Kant’s and Hegel’s transcendental argument for mental-content externalism breaks the deadlock between ‘internal’ and genuine realists. This argument shows that human beings can only be self-conscious in a world that provides a humanly recognizable regularity and variety among the things (or events) we sense. This feature of the world cannot result from human thought or language. Hence semantic arguments against realism can only be developed if realism about the world is true. Some of Putnam’s arguments for internal (...) class='Hi'>realism are taken as cases in point, and criticized accordingly. Pragmatic realists can use this transcendental argument, because its strong modal claims are consistent with falliblist accounts of justification. (shrink)

_Grounds of Pragmatic Realism_ shows Hegel is a major epistemologist, who disentangled Kant’s critique of judgment, across the Critical corpus, from transcendental idealism, and augmented its enormous evaluative and justificatory significance for commonsense knowledge, the natural sciences and freedom of action.

This paper addresses some apparent philosophical tensions between realism and enactivism by means of Charles Peirce’s pragmatism. Enactivism’s Mind-Life Continuity thesis has been taken to commit it to some form of anti-realist ‘world-construction’ which has been considered controversial. Accordingly, a new realist enactivism is proposed by Zahidi (_Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences,_ _13_(3), 461–475, 2014 ), drawing on Ian Hacking’s ‘entity realism’, which places subjects in worlds comprised of the things that they can successfully manipulate. We review this (...) attempt, and argue that whilst Zahidi rightly urges enactivists towards ‘internal realism’, he cannot sustain a non-negotiable aspect of realism that is crucial for scientific progress – the claim that multiple subjects inhabit _the same world_. We explore Peirce’s pragmatism as an alternative solution, foregrounding his distinction between existence and reality, and his inquiry-based account of cognition. These theoretical innovations, we argue, fruitfully generalize Zahidi’s _manipulation-based_ enactivist realism to a richer, _inquiry-based_ enactivist realism. We explore how this realism’s pan-species monism about truth encourages and supports the investigation of non-human animal cognition, and conclude by considering some implications of our discussion for long-standing realism debates within pragmatism. (shrink)

This paper examines the notion of emergence from the perspective of pragmatism, drawing special attention to Donald Davidson’s recent account of the emergence of thought and to Hilary Putnam’s pragmatic realism, which, we argue, can be applied to the question of the reality of emergent properties. Our overall conclusion is that the debate over the concept of emergence actively going on in contemporary metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of science should be focused more strongly on the (...) class='Hi'>realism issue, even though most emergentists tend to assume a rather straightforward metaphysical realism – a view that ought to be called into question on pragmatist grounds. (shrink)

In this paper I seek to articulate and develop Roberto Torretti’s advocacy of pragmatic realism. At the core of Torrietti’s view is a rejection of the notion that the truth of scientific theories consists in their correspondence to the world. I propose to understand correspondence in that sense as a metaphorical notion. I articulate a notion of pragmatist coherence, on the basis of which I make new coherence theories of truth and reality. Then it becomes possible to say (...) that pragmatic realism consists in the pursuit of true knowledge of reality, in a way that is also consonant with Torretti’s pluralism. (shrink)

This article deals with the philosophical problem of how to conceive reality. The difficulty consists in finding a middle way between the claim that reality is unconceptualised reality and the claim that there is no difference between what is real and what we experience as real. In this regard, the pragmatic tradition in philosophy promises to provide us with some fruitful ideas for steering a path between the two. The author applies some of these ideas in developing a (...) class='Hi'>pragmatic realist philosophy of religion which is not reductionist and therefore acceptable for religious as well as non-religious philosophers of religion. First, he gives a very short summary of pragmatism as background to his proposal. Second, in contrast to the notion of realism in the pragmatic tradition he sketches the presuppositions of what is labelled religious or theological realism in present analytic philosophy of religion. Third, he distinguishes between ontological commitments that are metaphysical in character and ontological commitments that are not, drawing on Rudolf Carnap’s idea of the difference between internal and external questions of existence. Fourth, he presents Hilary Putnam’s criticism of a metaphysically realist conception of existence and fifth, Putnam’s defence of what he calls internal realism. Sixth, he puts forward a pragmatic idea of the difference between observational experiences and existential ones in our lives. Finally, he applies this pragmatic philosophy of religion to the question of whether it is reasonable to claim that belief in God presupposes God’s existence. (shrink)

Within the philosophy of religion, there are several different views on what to consider the discipline’s most fundamental topic. The answer that you offer at the meta-level is often more important than the concrete answers you, in the next stage, offer to that question which you have identified as the question to attend to. The identification serves, namely, as a hermeneutical principle for understanding and addressing other topics within the discipline. As regards analytic Anglo-American philosophy of religion, there has, for (...) a long time, been a general agreement that the fundamental topic that philosophers of religion should attend to is God’s existence.... (shrink)

