-
C.S. Peirce On Vital Matters: C. S. Peirce sobre assuntos vitaisCognitio 3. 2002.: C.S. Peirce is infamous for his assertion that the ideas of truth and belief are out of place in vital or ethical matters. We must go on instinct and custom. But he also asserts that his view of truth is applicable to ethics - a true belief about what is right or wrong is the belief that would stand up to all deliberation, experience and argument. I shall resolve this tension in Peirce's work in favor of the cognitivist reading. That is, I shall argue that Peirce presents us with an attractive…Read more
-
39Rescher and Objective PragmatismContemporary Pragmatism 2 (2): 25-33. 2005.Nicholas Rescher embraces a more objectivist, realist, analytic pragmatism than the pragmatism which has been in vogue in the last two decades. He rejects any pragmatism for which there is no truth, reality, or objectivity but only conversations or solidarity within this or that vocabulary. Rescher has argued that pragmatism, far from being anti-realist, provides the only good argument for realism and for our ability to operate the causal model of inquiry about the real world. I examine this kin…Read more
-
60The pragmatist view of politics is at its very heart epistemic, for it treats morals and politics as a kind of deliberation or inquiry, not terribly unlike other kinds of inquiry. With the exception of Richard Rorty, the pragmatists argue that morals and politics, like science, aim at the truth or at getting things right and that the best method for achieving this aim is a method they sometimes call the scientific method or the method of intelligence – what would now be termed deliberative democ…Read more
-
60Pragmatism and bivalenceInternational Studies in the Philosophy of Science 4 (2). 1990.Abstract The success of the pragmatic account of truth is often thought to founder on the principle of bivalence?the principle which holds that every genuine statement in the indicative mood is either true or false. For pragmatists must, it seems, claim that the principle does not hold for theoretical statements and observation statements about the past. That is, it seems that pragmatists must deny objective truth?values to these perfectly respectable sorts of hypotheses. In this paper, after ex…Read more
-
136Icu psychosis and patient autonomy: Some thoughts from the insideJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (4). 2005.I shall draw on my experience of being an ICU patient to make some practical, ethical, and philosophical points about the care of the critically ill. The recurring theme in this paper is ICU psychosis. I suggest that discharged patients ought to be educated about it; I discuss the obstacles in the way of accurately measuring it; I argue that we must rethink autonomy in light of it; and I suggest that the self disintegrates in the face of it.
-
155The Subterranean Influence of Pragmatism on the Vienna Circle: Peirce, Ramsey, WittgensteinJournal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (5). 2016.An underappreciated fact in the history of analytic philosophy is that American pragmatism had an early and strong influence on the Vienna Circle. The path of that influence goes from Charles Peirce to Frank Ramsey to Ludwig Wittgenstein to Moritz Schlick. That path is traced in this paper, and along the way some standard understandings of Ramsey and Wittgenstein, especially, are radically altered.
-
502Deflating Truth: Pragmatism vs. MinimalismThe Monist 81 (3). 1998.It seems that no philosopher these days wants a theory of truth which can be accused of being metaphysical. But even if we agree that grandiose metaphysics is to be spurned, even if we agree that our theory of truth should be a deflated one, the controversy does not die down. A variety of deflationist options present themselves. Some, with Richard Rorty, take the notion of truth to be so wedded to metaphysics that we are advised to drop it altogether. Others, with Paul Horwich, take the disquota…Read more
-
6Reply to Margolis, Madelrieux and LevineEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 5 (2). 2013.Allow me to begin by thanking these three commentators for the time and energy they have put into thinking about the issues I raise in The American Pragmatists. There are some important common themes in their reading of the book and I am grateful for the opportunity to address them, and to clarify and expand on what I wrote. One thing that common to all three readers is that they see me as offering, in Stéphane Madelrieux’s words, a history of pragmatism that is both descriptive and normative...
