Contemporary Pragmatism. Volume 6, Number 1. June 2009

ontemporary CPragmatism

Contemporary Pragmatism Editors

Mitchell Aboulafia, The Juilliard School, USA John R. Shook, Center for Inquiry, USA

Assistant Editor

Tibor Solymosi, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale

Editorial Board Susana de Castro Amaral, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil Randall Auxier, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, USA Richard Bernstein, New School University, USA James Bohman, Saint Louis University, USA Randall Dipert, University at Buffalo, USA Pascal Engel, Université Paris IV–Sorbonne, France Jose Miguel Esteban, Universidad Autonoma del Estado de Morelos, Mexico Nancy Frankenberry, Dartmouth College, USA Nancy Fraser, New School University, USA Jim Garrison, Virginia Tech University, USA Paulo Ghiraldelli, Jr., Centro de Estudos em Filosofia Americana, Brazil Eddie Glaude, Princeton University, USA Russell Goodman, University of New Mexico, USA Judith Green, Fordham University, USA Susan Haack, University of Miami, USA Jürgen Habermas, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany Leoni Henning, Universidade Estadual de Londrina, Brazil Hans Joas, University of Erfurt, Germany; University of Chicago, USA Robert Kane, University of Texas, USA Paul Kurtz, Center for Inquiry, USA John Lachs, Vanderbilt University, USA Alvaro Marquez-Fernandez, Universidad del Zulia, Venezuela Joseph Margolis, Temple University, USA James Marshall, University of Auckland, New Zealand Glenn McGee, Albany Medical Center, New York, USA Floyd Merrell, Purdue University, USA Cheryl Misak, University of Toronto, Canada Lucius Outlaw, Jr., Vanderbilt University, USA Michael Peters, University of Auckland, Austr.; University of Glasgow, Scotland Huw Price, University of Sydney, Australia Hilary Putnam, Harvard University, USA Bjørn Ramberg, University of Oslo, Norway Mike Sandbothe, Aalborg University, Denmark Dmitri Shalin, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA Jeffrey Stout, Princeton University, USA Claudine Tiercelin, L’Université de Paris-XII, France Celal Türer, Erciyes University, Turkey Bas van Fraassen, Princeton University, USA Marcus Vinícius da Cunha, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, Brazil Cornel West, Princeton University, USA

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ontemporary CPragmatism Edited by

Mitchell Aboulafia & John R. Shook Volume 6 Number 1 June 2009

AMSTERDAM - NEW YORK, NY 2009

The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of “ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation - Paper for documents Requirements for permanence”. ISSN: 1572-3429 ISBN: 978-90-420-2656-8 E-Book ISBN: 978-90-420-2657-5 ©Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam - New York, NY 2009 Printed in The Netherlands

Contemporary Pragmatism Volume 6 Number 1

June 2009

Contents Articles Sami Pihlström Pragmatism and Naturalized Transcendental Subjectivity

1

Carl Sachs Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism

15

Charles A. Hobbs Naturalism, Death, and Functional Immortality

39

Andrew Wells Garnar Must a Pragmatist Be a Historical Materialist?

67

Tina Sikka A Pragmatist Critique of Derridian Politics

87

Phillip Deen A Call for Inclusion in the Pragmatic Justification of Democracy

131

Naoko Saito and Paul Standish What’s the Problem with Problem-Solving? Language, Skepticism, and Pragmatism

153

Discussion John Lachs Rescher’s Cognitive Pragmatism

169

Nicholas Rescher Epistemic Pragmatism (A Reply)

179

Review Essay Joseph Margolis A “Pragmatist” among Disputed Pragmatists: Robert Brandom’s Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism

183

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 1–13

Editions Rodopi © 2009

Pragmatism and Naturalized Transcendental Subjectivity Sami Pihlström

Pragmatism is an emergentist version of non-reductive naturalism: subjectivity arises as a natural development of certain kinds of organisms and their interactions with their environment. Subjectivity must be understood dynamically, in relation to (habits of) action; therefore, pragmatism is a philosophical anthropology, not just a philosophy of mind. Pragmatic naturalism not only avoids scientistic reductions of subjectivity but is compatible with a reconceptualized transcendental perspective on subjectivity; however, the problem of (transcendental) solipsism must not be ignored. Pragmatist philosophy of mind and subjectivity must engage with metaphysical questions about the way(s) the world is for us, in a manner ultimately connected with ethics.

Pragmatist thinkers, with the possible exception of influential neopragmatists like Richard Rorty and Robert Brandom, are rarely cited in mainstream contemporary analytic philosophy of mind.1 Nor are pragmatists’ works among standard references in phenomenologically oriented explorations of the mind and subjectivity, even though there is some interesting historical scholarship available on, for example, the connections between William James’s radical empiricism (focusing on the notion of “pure experience”) and Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology.2 In order to bring pragmatism – classical and modern – better into the focus of contemporary debates on subjectivity, this paper briefly argues for the following seven points (most of which I have discussed in more detail in previous publications of mine): 1.

Pragmatism may be regarded as an emergentist version of non-reductive naturalism: subjectivity arises from nature as a natural development of certain kinds of organisms and their interaction with their natural environment.

2.

Subjectivity must, in pragmatism, be understood dynamically, that is, in relation to (habits of) action. Therefore, pragmatism is essentially a philosophical anthropology, not just a philosophy of mind.

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3.

Not all pragmatists are emergentists, however; some have been, for instance, panpsychists. This is an interesting tension in pragmatist philosophy of mind.

4.

Pragmatic, non-reductive naturalism not only avoids scientistic reductions of subjectivity but is even compatible with a transcendental (Kantian-like) perspective on subjectivity, if the latter is reconceptualized from a pragmatist standpoint.

5.

No transcendental philosophy of subjectivity, even a pragmatic one, can ignore the problem of (transcendental) solipsism.

6.

Pragmatist philosophy of mind and subjectivity cannot be thoroughly nonmetaphysical (or “post-ontological”) but must engage with metaphysical questions about the way(s) the world is for us.

7.

Pragmatist metaphysics, both in general and in its particular applications in the philosophy of mind and subjectivity, must be intimately reconnected with ethics.

I will briefly consider these points in turn. My discussion will not constitute a deductive chain of argument; that would be a much more ambitious task. Rather, I will offer a kind of narrative, with one idea more or less naturally leading to another. Thus, I hope to be able to take up key pragmatist themes that may help to rearticulate some aspects of a plausible pragmatist approach to subjectivity. I cannot even attempt to interpret any of the classical or recent pragmatists whose views can be found as the main sources of my reflections. I will just summarize (and to some extent defend) a pragmatist philosophy of subjectivity, with my own, perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic emphases. Nevertheless, I do believe that it is to some extent justified to ascribe at least some of the ideas to be articulated below to some of the leading pragmatist thinkers. Note also that I am not merely describing pragmatist views in positive terms; I also try to identify tensions, challenges, and open issues. I am obviously aware of the fact that several pragmatists will immediately deny one or more of my allegedly pragmatist “theses.” That, however, is precisely as it should be: pragmatism is not a final set of closed, completed doctrines; it is a living philosophical orientation,3 and creative pragmatic work on subjectivity can be fruitfully continued if – and perhaps only if – philosophers disagree on how exactly pragmatists should view this exciting phenomenon. By no means am I claiming, then, that the seven pragmatist perspectives on subjectivity to be discussed form a coherent whole without internal tensions. The tensions they embody should be a source of genuine pragmatist insights. Pragmatism, as I see it, is inherently pluralistic; its tolerant methodology for examining subjectivity – or any other philosophically interesting phenomenon – need not be seen as a rival to, but may

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be seen as critically transforming and to some extent accommodating, some other methods, such as the transcendental one. 1. Emergence and non-reductive naturalism The pragmatist approach to subjectivity, as I see it, starts from non-reductive naturalism. This starting point can be made more precise by employing the concept of emergence. Subjectivity is something that “emerges from” the natural world, and is thus itself something fully natural, even though it is possible only in complex systems that are in some sense “more than the sum of their parts.” Nature, for pragmatists, is multiply layered, and its “higher” levels, including subjectivity, freedom, culture, and values, cannot be completely reduced – either conceptually, ontologically, or explanatorily – to its “lower” ones. This emergent naturalism is especially clear in John Dewey’s and George Herbert Mead’s pragmatism,4 although there was surprisingly little exchange between American pragmatism and British empiricism (which flourished in the 1920–30s, hence partly simultaneously with pragmatism).5 In The Quest for Certainty, Dewey writes: “The intellectual activity of man is not something brought to bear upon nature from without; it is nature realizing its own potentialities in behalf of a fuller and richer issue of events.”6 What gradually emerges out of the originally inanimate world in Dewey’s system is life, mind, freedom, culture, and value. For Dewey, such emergent structures and properties are “real features of ... complex systems which cannot be accounted for in terms that would be adequate if the same constituents were organized in a less complex way.”7 Although Dewey was a naturalist, he rejected metaphysical realists’ dream of representing nature as it is in itself from an absolute perspective. For him, any ontological structure of reality is a humanly established structure, itself emerging in the course of human experience and inquiry – and thereby, arguably, a structure to some extent presupposing subjective experiential perspectives or continuously getting “structured” through such perspectives of ours. In this sense his realism about emergent properties – if we may call it that – is thoroughly pragmatic. In the evolutionary flow of experience, both subjectivity and the objects constituted through inquiry and our practice-laden perspectives continuously emerge. Dewey was not entirely happy with the term ‘emergence’, however. Late in his life, jointly with Arthur Bentley, he argued that the “natural man” who talks, thinks, and knows should not, “even in his latest and most complex activities,” be surveyed “as magically ‘emergent’ into something new and strange.”8 He contrasted his transactional view of emergence to previous views (including, presumably, the British empiricists’ ideas) as follows: At a stage at which an inquirer wants to keep “life,” let us say, within “nature,” at the same time not “degrading” it to what he fears some other workers may think of “nature” – or perhaps similarly, if he wants to treat

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SAMI PIHLSTRÖM “mind” within organic life – he may say that life or mind “emerges,” calling it thereby “natural” in origin, yet still holding that it is all that it was held to be in its earlier “non-natural” envisionment. The transactional view of emergence, in contrast, will not expect merely to report the advent out of the womb of nature of something that still retains an old non-natural independence and isolation. It will be positively interested in fresh direct study in the new form. It will seek enriched descriptions of primary life processes in their environments and of the more complex behavioral processes in theirs.9

Accordingly, while being careful with the word “emergence,” Dewey did not reject the idea but only what he saw as its magical overtones. He simply required scientific, experimental research on the emergence of life and mind. Subjectivity cannot be studied purely philosophically, from an arm-chair, but our philosophical examinations of subjectivity must be empirically anchored, continuous with, not separated from, the advancing sciences. Among neopragmatists, Hilary Putnam may be the one whose views come closest to an emergentist philosophy of the mind and subjectivity. He has, after all, been one of the leading critics of reductive accounts of the mind for decades. However, he says that emergence is a “bad metaphor,”10 especially because its advocates tend to construe the mind as a mysterious entity whose existence calls for a (scientific-like) explanation. We should, rather, view the mind pragmatically as a world-involving set of capacities. Instead of maintaining the largely Cartesian framework within which mentality and subjectivity are mysterious, we should, according to Putnam, dissolve this mystery. From Putnam’s point of view, it may seem that emergentist philosophers of mind just keep up the mystery by talking about the somewhat magic leap of emergent novelty. However, if we, in a Deweyan and/or Meadian fashion regard mental properties as naturally emerging, I do not think that any mysterious emergentist assumptions are needed. The problem need not be thoroughly dissolved in a Wittgensteinian way, even if both dualistic and reductively scientistic approaches to it are abandoned. 2. Agency and philosophical anthropology Pragmatic subjectivity, in its natural emergence, is crucially connected with human (habits of) action, hence with the notion of agency. This conviction seems to be shared by those pragmatists who are fruitfully (re)interpretable as emergentists (including Dewey) and those who would rather abandon the entire issue of emergence (including Putnam). The emergence of subjectivity is not the emergence of peculiar immaterial entities, properties, or states (e.g., qualia understood as some kind of internal mental objects), but the emergence of certain capacities and habitualities, of ways of “being in the world” (if a Heideggerian expression is appropriate in this context).

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This, along with the pragmatists’ general naturalism, is a further step toward a total rejection of Cartesian assumptions that pragmatists have developed since Charles Peirce’s anti-Cartesian articles of the 1860s.11 The mind is “in the world,” not “in the head” of subjects or minded beings; subjectivity is inevitably connected with intersubjectivity, when it is understood in terms of subjects’ worldly (including social) actions.12 Pragmatism, then, can never remain merely a philosophy of mind; rather, it is a much more comprehensive orientation in philosophical anthropology, seeking to understand not just the mind (mentality, subjectivity) but the entire human being in her/his worldly (including social) surroundings, that is, in James’s words, “the whole man in us.”13 As such a general philosophical project, pragmatism must not only investigate the nature of the mind and its contents – as analytic philosophy of mind primarily does – but the ways in which “minded” creatures like us live in the world, amidst their different projects and habitualities. After all, the concept of a habit, or habitual action, has been central to the pragmatist tradition since its very start.14 This is why the recent analytic debates in the philosophy of mind have only limited relevance to pragmatist explorations of the mind and subjectivity. Nor do phenomenological investigations fare much better in this regard, however. Phenomenologists usually seek to examine mental and experiential phenomena from an allegedly “presuppositionless” standpoint, focusing on the way the world appears to us in experience and bracketing all naturalistic presuppositions (such as the very existence of a material world). One reason why we need to insist on both the natural emergence and the habitual embeddedness of subjectivity in pragmatism is the need to avoid the remnants of such “first philosophy.” Despite some highly interesting developments in phenomenology that seem to bring it in many ways close to pragmatism,15 it seems to me that the worldly – natural and practical – embeddedness of subjectivity is not sufficiently emphasized in phenomenological studies of experience. The same may, after all, be true about James’s radical empiricism, which, as an apparently first-philosophical metaphysical theory of the general structure of reality, may in the end be hard to reconcile with his pragmatism. 3. Emergence or panpsychism? For a pragmatist philosophical anthropologist, it may seem natural to think of subjectivity as a naturally emergent product of forces that are originally devoid of subjectivity. Our evolutionary history has produced complex organisms, world-directed agents, with genuinely “novel” subjective perspectives irreducible to what is objectively going on in their worldly surroundings. There is, however, an important tension in pragmatism between emergentist and nonemergentist views. It is, as already implicitly acknowledged, to some extent a mystery how anything subjective can, or ever could, “emerge” from something in which there is no subjectivity (or mentality, or experience, etc.) at all.

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Some pragmatists (and non-pragmatists) have, therefore, been inclined toward panpsychism instead of emergentism; arguably, there are elements of panpsychism in all the major classical pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey, and F.C.S. Schiller).16 James, in particular, is an interesting figure in this regard. Around the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century, he struggled with both radical empiricism and what he labeled “pluralistic panpsychism.”17 Panpsychism, though certainly a non-standard alternative, is increasingly drawing attention in the philosophy of mind today; pragmatist perspectives could significantly enrich this discussion, too (just as the discussion of emergence). It would be an especially significant pragmatist contribution to analyze in detail the usually metaphysically realistic background assumptions at work in the emergence vs. panpsychism controversy. The main novelty of pragmatist philosophy of subjectivity might be, indeed, that this dialogue cannot be based upon prior metaphysically realist presuppositions, according to which there either just is, or is not, emergent subjectivity (e.g., qualia, or related “mysterious” entities) “out there” in the world independently of us, conceived “absolutely,” or from an imagined “God’s-Eye View” (as Putnam would presumably put it). Rather, a pragmatic perspective on subjectivity should take seriously the idea that the world, insofar as it is an object of human conceptualizing, theorizing, and understanding (even including its mental, subjective, and perspectival aspects), is to some extent a “human construction,” structured and categorized by us into what it is or can ever be for us. Subjectivity, then, is also something that we ourselves (in a Kantian-like way) “impose on” or “contribute to” the world we live in. Whether this is ultimately emergentistically or panpsychistically elaborated is a further matter deserving continuous attention by pragmatist thinkers.18 Panpsychism may, if pragmatically articulated, be connected with, or even based on, Peirce’s synechism: the doctrine of continuity, according to which both being as such and specific modes of being, such as mentality, spontaneity, or (presumably) subjectivity, are matters of degree, instead of being sharply separable from their opposites. Nor is there any ontological gap between reality or being, on the one hand, and appearances or phenomena, on the other. For Peirce, synechism is “the tendency to regard everything as continuous,” in a way that includes “the whole domain of experience in every element of it.”19 Synechism, for Peirce, was both metaphysical and methodological. For a pragmatist philosopher working on the notion of subjectivity, it might be understood as the requirement to avoid postulating Cartesian gaps between the subjective mind and the objective (natural, material) world. The pragmatic embeddedness of subjectivity in our habits of action might be either emergentistically or synechistically conceptualized. This is to some extent an unresolved tension in pragmatist metaphysics and philosophy of mind. For a pluralistically oriented pragmatist, it would be ideal to get both – emergent novelty with continuity – but this may be difficult to achieve.

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4. The return of the transcendental subject While the naturalized picture of subjectivity here associated with pragmatism – whether it is, in the end, better understood in terms of emergence (and nonreductive naturalism with a “layered” reality) or in terms of panpsychism (sacrificing some, though not all, central assumptions taken to characterize naturalism in favor of at least some kind of metaphysical idealism) – may seem to be strictly opposed to any form of transcendental subjectivity, such as the “transcendental ego” invoked by classical transcendental thinkers like Kant and Husserl, there is an important transcendental strain in pragmatist philosophy of subjectivity (and intersubjectivity). According to James, in particular, “we” organize or structure the reality we are able to experience;20 this worldstructuring “we” plays a (quasi-)transcendental role, although in many signifycant respects pragmatism departs from Kantian transcendental philosophy. A similar “humanist” picture of pragmatism is provided in Schiller’s somewhat neglected writings.21 There is, in addition to undeniable differences, a lot of common ground between the Kantian transcendental tradition and the pragmatist tradition, to the extent that pragmatism may even be regarded as a relatively late twist in the former tradition. The pragmatist perspective on subjectivity, as outlined above, may even be seen as a way of articulating the “paradox of subjectivity” – our problematic role as both world-constituting beings and beings existing in a fully natural world, that is, beings whose subjective experiences, including the worldconstituting perspectives themselves, emerge within that world – that the transcendental tradition has always taken seriously.22 The challenge for pragmatists in this regard is to make naturalism and transcendental inquiry better compatible with each other as philosophical methods. This paper cannot examine that issue in general terms; I can merely programmatically suggest that such a reconciliation might be achieved by arguing that the world-engaging, dynamic, practice-embedded subjectivity the pragmatists emphasize itself “constitutes,” or even “constructs,” reality (objectivity) in a way analogous to the constitution of reality and its objects in transcendental philosophy. Just like the phenomenological notion of Gegenstandskonstitution, the pragmatist conception of world-structuring through human practices would be thoroughly misunderstood if this conception were taken to be committed to the claim that we humans “construct” or “create” reality in a factual, causal, or empirical sense; clearly, much of reality is independent of us, and we should be pragmatic realists about it. However, there is a clearly identifiable (JamesianDeweyan) sense in which reality does depend on us. The objects of our thought and inquiry are inevitably the result of selective interests, of what is important for us, of what we find significant in the world surrounding us, a world in which we must continuously act and orientate. Such selective interests and valuational activities – arising out of our human agency and habits of action, which themselves are crucial to any pragmatist philosophy of subjectivity, as suggested

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above – then to a crucial extent determine what the world, for us, is like. This is rather obviously analogous to the way in which the human cognitive faculty at a transcendental level constructs the empirical world in Kant’s First Critique. The transcendental subjectivity involved must, however, be carefully reconceptualized in terms of natural (presumably, emergently real) practices taking place in the world, which again is constituted, transcendentally, from subjective perspectives. There is, admittedly, a circular structure here, indicating, however, reflexivity instead of any vicious circularity or questionbegging. Transcendental subjectivity is not any kind of other-worldly (transcendent) ghost; it is our own subjectivity in this very world we live in and which is given to us as an object of cognition, that is, our own subjectivity viewed as the subject of world-constitution rather than simply as one object among others in the (constituted) world.23 We must, therefore, be able to view ourselves, slightly paradoxically, both as subjects and objects. Pragmatism, as much as Kantian transcendental philosophy, may offer us philosophical resources to defend this double-aspect view of ourselves. 5. The problem of solipsism Insofar as pragmatism “goes transcendental” along the lines suggested in the above reinterpretation of James, in particular, it will be a real issue whether the pragmatist conception of subjectivity in the end collapses into some form of solipsism. (Perhaps this is not a major problem for Peircean or Deweyan pragmatists, but for Jamesian or Schillerian more subjectivist pragmatists it certainly is.) Ultimately, it is my future experiences that count in determining the pragmatic significance of any (metaphysical) “formula of the world.” My selective interests guide the transcendental world-constituting that enables the objects of experience and inquiry to emerge. Moreover, it is not clear that my subjectivity is genuinely connected intersubjectively with other experiential points of view. Solipsism is, in Jamesian pragmatism, in the end overcome only ethically, through a pragmatic (moral) decision to take seriously other experiential perspectives on the world.24 It would, however, be impossible to argue for this interpretation of James, and for the relevance of the problem of solipsism in his thought, in this paper. I am certainly not claiming that James, or any pragmatist (or perhaps anyone else), is or ever has been a solipsist. Even so, the problem of solipsism does have a role to play in a serious philosophical examination of the problem of subjectivity. It certainly plays a role in transcendental philosophy, especially transcendental phenomenology, and it is hence natural to see it as playing such a role in Kantian reinterpretations of pragmatism, too. The way in which I am (as I really believe I am) connected, intersubjectively, with other human subjects within genuinely shareable practices and habits of action must be pragmatically explored; it cannot be just taken for granted.

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Note, however, that the problem of solipsism as it is understood here is not just the skeptical, epistemological problem that, for all we know, the external world might not exist or everything might just be my dream. It is, rather, the conceptual problem of how we are so much as able to view our own subjectivity as one among many, and to view the world as empirically speaking independent of us, even though it is – if the reflections above are on the right track – transcendentally speaking constituted by our practices. The social and intersubjective emphasis of pragmatism is certainly to its merit, but these valuable insights of pragmatism should not blind us to the philosophical significance of this conceptual problem (even if the epistemological version of the solipsism issue is a relatively uninteresting remnant of the Cartesian paradigm that pragmatists have, with good reason, set aside). 6. Pragmatism and metaphysics As a follow-up to the proposal not only to (non-reductively) naturalize subjectivity but to “re-transcendentalize” pragmatism and pragmatic naturalism, a metaphilosophical point on pragmatist philosophy of subjectivity needs to be raised. It might seem that pragmatism approaches the mind and subjectivity in non-metaphysical and non-ontological terms, purely epistemologically and experientially – or, in contemporary pragmatism inspired by Rorty’s antirepresentationalism, purely linguistically, examining not the “real” phenomenon of subjectivity at all – whether or not we may usefully say that there “really” is such a phenomenon in the world – but just the vocabularies or discourses (or “language-games”) we use to talk about subjectivity. Bjørn Ramberg, in particular, has aptly spoken about “post-ontological philosophy of mind” in this Rortyan context.25 This is indeed the perspective taken by several neopragmatists of the Rortyan stripe; however, for classical pragmatists, as has been argued by Dewey scholars and James scholars alike, the notion of experience is much more central than the notion of language.26 I am not claiming that the neopragmatists’ insistence on language is mistaken; on the contrary, pragmatists need to (re)connect their views with (late-) Wittgensteinian philosophy of language, for instance. Therefore, a sharp opposition between experience-oriented classical pragmatism (e.g., Dewey) and language-oriented neopragmatism (e.g., Rorty) is misleading and may hinder our pragmatist explorations of the dimensions of our subjectivity that are clearly both experiential and linguistically articulable. However, it would be a mistake to conclude that there is no place for ontology or metaphysics in pragmatism at all (either generally or in the special field of subjectivity research). By examining the ways in which subjectivity is experienced, or linguistically structured (spoken about), by us, pragmatists may examine what subjectivity, for us, is – or what its role or place in the natural empirical world transcendentally structured by us (by that very subjectivity) is. They will then examine the

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philosophical-anthropological phenomenon we categorize as subjectivity from within the perspectives of our lives already colored by that phenomenon. This, I am tempted to say, will be an ontological inquiry into subjectivity, albeit in a heavily reinterpreted form. It is “metaphysics of subjectivity” in a Kantian shape, examining not the way the world is absolutely independently of us but the ways in which we may (have to) take the world to be in terms of our experiential and linguistic practices. Pragmatists should not give up metaphysics but reinterpret the very notion of metaphysics pragmatically. In the case of subjectivity, what this means is that, once again, we should not be concerned with the subject conceived (or imagined) as a Cartesian-like substantial entity – any knowledge about which Kant persuasively argued is impossible27 – but, truly transcendentally, with the ways in which our subjectivity construes, for us, the world we live in as the (always reinterpretable) condition for the possibility of being able to experience any objects “out there.”28 7. Metaphysics, ethics, and subjectivity A successful rehabilitation of metaphysics – in relation to subjectivity or more generally – can eventually only take place in pragmatism if we are prepared to reconnect metaphysics with ethics. Ultimately, our metaphysical perspectives on subjectivity, when subjected to pragmatic evaluation in terms of the “pragmatic method” (especially in its Jamesian form), will have to be grounded in ethical considerations. This is how we should read James’s reflections on “some metaphysical problems pragmatically considered” in the third lecture of Pragmatism. It is, in the end, the ethical significance of various metaphysical conceptions of subjectivity that will determine their pragmatic “cash value.” James does not explicitly discuss subjectivity in this context, but he does examine free will, for instance, and his approach can be readily applied to the problems we are now considering.29 Here, the acknowledgment of the other subject, another human person and experiential point of view independent of ourselves, is a decisive test case, a criterion for any adequate pragmatist metaphysics of subjectivity. This will be a genuinely metaphysical endeavor grounded in ethics. Our pragmatist philosophy of subjectivity cannot first settle the metaphysical question of what subjectivity is, or whether there is any, in order to turn to ethical issues afterwards, but must approach this topic ethically from the very start. There is no non-ethical, or morally neutral, way of understanding, at a purely theoretical level, our practical world-embeddedness and the (quasi-)transcendental world-constitutivity itself reflexively embedded in that embeddedness. Thus, the special case of subjectivity, pragmatically investigated and rearticulated, enables us to draw a general metaphilosophical moral about the need to reconsider the relations between two central philosophical sub-disciplines, ethics and metaphysics. For a pragmatist, it is not the case – either here or elsewhere – that metaphysical issues are to be solved first and ethical ones only

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thereafter; on the contrary, the two are intimately entangled, because there is no way to examine metaphysically the way the world is absolutely, and any investigation of the world as structured from the perspectives of our selective (subjective) interests will inevitably be colored by ethical considerations.30

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am grateful to Bjørn Ramberg who invited me to present this paper in the “Pragmatism and Subjectivity” symposium at the APA Pacific Division Conference in Vancouver, BC (8–12 April 2009), as well as to all those who commented on the presentation. This paper is part of my research project, “The Ethical Grounds of Metaphysics,” funded by the Academy of Finland (2008–11).

NOTES 1. Another notable exception is Bjørn Ramberg, whose work in the philosophy of mind largely starts from Rortyan and Davidsonian ideas. See Ramberg, “Pragmatism and Post-Ontological Philosophy of Mind,” in Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert B. Brandom (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2000). Furthermore, Hilary Putnam’s work is of course classical in the philosophy of mind, but during his functionalist period in the 1960–70s, when he significantly contributed to the emergence of the main paradigms of contemporary philosophy of mind, he was not yet a pragmatist – not, at least, in the sense of being connected with the pragmatist tradition. For a pragmatist reconsideration of the problems of functionalism, see Putnam, Words and Life, ed. James Conant (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994); and Putnam, The Threefold Cord: Mind, Body, and World (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). Furthermore, while John Dewey is generally acknowledged as a classic of naturalism, which in turn is generally seen as the main paradigm of modern philosophy of mind, Dewey’s pragmatism plays hardly any role in this acknowledgment. 2. See Lynn Bridgers, Contemporary Varieties of Religious Experience (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005). 3. See Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin, Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed (London: Continuum, 2008). 4. See, in particular, Dewey’s classical works, Experience and Nature (1925, 2nd edn. 1929) (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court, 1986); and The Quest for Certainty: A Study on the Relation between Knowledge and Action (1929) (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1960). Among Mead’s works, see especially The Philosophy of the Present (1932), ed. A. E. Murphy (La Salle, Ill.:: Open Court). 5. Sami Pihlström, “The Re-Emergence of the Emergence Debate,” Principia 6.1 (2002): 133–181; Charbel Niño El-Hani and Sami Pihlström, “Emergence Theories and Pragmatic Realism,” Essays in Philosophy 3.2 (2002), at www.humboldt.edu/~essays. 6. Dewey, The Quest for Certainty, pp. 214–215. 7. J. E. Tiles, Dewey (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), p. 148. 8. John Dewey and Arthur F. Bentley, Knowing and the Known (1949), in John Dewey: The Later Works, 1925–1953, vol. 16, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), p. 45. 9. Ibid., p. 121.

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10. See Putnam, The Threefold Cord, p. 174. 11. These are collected in Charles S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce vol. 1, eds. Nathan Houser et al., (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992). 12. See again Putnam, The Threefold Cord, on emergence as a misleading metaphor, encouraging us to conceive of the mind as a kind of “thing” rather than a world-directed activity. As indicated above, I am not entirely convinced that this pessimism about the potential role played by the concept of emergence is justified. Even Putnam himself has appealed to an intuitive concept of emergence in defending his nonreductive account of the mind. 13. Sami Pihlström, Pragmatism and Philosophical Anthropology: Understanding Our Human Life in a Human World (New York: Peter Lang, 1998); “On the Concept of Philosophical Anthropology,” Journal of Philosophical Research 28 (2003), pp. 259–285. 14. See Charles S. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief” (1877), reprinted in The Essential Peirce, for the famous “doubt-belief theory of inquiry” and the related conception of beliefs as “habits of action.” For the importance of “habitual rationality” in pragmatism, see Erkki Kilpinen, The Enormous Fly-Wheel of Society: Pragmatism’s Conception of Habitual Rationality and Social Theory (Helsinki: University of Helsinki, Department of Sociology, 2000). 15. I am convinced that pragmatists have a lot to learn from, say, David Carr, The Paradox of Subjectivity: The Self in the Transcendental Tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), which starts from Kant and Husserl, or from Dan Zahavi, Husserl’s Phenomenology (Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press, 2003). 16. This is what David Skrbina argues in his book, Panpsychism in the West (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2005). 17. For interesting discussions of James’s panpsychist (or “panexperientialist”) reflections, see T. L. S. Sprigge, James and Bradley: American Truth and British Reality (LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1993). 18. Sami Pihlström, “Panpsychism – a Neglected Jamesian Alternative?” Journal of Philosophical Research 32 (2007): 319–347, reprinted in Pihlström, “The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything”: Jamesian Perspectives on Mind, World, and Religion (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 2008), chap. 7. 19. Charles S. Peirce, “Immortality in the Light of Synechism” (1893) in The Essential Peirce, vol. 2, ed. The Peirce Edition Project (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), pp. 1–2. 20. See especially William James, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907), eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), chap. 7. 21. F. C. S. Schiller, Pragmatism and Humanism: Selected Writings 1891–1938, eds. John R. Shook and Hugh P. MacDonald (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2008). 22. See again Carr, The Paradox of Subjectivity. 23. Sami Pihlström, Naturalizing the Transcendental: A Pragmatic View (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2003), especially “Introduction”; Pihlström, “The Problem of Mind and Other Minds in William James’s Pragmatism,” in Psychology and Philosophy, ed. Sara Heinämaa and Martina Reuter (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009), reprinted (in an expanded form) in Pihlström, “The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything,” chap. 5.

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24. Sami Pihlström, Solipsism: History, Critique, and Relevance (Tampere, Finland: Tampere University Press, 2004), chap. 5; Pihlström, “The Problem of Mind and Other Minds in William James’s Pragmatism.” 25. Ramberg, “Pragmatism and Post-Ontological Philosophy of Mind,” cited above. 26. See for example David L. Hildebrand, Beyond Realism and Antirealism: Dewey and the Neopragmatists (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2003). 27. See the section on the “Paralogisms of Pure Reason” (“Paralogismen der reinen Vernunft”) in Immanuel Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781/1787), ed. Raymund Schmidt (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1990). 28. Sami Pihlström, “The Metaphysics and Ethics of the Self: Personal Identity Pragmatically Reconsidered,” forthcoming in Identity and Social Transformation: Proceedings of the 5th Central European Pragmatist Forum, ed. John Ryder and Radim Šip (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2009); Pihlström, Pragmatist Metaphysics: An Essay on the Ethical Grounds of Ontology (London: Continuum, 2009). 29. See James, Pragmatism, chap. 3. I have examined the metaphysical and ethical significance of the pragmatic method more closely in Pihlström, Pragmatist Metaphysics. 30. For more thoroughgoing elaborations of this view, see Pihlström, “The Trail of the Human Serpent Is over Everything,” especially chap. 5; and Pragmatist Metaphysics, passim.

Sami Pihlström Professor of Practical Philosophy Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy University of Jyväskylä P.O. Box 35 FI-40014 Finland

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 15–37

Editions Rodopi © 2009

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism Carl Sachs

I distinguish between two phases of Rorty’s naturalism: “nonreductive physicalism” (NRP) and “pragmatic naturalism” (PN). NRP holds that the vocabulary of mental states is irreducible that of physical states, but this irreducibility does not distinguish the mental from other irreducible vocabularies. PN differs by explicitly accepting a naturalistic argument for the transcendental status of the vocabulary of agency. Though I present some reasons for preferring PN over NRP, PN depends on whether ‘normativity’ can be ‘naturalized’.

1. Introduction A substantial portion of 20th and 21st century Anglophone philosophy concerns the problem of naturalism. By this I mean the philosophical motivations for adopting naturalism, the status and varieties of naturalism, and the debates between naturalists and their critics. The resulting philosophical situation has been described as “the real battle going on today, between reductive naturalism and normatively oriented accounts of rational practice” (Moyar 2008, 141). A resolution of this “battle” requires an inquiry into the prospects for a stable and attractive via media between these extremes. Let us say, then, that a candidate for a via media between reductive naturalism and norm-focused account of the social practices of rational agents is a candidate for “non-reductive naturalism.” On the face of it, non-reductive naturalism promises us to eat our cake and have it afterwards. Since it is non-reductionist, it could avoid the problems that accompany reductive or eliminative naturalism.1 Yet as a version of naturalism, it avoids the dogmatic temptations of a first philosophy which stands apart from science, justifies science, and prescribes its cultural vocation.2 “Nonreductive naturalism” is used here as an umbrella term for a variety of positions that attempt to preserve metaphilosophical naturalism without giving in to reductionism or scientism. My aim here is to examine the strengths and weaknesses of a particular strategy for arriving at non-reductive naturalism – what might be called “the Davidson-Rorty strategy.”

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Rorty, as is well appreciated, enthusiastically endorses historicism with respect to philosophical problems and theories. His historicist emphasis on the invention of increasingly more sophisticated forms of self-understanding is supposed to work in tandem with a naturalist emphasis on human beings as slightly more complicated animals. The question arises therefore as to how we are supposed to understand the relation between naturalism and historicism. In what follows I will reconstruct Rorty’s naturalism through his engagement with Donald Davidson.3 This engagement falls into two stages: “non-reductive physicalism” and “pragmatic naturalism.”4 Pragmatic naturalism differs by accepting the importance of transcendental argument for understanding our ascriptions of intentional states, or by what Ramberg (2004) calls “the vocabulary of agency.” I begin with a reconstruction of “non-reductive physicalism” (section 2), with emphasis on how Rorty uses anomalous monism in order to deny (pace Davidson) that the vocabulary of intentional states has any privileged status over other descriptions of natural events, objects, and relations. I then turn to more recent work by Davidson and by Bjørn Ramberg to show how the distinctive status of the vocabulary of agency can be secured through transcendental argument, provided that the argument is understood as naturalistic and antifoundational (section 3). I argue that Rorty should be willing to endorse transcendental arguments as formulated in this way because they do not function as descriptive vocabularies. Rather, they are normative; they reveal basic structures of our self-understanding as agents. I argue that PN, understood this way, has distinct advantages over NRP. I conclude that Rortyian pragmatic naturalism is a type of naturalism insofar as it begins with the basically Wittgensteinian point that there is a plurality of discursive practices within the form of life of a certain kind of animal (section 4). Pragmatic naturalism, so understood, naturalizes the manifest image without reducing it to, or translating it into, the scientific image. We thus acknowledge the centrality to our self-understanding of ourselves as a certain kind of animal rather than as a system of particles (or whatever the ultimate constituents of reality turn out to be, if quantum mechanics is replaced by some other theory). 2. Non-reductive Physicalism What Rorty calls “non-reductive physicalism” (or “antireductionist naturalism”) goes through slightly different formulations throughout the 1990s. This position is comprised of two distinct claims. The first claim is that there are no radical discontinuities between humans and the rest of nature. Rorty presents this claim in a number of different ways, but it emerges clearly through the following examples:

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 17 1.

“To be a naturalist, in this sense, is to be the kind of antiessentialist who, like Dewey, sees no breaks in the hierarchy of increasingly complex adjustments to novel stimulation – the hierarchy which has amoebae adjusting themselves to changed water temperature at the bottom, bees dancing and chess players check-mating in the middle, and people fomenting scientific, artistic, and political revolutions at the top.” (Rorty 1991a, 109)

2.

“every event can be described in micro-structural terms, a description which mentions only elementary particles, and can be explained by reference to other events so described. This applies, e.g. to the events which are Mozart composing a melody or Euclid seeing how to prove a theorem.” (Rorty 1991b, 114)5

3.

“I define naturalism as the claim that (a) there is no occupant of space-time that is not linked in a single web of causal relations to all other occupants and (b) that any explanation of the behavior of any such spatiotemporal object must consist in placing that object within that single web.” (Rorty 1998b, 94)

4.

“I shall define ‘naturalism’ as the view that anything might have been otherwise, that there can be no conditionless conditions. Naturalists believe that all explanation is causal explanation of the actual, and that there is no such thing as a noncausal condition of possibility.” (Rorty 1991d, 55)

Or, as Rorty puts it in an especially pithy statement, “as good Darwinians, we want to introduce as few discontinuities as possible into the story of how we got from the apes to the Enlightenment” (Rorty 1998a, 40). Let us call this the continuity thesis, as comprised of the following claims: a)

for any entity, it stands in relation to other entities in terms that can be described using notions of spatio-temporal location and causal interaction.

b) all differences between spatio-temporal, causally related (i.e. “natural”) entities are differences of degree rather than of kind and, as a corollary. c)

all differences between human beings and other natural entities are differences of degree rather than of kind.

d) Thus human beings are properly seen as slightly more complicated than other animals, but nonetheless not something other than animal; we are not something animal plus something else that is non-animal or non-natural. The justification for the continuity thesis lies in Rorty’s debt to Quine, for whom there is no a priori vocation for philosophy; philosophy takes place within the

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natural world as the sciences present it. In its Quinean version, the continuity thesis is first and foremost a methodological assumption: philosophy is continuous with science, and only concerned with the objects of scientific inquiry. Consequently there are no entities that are exempt from the causal order. Rorty shares Quine’s rejection of any first philosophy that attempts to justify the sciences themselves. The continuity thesis is also, for Rorty, expression of sensitivity to the Darwinian and Deweyan understanding that human existence is continuous with the forms of life of other animals. The picture of humans as animals is underwritten by the results of the natural sciences. The second claim is presented as “anti-reductionism” or “non-reductive,” where reduction (and so irreducibility) is a semantic notion. Thus, in recasting Davidson, Rorty writes: to say that Davidson is an anti-reductionist physicalist is to say that he combines this claim [i.e. (2) above] with the doctrine that ‘reduction’ is relation merely between linguistic items, not among ontological categories. To reduce the language of X’s to the language of Y’s one must show either (a) that if you can talk about Ys you do not need to talk about X’s, or (b) that any given description in terms of X’s applies to all and only the things to which a given description in terms of Y’s applies. (Rorty 1991b, 114–115) Alternatively, following directly on (3) above, “I define reductionism as the insistence that there is not only a single web but a single privileged description of all entities caught in that web” (Rorty 1998b, 94). Let us call this the irreducibility thesis: there is no single privileged descriptive vocabulary to which all others can either be reduced (or eliminated if they cannot be reduced). Since Rorty stipulates that reduction is a semantic relation, the irreducibility thesis can be defined as the impossibility (or perhaps, more precisely, the uselessness) of that semantic relation among different “vocabularies.”6 If reduction is a semantic notion, then so too is irreducibility. Rorty thus argues that non-reductive physicalism rests on a conceptual or semantic irreducibility.7 Irreducibility is simply to say that talk of X’s – e.g. beliefs, desires, and reasons – cannot be replaced with talks of Y’s – e.g. patterns of neuronal activity or of fundamental particles – without altering the distribution of truth-values across sentences (or theories). To say that I believe that democracy is the worst form of government except for all the others is irreplaceable, salva vertiate, by saying anything about the behavior of large groups of neurons in my brain. Thus construed as a semantic relation, irreducibility is ontologically inert.8 It asserts only that talking about beliefs cannot be replaced by talking about brain-states; more generally, there is no single descriptive vocabulary into which all others can be translated salva veritate.

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 19 Irreducibility therefore neither licenses an inference to metaphysical supernaturalism nor blocks a commitment to metaphysical naturalism; irreducibility is “no impediment to a materialist outlook” (Rorty 1991b, 114). Nevertheless, it is not entirely clear how the dual commitment to continuity and irreducibility is supposed to work, or whether Rorty is even entitled to hold both theses. Since Davidson’s anomalous monism is also a type of non-reductive naturalism, and Davidson’s dialogue with Rorty has been important for both of them, it is helpful here to take a closer look at Davidson. Sinclair (2002) argues that Davidson ought to be interpreted as a naturalist because Davidson, like Rorty, accepts Quine’s emphasis on the continuity between philosophy and science. Yet Davidson is a non-reductive naturalist because he rejects the view that there must be a single level of description which satisfies all of our explanatory interests.9 Instead, Davidson holds that there can be both “heteronomic” and “homonomic” generalizations in the construction of theories (Davidson 1980). For some empirical theory, generalization to some additional body of evidence is homonomic if it further refines and extends those constitutive concepts already at work in the theory prior to taking the new body of evidence into account. A generalization is heteronomic if it departs from the prior set of concepts. On these grounds, Davidson claims that generalizations about psychophysical relations must be heteronomic because of the distinctive character of the concepts used in describing psychological states: when we use the concepts of belief, desire, and the rest, we must stand prepared, as the evidence accumulates, to adjust our theory in the light of considerations of overall cogency: the constitutive ideal of rationality partly controls each phase in the evolution of what must be an evolving theory.... We must conclude, I think, that nomological slack between the mental and the physical is essential as long as we conceive of man as a rational animal. (Davidson 1980, 223) The “evolving theory” here is the theory of the behavior of the creature construed as an intentional being, i.e. an agent. The norm of rationality makes it possible to take behavior as actions expressive of beliefs and desires, and this norm is heteronomic with respect to the concepts employed in physical theory. This does not preclude us from saying that every particular mental event is identical with some physical event. We can have both “causal dependence and nomological independence” of the mental and the physical (Davidson 1980, 224). Anomalous monism thus allows two different types of explanation – the psychological and the physical – to be regarded as conceptually (i.e. semantically) irreducible without warranting any claims about the distinct ontological status of the mental. By adopting this strategy from Davidson for his own purposes, Rorty accepts the conceptual difference between the mental and

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the physical but renders it ontologically innocuous. As he puts it, “the difference between mind and body – between reasons and causes – is thus no more mysterious than, e.g. the relation between a macro-structural and microstructural description of a table” (Rorty 1991b, 114). Rorty’s creative appropriation of Davidson should not blind us to a subtle but critically important distinction between their versions of non-reductive naturalism. Consider their respective attitudes towards Brentano’s thesis that the intentional is irreducible to the non-intentional. Davidson situates himself with respect to Quine’s attitude towards Brentano: After accepting Brentano’s claim that intentional idioms (those we use to report propositional attitudes) are not reducible to non-intentional concepts, Quine remarks, “One may accept the Brentano thesis either as showing the indispensability of intentional idioms and the importance of an autonomous science of intention, or as showing the baselessness of intentional idioms and the emptiness of a science of intention. My attitude, unlike Brentano’s, is the second.” (Davidson 2004a, 153)10 Though Davidson does not take Brentano’s thesis without reservation, he does argue that the vocabulary in which we employ intentional idioms has a special status with respect to the vocabularies of the natural sciences. By contrast, Rorty insists that the irreducibility of the intentional to the non-intentional is no different from any other kind of irreducibility. This irreducibility no different from, nor or any more significant, than the irreducibility of the biological or the geological. Deepening the contrast between Davidson and Rorty here is crucial for appreciating the superiority of Rorty’s later position. Rorty further develops this line of thought in a critical response to McDowell (1996). Rorty expresses skepticism about whether we could show “that there is a bigger gap between rationality and elementary particles and avian monogamy and those particles” (1998d, 393). Rorty happily accepts the Davidsonian thesis that the norms of rationality we employ in attributing psychological states to certain organisms on the basis of their behavior is heteronomic with respect to, and so irreducible to, the concepts of physics. Yet, he argues, it is conceptually irreducible only in the same way that any two forms of explanation may be irreducible to each other. That provides no reason, Rorty argues, for thinking that we need a new conception of the natural in order to accommodate the exercise of conceptual capacities, i.e. “naturalized platonism” (McDowell 1996, 95). The irreducibility of the mental to the physical does not indicate anything special about the mental; all vocabularies may be irreducible to one another. Though this flies in the face of Davidsonian doctrine, Rorty’s point ought to be well taken for two reasons. Firstly, Davidson’s original argument for the irreducibility of the mental suggests that all non-intentional vocabularies are in principle reducible to that of physics. But the irreducibility at stake here is a

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 21 conceptual one. The question therefore is whether the concepts that are constitutive of the vocabulary of geology or ecology are in principle semantically reducible to those of physics in a way that agency is not. Anyone who is inclined to think that conceptual irreducibility is a legitimate strategy to begin with should feel nervous about asserting that talking about beliefs is in principle irreducible to talking about particles, but talking about anticlines is not.11 Insisting on a difference between the sorts of irreducibility (psychophysical and geophysical) can easily become, if one is not exceedingly careful, a refuge for exiled and homeless intuitions about the ontological divide between humanity and nature. Rorty rightly questions Davidson’s contention that all nonintentional vocabularies can be in principle semantically reduced to that of physics.12 Secondly, Rorty argues for conceptual irreducibility, as Davidson does, in light of the diversity of human needs and interests. Sinclair clearly brings out this aspect of Davidson’s argument for non-reductive naturalism; we need different vocabularies, such as the vocabulary of the mental and the physical, because different vocabularies are governed by different explanatory interests we have as the sort of creatures we are (Sinclair 2002, 178ff). Some of our explanatory interests require intentional attributions, and thus presuppose norms of rationality. But then we ought to notice that we have explanatory interests not only in attributing psychological states; we have geological interests, ecological interests, paleontological interests, and so forth. Thus the considerations that Davidson brings to bear for refusing to reduce the psychological to the microphysical ought to hold for refusing to endorse the reduction of any interest-satisfying vocabulary to that of another. There is no reason, Rorty concludes, to think that the vocabulary of psychological states is sui generis with respect to all other vocabularies. Rorty concludes against McDowell that there is no need to fight off “bald naturalism” with “naturalized Platonism,” because bald naturalism is compatible with pluralism of vocabularies and so utterly innocuous. Recently, however, Rorty (2000) has conceded to Ramberg (2000) that Davidson had a deeper point that Rorty previously acknowledged. To use Ramberg’s terminology, the vocabulary of agency has priority over all vocabularies of empirical generalization. The next step is to determine what it is in Davidson’s account that Rorty has come to accept, and how accepting this points to a stronger version of non-reductive naturalism. 3. The Transcendental Priority of Agency To understand the significance of Rorty’s acceptance of Ramberg’s criticisms, we need to see how Ramberg is not only building on Davidson’s argument for the conceptual irreducibility of the mental, but also how Davidson’s argument is best seen as a transcendental argument of a peculiar sort. The transcendental character of Davidson’s arguments has been acknowledged elsewhere (Maker

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1991; Carpenter 2002; Bridges 2006). Here I want to appropriate Bridge’s term “transcendental externalism” in order to develop further Carpenter’s claim that “Davidson’s externalism, and especially its central model of triangulation, represents the heart of his transcendental argumentation” (220). More specifically, I want to describe three features of Davidson’s account of agency: that the irreducibility of the mental depends on the interrelation between physical and social externalism; that it is developed and defended through transcendental argument; and that it is a naturalized and anti-foundational transcendental argument, which Davidson calls “triangulation.” The triangulation argument can be difficult to specify precisely, in part because of the peculiarities of Davidson’s style of philosophizing. However, the importance of triangulation is clearly brought out in Davidson’s “Three Varieties of Knowledge” (2001d). Here, Davidson takes it as a basic fact that there are three domains of empirical knowledge: the subjective, the objective, and the intersubjective. Davidson regards modern epistemology as a series of various attempts to reduce one or two forms of knowledge to some third, and claims that all such attempts have failed. Hence he takes it as a starting point that “none of the three forms of knowledge is reducible to one or both of the others” (206). No ultimate priority can be assigned to knowledge of one’s own mental states, knowledge of the mental states of others, or knowledge of physical objects and events. At the same time, we need to understand how all three are both interconnected with and irreducible to one another. In “Three Varieties” Davidson argues that the indispensability of triangulation shows why all three types of empirical knowledge are inseparable. One cannot make sense of subjectivity without objectivity, because one cannot be a holder of beliefs at all without also understanding that one’s beliefs could be wrong. In that way beliefs require the concept of error, which in turn presupposes a grasp of objectivity.13 Yet objectivity depends upon the intersubjective community of creatures with whom one communicates: “it is only when an observer consciously correlates the responses of another creature with objects and events of the observer’s world that there is any basis for saying the creature is responding to these or to those objects and events” (212). Intersubjective communication consists of the on-going coordination of one’s responses to changes in the environment with the responses of others. To be a subject, then, is to regard oneself implicitly as standing at one corner of a triangle; at one of the other corners is another subject, and at the third corner is the world of objects.14 Consequently, “knowledge of other minds and knowledge of the world are mutually dependent; neither is possible without the other” and “knowledge of our own minds and knowledge of the minds of others are thus mutually dependent” (213). The “triangulation” of the subjective, intersubjective, and objective demonstrates why none can be grounded in the other; “[t]he three sorts of knowledge form a tripod: if any leg were lost, no part would stand” (220).

