Pragmatic Ideas Research Articles

Editors’ Notes

Editors’ Notes

Ecological criticism of growth and the means and ends of technology. A pragmatist perspective on societal dynamics

This article examines technological dynamics from the perspective of an ecological criticism of growth. The first part introduces the use of pragmatist thinking for this purpose. It also provides a basic definition of criticism of technological growth, which is a criticism of a self-increasing and uncontrollable dynamics of means that fails to take social and ecological ends into account. The second section explicates pragmatist thinking in more detail and argues for reflecting on means–ends relationships as a critical guideline in assessing technological developments. The third section builds on this conception and discusses historical and current criticism-of-growth debates, particularly degrowth/postgrowth debates. The main results of these considerations are, first, that specifications of growth can clarify the role of technology in growth dynamics, and, second, further reflections on societal development are necessary to overcome the uncontrollable proliferation of technologies. With regard to the first point, the fourth section distinguishes between direct and indirect driving forces underlying the dynamics of technological advancement: technological development is inherently driven while consumerism and capitalist accumulation can indirectly reinforce technological dynamics as well. Finally, section five points to the potential of pragmatist ideas to obtain more control over the criticized dynamics in a democratic and sustainable way.

Performance Management: How the Swedish Administration of Transportation for the Disabled Succeeded. A Case Study of Transportation Service for the Disabled, the Municipality of Gothenburg

Abstract Management by objectives (known also as performance management) has been perceived as a promising steering method in the public sector since the beginning of the 1990s (Smith 1993, 1995; Kravchuk and Schack 1996; Ballantine et al. 1998; Ferreira and Otley 2009Verbeeten 2008). However, working out operative goals of public organizations seem to be a challenge because major objectives formulated by politicians are oft en unclear and difficult to measure (Rombach 1991; Lundquist 1992; Gray and Jenkins 1995; Lapsley 1999). It is known that public organizations’ services like school, health care, welfare care, collective transportation, infrastructure and cultural services are usually unprofitable. The Transportation Service for the Disabled in the Municipality of Gothenburg is an exception. It fulfilled most objectives and achieved a profit of 7,890,000 SEK for 2013, while the planned one was scheduled at 5,000,000 SEK. Maybe performance management used as the steering model caused that result but the criticism targeting management by objectives suggests that this method hardly can explain such a positive result. Brorström et al. (2005) and Grönlund and Modell (2006) argue that in Sweden management by objectives is usually used in combination with other control models. The purpose of this study is to describe and explain why the Transportation Service for the Disabled succeeded in 2013 and to provide practitioners nationally and internationally with some pragmatic ideas how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of public services. We ask three sub-questions: How were the operative goals created within the Transportation Service for the Disabled? How were the operative goals followed up? What can be learned from this case study? The research is based on the analysis of state regulations, internal policy documents, reports and interviews with key respondents. The study shows that the performance management systems (PMS) in combination with a new organizational culture based on SMART solutions, mutual cooperation among staff, with local politicians and other stakeholders resulted in the increase of efficiency and even partly effectiveness. However, these findings deserve further research if there are other public administrations that succeeded because of using PMS and friendly organizational culture.

Language and legitimacy: Is pragmatist political theory fallacious?

Eva Erman and Niklas Möller have recently criticised a range of political theorists for committing a pragmatistic fallacy, illicitly drawing normative conclusions from politically neutral ideas about language. This paper examines their critique with respect to one of their primary targets: the pragmatist approach to political legitimacy that I proposed in earlier work, which draws on Robert Brandom’s theory of language. I argue that the charge relies on a misrepresentation of the role of pragmatist ideas about language in my analysis of legitimacy. Pragmatism’s significance for thinking about political legitimacy does not lie in the normative conclusions it justifies but in the way it reorients our thinking towards political practice. This raises the deeper question of what we are to expect from a theory of legitimacy. I argue that Erman and Möller presuppose a widely held but unduly restrictive conception of what a normative theory of legitimacy consists in and that pragmatism can broaden the scope of enquiry: a theory of legitimacy should not focus narrowly on the content and justification of criteria, but more fundamentally aim to explicate the forms of political activity in which such criteria are at stake.

