John Searle’s theory of social ontology posits that there are indispensable normative components in the linguistic apparatuses termed status functions, collective intentionality, and collective recognition, all of which, he argues, make the social world. In this paper, I argue that these building blocks of Searle’s theory are caught in a petitio of constitutive circularity. Moreover, I note how Searle fails to observe language in reciprocal relation to the institutions which not only are shaped by it but also shape language’s practical (...) applications. According to Searle, social theorists that tried to show a connection between society, culture, and language all failed to see the constitutive role of language in the making of social reality. Consequently, I believe that Searle is himself guilty of a certain kind of blind presumption, and argue that Hegel’s philosophy of culture, which Searle dismisses as implausible, offers a more cohesive account of the normative transactions between human beings and their social world. (shrink)

While Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy is often depicted in an ahistorical fashion, this book explores the consequences of placing his work in its historical context. In order to show how Sellars’ early publications depend on contextual factors, Peter Olen reconstructs the conceptions of language, psychological, and social explanation that dominated American philosophy in the early 20th century. Because of Sellars’ differing explanations of language and behaviour, Olen argues that many of Sellars’ early commitments are incompatible with his later works. In the (...) course of doing so, Olen highlights problematic tensions between Sellars’ early and later conceptions of language, meta-philosophy, and normativity. Supplementing the main text is a collection of previously unpublished archival material from Wilfrid Sellars, Gustav Bergmann, Everett Hall, and other early 20th century philosophers. This text will be a useful resource to those with an interest in the history of American philosophy, the history of analytic philosophy, Wilfrid Sellars’ philosophy, and the myriad issues surrounding normativity and language. (shrink)

Joseph Margolis’ philosophical work is both sanguine and fair. It is sanguine because much of it captures the inherent worth and dignity of the human condition. This includes aesthetics, anthropological diversity and history, the diversity of cognitive orientations and objectivity without foundations. Margolis embraces science and naturalism without reductionism. His pragmatism, though, is rooted more in James’ perspectivism, his local nice adaptation, and his relativism than that of Peirce and Dewey and their sense of science and the community of inquirers. (...) Margolis’ strength is his attempt to reconcile positions and his fairness towards others as he tries to wedge his pragmatist position amid others. But he celebrates the subjective stance of James, and downplayed the communal sense of Peirce and Dewey so vital to epistemic advances. (shrink)

Joseph Margolis has written on the problem of realism voluminously over several decades – in addition to the enormous number of other philosophical debates he has contributed to in original ways. His latest book, Pragmatism Ascendent, discusses a wide spectrum of philosophical issues, including the transformations of transcendental philosophy today in terms of (Hegelian) historicity and ‘flux,’ as well as the question of “what it is to be a human self” (Margolis 2012: x), but once again the r...

Dewey’s concept of “experience” has baffled many a reader. It is, however, assuredly the key to Dewey’s distinctive philosophical contribution. Notoriously, Rorty urges that Dewey would have been well-advised to abandon “experience: in favor of “discourse” (that is, the “linguistic method of philosophy”), which he draws largely from Davidson and Sellars. For various reasons, Rorty betrays his deep misunderstanding of Dewey’s pragmatism, the lack of any close relationship between Sellars’s notion of the “given” (as a philosophical target) and Dewey’s notion (...) of the saving discovery of what is “denoted” (in inquiry) as the “given”; and the extremely problematic (possibly even incoherent) treatment of linguistic meaning in Davidson’s most pertinent papers (which Rorty seems to regard as pragmatist in an important sense and is guided by). In any event, neither Davidson nor Rorty can be rightly supposed to extend or improve Deweyan pragmatism: Rorty, in fact, explicitly and unconditionally repudiates the “linguistic turn”; and Davidson finally subverts the very theory of language on which any reading of Rorty’s “pragmatist” account of Davidson’s theory of meaning would be at all feasible. The exposé of these disorders may contributes to a more careful formulation of the pragmatist undertaking, which lies elsewhere and depends on a measure of convergence between Dewey and Peirce. (shrink)

The paper notices that different readings have been provided as for the connections between Wittgenstein and pragmatism, such as for example H. Putnam’s picture as opposed to R. Rorty’s description that packages Wittgenstein and Dewey together as ‘postmodern’ pragmatists. Joseph Margolis tries to broaden the discussion by including an examination of Wilfrid Sellars, Gottlob Frege, Robert Brandom, and Huw Price. His aim it to review the newer challenges of naturalism and deflationism, which, by their own instruction, should bring us to (...) the decisive contest between the ‘pragmatism’ of the Investigations and that of Brandom’s Between Saying and Doing. The larger purpose of this exercise is to assess pragmatism’s best prospects currently, in meeting the gathering challenges of the day. (shrink)

The book reviewed here, Roberto Frega’s Practice, Judgment, and the Challenge of Moral and Political Disagreement, is an important and ambitious book. It is ambitious because it addresses the problems at stake in contemporary philosophical debates without any kind of awkwardness and shyness. Frega believes pragmatism to be a theoretically viable option, and tries to prove its soundness by adopting it as the conceptual framework of a theory of moral objectivity alternative to the ones formulat...

