Nursing is frequently described as practical or pragmatic and there are many parallels between nursing and pragmatism, the school of thought. Pragmatism is often glancingly referenced by nursing authors, but few have conducted in-depth discussions about its applicability to nursing; and few have identified it as a significant theoretical basis for nursing research. William James's pragmatism has not been discussed substantially in the nursing context, despite obvious complementarities. James's theme of pluralism fits with nursing's diversity and plurality; (...) his emphasis on social conscience in our actions matches nursing's fundamental purpose of improving the lives of others; his continuous testing of pluralistic truths in critically reflective practice pairs well with nursing's focus on developing best-available, holistic evidence; and his conceptualization of truth as being born in practice and becoming an instrument in practice is entirely compatible with nursing's theory–practice identity. The oft-discussed theory–practice gap is seen to hinder the development of nursing knowledge. If nursing is to find its identity in knowledge development and potentiate the knowledge developed, it is imperative to identify and address that which is impeding progress. By way of the pragmatic tenets of William James, I will argue that a significant part of the theory–practice gap lies in how nursing knowledge development is operationalized, creating a false dichotomy between practice and research. I will also argue that the research–practice schism has been widened by continued philosophical and methodological infighting in the research community. I will describe how Jamesian pragmatism can be 'what works' for rebuilding relationships and supporting an engaged plurality within nursing research and bring research and practice together into a collaborative and iterative process of developing nursing knowledge. (shrink)

This paper discusses William James’s pragmatism in relation to nominalism. James’s views are often contrasted with Peirce’s realism. There are differences between Jamesian and Peircean pragmatisms, but several scholars argue that it is misleading to simply classify James as a nominalist. Moreover, the nominalism vs. realism issue in these early pragmatists is not purely metaphysical but also ethical, illustrating the pragmatists’ tendency to view metaphysics and ethics as deeply entangled. This challenging theme should be further developed today in (...) attempts to rethink the nature and mutual relations of philosophical disciplines. (shrink)

In his lectures on pragmatism presented in the academic year 1913—14 at the Sorbonne, Durkheim argued that James’s pragmatist theory of truth, due to its emphasis on individual satisfaction, was unable to account for the obligatory, necessary and impersonal character of truth. But for Durkheim to make this charge is only to raise the question whether he himself could account for the morally obligatory or normative character of truth. Although rejecting individualism may be necessary for explaining the existence of (...) norms, it is not sufficient. I argue that Durkheim never succeeded in providing a full account of normativity. Of course, this is a problem that remains unresolved today. Nevertheless, Durkheim took an important step beyond James in recognizing the insufficiency of his individualist account of truth. (shrink)

This article picks up from William James's pragmatism and metaphysics of experience, as expressed in his “radical empiricism,” and further develops this Jamesian pragmatist approach to uncertainty and ignorance by connecting it to phenomenological thought. The Jamesian pragmatist approach avoids both a “crude naturalism” and an “absolutist rationalism,” and allows for identification of intimations of the sacred in both scientific and religious practices—which all, in their respective ways, try to make sense of a complex world. Analogous to (...) religious practices, emotion and the metaphysics of experience play a central role in science, especially the emotion of wonder. Engaging in scientific or religious practices may create opportunities for individuals to realize that they are co-creators of the world in partnership with God, in full awareness of uncertainty and ignorance and filled with the emotion of wonder. (shrink)

Nursing research has commonly taken a problem‐based approach to research design seeking to ground research endeavour within the phenomena with which nursing is occupied. The aim of this paper is to explore an alternative of using philosophical imperative as a research driver, considering both the appropriateness and implications of this approach for nursing. Jamesian pragmatism, with its emphasis on plural, fluid ontology and evolving knowledge, aligns with nursing and is one philosophical imperative which has much to the profession. (...) The paper offers an exemplar of research into family members' experience of the diminishing drinking of a dying relative, which was undertaken within, and from, a pragmatic imperative. Research driven by philosophical imperative has consequences. The philosophical imperative will likely to be pervasive across the research, influencing research topic, conceptualisation, design, delivery and utilisation, bringing both advantages and constraints. (shrink)

The Varieties of Religious Experience is not a theological treatise but an inquiry into a ubiquitous feature of the human condition and thus of human nature itself. Its author makes this clear at the outset, claiming competence as a psychologist and promising no more, therefore, than an examination of those “religious propensities of man” which James takes to be “at least as interesting as any other of the facts pertaining to his mental constitution.” The “at least” is clearly ironical for (...) James will argue throughout the work that this aspect of one’s mental constitution is generative of thoughts, sentiments and actions at once new, different, original, and of the greatest consequence. As an enduring feature of our mental constitution, the religious contents are under no special burden of vindication or verification for they are vindicated and verified precisely by their ubiquity and efficacy. This “radical empiricist,” true to the authentic ism, accepts no philosophical a priori that would pass judgment on just which experiences are to count and which are to be rendered otiose. Just in case there are religious thoughts and sentiments widely experienced, abidingly efficacious, central to actually lived lives, it is not for the psychologist to await some “metaphysical” license before including them among subjects of interest. In this independence of inquiry, this openness to realities set before us as indubitable facts of mental life, James records what Louis Dupré discovers in an entire generation of American philosophers. (shrink)