The early twentieth century witnessed the emergence of "objective relativism," a distinctly American school of metaphysical realism inspired by the works of John Dewey and A.N. Whitehead. Largely forgotten, objective relativism provided a metaphysical framework, based upon an ontology of events and relations rather than substances and discrete properties, that has continued relevance for contemporary metaphysical discussions. In this thesis, I attempt to chart the boundaries and pathways of this ontology, outlining what Dewey calls the "ground-map of the province (...) of criticism." In particular, the ground-map of objective relativism is invoked to situate and analyze the model of psycho-physical emergence outlined in Dewey's Experience and Nature. Because it is a relational ontology, objective relativism avoids problems with emergence common to substantival models. Additional analyses of its ontological premises, both in Dewey's writings and elsewhere, demonstrate how compelling accounts of causation, consciousness, and meaning may be formulated within this model. (shrink)

This paper will concentrate mainly on the analysis of some features present in Putnam's internal realism and in his "natural realism" that he shares with the pragmatist thinkers Peirce and James. Following the middle way which Putnam tries to reach between "reactionary metaphysics" and "irresponsible relativism," the first part of the paper deals with what is the positive insight of traditional realism, i. e., the reality of external things as independent from our mind, as it is emphasized (...) by Putnam. It also analyzes how this idea of the mind-independent character of reality has been very well worked out in Peirce's thought through the category of Secondness. The second part focuses on the right insight of relativism that Putnam wants to maintain: How our notion of reality changes and evolves together with our language, our life and our handling the world. The attention that H. Putnam pays to W. James is, also, especially important in relation to his way of understanding reality. (shrink)

DURING the past decade or so, philosophers of science have increasingly recognized that the rationality and progressiveness of science cannot be fully exhibited in syntactic or semantic terms, i.e., by considering science merely as a system of symbols. The idea is rapidly gaining ground that science is fundamentally a way of dealing with the world around us and that the rationality of scientific method essentially depends on the role which it plays within our total conduct.

The paper addresses the issue of scientific realism in Mach, and his pragmatist approach to epistemology. Firstly, Eric Banks’s interpretation of Mach as a direct realist about particulars will be explored and discussed. Secondly, Sami Pihlström’s pragmatic realism will be considered, and it will be suggested that this view can be more viably attributed to Mach. Finally, in the light of Mach’s 1910 paper on Sensory Elements and Scientific Concepts, it will be argued that Mach’s agnosticism was (...) probably stronger than any moderate form of realism he could have been committed to, and that he was a radical pragmatist in refusing to be concerned with any kind of metaphysical issue. (shrink)

The tradition of pragmatism has, especially since Dewey, been characterized by a commitment to nonreductive naturalism. The notion of emergence, popular in the early decades of the twentieth century and currently re-emerging as a central concept in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, may be useful in explicating that commitment. The present paper discusses the issue of the reality of emergent properties, drawing particular attention to a pragmatic way of approaching this issue. The reality of emergents can be defended (...) as a pragmatically-useful ontological commitment; hence, pragmatism can be employed as a tool in the debate over the structure and reality of emergence. This strategy of justifying ontological commitments is examined through historical and systematic discussions of the pragmatist tradition. It turns out, among other things, that while classical pragmatists did not specify any technical notion of emergence in the contemporary sense, their non-reductively naturalist views are relevant to the more recent emergence discussions -- especially because they rejected the metaphysical realism typical of today’s ontologically-oriented emergence theories. (shrink)

I discuss the design of the method of entropic inference as a general framework for reasoning under conditions of uncertainty. The main contribution of this discussion is to emphasize the pragmatic elements in the derivation. More specifically: (1) Probability theory is designed as the uniquely natural tool for representing states of incomplete information. (2) An epistemic notion of information is defined in terms of its relation to the Bayesian beliefs of ideally rational agents. (3) The method of updating from (...) a prior to a posterior probability distribution is designed through an eliminative induction process that singles out the logarithmic relative entropy as the unique tool for inference. The resulting framework includes as special cases both MaxEnt and Bayes’ rule. It therefore unifies entropic and Bayesian methods into a single general inference scheme. I find that similar pragmatic elements are an integral part of Putnam’s internal realism, of Floridi’s informational structural realism, and also of van Fraasen’s empiricist structuralism. I conclude with the conjecture that their valuable insights can be incorporated into a single coherent doctrine—an informational pragmatic realism. (shrink)