In this paper, I address the question of the nature and ground of objectivity, with the aim to develop a pragmatist account of its distinctive features. Traditionally, pragmatism has been considered as an alternative to Kantian approaches. The aim of the paper is to argue that, contrary to the received view, a consistent pragmatist theory of objectivity should preserve many insights of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy. My thesis is that Kantian notions of spontaneity, activity and objectivity can be fruitfully reformulated (...) and translated into pragmatist terms. The key notion here is that of practices. It is only within the context of a practice that concepts can be successfully applied to experience. The intrinsic normativity of practices establishes different levels of objectivity. The paper defends a pluralistic view of reality, insisting on the irreducibility of common-sense objectivity to scientific objectivity. At the same time, it is maintained that common-sense practices have a primacy over scientific practices, and that scientific objects are constructed out of common-sense objects through a process of articulation of the potentialities of the latter. (shrink)

Among many other things, Margolis’ new book, Pragmatism Ascendent: A Yard of Narrative, A Touch of Prophecy, is a successful attempt to articulate in a thoroughly naturalistic way the fundamental tenet of Kantian and post-Kantian philosophy – that is, the idea that idealism and realism are not two alternative metaphysical options, but rather two ways of dealing with the very same thing, the concrete experience that human beings have of their world. One of the most characteristic errors of tra...

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

This paper begins with a memoir of the author’s interactions with Joseph Margolis that delineates both Margolis’s importance as a teacher and their disagreements on aspects of American philosophy. It then turns to Margolis’s discussions of pragmatism as a philosophical movement, with an emphasis on his understanding of John Dewey. The paper considers, third, Margolis’s account of the decline and rebirth of pragmatism, the latter process attributed largely to the work of Richard Rorty. The paper concludes with an examination of (...) what it sees as Margolis’s most valuable work: his explorations of the nature of the self and of human society. (shrink)

Joseph Margolis holds that both artworks and selves are ”culturally emergent entities." Culturally emergent entities are distinct from and not reducible to natural or physical entities. Artworks are thus not reducible to their physical media; a painting is thus not paint on canvas and music is not sound. In a similar vein, selves or persons are not reducible to biology, and thought is not reducible to the physical brain. Both artworks and selves thus have two ongoing and inseparable ”evolutions”—one cultural (...) and one physical. Rather than having fixed ”natures” that remain stable for any purpose other than numerical identity, artworks and selves have ”careers” due to their cultural evolution that change with the course and flux of history, interpretation and reinterpretation. The question for this essay is how a Margolisian encultured artist, who is also an individual ”self," can construct an identifiable ”career” that is both from culture and develops culture constructively in a way that involves an individual, as well as collective, contribution. In answering this question I will provide a theory that shows how Margolis’ work on the artist as cultural agent leaves room for creative innovators within a cultural context. In short, I claim that Margolis’ idea that a person is a thinking-and-doing practitioner that emerges from and works within a cultural context does allow for the agent to use that same context to acquire the tools and skills necessary to make something new. I will then consider how this innovation might be possible by making recourse to some theories of creativity from neuroscience and psychology. This essay will focus on Margolis’ theory of the creative artist as cultural agent as supplemented with an account of the nature of the human being as a raw set of genetic materials and capacity for acquiring cultural competence. My claim is that this is the site for an adequate account of how some encultured persons are able to create exceptional innovations in artistic domains and others are not. I agree with Margolis that it is true that innovation is not possible by any pre- or non-encultured self but I also think that extremes of cultural mastery and innovation, as in the case of highly creative and innovative artists, are not possible without an inborn potentiality to develop to a high level of cultural ability under the right conditions. This is not to deny Margolis’ theory of artists as cultural agents. Indeed, I accept Margolis’ view of the deep importance of culture to the development of the self and to the creative artist wholeheartedly. I also agree that this is a crucial aspect of artistic agency and creativity that has been given short shrift in analytic aesthetics. My intention here is only to answer one question that is still left unanswered after understanding and acknowledging the importance of culture: How do we account for the disparity in ability in cultural agents and artists that cannot be attributed to cultural training and socio-historical factors? How do we account for the existence of the exceptionally creative artist in a situation where the cultural and socio-historical factors are roughly equivalent for others who demonstrate lesser amounts of creativity? (shrink)