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 23 Davidson’s version of semantic externalism is a “novel hybrid of perceptual and social externalism” (Carpenter 2002, 221), since we cannot have social and perceptual externalism depend on each other. Without social relations, one cannot determine the content-determining cause of propositional attitudes. But without causal relations with objects, one cannot ascribe propositional attitudes to those with whom one coordinates one’s behavior. And without both, one cannot even understand oneself as having beliefs and desires. As Carpenter helpfully puts it, the meaning of our thoughts and our utterances are fixed neither by the micro-structure of our physical environment nor by the practices of our linguistic communities. Rather, Davidson’s triangulation theory of externalism asserts that content is fixed (at least in part) by systematic patterns of causal interactions between ourselves, other people with whom we interact linguistically, and objects and events we perceive in the world. (228) In other words, the dynamic and evolving pattern of interaction between language users (social externalism) and the world (perceptual externalism) determines both “the objectivity of thought and the empirical content of thoughts about the external world” (Davidson 2001b, 129). In this sense the triangulation argument should be regarded as a transcendental argument, since it specifies a necessary condition of there being any rational cognition, and thus agency, at all. In “The Emergence of Thought” (Davidson 2001b) Davidson presents triangulation as a necessary condition for the emergence of thought itself. The emergence of thought is difficult to conceive precisely because the vocabulary of intentional ascriptions is irreducible to that of physical systems.15 Since it is irreducible (i.e. no homonomic psychophysical generalizations), we face a difficulty, to which I turn to quote Davidson at length: In both the evolution of thought in the history of mankind, and the evolution of thought in an individual, there is a stage at which there is no thought followed by a subsequent stage at which there is thought. To describe the emergence of thought would be to describe the process which leads from the first to the second of these stages. What we lack is a satisfactory vocabulary for describing the intermediate steps.... It is not that we have a clear idea what sort of language we would use to describe half-formed mind; there may be a very deep conceptual difficulty or impossibility involved. That means that there is a perhaps insuperable problem in giving a full description of the emergence of thought.... [but] There is a prelinguistic, precognitive situation which seems to me to constitute a necessary condition for thought and language, a condition that can exist independent of thought, and can therefore precede it.... The

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Anomalous monism holds that there is no serviceable vocabulary for bridging descriptions of objects and events in terms of physical (or chemical, biological, etc.) laws to vocabularies which ascribe beliefs, desires, and intentions to rational agents. Yet the vocabulary of intentional ascriptions is indispensable, for reasons familiar to us from Strawson and Austin as well as Davidson. Davidson’s triangulation argument shows us how to specify exactly which complex patterns of animal behavior are necessary conditions for the application of the vocabulary of agency. It thus allows us to regard ourselves both as parts of the natural world and as agents. Yet it is only as agents that we can see ourselves as distinguishing between those theories which are governed by norms of rationality (the mental) and those theories which are not so governed (the physical). In that respect the vocabulary of agency has a transcendental status with respect to empirical theories of both mental and physical phenomena. On this interpretation, the vocabulary of agency is both transcendental and naturalistic. The task now is to see how it can fulfill both conditions. This problem is resolved by noticing that the triangulation argument is explicitly and emphatically non-foundational. Though non-foundational, it counts as a transcendental argument because triangulation specifies a necessary condition for there being any rational thought at all. Pihlström (2004) proposes that an argument is transcendental if it satisfies two conditions: (i) it demonstrates “concern for the necessary conditions for the possibility of something (such as experience or meaning)”; (ii) “an examination of the conditions for the possibility of some given actuality must proceed ‘from within’ the sphere (of experience, of meaning) constrained and limited by those conditions” (293).16 The first condition is by now familiar from the work of Strawson and Stroud. The second condition prevents empirical discovery of actual conditions (e.g. of cognition or language) from counting as transcendental. In these terms, Davidson demonstrates that anything that we must describe by using the vocabulary of agency, including empirical content governed by shared norms (objective, intersubjective, and subjective), has as a necessary condition the triangulation between at least two creatures and a shared world. Yet it is only from within the sphere of agency, having been initiated into it through triangulation, that we are in an epistemic position to appreciate the force of the demonstration. Triangulation is a necessary condition for us to be the sorts of beings that we can recognize as agents at all. Like arguments in the transcendental tradition from Kant to Heidegger and Wittgenstein, Davidson’s triangulation argument culminates in a moment of insight into the necessary conditions of those basic features of ourselves without which we would find ourselves utterly unintelligible, unrecognizable.

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 25 That the triangulation argument is non-foundational, and thus compatible with naturalism in a way that foundational transcendental arguments are not, has not been appreciated. For example, in his important comparison of Kant and Davidson, Maker distinguishes between “confrontational arguments” and “transcendental arguments” (Maker 1991). Confrontational arguments posit an antecedently given subject and an antecedently given object and ask how subjectivity and objectivity, thus construed, could confront each other. By contrast, transcendental arguments demonstrate that no confrontation is necessary; subjectivity and objectivity are only intelligible insofar as they are mutually dependent. The mutual dependence is established by showing it to be a necessary condition for the possibility of any knowledge-claim at all. What a transcendental thinker such as Kant or Davidson “wants to show is that objectivity is other than subjectivity without being something radically other as to be thoroughly beyond and completely inaccessible to it” (Maker 1991, 351). While I concur with Maker to that extent, he does not sufficiently appreciate that triangulation is not a foundational transcendental argument. Though triangulation is a necessary condition for the possibility of empirical content, it does not provide a foundation for all knowledge and experience as a whole. Rather, it illustrates the interdependence of irreducibly different kinds of rational cognition. More importantly, by bringing into consideration the role of inter-subjectivity through the existence of another sentient creature who occupies a distinct spatio-temporal location and who has her own pattern of responses to stimuli, Davidson shows that objectivity cannot be given a foundation in subjectivity. In order for triangulation to work, the other must be truly irreducible to any sameness of self and other – for only then can the otherness of the other’s perspective count as a frame of reference according to which my own beliefs can be seen as true or false. I can only triangulate if the otherness of the other subject is irreducible to my own subjectivity. If it is not irreducible, then genuine inter-subjectivity is lost, and both objectivity and subjectivity along with it. Taken this way, triangulation should be regarded as a transcendental argument against “the constitutive power of transcendental subjectivity,” contra Pihlström (2004).17 Triangulation is a transcendental argument which shows, pace Kant and Husserl, that subjectivity cannot be foundational for knowledge. Triangulation allows Davidson to show how the irreducibility of psychological language to bio-chemical language is different in kind from the irreducibility of the latter to descriptions couched in terms of the behavior of elementary particles. The process of communication embedded in the relation of triangulation is, as Davidson puts it, “a community of minds is the basis of knowledge; it provides the measure of all things. It makes no sense to question the adequacy of this measure, or to seek a more ultimate standard” (Davidson 2001d, 218). Further developing this line of thought, Ramberg (2000) suggests that “the distinctiveness of agency lies ... in the fact that the predicates thus applied

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take their point from a normativity we invoke when we try to explain to ourselves what it is that makes communication possible” (Ramberg 2000, 360). Viewed in these terms, the basis of knowledge invoked by Davidson is construed as “a plurality of creatures engaged in the project of describing their world and interpreting each other’s descriptions of it” (ibid., 362). There is no question of our even being able to derive the vocabulary of agency from the vocabulary of empirical generalization; the former is a condition of possibility for the latter, with the crucial proviso that the former is conceptualized as having a naturalized transcendental condition: the triangulation between a plurality of animals and their world. It has often seemed that there is a conflict between transcendental interpretations of Davidson and naturalistic interpretations of Davidson. Yet only if the triangulation argument is both transcendental and naturalistic will we be able to appreciate the change in Rorty’s later position. 4. Pragmatic Naturalism Rorty’s shift from “non-reductive physicalism” to “pragmatic naturalism” can be seen in a number of articles from the first few years of the current century. In “Naturalism and quietism” (2007), Rorty clearly distinguishes between his own views and naturalistically-oriented analytic metaphysics and epistemology. Rorty identifies this difference through what Price (2004) calls “subject naturalism” and “object naturalism.” Object naturalism consists of an ontological doctrine – “the view that in some important sense, all there is is the world studied by science” – and an epistemological doctrine – “the view that all genuine knowledge is scientific knowledge” (73). But object naturalism is not the only kind of naturalism there is: I want to distinguish object naturalism from a second view of the relevance to science to philosophy. According to this second view, philosophy needs to begin with what science tells us about ourselves. Science tells us that we humans are natural creatures, and if the claims and ambitions of philosophy conflict with this view, then philosophy needs to give way. This is naturalism in the sense of Hume, then, and arguably Nietzsche. I’ll call it subject naturalism. (73) While object naturalists “worry about the place of non-particles in a world of particles,” (Rorty 2007, 151) subject naturalists view such “placement problems” (i.e. the place of values, mental states, numbers, secondary qualities, etc.) as no more than “problems about human linguistic behavior (or perhaps about human thought)” (Price 2004, 76). Thus, whereas object naturalists want to show how values, consciousness, secondary qualities, and logical and mathematical principles are consistent with our best contemporary physics, subject naturalists begin with a picture of human beings as a peculiar sort of animal – an animal that engages in an odd behavior called language.

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 27 Subject naturalism is consistent with the continuity thesis because it holds that humans are slightly more complicated animals. Yet it also embraces the irreducibility thesis because human beings are regarded as animals that engage in a variety of discursive practices, none of which satisfies all needs and interests. Thus there is no single privileged descriptive vocabulary to which all others can be reduced. Price further argues that subject naturalism undermines object (i.e. reductive) naturalism because it abstains from commitment to any substantive word-world relations. If one thinks that the terms employed by linguistic animals are representations of entities and properties, then there could be a privileged descriptive vocabulary. But the move from subject naturalism to object naturalism depends on having a substantive view of word-world relations from which subject naturalism can simply abstain. Subject naturalists “think that once we have explained the uses of the relevant terms, there is no further problem about the relation of those uses to the world” (Rorty 2007, 151). More interestingly, however, Rorty explicitly identifies Price’s subject naturalism with Ramberg’s (2004) own version of “pragmatic naturalism.” Ramberg’s account of pragmatic naturalism requires a distinction between reduction and naturalization; the importance of this distinction makes it worthwhile to cite Ramberg at length: Reduction ... is a meta-tool of science; a way of systematically extending the domain of a set of tools for handling the explanatory tasks that scientists confront. Naturalization, by contrast, is a goal of philosophy: the elimination of metaphysical gaps between the characteristic features by which we deal with agents and thinkers, on the one side, and the characteristic features by reference to which we empirically generalize over the causal relations between objects and events, on the other. It is only in the context of a certain metaphysics that the scientific tool becomes a philosophical one, an instrument of legislative ontology. This is the metaphysics of scientism.... The pragmatic naturalist, by contrast, treats the gap itself, that which transforms reduction into a philosophical project, as a symptom of dysfunction in our philosophical vocabulary. Pragmatic naturalism does not aim at conceptual reduction, but at a transformation of those conceptual structures we rely on to sustain our sense of a metaphysical gap between those items we catch in our vocabulary of thought and agency, and those items we describe in our vocabularies of causal regularities. (Ramberg 2004, 43) Pragmatic naturalism, in Ramberg’s sense, holds that while reduction can be a legitimate strategy for organizing vocabularies of causal regularities, reduction is not necessary to alleviate metaphysical gaps, which is the goal of naturalization.18 Ramberg regards the distinction between “our vocabulary of agency” and “our vocabularies of causal regularities” as the Davidsonian distinction between the theories we form about ourselves as self- and other-interpreting

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agents (theories that are governed by norms of rationality) and the theories we form about the objective world (which are not so governed). That distinction, in turn, is secured through anti-foundational, naturalistic transcendental argument: without that distinction, we would be unable to regard ourselves as agents at all, but triangulation allows us to see agency as natural. The priority of the vocabulary of agency permits a powerful criticism of Rorty’s (1998c) argument against McDowell (and Davidson). Against Rorty, Ramberg argues that the inescapability of agency shows that not every vocabulary can be regarded as on a par with the kinds of empirical generalization used in scientific explanation: “we should see an interesting difference between the sort of conceptual features that may distinguish the biological or the geological from each other or from the chemical or the physical, and the sorts of conceptual freedom that make the psychological distinct from all of these” (Ramberg 2004, 46). Triangulation guarantees that the vocabulary of agency is irreducible to the vocabulary of empirical generalizations, for it makes all such generalizations possible in the first place. It follows that the irreducibility of the mental to the physical cannot be held on a par with the irreducibility of the vital to the physical. Not only does Rorty concede the point, but Rorty’s (2000) response to Ramberg (2000) is remarkable for the extent of the concession.19 Rorty now accepts that the vocabulary of agency is privileged, in a distinctive way: “there is a vocabulary which is privileged, not by irreducibility, but by inescapability. It is not, however, the descriptive vocabulary of intentionality but the prescriptive vocabulary of normativity.... The two are not the same” (Rorty 2000, 373). By distinguishing between the descriptive and the prescriptive, Rorty endorses the transcendental presupposition of agency without rejecting the claim that there is no single privileged descriptive vocabulary. This point is central for a post-ontological philosophy, if the point of ontology – whether classical, “fundamental,” or scientific – is to assign ultimate privilege to some descriptive vocabulary.20 But the inescapability of normativity, as construed by Davidson, Ramberg, and now Rorty, does not threaten to smuggle ontology in through the back door after having been kicked out the front. To summarize, Rortyian pragmatic naturalism holds that: (a) the vocabulary of agency is distinctive from the vocabularies of empirical generalizations; (b) its distinctiveness lies in the role that normativity plays in this vocabulary; (c) the distinctiveness of the vocabulary of agency can be brought out through naturalistic transcendental argument. As a naturalistic transcendental argument, however, pragmatic naturalism is still a conceptual position, and so not grounded in any strong ontological claims for or against physicalism, reductionism, etc.21 An immediate advantage of PN over NRP can be seen in how it distinguishes between different positions that Rorty had previously conflated. Recall that NRP held that the irreducibility of the mental to the physical is no different from the irreducibility of the biological to the physical. It is clear that

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 29 part of this thought can be accommodated in terms of the “disunity of science” thesis advanced by Dupré (2004). If we consider how scientists actually work, we will see both a plurality of methods of inquiry and a plurality of scientific theories. Taking such diversity into account, there may be very good reasons for rejecting the reduction of the biological to the physical.22 Consequently we can reject what Dupré calls “the myth of the unity of science.” It is just this myth which Rorty also criticizes – remember that Rorty is skeptical of the viability of the reduction of the biological (“avian monogamy”) to the physical (“particles”). But NRP holds that once the myth of the unity of science is rejected, we will have done all that needs to be done to satisfy Davidson’s and McDowell’s desire to safeguard the distinctiveness of the mental. By contrast, PN allows us to correctly emphasize the difference between Dupré’s thesis and Ramberg’s. Dupré argues against a single privileged descriptive vocabulary among empirical generalizations; Ramberg argues for a distinctive status of the prescriptive vocabulary of agency as distinct from descriptive vocabularies of empirical generalization. Though pragmatic naturalism can happily accept both of these points, the difference was obscured in Rorty’s earlier position, and it is a virtue of PN that it makes the difference clear. Still, it might be asked: if we accept both the transcendental priority of the vocabulary of agency and the disunity of sciences – is there still anything left worth calling naturalism at all? The answer I propose is a tentative “yes,” because both within science (the Rorty-Dupré thesis) and among discursive practices generally (the Ramberg-Price thesis) we discover a basic plurality in the form of life of a certain kind of animal. Pragmatic naturalism understood in this way takes its cue from Wittgenstein’s remark: “Commanding, questioning, storytelling, chatting, are as much a part of our natural history as walking, eating, drinking, playing” (Wittgenstein 2001, §25). Though pragmatic naturalism is fully consistent with insights from the natural sciences (e.g. paleontology, neuroscience, comparative psychology, molecular genetics, particle physics, etc.), its content and validity are independent of them. (One might say that pragmatic naturalism allows us to naturalize the manifest image without reducing it to the scientific image or combining them within a synoptic view.23) The “yes” is tentative because obstacles to a full-blooded embrace of PN must not be ignored. The most serious problem is this: in order to accommodate the vocabulary of agency within naturalism, we must be able to see how normativity can be natural. Hence the pragmatic naturalist must surmount a dual burden: the tradition of how the normative has traditionally been conceived, and the tradition of how the natural has traditionally been conceived.24 On the one hand, among twentieth-century philosophers, normativity has paradigmatically been attached to linguistic performances expressive of conceptual mastery. On the other hand, within the modern tradition, nature has been construed as ‘disenchanted’, i.e. nomologically governed and so not describable in terms of norms.

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At this point we face a potentially serious problem with the DavidsonRorty strategy for constructing pragmatic naturalism. The problem is that both Davidson and Rorty appear to accept the very “disenchanted” concept of nature which renders it difficult, if not impossible, to see how normativity could be naturalized. For example, Davidson has been criticized for his rejection of our conception of animal life, which ought be to central to a successful pragmatic naturalism. In his criticism of the triangulation argument, Bridges (2006) contends that Davidson’s worries about “the ambiguity of the concept of cause” (Davidson 2001b, 129) in our explanations of animal behavior, and our inability to attribute propositional attitudes to them, arise because Davidson refuses to help himself to what Bridges calls “our ordinary conception of animal life” (Bridges 2006, 310). On the one hand, I concur with Bridges that our ordinary conception of animal life, grounded as it is in the form of life that we as animals share with the others, allows us to avoid having “to choose between Davidson’s bare vision of an animal driven to and fro by undifferentiated causal sequences passing through its body, and the sentimental pet owner’s view of an animal as a fullfledged thinker and agent who just happens to be unusually taciturn” (311). Put slightly differently, Davidson’s conception of nature, including animal life, is that of a disenchanted concept of nature. On the other hand, the theorists who offer alternatives to this dilemma – Bridges considers McDowell and Hurley – still must take up the burden of explaining how the normative emerged from the non-normative without reducing the normative to the non-normative, which is exactly the problem to which triangulation is a response.25 The disenchanted concept of nature is clearly present in NRP, where the commitment to naturalism is expressed through the claim that the ultimate constituents of nature are microphysical states. While PN does indicate a turn away from an emphasis on microphysics towards a picture of human beings as animals, where animal life is understood in terms that Rorty inherits from Dewey and Darwin, it is not yet clear to me that PN goes far enough in distancing itself from the disenchanted concept of nature that dominates both Davidson’s remarks on animals and NRP. The resolution of this problem requires that Rortyian pragmatic naturalism be further developed by taking much more seriously the thought that human beings are a more properly regarded as a certain kind of animal than as a system of particles.26 (This is also the crux of the difference between Price’s subject naturalism and object naturalism.) PN, as I have presented here, ought to be responsive to these worries due to its conception of (1) the vocabulary of agency as having patterns of complex animal behavior for its necessary conditions of application and (2) pluralism with respect to science which allows for a conception of animal life irreducible to the movements of particles. Yet without denying that much more work is required, PN offers a promising via media between “reductive naturalism” and “normatively oriented accounts of social practice” (Moyar 2008, p 141). It can

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 31 do so because the incorporation of the vocabulary of agency into naturalism makes possible a much richer and more sophisticated picture of ourselves as “natural agents”: animals who are inescapably committed to the process of triangulating between the subjective, objective, and intersubjective aspects of knowledge and experience, and in that process engendering, as Rorty has done more than most to emphasize, ever more interesting and exciting forms of science, philosophy, and poetry.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I wish to thank Steven Levine, Cheryl Misak, and Sami Pihlström for their comments on previous drafts of this paper, and Maureen Eckert for helpful remarks that led to note 8. The initial version of this paper was written as part of a NEH 2007 Summer Seminar organized at the University of New Mexico by Russell Goodman; the author thanks the NEH for its support, as well as the generous collegiality of the seminar participants and organizers.

NOTES 1. I have in mind here what Price (2004) calls “placement problems”: if the natural is all there is, then what should be said about values or about secondary qualities? For a now-classical presentation of placement problems for naturalism, see Stroud, “The Charm of Naturalism,” Pacific APA Presidential Address, 1996, reprinted in De Caro and Macarthur (2004). 2. In doing so, non-reductive naturalism also avoids flying in the face of the dominant metaphilosophical attitude of our times. Nor should it be ignored that a metaphilosophical commitment to naturalism is very likely regarded, among professional philosophers, as part of a broader commitment to secularism in the public sphere generally. 3. Since this paper emphasizes Rorty’s appropriation of Davidson, I shall ignore the early stage of Rorty’s naturalism, the “epistemological behaviorism” of Rorty (1979), where Davidson plays a less central role than in Rorty’s subsequent work. 4. The term “pragmatic naturalism” has a long genealogy independent of Rorty and his interlocutors; it was originally applied to Dewey’s position. Though Rorty has sometimes laid claim to the mantle of Dewey’s heir, much to the consternation of Dewey scholars, it is outside the purview of this paper to consider whether Rorty’s pragmatic naturalism is that of Dewey. 5. The careful reader will note that Rorty presents this as a definition of physicalism, not of naturalism. However, the notion that does the heavy lifting for Rorty here and throughout his corpus is that of a non-reductive physicalism. The idea of a “nonreductive physicalism” is also mentioned in a footnote to the citation in note 3 above. 6. For an extended discussion of the status of a “vocabulary” in Rorty’s philosophy, see Brandom (2000). 7. Only on the view of concepts that Davidson and Rorty accept – in which to grasp a concept is to know how to use a word in a sentence – is the identification of

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conceptual claims with semantic ones permissible. Since it is the views of Davidson and Rorty that are at issue here, I will use “semantic” and “conceptual” interchangeably. 8. Consequently, arguments against non-reductive naturalism – that is, arguments in favor of physicalism (“or something near enough”) – must turn on refutations of the semantic and epistemic views at work in Davidson and in Rorty, as can be seen in the criticisms of Davidson advanced by Kim and by Fodor. The disagreement in how to approach problems in philosophy of mind is driven by a much deeper set of striking contrasts. 9. Sinclair argues that Fodor’s reductive naturalism is driven by an a priori metaphysical commitment to “essentialism,” which he takes to mean “the ontological doctrine that posits a world consisting of a fixed totality of mind-independent entities admitting of only one true and complete description” (Sinclair 2002, 166). Only with this commitment in place does the continuity thesis shared by Davidson, Rorty, and Fodor generate the demand that (a) only phenomena that are reducible to physical phenomena count as real and (b) philosophical theories about necessary and possible conditions must be rejected if they conflict with empirical results about actual conditions. 10. This version of “Could There Be a Science of Rationality?” contains an “Afterword” not included in the original 1995 version of this essay, as reprinted in Problems of Rationality (2004). 11. In fact, Davidson does assert just this – that the vocabulary of geology is not in principle irreducible to that of physics, even if not in fact, whereas the vocabulary of psychology is irreducible in principle (Davidson 2004b, 112). 12. And, for that matter, which physics? I suspect that the privileged status of physics in Davidson – as in Quine and Sellars – derives its cachet from transferring to some imagined future physics – whatever physics might someday, somehow succeed in unifying (or overturning) general relativity and quantum field theory – the privileged status which Newtonian physics had for the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It is to Rorty’s credit that he is more sensitive to this point than are most contemporary naturalists, whether reductive or non-reductive. (A little historicism can go a long way.) 13. For elaboration of this claim within Davidson’s project, see “The Myth of the Subjective” (Davidson 2001a). However, it is important to notice that this constraint only pertains to conceptions of subjectivity as characterizable in terms of propositional attitudes. In the absence of mastery of a language, Davidson argues, the conditions for individuating propositional attitudes cannot be satisfied. However, Davidson does not deny that triangulation is possible in the absence of language. Davidson addresses the need for an account of non-linguistic triangulation, or “primitive triangulation” (Davidson 2005). For why Davidson requires a more fully developed account of primitive or non-linguistic triangulation, see Nulty (2006). 14. I take these to be “the familiar objects whose antics make our sentences and opinions true or false” (Davidson 2001c). 15. Sinclair (2005) does an excellent job of showing how the account of triangulation is motivated by the metaphilosophical commitment to non-reductive naturalism, and that seeing it in the proper context allows the Davidsonian naturalist to side-step certain objections. Where I disagree with Sinclair (2002; 2005) is in his reluctance to regard Davidson’s argument as a transcendental one. Davidson can hold transcendental claims of a weaker, naturalistic sort, to be specified. 16. Pihlström does not regard these conditions as necessary and sufficient conditions for transcendental argument: “Am I now claiming that any piece of philosophy if and only if it investigates the necessary conditions for the possibility of some given X

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 33 from within the sphere constrained by those conditions? Yes, but both X and the kinds of investigation that satisfy this criterion can be so variable that this ‘single criterion’ – while being a verbal formula that indeed captures all transcendental philosophies – itself has a family-resemblance character” (293). 17. It would take a different sort of paper to consider the similarities and differences between the transcendental argument of Davidson and that of Wittgenstein. For a nuanced explication of the sort of transcendental interpretation of Wittgenstein which could profitably be brought into conversation with the interpretation of Davidson defended here, see Lear (1998). 18. Notice, however, that by identifying reduction as concerned with “the explanatory tasks that scientists confront,” Ramberg regards reduction as an epistemic notion, and so not, as Rorty initially did, as a semantic one. 19. “In the case of Bjørn Ramberg’s paper, I find myself not only agreeing with what he says, but very much enlightened by it. So I shall be trying to restate Ramberg’s arguments rather than to rebut them – trying to strengthen rather than weaken them” (Rorty 2000, 370). 20. Whether it is possible or desirable to construct an ontology that is not an attempt to provide an ultimate or final descriptive vocabulary is not an issue that Rorty or Ramberg take seriously. 21. Ramberg (2000) argues our most basic reason for accepting the transcendental priority of agency, and thereby rejecting “scientism,” are not ontological but political. Rorty highlights the importance of this move by stressing the terminological shift from “intentionality” (a descriptive term) to “normativity” (a prescriptive term). We can thereby rescue the basically Kantian motivations of Davidson’s interest in anomalous monism by drawing out the point through Hegel rather than through Brentano. The next step would be to show how one can uphold the demand to resist and eliminate various form of dehumanization without ascribing a non-natural ontological status to human beings. 22. For recent attempts to explicate the nature of biological phenomena without reducing them to physico-chemical ones, yet but without thereby re-introducing vitalism or supernaturalism see Kauffman (1995; 2000) and Thompson (2007). 23. The hallmark of the “naturalized manifest image” is that it does not require any ontological commitments over and above those of the natural sciences. It thereby ought to be distinguished from the tradition of “perennial philosophy” which articulated the manifest image through an explicit anti-naturalism or supernaturalism in a tradition that runs from Plato through Paul and Augustine down to Descartes and Kant. 24. Aiken (2006) remarks, following Margolis, that if normativity is conceived of along Fregean lines, as it is by “Fregean Pragmatists” (322) such as Sellars, Brandom and McDowell – as well as Davidson and Rorty – there is a deep conflict with the commitment to continuity so important to the Deweyan strain within pragmatic naturalism. As long as normativity is construed along those lines, we will be tempted to give far too quick a response when asked why cooperative hunting among chimpanzees or dolphins should not count as normative. Rorty is aware, so far as I can tell, of the tension between the Fregean and Darwinian strands in his thought; he simply thinks that the urge to overcome that tension is the same as the demand to combine the manifest and scientific images within a synoptic view, and that urge therefore ought to be resisted, not satisfied. 25. In a similar vein, Finkelstein (2007) argues that Davidson is unable to avail himself our ordinary conception of animal life because of his commitment to what a properly philosophical theory is.

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26. Further development of this line of thought will require a conversation between pragmatic naturalists and critics of the disenchantment of nature (e.g. Theodor Adorno, Hans Jonas, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, John McDowell) and their contemporary exponents.

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Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 35 Finkelstein, David. 2007. “Holism and Animal Minds,” in Wittgenstein and the Moral Life: Essays in Honor of Cora Diamond, ed. Alice Crary (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. 251–278. Kauffman, Stuart. 1995. At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of SelfOrganization and Complexity. New York: Oxford University Press. Kauffman, Stuart. 2000. Investigations. New York: Oxford University Press. Lear, Jonathan. 1998. “The Disappearing ‘We’,” in Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), pp. 282–300. Maker, William. 1991. “Davidson’s Transcendental Argument,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 51: 345–360. McDowell, John. 1996. Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Moyar, Dean. 2008. “Review of Hegel, Idealism, and Analytic Philosophy by Tom Rockmore,” European Journal of Philosophy 16: 138–141. Nulty, Tim. 2006. “Davidsonian Triangulation and Heideggerian Comportment,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 14: 443–453. Pihlström, Sami. 2004. “Recent Reinterpretations of the Transcendental,” Inquiry 47.3: 289–314. Price, Huw. 2004. “Naturalism without Representationalism,” in Naturalism in Question, ed. Mario De Caro and David Macarthur (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), 71–88. Ramberg, Bjorn. 2000. “Post-ontological Philosophy of Mind: Davidson vs. Rorty,” in Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert Brandom (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 351–370. Ramberg, Bjorn. 2004. “Naturalizing Idealizations: Pragmatism and the Interpretive Strategy,” Contemporary Pragmatism 1.2: 1–66. Rorty, Richard. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. Rorty, Richard. 1991a. “Inquiry as Recontextualization: An Anti-dualist Account of Interpretation,” in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, ed. Richard Rorty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 93–110. Rorty, Richard. 1991b. “Non-reductive Physicalism,” in Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Philosophical Papers Volume One (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 113–125.

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Rorty, Richard. 1991c. “Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth,” Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth: Philosophical Papers Volume One, ed. Richard Rorty (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 126–150. Rorty, Richard. 1991d. “Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and the Reification of Language,” in Essays on Heidegger and Others, Philosophical Papers Volume Two (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 50–65. Rorty, Richard. 1998a. “Is Truth a Goal of Inquiry? Donald Davidson versus Crispin Wright,” in Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers Volume Three (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 19–42. Rorty, Richard. 1998b. “Charles Taylor on Truth,” in Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers Volume Three (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 84–97. Rorty, Richard. 1998c. “The Very Idea of Answerability to the World,” in Truth and Progress, Philosophical Papers Volume Three (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 138–152. Rorty, Richard. 1998d. “McDowell, Davidson, and Spontaneity,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58: 389–394. Rorty, Richard. 2000. “Response to Ramberg,” in Rorty and His Critics, ed. Robert Brandom (Malden, MA: Blackwell), pp. 370–377. Rorty, Richard. 2006. “Naturalism and Quietism,” in Philosophy as Cultural Politics, Philosophical Papers Volume Four (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 147–159. Sinclair, Robert. 2002. “What is Radical Interpretation? Davidson, Fodor, and the Naturalization of Philosophy,” Inquiry 45: 161–184. Sinclair, Robert. 2005. “The Philosophical Significance of Triangulation: Locating Davidson’s Non-Reductive Naturalism,” Metaphilosophy 36: 708–728. Stroud, Barry. 2004. “The Charm of Naturalism,” in Naturalism in Question, ed. Mario De Caro and David Macarthur (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press), pp. 21– 35. Thompson, Evan. 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 2001. Philosophical Investigations, 3rd edn, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Natural Agents: A Transcendental Argument for Pragmatic Naturalism 37 Carl Sachs Lecturer Department of Philosophy and Religion Studies University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #310920 Denton, Texas 76203–5017 United States

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 39–65

Editions Rodopi © 2009

Naturalism, Death, and Functional Immortality Charles A. Hobbs

I consider a naturalistic approach to death, seeking a naturalistic or “functional” version of immortality. Making use of John Dewey and some other classical American philosophers, I first articulate the naturalism of this project. I then discuss what such naturalism means for understanding the self and its survival. Finally, I consider the existential question about to what extent such a view of immortality is satisfying.

1. Introduction Everyone dies. Now given this fact of our existence, I hold that the meaning of living, that is, of our experience, is never a completely separate issue from the meaning of our deaths and dying.1 It is from this context that I wish to articulate another approach to the meaning of death, which is simultaneously an approach to the meaning of our living.2 My approach is a naturalistic one. I shall articulate a kind of immortality in this world that is not to be conceived in a traditional Western sense of eternal, immutable, or otherwise ongoing existence of one’s individual personality beyond the death of his or her earthly lived body. I wish, instead, to articulate what I shall term a naturalistic or functional immortality.3 Concerning this view, there is in the final analysis a significant question regarding to what extent one can live as a naturalist and with that alone, that is, an existential question about the extent to which such a naturalistic view of death is satisfying, and in this I shall later turn to some of the essays of John J. McDermott on the matter. This approach is in the spirit of understanding philosophy’s proper role as one of being relevant to life, or, as James Campbell has said recently said with reference to pragmatism: “Philosophy’s job is to address our problems of living – whether the metaphysical ones that tormented James, or the scientific ones that challenged Peirce, or the social ones that invigorated Dewey – and to be ever vigilant in challenging the purely intellectual solutions to which philosophers too often acquiesce.”4 As for the job at hand here, it is one of addressing our mortality by way of the issue of immortality, with the problem being one of whether or not we can live satisfactory lives without any certain knowledge of or even belief in personal survival after death and without much likelihood of

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our even being remembered as individuals for very long beyond our current existence. The concern here is thus not one simply of abstractions, for it is about our living with this fact. Now let us proceed from here by addressing a matter of terminology, especially the word immortality. The term appears employed quite often to refer to a survival, or continued existence, of the individual human personality. This is what is often meant when immortality is characterized as eternal life. Such immortality typically means, in short, the perpetuation of “personal” or “subjective” consciousness beyond one’s death. Kai Nielsen characterizes the position well: In speaking of immortality we are speaking of the endless existence of a person after what we call her ‘death’ or at least the death of her body. What is agreed on all sides, and what is an inconvertible fact, is that after a time for all of us our bodies cease to be energized and left alone they will simply rot, and no matter how they are manipulated, when they are thoroughly in that state there is no evidence of their ever being reenergised. (In that respect we are not like batteries.) Believers in immortality believe that, all this to the contrary notwithstanding, we, as human beings, persons, selves, somehow do not really die but have instead an endless existence after such a de-energisation and disintegration of our bodies or (if you will) our ‘earthly bodies’.5 As Nielsen clearly and forcefully puts the matter, immortality is most often understood, again, as the unending existence of the person beyond death. This, however ultimately incoherent or unlikely, is the major component of what believers in immortality typically mean by the term. I should be clear from the start that the view under consideration here, that of functional immortality or what George Santayana called “ideal immortality,” is of a very different species from the more conventional species described above.6 According to the functional view of immortality, there is no necessary postulation of eternal life as it is most often understood. Rather, there is, according to this view, an end of one’s personal experience beyond which he or she does not go, at least not as first-person endeavor. In other words, given the naturalism this position entails, which we shall address shortly, there is no ultimate personal survival of the body’s demise, or at least not as we can know consistent with naturalism. Yet while there may be no such ultimate personal or subjective survival, death does not necessarily mean an absolute end of the self simultaneous with one’s biological demise, particularly if the self has an irreducible social aspect. We will return to this notion of the self, but let us move now to first briefly consider at least a preliminary formulation of the view of immortality under consideration by turning to some of the remarks of Charles S. Peirce.

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While not at great length, Peirce provides an expression of the view under consideration. In his brief 1893 article “Immortality in the Light of Synechism,” we find a comment that is fairly representative of Peirce’s scattered remarks on the subject. Referring to his doctrine of continuity (synechism), he writes, ... synechism recognizes that the carnal consciousness is but a small part of the man. There is, in the second place, the social consciousness, by which a man’s spirit is embodied in others, and which continues to live and breathe and have its being very much longer than superficial observers think.7 That is, we can speak of a “survival” of the self through what Peirce is here calling the “social consciousness” by virtue of which one’s spirit lives on. Elsewhere, tying this notion of immortality to the purported words of Jesus, Peirce discusses this further: “Do you believe in a future life?” Some kind of a future life there can be no doubt of. A man of character leaves an influence living after him. It is living: it is personal. In my opinion, it is quite proper to call that a future life. Jesus so spoke of it when he said he would always be with us.8 Now we can readily recognize that there are those who would dismiss such an understanding of immortality as being, in Martin Gardner’s words, among “... those shabby pseudoimmortalities that atheists and pantheists are forever proffering as substitutes for the real thing.”9 This is not surprising, for a continued existence in the sense, as Peirce has said, of spirit as embodied in others, might well be thought of as simply amounting to a kind of mere residue. Indeed, this seems to be the case with regard to a former personal consciousness, and this is in large part, I think, why such a form of immortality, that is, immortality as embodiment in others, has for many people fairly dubious importance. It is here that one well may recall Woody Allen’s remark that he does not want immortality by virtue of his work, but, rather, that “I want to achieve immortality by not dying.”10 That is, immortality, if there is such a thing, is most often conceived of as a subjective affair, and, accordingly, a functional or social immortality, by itself, may not appear as amounting to very much at all. Yet such consideration should not necessarily preclude us from considering more closely a view of death according to which there is an alternative model of immortality to some ongoing personal consciousness. I also respond that the view of death articulated here will probably only strike one as “thin” or, as Gardner has put it, as being among “shabby pseudoimmortalities,” if one conceives of the self in Cartesian fashion as wholly atomistic or individuated, that is, non-contextual and non-relational. In any case, let us first turn more explicitly to the meaning of philosophical naturalism and its relevance for

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the current project. We can then return to the issue of the self, doing so from a naturalistic viewpoint we shall have articulated. Then, as I have indicated, let us provide a more explicit account of the meaning of functional immortality and the consequences of believing it and it alone with regard to death, which is to say that we shall further discuss death in terms of how we deal with it as a significant part of the meaning of our living. In this regard, it will be important to indicate that functional immortality is not ultimate immortality but rather involves a sense of one’s continued existence that suffices for some by temperament to make life sufficiently meaningful to get through another day. 2. Naturalism and Its American Sources “Functional immortality” requires some account of naturalism, and, in providing it, I shall here deal especially with naturalism as expressed by some classical American philosophers, including John Dewey. As part of this, I will discuss the issue of materialism in relation to naturalism, which is a significant issue regarding the extent to which materialism sometimes entails scientism. An important reason for this has to do with what such naturalism is not. Presently, “naturalism” is often associated with reductive physicalism.11 Yet unlike such scientistic naturalism, classical American naturalism (and Kai Nielsen’s as well) is not a form of reductionism. Thus it can quite readily admit meanings and values, aspects of the world not normally considered as wholly material, as real and not somehow simply or merely phenomenal or epiphenomenal. A beginning difficulty that any opening discussion of naturalism faces is that there is not a great deal of agreement about the “nature” of naturalism. That is, there are and have been a number of understandings of philosophical naturalism; there are indeed varieties of it. There is ethical naturalism, there is metaphysical naturalism, there is methodological naturalism, and there is, again, scientistic naturalism, to name a few.12 Central to naturalism, whatever its particular form or manifestation, is an insistence that every hypothesis and phenomenon is to be examined by the same basic methods of inquiry. Another way of putting this is simply to say that what is and is knowable is fundamentally natural as opposed to “super”-natural. All forms of naturalism deny that any such thing as the supernatural applies to intelligible descriptions of the various phenomena, causes, and processes within our natural world. This is the philosophical attitude expressed by Santayana in his 1905 The Life of Reason: “Men and gods are not conceivable otherwise than as inhabitants of nature.”13 Still, what exactly constitutes the naturalism of the current project and where did it come from? There is, again, also the issue of exactly what kind of naturalism we are endorsing and employing in the present project. Assumptions and ideas of philosophical naturalism can be seen within the work of the first Western philosophers, that is, within the pre-Socratic, Ionian philosophers such as Thales, reportedly the first to provide explanations of natural phenomenon with no appeal to supernatural causes, and Jonathan

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Barnes, for example, has characterized these philosophers as holding empirical principles of inquiry that are at least anticipatory of naturalism in its more modern forms.14 Later on, it is Aristotle who can unmistakably be understood as a naturalist. As Dewey points out, Aristotle is the first real historical instance of naturalism, into which only later on a dogmatic supernaturalism is injected, such that the dominant trend in philosophy later became very much anti-naturalistic, that is, until relatively recently in history.15 Ancient Greek and Roman thought was, on the whole, quite naturalistic in spirit, and Roy Wood Sellars expresses this point well with regard to the Epicurean philosophers, who constitute the most striking example of naturalism after Aristotle, and who were indeed committed to ethics as first-philosophy. Sellars characterizes the Epicurean as a “... naturalist who took pride in the fact that he had conquered ignominious fears and ungrounded hopes...”16 and Epicureanism, as Sellars (himself a naturalist) approvingly reminds us, was the only thoroughly naturalistic school of its time, according to which “Wise conduct needed no cosmic sanctions.”17 Now in addition to such ancient pre-Socratic, Aristotelian, and Epicurean roots, naturalism also has more recent historical roots in America, with Dewey, among others, playing a significant role. It seems here relevant to mention Jaegwon Kim, not in his capacity as philosopher of mind or metaphysician, but rather with regard to his recent article on the nature of naturalism and its proximate origins in several mid-twentiethcentury American philosophers.18 As part of a rather helpful tracing of some of these sources of contemporary naturalism, Kim, in his 2003 article “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism,” first considers the issue of whether naturalism contains particular subject matter or whether it is a method or set of methods only. That is, he considers the question of “whether naturalism is, or includes, a set of substantive philosophical theses concerning a specific subject matter, or is, merely or principally, a set of methodological precepts concerning the proper way of conducting our intellectual inquiries.”19 Kim notes that, of course, both could be the case.20 As a part of this, he asks, “If naturalism is a methodological precept, does it concern philosophy alone (all of it?), or is it intended to apply to all areas of cognitive endeavor?”21 On the other hand, if we consider philosophical naturalism as including substantive claims, then what exactly are they? There are a variety of doctrines with which naturalism tends to be associated, including “empiricism, materialism, physicalism, reductionism, scientific realism, moral realism, epistemological externalism, and nominalism.”22 As Kim notes, a relevant question here is one of ascertaining the commonality of these and related positions such that they tend to be associated with naturalism.23 With such considerations in mind, by the term naturalism, I hereafter refer to philosophical positions, quite often rooted in the classical American tradition, according to which, broadly speaking, nature is understood as what is given or provided in experience. That is, nature is understood as continuous with experience. In his Epilogue (“The Nature of Naturalism”) to the classic 1944

