Pragmatic Concept Research Articles

Pragmatic Language Testing and Its Application in Testing Oral Proficiency

With the rapid development of pragmatics, many pragmatic theories have been applied to language testing. This paper presents a general introduction of some important pragmatic concepts and discuss the development of pragmatic language testing. Types of pragmatic oral test items and practical ways of evaluation are explored.

Mind as Conceptual Structure: On Ethical Theory of C. I. Lewis’s Conceptual Pragmatism

Clarence I. Lewis (1883-1964) delineated the structure of mind based on his “conceptual pragmatism.” Human mind grounds itself on the ongoing dynamic interaction of relational processes, which is essentially mediated and structural. Lewis`s pragmatism anchors itself on the theory of knowledge that has the triadic structure of the given or immediate data, interpretation, and the concept. Lewis takes the a priori given as a starting point of meaningful experience. The interpretative work of mind is the mediator of the a priori given and the concepts. The a priori given is the principle that determines the application of concepts in our interpretative process. Our mind interprets the given in relating to other possible experience. In other words, the meaning of the a priori given is determined by mind, the subject of interpretative process, which performs constructive and legislative activity, and allows room for the existence of alternatives. Lewis`s theory of knowledge calls for pragmatic justification of value experience. In his ethical theory, Lewis pursues to find answers for how to build up the objectivity of value experience regarding the work of mind as conceptual apparatus. For Lewis, knowledge is a claim about valuation and normativity. In our value experience, the normative significance of our empirical assessments for action comprises objective significance for future experience. Mind is “principle-content apparatus” composed of imperatives as the a priori given principles and the contents of experience as a whole. Imperatives are the result of lessons accumulated from the past and function as rules for the future. Individuals start their experience from imperatives and organize their own experience by doing based on the inferential process, which is directional from the past to the future.

Asthma management: A new phenotype-based approach using presence of eosinophilia and allergy.

Asthma is a heterogeneous disease. The Czech Pneumology and Allergology Societies commissioned 10 experts to review the literature and create joint national guidelines for managing asthma, reflecting this heterogeneity. The aim was to develop an easy-to-use diagnostic strategy as a rational approach to the widening opportunities for the use of phenotype-targeted therapy. The guidelines were presented on websites for public comments by members of both the societies. The reviewers' comments contributed to creating the final version of the guidelines. The key hallmark of the diagnostic approach is the pragmatic concept, which assesses the presence of allergy and eosinophilia in each asthmatic patient. The guidelines define three clinically relevant asthma phenotypes: eosinophilic allergic asthma, eosinophilic nonallergic asthma and noneosinophilic nonallergic asthma. The resulting multifunctional classification describing the severity, level of control and phenotype is the starting point for a comprehensive treatment strategy. The level of control is constantly confronted with the intensity of the common stepwise pharmacotherapy, and the concurrently included phenotyping is essential for phenotype-specific therapy. The concept of the asthma approach with assessing the presence of eosinophilia and allergy provides a way for more precise diagnosis, which is a prerequisite for using widening options of personalized therapy.

Is Hume Attempting to Introduce a New, Pragmatic Conception of a Contradiction in his Treatise?

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1808-1711.2016v20n3p315Hume’s Treatise, with its celebrated bundle theory of the self, is a significant contribution to the embryonic Newtonian experimental philosophy of the enlightenment. But the theory is inadequate as it stands, as the appendix to the Treatise makes clear. For this account of the self, apparently, rests on contradictory principles — propositions, fortunately, that can be reconciled, according to Hume. My paper is a critical exploration of Hume’s argument for this intriguing suggestion.

