Download or read book Pragmatist Epistemologies written by Roberto Frega and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a series of ten articles from leading American and European scholars, Pragmatist Epistemologies explores the central themes of epistemology in the pragmatist tradition through a synthesis of new and old pragmatist thought, engaging contemporary issues while exploring from a historical perspective. It opens a new avenue of research in contemporary pragmatism continuous with the main figures of pragmatist tradition and incorporating contemporary trends in philosophy. Students and scholars of American philosophy will find this book indispensable.
Download or read book Pragmatism and Reference written by David Boersema and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008-09-19 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An argument that a pragmatist approach to reference offers a corrective to the prevailing analytic views on the topic. Despite a recent revival of interest in pragmatist philosophy, most work in the analytic philosophy of language ignores insights offered by classical pragmatists and contemporary neopragmatists. In Pragmatism and Reference, David Boersema argues that a pragmatist perspective on reference presents a distinct alternative—and corrective—to the prevailing analytic views on the topic. Boersema finds that the pragmatist approach to reference, with alternative understandings of the nature of language, the nature of conceptualization and categorization, and the nature of inquiry, is suggested in the work of Wittgenstein and more thoroughly developed in the works of such classical and contemporary pragmatists as Charles Peirce and Hilary Putnam. Boersema first discusses the descriptivist and causal theories of reference—the received views on the topic in analytic philosophy. Then, after considering Wittgenstein's approach to reference, Boersema details the pragmatist approach to reference by nine philosophers: the “Big Three,” of classical pragmatism, Peirce, William James, and John Dewey; three contemporary American philosophers, Putnam, Catherine Elgin, and Richard Rorty; and three important continental philosophers, Umberto Eco, Karl-Otto Apel, and Jürgen Habermas. Finally, Boersema shows explicitly how pragmatism offers a genuinely alternative account of reference, presenting several case studies on the nature and function of names. Here, he focuses on conceptions of individuation, similarity, essences, and sociality of language. Pragmatism and Reference will serve as a bridge between analytic and pragmatist approaches to such topics of shared concern as the nature and function of language.
Download or read book Realism And Pragmatic Epistemology written by Nicholas Rescher and published by University of Pittsburgh Pre. This book was released on 2014-02-06 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of philosophical realism from the standpoint of pragmatic epistemology, Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology addresses the core idea of Rescher's work in epistemology: that functional and pragmatic concerns exert a controlling influence on the conduct of rational inquiry and on the ways in which we can and should regard its products.Pragmatism is widely regarded as a philosophical approach that stands at odds with realism, but Rescher takes a very different approach. He views pragmatism as a realistic position that can be developed from a pragmatic point of view, and utilizes a number of case studies to augment his position. Throughout, he shows how the pragmatic and purposive setting of our putative knowledge of the real world proves to be crucial for the constituting and also for the constitution of our knowledge.
Download or read book Evidence and Inquiry written by Susan Haack and published by Prometheus Books. This book was released on 2009-12-02 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this important new work, Haack develops an original theory of empirical evidence or justification, and argues its appropriateness to the goals of inquiry. In so doing, Haack provides detailed critical case studies of Lewis's foundationalism; Davidson's and Bonjour's coherentism; Popper's 'epistemology without a knowing subject'; Quine's naturalism; Goldman's reliabilism; and Rorty's, Stich's, and the Churchlands' recent obituaries of epistemology.
Download or read book Introducing Pragmatism written by Cornelis de Waal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-30 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism’s focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions—from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West—evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue. The book discusses: Classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams; Contemporary figures, including Rorty, Putnam, Haack, and West; Connections with other twentieth-century approaches, including phenomenology, critical theory, and logical positivism; Peirce’s pragmatic maxim and its relation to James’s Will to Believe; Applications to philosophy of law, feminism, and issues of race and racism.
Download or read book Pragmatism Pluralism and the Nature of Philosophy written by Scott F. Aikin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-30 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the past fifteen years, Aikin and Talisse have been working collaboratively on a new vision of American pragmatism, one which sees pragmatism as a living and developing philosophical idiom that originates in the work of the "classical" pragmatisms of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, uninterruptedly develops through the later 20th Century pragmatists (C. I. Lewis, Wilfrid Sellars, Nelson Goodman, W. V. O. Quine), and continues through the present day. According to Aikin and Talisse, pragmatism is fundamentally a metaphilosophical proposal – a methodological suggestion for carrying inquiry forward amidst ongoing deep disagreement over the aims, limitations, and possibilities of philosophy. This conception of pragmatism not only runs contrary to the dominant self-understanding among cotemporary philosophers who identify with the classical pragmatists, it also holds important implications for pragmatist philosophy. In particular, Aikin and Talisse show that their version of pragmatism involves distinctive claims about epistemic justification, moral disagreement, democratic citizenship, and the conduct of inquiry. The chapters combine detailed engagements with the history and development of pragmatism with original argumentation aimed at a philosophical audience beyond pragmatism.
