a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a natural being, those causes and principles of a horse which attach to it insofar as it is a perishable natural being, and so on for the lower genera under which the species horse is subsumed. (shrink)

According to Margaret Wilson, Leibniz is inconsistent when it comes to the question of whether one can have distinct ideas of sensible qualities, and this because he sometimes conceives of sensible qualities as sensations and sometimes conceives of them as complexes of primary qualities. When he conceives of them as sensations, he denies that we can have distinct ideas of sensible qualities; when he conceives of them as complexes of primary qualities, he asserts that we can. In this paper I (...) argue that Wilson is wrong to think that Leibnizian ideas admit of various degrees of confusion or distinctness. I also argue that although Wilson's problem admits of being reformulated in a manner consistent with a correct understanding of Leibnizian perceptions and ideas, this reformulated version of the problem admits to a satisfactory interpretive solution. (shrink)

With DLT’s success in driving the development of cryptocurrency (such as Bitcoin), the technology bridged to a myriad of knowledge-based applications, most notably in the areas of commerce, industry and government . In the language of technology sector insiders, these areas were ‘disrupted’ by Blockchain. Some higher education analysts, technology industry insiders and futurists have claimed that Blockchain technology will inevitably disrupt higher education in a similarly dramatic fashion. The aim of this commentary is to introduce a healthy dose of (...) realism into the hype-filled atmosphere of the Blockchain-for-higher-education narrative. A postdigital approach is taken because it treats digital and non-digital technologies as having equal material and cultural standing as candidates to transform higher education. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to offer a clear explanation of what monadic domination, understood as a relation obtaining exclusively among monads, amounts to in the philosophy of Leibniz (and this insofar as monadic domination is conceived by Leibniz not to account for the substantial unity of composite substances). Central to my account is the Aristotelian notion of a hierarchy of activities, as well as a particular understanding of the relations that obtain among the perceptions of monads that stand in (...) relations of monadic domination and subordination. (shrink)

When Dewey scholars and educational theorists appeal to the value of educative growth, what exactly do they mean? Is an individual's growth contingent on receiving a formal education? Is growth too abstract a goal for educators to pursue? Richard Rorty contended that the request for a “criterion of growth” is a mistake made by John Dewey's “conservative critics,” for it unnecessarily restricts the future “down to the size of the present.” Nonetheless, educational practitioners inspired by Dewey's educational writings may ask (...) Dewey scholars and educational theorists, “How do I facilitate growth in my classroom?” Here Shane Ralston asserts, in spite of Rorty's argument, that searching for a more concrete standard of Deweyan growth is perfectly legitimate. In this essay, Ralston reviews four recent books on Dewey's educational philosophy—Naoko Saito's The Gleam of Light: Moral Perfectionism and Education in Dewey and Emerson, Stephen Fishman and Lucille McCarthy's John Dewey and the Philosophy and Practice of Hope, and James Scott Johnston's Inquiry and Education: John Dewey and the Quest for Democracy and Deweyan Inquiry: From Educational Theory to Practice—and through his analysis identifies some possible ways for Dewey-inspired educators to make growth a more practical pedagogical ideal. (shrink)

Environmental ethics has mostly been practiced separately from philosophy of technology, with few exceptions. However, forward thinking suggests that environmental ethics must become more interdisciplinary when we consider that almost everything affects the environment. Most notably,technology has had a huge impact on the natural realm. In the following discussion, the notions of synthesising philosophy of technology and environmental ethics are explored with a focus on research, development, and policy.

This commentary proposes that the concept of slacktivism be enlarged and refined in light of postdigitalism’s Parity Thesis, which states that digital media should not receive undue privilege relative to non-digital media. The term ‘slacktivism’ makes an implicit comparison of activism in digital and non-digital contexts, demeaning the former as less potent, valuable, and impactful than the latter. As a reconstructed concept, postdigital slacktivism would apply equally in both contexts, and most importantly to poorly reasoned activism. After this reformulation, slacktivism’s (...) vapidity no longer reflects the means of transmitting the activist’s message but conveys that there is a breakdown in the rational or logical relation between the activist’s means and the movement’s end. My argument is that subjecting slacktivism to a postdigital reinterpretation positively enriches the concept, transforming it into a pragmatically useful tool for understanding a wider swath of social and political phenomena. (shrink)

Plato’s Clitophon presents a confrontation between two alternative views of justice, one conventional and the other philosophical – and of Clitophon’s inability to move from the one to the other due to his confusion over the relationship between knowledge and virtue and his misconception of the path from ignorance to knowledge, which probably results from his ambition. The nature of this confusion is such that Clitophon can only overcome it by abandoning his submissive stance toward the authority of Socrates, which (...) fact, combined with the character of his appeal to Socrates for an answer to his difficulties makes any authentic verbal response from Socrates unlikely to help and to risk harm. Silence from Socrates at the conclusion of the dialogue would therefore exemplify the principle that it is not for the just to harm anyone. (shrink)