Using policy discourses to open up the conceptual space of farm education: inspiration from a Belgian farm education network

Farm education organized by farmers and directed towards students and groups of citizens is a relatively new practice often considered as one specific business strategy to diversify farmers’ income. Although we endorse the importance of an economic rationale we argue that this conceptualization undermines a diversity of perspectives on educative processes that address societal transformation and the political role of intergroup and interpersonal deliberation. In this paper, we start from the observation that on the European level three different competing policy paradigms or discourses are being advocated. Reasoning from a discourse-analytical perspective these policy discourses cannot be considered as mere ideas floating in abstraction but constitute interpretative frames that have concrete implications for practices in the agro-food domain. Along these lines, we reveal three analytically distinct educative practices by specifying how each discourse articulates meaning to make sense of farm education in terms of goals, relations and actions. Our theoretical assumptions on education are informed by John Dewey's pragmatist conception of education which starts from the idea that the mutual recognition of social interests are co-constitutive for the experience of learning. We use a case study on a regional farm education network in Belgium to illustrate how farmer's educative efforts can be enrolled differently in educational practices according to different discursive frames and how these different educational practices enable or constrain social and educational arrangements that promote a sustainability transition. We conclude that farm education is a multifaceted educational practice and reflect on its potentialities and pitfalls to foster (emancipatory) agency to re-balance conflicting interests towards sustainable development.

Rascals, triflers, and pragmatists: developing a Peircean account of assertion

ABSTRACTWhile the topic of assertion has recently received a fresh wave of interest from Peirce scholars, to this point no systematic account of Peirce’s view of assertion has been attempted. We think that this is a lacuna that ought to be filled. Doing so will help make better sense of Peirce’s pragmatism; further, what is hidden amongst various fragments is a robust pragmatist theory of assertion with unique characteristics that may have significant contemporary value. Here we aim to uncover this theory, and to show that assertion for Peirce is not a mere corollary of pragmatic conceptions of truth, judgement, and belief, but is rather a central aspect of his philosophy.

Wir Unsichtbaren. Geschichte der Polen in Deutschland by Peter Oliver Loew

Reviewed by: Wir Unsichtbaren. Geschichte der Polen in Deutschland by Peter Oliver Loew Jie-Hyun Lim Wir Unsichtbaren. Geschichte der Polen in Deutschland. By Peter Oliver Loew. Munich: C.H. Beck, 2014. Pp. 336. Paper €18.95. ISBN 978-3406667084. In a recent review essay, Michał Nowosielski pointed out that no monograph has been written so far on the history of the Polish minority in Germany (“Polacy w Niemczech. Stan i Perspektywy Badań,” Przegla˛d Zachodni 3 [2012]: 26). The existing scholarship in his estimation is fragmented, descriptive, narrowly focused, gender blind, or framed by the national history. Nowosielski called for a comprehensive history of the Polish minority in Germany from a transnational perspective (26–27). Peter Oliver Loew’s book is just that. For Loew, however, the reason why scholars have yet to write such a monograph derives from the difficulties with its terms: Germany, Poland, and minority (11). All three components of this topic resist easy or agreeable definition. Loew’s pioneering work intends to make the “invisible” visible. Poles in Germany have been marginalized, silenced, erased, and deprived of agency. As subalterns, they have spoken discreetly, but were hardly heard. Or worse, their voices were hijacked for the purposes of national histories: for instance, when historians try to determine [End Page 208] whether they were really “Polish Prussians” or “Prussian Poles.” Such an interrogation simplifies and singularizes their fluid, multiple, and often interchangeable identities in an ahistorical effort to fix them. Even today, “Poles in Poznań and Pomorze are jokingly called ‘Prussian Poles’ for their Prussian virtues” (122–123). Such self-identification defies national categorization. Indeed, people in borderlands often adhere to these fluctuating, multiple, elusive, and joking identities. Keenly conscious of these methodological dilemmas, Loew sees identity both as a “pragmatic concept” and a “working concept.” Pragmatically Loew frames historical Germany encompassing both German territorial states and German-speaking states where Poles lived. The large part of East Prussia, Silesia, Pomorze, the Habsburg monarchy, and so on, were parts of Germany in this sense. As a working concept, he defines Poles in terms of both a subjective and an objective nation (12). In this way, Loew can count Marcel Reich-Ranicki—the Polish Jewish German “literary pope” (Literaturpapst)—as a Pole. Though Reich-Ranicki did not regard himself even as half Polish, he maintained a strong bond to Polish language and poetry (206). Yet this approach leaves open the question of where to place the “Polonized Germans” who had belonged to “group 4” in the Deutsche Volksliste (171), the Nazi institution that classified the peoples of Occupied Europe according to racial desirability. In Loew’s schema, they seem to be subjective Poles but objective Germans—which would make them ultimately Germans. Loew ends up defining Poles, minorities, and Germany either too broadly or too narrowly because he still tends to reify identity. To be sure, he sees identity flexibly as multiple, fluid, and fragmented; but he often uses a mix of constructivist language and essentialist argumentation. The term itself seems responsible for that reification. Referring to identity still allows readers to imagine that it exists independent of the actions that create it and the norms that legitimize it. An alternative might be to use the concept of identification as it draws attention to the agency of historical actors in dialectical interplay with power institutions and thus the tension between relational and categorical modes of identification. Nonetheless, Loew’s panoramic description of the Polish minority in Germany is colorful, dynamic, wide-ranging, and transnational. His illustrations, postcards, and photos are fabulous. In the place of the stereotyped clichés of Poles as migrant workers, forced laborers, and seasonal workers, he explores the broad spectrum of their diverse historical traces. They include itinerant merchants at the Messe, the intelligentsia in exile, revolutionaries in the socialist movement, students at universities, artists in performance, inmates in concentration camps, prisoners of war in German POW camps, volunteers and conscripts in the German army during the two world wars, war expellees, postwar settlers, displaced persons, commuters, peddlers, marriage emigrants, and athletic stars, among others. That much diversity “makes it impossible to speak sweepingly of ‘Poles in Germany’” (278–279). The virtue of...

