Neo-Pragmatism

This class, introducing students to the pragmatist tradition and to neo-pragmatism, turned out unexpectedly: students knew so little of the history of modern philosophy that  it was necessary to include  summaries of. e.g., Descartes' approach.  One of the term papers in this class, by the way, was subsequently published in the Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society.

This is chapter 6 of my book on Rorty, an attempt to understand and defend to an extent his account of the uses of 'truth'. I'm posting it because I'm revisiting the topic and having reread it recently thought some might find it interesting. Any comments welcome!

This paper analyzes the rise of a new realist outlook among authors otherwise associated with postmodernism–Don DeLillo, Maxine Hong Kingston, James Ellroy. The argument starts out from the assumption that realism in a postmodern context, instead of designating the adequation to truth, refers rather to the pragmatic effort to improve the conditions of one's round of life. The three novelists analyzed here depict characters who have endured trauma or suffered loss and have neverthelees managed to find ways to make their own and other people's life easier. It is through this pragmatic effort that they explore and reshape their world, thus achieving a realist mode of social insertion. Contemporary pragmatic realism, the paper suggests, resonates with the neo-pragmatist discourse that has characterized Anglo-Saxon cultural theory for several decades. It also testifies to an evolution within contemporary culture–a movement away from pure metafiction and intertextuality toward a reappraisal of what constitutes the real with regard to language. The first part of the argument focuses on the paradigms of reference developed in the corpus defined above. The present analysis suggests indeed that pragmatic realism cannot limit itself to an unreflecting exploration of the manifest structures of everyday life: it needs to legitimate its pragmatic outlook by making plain that the latter is the only viable option in an age of ontological skepticism, where the very possibility of realism and reference has been questioned. It is argued in this respect that the three novelists display a less dogmatic attitude toward reference than that which is commonly attributed to postmodernism. In a gesture that harks back to pre-WWII modernism, the writers discussed here make allowances for moments of revelation which may be called epiphanies of the real. As in modernism, however, epiphanies of the real offer no lasting ground for cognitive or moral truth. Pragmatic commitment constitutes therefore a compensation for the impossibility to grasp the real in its totality. Simultaneously, the contemplative dimension of the novels–their reflections on reference and discourse--offer the guarantee of the existential integrity of their devotion to social usefulness. The second part of the argument analyzes the discursive strategies on which contemporary pragmatic realism relies. The paper focuses on the three novelists’s construction of a realist discourse that partly draws on genres–romance, the supernatural– traditionally regarded as antireferential. By the same token, the argument defines the status of the novels analysed here with regard to magic realism–a genre that has sometimes been described as the most emblematic realist discourse of postmodernity.

This conversation between Peirce and Rorty is compiled entirely from their own words. It covers almost every area of philosophy; and it is very funny, showing (what could not within the bounds of academic politeness be said) that Peirce's philosophy is far deeper and far broader than Rorty's vulgar Pragmatism.

Originally published in Agora (1997) and then in  Partisan Review (1998), this conversation has been reprinted many times. It has also been performed at least twice, once, in English, as after-dinner entertainment at a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy (Haack dressedup as Peirce!); and once in Spanish at the University of Granada.

