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37Review of Hans Joas, Pragmatismus und Gesellschaftstheorie (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society (1): 203-212. 1994.This is my critical review of Hans Joas' book on Pragmatism and social theory which concerns, in part the early 20th-century German reception of American philosophy and the relationship of this to contemporary German thought.
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110Cultural Pluralism and the Virtues of Hypothesesla Torre Del Virrey, Revista de Estudios Culturales 33-38. 2008.This paper focuses on the preliminary evaluation of expressions of moral sentiment under conditions of cultural pluralism. The advance of science and technology puts ever new power over nature in human hands, and if this new power is to more fully serve human ends, then it must become the means or material of human virtue. This prospect poses the question of the relationship between power and virtue, and equally, the question of how scientific advances may be understood to enter into a pluralism…Read more
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130Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World, An Annotated EditionCambridge Scholars Press. 2014.Arthur S. Eddington, FRS, (1882–1944) was one of the most prominent British scientists of his time. He made major contributions to astrophysics and to the broader understanding of the revolutionary theories of relativity and quantum mechanics. He is famed for his astronomical observations of 1919, confirming Einstein’s prediction of the curving of the paths of starlight, and he was the first major interpreter of Einstein’s physics to the English-speaking world. His 1928 book, The Nature of the P…Read more
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110Review of Cassese, Five Masters of International Law (review)Law and Politics Book Review 22 (1): 154-161. 2012.Focused on five prominent scholars of international law, and casting light on the related institutions which frequently engaged them, the present book provides insight into chief currents of international law during the last decades of the twentieth century. Spanning the gap, in some degree, between Anglo-American and continental approaches to international law, the volume consists of short intellectual portraits, combined with interviews, of selected specialists in international law. The interv…Read more
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26Review of H. Joas, Die Kreativität des Handelns (review)Philasophical Quarterly (Scotland) 45 (179): 247-249. 1995.
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527No Need to Speak the same Language? Review of Ramberg, Donald Davidson's Philosophy of LanguageDialectica, Vol. 50, No.1, 1996, Pp. 63-71 50 (1): 63-72. 1996.The book is an “introductory” reconstruction of Davidson on interpretation —a claim to be taken with a grain of salt. Writing introductory books has become an idol of the tribe. This is a concise book and reflects much study. It has many virtues along with some flaws. Ramberg assembles themes and puzzles from Davidson into a more or less coherent viewpoint. A special virtue is the innovative treatment of incommensurability and of the relation of Davidson’s work to hermeneutic themes. The weaknes…Read more
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33Sense, Reference and Purported ReferenceLogique Et Analyse 25 (March): 93-103. 1982.This paper argues for the importance of the concept of purported reference in understanding linguistic meaning and reference.
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14Meaning Holism and Semantic RealismDialectica 46 (1): 41-59. 1992.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 requi…Read more
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50Review of Sidney Hook, John Dewey, An Intellectual Portrait (review)Canadian Philosophical Reviews (6): 403-407. 1995.Newly re-printed, Sydney Hook’s classic (1939) work on Dewey appears with an Introduction by Richard Rorty. Hook may help us see how Dewey fit into his own time. That story is important. The new printing may also help us see how Dewey fits into our time. Rorty lauds more recent treatments of Dewey’s work, especially Robert Westbrook’s intellectual biography John Dewey and American Democracy (1991), and Steven Rockefeller’s John Dewey: Religious Faith and Democratic Humanism (1991) gets honorable…Read more
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76The opening essay of Emerson’s 1860 book, The Conduct of Life, posed, in that fateful year of threatening Civil War and disunion, the philosophical problem of human freedom and fate. The essay “Fate” is followed in the present book by a series of essays on related themes, including: “Power,” “Wealth,” “Culture,” “Worship,” “Beauty” and “Illusions.” The central question of the volume is, “How shall I live?” Appreciating both our freedom and its limits, we understand the vitality of power to acqui…Read more