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expression of mid-twentieth-century American naturalism, Naturalism and the Human Spirit, John Herman Randall, Jr. says that naturalism “is not so much a system or a body of doctrine as an attitude and temper: it is essentially a philosophic method and a program...” and it is further characterized as follows: ... naturalism, refusing to admit impassable gulfs and dualisms, either ontological or methodological, holds that everything encountered by men has some natural status in Nature, this does not mean that naturalism can absorb all the philosophic theories of what man encounters and in that sense cease to be a distinctive position. It is indeed fundamentally opposed to all those theories and interpretations which assert dualisms and gulfs....24 Randall adds with explicit reference to Dewey’s “Antinaturalism in Extremis” (the first essay of the same 1944 volume) that naturalism is the active antagonist of such dualisms and gulfs “so long as they are flourishing.”25 Moreover, according to Randall, there exists “no room for any Supernatural in naturalism – no supernatural or transcendental God and no personal survival after death.”26 For naturalists such as Dewey and Randall, there are to be no appeals to transcendental entities, and this view receives lively expression more recently, for example, by Nielsen, who says, “There are ... no purely mental substances and there are no supernatural realities transcendent to the world or at least we have no sound grounds for believing that there are such realities or perhaps even for believing that there could be such realities.”27 Dewey, in “Antinaturalism in Extremis” (a rather aggressive article attacking Kant and German idealism, Thomists, and others), characterizes naturalism as follows: The fact of the case is that naturalism finds the values in question, the worth and dignity of men and women, founded in human nature itself, in the connections, actual and potential, of human beings with one another in their natural social relationships. Not only that, but it is ready at any time to maintain the thesis that a foundation within man and nature is a much sounder one than is one alleged to exist outside the constitution of man and nature.28 The naturalist looks to the human realm itself in order to understand any form of value. That is, human experience, of whatever kind, is understandable in natural terms. In seeking to account for or understand that which is problematic or difficult in experience, American naturalism asserts that there is not any need for appeal to that which is not accessible to experience. John McDermott has provided a fine Deweyan summation of the understanding of experience that is here at work, describing experience as “nothing less than what we do and what

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is done to us, as well as the ‘way’ in which these transactions proceed....”29 Thus, for example, the naturalist does not have to deny spirituality or “mystical” experiences. He or she would rather be interested in what kind of human experiences these spiritual experiences are and how they proceed, as Dewey is, for example, in his 1934 A Common Faith, a work in which he defends the association of naturalism with a religious aspect of experience. As Dewey recognizes, the religious, which is a dimension of experience (along with the aesthetic), need not necessarily be associated with anything supernatural in order to still be quite meaningful as experience, although not as knowledge.30 The point is that such experience, as natural, is perfectly open to inquiry and in no way some closed domain or something simply rejected out of hand. This general position of not going beyond the natural in order to account for the natural is American naturalism’s adequacy thesis. With respect to it Larry Hickman writes that attempts to do otherwise, that is, attempts to search outside of human experience for absolutes, norms, or standards, inevitably “end in appeals to authority, a priorism, or the dead weight of tradition.”31 Committing to such an adequacy thesis does not, of course, mean that we must embrace some crude materialism or physicalism (with which, again, naturalism is now often identified), but, rather, simply that there are not adequate grounds for trying to comprehend that which is natural in non- or super-natural terms. We might say, simply, that what is natural is enough. Although naturalism need not entail a reductive materialism (or “physicalism”), there have nevertheless been some critics, such as W. H. Sheldon (in his 1945 “Critique of Naturalism”32), who charge naturalism with crass philosophical materialism, that is, with being definitionally limited to “physical nature.”33 Sheldon levels the following accusation (his term) against the naturalism expressed by Dewey and his Columbia associates such as Sidney Hook: Their naturalism is just materialism over again under a softer name. They claim to have superseded that perennial type of metaphysic; I believe they slip back into the same old rut. True, they are careful to define materialism in such a way as not to be accused of it; but to all intents and purposes they stand for the same sort of thing that materialists have always stood for. Thus they do not, as they claim to do, settle the old conflict between idealism and materialism (or for that matter, between scholasticism and process-metaphysic); they perpetuate the conflict by taking sides.34 So the naturalists, it seems, are not what they say they are, and, as such, they promise more than they deliver. Sheldon later continues: ... when I accuse the naturalists of materialism, I mean a working materialism, a philosophy that goes beyond pure theory to set up a way of

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CHARLES A. HOBBS life. And I say that their program and method leads to or implies that in the last analysis all processes in the known universe, mental, spiritual, vital, or what not, are wholly at the beck and call of the processes we have agreed to call physical, and therefore the only reliable way of control over nature – and over other men – is secured by knowledge of spatio-temporal distributions. That is the only materialism that counts, that has bearing on human life and the prospects of man’s future.35

Such naturalism, in short, says Sheldon, is limited to the physicality of nature. Dewey and his former Columbia students Hook and Ernest Nagel in the 1945 article “Are Naturalists Materialists?” are explicit in responding to Sheldon’s charge: When the consequences of this view (frequently given the label “reductive materialism”) are strictly drawn, statements such as “I am in pain” must be regarded as logically entailing statements of the form “My body is in such and such a physico-chemico-physiological state.” Whether any competent thinker has ever held such a view in the specific form here outlined is doubtful, though Democritus, Hobbes, and some contemporary behaviorists are often interpreted to assert something not very dissimilar to it. Those who do hold it maintain often that the obvious differences between a color and an electro-magnetic vibration, or between a felt pain and a physiological condition of an organism, are “illusory” and not “real,” since only physical processes and events (i.e., those describable exclusively with the help of physical terms) have the dignity of reality. But whatever may be said for reductive materialism – and very little can be said in its favor – it can be categorically asserted that it is not a view which is professed, either tacitly or explicitly, by the naturalists whom Mr. Sheldon is criticizing. If “materialism” means reductive materialism, then those naturalists are not materialists.36 Sheldon criticizes naturalism for being a form of reductive materialism in disguise, that is, a form of materialism that ignores the environment and context in which things happen, but this is not in fact the general position of these naturalists, who are in fact here explicitly distancing themselves from crass versions of materialism (versions, it is noted, often associated with the likes of Democritus and Hobbes). As Lewis S. Feuer puts it, these Columbia naturalists (Dewey, Nagel, Hook) were not holding “that mental states, emotions, joys, apprehensions of meaning, were subsumable under the heading of physical entities or events....”37 They were instead maintaining the more nuanced and defensible position (again in the words of Feuer) “that these mental occurrences were adjectival to physical ones and were in this sense analogous to such properties as temperature and solubility, which were not themselves physical entities, inasmuch as for instance, they had neither volume nor shape...” and

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simply that such mental occurrences have physical causes, which is to say that “they depended on certain organizations of physical things, without, however, being themselves additional physical entities.”38 In responding to Sheldon’s concern, Dewey and company are explaining, in short, that naturalists need not mind being called materialists so long as this does not mean reductive materialism.39 Also instructive on this issue is Ernest Nagel’s 1954 presidential address (“Naturalism Reconsidered”) to the American Philosophical Association.40 Nagel says that Naturalism does not maintain that only what is material exists, since many things noted in experience, for example, modes of action, relations of meaning, dreams, joys, plans, aspirations, are not as such material bodies or organizations of material bodies. What naturalism does assert as a truth about nature is that through forms of behavior or functions of material systems are indefeasibly parts of nature, forms and functions are not themselves agents in their own realization or in the realization of anything else. In the conception of nature’s processes which naturalism affirms, there is no place for the operation of disembodied forces, no place for an immaterial spirit directing the course of events, no place for the survival of personality after the corruption of the body which exhibits it.41 Naturalism disavows any transcendental or disembodied entities or forces, but as Nagel is pointing out, this view does not at all mean some reductive materialism, although it does mean that the naturalist cannot be sure of any personal immortality beyond death. Also, the rejection of any kind of reductionism follows from the basic pluralism of such naturalism. According to this commitment, not only materialistic reductionism would be rejected, but also any and all other forms of it, such as absolute idealism or metaphysical monism. That is, there is a commitment to irreducible variety or plurality of things within the world, that is, a plurality that is never ultimately reducible to anything else more basic. Let us look again to Nagel, who says that a ... major contention of naturalism is that the manifest plurality and variety of things, of their qualities and their functions, are an irreducible feature of the cosmos, not a deceptive appearance cloaking some more homogeneous ‘ultimate reality’ or transempirical substance, and that the sequential orders in which events occur or the manifold relations of dependence in which things exist are contingent connections, not the embodiments of a fixed and unified pattern of logically necessary links.42

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Thus any strict determinism is rejected. There are, as fundamental features of reality, plurality and variety. In any case, whether naturalism is of the materialistic variety or of a more pluralistic variety, nature is understood as adaptable or malleable in the sense that while there is indeed determination within nature or natural processes, such processes are also open in a significant respect. As Peirce well recognized (in for example his 1892 “The Doctrine of Necessity Examined” and his 1898 “The Logic of Continuity”), nature is describable both by law and chance. In other words, the universe is tychistic, that is, has the habit of chance such that not all events are causally determined to occur in the manner in which they do by the antecedent happenings.43 Accordingly, so-called laws of nature are hence understood as modifiable habits, rather than immutable, and so chance here means, as Douglas Anderson has said, that “nature has a habit of breaking habits.”44 Naturalists, it should not be surprising, reject strict dualisms, and, in particular, they reject Cartesian dualism. To do this is a significant part of affirming continuity between the human and nature with regard to the totality of the realms of experience. Accordingly, of great significance for naturalists are issues regarding the implications or consequences of experience for understanding nature. Such is the fundamental importance experience plays for naturalism and which suggests its association or link with empiricism as opposed to rationalism, although, to be sure, naturalism’s link here is to a radical or immediate form of empiricism, one congruent with our lived experience. It is such an empiricism that enables one perhaps to circumvent or sidestep the problem/question of whether the naturalism with which we are concerned must or must not be identified as a form of materialism. Dewey is here instructive in his seminal 1905 article “The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism,” saying that “Immediate empiricism postulates that things – anything, everything, in the ordinary or non-technical use of term ‘thing’ – are what they are experienced as.”45 From this perspective, we can understand nature as experience, that is, as what presents itself to us, as Heidegger, for example, interprets the classical Greek notion of phusis or nature.46 As Dewey puts it, “if one wishes to describe anything truly, his task is to tell what it is experienced as being” and that “things are what they are experienced to be...”47 Indeed, experience is Dewey’s most significant concept, the most significant statement of which is his 1925 Experience and Nature. For Dewey, it is imperative that whatever claims philosophers may raise be always traced back to experience itself, and that general philosophical conclusions have to be made consistent with experience, consistent, that is, with the experienced doings and undergoings of life. As a part of this, it seems worth emphasizing that Dewey’s understanding of experience refers not simply to the experience of an isolated individual, but rather to something much broader. As commentator S. Morris Eames puts it, for Dewey, experience is inclusive of

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... the experiences and reports of experiences of other men, living and dead, mature and immature, normal and abnormal. Experience is thus taken in a broad and full sense; it covers anything and everything that can be denoted. Experience includes feelings, sensations, concepts, psychical events, physical things, relations, actualities, potentialities, the harmonies and disharmonies of life. Experience includes our memories and imaginations, our pasts and projected futures, our present awareness, our illusions and hallucinations; it includes truths and falsehoods, objects of beauty and ugliness, goods and evils; it includes language and events, and “death, war, and taxes” (EN, LW 1: ch. 1). Experience includes all that is, has been, and has potentiality of becoming. For Dewey, experience is ultimate reality, if one chooses to use an old metaphysical term.48 Such a rich naturalist account of experience serves to expose inconsistencies of traditional accounts of nature, and Dewey’s effort, indeed, is one of overcoming the merely apparent separation between humans and nature. The strategy for this is one of articulating a philosophical method that shows both humans as a part of nature as well as nature as being for us cognitively accessible, and, as scholars such as Eames have emphasized, this is the main goal and point of the first chapter of Experience and Nature (“Experience and Philosophic Method”), where Dewey writes that “experience is of as well as in nature.”49 As a part of this, Dewey’s account, like that of his naturalist contemporary Santayana, rejects the Kantian view that reason or reflection is any sort of transcendental activity. That is, it has a natural as opposed to a transcendental status. In any case, naturalism can be understood as a doctrine denying breaks or strict divisions within experience, and this, of course, is a part of naturalism’s strong tendency of anti-dualism. Now contrary to this, an influential and widespread traditional postulation has been that there is a gap or separation between experience and nature. Eames has pointed out that, when such dualism has been perpetrated, experience has been understood as subjective and nature as objective.50 Descartes himself, of course, is the obvious exemplar of such a philosophical bifurcation or dichotomy. Naturalism flatly and wholeheartedly rejects such a separation. Instead, there is, according to the naturalist, an interrelation of nature and the human organism. There is a unity of organic interaction between these two aspects, and hence humans are constitutors of nature. In sum, naturalism, at least according to the present project, is understood as an anti-reductionist, anti-supernaturalist, contextualist, historicist, non-dualist and non-scientistic endeavor. This does not, however, mean that we must endorse or be led to relativism, nihilism, or subjectivism. There is good reason, in any case, to avoid reductionism, and the primary reason for this is one of respecting the primacy of experience, as opposed to founding a philosophical project, primarily, on some epistemology or ontology, rather than upon experience itself. Such an attitude is consistent with classical American

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naturalism, and also quite consistent with the more recent naturalism of Nielsen, whom I mentioned earlier, and so it remains in some quarters alive and well. With this, let us now turn in the following section to a naturalistic conception of the self. 3. The Naturalistic Self The functional immortality view of death also requires some such account of the self in naturalistic terms, and so I shall here take this up. First, it is fair to say that naturalists are in large part responding to Descartes and, more specifically, to Descartes’ starting point for philosophy, namely the cogito. Now when Descartes articulated his formulation of the cogito, that is, the I that is thinking, he was doing much more than simply declaring the foundation for a metaphysical/epistemological dualism. He was also articulating what would come to be an extremely influential view of the self, namely the self as a mental substance, distinguished from extended, material substance. Modern rationalists, of course, are not alone in this understanding of the self, for it is also found within modern classical empiricism (e.g. Locke, Hume), according to which the basis for knowledge is experience in the sense of individually private perception, which is understood as the sensory effects of those “primary” qualities that cause them in determinate or lawful ways. Thus, naturalism is largely a response to classical modern philosophy in general, as well as its twentieth-century empiricist heirs, such as the philosophers of logical positivism. In any case, the functional immortality view of death follows from an understanding of the self as relational, as social, as opposed to being confined only to this or “my” body. That is, this understanding of death presupposes an organic self extending well beyond my personal body, experience, and/or thoughts. Functional immortality assumes what Eugene Fontinell has called “a Field Model of the Self,” according to which “a self is composed of submicroscopic, microscopic, macroscopic, and ultramacroscopic fields...,” a view also found earlier in the idealism of William Earnest Hocking.51 As Fontinell, among others, points out, James’s position is quite consistent with this, insofar as he rejects any notion of an encapsulated self, that is, any notion according to which the self is contained inside the boundary of one’s skin or simply within some mind or ego.52 Instead, such a pragmatist notion of self can be well understood as a kind of non-dualistic, outward radiation and overlapping with other fields. In Fontinell’s metaphorical phrase, it is fields within fields.53 Similarly, in the words of John McDermott, one “is neither a container nor a box in a world of boxes.”54 As Randall exclaimed in his 1958 Nature and Historical Experience, “It is indeed amazing that students of man should ever have convinced themselves that the mechanisms of human behavior are located exclusively within the skin of the organism, or within a private and subjective ‘mind’, in view of the obvious fact, that everything that distinguishes man from other

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animals is a common and social possession.”55 In any case, Fontinell provides a helpful set of eight principles with which such a rich naturalist view of the self should adhere. According to him, our understanding of the self should do as follows: 1.

preserve individuality without falling into atomistic individualism or egocentric isolationism;

2.

account for change, growth, and development;

3.

account for a range and diversity of relations;

4.

account for continuity, identity, sameness, and difference;

5.

account for a variety of structures or dynamic systems such as the psychological, personal, historical, cultural, social, and religious;

6.

indicate how individuals both make and are made by language, history, art, science, religion, and other institutions;

7.

allow for creative participation in wider processes or fields;

8.

allow for radical transformation without obliteration or absorption into another reality or process.56

Again, Fontinell describes such a self as fields within fields.57 He explicitly references and allies himself with James, who, as Fontinell points out, talked of the self as “all shades and no boundaries.”58 Such a notion of the self eschews atomism, dualisms, and reductive materialism, to name a few of its foes. More positively, it emphasizes context, function, and relationality. It is on the basis of such a naturalistic view of the self that I identify the aforementioned functional immortality view of death, according to which the self lives past or through death not in the sense of a continued personal or subjective experience of one’s own (although, as far as we know, this cannot be absolutely ruled out, a point Fontinell for his part emphasizes), but rather in the sense of living on through, for example, one’s children, one’s ideas, and the various relationships cultivated in life that do not and presumably cannot simply end simultaneously with one’s biological demise. Accordingly, while death is a significant limitation on the activities of the self in the sense that its former center is no longer making a contribution, the self nevertheless goes on in its exerting of influence upon and within the world, albeit in a sort of restructured way. Put simply, meanings are real and live beyond my own person, affecting other people in a personal way. In his 1931 Immortality and the Present Mood, Julius Bixler expresses this position well:

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CHARLES A. HOBBS My friend’s ideals do not die when he dies. Indeed, as many have testified, his death may make possible for me a more perfect loyalty to his ideals. A life which has been is not a non-existent thing. An achieved possibility is a part of the nature of the real. The world is a very different place because of those who have left their mark upon us.59

Such a conception of immortality, of course, may appear to many people as insubstantial or thin, but this is precisely because they have a thin conception of the self, a conception that is part of the Cartesian legacy according to which the self is understood as individualized and atomistic as opposed to being understood as a significant part of something bigger. That is, it may well not satisfy those who thus desire to be preserved eternally as their unique individualized selves, since this would seem to require another world than this one; such immortality of one’s individuality does not appear to be the case with regard to this world. The functionalist version of immortality, of course, does not assume any other world than this one, and, I should add, such a version of immortality is itself nothing new. We can find instantiations of it at least as far back as ancient Greece. To name but one example, we find Socrates, at about the middle of Plato’s Symposium, saying that he concurs with Diotima’s claim that love is a desire for immortality understood as the reproduction of the self in this world, and so is a preservation through, for example, one’s children and/or one’s teaching.60 It is in this way that Socrates refers to the “children” of Homer, namely the Iliad and Odyssey, and also to all more literal (biological) children, as the essence of immortality. In any case, to return to classical American naturalism, we can see, for example, in Dewey’s Experience and Nature, a sense of the self that is quite consistent and required for the sort of immortality at issue here. The living person or self is transactionally constituted by events and interactions inclusive of that which lies beyond our skin. In this regard Dewey writes, “The thing essential to bear in mind is that living as an empirical affair is not something which goes on below the skin-surface of an organism....”61 Rather, he says “it is always an inclusive affair involving connection, interaction of what is within the organic body and what lies outside in space and time, and with higher organisms far outside.”62 Experience and, indeed, meaning and our embodiment within the world are never something simply somehow merely internal to one’s person. Rather, in Darwinian fashion, Dewey describes the self, or, in his term, the organism, as fundamentally interactive with its environment. As such, the skin demarcates the boundary of self and world, as organism and environment, in what is ultimately an unimportant way. Rather, experience goes beyond the skin and is transactional, and the self is not independent of its context, and this means the cultural, historical, societal contexts. In chapter 4 (“The Act of Expression”) of his 1934 Art as Experience, Dewey elaborates on this theme:

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The epidermis is only in the most superficial way an indication of where an organism ends and its environment begins. There are things inside the body that are foreign to it, and there are things outside of it that belong to it de jure, if not de facto; that must, that is, be taken possession of if life is to continue. On the lower scale, air and food materials are such things; on the higher, tools, whether the pen of the writer or the anvil of the blacksmith, utensils and furnishings, property, friends and institutions – all the supports and sustenances without which a civilized life cannot be. The need that is manifest in the urgent impulsions that demand completion through what the environment – and it alone – can supply, is a dynamic acknowledgment of this dependence of the self for wholeness upon its surroundings.63 The self, in this way, is dependent on its environment, on a context. It is contextual or relational. Now the final point here is one of inquiring into what the consequences are of the functional immortality view for living. We should of course remember here that the functional immortality view is of a different sort than most other prominent beliefs or views about death, not only in the senses that this view affirms an immortality that is not personal or subjective and that it affirms a naturalism that is not wholly reducible to materialism, but also in the sense that this view of death is, quite simply, an empirical fact. Regarding the commitment here to a naturalism that is not merely materialism, Dewey is helpful, as we have seen. For Dewey, it is experience that is the center from which meaning develops and grows. Materiality is of course required, but without being wholly dependent upon or reducible to it. That is, in classical American fashion, I assume a naturalism that affirms the human spirit.64 In any case, let us now turn again to the issue of practical consequences and, as part of this, to the existential issue of whether such an understanding provides equanimity in the face of death. This final consideration arises from the question of whether one can live with the naturalistic meaning of our living and dying alone. 4. Practical Consequences: the Existential Question One’s biological demise, while a significant coming-to-be, does not and cannot erase that one did exist in this world and, by virtue of it, that one presumably continues, in some degree, to exert an influence on and within the world. One continues, after one’s biological demise, to exist functionally within this world insofar as existence is constituted by such influence, and so I would here point out that the naturalistic or functional immortality of which I speak is not a mere sentimentalism to the effect that one shall live on within the thoughts of family and friends, although it does include the significance of such memories insofar as this is the mode through which such influence is transmitted, at least in the more immediate future beyond one’s death. In any case, the functional

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immortality account of death does not constitute a belief that is mutually exclusive of more speculative beliefs concerning death, such as those of personal immortality and of reincarnation, the Epicurean view that death is nothing to us, or Thomas Nagel’s deprivation view of death. From a pragmatist point of view, these other categories of beliefs are to be considered meaningful only if they in fact make some difference in our conduct, certainly as James says about metaphysical positions generally in Lecture II of his Pragmatism. Yet all must accept the functional immortality view of death as an empirical fact, regardless of whether it is supplemented by any of the other more speculative beliefs about the meaning or nature of death, for this means simply continuing to exert some influence (and, of course, hopefully for the better). While not taking part in the same discussion I am, the contemporary British philosopher Derek Parfit has nevertheless made some observations lending support to the view of immortality suggested here. In his 1984 Reasons and Persons, Parfit writes that There will later be some memories about my life. And there may later be thoughts that are influenced by mine, or things done as the result of my advice. My death will break the more direct relations between my present experiences and future experiences, but it will not break various other relations. This is all there is to the fact that there will be no one living who will be me. Now that I have seen this, my death seems to me less bad.65 Parfit examines and then criticizes the notion that death is best characterized as mainly the loss of one’s identity, that is, in the Enlightenment sense of the term, such that it is understood as that experience which becomes conscious. One’s cognitive and bodily experiences are not best likened to lightening flashes which quickly come and go. We instead have the ability to make connections between such experiences so as to establish a kind of comprehensive framework which we consider to be our identity. From this perspective, at death, since the brain ceases functioning and the body in general decays, what happens is simply that one loses the ability to establish and maintain such an identity. Now Parfit’s criticism here is that this modern Enlightenment emphasis upon identity, which has resulted in a view of death as simply the termination of everything making up one’s personality, disregards or ignores significant aspects of the person that remain after his or her death, for example, memories about the person or perhaps articles, books, or other things we have written or produced. The modernist sense of the self, dependent on a clear distinction between identity and non-identity, leads to a sense of death according to which such things are not indicative of a continued existence beyond our death. Now, to be sure, my death is of significance in that it ruptures those more immediate relations between one’s future and present experience. Yet with a more expansive sense of the self, we can see how death does not necessarily rupture

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all relations. Contrary to many of the so-called postmodern thinkers, this does not of course mean that the notion of identity must simply be abandoned completely. A significant amount of that which constitutes the self is indeed identity. However, the important supplement to this is that not all that makes up the self can or has to be understood as wholly constituted through such identity, such as, for example, the continuation of one’s words and actions within the lives of other people. One’s personality is made up of a number of elements. Yet not every one of them presupposes the control of some reflective self. That is, personality (understood as a complex of mental, physical, and social elements) is not in all respects dependent on a cogito, that is, upon an “I” that is selfaware. In any case, the question in the end is not one of whether or not such a notion of immortality is intelligible, but rather one of whether, as unsupplemented by any of the other views of death, a naturalistic or functional view gives us what we need. This brings to mind Albert Camus’ declaration, in The Myth of Sisyphus (which John McDermott is fond of citing), that “I want to know whether I can live with what I know and with that alone.”66 To reformulate this question, and to make it more specific, we can ask, with regard to death: can one go about living with only the knowledge that one’s existence exerts an influence, makes a difference, upon at least some future affairs, that is, without any supplementary knowledge to the effect that death involves or means anything more than this? In other words, to what extent, on its own, does the functional immortality view of death provide satisfaction? Can one live without faith in anything more? Are the practical effects of this efficacious for coping with our living in the world? In McDermott’s words, the question is one of whether we can “live with this secular liturgy, stunningly apart from a meaning transcendent of our everyday affairs...,”67 or, as he asks elsewhere, “can we experience ourselves as terminal and yet live creative, probing, building lives which, nonetheless, ask for no guarantees and for no ultimate significance to be attributed to our endeavor?”68 That is, we must ask, as McDermott has, about whether or not one can have equanimity in the face of death, that is, in the face of one’s own death. I respond that there are those of us who wish to exist as unconstrained by illusions as we can, and this would seem to entail an honest acceptance, however troubling it might be, of the ultimate disaster that shall come to pass for us as individuals. In any case, the comfort, if there can here be comfort, is in the empirical reality not only of a continued, albeit limited, existence through memory and influence, but also through being a part of that which is larger than any individualized self. This latter consideration is advocated by James as part of the conclusion he states in the Postscript of his 1902 The Varieties of Religious Experience. James writes:

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CHARLES A. HOBBS ... we can experience union with something larger than ourselves and in that union find our greatest peace ... the practical needs and experiences of religion seem to me sufficiently met by the belief that beyond each man and in a fashion continuous with him there exists a larger power which is friendly to him and to his ideals. All that the facts require is that the power should be both other and larger than our conscious selves. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary. It might conceivably even be only a larger and more godlike self, of which the present self would then be but the mutilated expression, and the universe might conceivably be a collection of such selves, of different degrees of inclusiveness, with no absolute unity realized in it at all.69

To sum up here, it was James’ belief that, with regard to immortality, there can be comfort through being part of that which is greater or larger than our individual selves, and that, as he says, pretty much anything larger will do. It need not necessarily be some bigger heavenly ego or anything infinite, but rather something simply larger than one’s own self as individual, and this seems an important aspect of the term functional immortality, in that it is not ultimate but it does the job of getting at least some of us through another day. As for Dewey, that which is larger than our individual selves is of course society, which, as he says near the beginning of his 1916 Democracy and Education, has its existence “through a process of transmission quite as much as biological life,” with the transmission occurring “by means of communication of habits of doing, thinking, and feeling from the older to the younger.”70 What Dewey is describing I would call, broadly, pedagogical, with the role here of pedagogy as one of itself constituting through activity and tradition, over the long-haul, the functional immortality of which I speak. We might thus just as well call the functional view of immortality a social immortality in which we are “immortal” not through our living on forever as individuals, but through the continuity between the individual and the greater trans-temporal process of society. I do not take issue with Dewey’s characterization of society, but it is worth recognizing that we are not guaranteed any sustainable equanimity in the face of our death, for, so much more likely than not, it is only a matter of time before we, or at least most of us, as individuals, are completely and utterly annihilated and forgotten. This is why, despite the Deweyan social answer I have mentioned, it may well be the case that a thorough-going naturalist position on death inevitably entails an element of bitterness or sadness, or, as Santayana says, “A note of failure and melancholy must always dominate in the struggle against natural death.”71 This is despite any Jamesian speculation about that which may be larger than and friendly to us.

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Speaking of James, there is here another relevant passage from The Varieties of Religious Experience (from Lectures VI and VII on “The Sick Soul”): The fact that we can die, that we can be ill at all, is what perplexes us; the fact that we now for a moment live and are well is irrelevant to that perplexity. We need a life not correlated with death, a health not liable to illness, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the Goods of nature. It all depends on how sensitive the soul may become to discords. “The trouble with me is that I believe too much in common happiness and goodness,” said a friend of mine whose consciousness was of this sort, “and nothing can console me for their transiency. I am appalled and disconcerted at its being possible.” And so with most of us: a little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians. The pride of life and glory of the world will shrivel. It is after all but the standing quarrel of hot youth and hoary eld. Old age has the last word: the purely naturalistic look at life, however enthusiastically it may begin, is sure to end in sadness. This sadness lies at the heart of every merely positivistic, agnostic, or naturalistic scheme of philosophy.72 It is with this sentiment that I would like to return to John McDermott, for we would do well to consider now his position on death in conjunction with the present project. In existentialist fashion, McDermott believes that the meaning of death, and, indeed, that of life, is most rich and striking when understood according to completely natural terms. Eugene Fontinell has in fact already performed a careful articulation and assessment of McDermott’s position in a recent essay.73 Fontinell says the following: If there is one need claimed, explicitly and implicitly, by all the traditional religions, it is the need to know that we are not alone. McDermott, on the other hand, repeatedly, explicitly and implicitly, argues that we must learn to accept the fact that we are alone – starkly and chillingly alone. There is no one, “nothing,” other than ourselves and other members of the human community who can help us to render life meaningful, who can participate with us in the struggle to achieve “salvation.”74

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As such, the nature of the human person, as we have seen with Dewey, lies mainly in his or her interaction with others. Indeed, as Fontinell himself notes, McDermott says that “The quality of the other and how we transact with the other constitutes our very being as human.”75 Simply put, McDermott is in the company of Nietzsche, among others, in rejecting any “God” or, more broadly, in rejecting any transcendent meaning. In any case, McDermott also holds that, in an important sense, each of us is radically alone. There can be for McDermott no salvation at all apart from temporal salvation, that is, if there can even be any such salvation at all. Thus the question, again, is one of whether we can live with the affairs of time only, that is, apart from any transcendent meaning.76 McDermott’s own answer is yes, and, moreover, that “it is only in this way that we live a distinctively human life.”77 With regard to the proper response to living in the face of our death, he further elaborates “that we should experience our own lives in the context of being permanently afflicted, that is, of being terminal,” and that “This is not to propose a morbid personal style, but rather to ask that this attitude ride as an abiding presence in the active recesses of our conscious life.”78 Now while the answer may well be that it is possible to live in this way, it also seems worth adding that such living is by no means necessarily easy. As Fontinell rightly notes, McDermott makes “terminality an energizing rather than a de-energizing phenomenon/belief.”79 Referencing Norman O. Brown’s work, McDermott declares that “The message is clear and twofold: avoid the temptation to invest in meaning which transcends our own experience of the life-cycle; and affirm the imminence of death as the gateway to an unrepressed life in which the moment sings its own song, in its own way, once and once only.”80 To accept one’s mortality is, in short, to live a more abundant life. McDermott recognizes, of course, that far from all of us respond to our terminality in this way. He says that while in one way or another everyone is aware of the fact of our mortality, we tend to respond to this in a variety of ways, with fear being one way and forgetting it being another common response. More destructively, denial of the fact that we shall die is also a common response. One might well respond, of course, by asking how indeed we can deny such a basic and fundamental fact of existence, but still, examples of such denial are widespread. McDermott is emphatic that such denial of the trauma of death quite often takes the form of “belief in some form of salvation or immortality.”81 In his view, there is a serious problem with this, and it is not only that such belief seeks to negate what death is, namely complete and utter annihilation, but also that it involves a serious misunderstanding of what constitutes the proper importance and value of human life. That is, what properly defines being human, and thus gives human life its unique flavor, is our being aware of our mortality. The authentic response to this, then, is to own up to the brutal fact that we shall die, as opposed to engaging in whatever strategies of belief in immortality as a means of pretending otherwise.

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Now to return to the topic of a functional immortality, the question may arise as to what extent it is problematic from McDermott’s standpoint. Now for McDermott, to repeat, the belief in immortality constitutes an illegitimate denial of death. There exists nothing but ourselves and other individuals of the human community that can aid in rendering life meaningful, and this would be the one and only form of “salvation,” if there is to be any. Let us, however, be clear about what McDermott refers to by the term “immortality.” He writes as follows: The history of culture has presented many varieties of immortality. Perhaps the most ingenious, although the least plausible, is that of traditional Roman Catholicism, wherein each of us, bodily, is resurrected glorious and immortal or damned and immortal. The attraction here is that our eternal life will be affectively continuous with our mortal life. Other versions of the doctrine of immortality involve claims of reincarnation, metempsychosis, immersion, or absorption, each attempting to perpetuate the me which is me, in one form or another.82 This is a fairly wide ranging list. Yet it is clear who McDermott takes the main culprit to be, and it is also clear that he would concur with Nielsen who says that “none of the faces of immortality provide live options.”83 In any case, McDermott’s brief taxonomy here does not include the “immortality” of which I speak, but nor should it, for, as I suggest, the acceptance of a functional immortality is not a denial or shunning of death, but is rather simply a naturalizing of a doctrine that is otherwise supra-natural. Functional immortality does not even constitute a belief in the typical sense of the word, for what it denotes is simply an empirical fact. That we exist and how we exist, and that we constitute an influence in and upon the world, however great or small, is empirically undeniable. In this sense, McDermott can be said to accept a functional immortality, as indicated, for example, by his response to Rainer Maria Rilke’s poem “The Ninth Elegy.”84 In responding to Rilke’s question, “having been once on Earth–can it ever be cancelled?,” McDermott is emphatic: “I think not. Celebrate!”85 We are, of course, still left with the existential question, as earlier recognized, of to what extent functional immortality is satisfactory for the individual, as un-supplemented by extra metaphysical baggage or speculation. As far as communal inquiry goes, it is with this question that we may be stranded, especially in light of the irreducible nature of temperament, as described by James. I mean here that the question is one whose answer can never be completely generalized and is always precarious, and particularly given that the answer to such a question can indeed change for the individual over time. So while there can be equanimity in the face of death, this does not mean that any and everyone shall experience such an acceptance or calmness. In Jamesian fashion, I suggest, again, that it is a personal question whose answer,

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in the end, can only be given by the individual person, and varies according to temperament, need, and context.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For his many comments, questions, and suggestions on work leading to this, I give special thanks to Ken Stikkers. I also thank Tom Alexander, Larry Hickman, Doug Anderson, John McDermott, Bryan Wiebe, and Ann Clark.

NOTES 1. And vice versa. That is, the meaning of death is inseparable from the meaning of living. There is not any confrontation of death that is wholly distinct from a confrontation of life, and there is not any contemplation of death that escapes reflection upon that in and about life which we value, that is, whatever it is that makes our lives worthwhile when they are in fact worthwhile, and the kinds of relationships we choose to engage in with other people. Thus reflection upon death constitutes an inescapable aspect of our quest to lead examined lives. I agree here with Richard W. Momeyer’s discussion in his Confronting Death (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); see especially p. xiv. 2. I here say “the meaning of our living” as opposed to “the meaning of life” because I hold with pragmatists generally that life is an abstraction compared to our living that occurs only in the present as opposed to some other time. John McDermott expresses this point well in his 1991 essay “Why Bother: Is Life Worth Living?” McDermott says the following: “The term ‘life’ can only be used retrospectively as in my life, or, if you knew of my life, or, what a life I have had, or, I have no life, or, plaintively, this is a life? The term ‘living’, on the other hand, is a process word, a present participle, a happening, and a witness to the ‘specious present.’ Following John Dewey, we live only at this time and at no other time and so life is an abstraction, perched above our living as a desperate effort to identify ourselves, to become existentially instantiated. Yet, the only part of our past, which exists, is the past that is present to us. And the future is but a ‘gossamer wing,’ vapid, elusive, and most always, by far, doomed to be different from the futured intentions of our present. Our living is not out of something or in something. Nor is it about something, or on behalf of something. Rather, our living is constitutive of our person. Who we are at any moment is precisely our living.” Journal of Philosophy 88 (1991): 678–679. McDermott’s essay is reprinted with additions in Philosophy and the Reconstruction of Culture, ed. John J. Stuhr (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993), and also in McDermott’s The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture, ed. Douglas R. Anderson (New York: Fordham University Press, 2007). 3. Thanks to Larry Hickman for the phrase “functional immortality” (from personal discussion at Center for Dewey Studies). 4. James Campbell, “One Hundred Years of Pragmatism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 43 (2007): 5. 5. Kai Nielsen, “The Faces of Immortality,” in Death and Afterlife, ed. Stephen T. Davis (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1989), p. 2. As Nielsen goes on to point out, there are two different versions of Western immortality. He explains as follows:

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“Jewish, Christian and Islamic defenders of immortality take two fundamentally different positions in their characterization of the afterlife. The first position ... is probably the more religiously orthodox position and the second position, until rather recently, would more likely appeal to philosophers and perhaps even to common sense since the time of Descartes, and in certain strata of society extending down to our own time.... The two views are, respectively, bodily resurrection by God to eternal life, and Cartesian dualism with its belief in an indestructible, immaterial individual self distinct from the body in which this self is said to be housed. This self is also thought to be capable of, without any body in which it must be housed, to exist as a disembodied individual who is also a person.” Ibid. Reprinted in Nielsen’s Naturalism and Religion (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001). 6. See Chapter 14 (“Ideal Immortality”) of Part III (“Reason in Religion”) in The Life of Reason (New York: Scribners, 1955). 7. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. Charles Hartshorne, Paul Weiss, and Arthur Burks (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), vol. 7, p. 356. 8. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 6, p. 354. 9. Martin Gardner, The Whys of a Philosophical Scrivener (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1983), p. 280. 10. I thank Andrew Youpa for alerting me to this quotation; I cannot locate a print citation for this, but a “google” search turns up numerous attributions (without print citation) of this to Allen. 11. I note this as a dominant trend. There are certainly exceptions such as, e.g., the work of Canadian philosopher Kai Nielsen, whose naturalism very much resembles some varieties of classical American naturalism, particularly Dewey’s naturalism. See, e.g., Nielsen’s Naturalism and Religion (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2001), Naturalism Without Foundations (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1996), and On Transforming Philosophy: A Metaphilosophical Inquiry (Boulder, Col.: Westview Press, 1995). See also Robert Sinclair’s “Nielsen’s Conception of Philosophy: Its Essential Tension and Deweyan Resolution” and Nielsen’s reply, both in Reason & Emancipation: Essays on the Philosophy of Kai Nielsen, ed. Michel Seymour and Matthias Fritsch (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity Books, 2007), pp. 161–171, 173–180. In any case, as with any –ism, we do well to define what we mean by it. Other names associated with related forms of non-reductive “naturalism,” in no particular order of importance, include John Lachs, Joseph Margolis, Nicholas Rescher, John Ryder, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, John E. Smith, and John J. Stuhr, to name just a few. There is also of course the compelling naturalistic (and existentialist) view of John J. McDermott, which I discuss in the last section of this paper. 12. Nielsen provides a helpful typology of naturalisms. He distinguishes cosmological (worldview) naturalism, methodological naturalism, ethical naturalism, and scientistic naturalism. See Naturalism and Religion, p. 136. 13. The Life of Reason, p. 17. 14. Early Greek Philosophy, ed. and trans. Jonathan Barnes (New York: Penguin Books, 1987), p. 49. 15. Dewey, “Anti-Naturalism in Extremis,” in The Later Works of John Dewey, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1989), vol. 15, p. 46. Originally published in the Partisan Review 10 (January-February 1943): 24–39. 16. Roy Wood Sellars, “The Emergence of Naturalism,” International Journal of Ethics 34 (1924): 320.

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17. “The Emergence of Naturalism,” ibid. 18. Jaegwon Kim, “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism” in Philosophy in America at the Turn of the Century (Charlottesville, Virg.: Philosophy Documentation Center, 2003) Of course, the origins of American naturalism can be said to ultimately go back much further than this, not only back to C. S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, but also further back to include philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. 19. “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism,” p. 85. 20. Ibid. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid, p. 86. 23. Ibid. 24. Naturalism and the Human Spirit, ed. Yervant H. Krikorian (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944), p. 374, 358. 25. Ibid, p. 358. 26. Ibid. It should be noted, however, that Randall immediately adds that “There is room for religion, to be sure, since that is an encountered fact of human experience.” (ibid) This is, to be sure, Dewey’s position on religious experience (or the “mystical”) as well, as evidenced by his 1934 A Common Faith, in which Dewey says the following: “There is no reason for denying the existence of experiences that are called mystical. On the contrary, there is every reason to suppose that, in some degree of intensity, they occur so frequently that they may be regarded as normal manifestations that take place at certain rhythmic points in the movement of experience. The assumption that denial of a particular interpretation of their objective content proves that those who make the denial do not have the experience in question, so that if they had it they would be equally persuaded of its objective source in the presence of God, has no foundation in fact. As with every empirical phenomenon, the occurrence of the state called mystical is simply an occasion for inquiry into its mode of causation. There is no more reason for converting the experience itself into an immediate knowledge of its cause than in the case of an experience of lightning or any other natural occurrence.” The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 9, p. 26. 27. Naturalism and Religion, p. 29. 28. Dewey, The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 15, p. 54. Also in the 1944 Naturalism and the Human Spirit volume, pp. 1–16. 29. See the Preface of McDermott’s The Culture of Experience: Philosophical Essays in the American Grain (Prospect Heights, Ill.: Waveland Press, 1976), p. ix. It is significant that McDermott also notes here “that only in the American philosophical tradition is this [conception of experience] the primary concern” (ibid). 30. Paul Kurtz is helpful on this point, saying as follows: “The naturalists do not deny that aesthetic and religious experiences are central to human life; in a sense they provide content to a rich and full life. The real issue for the naturalists however is how you interpret these experiences. Dewey constantly talks about the immediate experiences that we have, undergo, suffer, enjoy; but he denies that the term ‘knowledge’ should be applied to this range of awareness in any special way. For it is one thing to have a raw, brute, and unrefined immediate experience, it is another thing to interpret, relate, organize, or deduce from this experience ‘concepts,’ to claim that they apply to the world, and to act upon them.” See Kurtz’s “Naturalism in American Philosophy” in Philosophy and the Civilizing Arts: Essays Presented to Herbert W.

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Schneider, ed. Craig Walton and John P. Anton (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1974), p. 207. 31. Larry A. Hickman, “Theism and Naturalism in American Philosophy: An Overview” Journal of Korean Religion 7 (2005): 220 (and see p. 221 for the phrase “‘adequacy’ thesis of American naturalism”). 32. W.H. Sheldon, Journal of Philosophy 42 (1945): 253–270. Sheldon’s article is largely a critique of Naturalism and the Human Spirit. 33. Dewey, “Are Naturalists Materialists?” The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 15, p. 109. Originally published in Journal of Philosophy 42 (1945): 515–530; also reprinted in American Philosophic Naturalism in the Twentieth Century, ed. John Ryder (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1994), pp. 102–120. 34. “Critique of Naturalism,” p. 254. 35. Ibid, p. 256. 36. Dewey, The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 15, pp. 113–114. To be fair (according to Lewis S. Feuer), it was Ernest Nagel who was mainly responsible for the composition of this article, with Dewey himself actually writing very little (probably not much beyond the first paragraph). Ibid, p. xvi. 37. Introduction to The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 15, p. xvi. 38. Ibid. 39. See also Chapter 7 (“Nature, Life and Body-Mind”) of Dewey’s Experience and Nature, in which Dewey writes as follows: “‘Matter’, or the physical, is a character of events when they occur at a certain level of interaction. It is not itself an event or existence; the notion that while ‘mind’ denotes essence, ‘matter’ denotes existence is superstition ... the dependence of life, sentiency and mind upon ‘matter’ is ... practical or instrumental.” The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1, pp. 200, 201. 40. To the Eastern Division APA meeting in Baltimore, and originally published in Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 28 (1954–55): 5–17. Reprinted in American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. Paul Kurtz (New York: Macmillan, 1966), and in Presidential Addresses of the American Philosophical Association: 1951–1960, ed. Richard T. Hull (Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2006), pp. 265–275. 41. American Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, p. 547. 42. Ibid, p. 547. 43. Peirce writes in “The Logic of Continuity” that tychism is the doctrine that absolute chance is a factor of the universe. This is from his Cambridge Lectures on “Reasoning and the Logic of Things” (Lecture Eight). See Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, ed. Kenneth Laine Ketner (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 242–268. I offer further discussion of Peirce’s tychism in my “Peirce’s Tychism and the Epicurean Swerve,” forthcoming in Southwest Philosophical Studies. 44. From personal discussion with Anderson. 45. Dewey, The Middle Works of John Dewey, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977), vol. 13, p. 158. 46. Heidegger, Introduction to Metaphysics, trans. Ralph Manheim (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1959). 47. Dewey, The Middle Works of John Dewey, vol. 3, p. 159. We also find such a naturalism, whereby nature is experience, in James’ radical empiricism, which is, indeed, more or less what Dewey means by immediate empiricism.

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48. “Experience and Philosophical Method in John Dewey” in Experience and Value: Essays on John Dewey and Pragmatic Naturalism, ed. Elizabeth R. Eames and Richard W. Field (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003), p. 15. Originally published in the Midwestern Journal of Philosophy 4.1 (Spring 1976): 15–29. 49. Dewey, The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1, p. 12. 50. Experience and Value: Essays on John Dewey and Pragmatic Naturalism, p. 14. 51. Eugene Fontinell, Self, God, and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1986), p. 46. Regarding Hocking (who himself writes of the self as a Field of Fields), see, for example, his “Fact, Field, and Destiny: Inductive Elements of Metaphysics” in Review of Metaphysics 11 (1958): 542. Reprinted in A William Ernest Hocking Reader, with Commentary, ed. John Lachs and D. Micah Hester (Nashville, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press, 2004). Thanks to Douglas Anderson for calling my attention to the Hocking article. 52. Self, God, and Immortality: A Jamesian Investigation, p. 47. 53. Ibid, p. 46. 54. John J. McDermott, Streams of Experience: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of American Culture (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1986), p. 196. 55. New York: Columbia University Press, p. 173. 56. Self, God, and Immortality, p. 46. 57. Ibid. 58. Ibid, p. 47. 59. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 36. 60. Symposium 207a–212c. 61. Dewey, The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 1, p. 215. 62. Ibid. 63. Dewey, The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 10, pp. 64–65. 64. Again, I recognize that there are of course other varieties of naturalism, and certainly including the scientistic kind that does reduce all things to matter, a charge that, as Dewey notes in “Anti-Naturalism in Extremis,” is often leveled by antinaturalists at naturalism is general. (The Later Works of John Dewey, vol. 15, p. 56). Such would be a vulgar naturalism necessarily excluding from its concerns or recognition issues of human meaning and spirit. 65. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984, p. 281. 66. Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus, and Other Essays, trans. Justin O’Brien (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1955), p. 51. 67. Streams of Experience: Reflections on the History and Philosophy of American Culture, p. 90. 68. Ibid, p. 164. 69. James, The Works of William James (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), p. 413. 70. Dewey, The Middle Works of John Dewey, vol. 9, p. 109. Dewey adds the following: “Without this communication of ideals, hopes, expectations, standards, opinions, from those members of society who are passing out of the group life to those who are coming into it, social life could not survive. If the members who compose a society lived on continuously, they might educate the new-born members, but it would be a task directed by personal interest rather than social need. Now it is a work of necessity.” Ibid

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71. The Life of Reason, p. 290. 72. James, The Works of William James (1985), p. 119. 73. Experience as Philosophy: On the Work of John J. McDermott, ed. James Campbell and Richard E. Hart (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), pp. 116– 139. 74. Experience as Philosophy, p. 127. 75. Streams of Experience, p. 197; Experience as Philosophy, p. 127. 76. Streams of Experience, p. 90. 77. Ibid, p. 164. “The Inevitability of Our Own Death” was originally published in the Texas Humanist (April 1981), and, since Streams of Experience, it has also been reprinted in American Philosophic Naturalism in the Twentieth Century (1994) and in The Drama of Possibility: Experience as Philosophy of Culture (2007). 78. Streams of Experience, p. 164. 79. Experience as Philosophy, p. 136. 80. Streams of Experience, p. 163. 81. Ibid, p. 162. McDermott adds the following: “I do not refer here to a hope that somehow, somewhere, somewhen, all will go well for all of us who are, have been, or will be. Certainly, such a hope is a legitimate and understandable human aspiration. But to convert this hope into a commitment, a knowledge, a settled conviction, is to participate in an illegitimate move from possibility to actuality. It is understandable that we wish to escape from peril, but it is unacceptable to translate that desire into an assured belief that we have so escaped.” Ibid. 82. Streams of Experience, p. 162. McDermott adds the following: “Obviously, I have no final knowledge of these claims nor do I know of anyone who has. Evidence on their behalf is scanty, scattered, tentative, highly personal, and empirically dubious. Yet many of us cling to one or more of these solutions, as a redoubt, a trump card, or a lastminute reprieve from the overwhelming evidence that we are terminal.” Ibid. 83. Nielsen, “The Faces of Immortality,” Death and Afterlife, p. 28. 84. Duino Elegies (New York: W.W. Norton, 1939), p. 73 (as cited by McDermott in Streams of Experience, p. 257). 85. Streams of Experience, p. 168.

Charles A. Hobbs Visiting Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy 77 Spes Unica Hall Saint Mary’s College Notre Dame, IN 46556 United States

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 67–86

Editions Rodopi © 2009

Must a Pragmatist Be a Historical Materialist? Andrew Wells Garnar

There has only been sporadic engagement between the pragmatist and Marxist philosophical traditions. This is unfortunate because each has a great deal to learn from the other. This article seeks to form a bridge between the two traditions by reconstructing an argument from Marx and Engels for historical materialism in the light of both traditions’ shared emphasis on the centrality of action. There is much in the Marxist tradition that pragmatists can and should integrate into their own work, particularly given their interest in cultivating richer democracies.

The history of the relationship of pragmatism and Marxism might be generally characterized as one of mutual misunderstanding, with the exceptions of Sidney Hook and Cornel West, in particular West’s books The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought and Keeping Faith. Both sides are guilty of misunderstanding. For example, Dewey’s remarks on Marxist theory and practice are not particularly sympathetic.1 This misunderstanding might be explained by the fact that what some present-day academics see as the rather rigorous nature of Marxist analysis only gradually came into existence. For example, Marx’s 1844 Manuscripts and The German Ideology were not published until 1932, while Lukács’ History and Class Consciousness was published in 1922 but did not get translated into English until 1971. Some of the staples of contemporary academic Marxism were largely unavailable to a pragmatist like Dewey until late in his life. From the Marxist side the case of the Frankfurt School’s history in the United States is instructive in this regard, since Columbia University took in some of that group during the time John Dewey was there. Given the geographic proximity, the interpretation of pragmatism put forward by Max Horkheimer in The Eclipse of Reason is eye-catching.2 While one can see where Horkheimer gets his reading from, it can be said that he does to Dewey what Dewey might be accused of doing to earlier Marxists: engaging in serious misinterpretation. This is not to say that there are serious disagreements between Horkheimer and Dewey. Horkheimer rejected capitalism in toto; Dewey and other pragmatists

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were critical of capitalism but took a much more melioratist position about how to deal with its excesses. For such reasons, the little conversation between the two philosophies is understandable. This situation was then compounded by the difficulties they each faced within the academy after World War II. For pragmatism, its difficulties followed from diminishing significance for several decades in the wake of analytic philosophy and a subsequent resurgence in which pragmatists have sought to justify their own identity and differences from dominant strands of English-speaking philosophy. Marxism has had to deal first with eras of anticommunist paranoia and then the rise of post-Marxist French philosophy (Foucault, Deleuze and Guattari, Lacan, etc.) which takes a very critical stance towards more traditional Marxisms. It is against this backdrop that I raise the question: “Must a pragmatist be a historical materialist?” It is important to raise this question. Although I take this in a different spirit than was intended, Derrida puts the present situation correctly: “no future without Marx.” (Derrida 1994, 13) Why? I take it is obvious that economics plays an important, if not decisive, role in the lives of Americans. With this is in mind, it is worth observing that Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat remained on the New York Times best sellers list for over two years and was republished in an updated and expanded hardback edition within a year or so of its initial publication (and revised a little more for the paperback edition). This is a nontechnical book about globalization, particularly the economic dimensions of globalization. Part of the popularity of Friedman’s book is that it gives tools for people in the United States for understanding how globalization impacts their lives.3 This points towards an awareness, perhaps only tacit, that there are deep interconnections between the way people live their lives and the economic sphere. Neither this awareness nor this interconnection is new and Marxism has always provided a way to rigorously understand such interconnections. This presents the first reason for both laypeople and academic pragmatists to think about historical materialism seriously. Furthermore, from Charles Peirce to Cornel West, there has been a concern within pragmatism about cultivating democracy, be it liberal democracy or something more radical. Pragmatists, and I have Dewey in mind here, have had a difficult time implementing their democratic ideas into society in as thorough-going a manner as they would like. Dewey’s experience with education reform and other democratic projects generally is telling in this respect. While public education has retained much of Dewey’s rhetoric, its substance owes much more to the technocratic theory of Walter Lippmann, a theory that is effectively bent towards producing laborers for capitalist production. The trouble is that pragmatists have traditionally lacked the resources for explaining such failures. A specific example, more conventionally philosophical, occurs with Dewey’s brief discussion of the relationship between ethics and economics at

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the conclusion of chapter 10 of The Quest for Certainty. There, Dewey offers a brief reconstruction of how, through a denigration of economic theory by other sciences and philosophy, the economic sphere comes to dominate human existence. The trouble arises from modernity’s move to make ends into ideals, hence ethereal and subjective, while economics developed into a very rigid structure for providing means. Like many of the arguments in The Quest for Certainty, Dewey locates the trouble in a naïve separation of theory from practice. The result: That the economic life, thus exiled from the pale of higher values, takes revenge by declaring that it is the only social reality, and by means of the doctrine of materialistic determination of institutions and conduct in all fields, denies to deliberate morals and politics any share of causal regulation, is not surprising. (Dewey 1988, 255) While Dewey’s reconstruction of this history deserves to be taken quite seriously, it is also lacking. What is missing here is a systematic account of what happens in individuals’ concrete lives that allowed this to occur. To ask Dewey to do the requisite history on this front would be too much, but as I argue below, there is need for consideration of the structure, specifically the social structure, that produced this situation. It is this larger social structure, and its entanglement with questions of power and domination, which pragmatists need into take account if they wish to fully realize the prospect of democracy, that is, to achieve the ethical and political significance that pragmatism rightfully promises. The interpretation of Marxist historical materialism developed here aims to provide a start for pragmatists to do just this. To this end, I begin by briefly exploring the shared methodical starting point for both the classical pragmatists and Marx. From here, I reconstruct at some length the decisive moves in an early argument by Marx and Engels for historical materialism. By beginning with the common strand between these two traditions, I attempt to show a pragmatist is committed to a sort of historical materialism. I then conclude this article by addressing several concerns that could be raised by both sides about such a dialogue. We can begin by noting that common to both the classical pragmatists (Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead) and Marx and Engels is the centrality of action. Both traditions begin, methodologically speaking, by analyzing people doing things. Although this might at first appear like a trivial move, it has profound consequences and marks a revolutionary break with the history of Western metaphysics. Instead of understanding the subject as existing outside the world and, in some sense, beyond the temporal order, the subject is now shown to be an active participant in the world. The subject constructs her or his world, and not simply in some Kantian sense, but very much literally.

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Against Western metaphysics, both traditions do not denigrate this making, but instead use it as the starting point for understanding the subject’s world. Through the study of human action, we come to understand how the subject is an active part of the world, as is all of the subject’s products, be they houses, governments or concepts. I will refer to this conception of the subject as “acting-in-the-world,” largely to distinguish it from more traditional philosophies of “acting-on-the-world,” where the latter amounts to the Spectator Theory that Dewey relentlessly criticizes. A way into the pragmatic version of “acting-in-the-world” is to go back to Peirce’s formulation of the pragmatic maxim: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object. (CP 5.402) What we find here is the object that the subject considers is nothing more than the effects that have “practical bearings,” consequences. All the object amounts to is what the object can do, have done to it, do with it, etc. There is nothing else, because all there is are consequences. In the Popular Science Monthly essay where Peirce introduces what we will later be known as the maxim, he analyzes concepts from physics like force. In Pragmatism, James applies the maxim to a whole range of concepts and objects. What is needed is a way to explain these diverse applications in a common space in which the subject, the subject’s conceptions, the objects, and actions all take place in. I call this, for lack of a better term, “the world.” On this reading, the classical pragmatists concerned themselves with articulating the implications of acting-in-the-world, as well as trying to find an adequate way of talking about it. For instance, both of these themes can be seen in Peirce’s semiotics and the idealism he adopts in his later writings, James’ radical empiricism, and Dewey’s discussions about “transactions.” Regardless of its expression, the idea that sets the agenda for many of the classical pragmatists is that the subject actively participates in a world that it always already belongs to. Although the context is rather different, a similar methodological trajectory can be found in Marx and Engels. The “Theses on Feuerbach” sketch out the leitmotifs of Marx’s vision of acting-in-the-world. Consider the Second Thesis: The question whether objective truth can be attributed to human thinking is not a question of theory but is a practical question. Man must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of his thinking in practice. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is

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isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question. (Marx 1978a, 144, emphasis in original) Here we see similar motifs. For Marx, humanity proves truth through practice, actions. Through doing things in the world, subjects show that an idea or whathave-you is true. Again, we see how it is that the subject is wholly conceived of as part of the world. The other theses make this point as well, also emphasizing the subject’s active role. The most famous of the Theses makes this point beautifully: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” (Marx 1978a, 145, emphasis in original) Marx can assert this largely because of what he has outlined in the previous Theses: that the subject can only be understood as playing an active role in a world. Philosophy and every other human endeavor is grounded in the world and results from practices contained within the world. What Marx finds frustrating about much of the philosophy of his day was that it did not seek to engage the world that it was a part of. Further still, and this is part of his objection to Feuerbach, is that the philosophical tradition makes it very difficult to see how any philosophy might engage the world except as misguided ideology. This is what Marx and Engels overturned. While differences will emerge between these two ways to explicate acting-in-the-world, the concern with acting subjects, acting individuals, engaging the world is common to both traditions. Marxists and pragmatists have taken acting-in-the-world in different directions. Pragmatists have been concerned a wide spectrum of philosophical issues including ontology, ethics, science, and politics. Many Marxists have addressed these matters themselves, but approached in a different way. They have started from questions about the production and reproduction of human life and proceeded from there to engage these more traditionally philosophical questions. There are two interrelated reasons for this, which I hope to show that pragmatists must think through. First, when Marx began writing, capitalism was already the dominant mode of the production and reproduction of life, most clearly in Europe and America but elsewhere as well through colonialism. Consequently, the bourgeoisie were in the midst of totally transforming the world. From the perspective of the proletariat, many of these changes were detrimental to their existence. The centrality of capitalism to life one hundred and fifty years ago, as well as today, led Marx to put a great deal of emphasis on matters of these modes of production, particularly economics. Second, consideration of the mode of production and the ways it determines the rest of human existence, as well matters about ruling classes, brought to the fore questions surrounding the nature and function of power. What lurks in the background with this claim and throughout this paper is a

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worry that pragmatists have been unwilling to engage matters of power, conceived of as domination and oppression, in a thorough-going manner, which has caused many of them to disregard most of the Marxist tradition. I will return to this point below. Despite these different trajectories, it is this fundamental agreement on acting-in-the-world that allows for a pragmatic reconstruction of Marx’s historical materialism. Because of the shared trajectory of acting-in-the-world, pragmatists are effectively committed to some interpretation of historical materialism. Why? To demonstrate this, I will engage in a reconstruction of Marx and Engels historical materialism as they present it in The German Ideology (GI). Early in that work they state: “The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals.” (GI 37) What is decisive in this claim is their sense of “living.” History must be concerned with human individuals doing things in the world. “They are real individuals, their activity and the material conditions of their life, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity.” (GI 36–37) In order to understand humanity, one must look to human activity and the material conditions of that activity. Of course, there is a case to be made that this is true of any living organism.4 The thing that distinguishes humans from other animals is that humans began to “produce their means of subsistence...” (GI 37, emphasis in original). Two obvious examples of such activities are the development of agriculture and the domestication of animals. In each case, elements are taken out of the environment and transformed to produce things for satiating human needs. This is the beginning of what they will refer to as “the mode of production.” At this point, Marx and Engels make a key move: “By producing their means of subsistence men [sic] are indirectly producing their material life.”5 (GI 37) This statement is powerful, yet ambiguous. Ambiguous because on first read, it might appear that the means of subsistence (food, water, clothing, housing) would seem to exhaust “material life.” Since this seems too simple, something else might have been intended. On my interpretation, what they are getting at here is life as lived through material: be it artifacts, relationships with the environment (what they call “nature”), as well as self and other. The last two must be included here as well since self and other are both material existences, i.e., bodies. Though trouble with writing of “material life” is that “material” carries a somewhat static undercurrent, but this is clearly not what Marx and Engels have in mind given the emphasis on activity. To see the full power of the claim that the mode of production simultaneously produces humanity’s material life, several other points must be brought in. First, the mode of the production of human subsistence presupposes what Marx and Engels’ refer to as a certain “physical organization.” This phrase is productively overdetermined. In the course of one page (GI 37), it can be read as meaning: (a) the physical organization of the human body; (b) the physical organization of the environment humans interact with; (c) most importantly, the

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physical, i.e., material, organization of humans within the mode of production. The first two senses will establish certain limits on the last. Yet, for my purposes, it is the last that is most significant because through the physical, material, relationships that humans take with respect to another, different sorts of social structures emerge. This claim at this point in the argument is rather abstract. It can be made more concrete by considering discussions about the division of labor. Different humans do different activities with respect to the production of the means of subsistence. Because of these different roles, they will form different sorts of relations with one another and themselves. What they require from each other will be different, e.g., what the hunter requires from the farmer is not the same as the farmer from the hunter. It is at this point, in particular when we consider what they call the “tribal” mode of production, we can see why Marx and Engels claim that: As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. Hence individuals depend on the material conditions of their production. (GI 37, emphasis in original) Working with this methodology, there is nothing more to individuals than what they do. But, given certain qualifications relating back to the division of labor, much of what individuals do is produce and reproduce their means of subsistence. For this reason, Marx and Engels can claim that: (1) individuals are bound up with the mode of production in at least two different senses (the “what” and the “how” they produce); and (2) that individuals are “determined,” in a sense to be explained below, by their relationship to the mode of production. We can now see why Marx and Engels focus so much on the mode of production: the mode of production is what sustains human individuals, while at the same time structuring the lives of those individuals. One consequence of this position is that different modes of production will “determine” different sorts of social and cultural arrangements. The point about social arrangements should be clear enough. Because different ways of producing the material conditions of life entail different sorts of relations between individuals, social arrangements will depend on the mode of production. Marx and Engels discuss precisely this point with respect to the transitions from “tribal” to “ancient” and then to “feudal” modes of production and property. For example, within the developments of the ancient mode of production, by which they mean Greece and Rome, one sees the division of town and country, each place involving different sorts of labor. Also, with the growth of desires on the part of the ruling class, there is an expansion in the numbers of slaves and other laborers in order to fulfill these desires. Modes of

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governance then emerge to perpetuate this sort of society, as well as regimes of property. They extend out this line of reasoning to show how the feudal system arose out of the problems of the ancient, and the same can be said of capitalism as well. The outlines for a case about culture can be seen here as well, inasmuch as culture can be understood as an extension of society. Yet, there is another argument that Marx and Engels pursue that proves to be more significant for a pragmatist because it draws together the mode of production, culture, and consciousness. What must be kept in mind here is the developmental story that they are telling. To begin with: “The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men – the language of real life.” (GI 42) Since they begin by looking at definite individuals performing definite activities, it is reasonable to say that “culture,” broadly speaking, will be interwoven into these activities. These activities of production drive human existence because they are essential to human survival. Early on in human history, everything is related back to practicality, specifically: questions about survival. Marx and Engels emphasize that this is particularly true of language since “language is practical...” (GI 49, emphasis in original) Language first arises because of the need for individuals to communicate, have “intercourse,” relationships, with one another. This is the primary reason why language is fundamentally practical. It emerged in order to facilitate individuals in the production of the means of subsistence. What is important here is that language does not develop for me as individual qua individual, but instead as a way of relating me to other individuals. The need to have more complex relationships with others produces language. It is at this point that we can turn to matter of consciousness. For Marx and Engels, consciousness is always shaped by society, which itself is a deeply pragmatic claim. It can only be produced within the context of social relations. Though before showing why this falls out of what has been argued thus far, a bit is needed on what they mean by the term. First off, consciousness is never “pure.” Consciousness is utterly unlike the Cartesian cogito. Instead, “The ‘mind’ is from the outset afflicted with the curse of being ‘burdened’ with matter...” (GI 49) Whenever one is discussing the mind or consciousness, it always must be remembered that consciousness is embodied, grounded in the matter of the body. Marx and Engels take this point in the most logical direction in a sentence crossed-out in the manuscript, but that is of some importance: “My relation to my surroundings is my consciousness.” (GI 49n2) Unlike traditional accounts of consciousness, their conception is nothing located exclusively in the head of the individual. Instead, it is relation between the individual and his or her sensuous environment: things, animals, other individuals, in short, the world. It is clear in Marx and Engel’s discussions of consciousness that it is also developmental. Tribal consciousness is very close to the consciousness of

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animals, except that “with him consciousness takes the place of instinct or that his instinct is a conscious one.” (GI 50) The basics of what we will later recognize as self-consciousness begin to emerge here, but they are not very developed. For a robust self-awareness to develop a more complex mode of production is required, but that is getting ahead of the story. In order to fully understand why consciousness is social, we need to examine two moments in Marx and Engel’s argument. The first has to do with the interconnections between consciousness and language. They note: “Language is as old as consciousness” (GI 49) While not reading this statement as prefiguring 20th century work on language and mind, there is a strong connection here between these two. Given the practicality of language and the embodiedness of consciousness, the two must be bound up together: each realizes the other. Language makes possible the cognizing of relations with the world, while these relations that constitute consciousness, especially with other individuals, produce language. Yet, given the thoroughly social character of language, this entails that consciousness is thoroughly social as well. Consciousness arises out of relations with other individuals and the rest of the world. Language is the tool individuals use to facilitate such relations. What is important to note here is that for as much as language and consciousness are reciprocally related, they are not the same, reducible to each other. Each plays a different role in the account of the individual that Marx and Engels formulate. The second moment comes once humanity begins to transition from the tribal to the ancient mode of production. Part of what drives this process is the further division of labor. The division of labor begins with “the division of labor in the sexual act.” (GI 50) From here, as the population grows, which is made possible in part by the expansion of the means of production and further drives those means, labor is further divided. These divisions will occur along the lines of physical ability (e.g., strength), accident, talent, need, accident, and so on. The decisive moment comes when material labor is separated from mental labor. This produces a profound schism among social relations, which Marx illuminates in a marginal note: “The first form of ideologists, priests, is coincident.” (GI, 50n3, emphasis in original) The image of the priest, with his or her power of the masses, illustrates just how distinctive this new sort of labor is and its presumed superiority. Marx and Engels go so far as to say that this separation of manual and mental labor is when “Division of labor only truly becomes such...” (GI 50) To put the point perhaps too strongly, it is with this separation that we see the beginnings of the sort of class conflict that concerns the Manifesto. The connection that Marx and Engels make between this chiefest of divisions of labor and consciousness is quite fascinating. The separation of mental labor from material allows consciousness to misunderstand itself. “From this moment onwards consciousness can flatter itself that it is something other than consciousness of existence practice, that it really represents something

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without representing something real...” (GI 50, emphasis in original) Arising out of making mental labor something distinct from material labor, in the form of the priest and probably the emerging ruling class as well, consciousness is taken for something that it is not: outside the world. To use Marx and Engels’ language, consciousness assumes that it represents itself as distinct from the world. This is directly opposed to how they construe consciousness, as a relation between an individual and her or his surroundings. In the latter understanding of consciousness, if representation is even an applicable term, it represents something real: the relation between the active individual and the world. Through rigidly separating mental labor from material labor, consciousness becomes thought of as something else entirely, something religious, philosophical, metaphysical. We see two things here. First, the dominant discourses on consciousness or its correlates within the Western tradition have been based on a radical misunderstanding of consciousness and its connection to modes of production. Second, that consciousness is social, though from a different, yet related angle. How the relations that constitute consciousness are formed depend on the division of labor. Given that an individual’s world is “determined” by the existent mode of production, which structures the division of labor, any relation to the world will also be shaped by the mode of production, as well as language. At this point, it becomes clear how culture, better put: “cultural production,” is “determined” by the mode of production. Culture, both in the broad anthropological sense as well as in the more limited, “high cultural” sense, is the product of humans acting in the world through a particular mode of production. Culture reflects the activity of a particular sort of conscious individual, especially in the limited, “high cultural” sense. Particular ways of producing and reproducing the means of subsistence make possible certain sorts of consciousnesses. These different sorts of conscious beings, individuals, make their way through the world in various ways, which is dependent on their position within the division of labor. These differences will be manifested in the different sorts of cultural products created.6 Regardless, any cultural production will be “determined” by the mode of production, in the sense of “determined” in which a definite set of limited, though perhaps large, possibilities are established. The linchpin that makes this claim possible is the argument developed above that consciousness depends on the mode of production. Through this point, we find that all any cultural activity will be structured for similar reasons. What gives “high culture,” and at this point philosophy must be included here, the illusion of autonomy is a misunderstanding similar to the one discussed above with respect to consciousness. When the division is made between material and mental labor, conscious beings, at least of a particular class, believe that consciousness is something independent of the world of material relations; it is something “in itself.” The cultural productions of individuals whose being is

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based on this misunderstanding reflect this misunderstanding as well. As Marx and Engels put the matter: from now on consciousness is in a position to emancipate itself from the world and to proceed to the formation of “pure” theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc.. But even if this theory, theology, philosophy, morality, etc., come into contradiction with the existing relations, this can only occur because existing social relations have come into contradiction with existing productive forces... (GI 50–51) First, the supposed abstraction of consciousness from the world allows these certain individuals to pursue their particular cultural activities as if they are “pure,” not dependent on the mode of production, hence objective or true. Yet, given the argument reconstructed above, this rests upon a mistake, that consciousness is “pure,” which is then recapitulated at the level of cultural production. This “pure” culture does not represent the true, but only the activity of particular individuals, usually who occupy an advantageous position within the division of labor. Second, the contradictions that sometimes arise between these productions and “existing relations” do not illustrate the production’s autonomy. Just the opposite: it reinforces that such cultural productions are always bound up with the mode of production. What such “dissonant cases” show is that the forces of production have changed, which leads social relations to come into contradiction with those forces. From this, we can now begin to build out towards the larger concerns about economics and society, especially as Marx and Engels describe them elsewhere. This is one reconstruction of Marx and Engels’ historical materialism. The starting point is the proposition that of living human individuals, which entails that these are human individuals living, acting, in the world. Humans transform the world in order to sustain themselves. Yet, such transformations also change the individuals involved. This is because of two interrelated points: (1) human individuals live within a society of other individuals and only come to be recognized as human individuals in the context of that society; and (2) all of this occurs within a mode of producing the materials for sustaining those individuals. As society changes, which occurs because of transformations in the mode of production, relations between members of the society change.7 As Marx and Engels make clear, new forms of consciousness are produced as the mode of production is transformed. The relationship between the individual and the mode of production, via the division of labor, “determine” the sort of consciousness the individual has. This is then reflected both in social relations and cultural productions.

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Why then is a pragmatist committed to something like historical materialism? The answer revolves around what one is committed to when one endorses acting-in-the-world. From Peirce on, pragmatism has largely focused on how the socially constituted individual navigates the world based upon consequences. The individual is wholly contained within and has very dynamic relations with the world, a world which one might describe as “precarious and stable.” The classical pragmatists like Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead all took this concern in somewhat different directions. Yet, by the time Dewey writes Experience and Nature and The Quest for Certainty, he is exploring matters that cover much the same terrain as Marx and Engels in the passages discussed above; matters like: how early humanity engaged the world such that they could sustain themselves in it and what repercussions this had for society and culture.8 I have attempted to show that Marx and Engels and a pragmatist can, and largely do, begin from roughly the same starting point. What explains the apparent differences between them might be best called “a matter of structure and individuals.” Effectively, what Marx and Engels seek to describe is the structure through which individuals relate to one another, themselves and their environment. Their discussions of these structures are somewhat abstract in parts of The German Ideology under consideration here, but elsewhere in Part I of that work, and more so in The Manifesto and Capital, its then-contemporary form is articulated in grisly detail. Pragmatists have traditionally assumed a certain sort of structurality to human life, but have not dealt with such structure as thoroughly, made clear its rigorousness and oftentimes oppressiveness, as Marx and Engels. Marxists have emphasized, though not exclusively, matters of structure, while pragmatists have been concerned more with the individual, albeit an individual realized only through belonging to a community. Yet, based on my reconstruction of historical materialism, I hope to have shown that in fact the two concepts are bound up together and must both be addressed simultaneously. When this question of structurality is worked through “then Pragmatism assumes its proper stature as revolutionary step in Western philosophy.” (Sellars 1991, 340) If contemporary pragmatists wish to realize the full promise of their philosophy, such an engagement with this structure, especially the economic dimensions, is imperative. Without this, and without reflections upon the brutality of these structures, pragmatism cannot fulfill its promise. We can now return to Dewey’s discussion of economic life introduced at the start of this paper. There, Dewey notes the way in which the downplaying of economics results in a brutal separation of ends and means that is common to both industrial and post-industrial life. The value of historical materialism as articulated here is that it provides depth to Dewey’s reconstruction. No doubt, capitalism in its various forms relies on precisely this separation. What Marx

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and Engels bring to the fore is a demonstration of how this emerged early on within human development with the division of manual and intellectual labor. Taking the first premise of human history in conjunction with the whole of the Marxist tradition’s writing on labor and one discovers what might be called the “existential guts” that lies below many of Dewey’s dissections of the history of philosophy. In these writings, like the Manifesto and Capital up to present day Marxists, there are many vivid portraits of how the separation of means and ends and theory and practice plays out in the lives of people. Particularly when one digs into the early phases of the Industrial Revolution in Europe and America, as well as outside the Economic North in the present, we find that these lives are sometimes quite brutal. As discussed above, Dewey was aware of this, as were Peirce and James to different extents, yet what was lost in the classical pragmatists was a way of addressing the systematicity of this oppression, alienation and exploitation. Historical materialism as reconstructed here provides a way to do just this while remaining within the trajectory of pragmatism. This reconstruction, particularly taken in light of the discussion below, retains a space for human agency that is central to much of pragmatism, while also marking the rather serious limits to that agency. Giving all this, I imagine that some pragmatists will rightly raise a number of concerns. I will address two that strike me as particularly pressing. The first problem can be stated as: “You have argued above that the production and reproduction of the means of subsistence ‘determines’ consciousness, social, cultural life. There are several problems with such a claim like explaining the wide variety of socio-cultural forms and the reduction of human life to the economic. Yet, for a pragmatist, perhaps the most damning thing is the determinism implied in your claim. In any number of senses, the future is undetermined, yet your position seems to deny this.”9 No doubt this is a serious objection, one that is generated by Marx and Engels’ own pronouncements, especially in the Manifesto and in certain passages of The German Ideology, never mind Marx’s discussions of the “Laws of Capitalism” in Capital. There has also been a tendency among both defenders and opponents of Marxism to read Marx and Engels in this manner. Yet, this is not the only interpretation of historical materialism. Cornel West makes clear the “openness” of Marx, curiously contra Engels, and Raymond Williams has argued persuasively against more hard-line determinist interpretations of Marxism.10 Instead of directly exploring either Williams or West, I will focus on a set of letters written by Engels to Joseph Bloch in the 1890s where he clarified his and Marx’s position on historical materialism. Engels writes: According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real

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ANDREW WELLS GARNAR life. More than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract senseless phrase. (Engels 1978, 760, emphasis in original)

Clearly, Engels here is mainly making a negative point about what he and Marx never intended to mean. Yet, he begins to draw what will be a crucial distinction a few lines later. This distinction is between “determining elements” and “ultimately determining elements.” The “economic” element, that element concerned with the mode of production, plays a decisive role in history. But it is not the only factor in human history. Far from it, as Engels explains: The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure: political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and then even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juridical, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas, also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. (Engels 1978, 760, emphasis in original) Engels makes it obvious here that the economic element does play the most important part in establishing the limits of human existence, but this is not to say that the economic is the only factor. The economic shapes the “superstructure,” yet the “superstructure” influences the form of struggle, which will impact the production of real life. Elements of the “superstructure” like political and juridical organizations, religion and philosophy, being in some sense the most ideologically accessible expressions of the mode of production, help to structure the shape of human struggles. At least on some occasions, the materials used to articulate such struggles are derived from these socio-culture formations.11 What Engels does not address here, though it is consistent with his argument, is that such struggles will feed back into the “base” because they are struggles over real life. These struggles might be fought at the level of “superstructure,” but they will reverberate at the “economic.” In this way, there is a feedback loop between the economic and the other elements of society.12 I shall now clarify my use of the word “determination.” Determination is not meant in the supposedly scientific sense of determination in which Y always follows from X like hitting together billiard balls. Instead, determination means the establishing of limits of possible actions and channeling of human actions through the limits. The economic element, along with others, establishes the space of human activities. In such a space, some practices are possible, while others are impossible. For instance, individuals cannot choose in advance what

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language they speak or the sociality that structures their consciousness. Yet, there is freedom to do many definite things with consciousness and language, even given the limits that have been set up. It is in this context we see the full impact of Engels’ claim that: “We make our own history ourselves, but, in the first place, under definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive.” (Engels 1978, 761) Humanity, either as individuals or collectives, produces history and produce history as the result of their activities. Yet, the history that humanity produces is constrained, that is to say determined, by the elements discussed above. And Engels is correct in pointing out that the economic is decisive, because the economic in this context means the production and reproduction of real life, how individuals make and remake the materiality that comprises the world. Given the centrality of this sort of production and reproduction to the lives of individuals, the economic will be “decisive” because they are basic to human existence. Despite the claim of a particular consciousness, i.e., bourgeois, that “superstructural” forms are more important, these material concerns are the basis of human existence. Their production and reproduction play the pivotal role in understanding the human condition. This is not to discount the “superstructure,” because there are multiple feedback loops between all these elements, but to say that if one wants to understand and take action about human struggles and history, one must look to the variety of ways in which the field of possible actions is determined. The next objection that might be raised against the position developed here is: “You talk at great length about action which is good, yet you seem to give not just priority but objective superiority to labor. You do not address play at all, give its creative its due, or even appear to have sufficient resources to do so. At best, what you have done is addressed the creativity of labor, but not the creativity of action in all its moments.” For a pragmatist, especially one schooled in the works of Dewey, this is not a trivial concern. Both work and play are central concepts throughout Dewey and many pragmatic philosophers of education. The case is not made easier with works like that of Teresa Ebert’s Ludic Feminism and After, whose argument against post-structuralist, particular feminist post-structuralist, uses of the concept of play can be brutally summarized: by foregrounding “play” these postmodernists reify the consciousness of a particular class of privileged scholars and make critique of the capitalist mode of production impossible. There is no need to address the subtleties of Ebert’s critique of post-structuralism now, except to note that she is not wrong in terms of the broad outline. In which case, the issue at hand is showing how it is that a pragmatist’s conception of work and play escapes the accusation of being painfully bourgeois.

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To adequately address this challenge would require a full-scale analysis of the creativity of action, which is beyond the scope of this paper.13 Instead, I will make two points that might give a way out of the apparent impasse. First, at least the Deweyian conception of “play” is not overtly political. It can, and perhaps should, be at certain moments, but this is not the primary meaning for Dewey. Play is a moment in action where the ends are not firmly fixed: an individual reconstructs the means at hand, but without a particular goal in mind.14 Play is a style of action that cannot be neatly cut off from other moments in action. This is opposed to certain “ludic” postmodernists like JeanFrancois Lyotard, Judith Butler, and Jacques Derrida who, according to Ebert, thoroughly politicize “play.” The Lyotard of The Postmodern Condition ends up with an understanding of the contemporary world in which resistance to domination can largely be accomplished through what he terms “parology,” an aimless use of language that does not conform to the logic of performativity.15 Such a sense of play can be called creative in a very broad sense, but I doubt in the sense that many pragmatists or Marxists will use. The point of this comparison is two-fold. First, for Dewey, play is a moment in action, but not the only moment, nor the most important depending on the context. Second, because of this, there is a space to consider both work/labor and play as important and creative, again hinging on the context. The pragmatic up-shot is that while in some situations, work does trump play, this is not always the case which one should be sensitive to. The second point amounts to a Marxist rejoinder to the first. The interpretation I have offered of historical materialism is consistent with this discussion of play, assuming one is properly cautious. Both work and play have roles in the production and reproduction of real life and should be understood as playing those roles. Yet, such agreement must be qualified based on my interpretation, mostly arising out of my discussion of the division of labor. After a certain age, play’s role in life tends to be either downplayed or carefully controlled. Those people who pursue labor based on play either turn it into a materially, class-based, privileged life, a position quite distinct from that of the proletariat, or run the risk of being the starving artist. This can be further seen in the role that play has in different sorts of labor. Factory work involves little play, or creativity in a standard sense, on the part of the laborer, a point that is not farremoved from Marx’s criticisms of alienation. On the other hand, many “whitecollar” laborers are occasionally required to engage in critical thinking, “thinking outside the box,” which is one species of “carefully controlled” play. In this way, Ebert is on to something when she claims that play, in certain senses, is bound up with class privilege. This is a point that pragmatists should be attentive to if they are not already. In conclusion, I have sought to show that the historical materialism of Marx and Engels is at least consonant with the trajectory of classical pragmatism. Furthermore, I hope to have demonstrated the necessity of pragmatists

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engaging with the Marxist tradition because such an engagement provides the pragmatist a ways of thinking about the structure of society in a manner that allows to the pragmatist to better understand the obstacles to the pragmatic conceptions of democracy. Historical materialism seeks to make plain the ways in which concrete practices, specifically economic practices, affect the rest of society, establishing constraints on ways of acting and living. While, if Marxism is correct, such determinations have always been the case throughout human history, its significance in the present under capitalism is vital to conceptualize. As mentioned above, the classic pragmatists were aware of the deleterious effects of industrial capitalism to human possibilities, but they appear to have lacked an adequate way to work through these difficulties. Clearly, there are potential pitfalls for pragmatists who elect to embrace historical materialism, though as I sought to argue above many of the philosophical concerns arise from overheated rhetoric on the part of Marxists. Given what I argued here, there is the space for a productive interchange between pragmatists and Marxists, one that at least pragmatists should learn a great deal from. For these reasons, the pragmatist should seriously consider being a historical materialist as well.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I thank Jim Garrison for his very helpful criticisms on an early draft of this paper.

NOTES 1. For example, the few discussions of Marxism in Human Nature and Conduct show that Dewey read Marxism as very a very rigid, mechanistic, doctrine. On the other hand, it is better in some respects than psychoanalysis. 2. See Horkheimer (2004, 28–38) for the core of his critique of pragmatism. There he notes that Dewey’s theory “is consistent, but abolishes philosophical thought while it still is philosophical thought.” (Horkheimer 2004, 33–34, emphasis in original) See also Larry Hickman’s brief but useful analysis of Horkheimer’s reading of Dewey (1992, 64–68; 200–201). 3. While not the most sophisticated way to illustrate the point, the numerous reader reviews of Freidman’s The World is Flat on websites like Amazon.com sound the recurring theme that Freidman helps to make sense of both the positive and negative effects of globalization for people living in the United States. 4. Dewey makes this point clearly in his contributions to A Cyclopedia of Education, specifically the entry on “Organism and Environment” (Dewey 1978, 437– 438). 5. An issue that I will not address in this paper directly, but is worth noting, is the ways in which Marx and Engels deal the roles of women and men throughout The

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German Ideology. This passage foregrounds part of the trouble, since clearly men and women would have producing the means of subsistence. Such concerns will reappear when they begin to discuss the origins of division of labor. 6. For example, simply consider the differences between folk music in both Europe and America when compared to “classical music” (particularly that of the Baroque and Classical periods). In the interest of full disclosure, this discussion was written while listening to the works of Anton Webern. 7. The qualification regarding the mode of production is deliberately ambiguous. On the one hand, there are changes in the mode itself. On the other, there are social changes which reconstitute the mode and feedback into society. 8. With respect to Dewey, two clear examples of such discussions are the first two chapters of The Quest for Certainty, though these themes resonate throughout, and virtually every chapter in Experience and Nature. 9. On this pragmatic criticism, I am thinking most specifically of James’s discussions of pluralism and religion in Pragmatism. Dewey relies on a similar position, at least in the later works like The Quest for Certainty and Experience and Nature, though it is much more “existentially grounded” than James, particularly on the matter of meliorism. 10. See West (1991) and Williams (1977, 83–89; 1980, 31–49). Although I do not explicitly invoke Williams here, this analysis of determination owes much to his work. This discussion also echoes Foucault’s analytics of power and its affinities with pragmatism. For more on this, see Garnar (2006). 11. For one example of this, see the speech Marx gave in Amsterdam in 1872 where he addresses the possibility of non-violent revolution (Marx 1978b). 12. It is beyond the scope of this paper to address how best to describe these different elements of society (writing in terms of “base/superstructure,” “totality,” or perhaps something else). As Williams argues (1980, 31–40), there are risks associated with both of the traditional approaches which must be weighed. 13. The starting point for such an analysis must be Hans Joas (1996). 14. A classic example of a simple example of play in this sense is children doing things with blocks, Legos, or Play-Doh. Garrison (1997, 70–78) develops this sort of example in such a way that raises serious questions about ludic use of play by demonstrating how children deploy metaphysics and meanings even in this sort of event. 15. It should be noted that elsewhere Lyotard does develop a more robust ethical system, specifically in The Differend. While Ebert is also critical of this later work, it does escape some of the challenges leveled against The Postmodern Condition.

REFERENCES Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge. Dewey, John. 1958. Experience and Nature. New York: Dover. Dewey, John. 1978. “Contributions to A Cyclopedia of Education: Volume 1 and 2,” in The Middle Works, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press), vol. 6, pp. 358–467.

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Dewey, John. 1979. “Contributions to A Cyclopedia of Education: Volume 3, 4, and 5,” in The Middle Works, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press), vol. 7, pp. 209–365. Dewey, John. 1988. The Quest for Certainty, The Later Works, vol. 4, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press). Dewey, John. 2002. Human Nature and Conduct. Mineola, N.Y.: Dover. Ebert, Teresa. 1996. Ludic Feminism and After: Postmodernism, Desire, and Labor in Late Capitalism. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. Engels, Friedrich. 1978. “Letters on Historical Materialism” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edn, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton), pp. 760-768. Garnar, Andrew. 2006. “Power, Action, Signs: Between Foucault and Peirce,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42:347–366. Garrison, Jim. 1997. Dewey and Eros: Wisdom and Desire in the Art of Teaching. New York: Teachers College Press. Hickman, Larry. 1992. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Horkheimer, Max. 1947. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Continuum. James, William. 1907. Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, repr. in Writings, 1902-1910, ed. Bruce Kuklick (New York: Library of America, 1987). Joas, Hans. 1996. The Creativity of Action, trans. J. Gaines and P. Keast. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1979. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge, trans. Geoff Bennington and Brian Massumi. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Lyotard, Jean-François. 1988. The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeel. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Marx, Karl. 1977. Capital: Volume One, trans. Ben Fowkes. New York: Vintage Books. Marx, Karl. 1978a. “Theses on Feuerbach” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 2nd edn, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton), pp. 143–154. Marx, Karl. 1978b. “The Possibility of Non-Violent Revolution (The Amsterdam speech)” in The Marx-Engels Reader, Second Edition, 2nd edn, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: Norton), pp. 520–524.

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Marx, Karl. 1988. Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844, trans. Martin Milligan. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. 1998. The German Ideology. Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books. (Abbreviated: GI) Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1934. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, in 6 volumes, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). (Abbreviated: CP:Volume.Paragraph) Sellars, Wilfrid. 1991. Science, Perception and Reality. Atascadero, Cal.: Ridgeview Publishing Company. West, Cornel. 1991. The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought. New York: Monthly Review Press. West, Cornel. 1993. Keeping Faith: Philosophy and Race in America. New York: Routledge. Williams, Raymond. 1977. Marxism and Literature. New York: Oxford University Press. Williams, Raymond. 1980. Culture and Materialism. New York: Verso.

Andrew Wells Garnar Lecturer Department of Philosophy and Religion (0528) Clemson University Clemson, SC 29634 United States

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 87–129

Editions Rodopi © 2009

A Pragmatist Critique of Derridian Politics Tina Sikka

I draw on Security Council Resolution 1674 to demonstrate that the political assumptions Jacques Derrida holds in his politically-oriented texts are inconsistent with the assumptions of his linguistic texts, and that Jürgen Habermas’s political theory is consistent with the political implications of his approach to language. Habermasian pragmatism offers a critical theory of society and discourse of modernity that touches on the same themes of politics and meaning as Derrida and other deconstructionists, but is more coherent, consistent, and explanatorily persuasive.

In recent years there has been a rise in the amount of critical scholarship dedicated to unpacking the relationship between the late French philosopher Jacques Derrida and the German social theorist Jürgen Habermas. Although these two thinkers were born only a few years apart, their experiences of the world and the specific historical forces that shaped their intellectual upbringing could not be more different. Habermas was born and grew up in Germany and was 15 years old when WW II ended. Much of his work, it has been said, is a response to the devastation wrought by Nazism and the attendant need for Germany to found a new constitutional order. Derrida was a Sephardic Jew born in Algeria and educated in France. It has been argued that the trajectory of his work is shaped by the sense of being doubly displaced and, consequently, feeling estranged from both Algerian and French society. This lack of grounding is reflected in his philosophy which is shaped by an ongoing suspicion of “discourses of identity,” (Thomassen, 2006, 1). Perhaps as a partial result of these differences, the theoretical assumptions that underpin Habermas and Derrida’s manifold books and articles on the nature of language, meaning, subjectivity, and truth are equally contradictory. Despite these seemingly insurmountable differences I, as well as other contributors to this area of research such as Lasse Thomassen, Richard Rorty, Richard J. Bernstein, Simon Critchley, and Martin Morris, have come to believe that there are points of convergence and divergence between Habermas and Derrida worth unpacking – particularly in relation to their strikingly analogous

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approaches to international politics.1 As Lasse Thomassen argues, what merits further study of their approaches in relation to one another is [t]heir simultaneous differences and shared concerns. They are often taken as representatives of, respectively, modernity, postmodernism, universalism and particularism, and reason and the critique of reason. There are indeed important differences between them over the role of philosophy and reason. Nonetheless, they share in a critique of nationalism and xenophobia, and a concern for further European integration and the rule of law in international relations (Thomassen, 2006, 2). While I concur that the similarities between Derrida and Habermas’ political philosophies are striking, over the past few years I have turned my attention away from examining their similar political philosophies to unpacking the aporetic relationship that exists between Derrida’s early attempts to destabilize the conceptual grounds of metaphysical philosophy, and his later political texts which tend to embrace these very normative principles. My objective in this article is to concretely demonstrate this inconsistency. I first discerned the lack of entailment between Derrida’s linguistic and political work through my contemporaneous readings of Derrida and Habermas and the consequent development of a growing belief, on my part, that pragmatist philosophy in general, and Habermasian pragmatism in particular, offers a critical theory of society and discourse of modernity. This theory touches on the same themes as Derrida and other deconstructionists (i.e. politics and meaning), but does so in a manner that is coherent, consistent, and explanatorily persuasive. My objective here is not to belabor the theoretical intricacies of this argument but rather to demonstrate concretely that this is in fact the case. This article reveals the inconsistencies that exist between Derrida’s early and later work and shows that the opposite is the case with respect to Habermas’ early and later work. I employ a Habermasian pragmatist critique of Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy from the perspective of entailment. The case study chosen for making this argument is a political text, Security Council Resolution 1674 on the Responsibility to Protect (R2P). I subject this text to a double reading: first, through the precepts of Habermas’ linguistic work in order to unearth the political norms that result, which I then compare to the politico-moral framework he actually articulates in his later work; and second, through the assumptions of Derrida’s linguistic texts in order to show that the politics that result are not consistent with the political themes he expresses in his political texts.2 I chose this particular political text as the central case study because it makes claims to universality, justice, and human rights which fit well into Habermas and Derrida’s political theory but, when analyzed using Derrida’s linguistic philosophy, reveals itself as untenable.

