Seth Vannatta

In this paper I argue that Michael Oakeshott’s metaphysics of experience shares significant features with the pragmatism of C.S. Peirce and John Dewey and that these similarities highlight methodological norms guiding inquiry into philosophy’s value fields. Oakeshott, Peirce, and Dewey agree on (1) the primacy of experience in philosophical inquiry, (2) the dismissal of the capacity of intuition as a valid mode of experience contributing to a reliable epistemology, (3) a refusal of metaphysical dualism and a resulting continuity principle, and (4) consonant notions of the conditions and pattern of inquiry. This comparative analysis opens up new possibilities for prudently advancing the value fields in philosophy. Inquiry into legal, moral, and political philosophies, given the insights of Oakeshott, Peirce, and Dewey, can proceed prudently upon these shared premises and the skepticism of rationalism in politics, ethics, and law which ensues from them.

Social Darwinism covers a set of particulars bearing a family resemblance including, but not limited to the extension of evolutionary biology to social phenomena, a biological explanation for the success of certain more biologically "fit" groups over others, an acceptance of the use of force by the "fit" to succeed over the "unfit" in the life struggle, and a preference for competition in the marketplace and a laissez-faire ideology. The serpent of Social Darwinism leaves a trail of the eugenics movement in its wake. Evidence can be found that Oliver Wendell Holmes's judicial and non-judicial philosophy fits each of these instantiations.This paper first explains the origins of Social...

In this paper we (1) define and describe the practice of narrative medicine, (2) reveal the need for narrative medicine by exposing the presuppositions that give rise to its discounting, including a reductive empiricism and a strict dichotomy between scientific fact and narrative value, (3) show evidence of the effects of education in narrative competence in the medical clinic, and (4) present Peircean realism as the proper conceptual model for our argument that the medical school curriculum committees should give space to the employment of the scientific and literary knowledge in medical practice. On account of our argument, we contend that the medical community should tend to latitude and openness with regard to the tools we use to resolve medical problems. These tools include both biomedical and narrative knowledge

In this paper I measure the progressive potentiality of art against Russell Kirk’s notion of “normative art”. Kirk argues that good literature cultivates virtue according to a transcendent norm, a law of nature. I interrogate the extent to which this art can be conservative according to Kirk’s own meaning of conservatism and read his own conservatism against itself in an effort to show which of its tenets detrimentally supersede and contradict its others. The criticism of Kirk’s discussion of normative art makes use of Charles Sanders Peirce’s more sophisticated epistemology, metaphysics, and normative science of aesthetics. Ultimately, Kirk’s conservatism and his position on normative art rely on metaphysical dualism and the gratuitous capacity of intuition. This ends in an unjustified discounting of his principles of variety, imperfectability, prescription, and continuity and their subordination to his principle of transcendence.

In a 2001 article entitled “The Classical Conservative Challenge to Dewey,” Shawn O’Dwyer puts John Dewey’s understanding of method to the test of criticisms made by conservative theorist Michael Oakeshott. Oakeshott criticizes the view that technical knowledge is superior to the reliance on custom, tradition, and habit in practical knowledge, that moral intelligence can be taught, and that moral intelligence consists of the application of techniques to resolve problems. O’Dwyer concludes that Dewey’s reflections on moral deliberation pass Oakeshott’s challenge to rationalism “with its central themes intact, if not unscathed.”1 In light of O’Dwyer’s article, we see that the classical conservatives and the ..

In this review essay, I offer a summary of Brian E. Butler’s The Democratic Constitution: Experimentalism and Interpretation. Butler’s democratic experimentalism offers the thesis that democracy needs to be protected democratically rather than by relying on the judicial supremacy over constitutional interpretation by the Supreme Court. Butler illustrates what democratic experimentalism looks like through a close reading of key cases showing the virtues of an on-going, open-ended, empirical, fallibilist, and collaborative approach to constitutional interpretation against rival formalist and exclusionary theories. Butler relies on Richard Posner’s iconoclastic empirical approach to adjudication in advancing his thesis. However, Posner is skeptical of the Deweyan democracy Butler deploys to illustrate the democratic constitution. Further, Posner dismisses the philosophical pragmatism of Peirce and Dewey that Butler uses to ground his theory. Because of Butler’s reliance on Posner’s judicial practice and his side-stepping of Posner’s views on democracy and philosophical pragmatism, I ask how Butler’s proposal stands in relation to the ways it departs from Posner’s theory, if not his practice.

In this article I present two theories of historical inquiry, which I characterize as conservative and pragmatic. I argue that these two views of history, John Dewey’s and Hans Georg Gadamer’s, provide an excluded middle between the extremes of positivism and relativism. They are pragmatic insofar as they accept the anti-foundationalist critique of positivism; they are conservative insofar as they refuse to reduce historical inquiry to mere discourse or narrative. Both focus on the situatedness of historical inquiry, paying special attention to the culturally emergent conceptual schemes and prejudices of the historian, but they constrain historical inquiry by providing an improved understanding of the relationship between the problems which give rise to our inquiries and the tools which help resolve them. Dewey, in the key of naturalism, and Gadamer, in the key of phenomenology, provide conservative and pragmatic philosophies of historical inquiry, which refuse to pose as science, but do not fall into narrative fiction. Additionally, their approaches to historical inquiry share a concern for the practical application of the study of history. In this concern for application, both Dewey and Gadamer provide a theory of historical inquiry consonant with a conservative and pragmatic judicial theory, which rejects both the formalism of legal positivism and the model of unconstrained judicial radicalism.

The utilitarian and consumerist model of higher education undervalues the importance and worth of the liberal arts in higher education, both globally and locally. Globally speaking, it does not take long to flip through a national newspaper or to click through the Chronicle of Higher Education to find either some call for the academy to train students for the current set of jobs available, especially for which there is high demand, low supply, and a national need, or critical responses to such a call. Andy Delbanco wrote in The Chronicle Review of the problem, citing our “need to respond to the public demand for some demonstrable utility in what we teach: literature, history, philosophy, the arts.”1 How many...

In this article, I address the question of whether or not the use of instant replay in sports improves the ability of officials to make correct calls. I pay special attention to the use of instant reply in American gridiron football. I first explain the method of static phenomenology, by recourse to Edmund Husserl's work and apply a static phenomenological method to the official's quest for evidence in the analysis of a still frame of video. Second, I expose Husserl's genetic method of phenomenology and apply it to the official's search for evidence and accuracy when assessing a play in a frame-by-frame or super-slow-motion analysis. I then look critically at the intersection of these two methods in instant replay analysis. My conclusion is that in cases calling only for a static analysis, I think that instant replay is beneficial. In other cases, the application of a static, frame-by-frame analysis, abstracted from lived experience, to a context of movement, can disrupt the normality of perception such that it yields problematic evidence. The problems that ensue from employing a static analysis to a situation calling for a genetic analysis cause me to recommend a limited use of instant replay in the types of cases which involve a genetic analysis. Epistemologically, I think that lived-time analysis is the optimal mode of perceiving and judging certain events. Humanistically, my concern is that the use of instant replay can disrupt the life-world of sport

Like many philosophy instructors throughout the academy, one of my primary services to the university is teaching 100-level logic, a required course for all undergraduate students. In many ways I relish the responsibility and consider teaching the course one of my more valuable roles at the university. Furthermore, that the university requires logic makes me hopeful that higher education still values the cultivation of critical thinking, which should be a primary function of a logic class. However, required courses at the university follow a mandated assessment process that involves the administration of entry and exit exams, and a comparison of the test results to track teaching effectiveness. Passing the exit ..