In this chapter, the points of intellectual consonance between Jane Addams and John Dewey are explored, specifically their (1) shared belief that philosophy is a method, (2) parallel commitments to philosophical pragmatism and (3) similar convictions that philosophy should serve to address social problems. Also highlighted are points of divergence in their thinking, particularly their positions on U.S. entry into World War I and, more generally, the value of social conflict. Finally, the chapter concludes with what the author believes is (...) Addams's and Dewey's most significant joint contribution to the contemporary philosophical landscape: a vision of practically engaged pragmatism. (shrink)

Remembrance Education (RE) indicates “an attitude of active respect in contemporary society based on the collective remembrance of human suffering that is caused by forms of human behavior such as war, intolerance or exploitation, and that must not be forgotten.” Unlike traditional history education, the point of RE is not the straightforward teaching of historical facts (if that is at all possible). Instead, RE’s purpose is to bring learners into a community, a community of memory, where they become witnesses, judges (...) and guardians of the memories of tragic past events. Writings on RE are conspicuously absent from Dewey studies. In this bibliographic essay, I offer an overview of RE, including a sample of its programs, initiatives and curricula. In addition, I propose that Dewey’s educational philosophy can helpfully inform the practice of RE. Rather than articulate a definitive account of Dewey-inspired RE, my intention is only to draw a tentative ground map to motivate future research. (shrink)

In the time of Coronavirus, it is perhaps as good a time as any to comment on the use and abuse of metaphors. One of the worst instances of metaphor abuse-especially given the recent epidemiological crisis-is Lynne Tirrell's notion of toxic speech. In the foregoing reply piece, I analyze Tirrell's metaphor and reveal how it blinds us to the liberating power of public speech. Lynne Tirrell argues that some speech is, borrowing from field of Epidemiology, toxic in the sense that (...) it harms vulnerable listeners. In this response piece, I summarize the main points of Tirrell's toxic speech argument, map the underlying conceptual metaphor and pose three objections. (shrink)

In the second part of this essay, I aim to show that Leibniz, in asserting that bodies are aggregates of substances, wants to affirm something about bodies insofar as they exist a parte rei or in reality: in reality a body is not a being, but a multitude of beings or substances. And this, on my view, is precisely what leads Leibniz to assert that bodies are phenomena: since a body is not in reality a being, but many beings, it (...) follows that a body, conceived as a being, is something that exists only objectively in the soul. That is, a body, conceived as a single thing, is not something real, but an imaginary being, a creature of the mind, a phenomenon. (shrink)

It's well known that Leibniz characterizes bodies in two apparently incompatible ways. On the one hand, he asserts that a body is a real or well-founded phenomenon; on the other, he claims that a body is an aggregate of substances that possesses the reality of these same substances. In this essay I aim to defend an explanation of the relation that exists, according to Leibniz, between these two conceptions of body, an explanation that shows them to be compatible and, indeed, (...) complementary. In the first part of this paper I aim above all to show that Robert Adams and Donald Rutherford are wrong to think that these two conceptions are to be reconciled by recognizing that for Leibniz they apply to one and the same thing. (shrink)

A number of recent studies have called into question the traditional interpretation of Leibniz as an idealist beginning, at the latest, with the composition of the Discourse on Metaphysics (1686). In particular, in a recent book Daniel Garber affirms that between the late 1670s and late 1690s Leibniz maintains a realist doctrine according to which the created world is populated with extended corporeal substances. In trying to prove his thesis, Garber appeals to a document written in 1690 where Leibniz, addressing (...) an objection by Michelangelo Fardella, denies that bodies are composed of souls, declares that souls are substantial forms, and affirms that bodies are composed instead of substances. According to Garber, this shows that Leibniz then believed that bodies were composed, not of simple substances, but of extended substances possessing souls. Here I try to show that, to the contrary, the mentioned document (along with two others closely associated with it) support the traditional interpretation of Leibniz as an idealist in 1690. (shrink)

This article explores the possibility that John Dewey’s silence on the matter of which democratic means are needed to achieve democratic ends, while confusing, makes greater sense if we appreciate the notion of political technology from an anthropological perspective. Michael Eldridge relates the exchange between John Herman Randall, Jr., and Dewey in which Dewey concedes “that I have done little or nothing in this direction [of outlining what constitutes adequate political technology, but that] does not detract from my recognition that (...) in the concrete the invention of such a technology is the heart of the problem of intelligent action in political matters.” Dewey’s concession could be interpreted as an admission that he was unqualified to identify political machinery or institutions suitable for realizing his vision of democracy as a way of life. Not being able to specify adequate means to achieve lofty democratic ends is not problematic, though, if we appreciate the roots of Dewey’s work (especially Human Nature and Conduct) in the anthropological writings of Immanuel Kant and Franz Boas. For then experience reflects a myriad of social and cultural conditions such that specifying explicit means to structure that experience risks stymieing the organic development of political practice. When pressured to operationalize political technology, he chose the appropriately open-ended and, at times, frustratingly vague means of education and growth. In short, Dewey did not want his ambitious democratic vision to outstrip the possibilities of practice, so he left the task of specifying exact political technology (or which democratic means are best suited to achieve democratic ends) unfinished. (shrink)

