Interpretationism, Pragmatism, Realism, and Other Ideologies

Abstract

Shusterman fairly captures the intent of my target article when he describes it as a picture of a deep and wide-ranging paradigm change that the natural and human sciences seem, gradually and with some reluctance, to be undergoing. As Shusterman writes, this change is, in turn, away from a foundationalist, mechanical, atomistic, nondirectional objectivism [and] ... involves a more organic, relational, and developmental (or directional) perspective. With these central features of the target article, Shusterman has little difficulty. However, he goes on to argue that pragmatism, in contrast to the interpretationism suggested in the article, provides a most adequate philosophical context for bringing rational order to this paradigm change. The debate that Shusterman opens in his advocacy of pragmatism and in his critique of interpretationism is, in effect, the same debate that many psychologists are aware of as the debate between those who advocate a contextualist worldview and those who advocate an organismic worldview (Overton, 1984, 1991b, 1991c) as the rational frame within which inquiry can most adequately proceed. In contemporary American philosophy, the same form of the debate is evident in the pragmatist argument of Richard Rorty (1993), who eschews universals and understands traditional epistemological and metaphysical concerns as beyond recovery, and of Hilary Putnam (1990), who argues the value of idealized schemes as a necessary feature of understanding. The debate is also central to the stance that post-modernism has taken in opposition to modernism and the stance that skeptical, post-modem thought has taken in opposition to affirmative postmodern thought, as described in my article. It is, of course, impossible in any sense to fully enter into this debate in these few pages. However, a few points should be made. As prologue, it has to be clearly understood that there are vocabulary issues that often play a central, if confusing, role in the debate. Several terms that seem on first blush to define a point of view turn out on further examination to enter into both sides of the debate. Pragmatism, like realism, and other such central concepts draw their meaning from the interpretative whole or system of which they become a part. Thus, both Rorty and Putnam call themselves pragmatist, but Rorty's pragmatism is committed to an underlying nominalism and physicalism, whereas Putnam's evokes an idealized normative structure. Given this vocabulary problem, in a sense a part of my answer to Shusterman's critique is that I can indeed reasonably accept a pragmatist approach, and, in fact, I have done so in the past (e.g., Overton, 1991d; Overton & Reese, 1981). However, on analysis, it appears that Shusterman's Dewey-oriented pragmatism is closer to Rorty's and that the pragmatism I would advocate is closer to Putnam's. The variety of pragmatism that I would advocate might be called an interpretative pragmatism on the analogue to Putnam's internalpragmatism. It is a pragmatism in which cannot be naturalized, as both Shusterman and Rorty would naturalize reason. In a related fashion, I suggested in the past (Overton, 1984) that the position I describe could be termed contextualism as long as it is recognized as being framed by the categories of organismic contextualism rather than the categories of mechanistic contextualism. This latter point also speaks to Beilin's mistaken impression that I do not consider contextualism. Indeed, I have on several occasions discussed contextualism, and much of it I find appealing. However, for reasons that I have already discussed (see, especially, Overton 1984, 1991 c)-in particular, contextualism' s dispersive rather than integrative dialectical position-I believe that contextualism functions best as a scheme when it is aligned with organismic categories. On the other hand, I should also note that my organicism, although being a sort of Hegelian approach, is the specific sort that eschews the absolute of Hegel's system. Central to the debate as framed by Shusterman and to all other forms of the debate is the question of whether concepts such as system, organization, integration, pattern, form, metatheory, conceptual scheme, the normative, the idealized, synthesis, and reason are to enter the arena of inquiry as equal partners with concepts such as frag-