"Peter Hare, Michel Weber, James K. Swindler, Oana-Maria Pastae, Cerasel Cuteanu (eds.), International Perspectives on Pragmatism, Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009 (ISBN 978-1-4438-0194-2).
Foreword
Introduction: Modernity between humanism and crisis; towards pragmatism and liberalism by overcoming tradition
JASON JORDAN- On Human Dignity: The Testament of the Two Humanisms
MIHAELA STEFANESCU - Aspects of the crisis of the West
Part I: Practical Politics
NAOMI ZACK- Social Contract Theory and Disaster Preparation: The Importance of Including Civilians
HORST FREYHOFER - Libertarianism: Old Recipe for a New America?
SIMON GLYNN - Democracy, liberalism and freedom
LINDA SIMON - William James and the Haymarket Affair: A case study of pragmatic
politics
JANE SKINNER - Pragmatism and Political Practice: a Developing Country Perspective
MARJORIE O’LOUGHLIN - The values and practices of democracy in Deweyan pragmatism: a brief exploration
JASON D. HILL - The Right to Permanent Residency as a Human Right: A Kantian Inquiry
MICHEL WEBER - Pragmatic Anarchy in A. N. Whitehead
Part II: Democratic Theory
J.K. SWINDLER - Rationalist Grounds for Pragmatist Democracy
VASIL GLUCHMAN - Humanity and Moral Duty: Contexts with Rorty’s Ideas
SUSANA DE CASTRO - The Rortyan concept of justice as a 'larger loyalty'
MICHAEL HODGES - Rorty on Democracy and Justification
CERASEL CUTEANU - Contemporary Society under the tyranny of a Democracy of the Truth
JON MAHONEY - Pragmatism and Human Rights
MARTA GLUCHMANOVA – Teacher, democratic values and methods (Dewey and his philosophy of education)
NED MCCLENNEN -  A Pragmatic Defense of Justice

Part III: Art and Culture

OTILIA SIMION - Totalitarianism in Literature
KRYSTYNA WILKOSZEWSKA - Community of Art
PETER H. HARE - Comments and Queries: Krystyna Wilkoszewska's "Community and Art"
"

In this dissertation, I ask whether there is anything in Richard Rorty's political thought that can be saved. While I agree that Rorty's work is not what one considers systematic political philosophy, I nonetheless believe that his theory offers important insights to liberal political theory.I explore Rorty's contributions to aspects of liberal political theory. Each chapter can be seen as making an independent argument,but the overarching assertion I pursue in this dissertation is that through a close reading of Rorty's oeuvre, with a focus on his account of the self, one can findinsightful comments on questions of human dignity, humiliation and cosmopolitanism.

In connecting educational theory to a neo-pragmatist social epistemology, we set out to understand education as knowledge practices that yield ‘the cultural world again’ by retelling culture or by making explicit what is implicit in culture. Recent trends in German educational studies towards holistic understanding of education demonstrate that such a holistic, non-representationalist framework is deliberately placed outside the traditional procedure of merely applying knowledge gained in the so-called foundational disciplines such as philosophy, sociology or psychology to the field of education. By constructively relating Brandom’s non-representational inferentialism to a re-reading of Mollenhauer’s distinction of the presentation and representation of culture in and through education, we try to show that Brandom’s philosophy can also be used to point out an inferentialism that is already at work in educational theory. Together, this strengthens a social theoretic account of education that explores how to conceptualise the role of knowledge in educational processes in terms of a holistic epistemology.

These essays, highly unfashionable in their time, represent Haack's response against postmodernist, radical feminist, neo-pragmatist, and other extravagances. "Better ostracism than ostrichism," Haack writes. Economist Robert L. Heilbroner, writing of this book, describes Haack as having "a wicked wit, a kindly heart, and a passion for clarity..."

Il libro di Vismara Currò attraversa la storia della filosofia occidentale nella sua interezza. Lo scopo è sovvertire le letture storiografiche tradizionali che la interpretano come un’eterna dialettica tra Razionalismo ed Empirismo. Secondo l’autore il Pragmatismo non è una corrente di pensiero sorta in America alla fine dell’Ottocento, bensì un vero e proprio paradigma filosofico dotato di una sua storia e di un suo sviluppo che non sono ancora stati colti nella loro continuità. Questa tesi sarebbe di per sé già sufficiente a porre in discussione interi capitoli di opere storiografiche contemporanee e ad alimentare il dibattito accademico sulle (tanto contese) origini della filosofia analitica. Ma l’analisi non si ferma al Novecento. La consapevolezza dell’esistenza di tale paradigma pragmatistico si pone come la base per una radicale rilettura della storia del pensiero occidentale, nonché per una nuova indagine sull’origine delle principali tematiche filosofiche del Novecento, in esplicita polemica con le ricostruzioni oggi vigenti.

Haack teaches epistemology in not-quite-the-usual way. first, her approach is historical; second, it is classical-pragmatist in tone and tenor. nonetheless she also covers most of the topics in contemporary analytic epistemology (context, virtues, etc.) as well.

Readers may be amused to see that Haack's fall semester is, as so often, interrupted by a hurricane!

The field of interactive music systems (IMSs), beginning in the 1980s, is still relatively young and fast moving. The field of music theory-analysis, during the same period (since 1980), has undergone a major transformation in terms of technological innovations, flexibility, and breadth. The two fields have not really caught up with each other. It will be interesting to see what arises as they do — especially as both fields have become more concerned with the role of the body and embodied cognition. Framed in terms of contrasting epistemological orientations, this essay considers some relevant developments in IMSs, music cognition, and music theory and analysis, leading up to the present.  The most popular approaches to music cognition and to IMS design are rationalist (Ashby 2010), exploiting the ‘correct’ embodiments of music (Godøy 2004, Leman 2007, Paine 2009) based on affordances (Gibson 1977, Kelso 1998). This essay, however, advocates a pragmatist (Ashby 2010) approach inspired by music analysis and exploiting the potential of kinesthetic learning (associative learning). Prompted by a progressive approach to music analysis, theory, perception, and cognition (Dubiel 1999, Mailman 2007), interactive music technology can also be constructive, flexible, and progressive, by exploiting kinesthetic learning from immersion in new and unusual motion-to-sound mappings derived from dynamic formal processes in analysed music. In this way, immersive interactive systems offer an opportunity systematically to learn new associations based on principles theorised in response to analysis. Experience of these systems essentially ‘rewires the brain’, thereby exemplifying what Korsyn (2004) has attributed to Lewin’s (1986, 1987) approach to music perception: the ironist approach, as formulated by Rorty (1989). Thus a pragmatist ironist experimental (PIE) approach is articulated. Rather than committing to any particular ways music is already embodied, this approach acknowledges the flexible nature of embodied musical experience. It forges and uses interactive music technologies continually to redescribe and therefore reform how music is embodied, thereby disembodying to re-embody music, expanding how music is heard, contemplated and experienced.

Draft d'un article proposé à la revue Théorèmes, dans le cadre d'un dossier coordonné par Yann Schmitt et Romain Mollard sur "Pragmatisme et religion".

Résumé : Cet article poursuit deux lignes de discussion : la première regarde la montée en puissance des discours et théories du « post-séculier » ; la seconde concerne la fréquente (et récente) atténuation du caractère tranchant du sécularisme et du naturalisme de John Dewey. S’il m’importe de relever le curieux affadissement du naturalisme et du sécularisme de Dewey chez de nombreux pragmatistes contemporains, c’est afin de mieux répondre aux théories de la « société post-séculière », en opposant à ces théories une critique deweyenne non affadie. Pour faire droit à cette critique non affadie, je reviens sur plusieurs textes de Dewey, trop souvent occultés au seul profit de A Common Faith (Dewey, 1934) – un ouvrage dont la radicalité est d’ailleurs rarement considérée. Ce retour m’autorise, d’une part, à recouvrer la pleine puissance de la critique deweyenne des religions, et donc, par voie de conséquence, à corriger l’affadissement dont cette critique a fait l’objet ces dernières années. D’autre part, ce même retour me permet de montrer combien les positions deweyennes sont difficilement compatibles avec les discours et théories qui réclament l’advenue d’une « société post-séculière » ou d’un « âge post-séculier ».

This paper analyses the connection between Nietzsche's early employment of the genealogical method and contemporary neo-pragmatism. The paper has two goals. On the one hand, by viewing Nietzsche's writings in the light of neo-pragmatist ideas and reconstructing his approach to justice as a pragmatic genealogy, it seeks to bring out an under-appreciated aspect of his genealogical method which illustrates how genealogy can be used to vindicate rather than to subvert and accounts for Nietzsche's lack of historical references. On the other hand, by highlighting what Nietzsche has to offer neo-pragmatism, it seeks to contribute to neo-pragmatism's conception of genealogy. The paper argues that Nietzsche and the neo-pragmatists share a naturalistic concern and a pragmatist strategy in responding to it. The paper then shows that Nietzsche avoids a reductive form of functionalism by introducing a temporal axis, but that this axis should be understood as a developmental model rather than as historical time. This explains Nietzsche's failure to engage with history. The paper concludes that pragmatic genealogy can claim a genuinely Nietzschean pedigree.