The idea of geoengineering, or the intentional modification of the Earth's atmosphere to reverse the global warming trend, has entered a working theory stage, finding expression in a variety of proposed projects, such as launching reflective materials into the Earth's atmosphere, positioning sunshades over the planet's surface, depositing iron filings into the oceans to encourage phytoplankton blooms, and planting more trees, to name only a few.

During the 1960s and 1970s, institutionalists and behavioralists in the discipline of political science argued over the legitimacy of the institutional approach to political inquiry. In the discipline of philosophy, a similar debate concerning institutions has never taken place. Yet, a growing number of philosophers are now working out the institutional implications of political ideas in what has become known as “non-ideal theory.” My thesis is two-fold: (1) pragmatism and institutionalism are compatible and (2) non-ideal theorists, following the example of (...) pragmatists, can avoid a similar debate as took place between institutionalists and behavioralists by divulging their assumptions about institutions. (shrink)

As the value of a university degree plummets, the popularity of digital microcredentials has soared. Similar to recent calls for the early adoption of Blockchain technology, the so-called ‘microcredentialing craze’ could be no more than a fad, marketing hype or another case of ‘learning innovation theater’. Alternatively, the introduction of these compact skills- and competency-based online certificate programs might augur the arrival of a legitimate successor to the four-year university diploma. The thesis of this article is that the craze for (...) microcredentialing reflects (1) administrative urgency to unbundle higher education curricula and degree programs for greater efficiency and profitability and (2) a renascent movement among industry and higher education leaders to reorient the university curriculum towards vocational training. (shrink)

'Ghosting' or the unethical practice of having someone other than the student registered in the course take the student's exams, complete their assignments and write their essays has become a common method of cheating in today's online higher education learning environment. Internet-based teaching technology and deceit go hand-in-hand because the technology establishes a set of perverse incentives for students to cheat and institutions to either tolerate or encourage this highly unethical form of behavior. For students, cheating becomes an increasingly attractive (...) option as pre-digital safeguards-for instance, in-person exam proctoring requirements and face-to-face mentoring-are quietly phased out and eventually eliminated altogether. Also, as the punishments for violating academic integrity policies are relaxed, the temptation to cheat increases accordingly. For institutions, tolerating, normalizing and encouraging one type of student cheating, ghosting, improves the profitability of their online divisions by bolstering student enrolments and retention. In universities and colleges across the globe, online divisions and programs have become thriving profit centers, not because of the commonly attributed reasons (student ease, safety during health crises and convenience of taking courses online), but due to a single strategic insight: Ubiquitous opportunities for ghosting improve profit margins and maximize revenue. (shrink)

In his pithy indictments of democracy, Churchill captured a feeling prevalent among intellectuals in the first half of the twentieth century; a feeling that government-by-the-people warranted, at best, a limited or half-hearted faith; a feeling that might be described as the “majoritarian creed.” This creed can be characterized by the following propositions. A believer-inthe-democratic-faith defends majoritarian methods—such as popular votes, polls and representation—as the best available means to signal the people’s collective political preferences.

Rapidly, accurately and easily interpreting generated data is of fundamental concern. Ontologies – structured controlled vocabularies – support interoperability and prevent the development of data silos which undermine interoperability. The Open Biological and Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) Foundry serves to ensure ontologies remain interoperable through adherence by its members to core ontology design principles. For example, the Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO) Core includes terminological content common to investigations of all infectious diseases. Ontologies covering more specific infectious diseases in turn extend from (...) IDOCore, such as the Coronavirus Infectious Disease Ontology (CIDO). The growing list of virus-specific IDO extensions has motivated construction of a reference ontology covering content common to viral infectious disease investigations: the Virus Infectious Disease Ontology (VIDO). Additionally the present pandemic has motivated construction of a more specific extension of CIDO covering terminological contents specific to the pandemic: the COVID-19 Infectious Disease Ontology (IDO-COVID-19). We report here the development of VIDO and IDO-COVID-19. More specifically we examine newly minted terms for each ontology, showcase reuse of terms from existing OBO ontologies, motivate choicepoints for ontological decisions based on research from relevant life sciences, apply ontology terms to explicate viral pathogenesis, and discuss the annotating power of virus ontologies for use in machine-learning projects. (shrink)