-
41Pragmatism and the Transcendental Turn in Truth and EthicsTransactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 30 (4). 1994.
-
51Medically Inappropriate or Futile Treatment: Deliberation and JustificationJournal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (1): 90-114. 2016.This paper reframes the futility debate, moving away from the question “Who decides when to end what is considered to be a medically inappropriate or futile treatment?” and toward the question “How can society make policy that will best account for the multitude of values and conflicts involved in such decision-making?” It offers a pragmatist moral epistemology that provides us with a clear justification of why it is important to take best standards, norms, and physician judgment seriously and a…Read more
-
109
-
121 Charles Sanders Peirce 1839-1914)In The Cambridge companion to Peirce, Cambridge University Press. pp. 1. 2004.
-
116Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth (review) (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (2): 279-282. 2006.In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of TruthCheryl MisakRobert B. Westbrook Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005. xvi + 246 pp.Robert Westbrook, who in my view is our best intellectual historian of pragmatism, has written what is sure to be a major contribution to the study of pragmatist political theory, a branch of political theory which has rec…Read more
-
33A Culture of Justification: The Pragmatist’s Epistemic Argument for DemocracyEpisteme: A Journal of Social Epistemology 5 (1): 94-105. 2008.
-
23William James: Pragmatism in focusStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 25 (1): 123-129. 1994.
-
10Scientific realism, anti-realism, and empiricismIn John R. Shook & Joseph Margolis (eds.), A Companion to Pragmatism, Blackwell. 2006.This chapter contains sections titled: Pragmatism's Reputed Place in the Empiricist Tradition Peirce's Naturalist Account of Truth Pragmatism and Minimalism Experience: Physical, Mathematical, Metaphysical, and Moral.
-
146 CS Peirce on Vital Matters1In The Cambridge companion to Peirce, Cambridge University Press. pp. 150. 2004.
-
226Peirce, Levi, and the aims of inquiryPhilosophy of Science 54 (2): 256-265. 1987.Isaac Levi uses C. S. Peirce's fallibilism as a foil for his own "epistemological infallibilism". I argue that Levi's criticisms of Peirce do not hit their target, and that the two pragmatists agree on the fundamental issues concerning background knowledge, certainty, revision of belief, and the aims of inquiry
-
586Making Disagreement Matter: Pragmatism and Deliberative DemocracyJournal of Speculative Philosophy 18 (1). 2004.
-
29Narrative evidence and evidence‐based medicineJournal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice 16 (2): 392-397. 2010.
-
14Isaac Levi and his pragmatist lineageIn Erik J. Olsson (ed.), Knowledge and Inquiry: Essays on the Pragmatism of Isaac Levi, Cambridge University Press. pp. 18--31. 2006.
-
70Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and DeliberationRoutledge. 1999.Cheryl Misak argues that truth ought to be reinstated to a central position in moral and political philosophy. She argues that the correct account of truth is one found in a certain kind of pragmatism: a true belief is one upon which inquiry could not improve, a belief which would not be defeated by experience and argument. This account is not only an improvement on the views of central figures such as Rawls and Habermas, but it can also make sense of the idea that, despite conflict, pluralism, …Read more
-
1DS Clarke, Jr., Rational Acceptance and Purpose: An Outline of a Pragmatist Epistemology Reviewed byPhilosophy in Review 10 (2): 52-54. 1990.
-
37Ramsey's Cognitivism: Truth, Ethics and the Meaning of LifeRoyal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 78 251-263. 2016.Frank Ramsey is usually taken to be an emotivist or an expressivist about the good: he is usually taken to bifurcate inquiry into fact-stating and non-fact stating domains, ethics falling into the latter. In this paper I shall argue that whatever the very young Ramsey's view might have been, towards the end of his short life, he was coming to a through-going and objective pragmatism about all our beliefs, including those about the good, beauty, and even the meaning of life. Ethical beliefs are n…Read more
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
The Nature of Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
The Nature of Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |