Pragmatism Books

Book SynopsisHumanism, Antitheodicism, and the Critique of Meaning in Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion develops a distinctive approach to pragmatist philosophy of religion, and more generally to pragmatist investigations of the human search for meaning, by emphasizing what may be considered two closely interrelated main features of this tradition: humanism and antitheodicism. Humanism here emphasizes the need to focus on religion as a human practice within human concerns of meaningfulness and significance, as distinguished from any metaphysical search for cosmic meaning. Antitheodicism, in turn, stands for the refusal to accept any justification, divine or secular, for the experiences of meaninglessness that individuals undergoing horrendous suffering may have. Developing a critical form of pragmatism emphasizing these ideas, Sami Pihlström explores the relations between pragmatism and analytic philosophy in the philosophy of religion, especially regarding the question of religious meaning, as well as the significance of literature for philosophy of religion, with particular emphasis on William James's pragmatism.Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: A Pragmatist Perspective on the Philosophy of ReligionChapter 2: Meaning, Metaphysics, and Humanism: Between Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy of ReligionChapter 3: The Plurality of Pluralisms in William JamesChapter 4: A Poetic Pragmatism? Some Literary Voices in (and after) James’s Humanistic Philosophy of ReligionChapter 5: The Problem of Suffering, (Secular) Theodicies, and Humanistic AntitheodicismChapter 6: Natural and Transcendental Illusions in Kantian-Pragmatist Philosophical AnthropologyChapter 7: Losing (One’s) Religion? Conclusion: Our Tragic Search for Meaning

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Book SynopsisIn Rationalist Pragmatism: A Framework for Moral Objectivism, Mitchell Silver draws from a wide array of philosophical fields to formulate a comprehensive theory of ethics. He argues that an understanding of justification rooted in pragmatism leads to practical principles that apply to all those we would recognize as persons. The account bears implications for the nature of selfhood, the freedom of the will, the meaning of moral terms, the power of moral principles to motivate, conceptions of truth, the nature of value, and the use and abuse of abstract moral theorizing. Rationalist Pragmatism develops its pragmatically informed morality in light of prominent ethical schools, as well as relevant topics in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, including the correspondence theory of truth, inferentialist semantics, motivational internalism, the source of value, and experimental philosophy. Finally, Silver explores concrete moral and political implications of his theory, demonstrating that metaethics can affect positions regarding the morality of personal relations; the treatment of animals; and political assessments of democracy, socialism, and nationalism. Silver maintains that our interest in truth—our rational nature as practical and theoretical beings—forms us as a community of mutually recognizing truth seekers.Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Ideal vs. Non-ideal Moral TheoryChapter One: The Quest for JustificationChapter Two: Objectivity and TruthChapter Three: OthersChapter Four: Meaning, Morality, and Social AgreementChapter Five: Morality’s Motivational PowerChapter Six: No Double StandardsChapter Seven: Our MoralityChapter Eight: Political ImplicationsAppendix: Weighing ValueWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisIn Rationalist Pragmatism: A Framework for Moral Objectivism, Mitchell Silver draws from a wide array of philosophical fields to formulate a comprehensive theory of ethics. He argues that an understanding of justification rooted in pragmatism leads to practical principles that apply to all those we would recognize as persons. The account bears implications for the nature of selfhood, the freedom of the will, the meaning of moral terms, the power of moral principles to motivate, conceptions of truth, the nature of value, and the use and abuse of abstract moral theorizing. Rationalist Pragmatism develops its pragmatically informed morality in light of prominent ethical schools, as well as relevant topics in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology, including the correspondence theory of truth, inferentialist semantics, motivational internalism, the source of value, and experimental philosophy. Finally, Silver explores concrete moral and political implications of his theory, demonstrating that metaethics can affect positions regarding the morality of personal relations; the treatment of animals; and political assessments of democracy, socialism, and nationalism. Silver maintains that our interest in truth—our rational nature as practical and theoretical beings—forms us as a community of mutually recognizing truth seekers.Trade ReviewSilver (formerly, Univ. of Massachusetts, Boston) offers an ethical theory based on philosophical pragmatism. Pragmatism has always been rationalist. Worthy beliefs require sufficient reasons to justify them, reasons appreciable and sharable by others, and justified beliefs in turn inferentially support conclusions about judging situations and actions. Beliefs about values are no exceptions. Pragmatist ethics expects worthy moral beliefs and judgments to meet these cognitivist standards. Silver argues that neither subjectivism nor relativism, long associated with pragmatism by critics, stands in the way of attaining objective moral truths through reasoning, so long as enough people over a long enough time assess all implications of their conduct. Subjectivism and relativism, like prejudice and oppression, are unintelligent refusals to care about wider consequences. This practical ethics, unlike constructivism or discourse ethics, methodically reaches social agreements for attaining common goals despite shared problems. Pluralism is an opportunity, not a roadblock. Silver then shows how this ethics is compatible with naturalism on normativity, defensible against Humean emotivism, and unaffected by post hoc rationalizings. Politics, for Silver, is the public space for practical reason’s management of civic institutions in accord with objective morality. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty. * Choice *“Mitchell Silver’s new book argues that any account of moral objectivity must incorporate a pragmatic conception of moral justification. The argument is original, interesting, and perhaps even true. Best of all, Silver argues for his position with wit and verve. It was a pleasure to read this book.” -- Steven Levine, University of MassachusettsTable of ContentsPrefaceIntroduction: Ideal vs. Non-ideal Moral TheoryChapter One: The Quest for JustificationChapter Two: Objectivity and TruthChapter Three: OthersChapter Four: Meaning, Morality, and Social AgreementChapter Five: Morality’s Motivational PowerChapter Six: No Double StandardsChapter Seven: Our MoralityChapter Eight: Political ImplicationsAppendix: Weighing ValueWorks Cited