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Before I begin this examination, I must address several possible points of contention, or even disagreement, that readers may have in relation to this rather novel and untested thesis. I discuss these potential arguments in the following several paragraphs. The first significant point of contention that may be raised in relation to this project is the choice of case study. It could be argued that Security Council Resolution 1674, which I use to redeem or validate my central claim that Derrida’s deconstructionist philosophy is inconsistent while Habermas’ pragmatist position is not, is problematic because it does not represent an authentic instance of free, open, and democratic discourse – despite the fact that it makes claims to all three. Put another way, it could be argued that this political text constitutes an instance of strategic action masking itself as communicative action. Although UN Security Council resolutions are often portrayed by the UN, the media, and individual governments as emerging out of a fair and impartial discussion modeled after Habermasian discourse ethics, it is often the case that the narrow national self-interests of states trump the norms of justice, equality, fairness, etc. Nevertheless, I still chose this particular case study because it represents a textually-based example of what can emerge out of insistent discourse and deliberation. Despite the fact that the principle of R2P was not adopted by the UN Security Council without strenuous discussion, and was often clouded by the interests of self-seeking actors, it was still adopted.3 Moreover, it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a political text that has developed out of an instance, or instances, of public argumentation that meet all of the criteria outlined in Habermas’ theory of communicative action and discourse ethics. Moreover, I firmly believe that the interlocutors that participated in the discourse over R2P still relied on the basic precepts of communicative action as an idealized form of discourse. Remember that for Habermas, ideal or idealized does not refer to ideal in the traditional sense (i.e. perfect). Rather, drawing on Weber, Habermas’ conception of the ideal is more analogous to that of an ideal type. Weber defines an ideal type as typological term that does not refer to the perfect actualization of a given phenomenon but, instead, emphasizes certain elements common to most cases of this phenomenon. For example, democracy, as a political system, is an ideal type that is realized in many different ways but which tends to have a multiparty system, fair and free elections, etc. In Between Fact and Norms Habermas makes this argument clear. He states that such idealizations ensure that certain procedures should be the “core structure in a separate, constitutionally organized political system, but not [serve] as a model for all social institutions” (Habermas, 1998, 305). Similarly, in communicative action actors tend to speak, debate, and question one another expecting or acting as if all of the criteria of public argumentation/discourse ethics have been or could be met (remember that these presuppositions include that no relevant argument is excluded, only the better argument can exert a persuasive force, no validity claim is exempt from argu-

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mentation, everyone is entitled to participate, etc). As such, I argue that Security Council Resolution 1674 is a perfectly acceptable textual medium through which to substantiate the argument(s) that Derrida’s political philosophy is not entailed by his approach to language and meaning, and the political implications of Habermas’ theory of language are consistent with the political philosophy he espouses. Another potential point of disagreement might occur over whether or not it is possible to pragmatically critique deconstructionist philosophy. That is, it has been argued that because Derrida’s philosophical framework is explicitly opposed to the values of consistency, entailment, and coherence, a pragmatic critique would violate its basic principles. There are two responses to the critique worth considering that not only justifies but necessitates a pragmatic critique of deconstruction. This first is simply that because Derrida is consistently supportive of oppositional readings and interpretations, he can hardly exclude a pragmatist reading of his work since to do so would violate the precepts of difference and dissemination. The second response is little more complex and involves an explanation of the performative contradiction. The performative contradiction is a term Habermas borrows from Karl-Otto Apel and refers to the lack of fit between the content and performance of a speech act. For example, Habermas argues that in uttering statements about truth, meaning, and the logos, even though he is critical of these precepts, Derrida takes up a communicative stance which, by corollary, unintentionally presupposes the existence of that which he seeks to transgress. The same argument can be made in relation to the skepticism some scholars might have about the ability to articulate a pragmatist critique of Derrida. By drawing on the performative contradiction, one could argue that Derrida, in critiquing the normative valuation of consistency, coherence, and entailment, actually presupposes that which he seeks to bring into question. Thus Derrida cannot “possibly avoid appealing to ... [what he means] to repudiate” (McCarthy, 1990, xv). This internal contradiction, therefore, opens the door for a pragmatist critique of deconstruction. A final possible contention that might emerge is over the implicit assumptions I make about philosophy and philosophizing. In questioning the limits of a pragmatist critique, from the perspective of entailment, one could argue that I make a set of epistemic value commitments that I have failed to discuss. Specifically, it could be argued that in critiquing deconstructionist philosophy as inconsistent, I have committed myself to and elevated the values of consistency, coherence, and entailment without an adequate inquiry into my choices. Such a misleading “category mistake” could thus be said to distort rather than persuasively critique the assumptions of Derridian deconstruction. However, as a self-identified pragmatist, my response to such lines questioning is, first, yes I do hold that the values of consistency and entailment carry universal normative significance, and second, no this epistemological commitment does not constitute a category mistake.

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I, like Clinton Golding and others, contend that if “no criterion-based judgments are made about some ideas being better than others, we may be swapping some opinions, but we aren’t doing philosophy” (Golding, 2007, 5). And as Kant himself argues, “Consistency is the supreme obligation of a philosophy and yet the most rarely found” (Kant, 1949, 217). Moreover, the capacity to problematize an opponent’s view through the lens of philosophical criticism requires that one examine their opponent’s perspective from several different positions. This might include, in addition to logical consistency, an examination of their system as a whole, a study of its sources, and an assessment of its consequences. To argue that deconstruction is immune from such a critique is to endow it with a kind of intellectual freedom that shields it from any accountability. Thus, turning to the substance of this article, I have chosen to draw on several of the strategies of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), as articulated by such theorists as Ruth Wodak, Norman Fairclough, and Teun A. van Dijk, which I use to subject the text of Security Council Resolution 1674 to a Habermasian linguistic perspective and followed by a Derridian one. Briefly, CDA is a qualitative methodology that proposes “a study of the relations between discourse, power, dominance, social inequality and the position of the discourse analyst in such social relationships” (van Dijk, 1993a, 249). Its purpose is to focus on the “role of discourse in the (re)production and challenge of dominance” (van Dijk, 1993a, 249).4 CDA’s normative approach, according to Norman Fairclough, requires that opaque relationships be examined – including those between: “(a) discursive practices, events and texts, and (b) wider social and cultural structures, relations and processes” (Fairclough, 1993, 135). An example of CDA in practice is van Dijk’s (van Dijk, 1993b) examination of the debate surrounding ethnic affairs in Western parliaments which illustrates how political elites play a role in the reproduction of racism and racist discourse. van Dijk does this by locating and presenting those statements and assertions, taken from parliamentary records, that resonate and are consistent with negative assumptions and stereotypes about minority groups, which are most often based on nationalist rhetoric. Because CDA is oriented primarily to unearthing the ideological biases of texts through an examination of the relationship between discourse or language and culture, its use, for my particular purposes, requires that some adjustments be made to its objectives and basic methodology. In order to use CDA to examine R2P’s articles and principles through Habermas and Derrida’s theories of language, it must be adapted to identify the basic epistemological and ontological assumptions that Habermas and Derrida hold in their respective linguistic philosophies, and then to use those assumptions to study R2P and hypothesize what their response to its basic tenets might be. Following this, I compare these conclusions to the political philosophies Habermas and Derrida actually espouse and show that the political assumptions Derrida actually holds in his later work is not consistent with the assumptions he makes in his linguistic

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texts, and that Habermas’ political theory is consistent with the political implications extrapolated from his approach to language. I contend that the concepts, theories, and suppositions which accurately encompass Habermas’ primary assumptions include: discourse, consensus, understanding, intersubjectivity, communication, justification, modernity, Enlightenment, argumentation, reason, post-traditionality, and postmetaphysicality. Conversely, Derrida’s approach to language can be characterized by the following terms and infrastructures: deconstruction, différance, displacement, dissemination, non-presence or absence, complexity, metaphysics, logocentrism, misunderstanding, miscommunication, and grammatology. With these primary assumptions in mind, I now examine the articles of R2P using both Habermas and Derrida’s philosophies of language. 1. Habermas and the Responsibility to Protect In the following sections I draw on eight central principles and stipulations of R2P and subject them to a reading through Habermas’ approach to language in order to affirm my argument that his political philosophy is directly entailed by his theory of language and meaning and, consequently, that his pragmatism is superior to Derrida’s deconstructive approach. To this end, I not only describe what I believe Habermas’ response to these articles might be, were his linguistic theory to stand alone, but I also discuss what his political philosophy does say and, as such, hold both perspectives up to one another to illustrate his consistency concretely. The same mode of analysis is performed vis à vis Derrida further on. 1: Article 2 Emphasizes the importance of preventing armed conflict and its recurrence, and stresses in this context the need for a comprehensive approach through promoting economic growth, poverty eradication, sustainable development, national reconciliation, good governance, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for, and protection of, human rights, and in this regard, urges the cooperation of Member States and underlines the importance of a coherent, comprehensive and coordinated approach by the principal organs of the United Nations, cooperating with one another and within their respective mandates; The basic political assumptions of this particular article, much like the ones that follow, are ontologically coherent with Habermas’ approach to language and politics. In particular, this article’s emphasis on cooperation and respect for the Other are suppositions that he focuses on heavily in his linguistic and political work. For instance, in Habermas’ texts on language, cooperation between individuals (or Member States as this article stipulates) is argued to occur intersubjectively. He argues that the intersubjective relation, which presupposes

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a “structure of mutual recognition” (Habermas, 2003, 191), is constituted by the relation “that speaking and acting subjects take up when they come to an understanding with one another about something” by using the medium of natural language to “draw upon culturally transmitted interpretations, and relate simultaneously to something in the one objective world, something in their common social world, and something in each’s own subjective world” (Habermas, 1981, 392). This particular interpretation of cooperation by Habermas, which arises several more times in this resolution, is also in harmony with his political theory in which he again emphasizes that intersubjectivity is the primary relation between citizens. In Between Fact and Norms, Habermas states that intersubjectivity is the “process of reaching understanding that takes place through democratic procedures or in the communicative network of public spheres” (Habermas, 1998b, 299). He argues that this process of reaching understanding must occur with other social actors since it is only with Others that a procedural and deliberative democratic system can be strengthened. The latter assumption, respect for the Other, is consistent with Habermas’ adaptation of Mead’s theory of the ‘generalized other’ which, in his linguistic work, is constituted by a contextualized and performative familiarity of “being with the other”... [and] by a “close and symmetric interpersonal relation, where each reaches an awareness of himself [or herself] by being with, in, and for the other” (Habermas, 2003, 192). Similarly, in the context of law, democracy, and rights, Habermas applies this ethos of the “generalized other” to argue that the ability to recognize the Other as a subject who has certain rights and duties is what generates the capacity to recognize one’s own possession of said rights and duties (since the Other also recognizes them in you). Habermas maintains that the “elements of the legal order ... presuppose collaboration among subjects who recognize one another, in their reciprocally related rights and duties, as free and equal citizens” (Habermas, 1998b, 88). This consistency on the subjects of intersubjectivity and the generalized Other, as I have stated, is indicative of the coherence between Habermas’ early linguistic and later political work. 2: Article 7 Reaffirms that ending impunity is essential if a society in conflict or recovering from conflict is to come to terms with past abuses committed against civilians affected by armed conflict and to prevent future such abuses, draws attention to the full range of justice and reconciliation mechanisms to be considered, including national, international and “mixed” criminal courts and tribunals and truth and reconciliation commissions, and notes that such mechanisms can promote not only individual responsibility for serious crimes, but also peace, truth, reconciliation and the rights of the victims;

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This article, if read through Habermas’ linguistic philosophy, looks favorably upon its privileging of truth and reconciliation as well as the stipulation that the full range of mechanisms to achieve justice must be considered. Remember that truth, for Habermas, is approached postmetaphysically and is considered to be discursively achieved, universal, and counterfactual (or conditional). As such, truth, or what is accepted as true, can only be adjusted through a process whereby lifeworld certainties that have been problematized are subsequently thematized and subjected to rational discussion and debate. Habermas argues that truth is established only through the knowledge and acceptance of truth conditions that rationally justify why a truth claim should be accepted as true. This process of justification establishes an “internal relation between a proposition’s truth conditions and the kinds of reasons that might justify a corresponding truth claim” (Habermas, 2003, 71). Moreover, Habermas claims that “Argumentation remains the only available medium of ascertaining truth since truth claims that have been problematized cannot be tested in any other way” (Habermas, 2003, 38). It should be noted, however, that Habermas also argues that moral claims are truth-analogous given that their rightness is established analogously through procedures of rational argumentation – yet he also states that, in relation to moral claims, a connection to reality is unnecessary. This means that “the meaning of “rightness” consists entirely in ideal warranted acceptability” (Habermas, 2003, 248) achieved procedurally. Moreover, moral claims, because they lack a justification-transcendent relation to the objective world, are “replaced by the regulative idea of the mutual inclusion of the other in an inclusive – and to that extent universal – world of well-ordered interpersonal relationships” (Habermas, 2003, 248). Similarly, in this article of R2P, truth is defined procedurally and is discussed in the context of commissions oriented to revealing the ‘truths’ (inclusive of moral truths) of the victims of conflict and, by inference, emphasizes reaching accord, agreement, and reconciliation through rational discourse, in which the opinions, views, and stories of the Other are respected. It is significant that this process of reconciliation is also approached procedurally as it is consistent with Habermas’ method. That is, Habermas also emphasizes that consensus and agreement, and therefore reconciliation, can only be achieved through the use of universal procedures and the following idealizing presuppositions: (1) support of public debate and the complete inclusion of all those affected; (2) the equal distribution of the right to participate; (3) a nonviolent context in which only the unforced force of the better argument holds sway; and (4) an assurance of the sincerity of all who express themselves (Habermas, 2003, 37). In the realm of political theory, Habermas’ approach to truth undergoes little, if any, substantive alteration. In The Inclusion of the Other, he reiterates that truth must be thought of as both pragmatic and fallible: “when we assert ‘p’ and thereby claim truth for ‘p’ we accept the obligation to defend ‘p’ in

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argumentation [in accordance with the procedures of argumentation] – in full awareness of its fallibility – against all future objections” (Habermas, 2001, 37). However, it should be noted that this particular conception of truth, which extends into Habermas’ political theory, is somewhat different from how he approaches truth in his early work on ideology, knowledge, and interests. For example, Habermas, in Truth and Justification, acknowledges that in his early work he had claimed that truth was indistinguishable from ideal assertibility which, in turn, had left him open to the charge that assertibility, under ‘ideal’ conditions, is insufficiently fallible and that, consequently, the regulative ideals that arise out of truth conceived of in this way cannot be approximated. Thus, Habermas argues that These objections have prompted me to revise the discursive conception of rational acceptability by relating it to a pragmatically conceived, nonepistemic concept of truth but without thereby assimilating “truth” to “ideal assertibility” (Habermas, 2003, 38). This change, however, does not radically alter Habermas’ basic assumptions about the role of discourse and the importance of the intersubjective relation to truth. Both interpretations of truth are cognizant of and respect the role justification plays in the truth predicate but have divergent ideas about how strong the idealizations of argumentation are (that is, a non-epistemic theory of truth orients itself to achieving a kind of truth that is capable of being “justified in every context” (Habermas, 2001, 37)). In relation to this article’s principle that all mechanisms to achieve justice and reconciliation must be considered, what is significant, in the context of Habermas’ theoretical framework (in both his early and later texts), is that he explicitly and consistently defends the belief that communication between individuals is by nature oriented to the achievement of reconciliation, agreement, and consensus against any and all objections. Habermas maintains that this orientation is both a function of language itself and an attitudinal characteristic of participants in communication: Reaching understanding is the inherent telos of human language ... the concepts of speaking and reaching understanding reciprocally interpret one another. For this reason, we can analyze the formal-pragmatic features of this attitude oriented toward reaching understanding in connection with the model of the attitude of participants in communication, one of whom – in the simplest case – carries out a speech act, to which the other takes a “yes” or “no” position. (Habermas, 1998a, 120–121). Similarly, in his texts on politics using the same basic framework, Habermas states that in order for an authentic and postnational democratic ethos to take hold, what is required is the universalization of the tenet that communication

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between individuals is invariably oriented to coordination and understanding in the distinct sense of communicative action. Thus, he states that only through the “inclusive procedure of will-formation marked by discussion and publicity” (Habermas 2006, 122), can the cosmopolitan condition be realized. He does not, however, explicitly discuss the concept or issue of justice, as a political term, until his later work on postnational politics, law, and democracy. Habermas, in these latter texts, defines justice as the process or procedure whereby one is able to justify legitimate legal norms in a rational manner. He states that justice is intimately connected to democracy wherein democratic genesis, rather than a priori principles, is what provides a statute with its just-ness. That is, “the justice of law is guaranteed by the particular procedure by which it comes about” (Habermas, 2006, 189). This procedure, again (and consistent with his linguistic philosophy), consists of intersubjective and discursive communicative action in which all are able to participate and raise issues and questions in a fair environment. Overall, it is clear that Habermas’ epistemological and ontological assumptions, specifically in relation to the subjects of truth, reconciliation, and justice, are, one, consistent with the assumptions of this particular article, and, two, applies to both his linguistic and political texts. 3: Article 8 Emphasizes in this context the responsibility of States to comply with their relevant obligations to end impunity and to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law, while recognizing, for States in or recovering from armed conflict, the need to restore or build independent national judicial systems and institutions; In regards to Habermas’ approach to language and meaning, what stands out in this particular article are the terms compliance, obligation, violations of law, and the need for independent judicial institutions. In this section, I focus on the need to comply with legal obligations and to support the autonomy of judicial institutions. The requirement that states must comply with their obligations (under national law) and prosecute those who violate humanitarian norms is consistent with the linguistic philosophy Habermas articulates in his early work as well as the approach to the political he takes in his later texts. Although he does not explicitly discuss compliance with law in his texts on language and meaning, he does emphasize the need for individuals to abide by the norms that constitute their social world. Remember that these norms are seen as legitimate not because of their coercive character, but because they develop out of the discursive and intersubjective will-formation of social actors who “discursively redeem normative claims to validity” (Habermas, 1990a, 93). Thus, states must comply with international norms (including international legal norms that protect human rights) because they

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have developed out of a process of inclusive argumentation that is consistent with the will of the public. This is precisely what Habermas continues to argues in his political work in which he claims that human rights are norms, rather than values, which, while distinct from moral norms in a substantive way (in that they require some degree of coercion and compliance), are rights that only achieve “positive validity within an established legal order.” He claims that Only when human rights have found their proper “place” in a global democratic constitutional order, will we be able to assume that the addressees of these rights can also regard themselves as their authors at the global level. The institutions of the United Nations are on a course to close the circle between the enforcement of binding law and democraticlaw making (Habermas, 2006d, 28). This means that, for Habermas, the prosecution of human rights violations requires that human rights be perceived as legal norms that not only call for states to comply with their basic stipulations because of their coercive character, but also because they are consistent with the norms accepted as universally valid by the addressees of these rights and, consequently, with the laws enshrined in national constitutions. Habermas makes this clear in Between Facts and Norms in which he insist that human rights, which are internally linked to popular sovereignty, cannot be reduced to a “moral reading of human rights nor to an ethical reading of popular sovereignty” (Habermas, 1998b, 104). That is, they (human rights) can only be viewed as valid when, through the “legitimating force of a discursive process of opinion- and will-formation,” language is used that is “oriented to mutual understanding... [and which then serves] to bring reason and will together – and lead to convincing positions to which all individuals can agree without coercion” (Habermas, 1998b, 103). In relation to this article’s call for independent judicial institutions, Habermas – in his linguistic and political texts – also considers the independence of such institutions to be essential. Although Habermas does not overtly discuss law or the makeup of legal institutions in his linguistic work, his later discussion of law and justice (and in particular the need to have a transparent and responsive legal system independent of political and economic imperatives) is consistent with both his theory of communicative action and discourse ethics. For instance, in both volumes of Theory of Communicative Action Habermas argues that political institutions, including the state, are oftentimes forced to employ instrumental or administrative rationality to achieve its ends. He also argues that one of the manifold pathologies of modernity is the tendency for these bureaucratic imperatives to encroach on and instrumentalize the public sphere: “It is not the differentiation and independent development of cultural

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value spheres that lead to the cultural impoverishment of everyday communicative practice,” Habermas claims, “but an elitist splitting-off of expert cultures from contexts of communicative action in daily life ... and the penetration of forms of economic and administrative rationality into areas of action” (Habermas, 1987, 330). While Habermas does not initially extend this argument to the judicial arena (and argue that administrative imperatives can also impinge on and mediatize the judiciary), the foundation of this line of reasoning can be ascertained in his linguistic texts. Moreover, such an argument about judicial independence and the role public discourse plays in legitimating law is consistent with the discourse theoretic approach Habermas uses in his linguistic and political work. Such an argument, for example, can be observed in his discussion of norms which he claims are only accepted as legitimate by a rational public if they arise out of moral argumentation. Law is an example of a postconventional norm that, consistent with Habermas’ framework, must also arise out of such communicative contexts. That is, laws too “are susceptible to the requirement of deontological validity” (Habermas, 1990a, 177). Consequently, they are also susceptible to the pathologies that infect the public sphere (since they arise out of that public sphere) – namely the steering mechanisms of money and power. This is precisely what Habermas argues in his political writings (Habermas, 1994; 1998b; 2001b). Habermas’ linguistic and political philosophies are simultaneously consistent with one another and with the assumptions of this article, particularly in relation to the need for citizens (and states) to comply with law as well as with respect to the need for autonomous judicial institutions. 4: Article 9 Calls on States that have not already done so to consider ratifying the instruments of international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law, and to take appropriate legislative, judicial and administrative measures to implement their obligations under these instruments; This particular article is significant in that it explicitly acknowledges the importance of ratification – which is consistent with Habermas’ emphasis on discursively achieved rational consensus. It is also supportive of and consistent with Habermas’ approach to moral theory since it too highlights the need to adopt “appropriate measures” – where what is considered to be appropriate is defined with Others in a communicative context. What is particularly unique about this article is the inclusion of the term ‘obligatory’, which also plays a fundamental role in Habermas’ moral theory. Habermas asserts that norms, which are justified and accepted through the exercise of practical reason in contexts of rational communicative action (or, as he explains in Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, are recognized as just in the social world when the “subjects engaged in communicative action

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orient themselves to validity claims, including assertoric and normative validity claims” (Habermas, 1990, 100)), are obligatory in the sense that when two interlocutors are communicating, and one accepts the truthfulness of the Other’s reasons, certain “obligations are assumed that have consequences for the interaction, obligations that are contained in the meaning of what is said” (Habermas, 1990, 59). However, Habermas also asserts that for regulative speech acts, obligations hold differently for different actors. For example, in the case of orders and directives, obligations hold for the hearer, while for promises and announcements they hold for the speaker. Finally, in the case of agreements and contracts, obligations are symmetrical, “holding for both parties and, and [finally] in the case of substantive normative recommendations and warnings, they hold asymmetrically for both parties” (Habermas, 1990, 59). What is most important is Habermas’ assertion that normative/regulative speech acts contain and compel certain obligations on the part of participants. That is, he argues that in the case of such norms as human rights, obligations hold asymmetrically and symmetrically for all parties. This framework coheres nicely with the assumptions of this particular article in that it too emphasizes the need for the norms that constitute humanitarian law to be made obligatory. In The Divided West, Habermas takes this ethos a step further and argues that international law requires first that it be constitutionalized, and second that it be based upon a sense of deontological solidarity between individuals that arises out of and is legitimated not by the “thick political-value orientations that is necessary for the familiar kind of civic solidarity among fellow citizens,” but through the “reactions of moral outrage toward egregious human rights violations.” Habermas states that this basis for judgment is “provided by common cultural dispositions” in the lifeworld that are “slender but robust” (Habermas, 2006, 143). Overall, it is clear that the role of obligation and obligatory action in Habermas’ political work is directly entailed by his early texts and is also consistent with the principles of this article. Again, this level of coherence and sense of comprehensiveness (in accounting for and describing the role of a deontological nature of meaning, normativity, and law) is lacking in Derrida’s thought. 5: Article 18 Underscores the importance of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR) in the protection of civilians affected by armed conflict, and, in this regard, emphasizes (i) its support for the inclusion in mandates of United Nations peacekeeping and other relevant missions, where appropriate and on a case-by-case basis, of specific and effective measures for DDR, (ii) the importance of incorporating such activities into specific peace agreements, where appropriate and in consultation with the parties, and (iii) the importance

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What resonates here with Habermas’ philosophy is its emphasis on reintegration, inclusion, effectiveness, incorporation, and consultation. Specifically, and in relation to the privileging of consultation, reintegration, inclusion, and incorporation in particular, an affinity can be seen with Habermas’ early discussion of the ideal speech situation as well as his overall pragmatic approach to communication since both articulate the basic conditions under which successful communication occurs (where successful communication is achieved when interlocutors reach consensus). These conditions include, but are not limited to, the requirement that participants (1) are given an equal opportunity to contribute, make comments, ask questions, make explanations, etc.; (2) remain honest to one another and transparent in their intentions; and (3) have the ability to say no, to insist that others be made accountable, and to make their own demands/assertions regarding their respective opinions and beliefs. All these principles are echoed in this article – particularly the counterfactual ideal that everyone must be given the opportunity to contribute. This ethos of inclusion, consultation, and integration is also echoed in Habermas’ political philosophy – but with the important proviso that the adoption of these principles must not lead to the negation of Otherness or difference. Habermas, in The Divided West, states that despite deep and difficult impediments, including the blight of international terrorism, the militarization of international relations, and the tendentious status of the United Nations, a postnational constellation based on a global public sphere can be made manifest. This public sphere, Habermas states, is informal yet capable. What is required is the constitutionalization or juridification of international relations such that translating communicative influence [developed out of discursive communication of citizens in the public sphere] into political power ... can secure a sufficient degree of integration for global society ... [and] a sufficient level of legitimacy on the decisions of the world organization (Habermas, 2006b, 142). Habermas also states that any move to juridify international relations requires that its principles be “anchored in the legitimating force of the at once deliberative and representative character of the procedures of democratic opinionand will-formation” (Habermas, 2006b, 140). Additionally, in his later work Habermas is much more cognizant of and attentive to the requirement that the Other be given space to disagree and maintain a difference of opinion.5 In The Inclusion of the Other he asserts that this principle of respecting the Other is consonant with the assumptions that underlie his theory of communicative action and discourse ethics. Habermas also states that conflicts surrounding

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truths and norms are usually resolved through argumentation, but emphasizes that space must be made for one to choose their individual life plan. That is, the distinction between the public and private sphere sets standards through which freedom is interpreted and, in doing so “legally guarantees freedom of choice for private legal subjects [and] creates the free space for pursuing a plan of life informed by one’s own conception of the good” (Habermas, 100, 2001c). Habermas also suggests that moral argumentation, and in particular moral disagreements, must be sensitive to affective reactions and, accordingly, incorporate affect into moral argumentation (although emotion does not carry the same weight as reasons): The critical and self-critical stances be adopt toward transgressions find expression in affective attitudes: from the third person perspective, in abhorrence, indignation, and contempt, from the perspective of those affected, in feelings of violation or resentment toward second persons, and from the first person perspective, in shame and guilt (Habermas 2001c, 4). This is a significant admission in that it takes into account the feelings and emotions, as well as the rational arguments, of the Other – which Habermas was previously unwilling to do. With respect to effectiveness, which this article highlights by emphasizing the need to couple DDR programmes and activities, Habermas asserts that action oriented to measurable success and efficacy is essential. He explains that the use of instrumental reason in strategic and teleological action is concerned with pursuing one’s individual goals in order to coordinate action.6 In these kinds of actions, the actor makes a “decision among alternative courses of action, with a view to the realization of an end, guided by maxims, and based on the interpretation of a situation” (Habermas, 1981a, 85). Habermas also claims that strategic and/or teleological action is parasitic on communicative action but necessary when circumstances warrant it (in, for example, cases where a decision on government policy must be made). Moreover, he makes it clear that communicative action is analogous to strategic action in the sense that both are goal-oriented. This leads me to hypothesize that in the context of international relations, a measured orientation to teleological and/or strategic action is necessary. Habermas ultimately comes to this very conclusion in his political texts. He argues that for the cosmopolitan condition to be realized, the following strategic and teleological reforms must be adopted: (1) the reinforcement of the executive such that an “effective implementation of resolutions are possible”; (2) a universally-binding acceptance of the requirement that members must bind themselves to “actionable rules”; and (3) recognition that we must comprehensively transform wars “into police operations” (Habermas, 2006c, 173–174) (rather viewing wars as a series of existential conflicts).

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As I have demonstrated, this article’s principles are in harmony with Habermas’ discussion of inclusion, consultation, and effectiveness in his linguistic as well as in his political work. This level of consistency lends further support to my characterization of Habermas’ pragmatism as offering a distinctly modern, Enlightenment-driven, reflexive, and persuasive critical theory of society. 6: Article 26 Notes that the deliberate targeting of civilians and other protected persons, and the commission of systematic, flagrant and widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in situations of armed conflict, may constitute a threat to international peace and security, and, reaffirms in this regard its readiness to consider such situations and, where necessary, to adopt appropriate steps; When read through Habermas’ philosophy of language, this stipulation coheres with both his linguistic and political framework on several levels. First, this article’s call for the UN to “consider such situations,” implies an orientation to discourse and debate – both of which feature prominently in Habermas’ theory of communicative action. Specifically, he argues that discursive communication, through which truth is justified, norms are validated, and expressions authenticated, demands an orientation to the argumentative redemption of validity claims in which “arguments or reasons ... develop the force of rational motivation under conditions of cooperative testing of hypothetical validity claims” (Habermas, 1981a, 249). That is, for Habermas, it is inevitable that the achievement of consensus by Security Council members, who now must intervene in the affairs of countries who violate international law in accordance with R2P, requires, as its foundational structure, that all Security Council and UN member engage in communication oriented to achieving agreement on what constitutes appropriate action.7 Second, this article’s requirement that UN members adopt “appropriate steps,” would entail that action be taken jointly, and that the determination of what is ‘appropriate’ be reached through practical discourse. Specifically, in relation to point one, Habermas argues that agreement must be reached between parties with respect to what constitutes necessary action as well as agreement on the precise logistics required for said action to be taken. In relation to point two, Habermas asserts that the definition of what is “appropriate” must also be established consensually. Moreover, the formation of consensus takes place through practical discourse defined as “the medium in which we can test whether a norm of action, be it actually recognized or not, can be impartially justified” (Habermas, 1981a, 19). That is, consensus concerning what is ‘right’ can only occur through “a public, inclusive, nonviolent, and decentralizing form of argumentation among equals” in which a norm is accepted because it is

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“recognized as valid under (approximately) ideal conditions” (Habermas, 1993, 42). These conclusions are also reflected in the political approach Habermas adopts. On the topic of “considered” debate expressed in this article, Habermas is clear that for such “considered” debate to occur, support and space must be given for pluralist and discursive communication to take place. For instance, in Time of Transitions he argues that “the normative basis of constitutional democracy” is rooted in “the result[s] of a deliberative decision-making process that founders ... undertook with the intention of creating a voluntary, selfdetermining association of free and equal citizens” (Habermas, 2006d, 119). Moreover, with respect to the subjects of law, human rights, and popular sovereignty, Habermas commits himself to these principles and asserts that only public discourse amongst citizens can legitimate juridical rights, rules, and orders. Moreover, these citizens have, through the universal acceptance of the legitimacy of discursive rules, come to agree that “modern law ... [is] the [best] medium for regulating their common life” (Habermas, 2006d, 120), and fostering considered debate. Additionally, in relation to his (and this article’s) early emphasis on symmetrical intersubjectivity, Habermas, in his political philosophy as well, maintains that the justification of juridical norms, laws, and the normative basis of human rights requires the application of practical reason by public actors with Others in an inclusive public sphere to be justified. For example, in Between Facts and Norms Habermas states that because “rights are based on the reciprocal recognition of cooperating legal persons” (Habermas 1998b, 88), the intersubjective relation becomes critical in attaining the “socially integrating force of solidarity” through its capacity to legitimate political power and support “procedures of democratic opinion- and will-formation” (Habermas, 1998b, 299), via discourse. Habermas’ early engagement with meaning and communication and his later turn to the subject of politics are consistent with one another as illustrated through their mutual acceptance of the principles of discursive engagement and intersubjectivity expressed in this article. This, in turn, supports my argument that Habermas’ linguistic theory and his political framework accurately accounts for (through diagnoses and reconstruction) the variegated nature of modern society and also provides a means through which to attain such important Enlightenment ideals as progress, reason, freedom, justice, etc. without the latent authoritarianism, lack of reflexivity, or normative deficit that characterize other approaches. 7: Principle 1 1). Reaffirming its resolutions 1265 (1999) and 1296 (2000) on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, its various resolutions on children and armed conflict and on women, peace and security, as well as its resolution 1631 (2005) on cooperation between the United Nations and

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Before engaging in an analysis of this article through Habermas, it is important to be familiar with the content of resolutions 1265, 1296, and 1631. To begin with, Resolution 1265, passed on 17 September 1999, deals with the protection of civilians (particularly women and children) in armed conflict. It states that member states must jointly address the causes of armed conflict and take steps to enhance the protection of civilians over the long-term. This resolution also makes it clear that the UN must take action to ensure that refugees and internally displaced peoples are protected. It also emphasizes that member states have a responsibility to maintain “the civilian character of refugee and internally displaced person camps” (UN, 2000, online). Resolution 1296 is another resolution, passed on 19 April 2000, aimed at the protection of civilians in armed conflict. Of note in this resolution is its stipulation that organizations, including states, must “uphold the principles of neutrality, impartiality and humanity in their humanitarian activities...” (UN, 1999, online). Finally, Resolution 1631, passed on 17 October 2005, is meant to ensure cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations who must act together to maintain international peace and security. Most notably, this article states that the UN must aid in developing regional and subregional organizations’ [for example the African Union (AU)] ability to deploy peacekeeping forces rapidly in support of the United Nations peacekeeping operation or other Security Council mandated operations, and welcomes relevant initiatives taken in this regard (UN, 2005b, online). Thus, in relation to this article, and in light of the content of the previous resolutions that inform it, it is fair to say that Habermas would fully support the following principles of cumulative responsibility, protection of the vulnerable, capacity development, neutrality, and cooperation. I focus on principles two and four in this section. Consistent with his linguistic texts, Habermas claims that the protection of the vulnerable must occur substantively through, for example, armed protection and intervention but, most significantly, through the extension of communicative power to all citizens. That is, for Habermas, an important factor in the capacity to achieve equality, justice, and security is that each person is given the right and the space to contribute, to speak, and to be taken seriously. If victims of war and those who have suffered human rights violations are provided with the opportunity to speak, and if their stories, beliefs, and ideas are given the same amount of warranted respect and weight as statements made by government agents, this,

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according to Habermas, would go a long way towards protecting the vulnerable. This right is articulated in Habermas’ theory of the ideal speech situation and the idealizing presuppositions of communication (of which the right to contribute is featured prominently). This right also arises in Habermas’ claim that his emphasis on participation and equality requires that interlocutors are strongly oriented towards achieving mutual understanding. In his text On the Pragmatics of Social Interaction, Habermas states that mutual understanding can only occur if the following two levels of communication operate simultaneously: “(a) the level of intersubjectivity, at which the speakers-hearers speak with one another; and (b) the level of objects or states of affairs about which they communicate with one another” (Habermas, 2001a, 62). These two levels ensure that communication not only occurs in relation to objects, things and events, and persons and their utterances (that is, the representational or knowledge-constituting aspect of language), but also facilitates the meaning-constituting aspect of communication – that is, its use (Habermas, 2001a, 62–63). Thus, and consistent with this article and Habermas’ explicit emphasis on the protection of the vulnerable and the dual-structure of communication, what is required is the facilitation of a communicatively-based relationship between citizens of the world (including the vulnerable), the UN, and nation-states such that knowledge, meaning, and understanding is achieved intersubjectively, equally, and without barriers. This procedural context is essential if there is to be any level of equality between citizens. Habermas also supports the right to contribute, to be protected, and to engage communicatively with Others (including states) in his political texts. In The Inclusion of the Other, Habermas reaffirms that moral norms act as “a protective mechanism that compensates for the intrinsic vulnerability of persons” (Habermas, 2001c, 30). He also maintains that for solidarity and justice to be incorporated fully into normative relations and international law (which would, in turn, facilitate the further constitutionalization and internalization of such principles as equality and the right to be heard), what is needed is for us to understand and tangibly accommodate the reality that “Only those affected can themselves clarify, from the perspective of participants in practical deliberation what is equally good for all” (Habermas, 2001c, 30). This statement emphasizes that the experiences, beliefs, and arguments of the vulnerable are crucial and indispensable. In Between Facts and Norms, Habermas discusses the issue of justice in detail. His particular approach to “the just” is similar to this article’s emphasis on the protection of the vulnerable as well as his early focus on extending the right to speak to all citizens. Habermas states that for something (i.e., some law or action) to be considered just it (justice) must be conceived of postmetaphysically, that is, as attainable “only if it avoids taking sides in the contest of competing forms of life and worldviews” (Habermas, 1998b, 60). This means that “the theory of justice must limit itself to the narrow-circle of political-moral

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questions of principle for which an “overlapping consensus” may reasonably be expected” (Habermas, 1998b, 63), which, in the context of this principle, means that there can be no justification for lax protection of the vulnerable since this, by extension, has no basis in the system of rights, duties, and laws that have evolved out of national, international, and local instances of communicative action. Additionally, and in unison with his linguistic philosophy, Habermas is explicitly supportive of an ethos of neutrality which is also emphasized in this article. He states that a sense of neutrality or impartiality must be extended to every speech act one is engaged in (as either instigator or respondent) since to do so ensures that processes of understanding are not tainted by system imperatives (i.e., money or power). This does not, however, mean that some level of preunderstanding shaped by the experiences, knowledges, and competencies of the lifeworld have no bearing on communication. Habermas makes it clear that “language users can direct themselves toward something inner worldly only from within the horizon of the lifeworld” and that, as such, there can be “no strictly context-independent references to something in the world ... ” since “The lifeworld contexts and the linguistic practices in which socialized subjects “always already” find themselves disclose the world from the perspective of traditions and habits that generate meaning” (Habermas, 2003a, 93). In his texts on politics, Habermas also emphasizes the important role neutrality and fairness plays not only in the context of small-scale communication, but also in processes whereby such communications are filtered into larger political contexts. For instance, in Time of Transitions Habermas explains how this principle of fairness and neutrality extends to the realm of democratic politics through an examination of constitution-making. He asserts that the process whereby citizens contribute to the normative substance of their constitution requires that the “inclusive process of opinion- and will-formation on the part of the citizens” be ensured such that “constitutional principles [because they are rooted in the motivations and attitudes of the citizens] are [made] less coercive and more permanent” than, for example “the formal juridical mechanisms that immunize the constitution against changes by tyrannical majorities” (Habermas, 2006d, 118). Habermas goes on to argue that this process of opinion- and willformation also necessitates that “the constitution ... acquires the procedural sense of establishing forms of communication that provide for the public use of reason and a fair balance of interests in a manner consonant with the regulatory need and context-specific issue” (Habermas, 2006d, 119). That is, according to Habermas, the only means by which a constitution can acquire an ethos of universality is through rational and inclusive acts of communication that are fair and impartial. I contend that this orientation to fairness and impartiality in Habermas’ political work is further evidence of the consistent nature of his pragmatic approach to meaning and political life.

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Thus, as I have illustrated, this article’s core principles cohere seamlessly with Habermas’ linguistic and political philosophies. Habermas’ consistent support of the normative principles surrounding the protection of the vulnerable (i.e., the Other) and upholding the principle of fairness in all processes of communication are compatible with the norms articulated by this article. 8: Principle 2 2). Acknowledging that peace and security, development and human rights are the pillars of the United Nations system and the foundations for collective security and well-being, and recognizing in this regard that development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing, This final article of the Security Council Resolution can be seen to embrace the following moral principles and ethical strategies: collectivity, recognition (which is analogous to Habermas’ thesis regarding mutual recognition of the Other), security, peace, and foundations. In this section, I focus on the latter of these principles since a majority of the other tenets have been discussed extensively. In his linguistic and political work, Habermas is explicitly opposed to foundationalism. Foundationalism, he argues, erroneously privileges selfconsciousness and infallibility – both of which are deeply problematic principles: The fact of the matter is that we only draw inferences about the inner world of mental states and psychic events from our knowledge of external facts. The hypothesis of a “self” is forced on us only through the experience of error, that is, when an opinion that is at first held to be true turns out to be merely “subjective” (Habermas, 1992a, 97–97). However, it could be argued that this particular article of the R2P doctrine does not express a kind of foundationalism consistent with metaphysical thinking, but, rather, aims to reaffirm the sense of universalism that must surround human rights. This interpretation is consistent with Habermas’ early and later work. Briefly, in his texts on language and meaning, Habermas argues that the kind of universality that surrounds pragmatic competences of communication, rationality, facts, truths, and norms arises out of processes of communicative action rooted in everyday contexts (i.e., lifeworld experiences). That is, universality conceived of postmetaphysically, according to Habermas, must not fall “back upon the guarantees of the great philosophical tradition” (Habermas, 1992a, 138), but must emerge out of the constant raising and redeeming of validity claims. As Habermas maintains in The Pragmatics of Social Interaction, universality, in all of its various manifestations in the lifeworld, is internally linked to the “concept of the rational discursive redemption of validity claims”

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determined “in terms of the demand of reaching of rational consensus” (Habermas, 2001a, 89). This, again, is consistent with universalism circulated by this specific article. In his political texts Habermas continues to maintain that universality plays an essential role in the development of law, democracy, and justice. In Inclusion of the Other, Habermas is clear that democratic norms and principles (inclusive of laws) are obligatory, developed intersubjectively and, as such, universal but also revisable. Habermas argues this principle of universalization which, to reiterate, asserts that a norm is valid when the “foreseeable consequences and side effects of its general observance for the interests and value orientations of each individual could be jointly accepted by all concerned without coercion” (Habermas, 2001c, 42), is critical. He also emphasizes the role intersubjectivity plays in this context. Habermas states that “The attractiveness of the values in light of which I understand myself and my life cannot be explained within the limits of the world of subjective experiences to which I have privileged access” (Habermas, 2001c, 36) – which means that the norms of justice and rightness must carry universal standing. Habermas is consistent in his support of the universalism expressed by this article in both his linguistic and political frameworks. His approach is congruous not only with the processes of modernity articulated and accepted by the international community, but also corresponds to his comprehensive, convincing, and reflexively critical theory of society. In the next section, I demonstrate that Jacques Derrida’s deconstructionist approach, while engaging and appealing, particularly in relation to his early work, does not contain the persuasive or normative force carried by Habermas’ project. 2. Derrida, Language, and R2P This section subjects the same principles and stipulations of Security Council Resolution 1674 to a reading through Derrida’s approach to language. The themes on which I focus, some of which arise multiple times in different contexts, include coordination, cooperation, justice, and reconciliation. I have been cautious to refrain from repetition by examining these themes from different angles. I also discuss what Derrida’s political philosophy actually states in regards to the principles embedded in the selected articles in order to illustrate that Derrida’s approach to politics is inconsistent with his philosophy of language and meaning. 1. Article 2 2. Emphasizes the importance of preventing armed conflict and its recurrence, and stresses in this context the need for a comprehensive approach through promoting economic growth, poverty eradication, sustainable development, national reconciliation, good governance, democracy, the rule of law, and respect for, and protection of, human

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rights, and in this regard, urges the cooperation of Member States and underlines the importance of a coherent, comprehensive and coordinated approach by the principal organs of the United Nations, cooperating with one another and within their respective mandates; I contend that the early Derrida would have met this particular article of UN Security Council Resolution 1674 with skepticism on two separate counts. First, Derrida approaches with suspicion the assertion that cooperation is a possible or desirable outcome of discourse. In such texts as Of Grammatology and Writing and Difference he argues that cooperation and/or collaboration are metaphysical norms that claim a standard of objectivity, truth, and presence arbitrarily. In Of Grammatology, Derrida states that coordination presupposes the self-presence of ones’ self as well as the Other, both of which promulgate a deeply flawed ethos of logocentrism: We already have a foreboding that phonocentrism merges with the historical determination of the meaning of being in general as presence, with all the subdeterminations which depend on this general form and which organize within it their system and their historical sequence (presence of the thing to the sight as eidos, presence as substance/ essence/existence ... temporal presence as point ... of the now or of the moment ... the self-presence of the cogito, consciousness, subjectivity, the co-presence of the other and the self, intersubjectivity as the intentional phenomenon the ego and so forth (Derrida, 1976, 12).8 That is, for Derrida, the principle of joint action and synchronization are internally linked to the epoch of the logos and onto-theology, both of which deny the differential – differing and deferring – nature of meaning as well as the role writing plays in language. Derrida goes as far as to suggest that It is the original sin, functioning as the Flood did in the previous examples, which makes possible and necessary the sensationalist criticism of innate ideas, the recourse to learning through signs or metaphors, speech or writing, the system of signs (accidental, natural, arbitrary) (Derrida, 1976, 282). These assertions, when taken together, clearly deny a place for joint collaboration and intersubjective coordination in the processes of meaning-making, language, and learning. They are also central to Derrida’s early theses and, as such, leave little room for the principle of coordination as it is discussed in this article. Second, the call for a “coherent, comprehensive and coordinated approach by the principal organs of the United Nations,” would also be criticized by the early Derrida as either metaphysically-flawed or fundamentally

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coercive. Remember that, in his debate with Gadamer, Derrida makes this precise argument in relation to the ‘good-will’ to understand. He also argues that the notion of meaning and agreement attained through coordination presupposes a point of presence and/or a normative teleology that is unsustainable. For example, in his article “Form and Meaning” in Margins of Philosophy Derrida states that the ideal of fully present meaning and Being arises through an arbitrary privileging of “the living present (lebengige Gegenwart) as the ultimate, universal, absolute form of transcendental experience in general” (Derrida, 1982, 158). This argument (the claim that Being and meaning both presuppose that presence and self-evidence/essence are attainable normative ideals) is also applicable to the case of coordinated agreement as it is expressed in this article. However, each of these projections differ greatly with what Derrida actually articulates in his political texts. What he ends up arguing is that democracy and human rights achieved through coordination and cooperation is not only possible but necessary. In his article on Algeria, “Parallax: Taking a Stand for Algeria,” Derrida states that Algerians must “reaffirm that any solution [to conflict] must be a civil one” and emphasizes that only through civil cooperation and solidarity can Algeria realize “the possibilities which are still within ... [its] reach in order to build its own democracy and the conditions of economic development” (Derrida, 1998b, 17). Derrida’s article “The ‘World’ of the Enlightenment to Come (Exception, Calculation, Sovereignty)” also claims that only through the impossible and risky welcoming of the Other, and the Other’s beliefs, can human rights, and by corollary unconditional justice, be assured: “It is rational, for example, at the very moment of endorsing, developing, perfecting human rights, to continue to interrogate, in a deconstructive fashion, all the limits we thought pertained to life, the being of life and the life of being” (Derrida, 2003, 42). This interrogation occurs jointly through constant “exposure to the other, to what and to who comes – which means it [the event] must remain incalculable” (Derrida, 2003, 43). Thus, it is clear that Derrida drastically alters his early opposition to cooperation in his political work – which further confirms my argument that his politics, when taken as a whole, are without philosophical foundation. Also of note in the context of Derrida’s political theory, while not explicitly material to the subjects discussed in this section (it is tangentially related to the issue of coordination), is the subject of national reconciliation as discussed his book Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. Derrida argues that reconciliation is a problematic concept given that it is based, fundamentally, not on the unconditional forgiveness of the Other, that is, a “‘ hyperbolic’ ethical vision of forgiveness,” but on a pragmatic process of putting “an end to the crime and discords.” It thus aims solely at the “reconstitution of a health or ‘a normality’, as necessary and desirable” and, as such, is “only a political strategy or a psycho-therapeutic economy” (Derrida, 2001, 50). What is significant about the approach Derrida takes on the subject of reconciliation is that it, on the

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surface, appears to be consistent with the disseminatory ethos of excess he embraces in his early work. However, Derrida is also clear that reconciliation is a necessary part of forgiveness and, as such, cannot be excised from the process by which one forgives. Consequently, I conclude that not only does Derrida admit the necessary role reconciliation plays in the process of forgiveness into his political model, but he also, in doing so, undermines his theory of deconstruction. While the unconditional forgiveness/ coordinated reconciliation binary Derrida articulates is successfully reversed (by prioritizing unconditional forgiveness), it is never displaced. Instead, Derrida stops at the assertion that the two poles of this binary are co-implicated. This is a significant departure from the approach he takes in his early work. Overall, this article’s prioritization of coordination and cooperation is consistent with the principles of Derrida’s political work but antithetical to the assumptions in his linguistic philosophy. 2. Article 7 Reaffirms that ending impunity is essential if a society in conflict or recovering from conflict is to come to terms with past abuses committed against civilians affected by armed conflict and to prevent future such abuses, draws attention to the full range of justice and reconciliation mechanisms to be considered, including national, international and “mixed” criminal courts and tribunals and truth and reconciliation commissions, and notes that such mechanisms can promote not only individual responsibility for serious crimes, but also peace, truth, reconciliation and the rights of the victims; Derrida’s critique of this article would lie primarily in the privilege it extends to reconciliation, justice, and tribunals of truth – particularly in relation to the subject of truth. Because I have discussed the matter of reconciliation already, in this section I examine the latter two principles. First, I believe that Derrida, consistent with his linguistic philosophy, would have approached justice as a concept that requires or suggests finality and closure. I would expect that he would also problematize justice as a logocentric term that privileges presence over absence since it has traditionally been associated with the ‘illusion’ of teleology, agreement, consensus, and even power. That is, justice would be conceived of as negating the trace of difference and injustice – where the trace is defined as that which is “always differing and deferring ... [it] is never as it is in the presentation of itself. It erases itself in presenting itself, muffles itself in resonating, the a writing itself, inscribing its pyramid in différance” (Derrida, 1982, 23). Derrida might even go so far as to argue that justice is primarily a rendering of coercive and unequivocal judgment and, consequently, should be identified with “procedures or methodological suspensions ... [that are] fraught with metaphysical presuppositions” (Derrida, 1998a, 85).