Much attention is focussed on recent debates in contemporary political philosophy concerning the relative merits of ideal theory and non-ideal theory. In one of their many forms, these debates take shape as a realist challenge to idealistic or utopian approaches to normative political theory. This article shows that the philosophical tradition of pragmatism both instructively anticipates and also, more importantly, can today contribute to contemporary realism. It is shown how a political pragmatism, particularly one centred in William James’ (...) work, helps frame two key contributions that would be resources for the realist challenge to ideal theory. First is an orientation towards unruly pluralism as a feasibility condition that should constrain political theorising. Second is a procedural norm of inclusive tolerance that can help enact the motion of a liberal political vision under the constraints of unruly pluralism. (shrink)

I attempt to solve a problematic feature of Scheler's intentional feeling. Spiritual feelings are disembodied and elements of William James's pragmatism offer a way to make elements of Scheler's phenomenology more concrete than Scheler's phenomenology allows. I then further develop this insight since contact between both Scheler and James opens up possible trajectories and affinities that, in the end, reveal both thinkers share an affective underpinning to their respective metaphysics. In both thinkers, reality is given as felt. As such, (...) this underpinning becomes a basis for interpreting Scheler's later metaphysics through Jamesian pragmatism. (shrink)

This chapter examines the work of pragmatism's two earliest exponents, Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910). Particular attention is paid to the latter's version of pragmatism: a liberal and irenic Lebensphilosophie which judged thoughts by their practical consequences, encouraged individuals to trust the deepest demands of their natures, emphasized the creative and purposive character of all human thought, and stressed the moral and intellectual necessity of tolerating rival points of view. Two defining features of James's outlook (...) are emphasized and explored: his post‐positivist philosophy of science, and his ground‐breaking work in the philosophy of religion. Yet Jamesian pragmatism is full of arguments, many of them insightful, penetrating, and provocative. If philosophers have not always realized this, it is partly because of his magnificent prose style, which is both colloquial and eloquent, urbane but lofty, witty and playful yet not lacking in gravitas. (shrink)

Pragmatism, the single originally American philosophical tradition, has in recent decades once again become widely discussed in many fields of philosophy, including metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of science, philosophy of religion, and moral philosophy. This study seeks to show, both historically and systematically, that the issue of «human nature, » the main problem of philosophical anthropology, is (or at least should be) at the center of pragmatistic philosophizing. The author formulates a contemporary version of pragmatism largely based on William (...) James's (1842-1910) work, arguing that such a neo-Jamesian framework also can meet postmodernistic and irrationalistic threats. (shrink)

Classical pragmatism is committed to the thought that philosophy must be relevant to ordinary life. This commitment is frequently employed critically: to show that some idea is irrelevant to ordinary life is to prove it to be expendable. But the commitment is also constructive: pragmatists must strive to make their positive views relevant. Accordingly, one would expect the classical pragmatists to have fixed their attention on ethics, since this is the area of philosophy most attuned to everyday problems. Although (...) ethics was among Dewey’s persistent interests, Peirce wrote almost nothing on the subject, and James wrote very little. But what James did write exerts considerable influence on contemporary pragmatists, many of whom make frequent appeals to the dual components of James’s ethics, pluralism and meliorism. In this paper, we will pose three challenges to Jamesian ethics. As James’s ethics is unique, we begin with a sketch of his view. (shrink)

A rational reconstruction of James's doctrine of pure experience is attempted, showing how it can be formulated in terms of a Ramsey sentence so that its credibility is comparable to contemporary functionalism about the mind. Whereas functionalism treats only mental predicates as theoretical terms and quantifies over physical objects, Jamesian 'global-functionalism' treats both mental and physical predicates as theoretical terms and quantifies over pure experience. Rehabilitated in this way, the doctrine of pure experience is a fit partner for (...) class='Hi'>Jamesian pragmatism. When James says that pragmatism guides us in the course of our experience, this 'experience' must be understood as ultimately pure experience. Pure experience is just what appears, pre-conceptually, and Ramsey-sentence analysis shows how James's employment of the pre-conceptual demonstrative that can refer to pure experience with conditions of identity given by its physical or mental properties, while being itself 'colourless', neither mental nor physical. It is concluded that functionalists about the mind have reason to be global-functionalists about mind and body, in just the way that James's doctrine of pure experience lays out; and Jamesian pragmatists should also accept his radical empiricism. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:A Pragmatist Philosophy of History by Marnie BinderPiers H. G. StephensA Pragmatist Philosophy of History Marnie Binder. Lexington Books, 2023.Looking at current scholarship and opinion in American philosophy, one can easily conclude that there has been much more work done on studying the history of pragmatist philosophy than there has been on what pragmatist philosophy can give to the study of history. Ever since the resurrection of interest (...) in pragmatism in the late twentieth century, we have seen a range of publications offering new interpretations for the ideas of the classical pragmatists, as well as important new applications for philosophical pragmatism and the moving to center stage of historically sidelined individuals and groups. What we have seen relatively little of, however, aside from a 2016 symposium in the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy, is sustained engagement with the question of what a classically pragmatist approach to historical inquiry might contribute, entail, or imply. It is this important niche in the ecosystem of American philosophy that Marnie Binder's A Pragmatist Philosophy of History seeks to partially fill in.Binder, who is perhaps best known for her past writings on José Ortega y Gasset, is at pains from the start to indicate both the humility and the utility of her project. As befits the tradition, there are no grandiose philosophical pretensions here, with the "goal in presenting a pragmatist philosophy of [End Page 112] history" merely being "to add another apparatus to the toolkits of the philosopher and the historian," an extra perspective that is "meant to complement other methodologies" (xi; emphasis in original), as she explains in her introduction. At the same time, pragmatism can offer something distinctive, firstly through asking the pragmatic question of what difference is meant by the accepting of particular presumed facts as being true, and secondly, being able to better understand why certain historical details have relevance, value, and meaning for us as a result of answering the first question. A pragmatist philosophy of history is helpful then, Binder maintains, as it "is in a unique position to bridge the speculative analytic divide" (xiii), and her approach to doing this is to draw upon the resources found in the works of a succession of the familiar classical pragmatists, building toward a synthesis and a cashing out of insights in her concluding reflections.Structurally the work consists of an explanatory introduction followed by six chapters, each dedicated to a particular pragmatist and their insights, leading finally to an extended concluding section drawing the component parts together and answering possible objections to the project. Pragmatism, as Binder recognizes, is seldom thought of as a historically orientated philosophy, but she argues that for each of these thinkers—William James, John Dewey, F. C. S. Schiller, Charles Sanders Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and Jane Addams—there is at least the germ of a philosophy of history that can be unearthed and developed, eventually helping to inform understanding of what is needed to bring a pragmatist ethics into practical reality, the last of which is manifested primarily by Addams. Thus, the treatment of William James in chapter 1 homes in on James's psychological insights into the way that experienced reality forms a temporal continuum; our consciousness necessarily selects from the experiences of the past, ascribing interpretations and assuming levels of facticity and relevance, since no individual can know all the facts or select among them with perfect impartiality. The continuum will be one that speaks to the inquirer's concerns with accuracy, practicality, meaningfulness, and coherence, as all knowledge comes about through temporal processes, and since past events are continuously added to and can be continuously reinterpreted, it can have no real or ultimate beginning or end. Accordingly, for a Jamesian pragmatist account, the "continuum of history is the way in which we construct a meaning for history of the connected past experiences with the present and in view of the future—this is what we call 'history'" (7; emphasis in original), and Binder draws upon José Medina's recent work to further illuminate how such history can and will be continuously critically reconstructed. In addition, she observes, such reconstruction [End Page... (shrink)