The legacy of George W. Bush will probably be associated with the President’s infallibly certain style of visionary leadership and his specific vision of a ‘Freedom Agenda’. According to this vision, the United States must spread democracy to all people who desire liberty and vanquish those tyrants and terrorists who despise it. Freedom is universally valued, and the United States is everywhere perceived as freedom’s protector and purveyor. So, the mission of the Freedom Agenda is to guard existing freedoms as (...) well as spread the democratic political system to those countries lacking comparable freedoms. Recent analyses of the Bush Freedom Agenda examine its roots in realist foreign policy and neoconservative political thought. In this paper, I take a different approach, connecting the Freedom Agenda to the ideas of two philosophers: (i) Isaiah Berlin’s notion of positive-negative liberty and (ii) John Dewey’s concept of freedom as a function of culture. My central claim is that when compared with the ideas of Berlin and Dewey, the Freedom Agenda is a faulty construct, both conceptually and practically, for understanding America’s role in global affairs. The Freedom Agenda proves to be neither conservative nor universal. Nevertheless, it constitutes an essential element of George W. Bush’s legacy, a vision of American purpose in a threatening and divisive world. (shrink)

Robert Talisse objects that Deweyan democrats, or those who endorse John Dewey’s philosophy of democracy, cannot consistently hold that (i) “democracy is a way of life” and (ii) democracy as a way of life is compatible with pluralism, at least as contemporary political theorists define that term. What Talisse refers to as his “pluralist objection” states that Deweyan democracy resembles a thick theory of democracy, that is, a theory establishing a set of prior restraints on the values that can count (...) as legitimate within a democratic community. In this paper, it is argued that his pluralist objection succumbs to some combination of four charges. The first two sections of the paper are devoted to presentations of Talisse’s two formulations of his pluralist objection, as they appear in his essay “Can Democracy be a Way of Life?” and his book A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy , respectively. The four charges against the pluralist objection receive attention in the second section. In the third section, Dewey’s pluralist procedure is articulated and illustrated using a recent Canadian public policy debate, followed by some concluding remarks on the acceptability of relying on contemporary political examples of Deweyan democracy in action. (shrink)

For the past thirty years, the Transitional Justice (TJ) research program has been undergoing a period of transition, simultaneously expanding and consolidating; in one sense, expanding its scope to encompass the measurement of TJ’s impact and the redefinition of ‘transitional’ to include societies afflicted by deep social and economic injustice; and in a second sense, consolidating its practical approach to promoting democracy and peace by developing best practices for institutionalizing TJ. While there have been advances in designing new TJ mechanisms (...) and remedying the concept’s under-theorization, little comparative progress has been made to date in offering a guiding framework for TJ’s push to institutionalize. The thesis of this article is that philosophical pragmatism, specifically Deweyan pragmatism, offers a bevy of resources—a virtual tool-kit—for scholars and practitioners wishing to design TJ-friendly institutions within transitional societies. (shrink)

In chapter 8 of The Grace and the Severity of the Ideal, Victor Kestenbaum disputes the naturalistic-instrumentalist reading of John Dewey's A Common Faith. Rather than accept the orthodox reading, he challenges mainstream Dewey scholars to read Dewey's theism from a phenomenological perspective. From this vantage, Kestenbaum contends that Dewey was wagering on transcendence, gambling on an ideal realm of supersensible entities, and hoping that the payoff would be universal acknowledgement of "a widening of the place of transcendence and faith (...) in every area of his philosophy." In a long-neglected correspondence between John Dewey and Albert Balz, Dewey responds to Balz's misreading of his logic as a correspondence theory of truth by stating that through the translation of all the ontological into the logical in the context of inquiry, he is "on the side of the angels." I argue that Dewey is accomplishing much the same thing in A Common Faith by naturalistically unifying the real and the ideal under the heading of the religious. In this respect, Dewey's naturalism and instrumentalism, rather than Kestenbaum's transcendentalism, is firmly "on the side of the angels.". (shrink)

I formulate a Deweyan argument for school gardening that prepares students for a specific type of gardening activism: community gardening, or the political activity of collectively organizing, planting and tending gardens for the purposes of food security, education and community development.

