Pure Pragmatism Research Articles

Vojno-politički i ekonomski odnosi Jugoslavije i sad 1974. godine - afera "Votergejt"

During 1974.Yugoslav-American relations were characterized by large amplitudes. Relation varied from correct to very bad. Sometimes they were calculated but sometimes with too many emotional reactions. However it can be concluded that relations between two states were based on pure pragmatism. While Yugoslav side had strictly economical and political interests, Americans had strategic interests. It is important to stress that Yugoslavs skillfully used the conflict between East and West to strengthen and preserve state independence. Thanks to the ability to determinate its foreign policy socialist Yugoslavia in this period took the opportunity to position itself very good in compared to its real power. From the Yugoslav point of view it could be said that Yugoslavia found "modus vivendi" within the triangle Moscow-Belgrade-Washington which was acceptable for all sides.

Discussion Note: Selim Berker’s Combinatorial Argument against Practical Reasons for Belief

In a recent paper, Selim Berker (Analytic Philosophy, 59, 427-470, 2018) develops an abductive argument against practical reasons for belief that exploits an alleged difference between epistemic and practical reasons. According to Berker, epistemic reasons for belief balance to suspension. If I have equally strong epistemic reasons to believe and disbelieve some proposition, I lack sufficient reason either to believe or disbelieve it. Rather, I have decisive reason to suspend judgment. In contrast, practical reasons balance to permission. If I have equally strong practical reasons to φ or ψ (and there are no other reasons on the scene), I have sufficient reason to do either. Given this difference, Berker argues that defenders of practical reasons for belief cannot offer a plausible explanation of how practical and epistemic reasons interact in order to yield all-things-considered normative verdicts. In this essay, I defend a non-interactionist “pure” form of pragmatism against Berker’s objection. I outline a pure pragmatist theory, recapitulate why Berker thinks it also falls prey to his objection, and explain why the objection fails to undermine pure pragmatism. Finally, I consider an additional reason Berker’s argument might seem persuasive and show that it depends on conflating Berker’s objection and a separate challenge to pure pragmatism. Once these distinct challenges are disambiguated, it is easier to see why Berker’s objection is not a significant concern for pure pragmatists.

Казахстан в зеркале политики администрации Д. Трампа

The article provides an analysis on U.S. policies toward the countries of Central Asia in general, and Kazakhstan in particular. Currently this country has turned into a powerful geopolitical player in the region, capable of competently shaping up its relations with partners while taking into account its national interests. Today, the policy of the Donald Trump administration towards the Central Asia is characterized by the approach based on pure pragmatism, and sometimes even more – on a subjective factor that is not determined by laws of logic, which is so typical for the American president. The interests of the American administration in this region include mainly the Afghan problem and the fight against terrorism, strengthening regional security and regional integration, energy and economic aspects, as well as the alternate containment of two influential players here - both China and Russia. There is also a temporary retreat from proactive American policy in the region aimed at taking wait-and-see policy to make some adjustments there in order to start a new round of “conquest” of this space. The authors conclude that the process of transformation in the region is currently under-way, there is a clear shift focus of Central Asian countries from the US and the EU towards China, whose influence, and significance would be steadily increasing there. However, talking about this is a bit premature. As far as Russia is concerned, it will also remain one of the key partners of the countries in the region mostly due to its capabilities in security sphere - an issue that is of great importance for the region.

MONOLITH EXPERIMENT IN VILNIUS: BETWEEN IDEA AND PRAGMATISM / MONOLITO EKSPERIMENTAS VILNIUJE: TARP IDĖJOS IR PRAGMATIŠKUMO

Santrauka Gelžbetonio kaip kokybinio architektūrinės minties suolio kaltininko dviprasmiskumas pokarinėje modernistinės architektūros raidoje ypac matomas is kontraversiskų sios medžiagos naudojimo krypcių ir mastų: nuo industrializuotos masinės surenkamų gelžbetoninių stambiaplokscių namų statybos kaip grynojo pragmatiskumo iki pavienių isskirtinės plastikos monolitinio gelžbetonio architektūros pavyzdžių kaip idėjos skleidėjų. Būtent monolitinio gelžbetonio technologijos idėjiskumo ir pragmatiskumo santykis straipsnyje ir nagrinėjamas, sį klausimą perkėlus į Vilniaus gyvenamosios statybos kontekstus. Monolitinio gelžbetonio gyvenamieji namai, pastatyti naudojant savo laiku inovatyvią ir eksperimentine technologiją, pasirinkti dėl palyginti nedidelio jų įgyvendinimo masto ir dėl to, kad sis eksperimentas tetruko ne visus porą paskutinių sovietinės eros, kurios pabaiga žymi ir sio fenomeno nutrūkimą, desimtmecių. Tekste siekiama atsakyti, kokie pragmatiniai ir idėjiniai postūmiai lėmė sios technologijos p...

Experimental pragmatics

Grice proposed to investigate ‘the total signification of the utterance’. One persistent criticism of Grice’s taxonomy of signification is that he missed an important category of information. This content, and/or the process of providing it, goes by a variety of labels: ‘generalized implicature’, ‘explicature’, ‘unarticulated constituents’, ‘default heuristics’, ‘impliciture’. In this study we first take a sample of such phenomena and, from the point of view of pure pragmatics, survey the central descriptions of the content expressed and the mechanisms that might deliver these contents. We then, from the point of view of experimental pragmatics, focus on two accounts: Levinson’s I-heuristic, and Bach’s standardization. We find experimental evidence for the existence of such implicitures, and for the use of language specific standardizations over language neutral background ­information.

James, Royce, and Logic

James, Royce, and Logic Harvey Cormier It seems easy enough to understand the pragmatic philosophical position of William James. A struggle has persisted through philosophical history between realists, who think that there is a real world outside of the conscious mind, and idealists, who think there is not any such world. James is clearly on the idealists' side, since he says flat out in many places that the world we think and talk about is made of "experiences." But James is also clearly a realist, since he says in no uncertain terms that the objects of our knowledge transcend and are independent of us experiencing subjects. And, moreover, James also clearly offers neither realism nor idealism but a Kantian middle path between the two, since he says that the human serpent of perception and desire is all over everything, and this plainly entails that there is a something-or-other that the human serpent is all over. All of which means, in short, that understanding James may not be as easy as it seems. It helps to think about the views of James's friend, colleague, and committed philosophical opponent Josiah Royce. At the time of his disputes with James over truth, Royce called himself both an idealist and a pragmatist. James wanted very much to distinguish his own version of pragmatism from Royce's idealist and absolutist version, and many tricky passages in James's writing, especially passages concerning truth and its relationship to the things of the world, were intended as criticisms of Royce. In this paper I shall consider the way Royce used logic to try to establish "pragmatically" the existence of an absolute truth and reality, and I'll try to show how James responded by renouncing this kind of logical theorizing. Along the way we shall see just what kind of world—real, ideal, or otherwise—James was committed to by his pragmatism. I A number of writers have argued that the difference between Royce's and James's views is overrated. Royce's career is often described as having three periods, [End Page 201] and in at least the first and the last of these he seemed to avoid the kind of absolutism that would have put him clearly at odds with James concerning the nature of truth and reality.1 Moreover, in all his work, Royce was in important ways a follower of Kant, and many people think that James was, too. Royce departed from some of Kant's ideas, but like Hegel, another critic of Kant, Royce saw himself as completing Kant's project of connecting the free and self-conscious subject with the objects of knowledge.2 Interpreters such as Murray Murphey, Bruce Kuklick, and, lately, Michael Forest have argued that "the Cambridge pragmatists" constituted a New England school of neo-Kantian philosophy that included not only Royce but Peirce and James as well.3 These figures all seemed to adopt something like transcendental idealism, Kant's way of closing the transcendental gap between subject and object. That is, they seemed to adopt some version of the idea that the world of known objects was at least in part a product of spontaneous human mental activity. Moreover, like Kant, they all seemed committed in some way or other to some kind of unity of reason and primacy of the practical. Royce's own development as a Kantian pragmatist went as follows: First, his 1878 Johns Hopkins doctoral dissertation made the Kantian argument that though our judgments are relativistically made true by momentary contents of individual human consciousnesses, we creatively postulate "Ideas in themselves" that transcend individual minds. These capital-I Ideas have to exist if we individuals are to have genuine agreements and disagreements even with ourselves from moment to moment, let alone with each other. Still, though we want to have these agreements and disagreements, we have no justification in the world outside our minds and wills for supposing that we really can have them. Thus, our justification for postulating or demanding "Ideas in themselves" is purely pragmatic, purely a matter of what we happen to want.4 Next, Royce left this "pure pragmatism" behind. By 1885, in his first...