This critical editorial introduction summarizes and explicates Frederick Will’s pragmatic realism and his account of the nature, assessment, and revision of cognitive and practical norms in connection with: the development of Will’s pragmatic realism, Hume’s problem of induction, the oscillations between foundationalism and coherentism, the nature of philosophical reflection, Kant’s ‘Refutation of Idealism’, the open texture of empirical concepts, the correspondence conception of truth, Putnam’s ‘internal realism’, the redundancy theory of truth, sociology of knowledge, the (...) governance of practice by norms and the assessment and revision of norms in practice, scientific realism, the alleged independence of reason and tradition, rule-following, legal realism, ethical intuitionism and moral relativism, the regress problem (both in epistemology and in moral theory), the paradox of analysis, and culminating in Will’s account of the philosophical governance of norms. These issues are discussed in close consideration of the views of: William Alston, John Dewey, Descartes, Leibniz, Waismann, Austin, Russell, Schlick, Ayer, Richard Rorty, Michael Williams, Hempel, Carnap, Simon Blackburn, Ramsey, Strawson, Kuhn, Wilfrid Sellars, Wittgenstein, Nozick, Dretske, Quine, Barbara Herman, Hardy Jones, Marcus Singer, and Gerd Buchdahl. (shrink)

By deepening Austin’s reflections on the ‘open texture’ of empirical concepts, Frederick L. Will defends an ‘externalist’ account of mental content: as human beings we could not think, were we not in fact cognizant of a natural world structured by events and objects with identifiable and repeatable similarities and differences. I explicate and defend Will’s insight by developing a parallel critique of Kant’s and Carnap’s rejections of realism, both of whom cannot account properly for the content of experience. This (...) critique shows that Will has identified a genuinely transcendental basis for defending common-sense realism, without appeal to any high-level theory of knowledge. I then show how Will’s realism undercuts Simon Blackburn’s quasi-realism, Michael Williams’ partial defense of skepticism, John Haldane’s attempt to rehabilitate Aquinas’ account of concepts, and how it augments Crispin Wright’s defense of realism. (shrink)

In his book The Mangle of Practice and in other writings, Andrew Pickering purports to resolve the question of scientific realism by recasting the debate in terms of his own view “pragmatic” or “performative” realism. This view is informed by a constructivist view of scientific practice. Therefore it is characterised by Pickering as a species of anti‐realism that claims to take due account of the both the objective and pragmatic aspects of certain versions of scientific (...) realism. This paper analyses Pickering's claims to have resolved the debate and examines the merits and limitations of his proposed replacement.I show that insofar as Pickering conceives scientific practice as eschewing any position concerning the correspondence of theoretical concepts with nature , his position can be compared in several respects to Fine's much discussed alternative to realism, NOA . I contend that Pickering's proposed “performative realism” is no more successful at resolving the scientific realism question in than is NOA. (shrink)

In his book The Mangle of Practice and in other writings, Andrew Pickering purports to resolve the question of scientific realism by recasting the debate in terms of his own view “pragmatic” or “performative” realism. This view is informed by a constructivist view of scientific practice. Therefore it is characterised by Pickering as a species of anti‐realism that claims to take due account of the both the objective and pragmatic aspects of certain versions of scientific (...) realism. This paper analyses Pickering's claims to have resolved the debate and examines the merits and limitations of his proposed replacement.I show that insofar as Pickering conceives scientific practice as eschewing any position concerning the correspondence of theoretical concepts with nature, his position can be compared in several respects to Fine's much discussed alternative to realism, NOA. I contend that Pickering's proposed “performative realism” is no more successful at resolving the scientific realism question in than is NOA. (shrink)

This book examines the issue of moral realism from a pragmatist point of view, drawing attention to our human practices of ethical evaluation and deliberation. It defends the essentially ungrounded and humanly fundamental place of ethics in our thought and action. Ethics must remain beyond justification and ubiquitous in our human form(s) of life.

The particularly significant theory of the symbol of Alfred Schutz is based on a combination of the two perspectives of phenomenological individualism and pragmatic realism. This theory on the one hand explains processes of symbolic meaning constitution from a phenomenological viewpoint, specifically following Edmund Husserl. On the other hand it demonstrates the functioning of symbols through pragmatic social action, which is relevant for symbolic reality construction. The paper elaborates both perspectives within the Schutzian theory of the symbol (...) with reference to diverse interpretations of Franz Kafka’s novel The Castle. It outlines the decisive capacity of symbols to overcome and harmonize diverse and often contradictory meanings that are expressed and at the same time united by the symbol itself. (shrink)

Hasok Chang is developing a new form of pragmatic scientific realism that aims to reorient the debate away from truth and towards practice. Central to his project is replacing truth as correspondence with his new notion of ‘operational coherence’, which is introduced as: 1) A success term with probative value to judge and guide epistemic activities. 2) A more useful alternative than truth as correspondence in guiding scientific practice. I argue that, given its current construal as neither necessary (...) nor sufficient for success, operational coherence is too weak and fails to satisfy both 1) and 2). I offer a stronger construal of operational coherence which aims to improve on Chang’s account by tying it to systematic success. This makes operational coherence necessary and sufficient for success. This new account, if successful, rescues 1) but not 2). I then take a step back and try to locate Chang’s pragmatic realism within the broader pragmatist tradition by comparing his views to the founding fathers Peirce, James and Dewey. I also assess to what extent we should consider Chang’s position ‘realist’, arguing that despite the many relativists threads running through it, Chang’s pragmatic realism is deserving of the realist label because its aims to maximize our learning from reality, even if it falls short of what many traditional realist are happy to accept as realism. I finish with comments on the epistemology of science pointing out that there is nothing intrinsic about a practice-based philosophy of science that precludes having both operational coherence and correspondence and highlighting that given a proper understanding these two notions could, in fact, be understood as complementary. I suggest one way this could be done. (shrink)

After analysing Habermas's philosophical evolution from his theory of interests to his late pragmatic realism, I will focus on the problems of this last conception, trying to draw a plausible way out which avoids both naturalistic reductionism and a too weak form of realism.

Peirce trod a fine line between the extremes of nominalism and realism, tough-minded pragmatism and metaphysical speculation. As Peter Skagestad makes clear, Peirce's system of thought was fragmented, incomplete, and sometimes inconsistent.

Why do bad things happen, why is there suffering in the world? The problem of evil poses a serious threat to the idea of God as an omnipotent, omniscient and absolutely good being since it had been first articulated. The existence of horrible natural disasters and moral abominations continues to be one of the strongest arguments for atheism. Consequently, attempts of absolving God of the charge are legion: theodicies belong to the essential repertoire of traditional Christian theology and phi...

An examination of philosophical realism from the standpoint of pragmatic epistemology, this book addresses the core idea of Rescher's work in epistemology: that functional and pragmatic concerns exert a controlling influence on the conduct ...

Astroparticle physics is a recent sub-discipline of physics that emerged from early cosmic ray studies, astrophysics, and particle physics. Its theoretical foundations range from quantum field theory to general relativity, but the underlying “standard models” of cosmology and particle physics are far from being unified. The paper explores the pragmatic strategies employed in astroparticle physics in order to unify a disunified research field, the concept of observation involved in these strategies, and their relations to scientific realism.

It has become apparent that the debate between scientific realists and constructive empiricists has come to a stalemate. Neither view can reasonably claim to be the most rational philosophy of science, exclusively capable of making sense of all scientific activities. On one prominent analysis of the situation, whether we accept a realist or an anti-realist account of science actually seems to depend on which values we antecedently accept, rather than our commitment to “rationality” per se. Accordingly, several philosophers have attempted (...) to argue in favour of scientific realism or constructive empiricism by showing that one set of values is exclusively best, for anyone and everyone, and that the downstream choice of the philosophy of science which best serves those values is therefore best, for anyone and everyone. These efforts, however, seem to have failed. In response, I suggest that philosophers of science should suspend the effort to determine which philosophy of science is best for everyone, and instead begin investigating which philosophy of science is best for specific people, with specific values, in specific contexts. I illustrate how this might be done by briefly sketching a single case study from the history of science, which seems to show that different philosophies of science are better at motivating different forms of scientific practice. (shrink)

Recovers classical pragmatism from recent deconstructive interpretations.

Pragmatism, the philosophy native to America, has once again grown to prominence in philosophical debate around the world. Today, the type of pragmatism that is proving to be of greatest value for fostering discussions with other worldviews is pragmatic naturalism. The fourteen provocative essays in this original collection are all by philosophers who describe themselves as pragmatic naturalists and who are active in the present-day revival of American pragmatism. Pragmatic naturalism, like all varieties of pragmatism, steers clear (...) of the extreme intellectualism too often found in philosophy. Pragmatic naturalism stresses that genuine inquiry must be conducted in a consistently empirical manner and be responsive to real human problems. It also contends that the sciences and their methodologies are superior to other modes of inquiry into the human environment. Despite the curious fact that pragmatism is often taken to be opposed to realism, the essays in this volume assert the interdependence of pragmatism with some type of realistic metaphysical stance. As such they advance the debates over the question of realism by uncovering and investigating the deepest assumptions running through recent Anglo-American philosophy. This excellent collection of high-quality essays on a resurgent school of American philosophy will be of interest to philosophers as well as scholars in the natural and social sciences. (shrink)