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Book SynopsisW. V. Quine’s occasional references to his ‘pragmatism’ have often been interpreted as suggesting a possible link to the American Pragmatism of Peirce, James, and Dewey. Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism, and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction argues that the influence of pragmatism on Quine’s philosophy is more accurately traced to his teacher C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism from Mind and the World Order, and his later An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation. Quine’s epistemological views share many affinities with Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism, where knowledge is conceived as a conceptual framework pragmatically revised in light of what future experience reveals. Robert Sinclair further defends and elaborates on this claim by showing how Lewis’s influence can be seen in several key episodes in Quine’s philosophical development. This correspondence highlights a forgotten element of the epistemological backdrop to Quine’s mid-century criticism of the analytic-synthetic distinction, and Sinclair further argues that it provides the central epistemological framework for the form and content of Quine’s later naturalized conception of epistemology. Trade ReviewIn presenting a historical overview of Quine’s philosophical response to Lewis’ conceptual pragmatism, Sinclair offers a fresh perspective on the interplay between pragmatism and analytic philosophy in the mid-twentieth century. This work broadens our knowledge about Quine’s development, deepens our understanding of his objections to the analytic-synthetic distinction, and sheds new light on his naturalized epistemology. Sinclair’s book, in sum, is a must read for all Quine scholars and a valuable recourse for historians of analytic philosophy. -- Sander Verhaegh, Tilburg UniversityIn Quine, Conceptual Pragmatism and the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction, Robert Sinclair traces the often underappreciated influence of C.I. Lewis and his conceptual pragmatism on Quine’s early development. Starting with his graduate work, Sinclair details Quine’s growing discomfort with Lewis’s reliance on both the analytic-synthetic distinction and phenomenalism. While Quine was at first hopeful about analyticity, Sinclair shows how the exchanges with Lewis and Quine’s commitment to Lewis’s own style of pragmatism contribute to Quine’s rejection of the epistemological significance of the analytic-synthetic distinction and to his eventual move to naturalized epistemology. Emphasizing Lewis’s influence clarifies Quine’s claim to a more thorough pragmatism by taking us beyond just the typical focus on Carnap’s role. Further, tracing continuities between Lewis and Quine, Sinclair sheds useful light on the genesis and structure of Quine’s mature naturalism. Writing with clarity and a deft command of primary and secondary literature, Sinclair deepens and broadens our perspective on Quine’s development and a crucial period in the history of analytic philosophy. -- Paul Gregory, Washington and Lee UniversityTable of ContentsAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Quine and Conceptual PragmatismChapter 1: Themes from Mind and the World Order: The Pragmatic A Priori, Analyticity and the Empirical GivenChapter 2: Harvard Graduate School and Quine’s Early PragmatismChapter 3: Quine’s Critical Transition: From the Carnap Lectures to Truth by ConventionChapter 4: Ongoing Philosophical Struggles and Lewis’s An Analysis of Knowledge and ValuationChapter 5: The Penn-Harvard Triangle and Two Dogmas of EmpiricismChapter 6: After Two Dogmas: From Pragmatism to Naturalized EpistemologyBibliographyAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisJohn Dewey was the most celebrated and publicly engaged American philosopher in the twentieth century. His naturalistic theory of “experience” generated new approaches to education and democracy and re-grounded philosophy’s search for truth in the needs of life as it is shared and lived. However, interpretations of Dewey after the linguistic turn have either obscured or rejected the considerable role that he gives to the non-discursive dimension of experience. In Dewey and the Aesthetic Unconscious: The Vital Depths of Experience, Bethany Henning argues that much classical American philosophy implicitly recognizes an unconscious dimension of mind that is distinct from Freud’s theory. Although the unconscious that emerges within American thought has never been treated systematically, it found its fullest expression in Dewey’s work, particularly in his theory of aesthetic experience. This dimension of mind illuminates the continuity between nature and culture, and it provides us with an account of why artwork is often successful at communicating meanings from the ecological and intimate dimensions of life, where discourse often fails. If the relationship between the human and the organic world has emerged as the definitive question of twenty-first century life, then the aesthetic unconscious stands as a resource for our ecological and intimate well-being.Trade Review"Bethany Henning explores a rarely treated—but fundamental—dimension of Dewey's thought: the aesthetic unconscious. She does so with deep insight and nuanced care, producing a work that must be counted at the forefront of a new generation of scholarship on this complex and often misunderstood philosopher." -- Thomas Alexander"Henning finds words for the wordless, touching the live depths of Dewey—and of art, love, and nature." -- Richard Polt, Professor of Philosophy, Xavier UniversityTable of ContentsContentsAcknowledgementsIntroductionChapter One: The Aesthetic Confrontation with NatureChapter Two: The American UnconsciousChapter Three: The Feel of the Flesh, the Emergence of MindChapter Four: Eros and the Primacy of the AestheticChapter Five: Uncomfortable Art and American TraumaChapter Six: From the Organic Plentitude of BeingBibliography IndexAbout the Author

