Action, Belief and Inquiry – Pragmatist

Action, Belief and Inquiry Pragmatist Perspectives on Science, Society and Religion Edited by Ulf Zackariasson Nordic NSP Studies in 3 Pragmatism ACTION, BELIEF AND INQUIRY Nordic Studies in Pragmatism Series editors: Mats Bergman Henrik Rydenfelt The purpose of the series is to publish high-quality monographs and collections of articles on the tradition of philosophical pragmatism and closely related topics. It is published online in an open access format by the Nordic Pragmatism Network, making the volumes easily accessible for scholars and students anywhere in the world. ACTION, BELIEF AND INQUIRY PRAGMATIST PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENCE, SOCIETY AND RELIGION Nordic Studies in Pragmatism 3 Edited by Ulf Zackariasson Nordic Pragmatism Network, NPN Helsinki 2015 Copyright c 2015 The Authors and the Nordic Pragmatism Network. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 Unported License, except for Bjørn Ramberg (pp. 261–278) c 2011 Massachusetts Institute of Technology CC BY NC For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ www.nordprag.org issn-l 1799-3954 issn 1799-3954 isbn 978-952-67497-2-3 This work is typeset with Donald Knuth’s TEX program, using LATEX 2ε macros and the ‘Nnpbook’ class definition. Contents Preface iii Part I Democracy 1 Minimal Meliorism: Finding a Balance between Conservative and Progressive Pragmatism 2 Mats Bergman 2 John Dewey and Democratic Participation under Modern Condi- tions 29 Torjus Midtgarden 3 Democracy and the Problem of Pluralism: John Dewey revisited 44 Jón Olafsson´ Part II Normativity 4 Pragmatism, Objectivity and Normative Realism 69 Henrik Rydenfelt 5 Naturalism and Normativity in Pragmatism 94 Pentti Määttänen Part III Religion 6 A Skeptical Pragmatic Engagement with Skeptical Theism 109 Ulf Zackariasson 7 Objectivity in Pragmatist Philosophy of Religion 131 Sami Pihlström i ii CONTENTS Part IV Action and Habit 8 Habit, Action, and Knowledge from the Pragmatist Perspective 157 Erkki Kilpinen 9 On the Concepts of Trans-action and Intra-action 174 Matz Hammarström 10 Pragmatism as an attitude 187 Frank Martela Part V Inquiry 11 On Why’s, How’s, and What’s—Why What’s Matter 209 Margareta Bertilsson 12 Deweyan Approaches to Abduction? 230 Sami Paavola 13 The Role of Intuition in Inquiry 250 Lauri Järvilehto Part VI Ontology and Meaning 14 Method and Metaphysics: Pragmatist Doubts 261 Bjørn Ramberg 15 On Quine’s Pragmatic Conception of Ontology 279 Heikki J. Koskinen 16 Davidson versus Chomsky: The Case of Shared Languages 300 Jonathan Knowles Preface The Nordic Pragmatism Network was initiated in 2006 to facilitate the cooperation of Nordic philosophers and scientists whose work concerns philosophical pragmatism both with one another and with colleagues and collaborators elsewhere in the world. In 2008, the Network organized its first Nordic Pragmatism Conference in Helsinki hosted by Sami Pihlstrom.¨ Subsequent conferences were organized annually in 2009–2011, respectively hosted by Jon´ Olafsson´ in Reykjav´ık, Ulf Zackariasson in Uppsala and Margareta Bertilsson in Copenhagen. This series of conferences concluded in the first European Pragmatism Conference, itself a major achievement in the establishment of pragmatism as an indepen- dent area of inquiry in Europe, organized together with Italian colleagues in Rome, Italy, in 2012. Since 2007, Henrik Rydenfelt has acted as the coordinator of the Network and a co-organizer of each of the conferences. In 2010, the Network also established its own online publication series, the Nordic Studies in Pragmatism. This volume, edited by Ulf Zackari- asson, collects together contributions from the Nordic participants of the conferences arranged in 2009, 2010 and 2011. In accordance with the different themes of those conferences, the volume represents contributions to various topics and fields of inquiry related to philosophical pragmatism. It attests to the impact pragmatist notions and arguments may have if brought to bear on debates in philosophy of science, epistemology, philosophy of language, logic, ontology, ethics and metaethics, sociology, polit- ical philosophy and philosophy of religion. At the same time it provides an overview of key Nordic advances and debates in these areas of inquiry. The series editors would like to express their gratitude to Mr. Jukka Niku- lainen for the technical production of this volume. Helsinki, September 2015 Henrik Rydenfelt iii PART I DEMOCRACY Minimal Meliorism: Finding a Balance between Conservative and Progressive Pragmatism Mats Bergman University of Helsinki The philosophy of pragmatism has often been linked to reformist move- ments of different stripes. For many, this is part and parcel of what it means to be a pragmatist. According to this view, an authentic represen- tative of the movement emphasises change, progress, and active engagement in human affairs while distrusting traditional epistemological and metaphysical concerns with knowledge and truth. In other words, the primary task of the pragmatist philosopher is not to unearth the ultimate secrets of the mind and the universe, but rather to change the world for the better. Leading pragmatists such as William James, F. C. S. Schiller, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty have arguably outlined transformative philosophical programmes along such lines, albeit with varying vocabularies, emphases, and aims. Thus, it is not surprising that meliorism has been singled out as a characteristic element of the pragmatist world-view (e.g., Ruetenik 2008). Conversely, pragmatism has been lauded as a philosophy particularly conducive to social-melioristic efforts (e.g., Payton & Moody 2008). Although calls for amelioration and societal reform are by no means the exclusive prerogatives of pragmatists, the term ’meliorism’ 2 Bergman – Minimal Meliorism. 