The figure of Richard Rorty stands in complex relation to the tradition of American pragmatism. On the one hand, his intellectual creativity, lively prose, and bridge-building fueled the contemporary resurgence of pragmatism. On the other, his polemical claims and selective interpretations function as a negative, fixed pole against which thinkers of all stripes define themselves. Virtually all pragmatists on the contemporary scene, whether classical or "new," Deweyan, Jamesian, or Peircean, use Rorty as a foil to justify their (...) positions. The resulting internecine quarrels and divisions threaten to thwart and fragment the tradition's creative potential. More caricatured than understood, the specter of Rorty is blocking the road of inquiry and future development of pragmatism. Reconstructing Pragmatism moves beyond the Rortyan impasse by providing what has been missing for decades: a constructive, non-polemical account of Rorty's relation to classical pragmatism. The first book-length treatment of Rorty's intellectual debt to the early pragmatists, it establishes his selective appropriations not as misunderstandings or distortions but as a sustained, intentional effort to reconstruct their thinking. Featuring chapters devoted to five key pragmatist thinkers - Peirce, James, Dewey, Royce, and Addams - the book draws on archival sources and the full scope of Rorty's writings to challenge prevailing misconceptions and caricatures. By illuminating the critical resources, still largely untapped, that Rorty offers for articulating classical pragmatism's ongoing relevance, the book reveals limitations in the received images of the classical pragmatists that predominate in current debates and opens up new modes of understanding pragmatism and why it matters today. (shrink)

This chapter offers a description of what all classical and contemporary pragmatists have in common and in virtue of which we call them pragmatists. It also describes the ways in which classical and contemporary pragmatists differ on important epistemological issues, such as knowledge and truth. After then examining and rejecting longstanding criticisms of pragmatism, this chapter compares pragmatists on the questions of atheism, theism, and the status of religious sentiment without belief in the personal God of the omni‐predicates. Peirce (...) offered an argument (he called it a Neglected Argument) for belief in God. William James felt strongly that religious belief was well worth taking seriously as a positive moral force in the world, but in the end he was quite reluctant to accept the personal God of the omni‐predicates. Unlike Bertrand Russell, however, he did not believe that all religion was harmful and basically irrational. Dewey was a hard‐core materialist and hence an unabashed atheist. In the end, it seems fair to say that with regard to the existence of the traditional personal God of the omni‐predicates, there is no uniquely clear and generally accepted position among pragmatists in general. (shrink)

The neuroscience revolution has revived interpretations of religious experiences as wholly dependent on biological conditions. William James cautioned against allowing such neurological reductionism to overwhelm other useful perspectives. Contemporary psychologists of religion have raised similar cautions, but have failed to engage James as a full conversation partner. In this article, we present a contemporary, applied version of James's perspective. We clarify the problem by reviewing specific James-like contemporary concerns about reductionism in the neuropsychological study of religion. Then, most centrally, we (...) employ three of James's conceptual tools—pragmatism, pluralism, and radical empiricism—to moderate contemporary reductionism. Finally, we point to a constructive approach through which neuroscientists might collaborate with scholars in the humanities and psychosocial sciences, which is consistent with our conclusion that it is often no longer fruitful to separate neurobiological studies from studies that are psychosocial or sociocultural. (shrink)

Eric Mullis' Pragmatist Philosophy and Dance is a thoroughly multi-disciplinary and transdisciplinary book that is centered on and deeply engaged in the experimental and lived experience of Pentecostal dance in the American and Appalachian South. The focal point for Mullis' research is not observation and critique of dance as embodied religious practice from a critical distance but from the inside, embedding his own person and body into the environment with all the resources of the unifying self that he has at (...) his disposal to not just understand the form but feel it and live it. This makes Mullis a true William Jamesian and John Deweyan pragmatist; he doesn't... (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Jamesian/Rortyian Pragmatist Account of Truth The Peircean Account of Truth Genuine Belief and Deformed Belief References.