These are notes on Kant's third Critique that I made for the participants in a reading group I organized in my final semester as an MA student at San Francisco State University. The notes only cover the first part of the book, the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment. What appears is the result of my first serious and close reading of the text as I used it for my thesis on concept-acquisition. Accordingly the document was produced with an eye toward how Kant's theory of aesthetic judgment fits into his larger theory of cognition.

This (very amusing) "conversation" between Peirce and Rorty, compiled  entirely from their own published words, makes it abundantly clear, not only how VERY far Rorty's ideas are from the classical pragmatists', but also how immeasurably  better a philosopher Peirce was!

This paper offers a neo-pragmatist account of the representational character of the emotions, for those emotions that have such a character. Put most generally, neo-pragmatism is the view that language should not be conceived primarily in terms of a robust relation of reference to or representation of antecedently given objects and properties. Rather, we should view it as a social practice that lets us do various quite different sorts of things. One of those things might be called 'assessing representational accuracy', but this need not be thought of in terms of a metaphysically heavyweight relation. In applying neo-pragmatist techniques to the domain of the emotions, the result will be an alternative to currently popular accounts that individuate emotions partly in terms of what they represent. This alternative continues to allow us to use representational language in connection with some emotions. And it also helps to explain the awkwardness of representational talk in connection with other emotions: an awkwardness that was always a liability of monolithic representationalist views.

"This anthropological study describes a specific form of mediation, as it is practiced in Ethiopia (Northeast Africa) by members of the Oromo and Amhara ethnic groups. It introduces elders as male household-heads in their advanced ages, who settle conflicts and arrange marriages for the members of the junior generations. There are not only 'easy' cases dealt with, which one might assume to be too 'unimportant' for state courts or other juridical institutions but also aggravated cases that may affect the wider group or that have inter-ethnic dimensions. The study uses specific case studies of marriage, bride abduction, physical injury and homicide for illustration. Within the book, reference is made to speech-act-theory and the 'new ethnographic' approach related to it. Both rhetoric strategies and non-verbal means of communication are discussed, such as postures, gestures, spatial arrangements, numerical symbolisms, or the deliberate use of certain kinds of dress and of material objects. Special attention is paid to the use of ritual in mediation procedures. The book brings to light significant regularities that are inherent to the different types of elders' proceedings. Peculiar elements and phases can be distinguished that re-occur in all types of processes analysed in the study. This cannot exclusively be explained by reference to 'process', as a general idea of people negotiating law. It moreover hints to the existence of a formal 'procedure', which follows its own rules. Accordingly, a change of perspective 'from process to procedure' is suggested in the book's programmatic title.

http://www.harrassowitz-verlag.de/title_2776.ahtml

Book Order US:
http://www.amazon.com/From-Process-Procedure-Aethiopistische-Forschungen/dp/3447066113/

Book Order Germany:
http://www.amazon.de/Process-Procedure-Mediation-Formality-Ethiopia/dp/3447066113/
http://www.buchhandel.de/detailansicht.aspx?isbn=9783447066112"

PowerPoints (presented during Haack's 2009 lecture tour of China) to accompany the paper of the same title.

Slide 26 (the map showing which states allowed  same-sex marriage in 2009) is now out of date, superseded a 2015 Supreme  Court decision.

A brief sketch of the argumentative lines, credits and limits in rortyan interpretation of Heidegger's thought.
Is it possible to reduce the interpretation of Heidegger into political terms? And further is it even possible to consider Heidegger an essential step in the history of Liberalism? How to limits for the american philosopher the well known possible perversions of an heideggerian perspective?
In the end which are the reductive limits of this interpretation and what does it leave out of the door?

