H. G. Callaway

Peirce claims in his Lectures on Pragmatism [CP 5.196] that “If you carefully consider the question of pragmatism you will see that it is nothing else than the question of the logic of abduction;” and further “no effect of pragmatism which is consequent upon its effect on abduction can go to show that pragmatism is anything more than a doctrine concerning the logic of abduction.” Plausibly, there is, at best, a quasi-logic of abduction, which properly issues in our best means for the methodological evaluation and ordering of (yet untested) hypotheses or theories. There is always a range of explanatory innovations that may be proposed, from more conservative to less conservative; and it is important, in light of what Peirce has to say on the relation of abduction to pragmatism, that in ruling out “wild guessing,” attention be initially directed to more conservative proposals. Still conservatism, which we might understand in terms of Peircean continuity, is sometimes justly sacrificed for greater comprehension or overall simplicity of approach. This paper explores the relationships among Peircean abduction and pragmatism, the “theoretical virtues” approach to the evaluation of hypotheses, and contextual constraint on the scientific imagination.

James Campbell's Understanding John Dewey represents the latest of his series of recent books, focused on the classical pragmatist tradition. In The Community Reconstructs. Campbell capably explored the meaning and relevance of pragmatic social thought, urging that the social pragmatists combined 'the inquiring and critical spirit of Peirce' with 'issues of general and direct human concern that interested James. Dewey is 'the most important figure of this movement' and the "primary figure' for the earlier book. Campbell now engages Dewey more fully.

The aim of this paper is to defend a famous quotation from Martin Luther King, stating that “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” The quotation is inscribed on the King Memorial in Washington, D.C. and President Obama had it woven into a rug for the Oval Office in the White House. The quotation has become something of a contemporary proverb, and is certainly worthy of our close attention. In order to evaluate the dictum, questions concerning its meaning will first be addressed and clarified, and various possible misinterpretations will be set aside. It will be argued that the appeal, and an effective defense of this moral claim, depend upon the pre-existing values of the people to whom the claim is addressed. The dictum is clearly intended to support hopes of social change and to encourage support for ideals of racial equality, but we want to know whether it is true or false and exactly what it means. King’s dictum can easily be taken as involving a doctrine of “divine Providence” or “historical inevitability.” But many are skeptical of these ideas and hold that we cannot be sure that the future will eventuate in desired moral outcomes. But, if so, what would it possibly mean to claim that the “moral universe” or the human world “bends toward justice”? On the other hand, holding that the moral universe “bends toward justice” claims more than saying that we can now act or organize to support justice; instead, it tells us that there is some pre-existing support for our related activities. What, then, is this pre-existing bend of the moral universe?

We are currently witnessing a renewal of broad public interest in the life and career of Alexander Hamilton – justly famed as an American founder. This volume examines the possible present-day significance of the man, noting that this is not the first revival of interest in the statesman. Hamilton was a major background figure in the GOP politics of the Gilded Age, with the powerful US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. drawing on Hamilton to inspire a new, assertive American role in the world. Hamilton was first prominent as a soldier and aide to General Washington, and believed in centralization of power in the federal government and an energetic presidency. He founded the American financial system as the first Secretary of the Treasury, and was a great moving force of America’s first nationalist-conservative party – the Federalists. As shown here, close scholarly attention to Lodge’s biography brings out the darker sides of the celebrated hero. Hamilton’s deeper conviction was the need of an elitist “aristocratic republic,” and he was an advocate of military-commercial empire. The Gilded Age Hamilton revival helped inspire the Spanish-American war of 1898 and an American overseas empire. This book will be of interest for students and professionals in political philosophy, political science, American history and American studies.

SummaryReconciliation of semantic holism with interpretation of individual expressions is advanced here by means of a relativization of sentence meaning to object language theories viewed as idealizations of belief‐systems. Fodor's view of the autonomy of the special sciences is emphasized and this is combined with detailed replies to his recent criticisms of meaning holism. The argument is that the need for empirical evidence requires a holistic approach to meaning. Thus, semantic realism requires semantic holism.

The papers collected in the present volume arose from a 2009 seminar organized by the Society of Legal Scholars and the University of Birmingham, and convened at the Law Society’s Hall in Bristol, England. The seminar, “Judges and Jurists: Reflections on the House of Lords,” commemorated the centenary of the Society; and it chiefly focused on the transition from the House of Lords, as the U.K.’s court of final appeals, to the prospects of the newly instituted United Kingdom Supreme Court. “The aim of the volume,” according to the book-jacket description, “is to reflect upon the jurisprudence of the House of Lords and to consider the prospects for judging in the new Supreme Court.” Given the aims of the Society of Legal Scholars, considerable focus is placed on the relationship between the work of judges and that of scholars of law and jurisprudence. The book pervasively highlights the continuing voice of the scholars. Though their writings have no legal authority, the volume’s editor remarks in his Introduction that in 2009, “in six out of the seven final decisions of the House, reference was made to academic literature” (p. 2).