Securing the Nation: Neoliberalism's U.S. Family Values in a Transnational Gendered Economy

Securing the Nation:Neoliberalism's U.S. Family Values in a Transnational Gendered Economy Rebecca Dingo (bio) The Economy of a Culture in Crisis Shortly after the unethical practices of such corporate giants as Enron, WorldCom, and Global Crossing were exposed by the U.S. media in early 2003, Concerned Women For America (CWA), a conservative right-wing Christian women's organization, published Martha Kleder's article "Values-Based Investing: A Tool for Pro-Family Activists" on the "Culture and Family Institute" portion of their not-for-profit website. 1 Appealing to her audience's fear of the fall of the U.S. economy and capitalism Kleder begins her article by stating, "American capitalism is in crisis" and continues to define this state by using terms such as "broken," "scandal," "shocking," "cheating," and "lying." Kleder employs a rhetoric of crisis that is indicative of many U.S. citizen's late-twentieth-century anxieties about the state of the nation, U.S. culture, and personal desires. She draws upon U.S. nationalism's promises for wealth, democracy, freedom, and individual agency and suggests that these values, like capitalism, are also in crisis. Through practicing what Kleder calls values-based investments, individuals can morally invest in the market and fulfill, for themselves and their community, the values that both U.S. citizenship and contemporary conservative fundamentalist Christianity are purported to provide. Kleder's essay persuades her target audience of other "concerned" right-wing Christian women to consider the intricate relationship between contemporary conservative Christian values, truth, ethics, American nationalism, American culture, and the market. Her timely argument identifies what she suggests is one of the core problems in contemporary American culture: that "Christian values and absolute truth" have been abandoned, resulting in a morality "committed to philosophical relativism, the pure pragmatism" where "ethics is merely the art of staying out of trouble, not the conviction to uphold truth and do what is right."2 In essence, Kleder's rhetoric of crisis appeals to the emotions through taken-for-granted and familiar terms such as truth, responsibility, and family, which she links to contemporary anxieties about the morality of American culture. To assuage this anxiety, Kleder suggests that her audience use their own agency and invest selectively in the market. If one acts morally when investing, then the market will provide the best possible world for the individual, her [End Page 173] or his family, and the nation. Kleder ultimately asks her audience to consider the ethical practices of the companies in which they choose to invest—an ethical concern that I share with many others. Yet, this brief article on the morality of the market communicates much more than the seemingly simple call for individual investors in the global marketplace to choose carefully and responsibly their investment sites. Kleder's article characterizes the rhetorical link between the market, family values, and individual agency. This presumed relationship is persuasive because it builds upon a commonsense belief system of personal intervention that places both individual and national economic security into the hands of each U.S. resident.3 Kleder's essay on the value of moral investing is emblematic of the discursive convergence of market fundamentalism, right-wing Christian fundamentalisms, and neoliberal values that structure the rhetoric of pro-family ethics at the end of the twentieth century.4 Significantly, the majority of contemporary conservative right-wing Christian organizations were established within the mid-1970s and early 1980s. 5 Kleder collapses personal agency, nationalism, and marketplace investing into symbols of faith in God, familial commitment, and dedication to American values. Her article demonstrates the rhetorical slippages between family, nation, and free-market and demarcates the terms and values that thread through the conservative right wing Christian's basic belief system: Faith + Family+ Free-market= Freedom. This belief system is strongly situated in the historical and material circumstances of the late twentieth century. Anxious rhetorics of familial individualism, nationalism, and traditionalism are part of this new neoliberal ideological belief system and cannot be separated from the late-twentieth-century global networks of power. The anxious rhetorics employed by conservative right-wing Christian organizations are related to the cultural and economic shift to post-industrialism in...

Deception by researchers is necessary and not necessarily evil

Despite claims of pure pragmatism, Hertwig and Ortmann's negative perspective on deception suggests a selfish psychologist willing to sacrifice the reputation of the discipline in order to expedite the research. Although questions that appear to have correct answers may be investigated with complete openness, research that delves into personal secrets often requires deception as a tool to counter self-presentation bias.

Le rôle des idées dans les relations internationales

Ideas and International Relations, by Pierre Hassner After the defeat of the totalitarian idéologies of the 20th century, the future belongs neither to pure pragmatism nor to the clash of civilizations. Ideas are as important as ever, but they no longer form coherent wholes. They are hard to disentangle from interests and passions. This is the conclusion drawn from the debate in international relations theory, from cursory examination of the wars and revolutions of the 20th century, and from the present struggle between universalism and particularism which is at work both in the debate around globalization and in the successes and failures of religious movements.