Philip Kitcher brings his own inclusive and liberatory purposes to bear in Preludes to Pragmatism: Toward a Reconstruction of Philosophy, including in several chapters in which he criticizes William James’s defense of religious belief in “The Will to Believe” and Varieties of Religious Experience, while affirming John Dewey’s emphasis on a “religious” orientation toward community and nature in A Common Faith. These chapters in Kitcher’swide-ranging and beautifully written book contain many insights and imaginative proposals for advancing a “post-religion”secular humanism (...) that he hopes may be able to stabilize the evolution and widen the effective reach of a deep and enduring human impulse toward altruism that he.. (shrink)

Whitehead's Pancreativism: The Basics has provided tools to understand Whitehead secundum Whitehead. We now seek to bring him in dialogue with James. It will be a pragmatic dialogue looking for two types of synergy: to establish the relevance of a Jamesian background to read Whitehead, and to adumbrate how Whitehead can help us understand the stakes of James's works. After one hundred years of scholarship, it appears that James's legacy has mainly been studied from the perspective of his own (...) blend of pragmatism and that this blend has moreover chiefly been put into dialogue with Peirce and analytic philosophy at large. This double interpretational shift has allowed James to keep a fair amount of visibility on the academic scene but, over the years, it has significantly obliterated his vision. It is time to rediscover James from the perspective of his radical empiricism. (shrink)

The paper defends the idea that Jamesian pragmatism, Nietzschean perspectivism, and philosophical anthropology represent a consistent triad, for the similarities and connections between the first two positions rest in their engagement with the anthropological question. As will be argued, a) pragmatism is concerned with anthropology and that it deals with a fundamental issue of Nietzsche’s late thought; b) the problem of the type of man (der Typus Mensch) is involved in Nietzsche’s questioning the value of truth, and (...) perspectivism is an alternative view to Platonic and Christian metaphysics which arises from the same phenomenalist conception of knowledge defended by James ; c) Nietzsche’s interest in developing a philosophy that affirms the perspectival character of existence is primarily anthropological, and this is in fact the pragmatic criterion of validity that one can attribute to Nietzschean perspectivism. (shrink)

While most pragmatists view themselves as pluralists of one sort or another, Talisse and Aikin argue thatthe two views are, in fact, "not compatible". However, while their charge may be true of the types of pluralism that they consider, these pluralisms all presuppose a type of realism about value that the pragmatic pluralist need not accept. In what follows, I'll argue that the 'non-realist' account of value that one finds in James underwrites a type of pluralism that is both substantial (...) and compatible with pragmatism. (shrink)

Although William James wrote no philosophical treatise on aesthetics, he can be seen as an important source for pragmatist aesthetics. This paper reconstructs James's aesthetic views from his diverse writings that demonstrate a keen regard for the arts and for the central, pervasive importance of the aesthetic dimension of experience, a dimension he saw as closely linked to the rational and practical. Special attention is given to his path-blazing The Principles of Psychology which precedes James's explicit pragmatist stage but contains (...) all the most essential themes of pragmatist aesthetics that Dewey would later formulate with much greater detail and argumentation in Art as Experience . This paper elucidates James's treatment of these themes, argues for his influence on Dewey's aesthetics, and suggests how the Jamesian approach exemplifies a promising convergence of aesthetics with philosophy of mind. (shrink)

a decisive move on his part beyond James. Many have pointed out that it was James who turned Dewey from Hegelianism to what becomes his instrumentalist rendition of Jamesian pragmatism.2 In this article, I will concentrate on what Dewey borrows (and changes) from James: a notion of experience meant to bridge the gap between traditional philosophical rationalism and empiricism (and meant to take the place of both), and an emphasis on meliorism. I agree with those who argue that (...) Dewey "naturalizes" James.3 James's moral multiverse and his relatively uncritical approach to religious experience are replaced by a rather transparent religion of pluralism (or democracy) and a notion of moral faith which points from individual experience toward the pluralistic, democratic community. It would be more accurate to say that religion itself, any religious tradition, and religious experience, are replaced by the religious function in experience, through which the beliefs of the many and their aspirations form the working hypotheses of a progressive community. Faith in the existence of some religious Being is replaced by moral faith in the future, a faith which does not point to a divine Being beyond our own existences. James describes religious experience in psychological terms. Dewey wants to move beyond description. And he wants to move beyond the category of religious experience, beyond the idea that there is a special and unique type of experience which reflects a unique reality. For Dewey, the religious aspects of experience only point forward. In Dewey, James's pragmatism becomes instrumentalism. Where James may be satisfied to accept certain beliefs and experiences (including "special" beliefs and experiences) at face-value and to judge them by their consequences, Dewey demands a reconstruction of the meaning of a belief before he is willing to discuss its value; and value, for Dewey, involves the power to exert an influence at the level of community and address and redress social problems.. (shrink)