Дистанционное обучение как инновационная форма образования

Статтю присвячено проблемі дистанційного навчання як іноваційної форми освіти. Авторкою наголошено на тому, що дистанційне навчання дає можливість розширити студентський контингент без помітного збільшення професорсько-викладацького складу і зростання витрат на матеріальне забезпечення навчального процесу. Теоретична рефлексія цього процесу перебуває в основі ідеї глобального віртуального університету американського зразка. Віртуальний університет займається підготовкою кадрів для віртуального суспільства, тому він абстрагується від ситуації на конкретних ринках праці, проте потенційно дає можливість здійснювати селекцію студентів, дозволяючи відбирати найбільш здібних. На відміну від такого підходу, світоглядно і психологічно підкріпленого установками прагматизму, європейська традиція прагне модернізувати витратну модель вищої освіти, яка все частіше піддається критиці.Описуючи соціально-рольові особливості такої комунікації, авторкою наголошено на тому, що дистанційне навчання дозволяє внести елемент невимушеності і розкутості у відносини між викладачем і студентом. У його рамках, поряд з дидактичними завданнями, вирішуються також деякі культурні та психологічні проблеми. Аудиторія у віртуальному просторі розцінюється більшістю слухачів як безпечне місце навчання, де можна отримати емоційну підтримку; учні не бояться зробити помилку, здатися неосвіченими або недостатньо ерудованими. Високий ступінь толерантності викладача тут є не стільки особистісною, скільки об’єктивною позиційною характеристикою, яка сприймається слухачами як емоційно забарвлена. Тим самим створюються додаткові резерви дистанційного навчання: ідентифікація викладача із змістом курсу, зростання почуття власної гідності і самоповаги серед учнів, які набувають такі важливі соціальні вміння і навички, як самоконтроль, керування власним інтелектуальним розвитком, структурування навчального процесу тощо.

Analyzing the pragmatic structure of dialogues

In this article, we describe the notion of dialogue move intended as the minimal unit for the analysis of dialogues. We propose an approach to discourse analysis based on the pragmatic idea that the joint dialogical intentions are also co-constructed through the individual moves and the higher-order communicative intentions that the interlocutors pursue. In this view, our goal is to bring to light the pragmatic structure of a dialogue as a complex net of dialogical goals (such as persuasion, deliberation, information-sharing, etc.), which represent the communicative purposes that the interlocutors intend to achieve through their utterances. Dialogue moves are shown to represent the necessary interpretive link between the general description of the dialogical context or type and the syntactical analysis of the sentences expressed by the individual utterances. In the concluding part of this article, we show how this method can be used and further developed for analyzing various types of real-life dialogues, outlining possible uses and lines of empirical research based thereon.

Pragmatism and Human Resource Development

This article explores a perspective of Human Resource Development grounded in Pragmatist philosophy and emerging theories of Practice. Pragmatism focuses on the practical outcomes of what we think and do. Thus, a core focus of Pragmatism is on practice. Practice theories frame and explain activities that are continually performed, produced, and reproduced through a dynamic entanglement of action, politics, communities, discourse, materials, tools, and agents. Pragmatism and practice theories are complementary perspectives focused on the consequences of our ideas and the results of our actions. Both perspectives provide us with valuable insights about our world. Pragmatism is a perspective that can bridge current divides between scientific paradigms, the theory–practice gap, and academic–practitioner interests. We review the general tenets of Pragmatism related to the research, theory, and practice of Human Resource Development. Key topics include pragmatic ideas of inquiry and objectivity; epistemology, truth, and fallibilism; and practice and experience.

Moral Philosophers as Ethical Engineers: Limits of Moral Philosophy and a Pragmatist Alternative

AbstractEver since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law‐like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question (a) whether this is possible and (b) what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life.

