Pragmatism – Fall 2022

Books | Schedule | Assignments

Mondays & Wednesdays 5:30-6:45pm

PHIL 4322 – Philosophical Traditions II

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Course Description

“Post-modernist skeptics… turn to the old pragmatists because they (correctly) see them as potential partners in a struggle against ‘strong’, that is, absolutist and ‘totalizing’, conceptions of truth. But what they neglect is the old pragmatists’ conviction… that once they had overcome absolutism, they could then resume traveling down the road of inquiry in a more fuel-efficient vehicle than Reason toward a more modest destination than Truth.” — Robert Westbrook

This course will be an in-depth study of the tradition of pragmatism, a tradition mostly centered within American philosophy. Pragmatism is a diverse tradition, united by a common interest in a robust account of human experience, the fallibility of our knowledge, truth as a human phenomenon, the relation of theory to practice and knowledge to action. These interests often lead pragmatists out of the realm of pure philosophy or science into reflections on ethics, politics, culture, and education. For the purposes of this class, we will explore the pragmatist tradition thematically rather than chronologically.

Student Learning Objectives

  1. Students will articulate and employ basic methodologies of philosophical enquiry and textual engagement.
  2. Students will demonstrate an ability to make and defend, as well as recognize and critique, philosophical claims and arguments.
  3. Students will engage with central philosophical concepts and ideas from the pragmatist tradition and make effective use of them in addressing contemporary problems.
  4. Students will display a broad knowledge of the history and contemporary work in the tradition of philosophical pragmatism, and the reasons for its significance.

Required Texts

Electronic Works

Many of the classical pragmatists have complete or selected works available online in a searchable form, provided by InteLex Past Masters. Access to the following is provided by the UTD Library:

Other potentially relevant, available Past Masters collections include the works of Bacon, Darwin, Foucault, Hegel, Husserl, Kant, Merleau-Ponty, G.E. Moore, Royce, Santayana, Herbert Spencer, Wittgenstein, and Chauncey Wright.

Online Guides

  • The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has articles on pragmatism, feminist pragmatism, naturalism, Addams, Cooper, Dewey (multiple articles), Du Bois, Hook, James, C.I. Lewis, Alain Locke, Mead, Peirce (multiple), Quine, Rorty, Royce, Santayana, Wilfrid Sellars, Chuancey Wright, and other relevant topics.
  • The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a category of articles on American philosophy and includes articles on pragmatism, feminist-pragmatism, naturalism, Addams, Dewey, James, Lewis, Mead, Peirce (multiple), Rorty, Royce, Santayana, Roy Wood Sellars, Wright, and others.
  • The Pragmatism Cybrary has some links that are out of date, but many valuable resources nonetheless, including the Pragmatism Genealogy that helps position many key and lesser-known pragmatists in the tradition.