After setting out some basic elements in Henri Lauener's open transcendentalism, in comparison with related views in Quine and Davidson, the two views surveyed converge on a moderately holistic, normative cognitivism in Lauener's philosophy of science. Though resisting similar conclusions in the name of anti-naturalism, Lauener's "open transcendentalism" is plausibly constmed as a non-reductive naturalism, with important implications for the normative determination of meanings. At the last Lauener's criticism is yet to come to terms with central questions of the naturalist tradition. Crucial in this is the "principle of continuity" in Dewy's (non-reductive) naturalism, the relation of fallibilism to the pragmatic continuity of inquiry, and normative consequentialism in the scientific aims, methods, and meanings.

This paper explicates and defends a social‐naturalist conception of internationality and intentions, where internationality of scientific expressions is fundamental. Meanings of expressions are a function of their place in language‐systems and of the relations of systems to object‐level evidence and associated community activities‐including deliberation and experiment. Naturalizing internationality requires social‐intellectual reconstruction exemplified by the scientific community at its best. This approach emphasizes normative elements of pragmatic conceptions of meaning and their function in orientation. It requires social conditions and intellectual practices making knowledge of intentions possible. Scientific ends, methods, and meanings, together, constitute culturally evolved instruments of adaptation to, and reconstruction of, physical and cultural environments.

In his 2018 book, Identity, the Demand for Dignity and the Politics of Resentment, Stanford University politi­cal scientist Francis Fukuyama addresses themes which might more properly be considered matters of political philosophy and the philosophy of law: How are we to navigate between traditional, ethnic, unitary conceptions of the nation on the one hand, and the threat of identitarian fragmentation on the other? Though Fukuyama affirms the importance of the concepts of human dignity and identity, more or less as these are commonly understood, he also criticizes the contemporary phenomenon of identity politics—which he views as a danger to liberal democ­racy. “The rise of identity politics in modern liberal democracies,” writes Fukuyama, “is one of the chief threats that they face;” and moreover, “unless we can work our way back to more universal understand­ings of human dignity, we will doom ourselves to continuing conflict.” This paper raises the question of whether the well reasoned case against identity politics as a threat to national unity and purpose leaves room for skepticism of fast-paced and more ambitious (“Wilsonian”) pursuit of internationalist goals of globalization. Greater emphasis on political consensus at home may helpfully strengthen the hand of American foreign policy in support of liberal democracy. But we now look back with well founded skepticism on neo-conservative interventionism, and there are just and needed limits on globalizing internationalism imposed by and implicit in the retreat from identity politics. Having lost the unity of purpose of Cold War liberalism, we are yet to find a “golden mean” avoiding ethnic nationalism and short of political fragmentation.

This paper explores the scientific viability of the concept of causality—by questioning a central element of the distinction between “fundamental” and non-fundamental physics. It will be argued that the prevalent emphasis on fundamental physics involves formalistic and idealized partial models of physical regularities abstracting from and idealizing the causal evolution of physical systems. The accepted roles of partial models and of the special sciences in the growth of knowledge help demonstrate proper limitations of the concept of fundamental physics. We expect that a cause precedes its effect. But in some tension with this point, fundamental physical law is often held to be symmetrical and all-encompassing. Physical time, however, has not only measurable extension, as with spatial dimensions, it also has a direction—from the past through the present into the future. This preferred direction is time’s arrow. In spite of this standard contrast of time with space, if all the fundamental laws of physics are symmetrical, they are indifferent to time’s arrow. In consequence, excessive emphasis on the ideal of symmetrical, fundamental laws of physics generates skepticism regarding the common-sense and scientific uses of the concept of causality. The expectation has been that all physical phenomena are capable of explanation and prediction by reference to fundamental physicals laws—so that the laws and phenomena of statistical thermodynamics—and of the special sciences—must be derivative and/or secondary. The most important and oft repeated explanation of time’s arrow, however, is provided by the second law of thermodynamics. This paper explores the prospects for time’s arrow based on the second law. The concept of causality employed here is empirically based, though acknowledging practical scientific interests, and is linked to time’s arrow and to the thesis that there can be no causal change, in any domain of inquiry, without physical interaction.

This is my Ph.D. dissertation (Temple University, 1976) written under the supervision of Monroe Beardsley. The aim of the work is to defend a version of intentional realism, and this required a good deal of work sorting out versions of realism. Major influences in the work include Chisholm on Brentano and the skepticism of W.V. Quine. The dissertation first launched my critical work on Quine in the philosophy of language and the study of the analytic tradition in the philosophy of language, from Frege to Davidson.