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Pragmatic Encroachment, Religious Belief, and Practice
by Aaron RizzieriEngaging several recent and important discussions in the mainstream epistemological literature surrounding 'pragmatic encroachment', the volume asks, amongst others, the question: Do the high stakes involved in accepting or rejecting belief in God raise the standards for knowledge that God exists?
The Pragmatic Enlightenment
by Dennis C. RasmussenThis is a study of the political theory of the Enlightenment, focusing on four leading eighteenth-century thinkers: David Hume, Adam Smith, Montesquieu, and Voltaire. Dennis C. Rasmussen calls attention to the particular strand of the Enlightenment these thinkers represent, which he terms the "pragmatic Enlightenment. " He defends this strand of Enlightenment thought against both the Enlightenment s critics and some of the more idealistic Enlightenment figures who tend to have more followers today, such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Jeremy Bentham. Professor Rasmussen argues that Hume, Smith, Montesquieu, and Voltaire exemplify an especially attractive type of liberalism, one that is more realistic, moderate, flexible, and contextually sensitive than most other branches of this tradition.
Pragmatic Fashions: Pluralism, Democracy, Relativism, And The Absurd (American Philosophy Ser.)
by John J. StuhrJohn J. Stuhr, a leading voice in American philosophy, sets forth a view of pragmatism as a personal work of art or fashion. Stuhr develops his pragmatism by putting pluralism forward, setting aside absolutism and nihilism, opening new perspectives on democracy, and focusing on love. He creates a space for a philosophy that is liable to failure and that is experimental, pluralist, relativist, radically empirical, radically democratic, and absurd. Full color illustrations enhance this lyrical commitment to a new version of pragmatism.
Pragmatic Humanism Revisited: An Essay on Making the World a Home (Studies in Humanism and Atheism)
by Ana HonnackerHow can we feel at home in this world without clinging to false certainties? This book offers a humanist re-reading of philosophical pragmatism and explores its potentials for a worldview that relies only on human resources. Thinking along with authors like William James and F.C.S. Schiller, it highlights a fundamentally humanist strand of pragmatism aimed at fostering human creativity and transformative action. It is grounded in everyday experience and underlines our responsibility to strive for the better. Ana Honnacker traces perspectives on science, religion, and ethics in the light of a pragmatic understanding of humanism. Furthermore, she suggests how to address the existential challenges we face today. Thus, pragmatic humanism is explored not only as a philosophy for critical minds, but also as a way of life.
The Pragmatic Ideal: Mary Field Parton and the Pursuit of a Progressive Society
by Mark Douglas McGarvieFollowing the life of a charismatic woman committed to reform, The Pragmatic Ideal provides an introduction to the politics that dominated the early decades of the twentieth century, ideas that are the basis for much of today's progressive thought. As one of the "new women" who came of age during the Progressive era, Mary Field Parton, a close friend of Clarence Darrow, pursued social justice as a settlement house worker and as a leading writer on labor organizing, transforming pragmatic principles into action.Mark Douglas McGarvie shows how, following the upheavals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, liberals such as Mary Field Parton turned to pragmatism, hoping to generate greater social awareness from constructions of values rooted in personal experiences instead of philosophical or religious truths. The Pragmatic Ideal reveals how Mary Field Parton sought to expand her rights as a woman while nonetheless denigrating rights as artificial legal impediments to social progress. The issues she faced and the options she considered find important currency in the political divisions confronting Americans a century later.
Pragmatic Idealism and Scientific Prediction
by Amanda GuillánThis monograph analyzes Nicholas Rescher’s system of pragmatic idealism. It also looks at his approach to prediction in science. Coverage highlights a prominent contribution to a central topic in the philosophy and methodology of science. The author offers a full characterization of Rescher’s system of philosophy. She presents readers with a comprehensive philosophico-methodological analysis of this important work. Her research takes into account different thematic realms: semantic, logical, epistemological, methodological, ontological, axiological, and ethical. The book features three, thematic-parts: I) General Coordinates, Semantic Features and Logical Components of Scientific Prediction; II) Predictive Knowledge and Predictive Processes in Rescher’s Methodological Pragmatism; and III) From Reality to Values: Ontological Features, Axiological Elements, and Ethical Aspects of Scientific Prediction. This insightful analysis offers a critical reconstruction of Rescher’s philosophy. The system he created is often characterized as pragmatic idealism that is open to some realist elements. He is a prominent representative of contemporary pragmatism who has made a great deal of contributions to the study of this topic. This area is crucial for science and it has been little considered in the philosophy of science.
Pragmatic Inquiry and Religious Communities: Charles Peirce, Signs, and Inhabited Experiments
by Brandon Daniel-HughesThis book examines the ways in which religious communities experimentally engage the world and function as fallible inquisitive agents, despite frequent protests to the contrary. Using the philosophy of inquiry and semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce, it develops unique naturalist conceptions of religious meaning and ultimate orientation while also arguing for a reappraisal of the ways in which the world’s venerable religious traditions enable novel forms of communal inquiry into what Peirce termed “vital matters.” Pragmatic inquiry, it argues, is a ubiquitous and continuous phenomenon. Thus, religious participation, though cautiously conservative in many ways, is best understood as a variety of inhabited experimentation. Religious communities embody historically mediated hypotheses about how best to engage the world and curate networks of semiotic resources for rendering those engagements meaningful. Religions best fulfill their inquisitive function when they both deploy and reform their sign systems as they learn better to engage reality.
Pragmatic Judgments in Direct Patient Care: Moral Theory at the Beginning of Clinical Ethics Consultation
by Bernhard BleyerWhy does a hospital need an ethics consultation? And what about this counselling is ethical? The book explains the background of the development of clinical ethics counselling. It provides new insights into serious decision-making conflicts in everyday clinical life and uncovers the disputes that followed in public. In the search for the ethical understanding of clinical ethics counselling, the book comes across previously unexplored evidence. Step by step, a system is reconstructed that reveals the shape of a significant philosophical school of thought.
The Pragmatic Mind: Explorations in the Psychology of Belief
by Mark BauerleinThe Pragmatic Mind is a study of the pragmatism of Emerson, James, and Peirce and its overlooked relevance for the neopragmatism of thinkers like Richard Rorty, Stanley Cavell, Stanley Fish, and Cornel West. Arguing that the "original" pragmatists are too-often cited casually and imprecisely as mere precursors to this contemporary group of American intellectuals, Mark Bauerlein explores the explicit consequences of the earlier group's work for current debates among and around the neopragmatists.Bauerlein extracts from Emerson, James, and Peirce an intellectual focus that can be used to advance the broad social and academic reforms that the new pragmatists hail. He claims that, in an effort to repudiate the phony universalism of much contemporary theory, the new generation of theorists has ignored the fact that its visions of pragmatic action are grounded in this "old" school, not just in a way of doing things but also in a way of thinking about things. In other words, despite its inclination to regard psychological questions as irrelevant, Bauerlein shows that the pragmatic method demands a pragmatic mind--that is, a concept of cognition, judgment, habit, and belief. He shows that, in fact, such a concept of mind does exist, in the work of the "old" pragmatists.
A Pragmatic Perspective of Measurement (SpringerBriefs in Psychology)
by David Torres IrribarraThis book aims to address the challenges of defining measurement in social sciences, presenting a conceptualization of the practice of measurement from the perspective of the pragmatic tradition in philosophy. The book reviews key questions regarding the scope and limits of measurement, emphasizing that if the trust that the public places on measures in the social sciences relies on their connection to the notion of measurement in the physical sciences, then the clarification of the similarities and differences between measurement in the physical and the social realms is of central importance to adequately contextualize their relative advantages and limitations. It goes on to present some of the most influential theories of measurement such as the “classical view” of measurement, operationalism, and the representational theory of measurement, as well as more methodological perspectives arising from the practice of researchers in the social sciences, such as the latent variable perspective, and from the physical sciences and engineering, represented by metrology. This overview illustrates that the concept of measurement, and that of quantitative methods, is currently being used across the board in ways that do not necessarily conform to traditional, classical definitions of measurement, pushing the boundaries of what constitutes our technical understanding of it. Moreover, what constitutes a technical understanding of measurement, and the theoretical commitments that it entails, must vary in different areas. In this context, disagreement on what is constitutive of measurement is bound to appear. Pragmatism is presented as a theoretical perspective that offers the advantage of being flexible and fallibilist, encouraging us to abandon the pursuit of a timeless and perfect definition that attempts to establish decontextualized/definitive demarcation criteria for what is truly measurement. This book will be of particular interest for psychologists and other human and social scientists, and more concretely for scholars interested in measurement and assessment in psychological and social measurement. The pragmatic perspective of measurement presents a conceptual framework for researchers to ground their assessment practices acknowledging and dealing with the challenges of social measurement.
Pragmatic Perspectives: Constructivism beyond Truth and Realism (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy)
by Robert SchwartzFor a good part of the 20th century, the classic Pragmatists—Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey—and pragmatism in general were largely ignored by analytic philosophers. They were said to hold such untenable views as whatever best satisfies our needs is true and that the end justifies the means. Despite a recent revival of interest in these figures, spurred largely by the work of Richard Rorty, it is not uncommon to continue to hear claims that pragmatism is a subjectivist, anti-realist position that denies that there is a mind-independent world, and fails to place objective constraints on inquiry. In this book, Robert Schwartz dispels these traditional views by examining the empiricist and constructivist orientation of the classic pragmatists. Based on updated and expanded versions of his influential papers, as well as a number of previously unpublished essays, in this book Schwartz demonstrates the relevance of pragmatic thought to a wide range of issues beyond concerns over truth and realism that currently dominate discussions. The individual essays elaborate and defend pragmatic, instrumentalist, and constructivist conceptions of truth and inquiry, moral discourse and ethical statements, perception, art, and worldmaking. Pragmatic Perspectives will appeal to scholars interested in the history of American philosophy and pragmatic approaches to contemporary issues in analytic philosophy.
Pragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology (Routledge Research in Phenomenology)
by Ondrej Svec Jakub CapekPragmatic Perspectives in Phenomenology offers a complex analysis of the pragmatic theses that are present in the works of leading phenomenological authors, including not only Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty, as it is often the case within Hubert Dreyfus’ tradition, but also Husserl, Levinas, Scheler, and Patocka. Starting from a critical reassessment of existing pragmatic readings which draw especially on Heidegger’s account of Being-in-the-world, the volume’s chapters explore the following themes as possible justifications for speaking about the pragmatic turn in phenomenology: the primacy of the practical over theoretical understanding, criticism of the representationalist account of perception and consciousness, and the analysis of language and truth within the context of social and cultural practices. Having thus analyzed the pragmatic readings of key phenomenological concepts, the book situates these readings in a larger historical and thematic context and introduces themes that until now have been overlooked in debates, including freedom, alterity, transcendence, normativity, distance, and self-knowledge. This volume seeks to refresh the debate about the phenomenological legacy and its relevance for contemporary thought by enlarging the thematic scope of pragmatic motives in phenomenology in new and revealing ways. It will be of interest to advanced students and scholars of phenomenology who are interested in moving beyond the analytic-continental divide to explore the relationship between practice and theory.
