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203Seeing Ecology and Seeing as Ecology: On Brereton's Hollywood Utopia and the Anderson's Moving Image TheoryFilm-Philosophy 11 (1): 61-69. 2007.Joseph D. Anderson & Barbara Fisher Anderson Moving Image Theory: Ecological ConsiderationsCarbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.ISBN 0 8093 2599 3253pp.Pat Brereton Hollywood Utopia: Ecology in Contemporary American CinemaBristol: Intellect.ISBN 1 84150117 4270pp
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111Democracy and Law: Situating Law within John Dewey's Democratic VisionEtica & Politica 12 (1): 256-280. 2010.In this paper I argue that John Dewey developed a philosophy of law that follows directly from his conception of democracy. Indeed, under Dewey’s theory an understanding of law can only follow from an accurate understanding of the social and political context within which it functions. This has important implications for the form law takes within democ- ratic society. The paper will explore these implications through a comparison of Dewey’s claims with those of Richard Posner and Ronald Dworkin;…Read more
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93Dews, Dworks, and Poses Decide LochnerContemporary Pragmatism 7 (2): 15-44. 2010.Lochner represents a crucial case in American constitutional law. An investigation of the decision highlights important philosophical aspects of the place of law in a democratic society. Analysis of contemporary stances on Lochner, the actual Lochner opinion (including the dissents by Harlan and Holmes) and how judges following the legal philosophies of John Dewey, Ronald Dworkin and Richard Posner (“Dews,” “Dworks,” and “Poses”) would have decided the case shows that Dewey’s theory of law and d…Read more
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68Legal Pragmatism: Banal or Beneficial as a Jurisprudential Position?Essays in Philosophy 3 (2): 14. 2002.
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67There are Peoples and There are Peoples: A Critique of Rawls' Law of PeoplesFlorida Philosophical Review 1 (2): 1-24. 2001.In this paper, I aim to show that the arguments offered and conclusions at which Rawls aims in his book, The Law of Peoples, are telling as to the intellectual legitimacy of his larger theoretical project. To show this I first investigate how (1) non-liberal peoples fit within the limitations Rawls describes in The Law of Peoples and (2) how liberal peoples would react to such rules. I argue from the answers to these questions to the further conclusion that by spreading the principles and tools …Read more
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67Rorty, the first amendment and antirealism: Is reliance upon truth viewpoint-based speech regulation?Journal of Moral Philosophy 1 (1): 69-88. 2004.In this article I investigate the implications of antirealism, as characterized by Richard Rorty, for First Amendment jurisprudence under the United States Constitution. It is hoped that the implications, while played out in the context of a specific tradition, will have more universal application. In Section 1, Rortys pragmatic antirealism is briefly outlined. In Section 2, some effects of the elimination of the concept of truth for First Amendment jurisprudence are investigated. Section 3 a…Read more
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58Blackness is Noir: Flory's Philosophical Investigation of the Black Noir Genre in Film (review)Film-Philosophy 14 (1): 332-336. 2010.
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49Alva Nöe. Strange Tools: Art and Human Nature, written by Brian E. ButlerContemporary Pragmatism 14 (2): 243-258. 2017.
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47Indirect Reports and Pragmatics in the World Languages (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This volume addresses the intriguing issue of indirect reports from an interdisciplinary perspective. The contributors include philosophers, theoretical linguists, socio-pragmaticians, and cognitive scientists. The book is divided into four sections following the provenance of the authors. Combining the voices from leading and emerging authors in the field, it offers a detailed picture of indirect reports in the world’s languages and their significance for theoretical linguistics. Building on th…Read more
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43Law, Pragmatism and Constitutional Interpretation: From Information Exclusion to Information ProductionPragmatism Today 3 (1): 39-57. 2012.Through an analysis of the US Supreme Court's case Heller this paper argues that legal process can be pragmatically reconceptualized so as to create information necessary to decide complex social issues. This is in contrast to other more standard conceptions of law as more emphasizing what information ought to be excluded.
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40Sen’s The Idea of Justice: Back to the (Pragmatic) FutureContemporary Pragmatism 7 (2): 219-229. 2010.Sen argues that Rawls’ political theory suffers from the flaw of “institutional fundamentalism.” In response, he develops an alternate theory of justice that does not rely upon contractarian premises. I argue that Sen’s theory largely maps on to the insights of classic pragmatist thought. Further, the pragmatic tradition can help critique and supplement Sen’s project.
