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156Mind Matters: Earth to Manning A ReplySymbolic Interaction 31 (2): 149-154. 2008.This piece continues ideas developed in my essay, Mind Matters, through responding to the critique of that essay by Peter K. Manning. Manning cannot conceive that human conduct involves full-bodied semiosis rather than disembodied conceptualism, and that the study of human signification requires a full-bodied understanding. The ancient Greek root phren, basis for the concept of phronesis, is rooted in the heart-lungs-solar plexus basis of bodily awareness, and provides a metaphor for a discussion…Read more
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156A Long Way From Home: Automatic Culture in Domestic and Civic LifeIn Floyd W. Rudmin & Marsha Richins (eds.), Meaning, Measure, and Morality of Materialism, . pp. 1-9. 1992.A Long Way From Home: Automatic Culture in Domestic and Civic Life criticizes tendencies toward automatism in American culture and modern life, and calls for a recentering of domestic and civic life as a means to revitalize social life. Keywords: Automatic Culture, Autonomy Versus Automatic, Moral Homelessness, Materialism, The Great American Centrifuge, Consuming Devices, Home Cooking, From the Walled City to the Malled City, Malls, Vaclav Havel
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153The Real Nature of Pragmatism and Chicago Sociology (review)Symbolic Interaction 6 139-153. 1983.J. David Lewis and Richard L. Smith provide a history of pragmatism and Chicago sociology based on the positions of realism and nominalism. This issue is indeed the key to understanding pragmatism’s foundations in Charles Peirce’s original formulation. Lewis and Smith claim that there are two pragmatisms, a realistic one characterized by Peirce and Mead and a nominalistic one (which Lewis and Smith claim has no value) illustrated by James and Dewey. They argue that Chicago sociology, including H…Read more
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151Charles PeirceIn Harro Stammerjohann (ed.), Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics, . pp. 1142. 2009.A brief biographical entry on Charles Peirce in the Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics.
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138The Truth About that Quiet DecadeNotre Dame Magazine. 2023.This essay from 1999, republished in Notre Dame Magazine online in July 2023, explores how the 1950s were a time of fundamental transformations in American society, a time when the United States went fully megatechnic. The hugely increased power of military, corporate-industrial and “big science” institutions developed during the 1950s signaled the transformation to megatechnic America, with atomic bombs and nuclear testing, automobiles and televisions as key symbols of that transformation. Figu…Read more
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136Qualitative Immediacy and the Communicative ActQualitative Sociology 3 (5): 162-181. 1982.Qualitative immediacy (also termed quality in its philosophical sense and aesthetic quality) is of fundamental importance within the pragmatic conception of meaning as interpretive act, and yet it has been virtually ignored by social scientists. The concept is traced through its foundations in Peirce's philosophy, its development in Dewey's theory of aesthetic experience, and its relation to the general pragmatic conception of the self. The importance of the "I" in Mead's view of the self is see…Read more
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135Indigenous Bodies, Civilized Selves, and the Escape from the EarthIn Darcia Narvaez, Four Arrows, Eugene Halton, Brian Collier & Georges Enderle (eds.), Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First-Nation Know-How for Global Flourishing, . pp. 47-73. 2019.History can be understood as involving a problematic interplay between the long-term legacy of human evolution, still tempered into the human body today, and the shorter-term heritage of civilization from its beginnings to the present. Each of us lives in a tension between our indigenous bodies and our civilized selves, between the philosophy of the earth and that which I characterize as “the philosophy of escape from the earth.” The standard story of civilization is one of linear upward progres…Read more
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129DematerializationIn D. Southerton (ed.), Encyclopedia of Consumer Culture. pp. 433-435. 2011.Dematerialization can be taken variously as meaning less materials used in objects technically, a less materialistic outlook on consumption, or as the virtualization of communication and interaction. These ideas are reviewed here. Considering material culture and technoculture in this light raises questions about contemporary materialism and technology more generally as well, where smaller is not necessarily simpler, and where smaller may not even be less.
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116Charles MorrisIn Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics, Max Niemeyer Verlag. pp. 1050. 2009.A brief biographical entry on Charles Morris in the Lexicon Grammaticorum: A Bio-Bibliographical Companion to the History of Linguistics.
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18Pragmatic E-PistolsEuropean Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy 3 (2): 41-63. 2011.If pragmatists conceive of thought as an internal dialogue, then why not externalize that thought as a dialogue in the form of letters to the major pragmatists concerning their ideas in the contemporary world. This piece consists of letters fired off to William James, Charles Peirce, George Herbert Mead, and John Dewey, concerning key ideas from each and how these ideas relate to contemporary social thought. Queries are posed concerning what modifications of pragmatists’ ideas might be needed to…Read more
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Chapter 1: People and Planet in Need of Sustainable WisdomIn Darcia Narvaez, Four Arrows, Eugene Halton, Brian Collier & Georges Enderle (eds.), Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom: First-Nation Know-how for Global Flourishing, . pp. 1-23. 2019.Introductory chapter to the book, Indigenous Sustainable Wisdom.
University of Chicago
PhD, 1979
Notre Dame, Indiana, United States of America
Areas of Specialization
Philosophical Traditions |
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |
Areas of Interest
Philosophical Traditions |
Philosophy, Misc |
Other Academic Areas |