Download or read book Rational Acceptance and Purpose written by David S. Clarke and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 1989 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Feminist Epistemology and American Pragmatism written by Alexandra L. Shuford and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2011-10-20 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Feminist philosophy identifies tensions within mainstream theories of knowledge. To create a more egalitarian epistemology, solutions to these problems have been as diverse as the traditions of philosophy out of which feminists continue to emerge. This book considers two equally formidable approaches theorized by Louise Antony and Lynn Hankinson Nelson. The American philosopher W.V.O. Quine locates knowledge as a branch of empirical science. Shuford shows how both Antony and Nelson use Quine's 'naturalized epistemology' to create empirically robust feminist epistemologies. However, Shuford argues that neither can include physical embodiment as an important epistemic variable. The book argues that John Dewey's theory of inquiry extends beyond Quine's insight that knowledge must be interrogated as an empirical matter. Because Dewey insists that all aspects of experience must be subject to the experimental openness that is the hallmark of scientific reasoning, Shuford concludes that physical embodiment must play an important part in knowledge claims.
Download or read book New Pragmatists written by Cheryl Misak and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2007-03-08 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pragmatism is the view that our philosophical concepts must be connected to our practices - philosophy must stay connected to first order inquiry, to real examples, to real-life expertise. The classical pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, put forward views of truth, rationality, and morality that they took to be connected to, and good for, our practices of inquiry and deliberation. When Richard Rorty, the best-known contemporary pragmatist, looks at our practices, he finds that we don't aim at truth or objectivity, but only at solidarity, or agreement within a community, or what our peers will let us get away with saying. There is, however, a revisionist movement amongst contemporary philosophers who are interested in pragmatism. When these new pragmatists examine our practices, they find that the trail of the human serpent is over everything, as James said, but this does not toss us into the sea of post-modern arbitrariness, where truth varies from person to person and culture to culture. The fact that our standards of objectivity come into being and evolve over time does not detract from their objectivity. As Peirce and Dewey stressed, we are always immersed in a context of inquiry, where the decision to be made is a decision about what to believe from here, not what to believe were we able to start from scratch - from certain infallible foundations. But we do not go forward arbitrarily. That is, these new pragmatists provide accounts of inquiry that are both recognizably pragmatic in orientation and hospitable to the cognitive aspiration to get one's subject matter right. The best of Peirce, James, and Dewey has thus resurfaced in deep, interesting, and fruitful ways, explored in this volume by David Bakhurst, Arthur Fine, Ian Hacking, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Cheryl Misak, Terry Pinkard, Huw Price, and Jeffrey Stout.
Download or read book Richard J Bernstein and the Pragmatist Turn in Contemporary Philosophy written by J. Green and published by Springer. This book was released on 2014-01-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Richard J. Bernstein, who has played a leading role in "the pragmatist turn" in contemporary philosophy, replies to twelve younger critics in a lively conversation about pragmatism's past, present, and future as a guiding paradigm for philosophy and related fields.
Download or read book Democratic Hope written by Robert B. Westbrook and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 2015-05-27 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The pragmatists' response to the claim that theirs is a deeply American philosophy has been less to challenge the claim than to attempt to embrace it on their own terms. . . . One could speak of a national philosophy as one could not speak of a national chemistry or physics. But national cultures were complicated and often conflicted. Hence the relationship between a philosophy and a national culture could be at once close and fraught with tension."—from Democratic Hope Pragmatism, as Richard Rorty has said, "names the chief glory of our country's intellectual tradition." In Democratic Hope, Robert B. Westbrook examines the varieties of classical pragmatist thought in the work of John Dewey, William James, and Charles Peirce, testing in good pragmatic fashion the truth of propositions by their consequences in experience. Westbrook also attends to the recent revival of pragmatism by Rorty, Cheryl Misak, Richard Posner, Hilary Putnam, Cornel West, and others and to pragmatist strains in contemporary American political thinking. Westbrook's aims are both historical and political: to ensure that the genealogy of pragmatism is an honest one and to argue for a hopeful vision of deliberative democracy underwritten by a pragmatist epistemology and ethics.
Download or read book Pragmatic Reasons written by J. Koons and published by Springer. This book was released on 2009-04-22 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book shows how a sophisticated version of pragmatism, resting on a novel conception of rationality, can justify a range of important practices, including our practices of moral and epistemic evaluation, as well as our practice of making judgments regarding free will and moral responsibility.