Комплексные измерительные инструменты в социологии

The purpose of this article is to critically evaluate the predominant paradigm of measurement in social sciences, as well as to formulate an alternative vision of sociological measurement. This task is solved within the context of complex measurement instruments in sociology, namely scales, indices and sociological tests. The latter are considered to be key elements.Sociological tests are considered a system of statements selected by sociological methods. Sociological tests allow obtaining reliable and valid information about the phenomena undergoing examination. A proposition is made to evaluate sociological tests within three partially overlapping dimensions: methodical (brevity while preserving the reliability and validity of a test), conceptual (focusing on studying social phenomena) and prognostic (the diagnostic potential of a test when assessing the state of a social system).The author critically analyzes the main assumptions of the classical theory of measurement, as well as the concept of a latent variable. Formulated is an alternative concept for the main subject of sociological measurement, namely — social phenomena, while establishing the corresponding methodological assumptions based on pragmatic ideas. This brings the author to make a conclusion about the fundamental importance of theoretically and empirically validating complex measurement instruments.Theoretical validation is described within the context of achieving its three components — face, content and composition. Empirical validity requires verifying its three independent components (constructive, criterion and predictive) and its single dependent component (comparative). In the end, the specifics for developing norms or criterial levels are considered. This part of methodological work is a prerequisite for making a transition from a scale or an index to a sociological test.

Commentary: Physicists without borders

Commentary: Physicists without borders

Struggling to fight managerial opportunism in nineteenth- century Europe

During the second half of the nineteenth century, a growing interest in joint-stock corporations emerged. At the same time, managerial opportunism was observed in many of these corporations. Inefficient capital markets and inadequate transparency of operations as well as their results were characteristics of the time. Little was known about the means to reduce this opportunism. This knowledge grew over time out of pragmatic ideas, which foreshadow elements of present day agency theory. The important question to be answered by these pragmatic ideas was how managers could be influenced to act according to the goals of the owners of these corporations. In this paper, we draw on mostly academic literature of the nineteenth century to illustrate the developments of such pragmatic ideas. The presentation is structured by major mechanisms of agency theory. It is shown that attempts at reducing asymmetry of information by limiting corporate activities to less risky business, belief in high moral standards of managers or governmental supervision of operational activities were basically unsuccessful ideas. However, the empowerment of shareholders by introducing a supervisory board and the offering of monetary incentives showed more promise. Obviously, these ideas were not perfect. The pros and cons of any of these instruments became more visible over time, which led to better legal structures for establishing supervisory boards. With respect to monetary incentives, the contemporary debates seem to have been quite enlightened as compared with recent discussions.

Aesthetics of urban space through collaborative urban planning: integrating environmental aesthetics with communicative theory of planning

The collaborative urban planning has the potentials to make cities more aesthetically pleasing to the dweller. In this paper, we focus on the strengths of the said theory to bring in the views of the user to the designing process of the urban space. Our current research interest in the Collaborative Planning is also based on its ability to formulate a wider basis for evaluation, development and conservation of the city and its life. We intend to argue that aesthetics, within the current consciousness, is not what is meant by beauty but what makes the man familiar within his dwelling space. Aesthetic theories help understanding the perception, appreciation or experiencing of the space in everyday life. By developing useful tools to discuss the values of urban space, the contemporary developments in the environmental aesthetics, especially within phenomenological and pragmatist philosophy, could make the communicative planning theory more context-oriented. The current conception of planning as a decisionmaking process that has little to do with humanistic perspective of the city is to be challenged and provided with alternatives here. This decision-making deals with many practical demands, but its conventional attitude has cost the city life. The communicative theory and collaborative planning as a practice, strengthen inhabitant's relations to the urban space and as such, could create a new as well as manage the existing without losing its links with the users. Once reinforced with phenomenological and pragmatist ideas developed in the environmental aesthetic theories, this new practice could strengthen the urban space to promote dwelling.