Einführung in die Literaturpragmatik mit einer Beispielanalyse von Kafkas Roman Der Prozess by Elfie Poulain

Reviewed by: Einführung in die Literaturpragmatik mit einer Beispielanalyse von Kafkas Roman Der Prozess by Elfie Poulain Pamela S. Saur Elfie Poulain, Einführung in die Literaturpragmatik mit einer Beispielanalyse von Kafk as Roman Der Prozess. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2015. 110 pp. Elfie Poulain's book Einführung in die Literaturpragmatik mit einer Beispielanalyse von Kafkas's Roman Der Prozess is aptly titled. The first portion, more than half of the slim volume, offers an explication of the linguistic field of pragmatics, defining pertinent terms, quoting important theorists, and supplying some examples of applications to literary works. There follows the most original section, a well-executed pragmatic analysis of Franz Kafkas's novel Der Prozess. This volume (called a "Lehrbuch" on the back cover) belongs to a pedagogical series, "Sprachwissenschaft Studienbücher," published by the Winter Universitätsverlag of Heidelberg. Although it is also of scholarly interest beyond the classroom, it will serve well as a useful and well-organized textbook to help students understand and apply one important contemporary method of literary analysis. Kafkas scholars might wish that the brief discussion [End Page 129] of Kafkas had been enhanced by relating it to some of the innumerable existing studies of his work, including many involving language and thought processes. However, that would have gone beyond the scope of the project. Without a doubt it fulfills the purposes given in the title. The introduction, "Sprachpragmatik und Literaturtheorie," begins with comments on the relationships that bind language, literature, and reality, in particular countering the view that pragmatics is relevant to historical reality and ordinary, "alltägliche" language, not the invented, fictional world of literature. Wolfgang Iser, who has stated that fiction communicates aspects of reality by means of "Sprachhandlungen und kommunikativem Handeln auf fiktionaler Ebene," is quoted (8). After detailing several other approaches, Poulain notes that interest in applying pragmatic linguistics to literature emerged toward the end of the twentieth century. The section "Die Grundzüge der Pragmatik" introduces the classical "pragmatic triangle," namely semantics (meaning), syntax (adherence to grammatical rules), and pragmatics, which focuses on the effects of discourse in various contexts. A key question is whether a language act succeeds or fails. Considered are the intentions of the speaker, the reference or content of the utterance, the addressee, and the context. Pragmatics emphasizes analysis of speech acts as developed by John Austin and John Searle. Searle identified types of "utterance acts" as propositional, illocutionary (for example, a promise), and perlocutionary (those with external consequences and effects in social interactions). Illocutionary acts convey the speaker's intentions, whereas perlocutionary acts aim at persuading the addressee to act, to carry out the speaker's wishes. Further, Austin distinguished between constative utterances, which provide information that can be verified or refuted, and performative utterances. The latter type are not judged as true or false; they involve the pragmatic use to which the speaker puts them. Among the literary genres, Poulain asserts that pragmatic analysis is most useful when applied to the novel, which emphasizes communicative and social interactions between characters and their social environment. Pragmatic concepts are useful tools to analyze characters' actions, reactions, and motivations. Relevant are gestures, actions, and words of both speaker and addressee, as well as time, place, and situation as well as social and normative cultural roles. Additional factors in analyzing fictional discourse are literature's complex relationships to reality and differing types of narration, such as the omniscient [End Page 130] narrator and the traditional first-person narrator who is not privy to the inner life of other characters. In the twentieth century the "inner monologue" or "stream of consciousness" was developed, as well as "personal" narration which, according to Poulain, Kafkas used almost exclusively. An exemplary passage from Kafkas's novel Der Verschollene is given. As Poulain explains, at first there is no trace of a narrator; the reader is thrust into the action. Then it seems that someone is observing, and it turns out to be Karl, the protagonist, although first-person pronouns are not used. Poulain states, "Die Wirklichkeit wird so dargestellt, wie Karl sie wahrnimmt, und der Leser erfährt nur das, was im Wissenshorizont der Romangestalt steht" (59). This...

