Pragmatism is the view that our philosophical concepts must be
connected to our practices--philosophy must stay connected to first
order inquiry, to real examples, to real-life expertise. The
classical pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and
John Dewey, put forward views of truth, rationality, and morality
that they took to be connected to, and good for, our practices of
inquiry and deliberation.
When Richard Rorty, the best-known contemporary pragmatist, looks
at our practices, he finds that we don't aim at truth or
objectivity, but only at solidarity, or agreement within a
community, or what our peers will let us get away with saying.
There is, however, a revisionist movement amongst contemporary
philosophers who are interested in pragmatism. When these new
pragmatists examine our practices, they find that the trail of the
human serpent is over everything, as James said, but this does not
toss us into the sea of post-modern arbitrariness, where truth
varies from person to person and culture to culture. The fact that
our standards of objectivity come into being and evolve over time
does not detract from their objectivity. As Peirce and Dewey
stressed, we are always immersed in a context of inquiry, where the
decision to be made is a decision about what to believe from here,
not what to believe were we able to start from scratch--from
certain infallible foundations. But we do not go forward
arbitrarily.
That is, these new pragmatists provide accounts of inquiry that
are both recognizably pragmatic in orientation and hospitable to
the cognitive aspiration to get one's subject matter right. The
best of Peirce, James, and Dewey has thus resurfaced in deep,
interesting, and fruitful ways, explored in this volume by David
Bakhurst, Arthur Fine, Ian Hacking, David Macarthur, Danielle
Macbeth, Cheryl Misak, Terry Pinkard, Huw Price, and Jeffrey Stout.
General
Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate?
Let us know about it.
Does this product have an incorrect or missing image?
Send us a new image.
Is this product missing categories?
Add more categories.
Review This Product
No reviews yet - be the first to create one!
Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