Should ethics be taught in the high schools? Should high school faculty teach it themselves or invite college and university professors (or instructors) into the classroom to share their expertise? In this paper, I argue that the challenge to teach ethics in the high schools has a distinctly Deweyan dimension to it, since (i) Dewey proposed that it be attempted and (ii) he provided many valuable resources with which to proceed. The paper is organized into four sections. In the first, (...) I summarize Jim Garrison’s account of Dewey’s philosophy as education and argue that it offers an exceptional tool-kit to someone interested in advocating for high school ethics pedagogy. The second section presents Dewey’s model for ethics instruction in a high school setting, as articulated in his only essay devoted specifically to the subject: “Teaching Ethics in the High School.” The third examines Peter Singer’s brief essay, “Moral Experts,” to see whether moral expertise is a sine qua non for teaching ethics in the high schools. In the fourth and concluding section, I propose that meeting the Deweyan challenge of teaching ethics in the high schools requires, first, preparing oneself to overcome the objection that such a project is naïve, utopian or just plain foolish and, second, organizing enthusiastic participants to develop and test a prototype, experimenting with various implementation strategies on a small scale before attempting a bolder and larger scale version of the project. Apropos of this second requirement, I showcase the Center for Education in Law and Democracy’s “The High School Ethics Project” in the state of Colorado. (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)

An extensive literature on pragmatism and compromise, as well as their relationship to civic and political leadership, can be found in the field of Public Administration (hereafter PA). PA is broadly defined as that discipline of study addressing the development, institutionalization and reconstruction of bureaucratic-governmental organizations as well as the policies they are tasked to implement—or more “[s]imply stated . . . the management of government agencies." However, the literature is not limited to the works of PA scholars and practitioners. (...) It also encompass the writings of philosophers, and specifically philosophical pragmatists, who can contribute “a kind of methodological sophistication that either sharpens the issues at point in public controversy or discloses the absence of real or genuine issues, thus clarifying the options open for decision." In this literature, questions arise as to how unelected leaders in governmental bureaucracies are guided by pragmatism or pragmatic ideas to (i) negotiate with stakeholders to fashion appropriate compromise agreements, (ii) solve policy problems within a zone of legally mandated authority, (iii) clearly articulate the scope and content of that body of knowledge considered PA scholarship, (iv) understand the origins of PA as a distinct discipline and (v) bridge between the abstract principles offered by PA theorists and the concrete practices of bureaucratic-governmental organizations and public administrators. Classified thematically, these issues fit into four areas: first, controversy over whether administrative action is legitimate (i and ii); second, the PA’s identity crisis as a discipline (iii and iv); third, the gap between theory and practice (v); and fourth, the difficulty of integrating pragmatism and PA (i through v). (shrink)

This paper explores relationships between environment and education after the Covid-19 pandemic through the lens of philosophy of education in a new key developed by Michael Peters and the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. The paper is collectively written by 15 authors who responded to the question: Who remembers Greta Thunberg? Their answers are classified into four main themes and corresponding sections. The first section, ‘As we bake the earth, let's try and bake it from scratch’, gathers wider philosophical (...) considerations about the intersection between environment, education, and the pandemic. The second section, ‘Bump in the road or a catalyst for structural change?’, looks more closely into issues pertaining to education. The third section, ‘If you choose to fail us, we will never forgive you’, focuses to Greta Thunberg’s messages and their responses. The last section, ‘Towards a new normal’, explores future scenarios and develops recommendations for critical emancipatory action. The concluding part brings these insights together, showing that resulting synergy between the answers offers much more then the sum of articles’ parts. With its ethos of collectivity, interconnectedness, and solidarity, philosophy of education in a new key is a crucial tool for development of post-pandemic education. (shrink)

Richard Bernstein’s recent book The Pragmatic Turn is a first-rate scholarly work, an enduring contribution to the literature on the history of Pragmatism, and one that is very difficult to find fault with. Since I am a Dewey scholar and a democratic theorist, I will focus mainly on the book’s third chapter (“John Dewey’s Vision of Radical Democracy”) and its relation to Bernstein’s overall thesis: namely, that “during the past 150 years, philosophers working in different traditions have explored and refined (...) themes that were prominent in the pragmatic movement.” While Bernstein criticizes several of Dewey’s intellectual opponents (e.g., Maine, Trotsky and Lippmann), he does not excuse Dewey and his democratic theory from similarly exacting scrutiny—as some Dewey scholars are guilty of. Indeed, a recurring critique in the third chapter is that Dewey’s democratic theory is too light on particulars, saying very little about how to institutionalize the ideal he sets forth. I think that there is a good reason for Dewey’s vagueness, and that reason comes forth when we appreciate the turn within the pragmatic turn. Some philosophical historians draw attention to philosophy’s large-scale or macro-level turns, such as the so-called “pragmatic” and “linguistic” turns, but tend to ignore the small-scale or micro-level turns within those broader turns. Bernstein is not one of them. Democratic theory experienced a deliberative turn in the late twentieth-century, followed by a turn toward more practical issues, such as testing, applying and institutionalizing the deliberative democratic ideal. Likewise, we encounter a more recent turn within pragmatist studies, which manifests in the secondary literature on John Dewey’s pragmatism. Download PDF . (shrink)