Download or read book Knowing Democracy A Pragmatist Account of the Epistemic Dimension in Democratic Politics written by Michael I. Räber and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-10-06 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can we justify democracy’s trust in the political judgments of ordinary people? In Knowing Democracy, Michael Räber situates this question between two dominant alternative paradigms of thinking about the reflective qualities of democratic life: on the one hand, recent epistemic theories of democracy, which are based on the assumption that political participation promotes truth, and, on the other hand, theories of political judgment that are indebted to Hannah Arendt’s aesthetic conception of political judgment. By foregrounding the concept of political judgment in democracies, the book shows that a democratic theory of political judgments based on John Dewey’s pragmatism can navigate the shortcomings of both these paradigms. While epistemic theories are overly and narrowly rationalistic and Arendtian theories are overly aesthetic, the neo-Deweyan conception of political judgment proposed in this book suggests a third path that combines the rationalist and the aesthetic elements of political conduct in a way that goes beyond a merely epistemic or a merely aesthetic conception of political judgment in democracy. The justification for democracy’s trust in ordinary people’s political judgments, Räber argues, resides in an egalitarian conception of democratic inquiry that blends the epistemic and the aesthetic aspects of the making of political judgments. By offering a rigorous scholarly analysis of the epistemic and aesthetic foundations of democracy from a pragmatist perspective, Knowing Democracy contributes to the current debates in political epistemology and aesthetics and politics, both of which ask about the appropriate reflective and experiential circumstances of democratic politics. The book brings together for the first time debates on epistemic democracy, aesthetic judgment and those on pragmatist social epistemology, and establishes an original pragmatist conception of epistemic democracy.
Download or read book Pragmatism and Objectivity written by Sami Pihlström and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-02-17 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pragmatism and Objectivity illuminates the nature of contemporary pragmatism against the background of Rescher’s work, resulting in a stronger grasp of the prospects and promises of this philosophical movement. The central insight of pragmatism is that we must start from where we find ourselves and deflate metaphysical theories of truth in favor of an account that reflects our actual practices of the concept. Pragmatism links truth and rationality to experience, success, and action. While crude versions of pragmatism state that truth is whatever works for a person or a community, Nicholas Rescher has been at the forefront of arguing for a more sophisticated pragmatist position. According to his position, we can illuminate a robust concept of truth by considering its links with inquiry, assertion, belief, and action. His brand of pragmatism is objective and organized around truth and inquiry, rather than other forms of pragmatism that are more subjective and lenient. The contingency and fallibility of knowledge and belief formation does not mean that our beliefs are simply what our community decides, or that truth and objectivity are spurious notions. Rescher offers the best chance of understanding how it is that beliefs can be the products of human inquiry yet aim at the truth nonetheless. The essays in this volume, written by established and up-and-coming scholars of pragmatism, touch on themes related to epistemology, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics.
Download or read book Belief written by Aaron Z. Zimmerman and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-12 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Have you ever called yourself a "pragmatist"? Have you ever wondered what that means? Aaron Zimmerman traces the origins of pragmatism to a theory of belief defended by the nineteenth-century Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain, and defends a novel take on the pragmatic theory in light of contemporary cognitive neuroscience, social psychology, and evolutionary biology. Pragmatists define their beliefs in terms of information poised to guide our more attentive, controlled actions. Zimmerman describes the consequences of this definition for the reader's thinking on the relation between psychology and philosophy, the mind and brain, the nature of delusion, faith, pretence, racism, and more. He employs research on animal cognition to argue against the propositional attitude analysis of belief now popular among Anglo-American philosophers, offers pragmatic diagnoses of Capgras syndrome and various forms of racial cognition, and defends William James' famous doctrine of the "will to believe". Zimmerman believes we often have room to believe what we want. Indeed, the adoption of a theory of belief is an instance of this very phenomenon.
Download or read book Pragmatist Truth in the Post Truth Age written by Sami Pihlström and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-09-23 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Engages in a self-critical examination of the pragmatist conception of truth integrating ethics, epistemology, and philosophy of religion.
Download or read book Plato s Pragmatism written by Nicholas R. Baima and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-12-28 with total page 201 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Plato’s Pragmatism offers the first comprehensive defense of a pragmatist reading of Plato. According to Plato, the ultimate rational goal is not to accumulate knowledge and avoid falsehood but rather to live an excellent human life. The book contends that a pragmatic outlook is present throughout the Platonic corpus. The authors argue that the successful pursuit of a good life requires cultivating certain ethical commitments, and that maintaining these commitments often requires violating epistemic norms. In the course of defending the pragmatist interpretation, the authors present a forceful Platonic argument for the conclusion that the value of truth has its limits, and that what matters most are one’s ethical commitments and the courage to live up to them. Their interpretation has far-reaching consequences in that it reshapes how we understand the relationship between Plato’s ethics and epistemology. Plato’s Pragmatism will appeal to scholars and advanced students of Plato and ancient philosophy. It will also be of interest to those working on current controversies in ethics and epistemology