Pragmatic Reason: Christopher Hookway and the American Philosophical Tradition (Routledge Studies in American Philosophy)
by Robert B. Talisse Paniel Reyes Cárdenas Daniel HerbertChristopher Hookway has been influential in promoting engagement with pragmatist and naturalist perspectives from classical and contemporary American philosophy. This book reflects on Hookway’s work on the American philosophical tradition and its significance for contemporary discussions of the understanding of mind, meaning, knowledge, and value. Hookway’s original and extensive studies of Charles S. Peirce have made him among the most admired and frequently referenced of Peirce’s interpreters. His work on classical American pragmatism has explored the philosophies of William James, John Dewey, and Josiah Royce, and examined the influence of pragmatist ideas outside of the United States. Additionally, Hookway has participated in a number of celebrated exchanges with some of the most high-profile figures of twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy, including Karl-Otto Apel, Philip Pettit, Hilary Putnam, and W.V.O. Quine, through which his treatments of a large range of topics in epistemology and the philosophies of mind and language have been developed and promoted. The chapters in this book—which include contributions from several of Hookway’s former students and colleagues—include studies of Hookway’s engagement with the works of Peirce, James, and Dewey, his contributions to virtue epistemology, and his discussions of hope and pragmatist metaphysics. Pragmatic Reason will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, and epistemology.
Pragmatic Strategy: Eastern Wisdom, Global Success
by Ikujiro Nonaka Zhichang ZhuPragmatism is enjoying a renaissance in management studies and the social sciences. Once written off as amoral, relativist and opposed to the ideals of Truth, Reason and Progress, it is now regaining influence in public policy, international relations and business strategy. But what can pragmatism teach us about strategy? How can pragmatic strategies help businesses to succeed? This innovative book presents a pragmatic framework for shaping and solving strategic problems in a practical, creative, ethical and finely balanced manner. To achieve this, the authors draw from Confucian teaching, American pragmatism and Aristotelian practical wisdom, as well as business cases across industries and nations, particularly from emerging economies. With significant theoretical depth, direct practical implication and profound cultural sensitivity, the book is useful for executive managers, public administrators, strategy researchers and advanced students in the search for pragmatic strategies in an interconnected, fast-moving world.
Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your "Wetware"
by Andy HuntThis book guides us on how to: Use the Dreyfus Model of Skill Acquisition to become more expert; Leverage the architecture of the brain to strengthen different thinking modes; Avoid common "known bugs" in your mind; Learn more deliberately and more effectively; and Manage knowledge more efficiently.
Pragmatics and Law
by Alessandro Capone Francesca PoggiThis volume highlights important aspects of the complex relationship between common language and legal practice. It hosts an interdisciplinary discussion between cognitive science, philosophy of language and philosophy of law, in which an international group of authors aims to promote, enrich and refine this new debate. Philosophers of law have always shown a keen interest in cognitive science and philosophy of language in order to find tools to solve their problems: recently this interest was reciprocated and scholars from cognitive science and philosophy of language now look to the law as a testing ground for their theses. Using the most sophisticated tools available to pragmatics, sociolinguistics, cognitive sciences and legal theory, an interdisciplinary, international group of authors address questions like: Does legal interpretation differ from ordinary understanding? Is the common pragmatic apparatus appropriate to legal practice? What can pragmatics teach about the concept of law and pervasive legal phenomena such as testimony or legal disagreements?
Pragmatics and Philosophy. Connections and Ramifications (Perspectives in Pragmatics, Philosophy & Psychology #22)
by Alessandro CaponeThis book shows how pragmatics and philosophy are interconnected, and explores the consequences and ramifications of this innovative idea, especially in addressing and solving the problem of breaking Grice's circle. The author applies philosophy in order to get to a better understanding of pragmatics, and pragmatics in order to get a better understanding of philosophy. The book starts with a chapter on the non-cancellability of explicatures and the role that this idea plays in the resolution of Grice’s circle, and proceeds with the discussion of other topics in which explicatures or cancellability play an important and decisive role. While the reader proceeds in the reading of this book, they accumulate notions and pieces of knowledge which will be of invaluable use when arriving at the chapter on conversational presuppositions (and related chapters), where the author expresses his most radical views: namely that (potential) presuppositions are indeed cancellable, contrary to what many believe.