Suggested Texts

Schedule of Topics

DateTopicReadings
8/22IntroductionCornel West, “Why Pragmatism?” (1989); Joseph Margolis, “Pragmatism, Retrospective and Prospective” (2009)
8/24The Pragmatist Approach to PhilosophyCharles S. Peirce, “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities” (1868) [EP1]; William James, “The Present Dilemma in Philosophy” (1907) [POW]
8/29Pragmatism and PsychologyJames, “The Stream of Consciousness” (1892) [POW]; John Dewey, “The Reflex-Arc Concept in Psychology” (1896) [ED2]
8/31Necessity and DeterminismJames, “The Dilemma of Determinism” (1884); Peirce, “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” (1892) [EP1]; Dewey, “The Superstition of Necessity” (1893) [ED2]
9/5Labor DayNo class
9/7Belief and InquiryPeirce, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) [EP1]
9/12Anna Julia Cooper, “The Gain from a Belief” (1892); James, “The Will to Believe” (1896) [POW]
9/14Dewey, “Analysis of Reflective Thinking” (1933) [ED2] and “The Place of Judgment in Reflective Activity” (1933) [ED2]
9/19The Pragmatic MaximPeirce, et al., “Pragmatic and Pragmatism” (1902); Peirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878) [EP1]
9/21James, “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results” (1898); Dewey, “What Does Pragmatism Mean by Practical?” (1908) [ED2]
9/26The Pragmatist Theory of TruthPeirce, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (review); James, “What Pragmatism Means” and “Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth” (1907) [POW]
9/28Dewey, “The Problem of Truth” (1911) [ED2]; Dewey, “Propositions, Warranted Assertibility, and Truth” (1941) [ED2]
10/3Cheryl Misak, “Deflating Truth: Pragmatism vs. Minimalism” (1998); Rorty, “Truth without Correspondence to Reality” (1999) [PSH]
10/5Susan Haack, “The Pragmatist Theory of Truth” (1976); John Capps, “A Common-Sense Pragmatic Theory of Truth” (2020)
10/10Metaphysics, Experience, and NaturalismPeirce, “The Architecture of Theories” (1891) [EP1]; Peirce, “Evolutionary Love” (1893) [EP1]
10/12James, “Preface” to The Meaning of Truth (1909) [POW]; James, “A World of Pure Experience” (1904) [POW]; Dewey, “The Postulate of Immediate Empricism” (1905) [ED1]
10/17Dewey, “Nature, Life, and Body-Mind” (1925) [ED1]; Dewey, “Anti-Naturalism in Extremis” (1943) [ED1]
10/19Rorty, “A World without Substances or Essences” (1999) [PSH]; Richard J. Bernstein, “Pragmatic Naturalism: John Dewey’s Living Legacy” (2020)
10/24Ethics and ValuesJames, “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life” (1891) [POW]; Dewey, “Reconstruction in Moral Conceptions” (1920)
10/26Dewey, “Valuation and Experimental Knowledge” (1922); Dewey, “Three Independent Factors in Morals” (1930)
10/31Alain Locke, “Values and Imperatives” (1935); Rorty, “Ethics Without Principles” (1999) [PSH]
11/2Hilary Putnam, “Pragmatism and Non-Scientific Knowledge” (2002); Elizabeth Anderson, “How to be a Pragmatist” (2020)
11/7Democracy and PluralismAddams, “Why the Ward Boss Rules” (1898); Addams, selections from Democracy and Social Ethics (1902)
11/9Dewey, “Philosophy and Democracy” (1919) [ED1]; Rorty, “The Priority of Democracy to Philosophy” (1988) [PP1]
11/14Dewey, “The Search for the Great Community” (1927); Follett, “Community is a Process” (1919)
11/16Dewey, “Democracy is Radical” (1937) [ED1]; Dewey, “Creative Democracy — The Task Before Us” (1939) [ED1]
11/21Fall BreakNo class
11/28Locke, “Cultural Relativism and Ideological Peace” (1944); Rorty, “Postmodernist Bourgeois Liberalism” (1983) [PP1]; Richard Bernstein, “Pragmatism, Pluralism, and the Healing of Wounds” (1988)
11/30Ruth Anna Putnam, “Democracy as a Way of Life” (2009); Judy Whipps, “Dewey, Addams, and Design Thinking: Pragmatist Feminist Innovation for Democratic Change” (2019)
12/5Choice of Topic:Religion, Education, or
Science and Society
12/7
~12/14Finals WeekTerm Paper Due

Choice of Topics (Week 16)

We will choose one of the following topics based on student preferences.

  1. Religion
    • James, “The Will to Believe” (review)
    • James, “Pragmatism and Religion” (1907) [POW]
    • Addams, “Religious Education and Contemporary Social Conditions” (1911)
    • Dewey, “Religion versus the Religious” (1934) [ED1]
    • Rorty, “Religious Faith, Intellectual Responsibility and Romance” (1996) [PSH]
    • Rorty, “Religion as Conversation-stopper” (1994) [PSH]
    • Additional: Ruth Anna Putnam, “William James on Religion”; Ruth Anna Putnam, “Dewey’s Faith”
  2. Education
    • Dewey, “My Pedagogic Creed” (1897) [ED1]
    • Dewey, The Child and the Curriculum (1902) [ED1]
    • Anna Julia Cooper, “On Education” (1930?);
    • Dewey, “The Moral Training Given by the School Community” (1909) [ED1]
    • Addams, “Moral Education and Legal Protection of Children” (1912)
    • Additional: Rorty, “Education as Socialization and as Individualization” (1989) [PSH]; Addams, “The Public School and the Immigrant Child” (1908)
  3. Science and Society
    • Dewey, “Science and Society” (1931) [ED1]
    • Dewey, “Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry” (1938) [ED1]
    • Dewey, “Unity of Science as a Social Problem” (1938)
    • Rorty, “Science as Solidarity” [PP1]

Additional Readings

The readings below add depth to the main topics of the course. It is recommended that you have a look at them if you are considering a paper on that topic, or are otherwise particularly interested in going further.