Holism is the notion that all the elements in a system, whether physical, biological, social or political, are interconnected and therefore should be appreciated as a whole. Consequently, the meaning or function of the total system is irreducible to the meaning or function of one or more of the system’s constituent elements. The whole is, on the holist’s account, prior to its parts. In the Metaphysics, Aristotle captures the idea of holism in his statement that “the whole is more than (...) the sum of the parts.” The term holism was coined by South African statesman and scholar Jan Smuts. Etymologically, it comes from a Greek root meaning total, whole, entire or everything. In political thought, the idea is commonly associated with organicism, the view that the state is a living whole (the so-called “body politic”) and therefore studies of the how it functions should be treated systematically rather than piecemeal (cf. Plato, G.W.F. Hegel and Henry Maine). (shrink)

What is the normative significance of school gardening for environmental activism and activists today? Philosophical treatments generally highlight gardening's importance for human well-being, aesthetic theory, and urban landscape design. Several accounts of John Dewey's educational philosophy draw attention to the school gardens tended by students at the University of Chicago's Experimental School. However, these typically neglect the social and political significance of Dewey's writings on school gardening. One way to bring the normative dimension of school gardening to the fore is (...) to compare Dewey's work on the topic with more recent scholarship on the politics of gardening movements. In this paper, the object of comparison is an essay by the Community Studies scholar Mary Beth Pudup. While Pudup's and Dewey's approaches are not identical, the comparison proves fruitful in so far as it exposes the political reasons for gardening education, relates school gardening to contemporary gardening movements and gives the call for creating more school garden projects greater normative force—or so I argue. (shrink)

John Locke is often understood as the inaugurator of the modern discussion of personal human identity—a discussion that inevitably falls back on his own theory with its critical reliance on memory. David Hume and Sigmund Freud would later make arguments for what constituted personal identity, both relying, like Locke, on memory, but parting from Locke's company in respect the role that memory played. The purpose of this paper will be to sketch the groundwork for Locke's own theory of personal identity (...) and consider some common objections tied to his special reliance on memory. Then, we will investigate the extent to which Hume and Freud refined their respective concepts of self-identity in ways that escape some of the most intractable objections to Locke's theory in its dependence on memory. Finally, we will consider which theorist's conception of self-identity best accords with our notion of the cyber-self, or psychological subjectivity in the context of cyberspace. For Locke, the nature of self-identity is that it is continuous across time, and to remain uninterrupted it must be beholden to a psychological process, rather than a material or immaterial substance. (shrink)

Part of John Andrew Rice’s legacy, besides being a founder of Black Mountain College, is his vision of what a small liberal arts college curriculum should be. This vision helps shed light on some possible avenues by which to answer the following important questions: What implications do John Dewey’s progressive educational ideas have for experimenting with curricular design at small colleges? Does the college teacher’s struggle for improvement or growth depend on her having a belief that there is an ideal (...) liberal arts college curriculum? Probably the best known of such ready-made curricula is the Great Books Program, which employs a list of classic primary-source texts as the entry point into highly engaged dialogue, scholarship and learning guided by a teacher or tutor. In order to answer these questions, the paper turns to the historical debate between John Dewey and Robert Maynard Hutchins over the relative merits of progressive educational ideals and the Great Books approach. Most who have commented on this debate emphasize the differences between Dewey and Hutchins’ views.[ii] While Dewey emphasized learning through practical problem solving, in a dynamic mix of subject matter and method, Hutchins stressed exposure to and discussion of at least one-hundred primary texts in the Western canon, from Plato and Aristotle to Emerson and J.S. Mill. Hutchins resisted what he saw as the progressive educator’s push to transform the proper end of educating the whole person into training her for a particular vocation. In response, Dewey criticized Hutchins’ insistence that there existed a “hierarchy of truths” and that higher learning should remain aloof to the concerns of everyday life. Few commentators, however, mention the significant areas of agreement between the pedagogical approaches of Dewey and Hutchins, as well as other Great Books scholars. Since Rice praised the ideas of at least one Great Books proponent (Stringfellow Barr of St. John’s College), a more positive reconstruction of the Dewey-Hutchins exchange helps us to see how Dewey’s ideas informed Rice’s vision for the experimental college at Black Mountain—or so I argue.[iii]. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is examine the recent literature on the intersection between philosophical pragmatism and International Relations (IR), including IR theory and IR research methodology. One of the obstacles to motivating pragmatist IR theories and research methodologies, I contend, is the difficulty of defining pragmatism, particularly whether there is a need for a more generic definition of pragmatism or one narrowly tailored to the goals of IR theorists and researchers.

