Aikin Scott F. - The pragmatism reader: from Peirce through the present

The Pragmatism Reader

FROM PEIRCE THROUGH THE PRESENT

Edited by
Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
PRINCETON AND OXFORD

Copyright 2011 by Princeton University Press

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The pragmatism reader : from Peirce through the present / edited by
Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-691-13705-6 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-691-13706-3 (pbk.: alk. paper)
1. Pragmatism. I. Talisse, Robert B. II. Aikin, Scott F.
B832.P768 2011
144'.3dc22 2010026121

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available

This book has been composed in Minion Pro

Printed on acid-free paper

Printed in the United States of America

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The Pragmatism Reader

Although the term pragmatism is frequently used to characterize some or other highly specific thesis or program, pragmatism is not and never was a school of thought unified around a distinctive doctrine. In fact, the first pragmatistsCharles Peirce, William James, and John Deweywere divided over what, precisely, pragmatism is. Peirce first proposed the pragmatic maxim as a tool for dispensing with metaphysical nonsense; for him, pragmatism was strictly a method of ascertaining the meanings of hard words and abstract concepts (CP5.464). The core of this method is the idea that,

To develop [a thoughts] meaning, we have simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves. (CP5.400)

Hence the pragmatic maxim:

Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (CP5.402)

For Peirce, pragmatism was a way to clear away philosophical error and start upon the path of properly conducted philosophy. Peirce thought that by analyzing words and statements in terms of what is tangible and conceivably practical (CP5.400), one could dismiss make-believes (CP5.416) and free philosophy of senseless jargon (CP5.401).

Although pragmatism is the beginning of Peirces philosophy, it is not the whole of Peirces philosophy. As is well known, Peirce went on to develop original (some might say idiosyncratic) views concerning topics ranging from philosophy of mathematics, logic, and science to phenomenology, semiotics, and aesthetics.

Some twenty years after Peirce introduced the pragmatic maxim, James confessed to being dissatisfied with the narrowness of Peirces formulation; he proposed a broader application according to which the point of pragmatism is not to detect nonsense, as Peirce had alleged, but rather to settle metaphysical disputes. James proposed that one should include among the practical effects of a statement the psychological effects of believing it. Thus, whereas Peirce argued that pragmatism renders the doctrine of transubstantiation meaningless, James argued that pragmatism afforded a decisive case in favor of it. James contends that the idea that in the Mass one

Though profoundly influenced by them both, Dewey rejected the views of Peirce and James. According to Dewey, pragmatism was in the business of neither separating out meaningful statements from nonsense nor settling traditional metaphysical disputes. With Peirce, Dewey sought a way of doing philosophy that was unhindered by the traditional puzzles and problematics. But he resisted the Peircean strategy of proposing a test of meaning. Instead, he socialized the problems of philosophy, arguing that the traditional philosophical problems naturally arose out of the social and intellectual conditions of a pre-Darwinian age. Dewey contended that, because these conditions no longer obtain, the traditional philosophical problems should be simply abandoned, replaced by new difficulties arising from Darwinian science. He was especially concerned to address the difficulties involved in giving an account of valuemoral, aesthetic, epistemic, politicalthat is consistent with experimental natural science.

In the end, then, Deweys project owes something to James as well. After all, it was James, not Peirce, who really felt the pinch between the scientific and the normative, between the position of the psychological researcher working in his lab and that of the living human being convinced that the universe was too wild, wondrous, and unruly ever to be brought under the rigid discipline of a scientific theory. However, whereas James endorsed a metaphysical pluralism and an epistemic anti-evidentialism specially designed to leave room for the unruly, the inexplicable, and even the mystical, Dewey, by contrast, proposed a philosophy aimed at fostering equilibrium and continuity in the world. He gave philosophical articulation to the need always to rebuild, reorder, and reconstitute extant materials when they prove disordered, unintelligible, and useless. Dewey saw philosophy as a perpetual effort to reconstruct the world according to our current aims and interests. Indeed, he identified inquiry or intelligence itself with such activity, and he saw philosophy as the systematic attempt to apply intelligence to all varieties of human practice. And, perhaps most importantly, he saw democracy as both the precondition for and the social expression of intelligence.

Deweys philosophy is thus more systematic and comprehensive than that of either of his pragmatist predecessors. Peirce sought to make our ideas clear and James sought to resolve long-standing metaphysics disputes; Dewey, however, built his pragmatism into a grand philosophical system rooted in Darwinian naturalism. He devised a far-reaching and integrated network of philosophical accounts of experience, logic, existence, language, mind, knowledge, psychology, science, education, value, art, religion, and politics out of his commitment to the Darwinian thought that the fundamental philosophical datum is activity of living creatures interacting with various factors and materials within their environments.

Importantly, this basic Darwinian commitment also drives Deweys critical stance toward traditional philosophical approaches. According to Dewey, the philosophical lesson of Darwinism is that there are no strict discontinuities in nature. He reasons that therefore any philosophy that proceeds from a dualism