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However, in his discussions of justice in his political work, Derrida treats justice as an undeconstructible and impossible gesture that is neither metaphysical nor logocentric. He argues that justice is constituted by “the incalculability of the gift and singularity of the an-economic ex-position to others” (Derrida, 1994, 23). Derrida goes so far as to argue that justice is an event that is distinct from law given that the latter is “the reasoned exigency of calculation or conditionality,” and the former “the nonnegotiable exigency of unconditional incalculability” (Derrida, 2005, 150). Although Derrida does emphasize the connection between law and justice, and between the calculable and incalculable, he does not attempt to deconstruct justice or problematize its central presuppositions. I find it puzzling that Derrida chooses to accept and support the concept of justice in his later work – even if he does make some definitional adjustments to it.9 Derrida, in doing so, undermines deconstruction and his strategic use of infrastructures which he, in the past, used to unearth the genealogy of metaphysical concepts that inevitably presuppose the very phenomenon they aim to deny. On the subject of “tribunals of truth” Derrida would have been deeply critical of the suggestion that a tribunal of any sort has the capacity to determine truth unequivocally. He makes this very argument against truth in the first pages of Of Grammatology though a critique of Heidegger, Plato, and Hegel whom he accuses of assigning “the origin of truth in general to the logos: the history of truth, of the truth of truth, has always been ... the debasement of writing, and its repression outside “full” speech” (Derrida, 1976, 3). Similarly, in Speech and Phenomenon Derrida asserts that We have experienced the systematic interdependence of the concepts of sense, ideality, objectivity, truth, intuition, perception, and expression. Their common matrix is being as presence: the absolute proximity of selfidentity, the being-in-front of the object available for repetition, the maintenance of the temporal present, whose ideal form is the selfpresence of transcendental life, whose ideal identity allow idealiter of infinite repetition (Derrida, 1973, 99). However, it should be recognized that in his political work, Derrida’s understanding of truth is different. In his later texts, Derrida articulates an acceptable idea of truth defined as the “truth of the Other” and subsequently argues that the “truth” of the Other must be allowed to manifest itself. In Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas Derrida states that one must welcome and receive the face of the Other unequivocally and without question such that “hospitality becomes the very name of what opens itself to the face, or, more precisely, of what ‘welcomes’ it” (Derrida, 1997, 21). He goes on to assert that This would designate precisely the experience of the stranger, where the truth of the messianic universe exceeds not only the determined place and

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moment, but also the identity, especially the national identity, of the bearer of the messenger of the Torah, or the revealed Torah (Derrida, 1997, 69). However, I contend that although this approach to truth is messianic, undetermined, and excessive (in the sense that it exceeds national identity), it still remains a kind of truth. I do not accept that it is possible, without some sort of critical genealogical examination or textual exegesis, to simply transform, expand, or even totally redefine truth as the polar opposite of what it has traditionally stood for without incurring epistemological and ontological difficulties. Thus, overall, I find it difficult to reconcile this particular article of Security Council Resolution 1674 and Derrida’s political approach to justice and truth, to the position(s) he takes in early work. 3: Article 8 Emphasizes in this context the responsibility of States to comply with their relevant obligations to end impunity and to prosecute those responsible for war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law, while recognizing, for States in or recovering from armed conflict, the need to restore or build independent national judicial systems and institutions; When read through Derrida’s approach to language, this particular article would be questioned in its tendency to privilege obligatory action, law, and compliance over play, interpretation, and difference. The early Derrida would argue that these principles are not only coercive but logocentric because they privilege presence over absence and demand observance and conformity. In this section, I focus on the second of these two principles. In his linguistic work Derrida explicitly criticizes the privileging of inscription, and by corollary conformity, over play and complexity and argues, through a discussion of Hegel, that He [Hegel] has blinded himself to the possibility of his own bet, to the fact that the conscientious suspension of the play ... what itself is a phase of play; and to the fact that play includes the work of meaning or the meaning of work, and includes them not in terms of knowledge, but in terms of inscription: meaning is a function of play, is inscribed in a certain place in the configuration of a meaningless of play. [Thus] Since no logic governs, henceforth, the meaning of interpretation, because logic is an interpretation, Hegel’s own interpretation can be reinterpreted – against him (Derrida, 1978, 260). It should follow that Derrida, in his political work, would also critique logic, law, and obligatory action for its tendency to negate play, difference, and Otherness.

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However, in his text Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Derrida argues the opposite by explicitly emphasizing the need to build and support institutions that provide for and uphold international humanitarian law. He also underlines the obligation states have to comply with these laws through prosecutions of war criminals and human rights violators. Yet he simultaneously questions whether law is the best way to achieve security and peace since, consistent with his theory of auto-immunity, there is a very real tendency for states to violate the very humanitarian laws they go to such lengths to protect. While this latter critique of law appears to be consistent with the assumptions Derrida makes in his early work on language, it is contradicted by his strong assertion that coercive law is still necessary.10 In Specters of Marx Derrida, while maintaining that justice must be distinguished “from law or right and even from human rights” (Derrida, 1994, 59), also emphasizes that despite this, and the multiple problems international institutions face in the articulation and application of law, “These facts do not suffice to disqualify international institutions” (Derrida, 1994, 84), nor do they lead to a negation of international law. Derrida goes on to assert that Just as the concept of human rights has slowly been determined over the course of centuries ... likewise international law should extend and diversify its field to include, if at least it is to be consistent with the idea of democracy and of human rights it proclaims, the worldwide economic and social field, beyond the sovereignty of States and of the phantomstates we mentioned a moment ago (Derrida, 1994, 84). Consequently, it is clear that Derrida does not, in his political texts, adequately examine the nature and function of law, obligation (or duty), and compliance as one would expect in light of his early texts on language and meaning. This supports my contention that a significant aporia exists between Derrida’s early and later work which, in turn, jeopardizes the epistemological and normative force of his subsequent support for democracy and the Enlightenment. 4: Article 9 Calls on States that have not already done so to consider ratifying the instruments of international humanitarian, human rights and refugee law, and to take appropriate legislative, judicial and administrative measures to implement their obligations under these instruments; First, Derrida, in relation to this stipulation and consistent with his early work, would have argued that the very notion that one could ratify universal legal principles cooperatively is an inherently metaphysical presupposition. He argues that because universality presupposes a sense of mastery, transcendentality, and sovereignty, it is consistent with “dynamics of power, dynamics of dynasty: [which contain] a drive ... to dominate the entire body driven, and must subject

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this body to its regime” with an aim at “exercising the violence of its domination over the object” (Derrida, 1987, 404). Second, this article also presupposes that mutual obligations are important – which is something Derrida did not, in his early work, accept. For instance, in his dialogue with Gadamer, Derrida explicitly criticizes the notion of obligatory action or good-will, where obligatory action is understood as an action compelled by law or conscience, since both require that understanding and consensus be accepted as the telos of communication. He states that such a privileging integrates “a psychoanalytic hermeneutics into a general hermeneutics,” and, in doing so, reasserts a metaphysical ethos since “this way of speaking, in its very necessity, belong[s] to a particular epoch, namely, that of a metaphysics of the will” (Derrida, 1989, 53). In his political work, Derrida does not explicitly use the term ‘good-will’ but does, in his discussion of the Other, argue that the friend or guest must be given unconditional hospitality and be welcomed without question. This is a surprising assertion since it contradicts Derrida’s early contention that the extension of good-will to the Other, or the recognition of obligatory action in light of the Other, is metaphysical and logocentric. For example, in Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas Derrida clearly states that we must say yes to the Other. He states that hospitality is “An internal paraphrase, a sort of periphrasis, a series of metonymies that bespeak hospitality, the face, welcome: tending toward the other, attentive intention, yes to the other” (Derrida, 1997, 22). Additionally, this relation to the Other, Derrida concludes, plays a fundamental role in justice (where justice is conceived of as both undeconstructible and unconditional). As well, when read through Derrida’s theory of language, this article’s privileging of the intersubjective relation also poses problems in the sense that Derrida (again, in his linguistic texts) argues that the intersubjective relation is both stifling and oppressive. In The Post Card Derrida states that speech, in traditional philosophy, “is always [oriented] toward grounding it in the mediation of another subject [this is the allusion to intersubjectivity] that it operates, and that it [then] ... closes itself again” (Derrida, 1987, 476) – which is to say that metaphysical approaches to meaning tend to close off the chain of interpretation, even when it occurs with an Other, and oftentimes assumes that an authentic interpretation exists. In his political philosophy, Derrida initially continues to critique symmetry and intersubjectivity for its tendency to incorporate appropriation into one’s relation to the Other. That is, he states that this kind of a relation is exclusionary and thus prone to neutralize difference. However, Derrida concludes that although intersubjectivity presupposes an act of calculation, it remains necessary: “For if all the species of friendship ... imply equality or equity ... only primary friendship demands an equality of virtue between friends.” He asks “How can such an equality in virtue be? ... How do you calculate a non-natural equality whose evaluation remains immanent ... but at

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the same time obliged to reciprocity – that is, to a certain symmetry?” (Derrida, 1997, 23). This simultaneous critique and reluctant acceptance of symmetrical friendship institutes a relation to asymmetrical friendship in the form of entailment. Derrida argues that asymmetrical friendship entails primary friendship in which the former “dissymmetry separates itself ... it folds, turns inside out and doubles itself at the same time in the hypothesis of shared friendship” (Derrida, 1997, 13). However, it should be emphasized that, overall, Derrida privileges friendship in its excessive and impossible form. He states that I “have attempted to show that the Graeco-Roman model, which seems to be governed by the value of reciprocity, by homology ... bears within itself, nevertheless, potentially, the power to become infinite and dissymmetrical” (Derrida, 1997, 291). Finally, Derrida also asserts that fraternity-friendship (or political friendship) must, to escape its ethos of violence, cut the bond that binds or excludes one from a group. That is, friendship must stand for the possibility of befriending anyone – regardless of state, group, or community. What is problematic, however, is that this ethic of inclusion and esteem of difference put forth by Derrida is not unlike that of most progressive democratic theories, including Habermas’, which call for global equality and mutual respect. It is also vastly different from Derrida’s early argument that the intersubjective relation is pathologically metaphysical. As such, this, coupled with Derrida’s acceptance of an ethos of good-will into his philosophical framework, leads me to question the continuity between Derrida’s early work, in which he systematically undermines and attempts to destabilize tradition conceptions of modernity, Enlightenment, meaning, understanding, and consensus, and his later work which is much less revolutionary and much more ‘modern.’ 5: Article 18 Underscores the importance of disarmament, demobilization and reintegration of ex-combatants (DDR) in the protection of civilians affected by armed conflict, and, in this regard, emphasizes (i) its support for the inclusion in mandates of United Nations peacekeeping and other relevant missions, where appropriate and on a case-by-case basis, of specific and effective measures for DDR, (ii) the importance of incorporating such activities into specific peace agreements, where appropriate and in consultation with the parties, and (iii) the importance of adequate resources being made available for the full completion of DDR programmes and activities; Consistent with Derrida’s early work, this article would be perceived as reasserting a metaphysical and logocentric ethos in relation to the supposed possibility that peace accords can be consensually agreed upon, and the privilege given to security. In this section I focus on the latter of these two arguments and

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unpack this article’s implicit conception of justice in order to illustrate how Derrida’s political theory of justice conflicts with what he would have argued prior to his “political turn.” First, in relation to this article’s stipulation that security be considered a central objective for the UN in cases of humanitarian intervention, the early Derrida would have argued that the quest for security often entails an improbable and even impossible search for stability, presence, and consistency. Like the search for transparent meaning (rooted in the perfect communication of intentions), Derrida would have asserted that security must also be perceived of as aligned to and consistent with the negation of difference, Otherness, and uncertainty. In his discussion of communication he argues that The fact that a “break” with “the strategy of understanding the sentence as an utterance of a man who once ... etc., is always possible (“as one always can”) and that the mark still does not cease functioning, that a minimum of legibility or intelligibility remains, constitutes the point of departure of Sec’s argument and hence, it can hardly be held up as an objection to it. But it is no less necessary to draw the consequence ... that up to a certain point this “break” remains always possible without its preventing the mark from functioning. This implies, however, that in our ideal case considered by the strategy, there must always be a certain element of play, a certain remove, a certain degree of independence (Derrida, 1998a, 63–64). Similarly, when this argument is applied to the subject of security its ontology, goals, and fundamental assumptions become problematic. That is, the early Derrida would have argued that security, in negating or denying insecurity, is metaphysical since security must presupposes “a certain element of play, a certain remove, a certain degree of independence,” etc. (Derrida, 1998a, 64). Conversely however, in his political texts Derrida makes the case that security is fundamentally necessary in democratic societies. For example, in his discussion of justice in “Force of Law: The ‘Mystical Foundation of Authority’,” Derrida argues that security or enforceability is constitutive of law. He states that the connection between law and security is a relation of force which must always be thought of as an “authorized force, a force that justifies itself or is justified in applying itself, even if this justification may be judged from elsewhere to be unjust or unjustifiable” (Derrida, 1992b, 5). Moreover, law, and in turn the security that is guaranteed by law, is also characterized as founded on a performative violence at its point of institution. (This violence, remember, is undecidable, impossible, and yet must be repeated in all subsequent applications of the law – as in the case of verdicts made by judges.) Because Derrida believes that law and enforceability operates in the service of justice, he must also believe that the structure of law ensures the possibility of deconstruction: “the structure of law (droit) or of the law, the

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foundation or the self-authorization of law (droit) as the possibility of the exercise of deconstruction” (Derrida, 1992b, 15). This acceptance of law, enforceability, and security as the protectors of deconstruction, and as positive supplements to justice, is surprising since in the past Derrida would not have so easily accepted the necessary place law holds in society. As well, and as an aside pertinent to the subject of justice, I believe that Derrida falls far short of what he might have achieved had he continued on the path of deconstruction or chosen not to engage in the examination of political issues. To reiterate, Derrida’s theory of justice characterizes the just as an incalculable, aporetic and impossible gesture towards the Other. In Specters of Marx he argues that justice requires a “hospitable memory or promise” (Derrida, 1994, 175), be extended to the Other without question. What is missing from this argument is a systematic deconstruction of the history of security and law – that is, a generative skepticism that genealogically unearths and confirms that at the basis of security is a profound sense of insecurity that can never be completely negated. I also find it problematic that Derrida characterizes justice as unequivocally undeconstructible since this would entail a kind of universality he was firmly opposed to in his early work. 6: Article 26 Notes that the deliberate targeting of civilians and other protected persons, and the commission of systematic, flagrant and widespread violations of international humanitarian and human rights law in situations of armed conflict, may constitute a threat to international peace and security, and, reaffirms in this regard its readiness to consider such situations and, where necessary, to adopt appropriate steps; It is difficult to contend with this particular article since it is inaccurate to claim that Derrida, in any instance or by any stretch of the imagination, makes remarks or assertions in which violence, human rights violations, and/or armed conflict are acceptable (although he has been charged with doing all three). However, Derrida, could conceivably draw on his theory of language and meaning to critique this article on two separate counts: first, the perception of human rights as inviolable and universal is problematic; and second, the belief that action against these infractions could be taken collectively is misplaced. In relation to the first critique, in his early work Derrida is consistently skeptical of claims to universality – which in theory should extend to the universality that encompasses human rights. In Of Grammatology he asserts that universalisms of this sort are comparable to transcendentalisms – and are thus similarly metaphysical. Derrida also argues that universalism denies play (it is defined outside “the ontological and transcendental problematics” (Derrida, 1976, 50)) and, consequently, the differential structure of language. He goes on to state that transcendental universality negates the pre-original dispersion that constitutes language and, in doing so, remains locked in traditional philosophy:

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“It is remarkable that the original dispersion of which language began continues to mark its milieu and essence... The original dispersion leaves a mark within language” (Derrida, 1976, 232). Thus, it is my conclusion that the subject of human rights does not quite fit or lend itself to an examination through Derrida’s philosophy of language and meaning. That is, if we take his approach at face value, even human rights would be critiqued as indicative of a modern metaphysical construct that is meant to force structure, consistency, and method onto acts that deny both. In contrast, in Derrida’s political texts he is firmly in support of universality. For instance, in Ethics, Institutions and the Right to Philosophy he discusses universality in the context of the Enlightenment (to-come). He states, “nevertheless, I would advocate a universalization which would be an experience of translation respecting the absolute singularity of idiom” (Derrida, 2002, 44). However, the question of how the respect for the singular Other might coexist with universality is left entirely unexplored. As well, Derrida also acknowledges that “We shouldn’t give up the effort to universality and to try to think what’s happening in science [and] politics, and to formalize [it]” (Derrida, 2002, 51). This is a striking statement in that it acknowledges the necessary role universality plays and must play in philosophical thought. Thus, overall, it appears that neither of these assertions are entailed by the arguments Derrida makes in his early work on the subject of universality. I contend that Derrida’s treatment of universality is one of several examples of political concepts about which Derrida fundamentally alters his opinion in his later work without professing to do so. Moreover, it is also indicative of his reticence to either admit that his deconstructive approach to language cannot be extended to an examination of politics, or to undertake the academic risk that would most likely follow any attempt to apply deconstruction to politics. Before concluding this section however, I must include a further interpretation of Derrida’s approach to universality since it may serve as a rare example of consistency between his early and later work. According to this reading, it could be argued that Derrida, were he to apply his deconstructionist approach to politics – and in particular the subject of universality, would have concluded that even the violator of norms taken as universal must not be excluded or ‘Othered’ to such an extent that they fall on the ‘wrong’ side of the good/evil binary. For example, in Writing and Difference Derrida states that the face of the Other must be respected in perpetuity and, moreover, be understood outside the traditional relation of symmetry or appropriation: In effect, the necessity of gaining access to the meaning of the other (in its irreducible alterity) on the basis of its “face,” that is, its nonphenomenal phenomenon, its nonthematic theme, in other words, on the basis of an intentional modification of my ego ... and the necessity of

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This passage illustrates Derrida’s early movement towards a conception of the Other as inaccessible – yet it also suggests that for any relation with the Other to occur, it is necessary that the Other be respected in their Otherness. Derrida makes this very claim in Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness in which he states that forgiveness of the Other is unconditional and, as such, cannot be withheld under any circumstances. Even in the case of crimes against humanity he maintains that forgiveness must be extended: For if we were to being to accuse ourselves, in asking forgiveness, of all the crimes of the past against humanity there would no longer be an innocent person on earth – and therefore no one in the position to judge or arbitrate. We are all heir, at least, to persons or events marked, in an essential, interior, ineffaceable fashion, by crimes against humanity (Derrida, 2001, 31). While this is a significant example of entailment between Derrida’s early and later texts, this ethos of forgiving the unforgivable remains somewhat problematic in that it denies a particular kind of justice, i.e., justice through the legal system in the form of restitution, for victims whose human rights have been violated. Nevertheless, it is a rare indication of a consistency between Derrida’s early and later work. Turning to the issue of collective action, in his early texts Derrida is highly skeptical and overtly critical of the ‘traditional’ philosophical belief that agreement and action based on a pure understanding of language and intention between interlocutors is inevitable. He articulates this argument against univocal meaning in Limited Inc. as well as Positions in which he states explicitly that “this ideal hypothesis [of perfect communication] seems to me untenable,” since “the very structure of the mark,” which, again, is based upon a difference and the interaction between broaching and breaching contextual factors, “excludes the hypothesis of idealization, that is, the adequation of a meaning to itself, of a saying to itself, of understanding a sentence, whether oral or written, or to a mark in general” (Derrida, 1998a, 60–61). Derrida also asserts that the belief that speakers says what they mean and interlocutors are able to understand them absolutely is a fiction: “to grant such a possibility, even as a hypothesis, is to grant a myriad of problematic suppositions...” (Derrida, 1998a, 61) – which include denying the fact of context as well as the structure of language itself. Similarly, in Positions, Derrida makes an analogous argument through an exhaustive discussion of grammatology. He asserts that the belief in pure intention and perfect communication is based upon a privileging of presence that is unsustainable:

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Whether in the order to spoken or written discourse, not element can function as a sign without referring to another element which itself is not present. This interweaving, this textile, is the text produced only in the transformation of another text. Nothing, neither among the elements nor within the system, is anywhere ever present or absent. There are only, everywhere, differences and traces of traces (Derrida, 1981a, 26). Because Derrida’s philosophical framework denies that pure communication can be given precedence over misguided communication and, in doing so, repudiates the structure of intentionality, the notion that action between individuals can be taken collectively is problematic to the degree that individuals, more often than not, fail to understand one another and their intentions. As such, I am not convinced that Derrida would look favorably upon collectivity and unity based on mutual or pure understanding, as it is expressed in this article of R2P. Yet conversely, in his political work, Derrida surprisingly supports the capacity for collectivities to promote coordinated action in the name of democracy – although he modifies this argument in such a way as to accommodate some of his earlier presuppositions concerning difference and futurity. In Ethics, Institutions, and the Right to Philosophy, for example, Derrida makes a complex argument regarding collectivity in which he alters his theory of language and communication and evinces his belief in the “right to philosophy.” He states that the right to philosophy entails that we practice it in languages that do not have Greek, Latin, German, or Arabic roots in order for the practice of philosophy to be fully democratized and made accessible to all. This change, Derrida concludes, moves us away from abstraction and, instead, puts philosophical thought into operation “each time in an original way and in a noninfinite multiplicity of idioms, producing philosophical events that are neither particularistic and untranslatable nor transparently abstract and univocal in the element of an abstract universality” (Derrida, 2002, 12). He claims that this, in turn, provides the basis and impetus for individuals to “think, discern, evaluate, and criticize, philosophies” (Derrida, 2002, 15), and change things collectively.11 Derrida also, in a statement that brings him into proximity with Habermas’ counter-discourse of modernity, asserts that “It goes without saying that the development of sciences and technologies ... breaks open the path ... for better or for worse, for a cosmopolitan communication” (Derrida, 2002, 12). Not only does this passage reveal a clear acceptance of communication (and meaning) as globally extendable, but it also discloses Derrida’s acceptance of the notion that although modernity is an ambivalent and contradictory epoch, it is also, ultimately, necessary. These inconsistencies in Derrida’s approach to universality and collectivity or unity, provides further confirmation of my assertion that the deconstructionism employed by Derrida in his preliminary work to problematize what he characterizes as “traditional philosophy” cannot adequately explain, diagnose, or remedy political pathologies without major

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changes to its basic assumptions (which is what I believe Derrida, in the end, did). 7: Principle 1 1). Reaffirming its resolutions 1265 (1999) and 1296 (2000) on the protection of civilians in armed conflict, its various resolutions on children and armed conflict and on women, peace and security, as well as its resolution 1631 (2005) on cooperation between the United Nations and regional organizations in maintaining international peace and security, and further reaffirming its determination to ensure respect for, and follow-up to, these resolutions; When read through Derrida’s linguistic philosophy, this article would be questioned on its prioritization of cooperation, peace, and security – all of which would be seen as metaphysical constructs and concepts. Again, Derrida’s entire project in his early work is to destabilize these normative structures and insert into them infrastructures that reveal their inherent contradictoriness. In the case of security, to reiterate a point I made in an earlier section, I believe that Derrida would have argued that the traditional privileging of security also privileges order, structure, and power and fails to account for the fact that insecurity breeds creativity or that insecurity, rather than being wholly distinct from security, is part of security’s nature. Additionally, and in relation to cooperation, Derrida would have argued that dissensus, disagreement, and division are equally as likely as perfect communication and are inextricable parts of cooperation itself. This is similar to an argument he makes in relation to Austin and Searle’s assertion that one can and must differentiate between serious and non-serious or literal and non-literal speech acts, which, Derrida maintains, is completely unfeasible: “One need only consult, for instance, what is said there concerning the “suspicious status of the non-serious” ... and everything that forms its context.” He asserts that “Involved [in this process of idealization] are not merely the extreme difficulties which, in fact, can arise in the attempt to isolate the ideal purity of what is ‘serious’ and ‘literal’ ... [but also] the structural impossibility and illegitimacy of such an ‘idealization.’” (Derrida, 1998a, 67). Remember, however, that Derrida does not argue that legibility or a semblance of communicative understanding does not occur – rather, he attempts to articulate the fact that this does not mean that perfect understanding occurs every time: The functioning of the mark, a certain iterability, here a certain legibility that is operative beyond the disappearance or demise of the presumed author, the recognition of a certain semantic and syntactic code at work in this phrase – none of all this either constitutes or requires a full

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understanding of the meaningfulness of this phrase, in the sense of the complete and original intentionality of its meaning (Derrida, 1998a, 63). This quote illustrates Derrida’s point that meaning, understanding, and consensus are not a priori, inevitable, and natural processes that occurs each time something is uttered to someone else. On the subject of peace, Derrida would have argued that peace, when conceived through the lens of approaches to language that privilege transparent meaning, consensus, stability, and permanence, negates and denies the real nature of language and meaning which, again, in his view is based on difference. He states that “every process of signification [should be considered] as a formal play of differences. That is, of traces” (Derrida, 1981a, 26). As well, Derrida maintains, consistent with his grammatological approach, that intentionally breaks with such presuppositions and, in doing so, aims to “deconstruct everything that ties the concept and norms of scientificity to ontotheology, logocentrism, phonologism” (Derrida, 1981a, 35). Yet, in his political theory, Derrida incorporates all three of these normative ideals (security, meaning, and peace) into his theory of democracy-tocome and justice. Because I have described Derrida’s discussion of cooperative action, communication, and security in earlier sections, in this section I focus on the topic of peace. In his political texts, Derrida’s conception of peace is inextricably connected to his theory of the cosmopolitical, which he borrows from Kant. In Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Derrida initially questions the notion that peace and peaceability can be obtained or attained through international law and institutions since “the question of a universal, international, interstate, and especially trans-state democratization remains an utterly obscure question of the future” (Derrida, 2005b, 81). Derrida also states that for democracy to occur and for peace to become the norm, both in a futural, engendering, and regenerating sense, what is required is less of an inclination towards calculability and the regulative Idea and more of an orientation to the promise of peace and unconditional justice. Thus, peace and justice (situated in the realm of democracy-to-come) are argued to “remain aporetic in its structure” but also, in pointing to a new direction, as Derrida articulates in his conception of the New International, must be consistent with the tenets of “the renewed declaration of human rights.” Derrida claims that this declaration is the means by which “one tries, most often to no avail, to impose limits on the sovereignty of nation-states” (Derrida, 2005b, 87). As such, it appears that he, in the end, accepts such institutions as UN and International Criminal Court (ICC) as bodies that provide the means by which to extend “the democratic beyond nation-state sovereignty, beyond citizenship” (Derrida, 2005b, 87), and, in this sense, he is quite close to Habermas’ conclusion. However, as I have argued, where Derrida ends up is not entailed by the closely held philosophical positions and ontological assumptions he promulgates in his early work.

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Overall, although Derrida’s political assumptions appear to cohere seamlessly with those in this article (namely on the subjects of peace, cooperation, and security), they are inconsistent with the deconstructionist ethos of his early work. This incongruity is indicative of the inapplicability of deconstructionist linguistic philosophy to the realm of politics without problematizing core democratic principles. 8: Principle 2 Acknowledging that peace and security, development and human rights are the pillars of the United Nations system and the foundations for collective security and well-being, and recognizing in this regard that development, peace and security and human rights are interlinked and mutually reinforcing, In this final article of the preamble, I contend that Derrida, consistent with his linguistic philosophy, would question its prioritization of collectivity, peace, and security over singularity, disorder, and chaos. That is, Derrida’s difficulties with modern conceptions of peace and security should include that it negates and excludes the inherent complexity of social life and linguistic practice. This metaphysical tendency, Derrida claims, is inherently violent. He argues this in Writing and Difference in which he describes violence as a kind of dogmatism that must be summoned and interrogated and, in doing so, forced into “confessing their violent aims” (Derrida, 1978, 97). Derrida goes on to critique the violence of metaphysical ontology, in the spirit of Heidegger, which, “as first philosophy is a philosophy of power ... a philosophy of the neutral, the tyranny of the state as an anonymous and inhuman universality” (Derrida, 1978, 97). This is a particularly significant statement in that it indicates that Derrida, for all intents and purposes, should be skeptical of any and all “universal” claims to security and peace though law. However, this is not what Derrida actually articulates in his political texts. In these texts Derrida is explicitly supportive of a universally applied set of international laws rooted in the Enlightenment’s privileging of autonomy, justice, and peace. While his privileging of such modern principles do include slight alterations of meaning, this does not indicate that they are consistent with Derrida’s early philosophy. For example, in Rogues: Two Essays on Reason, Derrida states that democracy must be rooted: Not hopeless, in despair, but foreign to the teleology, the hopefulness, and the salut of salvation. Not foreign to the salut as the greeting or salutations of the other, not foreign to the adieu (“come” or “go” in peace), not foreign to justice, but nonetheless heterogenous and rebellious, irreducible, to law, to power, and to the economy of redemption (Derrida, 2005b, xv).

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This statement is illustrative of the fact that, in his political work, Derrida repeatedly attempts to justify and rationalize his turn to modern politics (modern in the sense of embracing the ideals of modernity) by incorporating an ethic of Otherness and difference into it which, as Habermas argues, is actually a fundamental counter-discursive part of the Enlightenment. 3. Conclusion As I have argued, when one reads a political text like that of Security Council Resolution 1674 through Habermas’ theory of language, what is revealed is that there is a strong continuity between the political implications of his approach to communication and the postnational political philosophy he articulates in his later work. Conversely, for Derrida, the political implications of his linguistic philosophy bears little if any resemblance to the politics he articulates in his later texts. It is my belief that the political implications of Derrida’s early critique of metaphysics, linear meaning, universality, consensus, and uniformity, etc. are simply untenable and that, as a result, he is forced to alter his assumptions such that the principles of his political texts begin to converge with and complement Habermas’ consistent embrace of the basic principles of modernity, the Enlightenment, and cosmopolitan universality. This convergence, as I have revealed, is illustrative of the leap Derrida makes in his political turn as well as of the resulting dissonance that exists between his early and later work. This dissonance also leads me to question whether an argument can be made in regards to the historical, political, and social forces that may have compelled Derrida to move in this direction. It is puzzling that Derrida makes this leap because, despite a few consistencies between his linguistic and political work (including, for example, his constant concern for the Other), this transformation in perspective and approach negates the very purpose and function of his early work. That is, I believe that Derrida in his texts on language and meaning performs an important exegesis of philosophical assumptions that, unfortunately, is absent in most of his political texts. This approach is characterized by an almost strategic use of infrastructures to destabilize and displace epistemological and ontological assumptions through intensely critical readings of traditional texts. The consequences this kind of work has for philosophy, social theory, and theories of meaning and communication are profound. Again, I believe that Derrida’s deconstructive ethos, and similar approaches of this sort, are successful in keeping theory attentive, reflexive, and also in ensuring that our taken-forgranted beliefs, in relation to, for example, universality, understanding, and even consensus, including the process by which we achieve all three, are never allowed to solidify and congeal into assurances that are taken at face value. Thus, I conclude that deconstructionist texts like these can and should continue to be use to engage with, critique, and problematize accepted ways of knowing and being. For instance, Derridian deconstruction could be used to

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render Habermas’ pragmatist conception of understanding more flexible (in regards to allowing for multiple interpretations of texts). It could also be potentially used to formulate a flexible pragmatic account of how we understand photography and film. However, and in spite of my respect for Derrida’s early work, I also maintain that his later political texts lack a critical edge and, instead, tends lapse into a rather troubling reiteration of Enlightenment thought – albeit with some minor revisions (e.g. democracy-to-come in place of democracy etc.). What I would have liked to see, in place of this, is a critical and deconstructive exegesis of classical political texts by such theorists de Tocqueville and Rousseau and an unearthing of the metaphysical presuppositions of democracy, justice, and friendship. I suspect, however, that this line of critique would not only be received as nihilistic and mutinous, but perhaps also as reactionary. Finally, what would be fascinating, in regards to further research in this area, is to examine whether other deconstructionists, postmodernists, and poststructualist also suffer from this lack of entailment and, if they do, what the implications are for this body of thought?

NOTES 1. It should be noted that I also object to the ideal of a complete reconciliation between Habermas and Derrida – this is not what I argue, nor do I believe it is possible. 2. Briefly, Security Council Resolution 1674, more commonly known as the resolution requiring the international community to abide by and uphold the Canadianinitiated Responsibility to Protect doctrine (R2P), was passed on 28 April 2006 by all fifteen members of the Security Council. Its adoption signals to the world that the UN will not longer countenance states who are either unable or unwilling to protect their own citizens, and that in those circumstances the international community is obliged to intervene. 3. There are several compelling criticisms of R2P that should be noted. First, it has been argued that R2P is an instance of Western imperialism that could potentially be used to abuse less powerful states, that in emphasizing violence, R2P fails to address such blights poverty and famine, and finally R2P does not have an adequately flexible definition of need. 4. Where dominance is defined as the exercise of power by elite groups resulting in social inequality. 5. Remember, however, Habermas’ long standing requirement that all citizens be included in discourse. 6. It should be noted that early in the first volume of Theory of Communicative Action, teleological action is treated by Habermas as a subset of strategic action. However, later in this text he uses strategic more or less synonymously with teleological action. 7. However, it should be emphasized that UN Security Council members oftentimes place national interests (economic, political, cultural) above humanitarian

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concerns. This is a significant barrier to R2P (as well as several other laws, resolutions, and treaties). Inaction on Burma is one such example. 8. Italics in the lower portion of this passage have been added. 9. What I am charging here is that Derrida takes the concept of justice and, because of the heavy normative weight such a term holds, decides against deconstructing it (since to do so would be politically untenable). Instead, Derrida alters the definition of justice in such a way that it is made to appear more amenable to difference and Otherness (but is not significantly different from justice as it is traditionally understood). 10. I argue that this is a strong assertion in order to differentiate Derrida’s treatment of law and justice, in his political work, from his early argument that the opposite poles of binaries presuppose one another (i.e. that speech presupposes writing). That is, in Derrida’s political texts he explicitly supports the central role law plays in democratic processes. 11. Also of note is Derrida’s linking of collective action to democratization. He states that challenging hegemonies and promoting the right to philosophy is not “dissociable from a movement of effective democratization” (Derrida, 2002, 14).

REFERENCES Derrida, Jacques. 1973. Speech and Phenonomena and Other Essays on Husserl’s Theory of Signs. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1978. Writing and Difference. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1982. Margins of Philosophy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1987. The Post Card: From Socrates to Freud and Beyond. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1989. “Three Questions to Hans-Georg Gadamer,” in Dialogue and Deconstruction: The Gadamer-Derrida Encounter, ed. Diane P. Mechelfelder and Richard E. Palmer (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 52–54. Derrida, Jacques. 1994. Specters of Marx: The State of Debt, the Work of Mourning & the New International. New York: Routledge. Derrida, Jacques. 1997. Adieu to Emmanuel Levinas. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1998a. Limited Inc. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press. Derrida, Jacques. 1998b. “Taking a Stand for Algeria,” Parallax 4.2: 17–23. Derrida, Jacques. 2001. On Cosmopolitanism and Forgiveness. New York: Routledge.

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Derrida, Jacques. 2003b. “The “World” of the Enlightenment to Come (Exception, Calculation, Sovereignty),” Research in Phenomenology 33: 9–52. Derrida, Jacques. 2005b. Rogues: Two Essays on Reason. Stanford, Cal.: Stanford University Press.

Dijk, Teun A. van. 1993a. “Principles of Critical Discourse Analysis,” Discourse and Society 4.2: 249–283.

Dijk, Teun A. van. 1993b. Elite Discourse and Racism. Newbury Park, Cal.: Sage Publications. Fairclough, Norman. 1993. “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities,” Discourse and Society 4.2: 133–168. Golding, Clinton. 2007. “Pragmatism, Constructivism, and Socratic Objectivity: The Pragmatist Epistemic Aim of Philosophy for Children.” Available at: www.pesa.org.au/ html/documents/2007-papers/Golding,%20Clinton.pdf (accessed 1 June 2008). Habermas, Jürgen. 1981. The Theory of Communicative Action, Volume One: Reason and the Rationalization of Society. Boston: Beacon Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1990a. Moral Consciounsess and Communicative Action. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1998a. On the Pragmatics of Communication. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 1998b. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2001. The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2003. Truth and Justification. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Habermas, Jürgen. 2006. The Divided West. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press. Kant, Immanuel. 1949. The Philosophy of Kant: Immanuel Kant’s Moral and Political Writings. New York: Random House. McCarthy, Thomas. 1990. “Introduction.” The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity by Jürgen Habermas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press), pp. vii–xvii. Thomassen, Lasse. 2006. “Introduction: Between Deconstruction and Rational Reconstruction,” in Derrida-Habermas Reader, ed. Lasse Thomassen (Chicago: University of Chicago Press), pp. 1–12.

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A Call for Inclusion in the Pragmatic Justification of Democracy Phillip Deen

Despite accepting Robert Talisse’s pluralist critique of models of democratic legitimacy that rely on substantive images of the common good, there is insufficient reason to dismiss Dewey’s thought from future attempts at a pragmatist philosophy of democracy. First, Dewey’s use of substantive arguments does not prevent him from also making epistemic arguments that proceed from the general conditions of inquiry. Second, Dewey’s account of the mean-ends transaction shows that ends-in-view are developed from within the process of democratic inquiry, not imposed from without. Third, Talisse’s model does not satisfy another general norm of inquiry – that of charity.

A sure sign that a philosophical movement has reached maturity is that it takes a moment to stop fighting enemies from without and sets its sights on enemies from within. When absolutists, realists, idealists and postmodernists are at the gate, we pragmatists have to stand united. Once secure, we begin to take roll to find who fits within the movement and who does not. This appears to have happened in one area of contemporary pragmatic thought. Until recently, if thinkers such as Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish, and Richard Posner are to be believed, it was an open question whether pragmatism has any particular relevance for politics. Now, it is accused of having a commitment to democracy so thick that it is no longer appropriate for a pluralistic nation. In this article, I discuss a recent turn inward among those who seek a pragmatic, epistemic defense of democracy and argue that there is sufficient room for the contending strands of the pragmatic tradition. The recent attempt to derive a pragmatic-epistemic defense of democracy is part of the broader effort to develop an argument on behalf of democracy while acknowledging that our world is increasingly pluralistic. We may not assume that citizens of modern, democratic nation-states will share an image of the good life. For democrats, this poses a special problem, since they want to believe that their position is rationally defensible at the same time that they want to respect those who reasonably disagree.

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Rather than attempt to eliminate the fact of moral disagreement, contemporary democratic theory has often tried to find the ground of democracy within moral disagreement itself. Whether it is John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas or the pragmatic theorists Cheryl Misak and Robert Talisse, there is a shared project to derive democratic principles from the structure of moral argumentation, rather than the content of any particular moral doctrine. Habermas and Apel argue that principles of justice – requiring that we seek mutual agreement rather than sheer victory, that there be the greatest possible inclusion of speakers, and that communication be undistorted by any power other than that of the better argument – are embedded in communicative action itself, and any communicator who denies them is engaged in a performative contradiction, whether they are aware of it or not. To act undemocratically is to act irrationally, or to colonize the lifeworld in the name of instrumental rationality. For Rawls, whom we will discuss further, deliberation constrained by a Kantian public reason results in a conception of freedom, equality and rights amenable to a democratic welfare state. A new and intriguing advance in pragmatic thought is the attempt to derive a defense of democratic principles from the nature of pragmatic inquiry alone. Perhaps the most systematic and compelling argument is that offered by Cheryl Misak in her Truth, Politics, Morality (Misak 2000). Inspired by Charles Peirce’s account of belief and inquiry, she has argued that the minimal assertion that one’s beliefs are true entails a number of further commitments to present evidence and argument in support of your position, to respond to others’ arguments, and to be as inclusive of as many arguers as possible. Proper inquiry entails a commitment to democratic values. Misak has been joined by Robert Talisse, a driving force in the attempt to develop a pragmatic and deliberative model of democracy. Talisse has built upon her foundation to create a more comprehensive account of the failures of liberal democratic theory, including those deliberative theories that rely, ultimately, on unquestioned liberal beliefs (Talisse 2005, 2007a). As Talisse argues: The Peircean image of a community of inquiry is inherently democratic. Proper inquiry requires that believers be continually open to revising their beliefs in light of new reasons, arguments, and evidence. And this requires that believers exhibit a perpetual readiness to engage in the process of reason-exchanging and argument.... In short, proper inquiry can be practiced only within a democratic political order. (2007, 66) By rooting democracy on epistemic norms rather than substantive moral commitments, Misak and Talisse hope to provide a firmer foundation than that provided by Rawls, Habermas and other contemporary democratic thinkers. Peirce is not the only source of inspiration for a pragmatic-epistemic philosophy of democracy. Hilary Putnam, Elizabeth Anderson, and Robert

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Westbrook have attempted to recover an epistemic defense of democracy from John Dewey’s thought. (Putnam 1992, Anderson 2006, Westbrook 2005) The structure of Dewey’s argument largely parallels that of Peirce – the nature of inquiry commits us to substantive, democratic principles. Therefore, as soon as one asserts the truth of one’s beliefs, even anti-democratic believers unwittingly affirm the very principles they deny. However, a split is forming between Peircean and Deweyan advocates. As readers of this journal know, Robert Talisse has argued that Dewey’s argument is insufficiently epistemic. (Talisse 2007b; see also 2003, 2005, 2007a) Instead, he claims that it relies on a comprehensive moral doctrine, meaning that Dewey’s commitment to the moral-political values of liberty, equality, and fairness is not the result of his commitment to inquiry, but independent of and prior to it. Talisse’s direct and unflinching style has angered a number of Dewey scholars, perhaps so greatly that they have been blinded to the value of his argument. I am largely sympathetic to the Rawlsian argument that, under conditions of pluralism, any attempt to justify democracy on the basis of one image of the Good is suspect. However, I also believe that Talisse’s argument does not require us to exclude Dewey from any future pragmatic and pluralistic philosophy of democracy. To make this case, I first present an account of Talisse’s argument. Second, I argue that this argument fails to take into account Dewey’s discussion of ends and ends-in-view. I conclude with an argument for interpretive charity that would allow us to bring Dewey back into the fold as a pluralistic, democratic thinker. 1. Inquiry and Reasonable Pluralism: Excluding Dewey The epistemic defense of democracy bears a resemblance to the transcendental defense of Habermas and Apel and to the procedural defense of John Rawls. The common concern is that of admitting the variety of reasonable moral doctrines, respecting them when we can and yet defending democracy against its radical enemies. The pragmatist does not seek such principles from the transcendental structure of argumentation, but from more modest empirical claims about how people assert beliefs. We may not assume that communication necessarily strives toward mutual agreement. However, we may argue that people have beliefs, they hold these beliefs to be true, and that they desire beliefs that are resistant to scrutiny. To hold that a belief is true is also to assert that the belief will resist evidence and arguments brought against it, that it is responsive to the world. Those who assert that their beliefs are true, yet close off the path of inquiry by a priori excluding the experience, evidence and arguments of others, are contradicting themselves. Certain modest democratic principles are therefore entailed by a pragmatic account of belief and inquiry. (Misak 2000, Misak 2008)

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Talisse’s critique of Dewey also draws from Rawls’ political liberalism. Rawls acknowledges that we live under conditions of reasonable pluralism. Any sufficiently large and free society will produce a variety of comprehensive moral doctrines (CMD) that provide an account of the nature of the world and man’s place in it. Unless we want to resort to violence and propaganda, we must ground our society in certain mutually accepted principles of justice. These principles arise out of deliberation under certain argumentative restrictions. Out of respect for other citizens as free and equal beings (and out of the practical needs of forming a stable, overlapping consensus), we must not derive these principles from any one substantive moral vision. Any argument that requires that my interlocutor convert to my CMD in order to accept it as just is illegitimate. I must appeal to reasons that I may reasonably expect members of other CMDs to accept. (Rawls 1996) However, Talisse and other critics note that Rawls’ argument, despite his intent, makes implicit appeals to substantive liberal beliefs. For example, those CMDs are ‘reasonable’ only insofar as they are willing to accept that others are free and equal beings deserving of respect – a liberal standard. Or Rawls recurs to a Kantian model of autonomy or metaphysics of the self as a free chooser unencumbered by substantive moral commitments. For all of his intent to isolate the moral from the political, Rawls ultimately relies on a comprehensive liberal doctrine. (Talisse 2005, 58–63 and 50) The pragmatist counters by providing an epistemic – rather than substantive – defense of democracy. She does not appeal to any comprehensive moral vision, but to the nature of inquiry, of seeking truth or knowledge. From this vantage point, Talisse argues that Dewey is insufficiently pragmatic. Rather than basing his argument for democracy on a commitment to inquiry, Dewey relies on a substantive liberal vision doomed to fail under conditions of reasonable pluralism. This vision cannot secure the overlapping consensus that grounds a stable, pluralistic society. Let us see how Talisse makes this argument. Following Schumpeter (among others), Talisse’s procedural model of democracy imagines a state that is neutral between competing normative visions. Instead, democracy provides fair procedures according to which individuals and groups may pursue their own happiness, “a procedure by which elites compete for political office.” (2007b, 20) Therefore, the scope of democracy is the state and its procedures, not society and its moral beliefs. Dewey, however, did not accept this restriction on the scope of democracy. He believed that political democracy, a set of institutions or procedures such as frequent, open and fair elections, is not the full meaning of democracy. ‘Democracy’ speaks to the full breadth of human community and communication, insofar that they placed experience at their center (LW 2: 328). Democracy runs, perhaps latently, through all associated endeavors. This vision culminated in his oft-quoted claim that democracy is “a way of life” (LW 13: 155).