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234Review of Gochet, Ascent to Truth (review)Dialectica, Vol. 42, No. 1, 1988, Pp. 45-58 42 (No. 1): 45-58. 1988.This book focuses on issues in epistemology, semantics and logic with Quine’s views always setting the themes, even if Quine does not always remain quite at center stage. Gochet, Professor at Liège and Secretary to the Editorial Board of Logique et Analyse is a prominent of Quine’s views in Europe. The author does not aim to take up the whole of Quine’s philosophy here. Rather, the aim is to “focus on a few central themes...and to treat them thoroughly.” Continental Europe not only recognizes Qu…Read more
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355Review of Alison L. LaCroix Ideological Origins of American Federalism (review)Law and Politics Book Review 21 (10): 619-627. 2011.Alison L. LaCroix is Assistant Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, where she specializes in legal history, federalism, constitutional law and questions of jurisdiction. She has written a fine, scholarly volume on the intellectual origins of American federalism. LaCroix holds the JD degree (Yale, 1999) and a Ph.D. in history (Harvard, 2007). According to the author, to fully understand the origins of American federalism, we must look beyond the Constitutional Convention of 1…Read more
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64Review of Boisvert, John Dewey, Rethinking Our Time (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35 (2): 409-415. 1999.The author's prior book, a very Aristotelian look at Dewey's Metaphysics (1988) starts from a criticism of the idea of freedom as autonomy. That theme persists, along with an Aristotelian flavoring in the present account of Dewey. "Autonomy as a model of freedom," Boisvert says, "leads in practice to a separation from others, not toward democratic community" (p.64). While it is true that emphasis on autonomy may put community under strain, we must ask if this is not sometimes needed to ensure it…Read more
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67Values and Conflicts of Values in the Pragmatist TraditionIn Samuel Natale & Mark Fenton (eds.), Business Education and Training: A Value-Laden Process. Volume I: Education and Value Conflict, University Press of America. pp. 44-57. 1997.This paper proceeds from an analysis (Callaway 1992, pp. 239-240) of a role of conflict in the origin of value commitments, a pervasive sociological pattern in the development of unifying group values which transforms personal conflicts, or differences, into large-scale collective conflicts. I have urged that these forces are capable of distorting even the cognitive processes of science and that they are a chief reason why value claims are regarded as incapable of objective evaluation. …Read more
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6Open Transcendentalism and the Normative Character of MethodologyGrazer Philosophische Studien 44 (1): 1-24. 1993.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 Lauen…Read more
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1337Schelling and the Background of American Pragmatism: (review)Arisbe, Peirce-Related Papers 1 1-12. 1996.The short cover-description of the present book tells that "Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775-1854) was one of the formative philosophers of German idealism, whose great service was in the areas of the philosophy of nature, art, and religion." Those having some familiarity with Schelling, and his influence on American philosophy, indirectly via Coleridge and Carlyle and more directly via Emerson and C. S. Peirce, will perhaps not be surprised to learn that German idealism itself looks som…Read more
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Ludwig Nagl, "Charles Sanders Peirce" (review)Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 30 (3): 722. 1994.
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25Review of Larry Hickman, John Dewey's Pragmatic Technology (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 30 (June): 345-348. 1996.This book appears in the Indiana Series in the philosophy of technology, edited by Don Ihde. Hickman emphasizes Dewey as a philosopher of technology and aims to make Dewey's perspective and contributions available to specialists. Still, as claimed on the book jacket, Hickman aims at a "comprehensive yet accessible overview of Dewey's philosophical work." The link between the two projects is the interpretation of Dewey's instrumentalism as a "critique of technology" (p. xi).
