"What Pragmatism Means to Me: Ten Principles"

Philosophy Journal, 2019

John E. Smith argued that there were almost as many pragmatisms as pragmatists. Almost all pragmatists criticized abstractive and reductive reasoning in the modern academy, but most entertained different visions of how and to what end academic reasoning should be repaired. Smith's vision was shaped by his strong preference for the classical pragmatisms of Peirce, Dewey, James and also Royce, whose differences contributed to the inner dynamism of Smith's pragmatism. Smith was far less impressed with the virtues of neopragmatists who rejected key tenets of the classical vision. My goal in this brief essay is to outline a partial list of these tenets, drawing on Smith's writings and those of a sample of recent pragmatists who share his commitment to the classical vision, such as Richard Bernstein, John Deely, and Doug Anderson. I restate the tenets in the terms of a pragmatic semiotic, which applies Peirce's semeiotic to classical doctrines of habit-change and reparative inquiry. I conclude by adopting the tenets as signs of pragmatism's elemental beliefs. Consistent with Peirce's account of "original" beliefs, these are not discrete claims about the world or well-defined rational principles but a loose and dynamic network of habits. The habits grow, change, inter-mix or self-segregate through the run of intellectual and social history. They can be distinguished but only imprecisely, described but only vaguely, encountered per se only through their effects. Among these effects are sub-communities of pragmatic inquiry, sub-networks of habits, and existentially marked series of social actions and streams of written and spoken words: including context-specific, determinate claims about the world, about other claims, and about habits of inquiry like pragmatism. Among these claims are my way of stating the tenets and my arguments about the history of pragmatism. Such claims are determinate, but the habits and tenets of pragmatism are not.

2017

The Philosophy Journal, Философский журнал, 2019

John E. Smith argued that there were almost as many pragmatisms as pragmatists. Almost all pragmatists criticized abstractive and reductive reasoning in the modern academy, but most entertained different visions of how and to what end academic reasoning should be repaired. Smith's vision was shaped by his strong preference for the classical pragmatisms of Peirce, Dewey, James and also Royce, whose differences contributed to the inner dynamism of Smith's pragmatism. Smith was far less impressed with the virtues of neo-pragmatists who rejected key tenets of the classical vision. My goal in this brief essay is to outline a partial list of these tenets, drawing on Smith's writings and those of a sample of recent pragmatists who share his commitment to the classical vision, such as Richard Bernstein, John Deely, and Doug Anderson. I restate the tenets in the terms of a pragmatic semeiotic, which applies Peirce's semeiotic to classical doctrines of habit-change and reparative inquiry. I conclude by adopting the tenets as signs of pragmatism's elemental beliefs. Consistent with Peirce's account of "original" beliefs, these are not discrete claims about the world or well-defined rational principles but a loose and dynamic network of habits. The habits grow, change, inter-mix or self-segregate through the run of intellectual and social history. They can be distinguished but only imprecisely, described but only vaguely, encountered per se only through their effects. Among these effects are sub-communities of pragmatic inquiry, sub-networks of habits, and existentially marked series of social actions and streams of written and spoken words: including context-specific, determinate claims about the world, about other claims, and about habits of inquiry like pragmatism. Among these claims are my way of stating of the tenets and my arguments about the history of pragmatism. Such claims are determinate, but the habits and tenets of pragmatism are not. THIS IS PART II OF A TWO PART PUBLICATION

Journal of Philosophical Investigations, 2018

Prof. Haack answers a series of questions on pragmatism, beginning with the origins of this tradition in the work of Peirce and James, its evolution in the work of Dewey and Mead, and its influence beyond the United States in, for example, the Italian pragmatists and the radical British pragmatist F. C. S. Schiller. Classical pragmatism, she observes, is a rich and varied tradition from which there is still much to be learned-as the many ways her own work in logic, epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of science, and philosophy of law has been informed by the old pragmatists testify. Of late, however, this tradition has been misunderstood, impoverished, and vulgarized by self-styled neo-pragmatists; here, Haack turns her attention specifically to the conception of pragmatism as essentially a political philosophy, and the near-vacuous equation of pragmatism with "problem-solving."

Praxis, 2010

Philosophy in Review, 2000

This book is an introduction to pragmatism, but also an explication of Rescher's own version of a realistic pragmatic philosophy. Rescher's realistic pragmatism is designed to dispel a number of traditional objections that figure prominently in the history of pragmatism from Peirce to the present day. Rescher contrasts a pragmatism of the 'left'-associated with James, Schiller, Dewey, Rorty-with a pragmatism of the 'right'-represented by Peirce and himself. Rescher carefully lays out a methodological version of pragmatism that is marked by metaphysical realism, objectivity, rationality, a hard-nosed theory of truth, but tempered with methodological flexibility and a healthy epistemological fallibilism. Rescher's distinction between truthconditions and use-conditions in his discussion of language and logic presents an intriguing strategy for cleaning up a pragmatist theory of truth and meaning. Rescher applies equal attention to presenting a pragmatic moral theory that is objective, principled, rational, sensible, capable of accommodating the highest human values, while shunning the conventional, pluralistic, crass-materialistic, anything-goes socio-cultural relativism traditionally associated with pragmatists of the left. All in all, Rescher forcefully addresses well-known criticisms leveled against earlier forms of pragmatism, presenting an alternative view that fares well as a response to recalcitrant problems of modernist philosophy without succumbing to tenuous laxities of post-modernism. This book is to be recommended for its effective portrayal of a hardnosed objectivist, realist pragmatism. Unfortunately the book will disappoint readers familiar with classical pragmatist texts.

Newsletter of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy, 2007

Cognitio Revista De Filosofia Issn 1518 7187 2316 5278, 2010

In 1951, Max H. Fisch put forward the idea that there is a distinct American philosophy that could be considered classical and he outlined the characteristic themes and proponents of "classical American philosophy." In this paper it is argued that the themes Fisch listed characterize a broad pragmatic ethos and can be used to help clarify what should count as classical pragmatism. This is the pragmatism that is increasingly attractive to philosophers today rather than the narrow technical pragmatism of Charles Peirce. It is further argued that, contrary to many accounts, Peirce regarded his narrower doctrine, which he called pragmaticism, as a technical variant of the more general pragmatism and that Peirce was a classical pragmatist along with James, Dewey, and the others.

2011

Reviewing a book like A Companion to Pragmatism, with its substantive introduction, thirty-eight essays, and over four hundred pages of material, is a fool's task, too large to do in a way that is fair, unified, or representative. A look at the list of contributors will tell you that this is bound to become a crucial introductory and secondary source for the study of pragmatism; you do not need me to tell you that.