3 has occasionally even been used as a straightforward synonym for ’pragmatism’ (e.g., Robinson 1924).1 On the other hand, C. S. Peirce—the ’putative father’ of pragmatism2— all but dismissed meliorist conceptions of philosophy in some of his writ- ings and lectures. Where a pragmatist would be expected to glorify con- crete action, Peirce ended up stressing the theoretical nature of philosophical work. More than that, he declared himself to be a ”sentimentalist” conservative, and as such insisted that philosophers should avoid direct attempts to change traditions and established social practices. As with all wide-ranging isms, it is not surprising that there should be noticeable internal strains and significant differences of opinions within the ranks of pragmatism; it can hardly be described as a unified school of thought. Attempts to produce systematic accounts of the ’broad church’ of pragmatism have typically acknowledged certain more or less significant intellectual divisions in the field. Susan Haack has emphasised the differences between revolutionary neopragmatism3 (whether literary or scien- tistic) and classical pragmatism, but has also detected the insidious virus of ”vulgar pragmatism” in Schiller’s humanism (see, e.g., Haack 2004). In contrast, Nicholas Rescher (2000) throws James, Dewey, and Schiller into the class of ’pragmatism of the left’ along with neopragmatism a` la Rorty, while Peirce and Rescher himself are portrayed as staunch defend- ers of realistic and objectivist right-wing pragmatism. Howard Mounce (1997) and Cheryl Misak (2013) have perhaps even more straightforwardly suggested that the movement is split into two radically different camps, personified by Peirce and James, practically from the outset. It looks as if the attitude towards meliorism would also divide the key pragmatists into two groups; but in spite of the fact that we again seem to find Peirce pitted against the rest, this distinction between a conservative 1 Of contemporary pragmatists, Colin Koopman (2009) has suggested that meliorism provides a ”summary statement of pragmatism,” construed as a ”successful transitionalism” that encompasses humanism and pluralism (17–19). (I owe this reference to an anonymous reviewer of this article.) 2 Looking back at the heyday of classical pragmatism and Peirce’s (depending of perspective, laudable or perfidious) renaming of his own doctrine, Schiller (1927, 83) elevated James to the ”real progenitor” of pragmatism while he dismissed Peirce as its ”putative parent”. Some fifty years later, Rorty echoed these sentiments as he asserted that Peirce’s ”contri- bution to pragmatism was merely to have given it a name, and to have stimulated James” (Rorty 1982, 161). 3 Fittingly enough, probably the first to use the term ’neopragmatist’ was none other than Peirce back in 1905. Peirce did not specify to whom the term referred, but the context suggests that he had James and Schiller in mind. 4 Action, Belief and Inquiry and a progressive wing does not exactly correspond to the more famil- iar partitions based on metaphysical, epistemological, or truth-theoretical perspectives. From this angle, Dewey appears to constitute the clearest counterpart to Peirce—although, as we shall see, it is Schiller that draws some of the most radical conclusions from the transformative viewpoint. In this essay, I will first discuss some of the main forms of meliorism within classical pragmatism. Naturally, I cannot trace all the varying asso- ciations and upshots of the melioristic strand of pragmatism in this short article; here, emphasis lies on the general justification for meliorism and conservatism in classical pragmatist thought as well as on the program- matic implications of these stances; I will bypass Rorty’s agenda in this context. At the heart of the discussion lies the far-reaching question of the proper goal of philosophical activity, which with a nod to Marx might be portrayed as a conflict between philosophy as world-explanation and philosophy as world-amelioration—but which in more pragmatist terms also can be taken to imply a basic tension between theory and practice. Such a discussion can easily slip into caricature, with the central issue reduced to a struggle between two straw men: the na¨ıve good-doer and the fogy- ish defender of the status quo.

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