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Dewey’s accounts of democracy and of inquiry are said to rest on a developed metaphysics of experience and to assume a vision of human flourishing within a community bounded by unquestioned ideals. His thick account of nature, humanity and community are too substantive for a pluralist democracy and undercut his supposed commitment to free inquiry. So let us not be naïve: Deweyan democracy is antipluralist in that it places decisive constraints upon the kinds of voices we need to include. ... Consider that the Deweyan-democratic commitment to inquiry excludes not only those who refuse to inquire, but also those who hold views that are incompatible with the fallibilism and experimentalism at the heart of inquiry. (2003, 13)1 Talisse concludes that, to the extent that Dewey appeals to this broadly moral vision of democracy extending beyond the state’s regulation of elite power struggles, he is not a proceduralist. And, to the extent that he is not a proceduralist and upholds a pre-deliberative account of the good, his defense of democracy is not sufficient for a pluralistic world. Like Rawls, Dewey ultimately relies on a substantive moral doctrine. Insofar as Dewey brings such ideals to inquiry from outside, he abandons his pragmatic theory of inquiry. Questions of which philosophical system is best, or which are the correct metaphysical, epistemic, and moral propositions, are questions to be settled by means of inquiry. Any conception of inquiry that even implicitly presupposes decisive answers to such questions is, in the end, not a conception of inquiry at all. (2007a, 88) This resembles Fabienne Peter’s contention that Dewey’s consequentialism makes deliberation or inquiry only instrumentally valuable and in service of the fixed end of “solving social problems.” Therefore, Dewey’s position is insufficiently epistemic and pragmatic. (2007a, 45, 51) The result is for Talisse to consign Dewey’s thought to the flames. “[W]e must bid farewell to the Deweyan ideal of democracy as a way of life. Pragmatists who want to theorize about democracy must look elsewhere.” (2007a, 53) Whereas Peirceans are concerned with normatively justified procedures underlying democracy, Deweyans care only about the outcomes of these processes and whether they reflect previously held democratic ends. Talisse concludes that only a Peircean, epistemic defense like that reconstructed by Misak is true to a pragmatic model of inquiry and provides an adequate defense against radical anti-democrats (2007a, 21–23).

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It is a virtual certainty that Talisse knew that such a claim would stir a sharp response from the Deweyan community. His argument is well-honed and pointed at the heart of Dewey’s project. As presented by Talisse, Dewey’s democratic ideal is too thick, desiring consensus on an image of the good life permeating all aspects of common life. This is quite ironic, given that Dewey spent much of his career defending himself against those who tired of vague calls to use the method of intelligence in moral and political life. When critics demanded absolute ideals, Dewey offered only growth. When they wanted absolute Ends to guide the ship of state, he provided flexible, fallible ends-inview that were found only within the context of inquiry. (Russell 1910, 10–11; Horkheimer 1947; Adler 1941) There is some weight to this criticism. Dewey clearly had robust commitments ranging from metaphysics to politics: a transactional account of experience, theories of child development and of human flourishing generally, proposals for economic and political reform, and more. But the question is not whether he had deeply held beliefs. Any inquirer or political agent will. Rather, as we will see, the criticism is that he brings these to inquiry from without. Insofar as Dewey bounds inquiry by some image of the democratic community, rather than develops ends from within inquiry, his arguments do not speak to all humanity and are less legitimate. However, in this section I argue that, according to both liberal and pragmatic proceduralists, democrats may make use of substantive arguments in certain contexts. In the next section, I will argue that Dewey’s commitment to inquiry, and the democratic values that follow, do not collapse into an independent and prior commitment to a substantive moral doctrine. Even the staunchest advocate for public reason does not deny that there is a place for argument from substantive moral doctrines. Once we acknowledge this, then the question is not whether Dewey makes use of appeals to liberal values, since he certainly does. As Westbrook notes, Dewey made use of virtually any argument he could find over the course of his long life (Westbrook 2007, 33). Rather, the real issue is whether it is appropriate to make such appeals in the public sphere – during campaigns, on the floor of the legislature, in the courtroom, etc. Much of contemporary political theory descends from Kant’s notion of public reason. Without going too far into this concept, Kant distinguished the public from the private use of reason. Reason is public insofar as it answered to no authority other than itself. The private use of reason is heteronomous, answering to some authority such as the Church or the Crown. It is restricted in the scope of its premises and what conclusions it is willing to accept. If one bases one’s argument on religious authority, for example, one cannot speak to those of another faith, those who serve another master. Only insofar as I am willing to set aside these restrictions am I able to speak across traditions and

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institutions and speak to all humanity on the basis of autonomous reason alone. The language of public reason is the tongue of angels, compelling others by virtue of their universal reason alone. Carried into the context of political justification, the conclusion is that only those political norms that transcend a prior commitment to some image of the Good or some political ideal are universal and binding. Normativity arises entirely within the process of political deliberation, not from the approximation of norms to some pre-political ideal.2 This provides a clue to modern deliberative Kantian theory like John Rawls’ political liberalism. Rawls argues that we must refrain from basing our arguments on our comprehensive moral doctrine (CMD) out of respect for others as free and equal beings with comprehensive moral doctrines of their own. In any free society of sufficient size, there will be a plurality of reasonable moral worldviews. Therefore, when arguing publicly, we must refrain from making conversion to one’s own doctrine a de facto requirement for agreement. If another must share my Catholicism (or liberalism, or Marxism, or any other CMD) in order to find my argument persuasive, then my argument is not fit for public debate. Rather, debate about fundamental principles of justice must respect all. This might seem to imply that arguments from substantive moral belief are simply disrespectful. However, it is a matter of context. To eliminate such arguments in all contexts would be to destroy our moral traditions. It would be absurd to claim that Jesuits must refrain from arguing about Church doctrine and on the basis of their long hermeneutic tradition – unless, of course, we wanted that moral tradition to end. Rawls makes room for substantive argumentation. Though all must use public reason when arguing in the public sphere and across doctrinal divides, believers of whatever doctrine are not required to use public reason when arguing among themselves. Nor are they required to affirm the principles of justice on the basis of public reasons. A Protestant may affirm them in the basis of a respect for the created individual, a Catholic because of an interest in social justice, a Muslim because of a belief in the values of mutual consultation (shura) and stewardship (khalifah), a liberal because of a commitment to liberty and equality, and so on. Admittedly, once one affirms the principles of justice, their value is not a function of one’s CMD. But the process of internal argumentation that leads one to affirm these principles need not be the same for all traditions and it need not refrain from moral appeals.3 The importance of context holds for the pragmatic, epistemic defense of democracy as well. Misak frequently and openly uses both substantive and epistemic arguments in her defense of democracy. Arguing against laws criminalizing homosexuality, she writes: They are bad laws for the first-order reason that they are oppressive and that they claim a harm to individuals and to society where there is no harm. And they are bad laws for the

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Does this condemn Misak to the criticism that Talisse levels against Dewey – that she makes use of substantive liberal beliefs and is therefore not ‘epistemic’ enough? Again, one must attend to the context, as Misak makes clear. The democrat turns to epistemic arguments once substantive agreement has failed. When speaking to a fellow liberal about homosexual rights, she does not begin by noting the performative contradiction of excluding the experience of homosexuals while also asserting the truth of ones beliefs. Rather, she says that it is a denial of the rights of privacy and self-expression. “Justification is something at which we arrive through open deliberation, but deliberation does not have to be open because we are all committed to the idea of the equal worth of persons.” (2000, 124–125) It is only when she must argue with someone who does not share a commitment to those rights that she must, possibly, shift to the epistemic level. It is a philosophical weapon of last resort. What does this mean for Dewey? Clearly, the issue is not whether Dewey makes use of substantive arguments for democracy, but whether he makes these arguments while expecting to persuade those who do not share his democratic faith. Against Misak’s Schmittian fascist who rejects the ideals of equality, inclusiveness and social cooperation, Dewey’s liberal assumptions will have little traction. But this is not necessarily his audience. Take Liberalism and Social Action. The argument from liberal ideals is apparent. He argues that liberal ideals of individuality and inquiry developed under unique historical circumstances. Those ideals continued of their own inertia, sedimented in the habits and institutions of liberal cultures. However, circumstances have changed as material life moved from agrarian to corporate. Appealing to fellow liberals, he argues that these values must find a new ground and a new articulation. If not, they are turned against themselves and the ideals of individual development and autonomy become corporate America’s excuse to deny workplace safety and a minimum wage. He pleads for fellow liberals to recover and reconstruct the best of their tradition. (LW 11: 1–67; LW 2: 290– 294) Similarly, he confronts the coming of fascism in Freedom and Culture by demanding that democrats recognize the flaws in their own culture while they criticize events overseas. (LW 13: 98) In short, we may not exclude Dewey simply because he appeals to liberal ideals. Substantive and epistemic arguments are not mutually exclusive. But perhaps I have damned Dewey with faint praise. Dewey’s critics may concede that substantive arguments have their place and are complementary to epistemic ones without losing the essence of their critique. If Dewey’s arguments appeal only to those who share his deepest ideals, then they do not have sufficient force in a pluralistic world where these ideals are widely

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contested. If Dewey’s defense of democracy is based exclusively on ideals independent of inquiry, then he is in fact vulnerable to Talisse’s criticism. In the following section, I argue that Dewey’s commitment to inquiry, and the democratic principles that follow, do not reduce to prior substantive commitments. 3. Democratic Ends and the Ends of Inquiry For Talisse to be correct, Dewey must argue for a thick ideal and that inquiry is valuable only insofar as it produces the fixed ideals of Democracy or Growth. Further, this end must be valued independently of his commitment to inquiry. Dewey consistently fought the tendency of philosophers to take the products of inquiry and act as if they were antecedent to inquiry. Calling this “the philosophic fallacy,” it would be a sad irony for Dewey to commit it. In this section, I argue that Dewey’s ideal of democracy is the result of – not independent and prior to – his commitment to inquiry. This account of inquiry is both more and less than Talisse believes. Inquiry includes more than those general norms derived from the assertion of belief. It is also the process of inquiry itself, which entails both the assertion of ends and their critical examination. It proceeds through the mutual constitution of ends and means that is the stuff of democratic inquiry. It is deliberation about ends, not merely the calculation of means to achieve the democratic end-in-itself. However, this account is also less than Talisse believes, because it does not require a prior commitment to a democratic, comprehensive moral doctrine. Others have tried to reconstruct an epistemic argument from Dewey’s thought. Perhaps the first to set us on this path was Hilary Putnam, who coined the phrase “the epistemological justification of democracy” in his “A Reconsideration of Deweyan Democracy.” In it, he briefly sketches an argument that, of all forms of government, democracy is unique, as “it is the precondition for the full application of intelligence to the solution of social problems.” (1992, 180) Only democracy provides the requisite conditions for knowledge, including the claim that as a form of public inquiry it is legitimate. Only democracy has institutionalized the methods of fruitful inquiry. “The need for fundamental democratic institutions as freedom of thought and speech follows, for Dewey, from requirements of scientific procedure in general: the unimpeded flow of information and the freedom to offer and to criticize hypotheses.” (1992, 188) Only democracy offers the opportunity to articulate the good through a process of free and open inquiry. To be experimental is to be democratic, and vice-versa. Robert Westbrook makes explicit use of Putnam’s argument in his own reconstruction. However, in the course of his account, he still finds Dewey’s “argument” thin enough to warrant scare quotes and writes elsewhere, “One cannot find in Dewey’s considerable logical writings (or elsewhere) an argument that one could call a logical argument for democracy” (2005, 179)4 Nevertheless, Westbrook agrees that we can reconstruct such an argument and

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that it provides resources for a deliberative theory of democracy. Further, he argues against neo-pragmatists like Richard Posner who sever the tie between pragmatism, democracy and epistemic values. Elizabeth Anderson’s reconstruction of Dewey’s epistemic argument argues that his theory has the distinct advantage of valuing dissent and taking into account “the epistemic diversity of individuals.” (2006, 11) This feature of Dewey’s theory makes it superior to other epistemic models of democracy in that it accounts for both the epistemic power of democratic institutions and the ability of these institutions to self-correct. She argues that only democracy – and, specifically, a Deweyan version – can claim the epistemic superiority of its ideals while also seeing disagreement as a value rather than the failure to achieve consensus. Referring directly to Westbrook and Anderson, Talisse rejects pragmaticepistemic arguments derived from Dewey’s thought as not “distinctively Deweyan.” Even Westbrook’s tempered support of a Deweyan, epistemic philosophy of democracy will expose him to critique. Though Dewey may share these ‘Peircean’ points that support a pragmatic-epistemic defense of democracy, it is argued, they do not display what is most essential to his philosophy of democracy. Though I find Talisse’s argument weak, I will defer my criticism until after we have a stronger presentation of Dewey’s own position. Instead, let us turn to a discussion of an aspect of Dewey’s thought that has not been integrated into the preceding reconstructions – an aspect that both protects Dewey from the charge that his democratic ideals are grounded in a substantive moral doctrine and yet remains distinctively Deweyan. As noted above, it seems odd to accuse Dewey of having too thick a commitment to ends that are prior to and separate from inquiry. The number of texts in which Dewey argued that moral inquiry must model itself on the best of scientific inquiry, that ideals are internal to ongoing human practice, or that the assertion of absolute ideals is fruitless (if not wholly destructive) is extensive. To claim that Dewey took substantive ends to be fixed and beyond rational inquiry is to overlook an overwhelming amount of his writings, including his Ethics, Human Nature and Conduct and Theory of Valuation. Hence the impact of the pluralist objection: to accuse Dewey of being a dogmatist, even a sympathetic and democratic one, strikes at the core of his project. However, I argue that Dewey’s democratic ideals are themselves internal to the transaction of means and ends that characterizes scientific-democratic inquiry.5 Dewey’s critique of fixed ends is present throughout his collected works, but one particularly sharp argument is made in “The Nature of Aims” from Human Nature and Conduct. In it, Dewey argued that ends are a function of action, internal to practice itself. Dewey argued that fixed ends and the sharp division of goods have no place in scientific inquiry. Rather than accept an Aristotelian teleology wherein the end of activity is fixed by a species-nature, the ends must be developed by way of the deliberative process itself. These

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ends-in-view are hypotheses proposed to resolve a morally problematic situation. Dewey did not believe in fixed ends, but funded provisional ideals that are instrumental to further inquiry. They direct ongoing practice in the hope of organizing competing goods, or images of the Good. This undercuts the wellworn dichotomy of means and ends, since the latter serve as means to present action. As Peirce well knew, if we enter inquiry with fixed ends, at best the way of inquiry is blocked. The search for fixed ends-in-themselves that are unchanged by inquiry is ultimately fruitless. Moral deliberation begins in the need to resolve a concrete, problematic situation. If the ends were known and certain, there would be no need for inquiry, other than to determine what means to use to attain them. But ends-in-view are not only ideals to be sought, but also means to the resolution of problems. Values are hypotheses, put forward in a bid to integrate the varied competing goods already in play. For, if there were not competing goods, then there would be no morally problematic situation. The task at hand is to identify those goods that should predominate at this time and in that manner. Ends will be brought to present inquiries, as no particular inquiry arises ex nihilo, but that is not the same as bringing fixed ends to inquiry itself. Ends-in-view carried over from previous inquiries provide a relatively stable platform for future inquiry, but they are not beyond revision and critique. The assertion of fixed ends institutes a number of divisions into inquiry between instrumental and intrinsic goods, material and ideal goods, and natural and moral goods. Fixed ends may not be measured against one another and the needs of the situation, which “inevitably leads thought into the bog of disputes that cannot be settled.” (MW 12: 174) At worst, fixed ends produce fanaticism. Adherence to eternal values expresses the fear that experience cannot regulate itself from within, to provide its own ideals. (LW 4: 204) The isolation of ends from means “leads to narrowness; in extreme cases fanaticism, inconsiderateness, arrogance and hypocrisy.” (MW 14: 157; see also MW 12:176 and LW 13: 226–236) The process of truth-seeking and its accompanying virtues are lost. To claim one End is beyond inquiry is to be willfully ignorant of the plural goods at hand and the plural effects of action. It is an attempt at rationalization rather than justification, “a refusal adopted in order that we may justify an act by picking out that one which will enable us to do what we wish to do and for which we feel the need of justification.” (MW 14: 158) Dewey holds that (if way may carry these comments to our context) any process of political justification must admit of a plurality of goods and show how the prioritization of one is not simply a ploy, a strategy designed to close one’s self off from the reasons and evidence offered by others.6 The fundamental failing of a doctrine of absolute ends is that such ends are not open to public scrutiny and result in instrumental reason. Untested preferences are taken to be absolute Truth and imposed on others. This has political implications, as fixed ends eventually line up behind the dominant

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social institutions and sanctify the status quo. (LW 4: 211, 224) In short, “the doctrine of the isolated, complete or fixed end limits intelligent examination, encourages insincerity and puts a pseudo-stamp of moral justification upon success at any price.” (MW 14: 159) Political argumentation collapses into instrumental rationality or, as modern political operatives might put it, ‘spin’. Democracy is “belief in the ability of human experience to generate the aims and methods by which further experience will grow in ordered richness.” (LW 14: 229) Dewey remarked that ‘democracy is radical’, in that within democratic practice, the end and the means are inextricably bound. (LW 11: 159–161) Dewey’s commitment is to that intuition which lies underneath public reason – reason that serves an external master is not truly rational. There is no authority outside of practice that can provide the norms of future practice. Faith in democracy is not instrumental, desiring it as a means to some independently valued end. Rather, faith in democracy is a commitment to the capacity for associated citizens to determine the principles by which they will interact and the ends they will collectively pursue. When pressed to define an overarching end, Dewey notoriously wrote, “Growth itself is the only moral ‘end’.” (MW 12: 181) Overlooking the scare quotes, Talisse repeatedly states that ‘growth’ indicates a thick, substantive image of human flourishing, but he does not indicate what, precisely, that image is (2003; WP; see also 2007a, 44). In his own criticism of Talisse’s conception of growth, Shane Ralston has argued that “In his first formulation, Talisse identifies Dewey’s notion of growth with “the republican concept of freedom,” or the positive freedom to participate in politics; and in his second formulation characterizes it as a “moral vision of human flourishing” and “a species of perfectionism.” (2008; for the original citations, see Talisse 2003, 8; 2007a, 44) Rather than being too thin, ‘growth’ is taken to mean a thick conception of the good life akin to the communitarian vision of Michael Sandel.7 In fact, Dewey’s ‘fixed’ ends of democracy, growth or human flourishing indicate the generally teleological structure of inquiry. They are an acknowledgement that inquiry is immanent, dialectical and ongoing. The general end of inquiry is the elimination of doubt through the ideational and material reconstruction of the problematic situation. When the habits of inquiry are generalized and made part of the habits and institutions of a society, we term that ‘democracy’. When transformed through the process of inquiry, experience and the ends-in-view that partially constitute it have been deepened, enlarged and set into new and fruitful relations. Experience has ‘grown’. It is difficult to conceive of a pragmatic model of inquiry – certainly not any Peircean model – that is not minimally committed to these ends of immanent growth and a democratic community of inquiry. However, this is a fundamentally different teleology than one grounded in a comprehensive moral doctrine. Most importantly, it does not posit a fixed human telos. Dewey shared Aristotle and Hegel’s immanent teleology. Ideals develop from within human practice and this process is taken up as an explicit object of concern in inquiry.

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However, he differed sharply from them because he did not believe that development has a set goal, nor that it will ever conclude. Growth is immanent, yet without an End. This indicates the goal-oriented structure of inquiry but does not imply substantive ends outside of inquiry itself. Dewey did not believe his liberalism and pragmatism to be mutually exclusive, as he understood himself to be part of an evolving tradition, one that was at its best when it was self-reflective, fallible and yet committed to the general end of human flourishing. Social inquiry and critique require ends-inview, provisional ideals posited to organize the activity. Anyone involved in inquiry will make use of them, but we may not conclude that ideals like individuality, community and the virtues of inquiry are fixed ends rooted in a CMD. To cite Ralston again, “Commitments to experimentalism and fallibilism serve as operational requirements for the conduct of intelligent inquiry, not discrete values in a particular worldview, elements in a perfectionist theory of the good life or substantive limitations on the democratic process.” (Ralston 2008) Specifically regarding the prior imposition of liberal principles of justice, Dewey wrote, “there is no antecedent universal proposition which can be laid down because of which, the functions of a state should be limited or should be expanded.” (LW 2: 281) That is not to say that such limits are meaningless. Rather, principles of justice such as the guarantee of basic rights and liberties are historically and experimentally funded tools for the regulation of political life. The flaw would be in weaving them on the level of pure theory and introducing them to the arena of democratic inquiry inviolate and whole cloth. Even if liberal ideals were to originate in a CMD, there is in Dewey’s work a deeper commitment to inquiry and to the fallibility of one’s system of beliefs. In the context of inquiry, we are not required to exclude arguments that rely on reasonably rejectable beliefs. After all, it is difficult to find any substantial belief that is not contestable and, if the deliberators do not disagree over matters of substantial belief, then there would be no need for inquiry. As Talisse notes, this deliberative restriction regards the types of reasons that may be offered. What inquiry requires is that we not put forward any assertion that claims to be infallible or beyond argument. As Talisse argued in 2003, commitment to inquiry requires that we exclude the fundamentalist, the violent, those who claim to have received an intuition or revelation, etc. It does not require that we exclude those with substantive moral visions. According to pragmatic epistemic standards, we are only required to be willing to subject our claims to opposing evidence and argument. We may not argue from fixed ends, substantive worldviews that are not open to scrutiny. However, we can – and must – argue with an orientation toward ends-in-view. The sheer facts that Dewey appeals to ends-in-view like that of an organic democratic community, and that this is contestable, do not result in the conclusion that Dewey has oppressed those who disagree. He would

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if he were to claim that this end-in-view is fixed and outside of inquiry. But he does not. Much of this depends on what is meant by “reasonable.” A pragmatic theory includes a concept of reasonableness that neither relies on a comprehensive moral doctrine nor refuses to accept any contestable outcome of inquiry. Concerning Dewey’s philosophy of inquiry and democracy, public justification requires that any doctrine he holds must be open to further inquiry if it is to be considered reasonable. It also means that we may not damn it as oppressive simply because another may reject it. For it to be an oppressive doctrine, it must undercut the process of inquiry itself. Under an overly broad definition, any “reasonable” person may reject any number of doctrines. Under a Rawlsian definition, “reasonable” is attached to the type of reason given in public debate. Citizens must offer reasons in terms that all citizens coerced by the law may accept. This denies appeal to one’s image of the good life, human nature, or the nature of reality. A pragmatic definition leaves room for substantive, yet contestable and fallible, doctrines. Dewey’s relatively thick commitment to democratic ideals retains a fundamental commitment to inquiry itself, a deeper commitment to the process rather than any particular outcome or vision of the good life.8 An unreasonable position is one that subverts the process of inquiry itself. Peirce provides four such blocks on the path of inquiry: assertions of absolute truth, the belief that there are foundational elements beyond analysis, the false hope that inquiry will ever end in a final formulation, and assertions of unknowability. (CP 1.135–140) The third block forms the basis of Talisse’s critique of a non-pluralistic philosophy of democracy. Supposedly, any assertion that inquiry is oriented toward mutual agreement violates the principle that inquiry has no conclusion. Underlying the pluralist objection is an attack on the Deweyan faith that, given enough time, enough sincerity and the proper method, there is hope that even the most deep-rooted disagreements may be overcome. This article of faith is said to run against the fact of reasonable pluralism, which entails that these basic disagreements are intractable, short of the use of ideology and violence. Unfortunately, a strong pluralism violates the fourth block on the path of inquiry – assertions that something is in principle unknowable. A Peircean philosophy of democracy must hold that the answer to the problematic situation is in principle attainable but, at the same time, must also hold that any answer we have may be false or that the search for the answer may always escape us. What is minimally required of a pragmatic justification of democracy? In broad strokes, it includes a doubt-belief arc resulting in the formation of new habits / institutions, fallibilism about the outcome of any inquiry and openness when carrying forward these outcomes to future inquiries, and responsiveness to others’ evidence and arguments. On this basis, we may argue that political institutions and deliberation must embody free inquiry or they may not claim to embody the preconditions for true beliefs. Incorporating pragmatism into

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contemporary liberal theory, Eric MacGilvray concludes, “The success of political liberalism in this regard should not be judged by its ability to forge a consensus on a particular set of public ends, but rather in its ability to engage in an ongoing process of inquiry” (2004, 177). In Dewey’s Freedom and Culture, we see many of these elements of a pragmatic-epistemic justification of democracy – the arc of doubt-belief, the norms governing inquiry and demand that assertions of belief be open to evidence and argument: [F]reedom of inquiry, toleration of diverse views, freedom of communication, the distribution of what is found to every individual as the ultimate intellectual consumer, are involved in the democratic as in the scientific method. When democracy openly recognizes the existence of problems and the need for probing them as problems as its glory, it will relegate political groups that pride themselves upon refusing to admit incompatible opinions to the obscurity which already is the fate of similar groups in science. (LW 13:135) For Dewey as for Peirce (as reconstructed by Misak and Talisse) there is a certain isomorphism in scientific and democratic inquiry. The norms of both are the same, as is the exclusion of those who refuse to submit their truth-claims to public justification. 4. Charity as a Norm of Inquiry Talisse predicts objections such as mine, that Dewey’s account of democracy is inherently self-reflective and constantly overturns its provisional ideals. (2007a, 46) However, his refutation is weak. The refutation has three parts and I will address the first before addressing the other two together. First, he contends that the pragmatist’s argument that their account of inquiry is melioristic, fallible and self-reflective just shifts the problem of reasonable pluralism rather than truly confronting it. For example, responding to Charlene Haddock Seigfried, he argues that the Deweyan makes a prior judgment of what worldviews and participants will be allowed to inquire, a judgment that surreptitiously excludes anyone who does not share Dewey’s substantive commitment to democracy. “Seigfried has claimed that assembling an ‘appropriately diverse’ range of viewpoints is a precondition for proper Deweyan democratic inquiry.” (2007a, 47) Her modifier ‘appropriately’ then reveals a prior restriction on what viewpoints may be included in inquiry. There is a surreptitious act of exclusion underlying Deweyan inquiry. However, this argument rests on a simple misreading. She lauds pragmatism for advocating “the actual inclusiveness of appropriately diverse viewpoints, including those of class, color, ethnicity and gender, as a precondition for resolving problematic situations.” (Seigfried 1998, 187–188)

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Seigfried argues that we must include a wide variety of worldviews if we are to successfully resolve – not begin – inquiries. She does not claim that judgments of what is appropriately diverse are prior to and separate from the inquiry itself. In substance, this is consistent with Talisse’s own argument that inquiry must as broadly inclusive as possible, but even a Peircean position does not require universal inclusion. There is no more reason to believe that exclusions from inquiry would be grounded in a prior, unquestioned CMD. Talisse also argues that (2) Dewey’s account of inquiry assumes a thick model of experience, one Darwinian in nature (2007a, 42–44) and (3) even if we may derive an epistemic defense of democracy from Dewey’s work – as we saw Westbrook, Putnam and Anderson attempt above – then there is nothing “distinctively Deweyan” about it. (WP) Quoting the work of contemporary Deweyans, he argues that Dewey’s theory of inquiry is inextricably bound to his broader theory of experience and of democracy as an ideal reaching beyond politics to all branches of social life. To isolate certain aspects of Dewey’s thought – say, his theory of inquiry, his account of means-ends transaction, or his identification of scientific and democratic reason – is to cut them off from his democratic comprehensive moral doctrine. (2007a, 48–52) One may not extract an epistemic argument from Dewey because all elements of his thought are wedded to his broader vision. On the other hand, Talisse contends, Peirce’s account of inquiry does not entail any weltanschauung and one may lift out Peirce’s theory of inquiry without leaving a scar. So we may extract general norms from Dewey’s model of inquiry but, he argues, we will not find anything that we do not already find within a properly pragmatic – that is, Peircean – model. Rather than conclude that Peirce and Dewey share a pragmatic account of inquiry and both have something to offer any future pragmatic philosophy of democracy, he concludes that we owe the good to Peirce and the bad to Dewey, the procedural and epistemic to one, the substantive to the other. I have attempted to argue that Dewey does, in fact, make a unique contribution to a pragmatic account of moral inquiry and democratic deliberation. Specifically, Dewey provides what Peirce does not: an account of the transaction of means and ends as an aspect of democratic inquiry. So we may not neatly conclude that anything of value that Dewey brings to a theory of inquiry was done first and done better by Peirce. (Not to downplay Peirce’s own great contributions.) However, there is another response to Talisse’s charge that a Deweyanepistemic defense of democracy is not “distinctively Deweyan”: It is uncharitable. Talisse borrows a number of rules of inquiry from Sidney Hook. (2005, 114–115; 2007a, 119) We may add another – be charitable in our interpretation of others’ positions. We may not make straw men of our opponents. Though stopping well short of a caricature, I believe that he has extended a certain charity to Peirce that he refuses to Dewey.

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Talisse acknowledges that Peirce’s architectonic goes well beyond his pragmatism. However, he simultaneously asserts that Peirce’s pragmatism is the basis for the rest of his philosophy and that it does not result in any specific philosophical commitments. (2007a, 6) His theory of inquiry, it is argued, neither implies nor requires a weltanshauung. For example, Misak and Talisse deny that Peirce’s model of truth requires a belief in an eventual consensus among the community of inquirers. In short, it is asserted that Peirce’s theory of inquiry is “wholly detachable” from the rest. (2007a, 88) He claims that Peirce’s pragmatism is the core of his project, but it is not clear that that is so. They ignore the notion that inquiry begins in the failure of habits to fruitfully engage the external world or that the outcome of inquiry is a reconstituted habit, both of which have physiological and ontological implications. Peirce had clear metaphysical commitments, as when he asserted, “The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism.” (CP 6.25) One could argue that Peirce’s pragmatism is the articulation of his scholastic realism, an attempt to understand the meaning of generals. Or that fixation of belief is part of the habit-forming process by which cosmic love produces a structured and self-reflective universe. I am not claiming that one must be a Scholastic Realist in order to accept Peirce’s model of inquiry, but it is not obvious that Peirce’s pragmatic theory of meaning may be hermetically sealed from his other substantive commitments, or that it is their foundation. Given that the pragmatic test of meaning and account of the doubt-belief arc are tucked away as a subset (to the sixth degree) of a philosophical system that Peirce believed would rival that of Aristotle, surely we cannot simply assume it may be lifted out without remainder.9 It is hard to contend that any element of a philosopher’s work is “wholly detachable” from the rest. For example, though William James claimed that his pragmatism was separate from his radical empiricism, it is clear that they both manifest his search for a heroic and sympathetic engagement with lived experience. Similarly, Peirce’s and Dewey’s pragmatisms reflect the scientist / objective idealist or social reformer/educator. No part is wholly detachable from the whole if, by “wholly detachable” we mean “Able to move to new contexts, new sets of relations, without changing its meaning.” Meaning is contextual and relational. Rather than saying that Peirce’s model of inquiry may be removed without a scar, we would be better off saying that it may be carried over to other contexts to take on other fruitful meanings. Embedded in an idealist architectonic, a program of social reform or an account of political justification under pluralism, this model is going to manifest a different character. The question is not whether Peirce’s or Dewey’s account of inquiry is pure, but whether it may be relocated to engage fruitfully with new problematic situations. Dewey’s can be, just as Peirce’s can. In criticizing Dewey, it is posited that any substantive philosophical positions must be the result of an independent, un-pragmatic commitment to an ontology, ethic, or democratic ideal. However, I have tried to argue that we may

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interpret Dewey in much the same way that Talisse has interpreted Peirce – that Dewey’s substantive positions are the outcome of either a general commitment to inquiry or particular inquiries into morality, social psychology, politics and inquiry itself. There is sufficient reason to believe that using either Peirce or Dewey for a contemporary political theory depends on a selective reading of their texts, that is, on the reader’s own charity. If, as William James believed, essences are teleological weapons of the mind, then we might say that what Talisse considers to be essentially Peircean or Deweyan is a matter of what use he hopes to make of each. To cordon off the procedural elements of Peirce’s thought from his broader architectonic and label them as the truly Peircean parts – the truly pragmatic parts – while denying that strategy to Dewey’s thought is uncharitable. I contend that both offer important resources for a pragmatic philosophy of democracy capable of addressing modern pluralism. Peircean models will emphasize the strict, quasi-transcendental procedural norms embedded in inquiry generally, while Deweyan models will draw more from the outcome of concrete inquires and emphasize the ongoing natural history of social inquiry itself. Or we might separate out those elements of Dewey’s and Peirce’s thought regarding inquiry in general from those that are more moral, social, anthropological and metaphysical. The former are more conducive to a pluralist and political liberalism while the latter might represent one of the many competing images of the Good that are debated within the framework of public, principled and experimental inquiry. We are by no means required to try them together. Pragmatist political theorists are quite right when they plead for a pragmatic, democratic philosophy that is more than resentment of the varieties of neo-pragmatism or, to paraphrase Dewey’s “The Need for a Recovery of Philosophy,” a happy chewing of the cud of past pragmatic thought. I am deeply sympathetic with the effort and believe that pragmatism must engage our pluralistic world. However, I also believe it is odd that this venture would begin by consigning Dewey’s democratic thought to the dustbin of history.

NOTES 1. Ironically, his present Peircean theory accepts the exclusion of those who refuse to participate according the norms of inquiry. But, at that time, Talisse was an unrepentant Deweyan anti-pluralist. See Talisse and Aiken 2005. 2. For a fine account, see O’Neill 1986. 3. Many critics, including Cheryl Misak, have disputed Rawls separation of morality and public reason, but we need not follow that through here. 4. An earlier version of this reconstruction appears in Westbrook, 1998: 128–140. 5. For a parallel defense, see Pappas 2008, chaps. 12–13.

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6. At the other extreme from absolutism is emotivism. When ideals are held to be outside deliberation, one is inclined to conclude that morality is a matter of emotion, taste or sheer preference – as “there is no disputing taste.” The valuable reduces to the fact of liking. Hence, absolutism and emotivism are two sides of the same position, mutually constitutive and mutually dependent upon a belief in fixed ends (LW 4: 205–212). Neither has space for public deliberation on contested goods. 7. The criticism that Dewey retains nostalgia for a certain type of local democracy has a long history. C. Wright Mills had perhaps the strongest version in Mills 1964. As a counter, see LW 13: 177. 8. For an incisive and sustained discussion of this point, see MacGilvray 2004, especially part 3. 9. Perhaps most significantly, as Robert Westbrook notes, Peirce himself certainly was no democrat and did not share Dewey’s belief that pragmatism had an internal relation to democracy (2005: 21–51, especially 27–28).

REFERENCES Adler, Mortimer J. 1941. “God and the Philosophers” in Science, Philosophy and Religion: A Symposium, vol. 1 (New York: Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion). Anderson, Elizabeth. 2006. “The Epistemology of Democracy,” Episteme 3: 8–22. Dewey, John. 1887–1952. The Collected Works of John Dewey (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press). Citations give volume and page numbers. Horkheimer, Max. 1947. Eclipse of Reason. New York: Continuum Press. MacGilvray, Eric. 2004. Reconstructing Public Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mills, C. Wright. 1964. Sociology and Pragmatism. New York: Paine-Whitman Publishers. Misak, Cheryl. 2000. Truth, Politics, Morality: Pragmatism and Deliberation. New York: Routledge. O’Neill, Onora. 1986. “The Public Use of Reason,” Political Theory 14: 523–551. Pappas, Gregory. 2008. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience. Bloomington: Indiana University press. Peirce, Charles. 1931–1958. Collected Papers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Citations give volume and paragraph numbers. Peter, Fabienne. 2008. “Pure Epistemic Proceduralism.” Episteme 5: 33–55. Putnam, Hilary. 1992. Renewing Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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Ralston, Shane. 2008. “In Defense of Democracy as a Way of Life: A Refutation of Talisse’s Pluralist Objection,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 44: 639– 660). Rawls, John. 1996. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press. Russell, Bertrand. 1910. Philosophical Essays. New York: Simon and Schuster. Seigfried, Charlene Haddock. 1998. “John Dewey’s Pragmatist Feminism,” in Reading Dewey: Interpretations for a Postmodern Generation, ed. Larry Hickman (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), pp. 187–216. Talisse, Robert. 2003. “Can Democracy be a Way of Life? Deweyan Democracy and the Problem of Pluralism,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 39: 1–21. Talisse, Robert. 2005. Democracy and Liberalism: Pragmatism and Deliberative Politics. New York: Routledge. Talisse, Robert. 2007a. A Pragmatist Philosophy of Democracy. New York: Routledge. Talisse, Robert. 2007b. “Two Democratic Hopes,” Contemporary Pragmatism 4(2): 19– 28. Talisse, Robert. 2008. “Toward a Social Epistemic Comprehensive Liberalism,” Episteme 5(1): 106–128. Talisse, Robert. nd. “A Farewell to Deweyan Democracy: Toward a New Pragmatist Politics (Working paper)” Talisse, Robert and Scott F. Aiken. 2005. “Why Pragmatists Cannot be Pluralists,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41: 101–118. Westbrook, Robert. 1998. “Pragmatism and Democracy: Reconstructing the Logic of John Dewey’s Faith,” in The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N.C. Duke University Press), pp. 128– 140. Westbrook, Robert. 2005. Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press. Westbrook, Robert. 2007. “Reply to Symposium Participants,” Contemporary Pragmatism 4(2): 29–34.

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What’s the Problem with Problem-Solving? Language, Skepticism, and Pragmatism Naoko Saito and Paul Standish

We critically examine pragmatism’s approach to skepticism and try to elucidate its certain limits. The central questions to be addressed are: whether “skepticism” interpreted through the lens of problemsolving does justice to the human condition; and whether the problem-solving approach to skepticism can do justice to pragmatism’s self-proclaimed anti-foundationalism. We then examine Stanley Cavell’s criticism of Dewey’s “problem-solving” approach. We propose a shift from the problem-solving approach’s eagerness for solutions to a more Wittgensteinian and Emersonian project of dissolution.

1. Pragmatism and Skepticism That knowledge can, and according to pragmatists should, produce a healthy awareness of human fallibility; but it should not, and indeed cannot, produce universal skepticism. One cannot summon up real doubt at will (“Doubting is not as easy as lying,” Peirce once said). Ceasing to believe anything at all is not a real human possibility. The fact that we have sometimes been mistaken in even very fundamental beliefs cannot, by itself, make me doubt any specific belief. The fact that there are no witches does not make me worry that perhaps there are no resistors. (Putnam 1995, 68). This is a powerful statement and a fitting defense of pragmatism’s distinctive approach to skepticism. First, pragmatism does not itself succumb to “universal skepticism,” which is an all-or-nothing approach to doubt. Fallibility is a part of the human condition, and any belief is always a specific matter in a particular context of life: it cannot be assimilated at will into an encompassing system of doubt. Hence, as Putnam says, “ceasing to believe anything at all is not a real human possibility.” Pragmatism is a philosophy of, and for, actual, ongoing human experience. Second, the passage above indicates pragmatism’s trust or faith in the power of human beings to live through fallibility towards belief. This depends upon the method of “inquiry,” or call this “the scientific

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method of thinking,” which is typically understood as the method of “problemsolving.” It makes possible the process of resolving specific doubts and turning them into beliefs. As Putnam goes on to claim: “the fact that we cannot reduce scientific inquiry ... to an algorithm, on the one hand, nor provide a metaphysical guarantee that any of our beliefs or methods will never need revision, on the other, does not mean that we don’t know anything about how to conduct inquiry” (69). Pitted against the skeptic’s doubts, one aspect of pragmatism’s response – and particularly of Dewey’s scientific method of thinking – is, thus, to take inquiry as a process of “cooperative human interaction with an environment” (70) – or, what Putnam calls, “the democratization of inquiry” (73). There is, third, another implication of pragmatism’s approach to skepticism in that, in this process of cooperative inquiry, inquirers do not rely on any metaphysical ground of belief or any universal set of criteria for judgment. The revision of criteria is always conducted in a specific context through “openness” and “criticism” (74). In this regard, pragmatism takes an anti-foundationalist stance. It is a philosophy equipped to live through uncertainty without resorting to any absolute ground. While it is rich and innovative in its approach to skepticism, pragmatism has long been criticized for its problem-solving orientation – an orientation too procedural or too optimistic, the criticism runs, to capture the subtle and invisible dimensions of the human condition. The most typical point of focus of such criticism is the claim that Dewey’s pragmatism lacks a tragic sense (Boisvert 1999; 2001; 2002; Feenberg 2001; West 1989). Criticism of this kind that is directed against the method of problem-solving, however, often seems, as a result of its focus on a limited dimension of Dewey’s scientific method of thinking, only to scratch the surface of pragmatism. Conversely, the defense given by Deweyan pragmatists is often too defensive, falling short of any real questioning of whether or not Dewey is right. As Richard Rorty says, the defenders of Dewey “stick so closely to the letter that they can make no concessions to current audiences” (Rorty 1995, 53). Hence, pragmatism awaits a deeper criticism, beyond polemical debate over its scientific method and problem-solving approach. The rich potential of its antifoundationalism needs to be tapped not simply in terms of a method of thinking, but also as something that goes more deeply into the question of the human condition: as a philosophical response to the question of how to live a better life, of how, especially in the face of the tragic or of doubt, to make our experience more rich. Hence there is a need for criticism. This article conducts a critical examination of pragmatism’s approach to skepticism and try to elucidate its limits. The central questions to be addressed are: whether pragmatism’s problem-solving approach is an adequate way of responding to skepticism, or to put it in a different way: whether “skepticism” interpreted through the lens of problem-solving does justice to the human condition; and whether the problem-solving approach to skepticism can do justice to pragmatism’s self-proclaimed anti-foundationalism. On the basis of

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these questions, one of the purposes of this paper is to elucidate that dimension of the human condition that might be suppressed in the problem-solving approach. By “problem-solving” we do not mean simply the scientific method of thinking as Dewey elaborates this, for example, in The Quest of Certainty. It is not simply the matter of a procedure of inquiry that is at issue, but something more broadly and more deeply related to the human condition, and this involves questions regarding the relationship between the self, the other, and language. The inclination towards problem-solving in Dewey’s pragmatism is thus illustrated in some of its aspects in his theory of communication, with its concomitant conception of language and its relation to the self. By elucidating the essential nature of language in Dewey’s pragmatism via the reader-response theory of Louise Rosenblatt, we shall first re-describe the nature and implications of the problem-solving approach and give an initial indication of its limits. Demonstrating the nature of these limits, we then examine Stanley Cavell’s criticism of Dewey’s “problem-solving” approach. Cavell’s criticism offers an alternative approach to skepticism that is based on ordinary language philosophy, and this serves to reveal a kind of repression in Dewey’s thought – a repression disclosed in the very moment of solving problems. In conclusion, and in line with Cavell’s thought, we propose a shift from the problem-solving approach’s eagerness for solutions to a more Wittgensteinian and Emersonian project of dissolution. 2. Language, the Transactional Theory of Communication, and ReaderResponse Theory: Implications of the Problem-Solving Approach In order to show that problem-solving is more than a matter of method or procedure, and that it has deep implications for the human condition, it is worth considering Dewey’s pragmatist account of language and communication. Language in Dewey’s pragmatism plays a crucial role in his theory of communication. Dewey views language as an “experience event” and as “a natural function of human association” (Dewey 1981, 137). On the one hand, it is instrumental as “the tool of tools,” as a means to reach “concerted consensus of action,” and it brings “the sense of sharing and merging in a whole” (145, 146). On the other hand, in communication language has a consummatory aspect as “a release and amplification of energies that enter into [the interaction of human beings]” (137). As these remarks indicate, language in Dewey’s pragmatism is not understood to be simply a method of dealing with and overcoming problems and of reaching “consensus”: what matters equally, according to Dewey, is the quality of human interaction and the achievement of richer human experience. In discussing the influence of Dewey’s pragmatist theory of transaction in Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory, Jeanne Connell introduces Rosenblatt as a leading figure in literary criticism who, in the second half of the twentieth

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century, challenged the dominance of the New Criticism (Connell 2008, 106). Connell highlights, as one of the distinctive features of Rosenblatt’s theory, the “transactional relation between reader and the text” mutually engaged in the process of meaning-making. What is important here is the notion of a “balance” between reader and text (ibid.). Rosenblatt emphasizes personal experience (of the “I,” obviously) as a condition for participation in the “public realm of shared meanings” (the “we”) (104). Furthermore, Connell stresses that it is a challenge for any transactional theory of reading to establish “criteria for what constitutes a valid reading” (109). She refers here to Rosenblatt’s appeal to Dewey’s notion of “warranted assertions” in the context of problem-solving: its point is to “determine meanings and connections with other ideas that represent real problems to solve and to consider contexts that are required for understanding these problems.” In this problem-solving endeavor, “shared criteria” are formed in the process of inquiry in “cooperative communicative efforts” (110, 111). Reader-response theory shows that the experience of reading is not a matter simply of literary activity, or worse, of what might be referred to scathingly as linguistic play: rather it is crucially related to the transactional nature of human experience – how we, as individuals acting together, bring richer meanings to the world. In this regard, and taking “text” to refer not only to literal texts but to the fabric of experience itself, reading is seen to extend beyond the procedure or method of problem-solving to the very process of the individual’s continual relating and re-relating of herself to the text – and, thus, to the language community and to others with whom she shares the experience of reading and meaning-making. As Rosenblatt herself says: “Reader and text are involved in a complex, nonlinear, recursive, self-correcting transaction” (Rosenblatt 2005, 9). In a more social context, for example, “dialogue between teacher and students and interchange among students can foster growth and crossfertilization in both the reading and writing processes” (28). Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory elucidates some implications of Dewey’s views on language, and, through the perspective of language, on the broader nature of his pragmatism – especially with regard to the relationship between the self, the other, and language in transactional experience. In the context of the present discussion her account provides a convenient stagingpoint for the lines of enquiry we propose shortly to pursue. Let us identify four principal features of the position to which it has led. First, it raises questions concerning the purpose of human communication and the sharing of experience. Dewey makes it clear that human communication and the use of language, understood in terms of pragmatism, aim at reaching some point of “concerted consensus.” Rosenblatt’s theory also illustrates the way such consensus is sought in the process of reading. Moreover, both Dewey and Rosenblatt indicate that such consensus is never a once-and-for-all fixed state, but always subject to the continual process of revision and reconstruction in negotiation over social criteria (very much in line with what Putnam says regarding the “democratization of inquiry”). Second, the quality of transactional

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experience illustrated by the process of reading is perhaps typically represented by what Cornell calls “balance between reader and text” (Cornell 2008, 106, italics added), which might also be called a state of equilibrium. There is then, it seems, this constant drive towards finding settlement, with every component contributing to an interrelated balance in aid of the harmonious whole. Third, and related to the second point, transactional experience is also underpinned by a principle of continuity – “the continuity between human beings and their social and natural worlds” (104). The “principle of continuity” is an essential feature of Dewey’s idea of growth (Dewey 1938, 36). Fourth, the position raises a question as to how the “criteria” of temporary consensus are to be articulated and made transparent to those involved in the use of language. Rosenblatt herself says: “the assessment must be based on clearly articulated criteria as to signs of growing maturity in handling personal response, relating to the evoked text, and use of personal and intertextual experience vis-à-vis the responses of others” (Rosenblatt 2005, 33). The lines of enquiry we intend to pursue involve further examination of the implications of these features of reader-response theory as an amplification of Dewey’s views on language, against the background of which we raise three critical questions. First of all, does not the emphasis, in the experience of reading, on the achievement of a state of equilibrium subtly endorse assumptions of problemsolving – the overcoming of doubt and uncertainty or, say, acquiescence in a certain point of convergence? Both Dewey and Rosenblatt show that problemsolving is not simply a procedure for dealing with problems, that it involves our experience. The point here, however, is that there may be an internal tension in Dewey – between the Dewey who has the proclivity toward problem-solving as a method, and the Dewey who, especially on the strength of his account of the consummatory nature of experience, seeks a possibility of human being that is altogether more broad and more rich in kind. (The worry remains that the latter Dewey is assimilated to the former.) Second is the question of “consensus” in concerted action. Is sufficient space allowed for dissensus, for deviation from “clearly articulated criteria”? Or is, rather, the voice of the dissenter eventually to be reconciled to the drive toward consensus? Can there not be a moment when the voice of dissent may represent the inarticulate or, say, the unknowable – that which escapes articulated criteria? Third, if we bring together the first and second questions, it can be seen that Rosenblatt’s reader-response theory seems to suggest that the aim of reading is to reach mutual understanding – between the reader and the text, between the reader and the author, and among diverse readers. This combination of the very notions of mutuality and understanding should raise doubts as to how far Dewey’s pragmatism can sustain its anti-foundationalist position (that is, how far it can avoid sliding into a state of settlement and reconciliation, the two parties discharged of doubts, even if only temporarily) and as to whether the

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dissident’s voice can avoid assimilation, in the name of mutual understanding, into “a merging whole.” 3. Dewey’s Repression Elucidated by Cavell’s Criticism As a continuation of the initial line of criticism, we introduce here Cavell’s criticism of Dewey’s pragmatism. As is well known, Cavell has preferred to maintain his distance from Dewey (Cavell 1990; 1998; 2003). The nature of his criticism and the basis of this in his views on language are helpful in the further elucidation of the possible limits of Dewey’s problem-solving approach. We examine, first, Cavell’s direct criticism of Dewey and then move on to consider some of the representative features of Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy, with its distinctive account of the place of skepticism in the human condition. Cavell’s approach to language and the self shows us an alternative approach to human doubt and, by implication, a different relation to skepticism. Cavell characterizes Dewey’s proclivity towards problem-solving in terms of its “moving in action from a problematic situation to its solution, as by the removal of an obstacle” (Cavell 1990, 21). Through the Emersonian lens of Cavell’s perspective, “the Deweyan is apt to seem an enlightened child” (16). Cavell sees what he regards as the unbridgeable gap between Dewey and Emerson as turning on the difference between “the appeal to science” and “the appeal to ordinary language philosophy” (Cavell 1998, 75). In the latter, “mourning,” “suffering,” “patience,” and “passion” are more representative elements of human experience, at odds with the active tendency in Dewey’s science (73, 76, 78). From this position it seems that neither Dewey nor William James “take the threat of skepticism seriously” (77). And in spite of Dewey’s pragmatist claim that he goes beyond dualism, Cavell has more recently taken the view that Dewey’s anti-dualism and, by implication, his antifoundationalism differ from Emerson’s “middle way.” For Emerson, “there is no middle way between, say, self-reliance and self- (or other-) conformity” (Cavell 2003, 11). This view reiterates the questions raised in connection with readerresponse theory concerning the apparent tension between consensus and dissensus; it rearticulates the impression that, despite pragmatism’s much vaunted anti-foundationalism, social criteria bring us eventually to some settled point of solution, as a consequence of negotiation between dualistic termini. To gain a better sense of the pulse of Cavell’s criticism of Dewey, it is necessary first to consider the nature of his ordinary language philosophy, the crucial place within that philosophy of Cavell’s response to skepticism being addressed in the final section. Cavell is stuck especially by the way that the characteristic procedure of the ordinary language philosopher, its characteristic mode of appeal, takes the form of “When we say . . ., we mean. . .”1 This is an appeal to ordinary use not as some kind of empirical generalization about the behavior of a particular people; a survey of usage would be beside the point. It is an appeal instead to the ear.