Kant’s philosophy was an important background for the pragmatist tradition, even though some of the major classical pragmatists, especially William James, were unwilling to acknowledge their debt to Kant. This essay considers the relation between Kant and James from the perspective of their conceptions of the human condition. In particular, I examine their sha red pessimism, employing Vanden Auweele’s recent analysis of Kant’s pessimism and arguing that this is required by James’s meliorism. A comparative inquiry into Kant’s and James’s views (...) on the relation between ethics and religion is provided against this background of their shared philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

William James advocated a form of finite theism, motivated by epistemological and moral concerns with scholastic theism and pantheism. In this article, I elaborate James’s case for finite theism and his strategy for dealing with these concerns, which I dub the problems of suffering. I contend that James is at the very least implicitly aware that the problem of suffering is not so much one generic problem but a family of related problems. I argue that one of James’s great contributions (...) to philosophical theism is his advocacy for the view that adequate theistic philosophizing is not so much about cracking this family of problems, but finding a version of the problem to embrace. (shrink)

: The article outlines some similarities between the perspectives adopted by Shaun Gallagher and William James. In particular, assuming that the issue of representation in cognitive systems provides a valuable starting point and testing ground for verifying James’ possible contribution to enactivism, we argue that there is a considerable degree of similarity between Gallagher’s and James’ non-representational models of direct perception. Furthermore, we propose that by combining James’s theory of time and spatial perception with Gallagher’s Husserlian-inspired theory of retentional-protentional structure, (...) we can strengthen the theoretical assumptions of enactivism, integrating elements taken from phenomenology and aspects of Jamesian pragmatics. Understood in this way, James’ enactive theory of action and perceptual causality provides a promising opportunity for an innovative and coherent enactivist research program. Keywords: Enactivism; Pragmatism; 4E Cognition; William James; Shaun Gallagher Rendere l’enattivismo ancora più pragmatico: l’eredità jamesiana nell’approccio enattivista alla cognizione di Shaun Gallagher Riassunto: In questo lavoro si pongono in evidenza alcune somiglianze tra la prospettiva enattivista di Shaun Gallagher e la psicologia di William James. In particolare, assumendo che il tema della rappresentazione nei sistemi cognitivi fornisca un valido punto di partenza e un terreno di prova per verificare il possibile contributo di James all’enattivismo, ritengo che esista una notevole assonanza tra l’anti-rappresentazionalismo di Gallagher e la teoria della percezione diretta di James. Sostengo inoltre che attraverso una combinazione della teoria del tempo e della percezione spaziale di James con la teoria di Gallagher della struttura ritentivo-protensiva di ispirazione husserliana sia possibile rafforzare i presupposti teorici dell’enattivismo, integrando elementi tratti dalla fenomenologia con aspetti pragmatisti. La teoria jamesiana dell’azione e della causalità percettiva sembra fornire una promettente opportunità per un innovativo programma di ricerca in ambito enattivista. Parole chiave: Enattivismo; Pragmatismo; 4E Cognition; William James; Shaun Gallagher. (shrink)

For most of the 20th century Mary Parker Follett (1868–1933) was one of the “invisible women” in the history of American philosophy, although her work was taken seriously by philosophers of her time. While some have described Follett as an idealist, this essay develops the pragmatist and feminist elements of Follett’s philosophy. In particular, Follett’s concept of “integration” can be clarified by reading it through a pragmatist lens, connecting it with Dewey’s writing on experience, and with Jamesian pluralism. Follett (...) also shares with Jane Addams an understanding of the creative integrative power of diversity; Addams directly referenced Follett in 1930 when she describes how conflicts were resolved in the process of mutual action. The latter part of this essay discusses the contemporary relevance of Follett’s integrative “power-with” methodology in feminist thought. Taking integrative work seriously requires preparation and training, and Follett’s writing on education for integration has implications for contemporary pedagogical practice. (shrink)

In this essay I respond to critical readers of my book, William James and the Quest for an Ethical Republic. I argue that James’s ultimate preoccupations are ethical, and that his ethical and moral writings constitute a rich resource for pluralistic societies seeking democratic tools for negotiating deep ideological, cultural, and religious differences, and for building a thriving commons.

At the core of pragmatism is the idea of an active projection of experience into the future. William James’s contribution to pragmatism included an emphasis on emotions in the apprehension of possible futures and related processes. After presenting a summary of Jamesian pragmatism, and especially the significance of emotions in it, the article notes the reception of James’s writings in Europe and their influence on European intellectual developments. Max Weber, for instance, studied James closely. He treated (...) James’s approach to religion as a negative example. While Emile Durkheim rejected the individualist approach of James, he nevertheless found much of value in James’s conceptualization of religious experience, including its emotional underpinnings. Discussion below explores the neglected Jamesian quality of Durkheim’s account of religion. It is noted in conclusion that the more recent sociological neglect of James and the failure to appreciate his particular approach in pragmatism, coincided with the rise of Freudian psychology in the early decades of the twentieth century. (shrink)

American pragmatism was, in the beginning of the twentieth century, a major movement not only in its home country but also in other parts of the globe as well, largely (but not exclusively) thanks to William James’s (1842–1910) international activity. In Europe, Italian and French philosophers, in particular, established their own pragmatist “schools,” and pragmatism also spread to the northern parts of the continent, including Germany and the Scandinavian countries. Even in the relatively remote Finland, Jamesian (...) class='Hi'>pragmatism rapidly became well known. James’s ideas were discussed in meetings and publications by a number of philosophers and other scholars, and several Finnish translations of James’s works appeared.. (shrink)