Peaceweaving

Beginning with the odd finding that “peace research is just the study of war,” this article explores “positive peace” as an important yet neglected notion in public administration. It does this by examining the ideas of Nobel Peace Prize winner, Jane Addams, a pioneer in public administration and peace theory. More than 100 years ago, Addams refined an expansive notion of peace that incorporated social justice and social equity. Addams’s feminist, pragmatist ideas of peace, which we call peaceweaving, emerged from her critique of municipal government and her experience as a settlement worker in Chicago. Her ideas are placed in historical context, and applied to an essential problem facing contemporary peace operations, which is how to prepare troops and other state agents for the seemingly contradictory demands that come along with today’s security problems, both intra- and internationally.

American philosophy and its Eastern strains: Crisis, resilience, and self-transcendence

This paper will critically reconsider the potential of Dewey’s pragmatist idea of security without foundation. There is some potential in his anti-foundationalism as a form of wisdom for living beyond the risk society. I shall argue that Deweyan critical thinking needs to be further reconstructed, and even to be destabilized, if it is to exercise its best possible power of transcendence. One way to do this is to open its boundaries towards the ‘East’, towards European poststructuralism as well as towards East Asia, thereby destabilizing and transcending the limit of pragmatism. And I propose to do this through the mediation of Stanley Cavell’s rereading of Emerson’s and Thoreau’s American transcendentalism.

Gibt es eine pragmatistische Ethik?

AbstractIt is commonly assumed that classical pragmatism has not developed an ethical outlook that deserves to be taken seriously despite the fact that John Dewey, in particular, has published several books on ethics. Major contemporary textbooks in ethics do not mention a possible pragmatist ethics. However, recently there have been various approaches in ethics and political philosophy that claim to base their normative accounts on pragmatist ideas (Philip Kitcher, Elizabeth Anderson). The article introduces these approaches and suggests that they adopt a methodological or proceduralist interpretation of pragmatism devoid of substantial ethical assumptions. It is then claimed that a purely methodological or procedural reading of pragmatism runs into problems that can only be solved if a closer look is taken at some of the more substantial ethical assumptions of pragmatism. Following a review of central elements of Dewey’s ethics, in particular his description of the role of the self in moral dilemmas, typical criticisms of these assumptions are discussed and partially rebutted. It is then suggested that one might conceptualise a pragmatist ethics as a “consequentialism of character”.

Four Korean teacher learners’ academic experiences in an Australian TESOL programme and disclosure of their multiple identities

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore four Korean teacher learners’ academic experiences in an Australian Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) master’s programme. By investigating the ways they encounter the overseas teacher education programme and how to interact with different meanings, this study reveals Korean teacher learners’ multiple selves and several meaning systems embedded in them. The understandings from the case provide some implications for curriculum internationalisation in higher education as well as TESOL. Design/methodology/approach Interviews, a focus group discussion and metaphors were used as data, and from these narratives, the participants’ experience was categorised into the programme’s aspects of the methods, contents and applicability, materials and usefulness, assessment criteria and feedback and communication and support. Each interview was undertaken in a library for around one and a half hours. At the end of the interviews, participants were required to produce a metaphor of desirable teacher/lecturer roles. For triangulation, a focus group discussion was conducted for approximately two hours, in which three participants could represent social worlds, evaluate them and establish themselves as members of particular groups. All the questions were semi-structured and about teaching and learning experiences in Korea and Australia and ideas of lecturers’ roles, practices and desirable pedagogy. Findings From the analysis of the participants’ experiences in these, it was revealed that their identity was tangled with that of the (English) teacher, consumer, (international) student and non-native speaker. The meaning systems of these identities were based on the mixture of the Korean traditional and Western or modern educational values: positive attitude towards communicative language teaching and its contexutalisation, pursuit of practical knowledge and pragmatic ideas, favour for discussions and getting confirmation from authorities and being positioned in the weak and using different communication rules, etc. Research limitations/implications From the insights from this case, the lecturers and programme coordinators in intercultural TESOL courses will gain some ideas for a curriculum responsive to international needs. While it cannot be denied that the small scale of the study has limitations for generalisation, this research will be one of the required literatures which examines East Asians or Koreans in Western academic institutions, given that this qualitative study complements the findings of the quantitative studies by specifically disclosing the ways Korean teacher learners’ identity and the meaning systems of desirable pedagogies. Practical implications For the curriculum internationalisation in TESOL and several higher education (HE) courses, the lecturers’ and the institutions’ awareness of cultural differences and reducing stereotyping, language support and being explicit about new rules in the new game and communication for support and respectful and professional encounters are essential, alongside the learners’ voluntary endeavour for academic adaptation in their overseas learning. Social implications The effort to understand each other in education is a good start for intercultural communication, that is, curriculum internationalisation in TESOL as well as higher education. Originality/value Different from other studies in similar areas, this study discloses the multiple selves/identities and meaning systems of the teacher learners in TESOL, by maximising the benefits of a qualitative study. The understandings from this approach help the researcher draw out practical implications for curriculum internationalisation in TESOL and HE.

