The Range of Pragmatism and the Limits of Philosophy

the pluralist, 2012

2017

Praxis, 2010

Philosophical Frontiers, 2009

In this paper, I evaluate three views of philosophical pragmatism’s practical implications for academic and non-academic or public discourses, as well as offer my own view of those implications. The first view is that of George Novack. In an underappreciated tract, Pragmatism versus Marxism, the American Trotskyite and union organizer launched a vicious attack on John Dewey’s career as a professional philosopher. He alleged that Dewey’s ideas were inaccessible to all but a small community of fellow academicians. While Novack conceded that Dewey’s philosophical inquiries had a cross-pollinating influence on other academic fields, he doubted that the beneficial products of those inquiries traveled far beyond the walls of the so-called ‘ivory tower.’ Larry Hickman offers a second view. He understands Dewey’s claim in Experience and Nature that philosophy serves as a “liaison officer” to mean that philosophers should provide a common lexicon that translates between the languages of distinct disciplines. In other words, for Dewey, the role of philosophy, including philosophical pragmatism, is to facilitate interdisciplinarity. Since interdisciplinary sharing is usually confined to academic discourse, Novack’s challenge is perfectly compatible with Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim. Both Novack and Hickman are mistaken, though in different degrees and for different reasons. The third, and more promising, view is advanced by Robert Talisse. He cites the life and works of Sidney Hook, one of Dewey’s better-known students, as an exemplary case of a pragmatist who consistently realized his pragmatic commitments in public discourse. The most important reason for qualifying Hickman’s interpretation of Dewey’s ‘liaison officer’ claim is that the measure of pragmatism’s value is not solely the ability of pragmatists to facilitate interdisciplinary collaboration, but their ability to also insert their ideas into public discourse. In my view, philosophical pragmatists, and philosophers generally, should both facilitate interdisciplinarity in academic discourse and introduce philosophical notions into public discourse—that is, serving in the dual capacity of interdisciplinary scholar and public intellectual.

Journal of the American Studies Association of Texas.,Vol. 38, 2007

Journal of the Operational Research Society, 2006

This paper examines the origins of philosophical pragmatism in the USA in the second half of the 19th-century and its development and use up to the Second World War. The story is told through the lives and ideas of some of the main originators, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, Charles Saunders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. The core idea of pragmatism, that beliefs are guides to actions and should be judged against the outcomes rather than abstract principles, dominated American thinking during the period of economic and political growth from which the USA emerged as a world power. The paper suggests that the practical, commonsense, scientific approach embedded in pragmatism resonates with OR as practised and that much of pragmatism could be attractive to practitioners and academics alike.