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Book SynopsisMono no Aware and Gender as Affect in Japanese Aesthetics and American Pragmatism places the naturalistic pragmatism of John Dewey in conversation with Motoori Norinaga’s mono no aware, a Japanese aesthetic theory of experience, to examine gender as a felt experience of an aware, or an affective quality of persons. By treating gender as an affect, Johnathan Charles Flowers argues that the experience of gendering and being gendered is a result of the affective perception of the organization of the body in line with cultural aesthetics embodied in Deweyan habit or Japanese kata broadly understood as culturally mediated transactions with the world. On this view, how the felt sense of identity aligns with the affective organization of society determines the nature of the possible social transactions between individuals. As such, this book intervenes in questions of personhood broadly—and identity specifically—by treating personhood itself as an affective sense. In doing so, this book demonstrates how questions of personhood and identity are themselves affective judgments. By treating gender and other identities as aware, this book advocates an expanded recognition of the how to be in the world through cultivating new ways of perceiving the affective organization of persons.Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter 1: Mono no Aware in Motoori Norinaga’s ThoughtChapter 2: The Poetic Cultivation of Mono no AwareChapter 3: The Normative and Social Dimensions of Mono no Aware in ExperienceChapter 4: The Aware of Gender in LiteratureChapter 5: Establishing the Ground of Aesthetic Personhood through John Dewey and Thomas AlexanderChapter 6: Individuated Identity as an Aesthetic ProcessChapter 7: The Qualitative Unity of Gender and OfficesChapter 8: Reconceiving the Kokoro: Reading Norinaga with DeweyChapter 9: Cross-Culturally Reconceiving Mono no Aware and GenderChapter 10: The Kata of Gender and the Dō of OfficesChapter 11: Aware as a Poetics of Gender