In this paper, I evaluate three views of philosophical pragmatism’s practical implications for academic and non-academic or public discourses, as well as offer my own view of those implications. The first view is that of George Novack. In an underappreciated tract, Pragmatism versus Marxism, the American Trotskyite and union organizer launched a vicious attack on John Dewey’s career as a professional philosopher. He alleged that Dewey’s ideas were inaccessible to all but a small community of fellow academicians. While Novack conceded (...) that Dewey’s philosophical inquiries had a cross-pollinating influence on other academic fields, he doubted that the beneficial products of those inquiries traveled far beyond the walls of the so-called ‘ivory tower.’ Larry Hickman offers a second view. He understands Dewey’s claim in Experience and Nature that philosophy serves as a “liaison officer” to mean that philosophers should provide a common lexicon that translates between the languages of distinct disciplines. In other words, for Dewey, the role of philosophy, including philosophical pragmatism, is to facilitate interdisciplinarity. Since interdisciplinary sharing is usually confined to academic discourse, Novack’s challenge is perfectly compatible with Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim. Both Novack and Hickman are mistaken, though in different degrees and for different reasons. The third, and more promising, view is advanced by Robert Talisse. He cites the life and works of Sidney Hook, one of Dewey’s better-known students, as an exemplary case of a pragmatist who consistently realized his pragmatic commitments in public discourse. The most important reason for qualifying Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim is that the measure of pragmatism’s value is not solely the ability of pragmatists to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, but their ability to also insert their ideas into public discourse. In my view, philosophical pragmatists, and philosophers generally, should both facilitate interdisciplinarity in academic discourse and introduce philosophical notions into public discourse—that is, serving in the dual capacity of interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual. (shrink)

In Law, Pragmatism and Democracy, Richard Posner wrestles with the ghost of John Dewey for the mantle of pragmatist jurisprudence. Most commentators have seen this work as pitting Posner against Dewey in a contest of pragmatisms, the stakes for which are no less than their respective legacies for legal and democratic theory. Some have sided with Posner and others with Dewey. I contend that the commentators have misidentified the target of Posner’s critique. Posner had another legal theorist in mind and (...) he was disingenuous in naming Dewey. A careful reconstruction of Posner’s argument shows that Dewey’s pragmatism provides a genuine middle way between Posner’s position and that of his intended rival. (shrink)

Imagine you are the CEO of a hospital [. . .]. Decisions are constantly being made in your organization about how to spend the organization's money. The amount of money available to spend is never adequate to pay for everything you wish you could spend it on, therefore you must set spending priorities. There are two questions you need to be able to answer . . . How should we set priorities in this organization? How do we know when we (...) are doing it well? When people seek to achieve good public policy, the result will tend to be good public policy. In a collective choice process, public‐spirited individual participants produce good public policy by deliberating—talking with each other, listening to each other's arguments, and being willing to learn and change their minds based on such dialogue. –Steven Kelman (1992: 181) Public policy scholars agree that those persons (or agencies) vested with the authority to establish health care priorities should elicit public input before making rationing decisions. The two most common approaches are (i) consultation and (ii) deliberation. Though deliberation has obvious advantages over consultation, it falters in the face of the objection that ordinary citizens lack the cognitive resources for the extended, rigorous inquiry required of them in undertaking the priority‐setting task. To overcome this objection, I propose that deliberative forums for health care rationing should be designed so that they imitate the natural pattern of human experience. The experience of deliberation should encompass both prolonged periods of less‐demanding cognitive activity, in which citizens passively receive information, and briefer periods of more‐demanding cognitive activity, in which they engage in active problem‐solving. In arguing for this thesis, I rely on two theoretical sources and one practical case study, in the following order: (i) John Dewey's metaphysics of experience, (ii) cognitive science research on schemas and frames, and (iii) the Health Care Council in São Paulo, Brazil. (shrink)

The American rock band KISS is notorious. Its notoriety derives not only from the band’s otherworldly costumes (except for of course during the unmasked period), the fact that they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, their numerous hit records or the amazing stage theatrics and pyrotechnics of their live shows. It’s also related to the band’s constantly changing makeup (and I don’t mean the kind on their faces!). Of the four members, only Paul Stanley and Gene (...) Simmons were fixtures. With so many changes to the band’s composition, has KISS always remained the same band? Some see this head-scratcher as roughly similar to a conundrum in philosophical metaphysics (that’s the area of philosophy addressing problems of existence): the puzzle of Theseus’s ship. (shrink)

Not long after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, an American citizen was captured by U.S. soldiers on he battlefield carrying a weapon and wearing the dress of a Taliban soldier. Heralded by the news media as the “American Taliban,” he became a spectacle, bound, gagged, naked and blind-folded on a stretcher in a photo taken soon after his capture. The story of how the homeschooled twenty-year-old from a middle-class Northern California family became an enemy combatant in the Afghani desert piqued (...) the popular imagination. After converting to Islam, he went to Yemen, learned Arabic, returned home and then left again to attend a madrassa (or Islamic religious school) before receiving training at an Al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. Some Americans reacted to the young man’s story with wonder; others with loathing. How did this youth stray from the values that most Americans hold dear? In fact, he did not. Similar to Paul Maud’dib who, at the end of Dune Messiah, wandered into the desert a blind holy man, the American Taliban had acted in accordance with values that most American prize: self-reliance, ingenuity, spirituality and practical know-how. It is widely believed that the Fremen culture derives from their religion, Zensunni , an imaginative blending of Zen Buddhism and Sunni Muslim beliefs. However, a closer look reveals that the Fremen (similar to the American Taliban) were shockingly American in their core values. To demonstrate this, I begin by discussing the weirdness of Dune’s Fremen, their religion, customs and lifestyle. Then, I give a brief summary of American philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson’s famous essay “Self-Reliance” followed by a similar treatment of John Dewey’s notion of democracy as a way of life. The essay returns to paint a clearer picture of the American Fremen and their exhilarating though dangerous faith in jihad as a way of life. (shrink)