This paper does not take for granted, and indeed questions, the common assumption that pragmatist philosophers endorse some form of relativism, and examines the issue in more detail with reference to both the classical pragmatists-Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey-and more contemporary thinkers such as Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam. The article calls for a more nuanced characterization of the relationship between pragmatism and relativism, which in turn results in a more nuanced characterization of the pragmatist tradition (...) itself, one opposed to the easy dichotomy between the Peircean anti-relativist legacy on the one hand, and the Jamesian-Deweyan relativist strand on the other. (shrink)

James's moral philosophy is a valuable resource for environmental philosophy because it reveals and impugns some deep, unhelpful assumptions about the relationship between moral theory and the moral life. In particular, James's ethics demonstrates that the debates in environmental ethics are better regarded as disputes about ideals of the kind of self and world we want, rather than as disputes over abstract propositions about the intrinsic value of nature.

William James’s radical empiricism and pragmatism constitutes a philosophy that can reconcile the split between intrinsic value theorists, who stress the development and relevance of theoretical axiology, and pragmatists who have favored a more direct emphasis on environmental policy and application. By distinguishing James’s emphasis on direct personal experience from John Dewey’s more socialized approach, James’s distinctive emphasis on the transformative possibilities of pure experience and his links to romantic sensibility enable us to articulate and validate the noninstrumental aspects (...) of experienced environmental values that anti-pragmatists habitually regard pragmatism as unable to speak for. Using James’s framework to explicate and support Anthony Weston’s radically noninstrumental “immediate values” better expresses the felt noninstrumental worth of nature than intrinsic value theory can. Nonetheless, a rapprochement between the two sides is possible: although James’s pragmatic naturalism is the framework that can best capture nature’s experienced noninstrumental worth and link it to wider human values, intrinsic value theory has real practical application in the realm of law, and pragmatists can support it in that domain, thus upholding the primary emphasis on practicality and policy that is usually seen as pragmatism’s main strength. (shrink)

Critics and defenders of William James both acknowledge serious tensions in his thought, tensions perhaps nowhere more vexing to readers than in regard to his claim about an individual’s intellectual right to their “faith ventures.” Focusing especially on “Pragmatism and Religion,” the final lecture in Pragmatism, this chapter will explore certain problems James’ pragmatic pluralism. Some of these problems are theoretical, but others concern the real-world upshot of adopting James permissive ethics of belief. Although Jamesian permissivism is (...) qualified in certain ways in this paper, I largely defend James in showing how permissivism has philosophical advantages over the non-permissivist position associated with evidentialism. These advantages include not having to treat disagreement as a sign of error or irrationality, and mutual support relations between permissivism and what John Rawls calls the "reasonable pluralism" at the heart of political liberalism. (shrink)

Charles Sanders Peirce complained that James allowed pragmatism to become "infected" with "seeds of death" like the idea that truth is mutable. The Truth is What Works is an attempt to defend James's pragmatic theory of truth from a wide range of critics including Peirce, Betrand Russell, Hilary Putnam, and Cornel West. Cormier runs the gauntlet of historical and contemporary criticism in an attempt to show, not that Jamesian pragmatism does in fact contain a perfectly good theory (...) of objective reality after all, but rather that it doesn't, and is still a kind of realism anyway because it does not leave individuals and their subjective desires behind in an attempt to describe the real world. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content: American Pragmatism: An Introduction by Albert R. Spencer. Polity Press, 2020. Reviewed by: Lee A. McBride III -/- American Pragmatism: An Introduction is a judicious and stimulating read, comprising an introduction and five numbered chapters. The introduction orients the book, offering various ways of conceiving American Philosophy and American pragmatism. Spencer explains that it is difficult to discern the national and cultural variables that make (...) a philosophy an American philosophy. Not all philosophers who practice philosophy in the United States claim the descriptor "American Philosophy." And, within the group that embraces the descriptor, some take American pragmatism to be, in essence, a theory of truth (or a method by which we can make our ideas clear); others take pragmatism to be a method of experience, a pluralistic approach to knowledge creation and social amelioration (2). It is a complicated picture, and Spencer affords ample care and attention to the disparate camps of pragmatism. Chapter 1: "Fallibilism and the Classical Pragmatists" is largely devoted to Charles S. Peirce and William James. Peirce and James, as fallibilists, are contrasted against Descartes and Hume, respectively. Peirce and James diverge in regard to style and their commitments to (scholastic) realism. Spencer discusses Josiah Royce briefly at the closing of the chapter, noting how Royce's work can serve as a foil for both Peircean and Jamesian pragmatisms. Chapter 2: "Meliorism and the Chicago Pragmatists" highlights the pragmatist philosophical contributions of Jane Addams and John Dewey. In this chapter, Spencer emphasizes sympathetic knowledge, cooperative intelligence, the pattern of experimental inquiry, and social amelioration. Spencer deserves kudos for introducing Addams's pragmatist contributions first, then explaining the ways in which her work in community-building and social amelioration influenced Dewey. Chapter 3: "Pluralism and the Harvard Pragmatists" highlights the work of a motley crew: George Santayana, W. E. B. Du Bois, Horace Kallen, and Alain Locke. This chapter draws attention to the pluralism one can detect in Santayana's detached cosmopolitanism, Du Bois's double consciousness, Kallen's cultural pluralism, and Locke's democratic pluralism. We are introduced to a Spaniard, two African American men, and a Jewish man, all of whom had spent time abroad. Each offers a critical perspective that falls outside the conventional view of the purported democratic culture of the United States. Chapter 4: "Verification and the Analytic Pragmatists" turns to the philosophers of the logico-linguistic turn, [End Page 108] featuring C. I. Lewis, W. V. O. Quine, and Richard Rorty. Here, we see a pronouncedly analytic approach to the analysis of propositions, inference, and semantic content—a heightened attention to shoring up defensible conceptions of truth and the real. The goal is to articulate a coherent conceptual pragmatic position that evades both scientistic reductionism and Fregean transcendental presuppositions, all the while offering a feasible conception of truth. Chapter 5: "Hope and the Contemporary Pragmatists" surveys how pragmatists have engaged with various traditions in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to potentially bolster their positions and find hope. Spencer highlights three promising strands. The first strand is that of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas arose out of Frankfurt School critical theory but appropriated pragmatist insights from Peirce, Dewey, and Mead to formulate his conceptions of communicative action and communitive rationality (208). Habermas reconstructed the reductive dialectical materialism of the Frankfurt School, developing a sophisticated theory of democracy as public discourse. Spencer asserts that "ultimately Habermas is the best demonstration of pragmatism's potential when compared with critical theory during the Cold War" (208). Spencer also finds the work of Huw Price promising. Price, in an effort to defuse the tension between neopragmatism's antirealism and scientific realism, offers a tenable theory of truth: truth as a (postulated) practical norm, or "truth as a convenient fiction" (217). Truth, as a practical norm, gives normative structure and impetus to various forms of inquiry. And, to close this chapter on hope and contemporary pragmatism, Spencer delineates a third promising strand. He writes that "perhaps the most promising development among pragmatists results from their increasing engagement with American Indian philosophy and other philosophical traditions throughout the Americas" (219). American pragmatists, following Scott L. Pratt and Bruce Wilshire, are increasingly recognizing... (shrink)

