Larry A. Hickman

On Hugh T. Miller on “Why Old Pragmatism Needs an Upgrade”

One of the more interesting aspects of the increasing market value of neopragmatism as it has developed in the hands of practitioners such as Richard Rorty and Stanley Fish is the manner in which its successes have contributed to misreadings of the classical pragmatism of Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. On one hand, there are those such as Bernard Williams who appear to have accepted neopragmatist truth deflationism (the notion that truth is no longer an interesting or important philosophical concept) as pragmatism simpliciter (Williams, 2002, p. 129). In his debate with Richard Rorty over the consequences of Rorty’s truth deflationism, for example, Williams seems to have misplaced the fact that the classical pragmatists, unlike their neopragmatic successors, advanced robust accounts of truth that went well beyond traditional correspondence and coherence theories, taking the best of what those theories offered, rejecting their problematic components, and utilizing the salvaged materials as the basis on which to construct a dynamic new theory. On the other hand, there are writers such as Hugh T. Miller who recognize the distinction, but do not get it quite right. Miller, for example, has concluded that neopragmatism constitutes an advance over the older version in that classical pragmatism (a) holds fast to modernist foundationalism, (b) advances a correspondence theory of truth that “posits a direct, denotative link between words and facts,” (Miller) and (c) makes the mistake of holding that scientific objectivity is possible. In my view, the first two of these claims constitute clear misreadings of the classical pragmatists; the third is based on a misreading of the relationship of classical pragmatism to what has been termed “Enlightenment rationality.” A part of this confusion, at least on Williams’s part, may be because of the fact that classical pragmatism and neopragmatism are forms of

Making the Family Functional: The Case for Legalized Same-Sex Domestic Partnerships

This essay argues that “the family” should be understood in functional terms: whatever functions as a family should have the legal status of a family. The author’s argument thus avoids two extreme positions. The first is the position of the hard-line “platonic” essentialists who, on grounds of nature, supernature, or cultural history, argue that a family unit must comprise heterosexual partners. The second is the position of the radical relativist, who argues that there are no essences whatsoever or that essences are purely arbitrary. Treating the family in functionalist terms, the author argues, would have positive consequences that would strengthen the social fabric.

Science Education for a Life Curriculum

As John Dewey frequently noted, one of the more interesting paradoxes of our scientific-technological milieu is the conspicuous fact that its defining methods and outlooks, despite their remarkable successes and widespread use, have been the subject of popular misunderstanding and even disparagement. This complex situation has been manifested both by negative appraisals of science as a body of knowledge and by flights from scientific methods of thinking.

The Products of Pragmatism

Critics of the pragmatists (and of the pragmaticists, in case there has been more than one of those) seem never to have tired of accusing them of making action an end in itself. Bertrand Russell misread them in this way, accusing Dewey of subordinating knowledge to action. Russell charged pragmatism with saying “that the only essential result of successful inquiry is successful action” (Russell 1969:304). He was later joined in this mistake by members of the Frankfurt School, including Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (Hork-heimer 1974:42ff).1

Doing and Making in a Democracy: Dewey’s Experience of Technology

Advancing a claim that was then regarded as radical, and is still widely misunderstood, John Dewey argued that most of his philosophical predecessors, even those who had claimed the methods of science as their own, had been guilty of a failure to recognize the importance of technology. He suggested that this was due in part to their prejudice against the impermanent materials utilized by artisans and craftspeople, in part to their tendency to deprecate the social classes whose members have traditionally dealt with doing and making in the practical sphere, and in part to their rejection of what he took to be the democratizing tendencies of technological methods.

THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE QUOTIDIAN ARTIFACT

In chapter four of The Human Condition 1 Hannah Arendt suggests that quotidian artifacts, such as the tables and chairs that we utilize on a daily basis, serve to stabilize human life. Between the private vagaries (one might even say the randomness) of human subjectivity on the one hand and the “sublime indifference of untouched nature” on the other, there is a man-made world protecting us from both.

Pragmatic Resources for Biotechnology

It was with considerable pleasure that I read the essay entitled “Ethics in a Technological Culture: A Proposal for a Pragmatist Approach”, co-authored by the organizers of the conference on “Bioethics and Pragmatism” (see Introduction). Their essay seemed to me to accomplish several important tasks, not the least of which was its call for a new vocabulary - one that would be designed to help answer the question of “how to live” in our changing technological landscape. I can only applaud their observation that the customary philosophical and ethical vocabulary is not properly equipped to formulate an appropriate answer to this question.

Techniques of Discovery: Broad and Narrow Characterizations of Technology

Historical studies of technology have tended to exhibit two focal points. Their primary concern has usually been what has happened or happens in the domain of hardware such as tools, machines, structures, and even items of personal use. Second (and secondarily), they have concerned themselves with what were or are the “attitudes” that accompanied the invention, development, or use of such hardware. Such secondary considerations have included the cultural matrices that made such inventions and developments possible and the cultural consequences of their employment. One of the ways that historians have expressed this difference of emphasis has been to identify the stock of hardware available for use during a given historical period as its “civilization,” or “tools,” and its ideas and institutions as its “culture.”

Populism and the Cult of the Expert

One of the most persistent problems of Western industrial societies may be put quite succinctly: “What should be the role of the expert in technologically based democracies?”

Concluding Conversation: The Future of Democratic Diversity

In the following conversation, the eight authors of this book discuss selected issues, challenges, and risks of democracy and diversity in our time and the relevance of Deweyan pragmatism as an intellectual resource for reconstruction of philosophical methods; personal habits; traditional cultures; institutions of government and civil society; and public policies at local, national, and international levels. They further clarify their position by responding to six general questions.