Informed consent in the Czech Republic

This paper describes the ethical practice of environmental epidemiology prior to the ‘velvet revolution’ at the end of 1989. The practice was essentially pragmatic. It was applied in a standard way in every central and eastern European country, with some modifications consistent with local conditions. The former Soviet model of national health care services used in these countries accentuated, both in theory and practice, the principle of prevention. As a result of the decades of pure pragmatism in resolving problems, however, there now exists a real risk from potential neglect of important ethical matters. Pragmatism has resulted in a potential incapacity to identify an ethical problem and to recognize its seriousness. It is a pervasive problem currently affecting all societies undergoing socio-political transformation, accompanied by troublesome and, sometimes, painful transitions. This process is evident to varying degrees in every country of central and eastern Europe.

Western Europe and the Reagan Doctrine

The Reagan Doctrine has become a major source of controversy in American politics. That it is also the cause of considerable disagreement within the Western alliance as a whole has been less widely noted. No West European state has joined the US administration in its policy of providing military assistance to rebels in Nicaragua, Cambodia and Angola; and only Britain has (apparently) joined in providing assistance to the rebel forces in Afghanistan. Some European governments have been openly critical. Even the British government, the European administration which has been most supportive of President Reagan's policies, expressed public dissent from the decision of Congress in the summer of 1986 to increase support for the Contras against the Nicaraguan government; and Sir Geoffrey Howe, the British Foreign Secretary, has recently more pointedly declared his belief in the need for a 'peaceful solution' to the Nicaraguan problem. These differences, though not yet highly publicized, could become a source of considerable embarrassment to the Western alliance in the Reagan administration's remaining term of office. This article attempts to set out the prevailing view among West European governments on this issue, one that is held by many conservative as well as more left-wing administrations. This outlook is based partly on a point of principle: the conviction that military assistance to rebel groups in other countries is contrary to the currently accepted rules of the international community. But it is based far more on pure pragmatism: the belief that those policies are unlikely to succeed. Let us examine the issue of principle first. Few questions in international politics have been so bitterly disputed as the propriety of intervention in civil wars elsewhere. Under traditional international law governments were held to be under a 'duty', when rebels acquired control of a substantial part of a national territory, to recognize the 'belligerency' of the insurgents. Once this recognition was granted, they were under a obligation to provide no assistance to either side. Recognition of that kind was usually highly unwelcome to a government fighting a rebellion. Not only did it deprive it of the possibility of receiving active assistance; it accorded a recognized status to the rebellious faction. For this reason the British government caused great offence to the US Federal government by recognizing the belligerency of both parties in the American Civil War and thereafter adopting a position of neutrality. A later British government caused equal offence to the Republican government in Spain in the 1930s by adopting a position of 'non-intervention' and hence neutrality at a time when Hitler and Mussolini were actively assisting Franco's rebel forces. Since 1945 these old rules have been largely abandoned. No government now ever formally recognizes the 'belligerency' of a rebel force, so committing itself to strict

Directives and Evocatives. On the Limits of Pure Pragmatics

Directives and Evocatives. On the Limits of Pure Pragmatics

The adoption of self-induction by telephony, 1886–1889

Summary Through 1886 to 1889 understanding of the mechanism of telephone transmission was transformed from an electrostatic and traditional view to an electrodynamic one conforming with Maxwell's scheme. Observed at the level of commercial application this painful adjustment occurred via a sequence of controversies connected with self-induction—on techniques of telephony, on electrical measurement, on lightning conductors and on matters of professional ethics—in which the parts played by evidence, by theory, and by authority were strangely mixed. The well-known confrontation of O. Heaviside and W. H. Preece was at the centre of the debate. An open division between traditionalists and progressives amongst electrical engineers was provoked, and the effectiveness of mathematical theory as against pure pragmatism at the practical level had in the end to be conceded.

Nomological Necessity and the Paradoxes of Confirmation

“What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in the world of speculation.”T. S. EliotBurnt NortonSome of the concerns which motivate attempts to provide a philosophical reduction of nomological necessity are briefly introduced in I. In II, Hempel's treatment of the paradoxes is contrasted with a position which holds that nomological necessity is a pragmatic dimension of laws of nature, and that this pragmatic dimension is of such a type that it prevents laws of nature from contraposing. Such a position is, however, untenable unless (i) the sense of ‘pragmatics’ at issue is specified, and the possibility of pragmatic differences resulting in differences in confirmation is defended, and (ii) a relevant pragmatic difference between contrapositives is indicated. III attempts to satisfy condition (i) by developing a new sense of pure pragmatics and argues that some remarks by Goodman and Scheffler together with work on the logic of explanation by Dr. Rescher and myself suggest that nomological contrapositives are not pragmatically equivalent (i.e. substitutable salva veritate in the pure pragmatics of an ideal scientific language). If such is the case, condition (ii) is also satisfied.