The History and Ideas of Pragmatism

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, common sense, scientific approach embedded in pragmatism resonates with OR as practised and that much of pragmatism could be attractive to practitioners and academics alike.

Framework on drug interactions between herbal medicine and western medicine: building Ⅰ/Ⅱ/Ⅲ class pathways of interactions

Combined use of Chinese medicine and western medicine is one of the hot spots in the domestic medical and academic fields for many years. There are lots of involved reports and studies on interaction problems due to combined used of Chinese medicine and western medicine, however, framework understanding is still rarely seen, affecting the clinical rationality of drug combinations. Actually, the inference ideas of drug interactions in clinical practice are more extensive and practical, and the overall viewpoint and pragmatic idea are the important factors in evaluating the rationality of clinical drug combinations. Based on above points, this paper systemically analyzed the existing information and examples, deeply discuss the embryology background (environment and action mechanism of interactions), and principally divided the interactions into three important and independent categories. Among the three categories, the first category (Ⅰapproach) was defined as the physical/chemical reactions after direct contact in vivo or in vitro, such as the combination of Chinese medicine injections and western medicine injections (in vitro), combination of bromide and Chinese medicines containing cinnabar (in vivo). The evaluation method for such interactions may be generalized theory of Acid-Base reaction. The second category (Ⅱ approach) was defined as the interactions through the pharmacokinetic process including absorption (such as the combination of aspirin and Huowei capsule), distribution (such as the combination of artosin and medicinal herbs containing coumarin), metabolism (such as the combination of phenobarbital and glycyrrhiza) and excretion (such as the combination of furadantin and Crataegi Fructus). The existing pharmacokinetic theory can act as the evaluation method for this type of interaction. The third category (Ⅲ approach) was defined as the synergy/antagonism interactions by pharmacological effects or biological pathways. The combination of warfarin and Salvia miltiorrhiza is an example for synergy interaction, while the combination of guanethidine and ephedra is an example for anatagonism interaction. The repeated application of Chinese and western medicine compound preparations and same type of western medicine also belongs to this approach. The receptor competition theory under the view of the overall pathways might act as the evaluation method for this type of interactions. Above all, the research framework on interactions between Chinese medicine and western medicine was proposed, providing overall thinking and support for the essential study on combined application of Chinese medicine and western medicine.

We need science to be useful too.

We need science to be useful too.

Li Zehou and Pragmatism

Li Zehou and John Dewey both share the pragmatist idea that knowledge is linked to experience and theories arise out of practices. Li Zehou’s philosophy, however, goes beyond Dewey’s more narrow philosophy with an anthropological, historical ontology. Finding the source of humanity in the using and making of tools by early humans, Li is able to provide the foundation for a philosophy that enlarges pragmatism to give a fuller account of human capacities and human flourishing.