  • Pragmatism and Psychology
    • George Herbert Mead, “The Mechanism of Social Consciousness” (1912)
    • Mead, “A Contrast of Individualistic and Social Theories of the Self” (1927)
  • Belief and Inquiry
    • Dewey, “The Pattern of Inquiry” (1938) [ED2]
    • Richard Rorty, “Solidarity or objectivity?” (1985) [PP1]
  • The Pragmatist Theory of Truth
    • Donald Davidson, “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knolwedge” (1983)
    • Rorty, “Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth” (1986) [PP1]
    • Robert Brandom, “Truth and Assertibility” (1976)
    • Rorty, “Representation, Social Practice, and Truth” (1988) [PP1]
    • Price, “Truth as Convenient Friction” (2003)
    • Bernstein, “Pragmatism, Objectivity, and Truth” (2008)
    • Brandom, “Why Truth Is Not Important in Philosophy” (2009)
    • James, The Meaning of Truth (1909)
    • Capps, “The Pragmatic Theory of Truth” (2019)
    • Capps, “Did Dewey Have a Theory of Truth?” (2018)
  • Necessity and Determinism
    • Peirce, “Reply to the Necessitarians” (1893)
  • Metaphysics, Experience, and Naturalism
    • Willard Van Orman Quine, “Epistemology Naturalized”
    • Quine, “Ontological Relativity”
    • Brandom, “Vocabularies of Pragmatism: Synthesizing Naturalism and Historicism”
  • Ethics and Values
    • Dewey, “The Logic of Judgments of Practice” (1915)
    • Locke, “A Functional View of Value Ultimates” (1945)
    • C.I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation Chapter 1, 12-17 (1946)
    • Hilary Putnam, “Beyond the Fact/Value Dichotomy” (1982)
    • Ruth Anna Putnam, “Creating Facts and Values” (1985)
    • Ruth Anna Putnam, “Perceiving Facts and Values” (1998)
  • Democracy and Pluralism
    • Addams, “Americanization” (1919)
    • Follett, “‘Consent’ Not the Technique of Democracy” and “A Participant Electorate” (1930)
    • Addams, “Our National Self-Righteousness” (1933)
    • Locke, “Pluralism and Intellectual Democracy” (1942)
    • W.E.B. Du Bois, “My Evolving Program for Negro Freedom” (1944)
    • Rorty, “American National Pride: Whitman and Dewey” (1998)
    • Ruth Anna Putnam, “Democracy and Value Inquiry” (2009)

Requirements and Grades

Main Graded Assignments

  1. Discussion Questions (20%)
  2. Class Participation (20%)
  3. Class Presentation (20%)
  4. Term Paper (40%)

Course and Instructor Policies

Class Meeting expectations

You are expected to have read the assignments before class, and it would be to your benefit to also read them again after class. You are expected to have the readings for each day’s class open to refer to during discussion. You are expected to listen respectfully to the professor and your fellow students, and participate in class discussions and activities.

Late Work, Make-Up, and Completion

It is important to stay on track with the class schedule, or else you will fall behind and not be able to complete the work to a satisfactory standard. However, life happens, and I am a reasonable person. Reasonable extensions will be given upon request, for any reason, as long as you ask before the deadline.

Cheating and Plagiarism

Don’t do it! If you incorporate any work that is not your own into any project that you do, and you do not cite the source properly, this counts as plagiarism. This includes someone doing the work for you, taking work done by another student, verbatim copying of published sources, paraphrasing published work without citation, and paraphrasing in an inappropriate way even with citation. Re-using work created for another course also counts as plagiarism in most contexts. Unless group work is explicitly permitted or required, it is expected that all of the work that you turn in is original and your own, and that any sources that you make use of are correctly cited.
If you are caught cheating or plagiarizing, it is absolutely mandatory for me to turn you in to the Dean of Students Office of Community Standards and Conduct.

University Policies

The information contained in the following link constitutes the University’s policies and procedures segment of the course syllabus: http://go.utdallas.edu/syllabus-policies