Pragmatism in America (original) (raw)
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Dewey and Peirce, the Philosopher's Philosopher
Three arguments are presented in this article that point to discontinuity rather than continuity in John Dewey's philosophical views. First, the author examines and critiques the most comprehensive current account of the development of Dewey's thinking early to late based on the assumption of continuity. Contrary to this account, it is argued, Dewey dramatically changed his views about the role of action, language, and quality in knowledge construction from mid-career on. In the second and third sections of the paper, numerous examples are presented showing how closely Dewey's later ideas map onto those of the brilliant but less known originator of pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce. The intent in all three sections of the paper is to demonstrate the magnitude of Dewey's debt to Peirce.
Scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory. When we experience scientific explanation in its consummation, we experience what I have deemed a creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is an important aspect of creativity that comes at the end of inquiry and contributes to the development of future inquiry. Because scientific explanation is commonly cleaved from aesthetic experience, this moment of creativity has been neglected in both analyses of scientific practice and analyses of aesthetic experience. By synthesizing John Dewey's conceptions of scientific explanation and aesthetic experience with Charles S. Peirce's categories, this moment of scientific inquiry is revealed and understood as a fundamental part of our creative reasoning process. In order to argue that scientific explanation is both instrumental and consummatory, Dewey's instrumental conception of scientific explanation is provided, which includes why science is so often considered as separated from aesthetic experience. A general overview of Dewey's conception of aesthetic experience and the common division conceived between scientific experience and that of aesthetics is also provided. Reasons are then supplied to reconsider scientific experience as having an aesthetic dimension, especially with regard to scientific explanations and the creative moment of scientific apprehension, which is followed by a brief discussion concerning how recognition of this moment reveals an important aspect of creative reasoning that is to be understood as a part of our experience through what Peirce referred to as firstness and secondness. Analyzing the aesthetic experience of scientific explanations against the backdrop of Dewey's conceptions of aesthetics and science, combined with Peirce's categories, accounts for that creative moment of scientific apprehension in which a scientific explanation takes on the quality of kalos, or sense of general harmony, that inspires reverie and future inquiry.
In1877 Peirce distinguished four different methods of “fixating our beliefs”, among which I here concentrate on what could be called the “method of tenacity” and the “method of science”. I then use these distinctions to argue that despite their apparent conflict, pragmatism, relying on the method of tenacity, and naturalism, relying on the method of science, can and should coexist, bothin science and in metaphysics. In1877 Peirce distinguished four different methods ,of “fixating our beliefs” (Peirce 1877), among which I will concentrate on what could be called the “method of tenacity”, to becontrasted,with the “method of science”. The method ,of tenacity ,is described ,as an epistemic attitude that consists in reinforcing one’s beliefs at all costs, however they are arrived at, while the method of science consists instead in letting one’s beliefs be constantly shaped and revised by empirical, mind-independent regularities (laws) that are exemplified by natural phenomena. In this pa...
Peirce's Abduction of Science: Is Anti-Intellectualism of American Universities Rooted in Pragmatism
Am. J. Hum. Soc. Sci. (AJHSS) Vol. 26, 2021 pp. 22-37, 2021
Anti-intellectualism is deeply rooted in American culture. Charles Peirce (1839-1914) was a pioneering American scholar and one of the greatest thinkers of the Fin de Siècle period. Being a prominent logician and philosopher and living far away from European centers, he developed the original American concept of-Pragmatism,‖ which later became a part of Analytic Philosophy. As the dominant school of philosophy in the US, Analytic Philosophy is characterized by scientism, nominalism, linguistic analysis of fundamental problems, and pragmatic attitudes towards science. Peirce's influential epistemological idea was the concept of abduction or selection of scientific hypotheses based on their practical, including monetary, value. Abduction was thought to be a third mode of inference, in addition to deduction and induction. In this way, money was introduced into epistemology and scientific methodology. One can hypothesize that the current obsession with measuring scientific discovery by research expenditures in American universities is a direct continuation of the Pragmatist tradition. I explore the metaphor of the-Abduction of Europa‖ (the Rape of Europe) and bring examples of measuring science by money from my faculty experience at the Mechanical Engineering Department of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and relate them to Peirce's ideas.