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32All Rights Are AffirmativeRadical Philosophy Review 4 (1-2): 95-101. 2001.Popular images of rights almost always emphasize their protective qualities. But who is really protected? In this paper it is argued that contemporary rights talk, because of faulty underlying assumptions, systematically favors prejudice and big property interests. Further, once the mistaken assumptions are surrendered, and it is realized that all rights are affirmative, a less systematically misleading debate can be created within the realm of rights discourse.
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29Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (review)Education and Culture 28 (1): 87-90. 2012.
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27From Social Contract Theory to Sociable Contract TheoryContemporary Pragmatism 11 (2): 1-17. 2014.
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24Transgression: Ordinary and OtherwiseFilm-Philosophy 5 (1). 2001.Thomas E. Wartenberg _Unlikely Couples: Movie Romance as Social Criticism_ Boulder: Westview Press, 1999 ISBN: 0-8133-3438-1 (hb); 0-8133-3439-X (pb) 254 pp
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23Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy: Part 1 From Theory to Practice (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2018.This book builds on the idea that pragmatics and philosophy are strictly interconnected and that advances in one area will generate consequential advantages in the other area. The first part of the book, entitled ‘Theoretical Approaches to Philosophy of Language’, contains contributions by philosophers of language on connectives, intensional contexts, demonstratives, subsententials, and implicit indirect reports. The second part, ‘Pragmatics in Discourse’, presents contributions that are more em…Read more
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21Law as a Democratic Means: Deweyan Jurisprudence and Democratic ExperimentalismContemporary Pragmatism 9 (2): 241-254. 2012.
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20Democratic ExperimentalismBrill Rodopi. 2013.This volume focuses on democratic experimentalism, gathering a collection of original and previously unpublished essays focusing upon its major outlines, as well as specific aspects ¿ both promising and troublesome - of this theoretical approach. Together these essays offer conceptions of democracy and democratic governance that emphasize and highlight experimentalist aspects of pragmatic thought, particularly Deweyan pragmatism, and its relationship to instantiation in concrete social and polit…Read more
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19The Necessity of Understanding Thumos, and the Misuse of Emotion in Modern Political Theory, The Review of Communication, VolThe Review of Communication 2 (2). 2002.
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18Dworkin’s “Semantic Sting” and Behavioral PragmaticsIn Keith Allan, Jay David Atlas, Brian E. Butler, Alessandro Capone, Marco Carapezza, Valentina Cuccio, Denis Delfitto, Michael Devitt, Graeme Forbes, Alessandra Giorgi, Neal R. Norrick, Nathan Salmon, Gunter Senft, Alberto Voltolini & Richard Warner (eds.), Further Advances in Pragmatics and Philosophy: Part 1 From Theory to Practice, Springer Verlag. pp. 259-273. 2018.Ronald Dworkin in Law’s Empire famously utilized what he described as the “semantic sting” to explain both why the concept of “law” is an essentially contestable concept and because of this why the concept of law is also essentially interpretive. Ultimately Dworkin’s theory makes law and legal practice on all levels turn on, in his terms, an essentially semantic dispute over what the best conception of law is. That is, law is in all its worldly glory ultimately an interpretive concept based upon…Read more
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15Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations: Essays for a Bold New WorldLexington Books. 2013.Philosophical Pragmatism and International Relations bridges the gap between philosophical pragmatism and international relations, two disciplinary perspectives that together shed light on how to advance the study and conduct of foreign affairs. Authors in this collection discuss a broad range of issues, from policy relevance to peacekeeping operations, with an eye to understanding how this distinctly American philosophy, pragmatism, can improve both international relations research and foreign …Read more
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12The real Metaphysical Club: the philosophers, their debates, and selected writings from 1870 to 1885 (edited book)SUNY Press, State University of New York. 2019.The Metaphysical Club, a gathering of intellectuals in the 1870s associated with Harvard, is widely recognized as the crucible where pragmatism, America's distinctively original philosophy, was refined and proclaimed. Louis Menand's bestseller about the group was a dramatic publishing success. However, only three actual members - Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., Charles S. Peirce, and William James - appear in this book, alongside other thinkers such as John Dewey who were never in the Club. The Real …Read more
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12Thomas Elsaesser and Warren Buckland _Studying Contemporary American Film: A Guide to Movie Analysis_ Arnold: London 2002 ISBN 0 340 76206 3 (PB) x + 309 pp
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10Book Review of Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition (review)Education and Culture 28 (1): 9. 2012.
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10Law’s Image of Pragmatism — Another Legal Fiction (review)Contemporary Pragmatism 1 (1): 151-157. 2004.
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