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Book SynopsisThis book is a critical edition of William James’s Essays in Radical Empiricism. The text has been annotated to explain and expand on James’s references and to briefly develop points of criticism. The editor has added a new, critical Introduction, an extended bibliography and a new, comprehensive index. William James is perhaps America’s favorite philosopher and his writings remain popular around the world. Yet he studied to be an M.D., taught anatomy and physiology at Harvard, and he came to international prominence with his magnum opus, The Principles of Psychology (1890). James represented America just as the U.S. arrived on the world stage. This critical edition examines James’s later philosophical work from the perspective of the scientific naturalism often prominent in the Principles. It also takes up developments in historical and contemporary sources of functional psychology—which James often inspired—up to and including reflections of the contemporary French neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene. The aim is to place the evaluation of James on pragmatism and radical empiricism within the scientific perspective of contemporary work in the philosophy of psychology and the philosophy of mind. James on “radical empiricism” and “pure experience” and “pragmatism” are particular topics of critical attention.Table of ContentsPrefaceIntroductionWilliam James, Functional Psychology, and Radical EmpiricismChapter 1Does ‘Consciousness’ Exist?Chapter 2A World of Pure ExperienceChapter 3The Thing and its RelationsChapter 4How Two Minds Can Know One ThingChapter 5The Place of Affectional Facts in a World of Pure ExperienceChapter 6The Experience of ActivityChapter 7The Essence of HumanismChapter 8La Notion de ConscienceChapter 9Is Radical Empiricism Solipsistic?Chapter 10Mr. Pitkin’s Refutation of ‘Radical Empiricism’Chapter 11Humanism and Truth Once MoreChapter 12Absolutism and EmpiricismBibliographyIndex

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Book SynopsisThe topic of history was not a principal theme of the classical American Pragmatists, but in this book Marnie Binder presents the case for a pragmatist philosophy of history, examining supporting material from William James, John Dewey, F.C.S. Schiller, C.S. Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and Jane Addams. While the thinkers explored here have significant differences among themselves, together they provide distinct contributions to a fuller picture of what guides our selective memory and our present attention, and they indicate how this is all maintained via confirmation in the future. Philosophy needs history to help clarify meanings and concepts; part of the methodology of pragmatism is derived from history, as it is attested over time. History needs philosophy to critically analyze historical data; pragmatic interests influence how we study and record history. A Pragmatist Philosophy of History, therefore, provides a rich context for a method that brings the two disciplines together.Table of ContentsIntroductionChapter One: William James on Pragmatic ExperienceChapter Two: John Dewey on Pragmatic EducationChapter Three: Ferdinand Canning Scott Schiller on Pragmatic RevaluationChapter Four: Charles Sanders Peirce on Pragmatic InquiryChapter Five: George Herbert Mead on Pragmatic CommunicationChapter Six: Jane Addams on Pragmatic EthicsConclusion