A conversation between Peirce and Rorty, compiled form their own words, revealing how much deeper, and broader, Peirce's philosophy  is than Rorty's. This "conversation" covers just about every philosophical field, and more besides.

Translated by Rachel Herdy.

Haack's title for this piece is "Pragmatism Yesterday,Today and Tomorrow." Answering the editor's questions, she stresses the richness and diversity of classical pragmatism, and the vulgarization and dilution of this rich tradition in contemporary forms of neo-pragmatism. she agrees with the editor, however, that a reconciliation of the values of analytic and of he continental tradition is needed, and that pragmatism might help.

Call For Papers:  The Pragmatist Turn and Embodied Cognition: Habit and Experience at the crossroads between Pragmatism, Neurosciences, and Social Ontology (6-7 April, 2017, University of Parma, Italy

dead line: January 20, 2017

To Date Invited Speakers:

Vittorio Gallese (University of Parma)
Richard Menary (Macquarie University)
Daniel Hutto (University of Wollongong), TBC
Teed Rockwell (Sonoma State University)
Jessica Lindblom (University of Skoevde)
Pierre Steiner (COSTECH/UTC, Paris)
Roberto Frega (IMM-CNRS, Paris)
Corrado Sinigaglia (Università di Milano)
Pentti Määttänen (University of Helsinki)
Arvi Särkelä (University of Luzern)

ABSTRACT:  It is a familiar story that Kant’s defence of our synthetic a priori cognition in the Critique of Pure Reason suffered sharp criticism throughout the extended philosophical revolutions that established analytic philosophy, the pragmatist tradition, and the phenomenological tradition as dominant philosophical movements in the first half of the twentieth century.  One of the most important positive adaptations of Kant’s outlook, however, was the combined analytic and pragmatist conceptions of the a priori that were developed by the American philosophers C. I. Lewis (1883–1964) and Wilfrid Sellars (1912–1989), most notably in Lewis’s 1929 classic, _Mind and the World Order_, followed by Sellars’ critical reworking of Lewis’s outlook in ‘Is There a Synthetic A Priori?’ (1953) and other mid-century articles. Both Lewis and Sellars defended central aspects of Kant’s analysis of our a priori knowledge of mind-independent physical objects and necessary causal connections.  But both also radically transformed Kant’s view by defending the idea that there are alternative a priori conceptual frameworks that are subject to an ongoing process of reassessment and replacement on overall pragmatic and explanatory grounds. Furthermore, while Sellars’ answer to his question, ‘Is There a Synthetic A Priori?’ thus represented a partial endorsement of Lewis’s pragmatic relativization of the a priori, I argue that Sellars’ account of meaning diverged from Lewis in ways that constituted a significant improvement upon the previous ‘analytic’ defenses of the a priori, not only in Lewis but in general. This arguably has implications for wider disputes concerning the nature and possibility of a priori knowledge in non-formal domains.

Haack empieza, citando a Saul Bellow, “que rápido las visiones de los genios se convierten en los productos enlatados de los intelectuales.” Entonces, explora el origen y la evolución de la tradición pragmatista en filosofía (Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead), de una manera que revela la enorme variedad y riqueza de esta tradición, pero también sus tensiones internas; los aspectos y corrientes jurídicos asociados con esta tradición en el trabajo de Holmes, y también (con menos obviedad) en Roscoe Pound y Benjamin Cardozoy además, por supuesto, en Dewey. Identifica algunos “secuestadores” importantes del termino “pragmatista” como por ejemplo Rorty, Brandom y, en el derecho, (tal vez) el juez Posner. Y finalmente, presenta su propia “filosofía jurídica pragmatista neo-clásica”.