Pragmatics and Semantics: An Empiricist Theory
by Carol A. KatesWhat is the nature of communicative competence? Carol A. Kates addresses this crucial linguistic question, examining and finally rejecting the rationalistic theory proposed by Noam Chomsky and elaborated by Jerrold J. Katz, among others. She sets forth three reasons why the rationalistic model should be rejected: (1) it has not been supported by empirical tests; (2) it cannot accommodate the pragmatic relation between speaker and sign; and (3) the theory of universal grammar carries with it unacceptable metaphysical implications unless it is interpreted in light of empiricism. Kates proposes an empiricist model in place of the rationalistic theory—a model that, in her view, is more consistent with recent findings in linguistics and psycholinguistics. In attempting to clarify the nature of utterance meaning, Kates develops theoretical perspectives on phenomenological empiricism and produces an account of reference and intentionality directly relevant to empirically based theories of speaking and understanding. Among the major topics addressed in the book are transformational-generative and universal grammar, cognitive theories of language acquisition, pragmatic structure, predication and topic-comment structure, and empiricism and the philosophical problem of universals. An innovative and probing work, Pragmatics and Semantics: An Empiricist Theory will be welcomed by philosophers, linguists, and psycholinguists.
The Pragmatics and Semiotics of Standard Languages (G - Reference, Information and Interdisciplinary Subjects)
by Albert SweetSweet describes the pragmatic foundations of standard logic and applies these foundations to the task of developing a theory of intended models as an extension of standard model theory in which the relevant "intending" is represented pragmatically. Methods of formal logic are used to investigate the structure of the relation between language and the world. The truism which holds that this relation includes the speaker as well as the object spoken about is formally explicated and applied to the problem of illuminating one of the deepest phenomena in standard model theory: the existence of non-isomorphic models of complete theories. To this end it is shown that standard logic admits pragmatic foundations upon which a theory of intended models can be built as an extension of standard model theory. The relevant "intending" is represented by the very forms of verbal behavior which determine the grammatical and logical structure of the sentences whose referential meaning is in question. The uniqueness properties of the class of intended models may then be described.The first section of the book states the immediate goal of standard pragmatics as that of recovering the algebraic structure first-order logic by means of a purely pragmatic construction. The second section, the major portion of the work, then provides the foundation for a semiotic theory of intended models and referential meaning. The theory is then applied to the problem of referential indeterminancy, which has been associated with the phenomenon of scientific revolutions. The theory is also applied to the problem of the apparent synonymy of observationally equivalent theories. Sweet concludes that such theories are not referentially synonymous in any natural sense which is analogous to the paradigm sense in which theories of alternative scales of measurement are referentially synonymous.A novel feature of this book is the formal explication of the idea that the factors, pragmatical in nature, which distinguish the actual meaning of a sentence from among its possible meanings, whose range is defined by the manner in which the sentence is parsed, determine that very parsing. Applicability to natural language of the model-theoretic semantics thereby obtained is made possible by another feature of the book: the development of a theory of locally standard grammar which provides the foundation for representing the structure of natural language as that of standard first-order logic, in a local, as distinguished from a global, sense.This book is intended for scholars in logic, semiotics, and the philosophies of language and of science. Those concerned specifically with such philosophers as Peirce, Martin, and Davidson will also find the study valuable.
Pragmatische Urteile in der unmittelbaren Patientenversorgung: Moraltheorie an den Anfängen Klinischer Ethikberatung (Gesundheit und Medizin im interdisziplinären Diskurs)
by Bernhard BleyerWozu braucht ein Krankenhaus eine Ethikberatung? Und was an dieser Beratung ist ethisch? Das Buch erklärt die Hintergründe der Entstehungsprozesse Klinischer Ethikberatung. Es gewährt neue Einblicke in schwerwiegende Entscheidungskonflikte des klinischen Alltags und deckt die vehementen Auseinandersetzungen auf, die sich öffentlich daran anschlossen. Auf der Suche nach dem Ethikverständnis der Klinischen Ethikberatung trifft das Buch auf bisher nicht ausgewertete Hinweise. Schritt für Schritt wird eine Systematik rekonstruiert, die die Gestalt einer bedeutsamen philosophischen Denkrichtung erkennen lässt.
Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader
by Russell B. GoodmanRussell Goodman examines the curious reemergence of pragmatism in a field dominated in the past decades by phenomenology, logic, positivism, and deconstruction. With contributions from major contemporary and classical thinkers such as Cornel West, Richard Rorty, Nancy Fraser, Charles Sanders Peirce, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, Russell has gathered an impressive chorus of philosophical voices that reexamine the origins and complexities of neo-pragmatism. The contributors discuss the relationship of pragmatism and literary theory, phenomenology, existentialism, and the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. They question the meaning of pragmatics, what it is to be practical, and ask provocative questions such as: what is reading? and whether democracy is a precondition for the functioning of intelligence. This work places this reemergent and interesting neo-development in its proper context and will provide readers with a strong sense of the movement's foundations, history, and subtlities.
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking
by William JamesThe word pragmatism is used everywhere today, from business to sports to politics. Although the word hadn't yet entered everyday language when William James published "Pragmatism" in 1907, the philosopher believed its doctrine had virtually become common sense in twentieth-century America. For James, pragmatism was a specific philosophical alternative to essentialism and foundationalism and argued that ideas are meaningful only insofar as they have practical consequences in concrete human experience; however today pragmatism has come to denote merely a general willingness to compromise principles, even to the point of selfishness or irresponsibility. Written in an engaging and accessible style, "Pragmatism" is a valuable corrective to modern uses of the word, since the voice that speaks in its pages embodies precisely the opposite values from the pejorative semes the word has acquired.
Pragmatism
by William JamesNoted psychologist and philosopher develops his own brand of pragmatism, based on theories of C. S. Peirce. Emphasis on "radical empiricism," versus the transcendental and rationalist tradition. One of the most important books in American philosophy. Note.
Pragmatism: A New Name For Some Old Ways Of Thinking (Dover Thrift Editions)
by William JamesA profoundly influential figure in American psychology, William James (1842–1910) was also a philosopher of note, who used Charles S. Peirce's theories of pragmatism as a basis for his own conception of that influential philosophy. For James, this meant an emphasis on "radical empiricism" and the concept that the meaning of any idea — philosophical, political, social, or otherwise — has validity only in terms of its experiential and practical consequences. <P><P> James propounded his theories of pragmatism in this book, one of the most important in American philosophy. In a sense, he wished to test competing systems of thought in the "marketplace of actual experience" to determine their validity, i.e. whether adopting a particular philosophical theory or way of looking at the world makes an actual difference in individual conduct or in how we perceive and react to the varieties of experience. In these pages, James not only makes a strong case for his own ideas, but mounts a powerful attack against the transcendental and rationalist tradition. <P><P> For anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought, Pragmatism is an essential and thought provoking reference. In this handy, inexpensive edition, it will challenge and stimulate any thinking person.
Pragmatism
by William James Bruce KuklickA profoundly influential figure in American psychology, William James (1842–1910) was also a philosopher of note, who used Charles S. Peirce's theories of pragmatism as a basis for his own conception of that influential philosophy. For James, this meant an emphasis on "radical empiricism" and the concept that the meaning of any idea — philosophical, political, social, or otherwise — has validity only in terms of its experiential and practical consequences. James propounded his theories of pragmatism in this book, one of the most important in American philosophy. In a sense, he wished to test competing systems of thought in the "marketplace of actual experience" to determine their validity, i.e. whether adopting a particular philosophical theory or way of looking at the world makes an actual difference in individual conduct or in how we perceive and react to the varieties of experience. In these pages, James not only makes a strong case for his own ideas, but mounts a powerful attack against the transcendental and rationalist tradition. For anyone interested in William James or the history of American philosophical thought, Pragmatism is an essential and thought provoking reference.