The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory by Amy Allen

Reviewed by: The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory by Amy Allen Sina Kramer Amy Allen, The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory New York: Columbia University Press, 2016, 304 pp. ISBN 9780231173247 Drawing on Adorno's aphoristic claim in Negative Dialectics that "Progress begins where it comes to an end," Amy Allen's The End of Progress: Decolonizing the Normative Foundations of Critical Theory is a critique of the concept of progress in critical theory, for the sake of critical theory's decolonization. It is a clear, forceful and convincing argument that calls us to question what critical theory is, and perhaps more pressingly, for whom. While Allen aims both to decolonize critical theory and to criticalize post- and decolonial theory, she thoroughly succeeds at the first but only really invites the latter. While she relies on some postcolonial theorists and feminist and critical race philosophers (Spivak, Saïd, Chakrabarty, Alcoff), Allen's target and audience are members of the second, third, and fourth generations of critical theory and those inspired by their thought. She employs the method Adorno described as "critique and rescue": she gives an immanent critique of the concept of progress implicit but largely unacknowledged in the work of Habermas, Honneth, and Forst. And she rescues a version of progress and a method of critical theorizing more friendly to decolonial aims (by means of the work of Adorno and Foucault). [End Page 357] Allen rescues a version of progress for the decolonization of critical theory by distinguishing between a backward-looking sense of progress as a historical "fact" from a forward-looking sense of progress as a moral-political imperative, a kind of anti-foundationalist, immanent regulative ideal. While the latter is a necessary expression of the demand for a better world at the heart of critical theory, the former is rooted in the desire to ground the normative claims of critical theory in empirical claims about the "fact" of our historical progress. Allen argues that this backward-looking notion of progress is grounded in a theory of modernity as a developmental, geographical, racial, and historical logic that positions non-European and non-Western peoples as lagging behind Europe and the West. She characterizes this backward-looking notion of progress as self-congratulatory, producing a neat political-epistemological circle that presumes the very thing it is meant to prove: the superiority of Europe, or the West. The middle three chapters of the book address the implicit accounts of progress at work in Habermas, Honneth, and Forst. As a theory that proceeds immanently, critical theory has to find grounds for making normative judgments without relying on the prop of some transcendental element. These theorists worry that this leaves critical theory open either to relativism (if societies develop their own internal normative criteria, then there is no place from which to adjudicate between them) or conventionalism (if normative criteria develop immanently to a particular society, then those criteria should be regarded as legitimate). Allen identifies Habermas's concept of universal pragmatics as his attempt to solve this problem. Allen argues that while Habermas does not work from an explicit philosophy of history, universal pragmatics nevertheless relies on a notion of social evolution that commits him to an implicit philosophy of history. She argues that Habermas's universal pragmatics is based on a conception of discursive competence that presumes the very thing it claims to argue for: the superiority of Western or European societies, or those that have historically developed the relevant capacities for justifying their claims and sorting between the different life-worlds to which these claims belong. While Honneth is also committed to the project of grounding critical theory's normative claims, he considers Habermas's approach insufficiently rooted in empirical practices or lived experience. Honneth grounds the legitimacy of norms in our subjective investment in them, arguing that our need for reciprocal recognition provides a mechanism for the revisability of norms and thus for progress. While Honneth avoids explicit claims about the superiority of Western or European societies and the reasoners within them, Allen argues that his commitment to a backward-looking account of progress ties...