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Book SynopsisFrom American Empire to América Cósmica through Philosophy: Prospero's Reflection envisions a greater ideal American philosophy that integrates philosophies from across the Americas and is set to work resolving the problems that vex the peoples of the Americas. This work contributes to the rapidly growing dialogue on Inter-American philosophy with research that adds to the list of philosophical affinities across the Americas. However, Terrance MacMullan also delves deeply into the points of philosophical contention and misrecognition between Anglo-American and Ibero-American philosophies by reversing the colonial gaze of the last centuries. Following in the tradition of cultural theorists like Enrique Rodó and Roberto Fernández Retamar, who draw on Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a source of literary metaphors to understand colonialism and imperialism in the Americas, MacMullan argues that the United States will never achieve democratic community unless it first contends with the harsh critiques of its culture and philosophies reflected within the works of Latin American philosophers who prophesied and survived the imperialism of the North American Prospero but whose works are still largely unknown and unseen within U.S. universities.Table of ContentsIntroduction: Inter-American Philosophy and the Hope for a Greater AmericaPart I: Perils and Possibilities of Inter-American Philosophy Chapter 1: Prospero’s ReflectionChapter 2: Inter-American Philosophic Unity as Fact, Propaganda, or Legitimate AspirationChapter 3: Inter-American Philosophical Affinities in the 19th CenturyChapter 4: Early Pragmatist Affinities within Inter-American PhilosophyPart II: Inter-American Philosophy as Resistance to PropagandaChapter 5: The Stars and Stripes over Plaza de las ArmasChapter 6: Scrying Prospero’s Empire: Inter-American Philosophy and Imperial PropagandaChapter 7: Confronting the Seven League Giant: Martí and Rodó on Inter-American Philosophy as Resistance to PropagandaChapter 8: José Vasconcelos and Pragmatism as Gunship Philosophy Chapter 9: Pedro Albizu Campos as the Socratic Gadfly of American Empire Part III: Inter-American Philosophy as a Legitimate AspirationChapter 10: Gloria Anzaldua and Confronting the Gringo Doppelganger Chapter 11: Juan Bautista Alberdi and Inter-American Philosophical Responses to el Caudillo Gringo Chapter 12: The American Redoubt and the Coyolxauqui Imperative: Remembering América through Inter-American Philosophy

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Book Synopsis“Mattering” is the process and product of reality. It is one from nothing. Using Charles Sanders Peirce’s systematic method of inquiry, Dorothea Sophia explores the meaning, the value, and the consequences of “mattering”: to be able to say, beyond reasonable doubt, “it matters,” and that being on an evolving, developing telos, “it is mattering.” Peirce Mattering: Value, Realism, and the Pragmatic Maxim develops a three-part hypothesis of “mattering”: value functions as a condition of intelligibility—purpose, as the ground of “mattering” is dependent on value; power—the capacity to cause—is the enabler of force functioning as actual “mattering”; and “mattering” is evolutionary realization of universal telos. This book argues that championing one’s rights, with disregard for consequences—even for probabilities—and disowning responsibility has come to mean that choice, the hallmark of human freedom, is increasingly circumscribed, as are our chances of saving our world from ecocide. Table of ContentsIntroductionAbbreviationsChapter 1: Why Peirce? Chapter 2: Truth en futuro Chapter 3: Belief Chapter 4: Information Chapter 5: In the beginning Chapter 6: Cosmology Chapter 7: Value and Purpose Chapter 8: Value and Power Conclusion

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Book SynopsisThis book analyses selected participative structures (Diocesan Synod, Diocesan Finance Council, Presbyteral Council, College of Consultors, and Diocesan Pastoral Council) in selected particular Churches in the AMECEA region and proposes some concrete means through which active participation of the Christian faithful may be fostered in the participative structures of these Churches. Table of Contents There are nine participative structures in the 1983 Code of Canon Law Only a few of these structures are functional in particular Churches in the AMECEA Even those mandated by the Code of Canon Law are not functional in some particular Churches in the AMECEA Participative structures are the means by which collaboration of stakeholders is assured in the Church Dialogue is key to making these structures relevant in the Church

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