The notion of the “deep state” or a “state within a state” is creepy, to say the least. It indicates the existence of a shadowy group of unelected bureaucrats deeply embedded in the military-intelligence establishment secretly manipulating government policy. International relations scholars and public administration experts associate deep states with authoritarian regimes, such as Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and pre-civil-war Syria. However, as we’re finding out, the U.S. has its own deep state. While some media outlets portray deep state talk as (...) tantamount to conspiracy theory, the deep state is quite real. (shrink)

Any treatment of the relationship between pragmatism and politics would be incomplete without considering the multiple areas in which pragmatist thought and political studies intersect. Extensive scholarly work on pragmatism and politics can be found in the broad literature on political science, democratic theory, global political theory, public administration, and public policy. To a lesser extent, scholarship employing a pragmatist approach can be found in other subfields of political studies, including American politics and international relations. Unfortunately, the few works in (...) these subfi elds tend to appeal to a generic form of pragmatism (e.g., pragmatism as brute instrumentalism or pragmatism as vicious opportunism), not the robust version associated with classic and contemporary philosophical pragmatism.1 Most works on classic pragmatism and politics draw heavily on John Dewey’s political writings. Pragmatism’s two other founders remained relatively silent on the subject; in Robert Talisse’s words, “neither [Charles Sanders] Peirce nor [William] James wrote systematically about politics.” Neo-pragmatist treatments of politics can be found in the works of the late Richard Rorty, Cornell West, and Richard Posner. (shrink)

Besides being the title of an EP by The (International) Noise Conspiracy, “Bigger cages, longer chains!” is an anarchist rallying cry. It’s meant to ridicule those political activists who compromise their ideals, make demands and then settle for partial concessions or, to put it bluntly, bargain with the Man. In the T.V. series Mr. Robot, Christian Slater plays the anarchist leader of a hacktivist group known as fsociety. Mr. Robot won’t negotiate with the FBI and E(vil) Corp for bigger cages (...) and longer chains. He tells Elliot Anderson, the young cybersecurity expert and hacker, “We live in a kingdom of bullshit!” Victory over the tyranny of corporations and states requires radical means to achieve radical ends. Mr. Robot wants freedom without limits, total liberation from corporate and statist control, and the opportunity to live in a world without bullshit. Mr. Robot’s objective is to free citizens of first-world nations from the cages of consumer debt and citizens of third-world nations from the shackles of extreme poverty. Meeting half-way will not do. So what are the inspirations for Mr. Robot’s hacktivist philosophy? The most proximate sources are David Graeber’s anarchism, which also influenced the Occupy Wall Street movement, and the hacktivist group Anonymous’s moralfaggery, that is, the policy of some of its members to use collective computer hacking to serve the greater good. Candidates for more remote sources are Marxism and pragmatism; the former, a blueprint for freeing the working class from their bourgeois oppressors; the latter, a philosophy of action, intelligent inquiry and democratic reform. Some might object that pragmatism is too conventional to be compatible with the radical ideas that motivate Mr. Robot’s worldview. Hacktivism demands action, not mere thinking! But any organized social-political movement requires a well-thought-out plan as well as a vision of what its participants hope to achieve. Since pragmatism is a philosophy of action and reform, it’s possible that Mr. Robot is a closet pragmatist! (shrink)

Environmental justice refers to many things: a global activist movement, local groups that struggle to redress the inequitable distribution of environmental goods (and bads), especially as they affect minority communities, as well as a vast body of interdisciplinary scholarship documenting and motivating these movements. In the past three decades, scholarly debates over what environmental justice requires have been dominated by a discourse of rights.

This paper examines Linda Zagzebski’s account of rationality, as set out in her rich, wide-ranging, and important book, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. We briefly describe the account that she offers and then consider its plausibility. In particular, in the first section we argue that a number of Zagzebski’s claims with regard to rationality require more support than she offers for them. Moreover, in the second section, we contend that far from offering Zagzebski a (...) quick way of dealing with radical scepticism, her account of rationality actually seems to be particularly vulnerable to this problem. (shrink)