Contemporary Pragmatism最新文献

Jane Addams takes sympathetic knowledge as a key concept for her moral and political philosophy. However, regarding the classical objections to sympathy as a foundation for morality and democracy, some theoretical remarks are still needed. In this article we aim at showing that the main problem is not due to the absence but to the qualitative import of sympathy in democratic societies. To achieve this goal, we firstly consider Addams’ idea of sympathetic knowledge in light of the influence of social evolutionary theorizing and her distinction between individual and social ethics. Secondly, we analyze the 1894 Pullman strike and the “newsboy” case, and we argue that failures in sympathy may be corrected by a horizontal process. As a result, we consider them not only as failures but mainly as lessons to be learned towards democracy as a rule of living.

This paper develops the pragmatic “atheoreticism” of Quine and Rorty. A position I dub “postpragmatism”—paralleling the post phases of modernism and humanism—my purpose here is to bring to a culmination what Quine and Rorty started decades before. By doing so, I argue, it becomes possible for Quine, and more so Rorty, to avoid the most common critiques of their atheoretic form of pragmatism. Chief among them, that it is mired in self-contradiction. Rather than rely upon theory to justify atheoreticism—the very stuff of their self-contradiction—I rely instead upon Rorty’s own insouciance, syncretism, and eclecticism to shift the ground of debate from concern with what is justified to concern with what is interesting.

Are current digital technologies supporting democracy? Answering that question depends, among other things, on what is meant by democracy. This article mobilizes a communicative conception of democracy. While it is generally accepted that communication is important for democracy, there are directions in democracy theory that understand communication as not merely instrumental but as central to what democracy is and should be. Inspired by Dewey, Habermas, and Young, this paper articulates a conception of democracy as communication. It is then argued that this “deep-communicative” ideal of democracy, together with the usual ethical and epistemic norms of communication as sketched by O’Neill, offer a tentative normative framework for evaluating digital technologies in relation to democracy.

This paper examines the common notion of “resonant experience”—an experience marked by extraordinarily rich, powerful, or deep meaning—as a manifestation of the relational nature of meaning and value. I propose to define resonance as an enhanced feeling of the relational context in which experience is determined, and I then proceed to show how this concept of resonance can be used to understand the experience of enriched meaning and value in art. This exploration of resonance is inspired by William James’s claim that meaning is based in the direct experience of relation, together with John Dewey’s claim that basic features of experience are intensified in the enjoyment of art. It also draws from the relational framework of ecological psychology, and is intended to contribute to that framework from a philosophical standpoint.

This study extends on work investigating the increased application of mixed methods research in prehospital care. The complexity and diversity of the prehospital environment warrants flexibility and applicability to guide the research process, yet little attention has focused on the theoretical lens used in prehospital research when using mixed methods research. Pragmatism’s characteristics of human inquiry, problem solving, and action align with a clinical reasoning approach, supporting the prehospital researchers epistemological understanding of the world. Through further exploration of this alignment, this article proposes pragmatism as a compatible theoretical lens for mixed methods in prehospital research.

This paper examines the well-known pragmatist claim to mediate between philosophical disputes. While recognizing the reconciliatory and harmonizing role that pragmatism plays in traditional debates between, for example, realism and antirealism, naturalism and culturalism, or science and religion, it is argued that the pragmatist also needs to acknowledge that there are situations in which no such mediation is reasonably possible, such as the conflict between racism and antiracism. The metaphilosophical question to be raised is how – in terms of pragmatism itself – we are able to distinguish between these different cases and what exactly it means to apply the pragmatic method to resolving this meta-level issue. Pragmatism here emerges as a thoroughly fallible and antifoundationalist reflexive inquiry into what it means, and what it ought to mean, for us to view philosophical issues in terms of their conceivable practical consequences. The project of mediation must be subordinated to this more fundamental understanding of pragmatist methodology.