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55Democracy, value inquiry, and Dewey's metaphysicsJournal of Value Inquiry 27 (1): 13-27. 1993.This essay proposes a re-evaluation of Dewey's work with emphasis upon the ability of his philosophy to effect a realistic reformulation and development of America's tradition of humanistic liberalism. Dewey combines the tough-minded realism (or naturalism), congenial to the scientific orientation of American philosophy, with a firm conviction of the need of values and revaluation in community life. I draw on recent work of Hilary Putnam on Dewey and argue for the viability of Dewey's conception…Read more
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515Review of Gochet, Ascent to Truth: a Critical Examination of Quine's PhilosophyDialectica 42 (1): 45-58. 1988.This book focuses on issues in epistemology, semantics and logic with Quine’s views always setting the themes, even if Quine does not always remain quite at center stage. Gochet, Professor at Liège and Secretary to the Editorial Board of Logique et Analyse is a prominent of Quine’s views in Europe. The author does not aim to take up the whole of Quine’s philosophy here. Rather, the aim is to “focus on a few central themes...and to treat them thoroughly.” Continental Europe not only recognizes Qu…Read more
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66Review of D.W. Howe, What Hath God Wrought (review)History News Network, Online 2009. 2009.This is my review of D.W. Howe's 2007 book, What Hath God Wrought, Transformation of America 1815-1848. The book is a volume in the new Oxford History of the U.S.(O.U.P. 2007)--exploring the transformation of the early American republic through the period of domination of the Jacksonian Democrats. This is also the period of the New England Renaissance and the early work of R.W. Emerson. Howe devotes a good deal of attention to Emerson and his influence and thereby provides needed historical cont…Read more
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126Abduction, Competing Models and the Virtues of HypothesesIn Lorenzo Magnani (ed.), (2014) Model-Based Reasoning in Science and Technology, Springer. pp. 263-280. 2014.This paper focuses on abduction as explicit or readily formulatable inference to possible explanatory hypotheses--as contrasted with inference to conceptual innovations or abductive logic as a cycle of hypotheses, deduction of consequences and inductive testing. Inference to an explanation is often a matter of projection or extrapolation of elements of accepted theory for the solution of outstanding problems in particular domains of inquiry. I say "projections or extrapolation" of accepted theor…Read more
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631Review of Fodor, Psychosemantics (review)Erkenntnis 33 (2). 1990.This is my expository and critical review of Jerry Fodor's Psychosemantics. See also Callaway 1992, Meaning Holism and Semantic Realism.
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156Semantic Theory and Language: A Perspective (Reprinted in Callaway 2008, Meaning without Analyticity)Proceedings of the Southwestern Philosophical Association; Philosophical Topics 1981 (summer): 93-103. 1981.Chomsky’s conception of semantics must contend with both philosophical skepticism and contrary traditions in linguistics. In “Two Dogmas” Quine argued that “...it is non-sense, and the root of much non-sense, to speak of a linguistic component and a factual component in the truth of any individual statement.” If so, it follows that language as the object of semantic investigation cannot be separated from collateral information. F. R. Palmer pursues a similar contention in his recent survey of is…Read more
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312Meaning without analyticity: essays on logic, language and meaning (edited book)Cambridge Scholars Press. 2008.Meaning without Analyticity draws upon the author’s essays and articles, over a period of 20 years, focused on language, logic and meaning. The book explores the prospect of a non-behavioristic theory of cognitive meaning which rejects the analytic-synthetic distinction, Quinean behaviorism, and the logical and social-intellectual excesses of extreme holism. Cast in clear, perspicuous language and oriented to scientific discussions, this book takes up the challenges of philosophical communicatio…Read more
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Review of The Collected Works of John Dewey . The Electronic Edition, on CD-ROM. 63MB (review)Journal of Speculative Philosophy 11 225-230. 1997.
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62Intelligence, Community and Cartesian DoubtHumanism Today 13 31-48. 1999.This paper attempts some integration of two perspectives on questions about rationality and irrationality: the classical conception of irrationality as sophism and themes from the romantic revolt against Enlightenment reason. However, since talk of "reason" and "the irrational" often invites rigid dualities of reason and its opposites (such as feeling, intuition, faith, or tradition), the paper turns to "intelligence" in place of "reason," thinking of human intelligence as something less abstrac…Read more
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64Review of John Dewey, The Later Works, Vol. 13, (1938-1939) (review)Journal of Value Inquiry 28 (3). 1994.Vol. 13 of John Dewey, The Later Works, brings this edition of Dewey's Collected Works to the fateful years 1938-1939. It contains three main texts Experience and Education, Freedom and Culture, and Theory of Valuation, plus essays and miscellany. The editors, Jo Ann Boydston and Barabara Levine, provide twenty-five pages of Appendices, and Steven M. Cahn has written and excellent Introduction. The hardback version includes a scholarly apparatus featured in each of the volumes of the series.
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66Review of Mott, W.T and R.E. Burkholder eds., Emersonian Circles, Essays in Honor of Joel Myerson (review)Transactions of the C.S. Peirce Society 35 (3): 629-632. 1999.The 14 essays assembled in this volume, along with their intensive scholarship, create somewhat the impression of a Who's Who of contemporary literary studies of Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Transcendentalists. All has been brought together by Mott and Burkholder to honor Joel Myerson, with the words of Emerson's famous remark to Walt Whitman, "We greet You at the Mid-point of a Great Career" (p. xi). An authority on Transcendentalism, textual and bibliographical studies, Myerson has wri…Read more
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