Scientific knowledge, fallibilism, agapasm and the ethics of inquiry according to C. S. Peirce
Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) was a practising physical scientist and for thirty-two years employed by the United states Coast and Geodetic Service – first and foremost surveying and conducting geodetic investigations, for example making measurements of the intensity concerning the gravitational field of the earth (cf. Fisch 1993). But Peirce was also a fine theorist of the logic and philosophy of science, and in a fragment (c. 1897) he accentuated that: ”…out of a contrite fallibilism, combined with a high faith in the reality of knowledge, and an intense desire to find things out, all my philosophy has always seemed to me to grow. . . .” (CP: 1.14). According to Peirce there is a real uncertainty in the world and in the inferences of the scientific inquirer; these are, of course, closely connected. Hence, the scientific inquiry can never stop. This does not mean, however, that Peirce was a scepticist (cf. Deely 1932: 124). Rather, Peirce`s interpretation of scientific knowledge was highly optimistic; according to him scientific theories are progressive, cumulative and – in the long run – convergent. Peirce had, as John Dewey (1859-1952) remarks in a review of ”The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce”: ”…an intense faith in the possibility of finding out, of learning – if only we will inquire and observe” (Dewey 1932: 124). Peirce`s acknowledgement of fallibility seems to establish the cognitive task of the scientific inquirer and can be related to his scattered remarks concerning an ”ethics of inquiry”: how the inquirer ought to conduct his investigations in the light of fallibilism. In the following will try to take a look at the logical obligation of the scientist, to pursue truth for the sake of truth, which rests upon the ethical obligation, the identification of his interests of cognition with the interests of an indefinite community of inquiry. An important metaphysical concept seems to underpine this ”ethics of inquiry”, agapastic attraction or the living telos of reason. Only because the scientist can be attracted to reason by its intrinsic aesthetical goodness, is he able to fullfil his two obligations. The article will proceed like this; firstly, we will take a look at Peirce´s concepts of scientific knowledge and fallibilism. Then we will understand with Peirce that science is an ethical claim. And, finally, we will see how agapastic attraction can be a metaphysical underpining of the ”ethics of inquiry”.
Classical Pragmatism and Metaphysics: James and Peirce on Scientific Determinism
Published in: Pihlström, S. – Stadler, F. - Weidtmann, N. (eds.), Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism, Dordrecht: Springer, 2017
The present paper has two main aims. The first one is philosophical and is related to the general topic of this volume (Logical Empiricism and Pragmatism): I would like to draw attention to the fact that the issue of classical scientific determinism, despite being ‘metaphysical’ and thereby ‘nonsensical’ according to the Vienna Circle's ‘scientific world conception’, bothered philosophers, like William James and Charles Peirce, who were deeply involved in scientific practice. At the end of the paper I shall raise the question of why it was so and what this fact may suggest about the relationship between science and metaphysics. The second main aim of this paper is historico-philosophical: in the time span between the late 1870s and by the turn of 1900 James (1842–1910) and Peirce (1839–1914) contributed repeatedly to the ongoing discussions about scientific determinism. In this paper I give a general overview of their positions based mainly on primary sources and I embed them into the broader context of the history of the concept of scientific determinism, dedicating special attention to their relationship with a particular French anti-deterministic tradition (Renouvier, Poincaré, Boutroux and Bergson).
Toward a Pragmatic Account of Scientific Knowledge
C. S. Peirce's psychological analysis of belief, doubt, and inquiry provides insights into the nature of scientific knowledge. These in turn can be used to construct an account of scientific knowledge where the notions of belief, truth, rational justification, and inquiry are determined by the relationships that must hold between these notions. I will describe this account of scientific knowledge and some of the problems it faces. I will also describe the close relationship between pragmatic and naturalized accounts of scientific knowledge.