The Role of Culture in Dubbing TV Advertisements into Arabic: The Case of Chocolate Commercials

This study aims to explore the transcreation of television advertisements that were dubbed from English into vernacular and modern standard Arabic, and to propose translation as an integral part of marketing a product internationally. The study attempts to achieve these aims by looking at the pragmatic concept of presupposition in translation studies, guided by micro-translation strategies of cultural themes. The study employs Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs (1943) and Hofstede’s Cultural Dimensions (1984) to analyze the translation of three cultural themes: methods of persuasion, stereotypes, and humor. Further themes, per each cultural themes are explored: persuasion through foreignization, persuasion through localization of norms and preferences, persuasion through adapting types of register, portraying the Arab culture as storytellers, verbalizing stereotypes through linguistic cliches and idioms, hyperbole in humor, and modification of irony in humor. The study concludes that micro-translation strategies: (1) in terms of cultural themes, are not exclusive to either a Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) or a vernacular Arabic dialect; and (2) are used concurrently across cultural sub-themes.

Wittgenstein’s Remarks Concerning the Accessibility of Foreign Cultures

AbstractWittgenstein (1889-1951) was highly disapproving of scholars whom he thought unable to properly acknowledge diversity amongst cultures or take due note of the enormous differences separating them from tribes living in radically heterogeneous cultural environments. The best known and paradigmatic example of his attitude to such differences is to be found in his Remarks on Frazer’s ‘Golden Bough’, where he wrote: “[…] how impossible for him [Frazer, J.B.] to understand a different way of life from the English one of his time”. But to cut a long story short, whether Wittgenstein saw this “impossibility” as an intrinsic feature of the task or not is by no means unambiguously clear. To resolve this question, I shall take as my point of departure the socio-anthropological writings of B. Malinowski (1884-1942), who spent several years amongst one of the Pacific island tribes - the Trobriands. In his “field studies”, Malinowski focused on the tribe’s “form of life”: i.e. on their belief in ritual and magic, and on how their customs interlinked with kinship and with their economy. Taking into account Malinowski’s own pragmatic conception of language and his notion of the divergent character of scientific and magical forms of belief, I then outline Wittgenstein’s notions of “language game”, “family resemblance” and “form of life”. The usage of these concepts will show in what sense Wittgenstein would have recognized the similarities within and between different cultures and human societies - but, equally, just how far we can understand a human way of life deeply different from our own.

SOCIAL PROGRESS

Abstract:The concept of social progress I hope to rehabilitate will be local, far from locally complete, and permit only modest extensions; it will be pragmatic rather than teleological. In this way, it will hope to avoid treating the multiplicity of goods as if there were always the possibility of comparing them on a single scale, to abandon the idea of a final state toward which history is tending or should tend, and to substitute piecemeal accomplishments for utopian ends. Its emphasis on local comparisons will allow it to forgo sweeping historical comparisons, those juxtaposing the “enlightened” with “lesser breeds without the law,” or the “ancients” with the “moderns.” A restrained pragmatic concept of social progress honors the insights of critics of the notion of social progress, seeing them as questioning alleged presuppositions that can be given up.

