Pragmatic Critique Research Articles

Theosemiotics and Pragmatism

ly. He may have done so by promoting a contrary practice (his theistic practice of science) as if it represented the logical contradictory of dogmatic naturalism: assuming that, if, for the dogmatic naturalist, scientific claims precluded the theistic one, then, for nondogmatic naturalism, scientific claims must include them. Otherwise put, Peirce believed that the scientist must acknowlege God as author of our universes of experience, but, as yet, he lacked any nondogmatic means of demonstrating that his belief was true. The dialectic of pragmatic critique and unpragmatic dogma was 16 Susan Haack, Descartes, Peirce and the Cognitive Community, in The Relevance of Charles Peirce, ed. Eugene Freeman (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1983), p. 254. 17 From an unpublished sequel to Peirce's 1866 Lowell Lectures (MS 359), cited in Orange, pp. 21-22. For future reference, MS refers to Peirce's unpublished manuscripts as they appear in The Charles S. Peirce Papers (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Library, Photographic Service, 1966). The manuscripts are numbered according to the system of Richard S. Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967). 18 As argued in an unpublished critique of positivism (MS 970, 1867-68), cited in Orange, pp. 17-18. 19 MS 354, cited in Orange, pp. 9-20.

Imagination and Justification

My objective in this paper is to defend the possibility of epistem ologica! justification against Richard Rorty's pragmatic, postphilo sophical critique of traditional philosophy.1 By epistemological justifi cation I mean the establishment of reasons for holding beliefs extralin guistically true. My inclination is to understand truth and justification in a Davidsonian holistic coherentist way, as opposed to the traditional cor respondist way. But for my present purpose the coherentist/correspondist issue is deferrable. I am, nonetheless, concerned with objective epistemic justification, as opposed to subjective justification or warrantedness. I shall proceed by discussing justification and Rorty's challenge to it, and then attribute to Rorty a conception of imagination which I think under mines that challenge. I want to suggest that a philosophical conception of imagination plays a crucial role in Rorty's pragmatic critique of philosophy and epistem ological justification. My project is deconstructive in that I hope to show that Rorty's allegedly /?o5fphilosophical critique is vulnerable to the philosophical criticism he tries to deflect as question-begging because Ror ty's critique incorporates a philosophical presupposition.2 My objective is to show Rorty's position less than the radical break with the philosophical tradition that he takes it to be; to show it open to traditional philosophical assessment, and so less than a new and distinct conversation requiring complete endorsement as the price of participation. I want to be able to ac cept much of what Rorty says without accepting the impossibility of epistemological justification and the consequent preclusion of extra linguistic correctness?and hence the reduction of science to just one more conversation.3

Santayana and verifigationism

Santayana's later philosophical writings contain a critique of pragmatism and idealism which still has a little appreciated relevance as a critique of verificationist styles of thought which remain markedly influential. He urged that cognitive thought essentially consists in positing objects the existence of which cannot be verified except by other thoughts which likewise do no more than posit objects, and moreover that in a sense all such posited objects are substances lurking behind their various appearances. Granted that this is a general truth about the objects of thought, one can never discredit the claim to know about objects of any particular type on the grounds that this truth applies to them, nor can it be thought a recommendation of some reductivist account of objects of a certain sort that it saves their existence from being unverifiable, for it will still leave the objects to which they are reduced in the same boat. The continuing relevance of Santayana's insight here is argued for.

Pragmatism and Idealism.

Foundations of in American Thought series offers two sets of volumes containing the most significant defenses and critiques of pragmatism written before World War I: the Early Defenders of Pragmatism and Early Critics of Pragmatism. This, the first collection, Early Defenders, provides key texts for understanding the context of pragmatism's years of greatest vitality. Each author was either a pragmatist of stature in their own right, or a formidable philosophical critic from a rival school of thought. They all participated in the heated controversies over pragmatism during its first decade, and drew onthis experience to sum up their views in their books reprinted in these sets. The early critics represent the broad spectrum of philosophical activity at the start of the 20th century. James B. Pratt was educated at Harvard; initially attracted to James's pragmatism, he soon became a member of the Realist movement. Paul Carus, the editor of Monist, and Albert Schinz, a scholar of language and literature, deplored pragmatism's relativism. William Caldwell was a product of the Cornell school of idealism. John T. Driscoll appealled to Thomistic scholasticism for his critique of pragmatism. The central texts of the movement can be found in this set, along with a representative selection of the secondary texts, reviews and responses they elicited. Each volume features a newly-commissioned introduction by a scholar of American pragmatism.