Definitions of pragmatism increasingly turn upon understanding and relating the philosophies of Richard Rorty and John Dewey. Frequently Rorty is the first and most important lens through which many encounter pragmatism or Dewey; thus, it is crucial to know where " Rorty " ends and where " Dewey " begins. To find that line, this essay answers the question: What did Rorty believe Dewey contributed to pragmatism, to philosophy, and to humanity? After reviewing how Rorty's personal and academic beginnings intertwined with Dewey, preliminary context is provided by reviewing Rorty's view of pragmatism and neopragmatism and his general interpretive approach to Dewey. These preliminaries yield to analytical descriptions of the main areas in Dewey's work Rorty was concerned to present: experience; objectivity and truth; inquiry and scientific method; ethics, politics, and democracy; and finally, the general purpose of philosophy. (135 words)

– ENGLISH BELOW –
L’édition comme expérience : La collection « Tiré à part » des Éditions de l’Éclat.
Entretien avec Olivier Gaudin et Thibaud Trochu

Michel Valensi et Patricia Farazzi ont fondé les Éditions de l’Éclat en 1985. Avec la cinquantaine de titres de la collection « Tiré à part » (1989-2009), dirigée par Jean- Pierre Cometti (disparu en 2016), cette maison a contribué à introduire de nouveaux auteurs nord-américains dans le paysage francophone. L’idée directrice de l’entretien est que l’activité éditoriale, qui passe souvent au second plan de l’histoire de la philosophie et des sciences humaines, en est une condition décisive. Michel Valensi a accepté de nous répondre en tant que promoteur – et témoin direct – de ces circulations transnationales de nouvelles idées.
 Il nous fournit quelques clefs pour mieux comprendre
les conditions de diffusion en français du pragmatisme classique et du néo-pragmatisme. Comment ces auteurs ont-ils pu trouver leur public ? Autour de quels textes ? Dans quelles circonstances ? Grâce à quelles conditions de coopération et de financement ? Moyennant quels soutiens institutionnels ou privés ? Les réponses de Michel Valensi nous montrent combien le travail d’édition se nourrit de rencontres fécondes et de bonnes surprises, de hasards et d’imprévus, de coups de foudre et, parfois, d’occasions manquées.


Publishing as an experience: the publishing house Les Éditions de l’Éclat’s collection “Tiré à part”.
An interview with Olivier Gaudin and Thibaud Trochu

Michel Valensi and Patricia Farazzi founded Les Éditions de l’Éclat in 1985. With some 50 titles in the “Tiré à part” collection (1989-2009), edited by Jean-Pierre Cometti (who died in 2016), this publisher has helped to introduce new North American authors onto the French-speaking philosophical scene. The guiding thread of the interview is that the activity of publishing, which is often neglected in the history of philosophy and the social sciences, is a crucial condition of their development. Michel Valensi agreed to be interviewed as a promoter – and direct witness – of these transnational ows of new ideas. He gi- ves us a few keys to understanding the conditions under which classical pragmatism and neo-pragmatism spread into French. How did these authors nd a readership? Through which key texts? Under what circumstances? Under what conditions of cooperation and funding? With what sources of support? Michel Valensi’s answers show us the extent to which the work of publishing is characterised by fruitful encounters and happy surprises, by the unexpected and the unforeseen, by instant attraction and, sometimes, by missed opportunities.

Che cos’è la verità e qual è il suo legame con la realtà? Esiste veramente una realtà indipendente a cui le nostre conoscenze fanno riferimento? Che ruolo giocano le nostre giustificazioni nel determinare la verità di una credenza? La metafora del luogo è, secondo l’autore, il modo più efficace per presentare il problema della relazione tra verità e realtà. Italia sviluppa un’analisi teoretica di questi due concetti che si concentra criticamente sulla teoria della verità di Jürgen Habermas, a partire dalla relazione comunicativa tra oggettività e intersoggettività. Il risultato è un realismo graduale che si propone come valida soluzione al problema filosofico del realismo.

Haack replies to a series of questions about how she came to be interested in pragmatism, what work she has done in the area, what she regards as its future, and so on.

This paper was written in response to an invitation from the editor, James Johnson, of a "Five Questions" volume on pragmatism. When, a couple of years later, Haack inquired, numerous times, about publication details, she never received ANY reply! She assumes (charitably) that the editor is deceased.