Three types of thought about the world are put forth by James in Pragmatism : common sense, science, and philosophy. The worlds of science and philosophy reified and idealized aspects of the vague, intersubjective world of common sense. However, once "formed" these two worlds are themselves "formative." They can and have infected the vague world of common sense with a quest for certainty and immediacy. Empathy arises as a problem through the conceptual world views of science and philosophy, insofar (...) as the vague is not acceptable. Using James' views on language and his metaphysics, I argue that empathy appears epistemically as an issue unsolvable in terms of certainty, and empathy appears ontologically as an issue which compels action. In medicine, empathy exists as a problem because pure consciousness has come upon the scene as a "rip" or "tear," in Sartrean terminology. The physician finds himself "encrusted twice over"; consciousness has arisen and also professional consciousness has arisen. He/she works back, not simply toward the world of common sense, now infected, but toward the pre-reflective world. Such a recovery is never complete, yet such a recovery must always be attempted. CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

No Professor's Lectures Can Save Us: William James's Pragmatism, Radical Empiricism, and Pluralism draws critically on the full range of the writings of William James--his psychology, theory of belief and truth, radical empiricism, pluralism, and his accounts of religion, ethics, politics, and society-to develop a powerful case for an original pragmatic world view and temperament resonant with James's philosophy. In a manner that avoids the "vicious intellectualism" that James criticized, the book engages more than a century of scholarship on (...) James, and places him in conversation with both his contemporaries and more recent writers. Throughout the book's seven interwoven chapters, the author moves both with James and at times against James to address and illuminate central issues about the nature of the self, freedom, morality, community, truth, reality, and possibility. The chapters take up, in turn, James's views on: faith and freedom; habit, attention, and flourishing; inclusive and ethical lives; democratic politics; the temperament of pragmatism; a radically empirical ontology of relations; and, a pluralistic and unfinished universe. The focus throughout is practical: the book aims to show the differences in concrete lives that it makes to take up a broadly Jamesian pragmatic, radically empirical, and pluralistic personal perspective across the fallible and "ever not quite" endeavours of our finite lives. "From this unsparing practical ordeal," James noted, "no professor's lectures and no array of books can save us." In this spirit, this book does not pretend to provide, by itself, salvation. Instead, it effectively develops insights in the writings of William James that continue to constitute invaluable resources for new problems, new possibilities, and new forms of personal and social life. (shrink)

Pragmatist responses to radical skepticism do not receive much attention in contemporary analytic epistemology. This observation is my motivation for undertaking a search for a coherent pragmatist reply to radical doubt, one that can compete, in terms of clarity and sophistication, with the currently most popular approaches, such as contextualism and relevant alternatives theory. As my point of departure I take the texts of C. S. Peirce and William James. The Jamesian response is seen to consist in the application (...) of a wager argument to the skeptical issue in analogy with Pascal's wager. The Peircean strategy, on the other hand, is to attempt a direct rejection of one of the skeptic's main premises: that we do not know we are not deceived. I argue that while the Jamesian attempt is ultimately incoherent, Peirce's argument contains the core of a detailed and characteristically "pragmatic" rebuttal of skepticism, one that deserves to be taken seriously in the contemporary debate. (shrink)

This book takes a fresh look at how William James' conceptions of the human mind, death , and religion provide us with a viable alternative to many contemporary philosophical approaches. The distinctive Jamesian perspective is illuminated through critical discussions of several different theories and conjectures. The overall argument of this volume is that pragmatist metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of religion must be subordinated to ethics. To provide an historical and philosophical context for this revolutionary conception of the (...) pragmatic method, an introductory discussion of James' views on pragmatism, realism, and truth is also included. Instead of focusing on the general issues of realism and pragmatism, however, the volume examines the applications of these issues to topics such as death, evil, and other minds. The book is vital reading not only for James scholars and pragmatists, but for anyone thinking seriously about human mortality and the endless ethical challenges our life with other human beings that confront us. (shrink)