A Study of Using Chinese Conversation Textbooks and Doing Chinese Class Activities with the Concepts of Pragmatics

This paper discusses how to use Chinese conversation textbooks and how to do Chinese class activities with the concepts of pragmatics. This paper tries to understand firstly what the current Chinese education needs to supplement based on Stern (1983[2015]) and Edmondson & House(2011[2012]), and then, discuss how to use Chinese textbooks in the conversation class with the concepts of pragmatics, e.g. deixis, speech acts, politeness etc.

What to expect from reliability and validity claims? A pragmatic conception of psychiatric nosology

The reliability and validity of psychiatric diagnoses have always been a major concern. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) reliability field trials yielded ambiguous results, with some diagnostic categories scoring well below par. We argue that the emphasis on the reliability of psychiatric diagnoses, which has dominated psychiatric nosology and guided the endeavor of improving the DSM in its consecutive editions, is misguided and lacks in structural validity. In this article, we defend a pragmatic view on psychiatric disease as the most fruitful approach to an understanding of what the categorical distinctions in the DSM (can) represent. Disorders in the DSM are descriptions of clinical pictures and do not necessarily correspond to an identified pathological substrate. Although this is a logical result of the nature of psychiatric disease, it bears important consequences. The various DSM disease categories are not uniform but should be regarded as representing different kinds of disorders, ranging from a separation from normal behavior based on practical grounds to the discrete kind of disorders envisioned by proponents of a strong realistic view. We argue that the explication of kinds of disorders outlined in this article provides interesting perspectives on the problems of reliability and validity that the DSM faces.

La gran antinomia

Se plantea y discute una “gran antinomia” entre concepciones teoreticistas o fundacionistas, y concepciones pragmatistas, en relación con una amplia diversidad de enfoques científicos y/o filosóficos. Ilustramos este contraste de manera especial con el concepto de tiempo y algunas consideraciones en torno a los ‘negacionistas’ del tiempo, guiados por visiones teoreticistas.

La gran antinomia

We formulate and discuss a “great antinomy” between theoreticist/foundationist conceptions and pragmatist conceptions, in relation to a wide diversity of scientific and/or philosophical approaches. The contrast is illustrated in particular with the concept of time, considering the ‘timelessness crowd’ that has been guided by a theoreticist vision.

Contested change: how Germany came to allow PGD.

Until recently, German laws protecting the human embryo from the moment of conception were some of the strictest internationally. These laws had previously prevented any manipulation of the embryo, such as in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), and continue to affect stem cell research. In 2011, however, the German parliament voted in favour of allowing PGD in specific cases. While the modification in the law in earlier analysis was interpreted as being in keeping with the usual norms in Germany, this article argues instead that the reasoning behind the partial acceptance of PGD, rather than the legal decision itself, is indicative of a sociocultural change that needs to be accredited. Demonstrating that a significant change occurred, this article analyses the arguments that led to the amendment in law: not only has the identity of the embryo been redefined towards a pragmatic concept but the notions of parenting and pregnancy have also changed. The focus on the mother and the moment of birth has given way to a focus on conception and ‘genetic couplehood’. The professional discourse preceding the decision allowing PGD suggested that the rights of the not-yet-implanted embryo should be negotiated with those of the two parents-to-be, a concept that may be called ‘in-vitro pregnancy’.

Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life: Essays on American Pragmatism, edited by Krzysztof Piotr Skowroński

Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski, ed. Philosophy as Experiencing Life: Essays on American Pragmatism. Brill. 2015. 132 + xiv pp. ISBN 9789004301986 (paperback).Practicing Philosophy as Experiencing Life: Essays on American Pragmatism is a recent collection of essays edited by Krzysztof Piotr Skowronski. essays, taken individually, are fascinating, but the pieces do not speak each other enough feel like a coherent volume. I say this not criticize the volume, but rather explain the form this review takes. Instead of discussing the volume in general terms, I have opted for a summary of each article.In John Lachs's contribution, The Obligations of Philosophers, he asks about the obligations philosophers incur by taking material support from the public. In other words, what ought we do earn our checks? While many might think that philosophers' professional obligations are exhausted by mentoring students and going faculty meetings, Lachs has a longer list. These range from the banal and too opt-repeated adage avoid jargon more tendentious claims resist communism more interesting suggestions. For instance, Lachs urges philosophers be fallibilists, acknowledge the freedom we exercise in conceptualizing, and acting in, the world, and display the courage to speak up when central values are in danger (p. 8). No doubt, these obligations tug on one another. (If the world does not dictate how it is be conceptualized, we cannot be wrong about our preferred conceptualizations, so why should we be fallibilists about these? If we are fallibilists about our value judgments, why should we ever act as though we are certain that a value has been wrongly threatened and requires our defense?) Though such tensions may be ineliminable, Lachs is surely right that navigating them is essential for being a good philosopher. Whether one likes his specific answers or not, Lachs poses an important question. What should philosophers do earn their keep? In an age when is endangered within the academy, this question has perhaps never had more relevance.Prolegomena Pragmatist Conception of the Good is Emil Visňovský's contribution the volume. Though the article gets off a slow start, mentioning - not really probing - lots of well-known views about the good life and the good society, Visňovský ends the article on a high note, articulating a pragmatist vision of the good life, one that is flexible, imaginative, pluralistic, anti-dogmatic and non-hedonistic (p. 28). While I found this vision quite compelling, I also found myself wondering at the end: If this is the pragmatist vision, in what sense is Visňovský's text a prolegomenon? Prolegomena are expository preludes a longer discussion. On Visňovský's view, however, pragmatists will not have any general, pre-packaged prescriptions on how live, so there should be no tome or treatise for which his remarks serve as introduction. A pragmatist treatise on the good life is a contradiction in terms. This wrinkle aside, Visňovský offers an attractive vision of how pursue the good life, a vision that is strongly rooted in both classical and more contemporary pragmatist thought.Why, in American thought, have people traditionally understood as a way of life, and not as a for detached, academic study? That question animates Kenneth W. Stikkers's contribution, Practicing Philosophy in the Experience of Living: Philosophy as a Way of Life in the American Philosophical Tradition. Stikkers ventures two answers. First, he argues that, throughout American thought from Puritanism pragmatism, one finds a different ontological framework than one finds in Europe, and he further suggests that this difference enabled American thinkers resist Europe's epistemologycentered view of philosophy, which goes hand-in-hand with the philosophy as subject view. Second, Stikkers points a long history of American being practiced beyond the academy. …

Is There a Need for Transcendental Arguments in Discourse Ethics?

AbstractIn this essay, James Scott Johnston examines Jürgen Habermas's transcendental justification of his discourse theory of morality. According to Johnston, the application of Habermas's theory to educational issues often assumes that this justification is a cogent one. However, if the theory is to provide reasoned and appropriate guidance for educators, the justification of discourse ethics requires closer examination. Johnston argues that Habermas's so‐called “weak” transcendental approach is in fact unsustainable because it fails to reconcile two conflicting schools of philosophical thought: Kant's transcendental idealism and George Herbert Mead's social pragmatism. Johnston concludes that a more plausible justification of the discourse ethical project can be achieved by rejecting Habermas's Kantianism and appealing solely to Mead's social pragmatic conception of rationality.

Estudio exploratorio-descriptivo sobre las consideraciones bioéticas presentes en la intervención a personas con discapacidad psiquiátrica en los Hospitales de Día de la Región del Maule

This article relates bioethics and psychiatric disabilities. Through interviews with professional teams that representing the unit of analysis, describe the objectives of existing bioethical considerations in interventions for people with psychiatric disabilities are plotted, hoping to contribute a bioethical approach for optimizing these attentions. The research was conducted in the three Day Hospitals in the Maule Region -devices which accord preferential treatment to people with chronic psychiatric disorders- through a qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study. During the course of the study is possible to appreciate that our country is necessary to implement health care models that integrate a pragmatic concepts of justice and fairness as transverse, strongly on their own mental health care, given the particular vulnerability of those users and users; for example, through the development of a community and social bioethics. Finally, it is expected that from this work can generate lines of research that contribute to the progress in improving the quality of care for people with psychiatric disabilities.