BOOK REVIEWS 685 hand to resolve a hermeneutical controversy. For instance, when he considers the question of whether or not Peirce is in some sense an idealist, Hausman does not use Peirce's distinction among the three grades of conceptual clarity as itself a tool for becoming clear about just this question. Yet Peirce himself turned, near the end of "How to Make Our Ideas 'Clear," to the idea of reality as a means of clarifying the pragmatic maxim (a maxim by which grades of clarity higher than subjective familiarity and abstract definition might be reached). In general, Hausman relies too heavily on the conceptual clarity to be attained via abstract definitions, and too sparingly on the clearness to be reached via pragmatic considerations. Without taking back in the least what was said earlier, I find that Hausman's Peirce is not enough of a pragmaticist . In particular, such topics as habit, history, and agency are somewhat occluded by the author's emphasis, at a very abstract level, on such topics as intelligibility, continuity, and resistance. From a pragmaticist perspective, abstract definitions and dialectical arguments are in the end insufficient; translating concepts into hab/ts of acting and of imagining is imperative. So, too, is the task of constructing a thick narrative of the habit changes of historical agents (in more familiar language, the paradigm shifts so forcefully brought to our attention by Thomas Kuhn). As a crucial feature of the case for evolutionary realism, thick narratives need to be offered as pointed alternatives to those stories so captivatingly told by, say, Richard Rorty in, e.g., "The Contingency of Language" (chapter 1 of Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity). Yet another curious feature is that Hausman develops his own views without reference to several Peirce scholars who are at once the ablest expositors of Charles Peirce and the strongest allies of Carl Hausman (most notably, David Savan, T. L. Short, and Joseph Ransdell--the three expositors to whom I alluded above). But this is a quibble and the above criticisms perhaps not much more than that; for Carl Hausman's book is a firstrate interpretation of a first-rank philosopher. In sum, for those of us who are specialists in Peirce, this study is required reading; for those who are interested in the most central issues of contemporary philosophy, it is nothing less than highly recommended. VINCENT COLAPIE'rRo Fordham University Thomas E. Uebel. Overcoming Logical Positivismfrom Within: The Emergence of Neurath's Naturalism in the.Vienna Circle's Protocol Sentence Debate. Studien zur Osterreichen Philosophie, Band XVII. Amsterdam-Atlanta: Rodopi, 199~- Pp. xv + 377- Paper, $93.~176 To recent generations of analytic philosophers, Otto Neurath is forever bound to his "parable of the mariners," employed frequently and to great effect in Quine's endorsements of naturalized epistemology. Given that the explication, defense, and pursuit of naturalized epistemology has occupied philosophers for the last quarter century (and that this is due in part to Quine's writings), it is remarkable that only recently have the historical questions posed by Quine's use of Neurath's parable received much attention . Was Neurath in fact a naturalist among the logical positivists of the 192os and 686 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 32:4 OCTOBER 1994 x93os? If so, what sort of naturalism did he put forward, and how did he defend it? Moreover, how should we alter our philosophical understanding of the Vienna Circle, if one of its central members turns out to have held just the views usually taken to have supersededthe Circle's? Thomas E. Uebel's OvercomingLogicalPositivismfrom Within: The Emergence of Neurath's Naturalism in the Vienna Circle'sProtocolSentenceDebateprovides detailed and persuasive answers to all these questions, and as such it is a crucial contribution both to Neurath scholarship and to the ongoing reassessment of logical positivism. Uebel's scholarship and analysis is sustained, thorough, and first-rate. He argues that Neurath did formulate a naturalized epistemology--albeit not Quine's, for it was neither reductive nor rooted in behavioristic psychology. Its character is reflected piecemeal in the course of Neurath's defense of his physicalist proposal for protocol sentences--the evidence sentences of science--against the proposals of...
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Sep 1, 2018
Daniel Kuby 