The author examines the history of pragmatism and maintains that a thematic continuity runs through the classical pragmatists, neopragmatitsts and contemporary pragmatists. This continuity can be vaguely characterized as an integration of theory and practice, but experience gives theory its content such that action is always guiding the formation of knowledge. There are four implications of this continuity. Pragmatists are centrally concerned with the human relationship to a process-oriented and evolving conception of nature. For pragmatists, our beliefs are regarded (...) not as propositions that map onto a separate and fixed reality, but instead their truth emerges out of the habits beliefs generate. Pragmatism emphasizes an openness to possibility since our access to the world of experience is mediated by a variety of selective interests, intellectual histories, varying linguistic and discursive practices. Pragmatists are deeply concerned with the social and political problems that confront us on a daily basis. The author also examines the manner in which James understands the term “metaphysics” given that pragmatism is a method for settling “metaphysical disputes.” Jamesian existential pluralism implies to maximize all possibilities that can satisfy everyone as much as possible without impeding and harming another's capacity to experience a rich and novel world. The author analyzes Todd May’s approach to the analytic-continental divide and concludes that if settlement embraces James’s thick conception of experience, then the resulting ontological pluralism is the best settlement possible, and this commitment to pluralism requires dissolving the exclusionary practices the analytic-continental divide suggests philosophically. (shrink)

Can we who have been touched by the scientific, intellectual, and experimental revolutions of modern and contemporary times still believe with and degree of coherence and consistency that we as individual persons are immortal. Indeed, is there even good cause to hope that we are? In examining the present relationship of reason to faith, can we find justifying reasons for faith? These are the central questions in Self, God, and Immortality, a compelling exercise in philosophical theology. Drawing upon the works (...) of William James and the principles of American Pragmatism, Eugene Fontinell extrapolates carefully from "data given in experience" to a model of the cosmic process open to the idea that individual identity may survive bodily dissolution. Presupposing that the possibility of personal immortality has been established in the first part, the second part of the essay is concerned with desirability. Here, Fontinell shows that, far from diverting attention and energies from the crucial tasks confronting us here and now, such belief can be energizing and life enhancing. The wider importance of Self, God, and Immortality lies in its pressing both immortality-believers and terminality-believers to explore both the metaphysical presuppositions and the lived consequences of their beliefs. It is the author's expressed hope that such explorations, rather than impeding, will stimulate co-operative efforts to create a richer and more humane community. (shrink)

This essay contributes to the debate over whether there is, or can be, any place for metaphysics in pragmatism, in William James's pragmatism, in particular. The paper defends the possibility of pragmatist metaphysics, seeking to show how interesting forms of such metaphysics with a grounding in key Jamesian texts can, pragmatically, be put to work. This task is interesting from the perspective of both James scholarship and the ongoing re-evaluation and critical transformation of the pragmatist tradition. Furthermore, (...) we need metaphilosophical discussion of the possibility and prospects of metaphysics in a situation in which many philosophers believe metaphysics to be dead and buried, partly thanks to the classical pragmatists and their followers. Thus, the present paper examines critically the widespread idea that pragmatism is an inherently non- or even antimetaphysical philosophy (a view held not only by radical neopragmatists like Richard Rorty but also by scholars of classical pragmatism such as Charlene Haddock Seigfried). (shrink)

It is not uncommon, when reading and writing about philosophical traditions, to be highly selective. Especially so when the tradition under review has been contested among its friends and foes alike since its very beginning. This has surely been, and still is, the case with pragmatism, where depending on the narrative spun we would have very different figures foregrounded or rather eclipsed. One might well speak of pragmatisms in the plural, as the Peirceans, the Jamesians, the Deweyeans, and...

The paper firstly reconstructs Mario Calderoni’s criticism of the Jamesian version of pragmatism, which corresponds to his philosophical choice in favor of the ethical value assigned by Peirce to the scientific-experimental method. In this light, I propose a reading of some Calderoni’s arguments concerning the link between the construction of beliefs, practical norms and moral or legal responsibility, trying to reassess his criticisms of James and then his conception of philosophy as a practical and therapeutic activity. The latter (...) will be discussed considering Wittgenstein’s analysis of intentional verbs and Calderoni’s approach to the issues of freedom, of the definition of voluntary acts as well as of individual responsibility, both moral and legal. In particular, I will focus on the paradigm shift suggested by Wittgenstein with regard to the problem of human will, which seems useful for enhancing Calderoni’s pragmatist insights. (shrink)

Journal of Business Ethicsrecently published a critique of ethical practices in quantitative research by Zyphur and Pierides (J Bus Ethics 143:1–16, 2017). The authors argued that quantitative research prevents researchers from addressing urgent problems facing humanity today, such as poverty, racial inequality, and climate change. I offer comments and observations on the authors’ critique. I agree with the authors in many areas of philosophy, ethics, and social research, while making suggestions for clarification and development. Interpreting the paper through the (...) class='Hi'>pragmatism of William James, I suggest that the authors’ arguments are unlikely to change attitudes in traditional quantitative research, though they may point the way to a new worldview, or Jamesian “sub-world,” in social research. (shrink)