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Two things should be noted especially: the statement is first person, and it is plural. That it is first person shows the significance of voice; the authentication of the statement has to do with the speaker’s sincere assent, with how things seem to her, and with her desire or responsibility to express this. That it is plural testifies to her desire or responsibility to speak for others, to find community of some kind with them. This is by no means to impose on their views, nor is it simply to align herself with them in terms, say, of shared characteristics (a community of the same); it is rather to offer her assertion as exemplary in some way, testing this against the responses of others, and testing her own responses against what those others themselves say. That this relation to others does not spring from a fully-fledged personal autonomy is evident in the importance that is attached to reading: reading is a metonym for the ways in which our responses are drawn out and tested in the words of others, and hence for the salience of reception. This then is to see her autonomy, rightly conceived, as inevitably tied to the political (the creation of the polis) as two sides of the same coin, and to see it as inextricably tied to the conditions of response within which she finds herself. The political is to this extent internal, and literary activity conditions political participation. Reading, then, is the process through which reader and writer become engaged in a cooperative task of “conjecturing” (Cavell 1992, 28), or in other words in an Emersonian poiesis of “metre-making” (Standish 2002, 160). It is a testing of the criteria of words and culture, keeping alive the search for their truth. The reader seeks to be convinced by the text but also finds herself “convicted” (Cavell 1992, 48) in that she is caught in a position of responsibility – that is, a responsibility to see how far she can give her assent to the words that the text presents to her, and how far she can find herself in relation to their provocation, but also a responsibility to bear the brunt of the destabilization and reconstruction of language with which responsible reading is charged. In Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy reading – not only of the literal text but of the text of experience as a whole – is not a process that aims at reaching a state of equilibrium, of consensus, or at an articulation of clear and distinct criteria. Reader and text are not positioned in a relationship of balance, but rather one of imbalance, in the experience of a separation that is not to be overcome. The reader needs especially to persevere in the “trial” that the text presents (Cavell 1992), to undergo a sense of “bottomlessness,” even as she seeks a basis for her reading (Michaels 1992). This is what Cavell calls “reading in a high sense” (Cavell 1992, 4). The experience the reader undergoes here is captured better by the idea of disturbance than by that of a security within a “merging whole,” as in reader-response theory. The aim of reading, if it is right here to speak of aims at all, is not to reach mutual understanding, but rather to become aware of the “residuum unknown, unanalyzable” (Emerson 1990, 168). In contrast to Dewey’s pragmatist notion of transaction, Cavell’s idea of language and reading can be better captured by the idea of translation.2 Cavell refers to the notion of translation sporadically, but it is a thought that permeates

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his writings. For example, “Walden,” he writes, “can be taken as a whole to be precisely about the problem of translation, call it transfiguration from one form of life to another” (Cavell 2006, 17). The accent here is at once religious and Wittgensteinian. A form of life cannot be realized other than through the specifics of particular language-games, and these, being language-games, are always themselves in transition or on the way. Nor can such a life be realized in one language-game alone: one must move between language-games that, by their very nature, will be more or less incommensurable. By transfiguring and broadening the concept of translation, Cavell presents us with the idea of philosophy as translation, whose task will be “to make human existence, or show it to be, strange to itself” (7). Such a sensitization is something to be found in some of the texts that Cavell most values. Thus, of Emerson’s exemplary prose he writes: “His language is hence in continuous struggle with itself, as if he is having to translate, in his American idiom, English into English” (Cavell 2005, 8). Translation here is not well understood if it is assumed to depend upon a binary contrast between, on the one hand, an original pure language and, on the other, a foreign language that can be juxtaposed against the original and that is subordinate to it. Rather, the thought is that translation is something that is already woven into the process of the acquisition of the original language. It is not just that languages never as a matter of fact exist in some pure unmediated form, uncontaminated by influence from outside; it is also that the idea that they might do so is predicated on metaphysical assumptions about the relation between language and world, and about the nature of meaning, that lose sight of language’s ongoing, evolving, fluid nature. If this is so, language is already in translation, in movement in the self; and we, in turn, are ourselves already in translation. Cavell’s idea of philosophy as translation destabilises the illusion of immediacy – typically observed in the Deweyan discourse of “face-to-face dialogue.” In a manner significantly different from, though not necessarily in conflict with, that of Jacques Derrida, it reconfigures the relationship between speech and writing. “Writing appears in Walden not as an extension but as an experience of speech” (Cavell 1994, 41). In other words writing, or experience of the written language, is a reengagement with the mother tongue (which is represented most obviously by speech), a reengagement that, in Thoreau, warrants the name of the “father tongue” (Cavell 1992, 15–16). The acquisition of, or immersion in, the father tongue constitutes a rebirth; yet this is not a onceand-only event, but a daily baptism, a daily requirement that our right relation to language exacts. This recovery of language involves the very process of translation, of a “discontinuous reconstitution of what has been said, a recounting of the past, autobiographizing, deriving words from yourself” (Cavell 1994, 41). Finding one’s language means taking what is given and adding something new. Translation in this broader and perhaps more originary sense is not merely an exchange between a familiar native tongue and a foreign native

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tongue, but something already conditioning the process of acquiring a tongue at all. This means that the experience of translation has always already taken place within ourselves. In the light of Cavell’s account of language and more generally his views on human experience, some sense of the repression that works through Dewey’s writings gradually becomes apparent. This is illustrated most strikingly in what sometimes seems to be his distaste for, even recoil at, psychoanalysis. Cavell draws attention to the way that the “depth of psychoanalytic discovery” is missing from Dewey’s text (Cavell 1990, 13). It is this repression that is hidden behind Dewey’s problem-solving approach and his transactional theory of language and communication; and that demonstrates the limit of his pragmatism at a deeper level. In Human Nature and Conduct (1921), where Dewey criticizes psychoanalysis, the inner (Dewey 1983, 61–62), the invisible realm of life, seems to be absorbed into the “daylight of the public” (9). This covering over of the inner suggests another, and possibly a deeper, source of the limits of his pragmatism. Dewey’s pragmatism resists the dangers of an introspective psychology that isolates mind from its environments and organic connections. For Freud, Westbrook says, there was the “possibility of a compromise in the conflict of instinct and culture but not of resolution; faith in such a resolution was a first principle of Dewey’s social psychology” (Westbrook 1991, 292, italics added). His notion of impulse in habit reconstruction is a function of solving conflicts and tensions. Dewey’s seeming revulsion at psychoanalysis is coupled with his pragmatist proclivity towards coping with problems; and his placing of coping at the heart of a philosophy is tantamount to a kind of denial, containing its problems and modes of enquiry within the territory of solution. It is in such a spirit that we find Dewey saying, for example, that “All friendship is a solution to the problem” (Dewey 1987, 339). Thus, Dewey omits or muffles another possibility of acknowledging the deep psychological reality of trauma, an acknowledgement that would require something more like a radical leap, beyond the realm of intelligent control in the light of articulated criteria. Westbrook tries to show how Dewey’s later ethics opens onto a “tragic view of experience,” with a corresponding acknowledgment of the “rarity” of consummatory experience (Westbrook 1991, 416), but the criticism that his pragmatism lacks a tragic sense remains hard to shake off. 4. From Solution to Dissolution “There are no fixtures in nature... The law dissolves the fact and holds it fluid.” – Emerson, Self-Reliance (Emerson 1990, 166). Cavell’s approach to language has helped us transform our perception of “skepticism” in a way that Dewey’s pragmatist approach does not. Cavell

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identifies a contrast between Emerson’s (and, by extension, ordinary language philosophy’s) “intellect,” which is associated with “dissolving,” and Dewey’s “intelligence,” which is associated with “solving” (Cavell 2003, 8–9). What distinguishes Cavell’s language from many other forms of political discourse is its persistent sense of dissonance and destabilization. In part this is derived from his distinctive approach to skepticism, the most sustained theme in his work. His Emersonian dual sense of tragedy and hope, and his Wittgensteinian sense of dissolution, make possible an alternative language, whose appeal is to a more subtle responsiveness on the part of the reader and which acknowledges more fully in the human condition the proximity of despair. That language speaks directly to the latent nihilism of our times. In comparing his own work to Dewey’s pragmatist position and to Dewey’s style of writing, Cavell has said: “for my taste pragmatism misses the depth of human restiveness, or say misses the daily, insistent split in the self that being human cannot, without harm to itself, escape” (5). The sense of the riven is missing from Dewey’s writing and the realm of the “residuum unknown, unanalyzable” is dissipated in the overcoming of doubt and the ameliorative response to the tragic. Cavell attributes this lack to the pragmatist preoccupation with problemsolving. Wittgenstein’s approach, by contrast, is not to the solving so much as to the dissolving of problems. He “dissolves” problems, however, only to allow them to start up again. The fly escapes from the fly-bottle yet returns. Philosophy achieves peace but becomes restive again. The problem never simply goes away, the itch never finally eased. And this is tantamount to an acknowledgment not of the truth of skepticism but of the truth in skepticism; this is, as it were, not an epistemological but an existential truth. Skepticism testifies to something deep in the human condition: our compulsion to doubt; our inclination to demand a greater reassurance than the circumstances allow or a more robust verification than they could reasonably bear. And so our failures are not failures of knowledge so much as failures of acknowledgement. As Putnam has put this, “our fundamental relation to the world, Cavell teaches us, isn’t one of knowledge but of acknowledgement” (Putnam 2005, 125). It is this sense of skepticism that distinguishes Cavell’s position radically from the politics of recognition – and also subtly from that of Derrida: Cavell snipes at Derrida’s notion of “deferral,” the idea that eternal prorogation is inevitable. In contrast, Cavell responds more fully to the sense of a deadlock, of being stopped short, and to the ensuing anxiety over what cannot be said (Cavell 1994, 37). Cavell’s idea of acknowledgment, however, as an alternative approach to skepticism, is anything but a negation of our capacity of thinking, of human intelligence; it is rather a recognition of our fated relation to language. Dissolution is not the romanticization of the unknown: for indeed, as Wittgenstein at one point will say, our investigation “seems to destroy everything interesting, all

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that is great and important” (Wittgenstein, 1953, #118). It is not a reverencing of the unsolvable by assimilating the inarticulate and inexpressive to another emerging whole of the mystical: for “What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand” (ibid.). It is not the abrogation of our quest for expression, for this would deny not only the perspicuity that we need but also that human tendency to run up against the limits of language, a tendency Wittgenstein admires. It is then rather a dissolving of the illusions to which our legitimate desire for mutual understanding can lead, enabling us to live better with the rifts of experience divided by which we find ourselves. These features of Cavell’s ordinary language philosophy and its comcomitant idea of translation represent his alternative anti-foundationalism. This neither solidifies the ground of language nor, in the rigorous challenge of measure-making, abrogates the search for common ground. It is most typically illustrated in his reiteration of the Emersonian idea of finding as founding – “Foundation reaches no farther than each issue of finding” (Cavell 1998, 114) – and in his Thoreauvian sense that “The volatile truth of our words should continually betray the inadequacy of the residual statement. Their truth is translated; its literal monument alone remains” (Thoreau 1992, 217). This recognition that our words can succumb to a condition of fixity or fixation, which resonates so clearly with the distinction drawn by Emmanuel Levinas between the saying (le dire) and the said (le dit), is not the only point at which his relation to poststructuralist lines of thought is apparent (Levinas 1998).3 On the one hand, Cavell’s anti-foundationalism should be distinguished from Dewey’s pragmatist anti-foundationalism, while on the other hand, Cavell’s coining of “deconfounding” both alludes to deconstruction and signals a resistance to any position too neatly so described. And the word bears some examination, for if the root term here suggests a founding, and hence finding as founding, it also says rather more than this. Such a founding, as we have seen, is a con-founding, a finding together through the projection of our words, in an ongoing aspiration toward the common; yet this is also a process through which we are confounded, which is to say a process to and through which we are damned – say, by the fixity of our words or by the consolidation of the “we.” If, as Derrida says, deconstruction does not negate but rather includes construction, so our deconfounding incorporates both our founding together and our being confounded. And yet the force of the prefix is to undo both of these (apparently contradictory) movements: it unsettles our tendencies toward consolidation, and it is the mode of our release from our damnation. A good reading deconfounds, and this is the condition of human experience we need. In the face of consuming doubt and tragic despair, Cavell’s Emersonian anti-foundationalism is not orientated toward the finding of provisional identifications or the articulation of criteria as points of convergence. The state of disequilibrium is not a stage in a system of homeostasis, geared toward the regaining of equilibrium. It is a process rather of encountering the irreconcilable

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other within the self. The purpose of conversation is then the progressive unfolding of difference, to which, if we respond well, we shall learn to accept the unbridgeable rifts in experience: In philosophizing, I have to bring my own language and life into imagination. What I require is a convening of my culture’s criteria, in order to confront them with my words and life as I pursue them and as I may imagine them; and at the same time to confront my words and life as I pursue them with the life my culture’s words may imagine for me: to confront the culture with itself, along the lines in which it meets in me (Cavell 1979, 125). The rift within the self between, say, one’s innovative impulse, on the one hand, and inheritance from the past and the constraints given by culture, on the other – cannot be entirely closed. One has to live this experience through. Being riven is, perhaps, part of the tragic condition of human being. But when one succeeds in finding “perfect pitch” in one’s voice, the moment for “the birth of culture within oneself” (Cavell 1994, 30, 48, 50), this is the moment when one becomes aware that, with “a small alteration of its structure, the world might be taken a small step – a half step – toward perfection” (50). Cavell’s idea of “perfect pitch” is at odds with the articulation of visible criteria in readerresponse theory. Dissolution, deconfounding, and translation, these ideas we have drawn from Cavell, thus indicate an alternative way of living with – or, better, through – doubt. Cavell’s American philosophy, more fully than Dewey’s pragmatism, resists the temptation to succumb to the illusion of foundation, while yet avoiding the lure of universal skepticism.

NOTES 1. The brief account offered is drawn especially from Cavell’s extensive treatment of the matter in The Claim of Reason (Cavell, 1979). 2. Cavell’s idea of philosophy as translation is discussed in Saito 2007; 2009. 3. For a discussion of aspects of Cavell’s thought in relation to Levinas, see Standish 2007. More broadly, if poststructuralism can be said to inherit more or less distinct lines of thought from Levinas and Nietzsche, these can be characterized in terms, respectively, of the negative strand that emphasizes the relation to the other and the limits of what can be known, and the affirmative strand of an affirmation with no other (the yea-saying of amor fati) (see Standish 2004). Cavell’s writings in this respect might be seen, like Emerson’s, as realizing the tension – better, the oscillation – between these ways of thinking and being. This is to bear witness to the condition to which the human is fated.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Boisvert, Raymond D. 1999. “The Nemesis of Necessity: Tragedy’s Challenge to Deweyan Pragmatism,” in Dewey Reconfigured, ed. Casey Haskins and David I. Seiple (Albany: State University of New York Press), pp. 151–168. Boisvert, Raymond D. 2001. “Updating Dewey: A Reply to Morse,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 37: 578–583. Boisvert, Raymond D. 2002. “Toward a Programmatic Pragmatism: A Response to Naoko Saito,” Journal of Philosophy of Education 36: 621–628. Cavell, Stanley. 1979. The Claim of Reason: Wittgenstein, Skepticism, Morality, and Tragedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Cavell, Stanley. 1990. Conditions Handsome and Unhandsome: The Constitution of Emersonian Perfectionism (La Salle, Ill.: Open Court). Cavell, Stanley. 1992. The Senses of Walden (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Cavell, Stanley. 1994. A Pitch of Philosophy: Autobiographical Exercises (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Cavell, Stanley. 1998. “What’s the Use of Calling Emerson a Pragmatist?” in The Revival of Pragmatism: New Essays on Social Thought, Law, and Culture, ed. Morris Dickstein (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press), pp. 72–80. Cavell, Stanley. 2003. Emerson’s Transcendental Etudes (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Cavell, Stanley. 2005. Cities of Words: Pedagogical Letters On A Register Of The Moral Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Cavell, Stanley. 2006. “Walden in Tokyo.” Paper presented at a colloquium on Cavell’s work at Harvard University on 28 October 2006. Connell, Jeanne M. 2008. “Emergence of Pragmatic Philosophy’s Influence on Literary Theory: Making Meaning with Texts from a Transactional Perspective,” Educational Theory 58: 103-122. Dewey, John. 1938. Experience and Education (New York: Macmillan). Dewey, John. 1981. Experience and Nature, The Later Works of John Dewey vol. 1, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press). Dewey, John. 1983. Human Nature and Conduct, The Middle Works of John Dewey vol. 4, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press).

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Dewey, John. 1987. Art as Experience, The Later Works of John Dewey vol. 10, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press). Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1990. Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Richard Poirier (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Feenberg, Andrew. 2001. “Pragmatism and Critical Theory of Technology: Reply to Hickman.” Paper presented at a meeting of the Society for Philosophy and Technology in Aberdeen, Scotland on 10 July 2001. Levinas, Emmanuel. 1998. Otherwise than Being, or Beyond Essence, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press). Michaels, Walter Benn. 1992. “Walden’s False Bottom,” in Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, ed. William Rossi (New York: W. W. Norton). Putnam, Hilary. 1995. Pragmatism: An Open Question (Oxford: Blackwell). Putnam, Hilary. 2005. “Philosophy as the Education of Grownups: Stanley Cavell and Skepticism,” in Reading Cavell, ed. Alice Crary and Sanford Shieh (London: Routledge), pp. 117–128. Rorty, Richard. 1995. “Response to Thelma Lavind,” in Rorty and Pragmatism: The Philosopher Responds to His Critics, ed. Herman J. Saatkamp, Jr. (Nashvile, Tenn.: Vanderbilt University Press), pp. 50–53. Rosenblatt, Louise. 2005. Making Meaning with Texts: Selected Essays (Portsmouth, N.H.: Heinemann Publishing). Saito, Naoko. 2007. “Philosophy as Translation: Education for inter-/intra-cultural understanding with Cavell and Thoreau,” Educational Theory 57.3: 261–275. Saito, Naoko. 2009. “Ourselves in Translation: Stanley Cavell and Philosophy as Autobiography,” Journal of Philosophy of Education, 43.2: 253–267. Standish, Paul. 2002. “Essential Heidegger: Poetics of the Unsaid,” in Heidegger, Modernity, and Education, ed. Michael A. Peters (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield), pp. 151–170. Standish, Paul. 2004. “Europe, Continental Philosophy and the Philosophy of Education,” Comparative Education 40.4: 485–501. Standish, Paul. 2007. “Education for Grown-Ups, A Religion for Adults: Scepticism and Alterity in Cavell and Levinas,” Ethics and Education 2.1: 73–91. Thoreau, Henry David. 1992. Walden and Resistance to Civil Government, ed. William Rossi (New York: W. W. Norton).

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West, Cornell. 1989. The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press). Westbrook, Robert B. 1991. John Dewey and American Democracy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press). Wittgenstein, Ludwig. 1953. Philosophical Investigations, trans. G. E. M. Anscombe (Oxford: Blackwell).

Naoko Saito Associate Professor of Education Graduate School of Education Kyoto University Yoshida-Honmachi, Sakyo-ku Kyoto-shi, Kyoto 606-8501 Japan Paul Standish Professor of Philosophy of Education Institute of Education 20 Bedford Way University of London London, WC1H 0AL United Kingdom

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 169–178

Editions Rodopi © 2009

Rescher’s Cognitive Pragmatism John Lachs

The aim of this article is to examine the structure, appreciate some of the strengths and criticize a major weakness of Rescher’s pragmatism. Rescher’s pragmatic commitments are well-articulated. His reasons for embracing realism are strikingly similar to Santayana’s. His insistence, however, that inquiry and communication constitute central human activities privileges talk, propositional knowledge and cognitive achievement. His position would be stronger if he placed cognitive activities in the broader context of the rich non-propositional flow of life.

Dictatorships are not the only sites of mysterious disappearances. The history of philosophy is rife with theories that drop from view, in some cases never to be heard from again. Leibniz’s preformationism, Hegel’s astronomical ideas and Spengler’s theory of the decline of the West disappeared from the scene without a trace and so quickly that hardly anyone noticed. This may be an appropriate fate for many views: it is just as well if they go unresuscitated, and it is indeed unlikely that someone would have the bad judgment and leisure to bring them back. Unfortunately, from time to time even worthy and interesting views slip from sight and leave us impoverished. That is what happened to pragmatism around the middle of the Twentieth Century: it went in short order from one of the dominant traditions of the day to a curious view no one wanted to take seriously. The usual reason offered for this sudden shift, namely the arrival in the United States of positivist philosophers inspired by the Vienna Circle, is clearly inadequate to account for the decline. Factors internal to philosophy and socio-political circumstances also played a central role. Throughout the modern era, physics-envy has been a powerful motivating force in philosophy. The explanatory success of physical theory left a deep impression on thinkers from at least John Locke on; many of them attempted to replicate the sweeping non-teleological theorizing of their hard-science colleagues. Pragmatism, with its insistence on the centrality of purposes and its refusal to honor the fact/value distinction appeared to be a relic of the past, fatally tied to Hegelian views of context and totality. The pragmatic interest in social and political matters, moreover, played itself out in wrongheaded support

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for Stalinist dictatorship and became dangerous in the hysterical days of McCarthy. Philosophers thought it best to retire to their ivory towers and focus their efforts on abstract, value-free inquiries. For about forty years, pragmatism was out of step with the times. Its sudden and striking revival was due to complex and multiple causes, among them the growth of interest in applied ethics, the renewed concern of the professoriate for public policy as a result of the Vietnam War and a growing unease among intellectuals about the value-free operations and applications of science. Not the least among the reasons for the revival was the intellectual curiosity and perceptiveness of a few thinkers, who discovered in pragmatism rich resources for dealing with both philosophical and practical problems. Nicholas Rescher was, as always, in the vanguard of those exploring new terrain. His embrace and development of pragmatism aided the renaissance and made available a new, well worked out and intriguing version of the position. Pragmatism is an anti-essentialist view, so it is unhelpful, and certainly unpragmatic, to worry about who is and who is not a pragmatist. There are no necessary and sufficient conditions which, if met, constitute credentials and, accordingly, the amount of information we can derive from calling someone a pragmatist is sharply limited. There are so many sorts of pragmatism – more in fact than the thirteen Lovejoy distinguished – that the serious work of understanding thinkers begins rather than ends with classifying them as pragmatists. One way to think about pragmatisms is to arrange them from Peirce’s realistic version that takes truth seriously to Rorty’s postmodern, relativistic reflections. On this continuum, Rescher falls close to Peirce: his devotion to the scientific method and his insistence that there is an independently existing world concerning which we may eventually be able learn the truth are clearly reminiscent of that first great pragmatist. Rescher sees little value in a Rortyan pragmatism queered by postmodern accretions, and finds himself so far from social constructivism that Dewey’s name does not even appear in Rescher’s books Methodological Pragmatism and Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology. I will say more about Rescher’s relation to pragmatism a little later; first, I want to explore the remarkable and unsuspected similarity of his postulate of realism with George Santayana’s philosophy of animal faith. I do not know if Rescher is aware of this resemblance. He makes occasional references to Santayana, though more for his pithy quips than for the major philosophical system he developed. The connection to Santayana, who was a realist and in certain respects a pragmatist, will help me elucidate Rescher’s philosophical position and lead me to the fundamental objection I want to raise to it. The realism Rescher embraces in Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology is the view that, in Peirce’s language, there is an “external permanency” that constrains our beliefs. This “order of mind-independent reality”1 serves as the object our cognitive efforts explore and the standard by which the truth of our beliefs is measured. Any of our current convictions about the objective universe may prove false because its processes – ready to be explored yet unaffected by

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what we think or hope – comport themselves differently from what we believe. The enveloping natural world both motivates inquiry and stands as the silent judge of our methods and results. Without it, the enterprise of knowledge would be in vain and human communication impossible. Rescher is keenly aware of the power of skepticism and the arguments of such idealists as Berkeley. He thinks it is clear that the existence of an objective order cannot be proved. Yet it is equally obvious, he believes, that without such an independent world, truth, knowledge and even inquiry would not be possible. So the epistemic status of realism is not that of an “empirical discovery but of a presupposition.”2 The postulate is required by our cognitive practices for which it is vital that we distinguish truth from falsity and appearance from reality. Without this backdrop of real objects or facts, communication and common inquiry could not exist and the fallibilistic enterprise of science would never move ahead. One could raise questions about the requirement of an objective world for communication and about the importance of a grand distinction between appearance and reality for conducting our ordinary cognitive affairs. Arguing about such matters is the delightful privilege of philosophers. But, though detailed criticism may be useful and appropriate here, that is not my present purpose. I want to examine the structure, appreciate some of the strengths and criticize a major weakness of Rescher’s pragmatism. I cannot accomplish that if I challenge every one of his interesting but questionable claims. Rescher proposes two justifications of his postulate of realism, though he seems to conflate them. First, he maintains that its “ultimate justification” is a transcendental argument from “the character of our conceptual scheme to the unavoidability of accepting its inherent presuppositions.”3 He also argues, however, that it is warranted because of its utility: through the results we achieve by adopting it, the view receives “experiential retrovalidation.”4 These two attempts by Rescher to justifying the assumption of realism do not strike me as identical or even very closely related. The appearance of a transcendental argument in the work of a pragmatist is, to say the least, surprising. However that may be, arguing from something actual (in this case, the conceptual scheme with which we presumably work) to the conditions of its possibility seems altogether different from justifying a belief by its salutary results. I note this issue also as worth exploring but not germane to my current interests. I want to focus on the similarity of Santayana’s justification of his philosophical views, including realism, with Rescher’s validation of realism. The connection is best observed by attending to Scepticism and Animal Faith, Santayana’s detailed discussion of epistemology. That book, as the title suggests, is a work in two movements, the first destructive, the second restorative. In the first, Santayana assesses the power of skepticism; in the second, he reestablishes the beliefs of common sense on the basis of the philosophy of animal faith.

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The skeptical reduction features a savage attack on every belief open to doubt. As it turns out, this includes all beliefs, from the perceptual to the historical, from the scientific to the mathematical and from the public to the personal. The criterion by which convictions are evaluated is that of immediate and indubitable presence; on the basis of that high standard, everything we think true fails the test. Santayana concludes the first movement by what he calls “solipsism of the present moment,”5 in which we give credence to nothing beyond the immediate content of consciousness. This content, however, is inert and unmeaning; it is what it is, but validates nothing other than its self-identity. Although such a reduction spells cognitive disaster, it also offers a way out of the grips of skepticism. It points to the irrelevance of wholesale skeptical doubt and the artificiality of the standard on which it rests. A philosophical position cannot be right if it invalidates all of life, even while we continue in the happy pursuit of our values and purposes. Confident human action displays the fatuousness of universal doubt and unmasks it as nothing more than an intellectual exercise. One can hear overtones at this point of Peirce’s distinction between genuine doubt and feigned hesitancy. Abandoning the skeptical enterprise leaves Santayana with the need to establish a different criterion of knowledge. He proposes a new philosophy of animal faith, consisting of the adoption of all and only those beliefs implicated in our actions. The independent existence of a world, for example, is affirmed in our attempts to influence it. Our actions suggest that this universe is deployed in space and time and that, as agents in it, we are both causally efficacious and mortally vulnerable. Other beliefs to which our actions testify include the continuity of the field of agency in which we operate, the difference between animate and inanimate inhabitants of that field and the identity through time of substantial existents. According to Santayana, a sensible and honest philosophy will focus its efforts on articulating the tenets of animal faith. These are the beliefs animals (including human animals) would adopt if they thought in propositional form and learned to generalize. To the discerning eye, actions reveal beliefs, and the most general of these beliefs constitute a philosophy we can safely adopt. Its tenets carry the highest level of assurance humans can provide, namely the confidence that comes of success in operation. Santayana clearly agrees with Rescher that realism and other fundamental beliefs are not susceptible of proof. Initially, they are experiments animals make; the success of the experiments establishes them as habitual modes of operation that, on their intellectual side, can take their places in the philosophy of animal faith. One might well say that the propositions expressing this “empirical confidence” are postulates justified by the felicitous results obtained through acting on them. Santayana puts it in a way that is close to what Rescher has in mind by retrovalidation when he says, “When once I have admitted the facts of nature…then indeed many excellent reasons for ... belief ... will appear.”6

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Santayana’s view of what justifies the tenets of animal faith can, interestingly enough, also be put in terms similar to Rescher’s transcendental argument. As for Rescher, the premise of the argument is the description of certain human practices. The search for the necessary conditions that make such practices possible should yield the same results as does starting with the examination of tacit animal beliefs. An independently existing spatio-temporal world whose agents enjoy reciprocally effective causal powers is one of the first conditions of engaging in the practices of hunting, fleeing, hiding and eating. Other conditions can be derived in a similar way. At this point, however, we arrive at a crucial parting of the ways. When Santayana speaks of practices, he has in mind the rich, embodied activities of animals trying to survive in a treacherous environment. He views even the human “psyche” – his word for the agent animal in us – as primarily engaged in parrying the blows of the world. Our lives are taken up by acting on our desires and pursuing our plans, preparing for trouble and repairing the damage we suffer constantly. We use our surroundings to meet whatever need arises; the perpetual demand for nourishment reminds us, says Santayana, that “matter is essentially food.”7 When Rescher speaks of practices, on the other hand, he has in mind activities of inquiry and communication. Rescher operates on the level of thought; his transcendental argument for realism is built on “the character of our conceptual scheme.”8 The reason for postulating an independently existing world is that without it inquiry and communication would be impossible. Practices of information gathering and information sharing are, therefore, the central activities in which humans engage. They suggest that we need intellectual accommodation in the world no less than we need physical accommodation.9 Further, Rescher is not satisfied with the sort of inquiry in which a bird might engage in looking around for predators and the kind of communication common among monkeys when they warn each other of danger. He wants a much higher level of intellection, consisting of inquiry and communication that provide good reasons for beliefs. The reasons and the beliefs they support must, of course, take propositional form; this is what it means for humans to be “intelligent beings”10 who search for sound information and guide themselves by it. This model of human intelligence is well known and enjoys a certain plausibility. The phenomenal success of social life and the ubiquity of the communication on which it rests support it. People today are in love with information. They want to learn about themselves from psychiatrists, about celebrities from gossip columnists, about the weather from meteorologists and about the future from astrologers. The vast investments we continue to make in science provide momentous quantities of information, some of it useful for the purposes of life. So it is not implausible for Rescher to focus on the clear and

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perhaps even quantifiable fruits of research, and to isolate our cognitive practices as our most significant and most promising activities. The prevalence of information goes hand in hand with the dominance of language in our society. The growth of universities as institutions devoted to the cultivation of talk provides support for the impression that human beings operate in a verbal medium. Some people have actually come to believe that all differences among us can be talked out, that finding the right words resolves or eliminates conflicts of value and belief. The informational content of talk is measured in propositions and the majority of people believe that science is the single most effective instrument for generating information-laden sentences, for providing reasons to believe them and for evaluating especially those among them that are suitable to guide our conduct. In spite of the plausibility of building a philosophy – a “cognitive pragmatism,” as Rescher calls it – on the centrality of intellectual practices, I believe that such a system rests on the wrong foundation. Rescher says again and again that our beliefs ground or determine our actions,11 introducing a tacit but questionable separation between intelligence as manager of information and action as force in need of direction. This is an artificial distinction that is likely to mislead us about how we operate. Even Peirce, Rescher’s mentor in pragmatism, maintained that beliefs are simply habits of action or tendencies to behave in certain ways. To say that such tendencies express values or beliefs is not to maintain that values and beliefs exist independently of the actions; on the contrary, they are thought to exist only in the activities expressing them. Dewey makes a related point when he reminds us that intelligence is not substantival but adjectival. This is a stilted way of calling it wrongheaded to suppose that there is any intelligence apart from intelligent participation in practices. Moreover, a psychology that thinks habits of action can be changed by providing new and perhaps better information to the agent is at a distance from understanding how human beings behave. We may be able to substitute new and possibly better habits for old and undesirable ones, but only in the rarest circumstances does that occur as a result of recognizing the superior truth of novel information. These considerations, gleaned from Rescher’s fellow pragmatists, clearly cut against his view. Since Peirce failed to provide a detailed analysis of the notion of habit, it may not be surprising that Rescher pays little attention to his theory of belief. His distaste for social constructivism renders Rescher’s disregard of Dewey understandable, but nevertheless unfortunate. Rescher’s deep grasp of science would have made the encounter of the two instructive for the rest of us, and Dewey’s subtle account of psychological and social phenomena might have succeeded in convincing Rescher not to make his pragmatism too intellectual. Although I think Dewey is right in arguing against a sharp distinction between intelligence and action, that is not the ultimate reason for my unhappiness with the foundation of Rescher’s pragmatism. A great deal of

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philosophy today displays the influence of the mode of life of its author. As professors, we live in universities sheltered from the external world. Economic downturns leave our salaries largely untouched, and we enjoy job security and protection from capricious bosses. We are expected to read books and to write them, to criticize and to think up new ideas. Much of the travail of life is alien to us. Sickness might strike, but with fine health insurance, we can afford every treatment of promise. The major activity in which we engage is the manipulation of words. We argue with each other, give lectures, discuss policies in committee meetings, contribute to reports, write books and articles, and instruct graduate students. We live in a sea of words and get paid for talking, not unlike preachers and comedians. But talk is a thin veneer covering the surface of events, which tends to turn our attention away from the underlying physical and biological realities. In the world of words, a trip to the grocery store may seem as a pleasant journey to meet friends and chat with the butcher. We forget, if we ever knew, what goes into the presentation of steaks at the meat counter. The violence of slaughter, the labor of people who live hand-to-mouth, the pain of working in dead-end jobs and the insensitivity to the suffering of others that seems endemic are easily submerged in what appears to be a civilized exchange of words and of money for food. As philosophers and members of an isolated academic realm, we are understandably tempted to think that words are omnipotent and that inquiry and communication constitute the central elements of life. This conviction, however, is not borne out by the experience of the vast majority of humankind. Most of us always and all of us most of the time engage the world on a non-verbal level. We eat, drink, walk, drive, buy bananas and pick lovers without verbalizing. The choice of what we do, the skill of doing it and the expected consequences are rarely if ever verbal. Words cannot capture the griefs and exhilarations of living, and dying is a mode neither of communication nor of inquiry. Of course, it is possible to see a rudimentary form of inquiry in many of our activities. We can suppose that tasting food and checking the weather before dressing are proto-scientific acts involving hypothesis formation and experiment. This idea may be useful for some purposes, but it grievously overintellectualizes the processes of ordinary life. We are not logic machines or mechanisms that attend to and obey rational rules; we just do what we do and let those who wish extract theories from acts. Least of all do we formulate propositions to ourselves or “self-communicate” as we go about the business of daily life. We may see here a philosophical version of what William James called “the psychologist’s fallacy.” James noted that psychologists were apt to project the analytical products of their investigations into the minds of their subjects. In fact, of course, psychological processes do not take place in a way that matches their dismemberment and rational reconstruction at the hands of scientists. Similarly in philosophy, investigators try to understand everyday practices by

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analyzing them into their elements and articulating the principles on the basis of which they operate. This leads to severe error when philosophers suppose that the practices involved actually look like their reconstructed counterparts. Laying bare the logical or epistemic structure of what we do may help the cause of understanding, but it is gravely distorting to suppose that that is how events actually devolve. Rescher takes a bold step beyond the over-intellectualization of everyday practices. He asserts that “a scientifically sophisticated and technologically advanced civilization is itself largely geared not towards the conduct of everyday life but towards the enlargement of knowledge.”12 Of course, as a pragmatist, he adds that one of the purposes of this expansion of knowledge is the improvement of life. Yet this pragmatic concession appears to be of the nature of an addendum; though Rescher clearly means it, there is no denying that what draws him is cognitive improvement. If purpose is determined by investment, our society is at best modestly committed to the development and dissemination of knowledge. But even the professional search for information is grafted on the trunk of ordinary life with its roots in the soil of biological and social struggle. Scientific research presupposes and is more than somewhat motivated by the vicissitudes of life and by the need to overcome them. Our admiration for cognitive mastery is so great and the academic world is so distant from the hurly-burly of existence that we tend to enjoy the flower and overlook the root. Yet even scientists are people first, foremost and throughout their investigations. Romantically, we might imagine them as unrelenting searchers after truth. In reality, however, they have ambitions and fears, needs and wants, conflicts and hesitations. Their days are structured by relations to parents, children, partners, bosses, neighbors and rivals, and only in a relatively minor way to research paradigms and the truth. This takes nothing away from their achievements as scientists; it simply puts their cognitive activities in the broader context of their multifaceted empirical lives. To suppose that we search for truth much of our lives is to overlook the bulk of what we do and to overextend the ideology of the academic world. My objection to taking inquiry and communication as paradigmatic practices is that doing so gives a distorted picture of human life. The overt search for knowledge does not occupy a central position in the broad range of our activities. Our behavior is not well understood as governed by beliefs and principles and is not readily changeable as a result of increased information. Beliefs are not separate realities that govern actions, and knowledge of a propositional sort plays a relatively minor role in the processes of life. I am aware, of course, that pragmatists do not believe there is a single right place for philosophical reflection to start; they enjoy the privilege of setting out from whatever place they happen to occupy or judge productive. But they do acknowledge an external standard of success even if it is not the correspondence to reality Rescher extols. That standard is deployed in the future in the form of

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consequences. What are the salutary results of focusing on the intellectual practices of human beings as their primary activities? I can think of very few, other than glorification of the overly optimistic Enlightenment supposition that knowledge solves all problems. This is to gainsay neither the immense value of knowledge for the improvement of life nor the delight and glory of learning about the world. But, even in the age of the Internet, the search for knowledge and the dissemination of information are incidental practices embedded in and built upon our wide-ranging social, practical, emotional and personal activities. On the other hand, the cheerleaders for reason lose a great deal as a result of their focus on explicit knowledge. First and foremost, they forfeit the opportunity to form a balanced picture of human life. Contrary to what Peirce said, man is not a sign, and only importantly but not primarily a sign-making animal. Insistence on the cognitive tacitly delegitimates other areas of life and forms of activity. It establishes a hierarchy among human beings, with workers and business people near the bottom and intellectuals at the top. Judging by its historical ubiquity, such a pecking order might well be the favorite selfindulgent fiction of professional thinkers: one can see it from Plato’s theory of the philosopher-king to Peirce’s disdain for everyone whose primary commitment is not to the pursuit of inquiry. This unfortunate and unfair stratification of persons and activities rests on a suspicious value judgment, whose source may explain its nature. The eloquent make a case for eloquence, the smart, for intelligence. The dominance of thought and talk among the literati misleads when it is generalized to all humanity. Focus on the cognitive makes us overlook the obvious empirical fact that humans are ruled by unuttered and largely uncontemplated desires, passions, emotions, drives, longings, strivings, aspirations, fears and avoidances. Our behavior may be intelligible on some level, but it is not controlled by intellect and for the most part not open to the suasion of reason. There is hardly a better demonstration of the power of a-rational forces than the way philosophers adopt and defend their views. If we were governed by reason, our theories would tend to converge and those with the better arguments would little by little win over their colleagues. Nothing like this is actually the case. Philosophers embrace ideas that seem particularly plausible to them. They hold nearly every conceivable view and cling to their positions with unflagging devotion. The energy and inventiveness with which they attempt to justify their ideas suggest that they are less interested in pursuing the truth than in protecting their favored versions of it. The conclusion seems unavoidable that the central organ of many whose profession requires commitment to untrammeled inquiry is not reason but the will with its infuriating obstinacy. Even those who deride the method of tenacity display great stubbornness in their judgments, remaining for the most part altogether unconscious of their motivations. Focusing on our social predicaments and on what we share with other animals, by contrast, enables us to develop a picture of human life in all its

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complexity. This picture must display humans as they were thousands of years ago and as, for the most part, they still are today. The struggle with others, the struggle with nature and the struggle for life antedate, encase and outstrip whatever role talk and reasoning play today. Engagement with the world by means of our hands is a fundamental fact about humans; what inquiry would be possible and what would be the value of communication if, like sparrows, we could operate only with beaks? Spontaneous social cooperation, the foundation of human success, prepares the way for systematic inquiry, not the other way round. Information gathering and information sharing are belated and specialized arrivals on the scene, showing us what humans are capable of doing but telling us relatively little about the compass of their lives. It is understandable that Rescher the philosopher’s splendid dialectical mind would make him fall in love with science, books and thought. But Rescher the grandfather knows that the function of poems is not to gather or transmit information. He also knows that embracing your grandchildren is something deeper and more meaningful than any knowledge numbers and words convey.

NOTES 1. Nicholas Rescher, Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), p. 21. 2. Ibid., p. 22. 3. Ibid., p. 21. 4. Ibid., p. 33. 5. George Santayana, Scepticism and Animal Faith (New York: Dover, 1955), p. 15. 6. Ibid., p. 186. 7. George Santayana, Realms of Being (New York: Cooper Square, 1972), p. 288. 8. Rescher, Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology, p. 21. 9. Ibid., p. 27. 10. Ibid. 11. Rescher, Realism and Pragmatic Epistemology, pp. 62, 105. 12. Nicholas Rescher, Methodological Pragmatism (New York: New York University Press, 1977), p. 24.

John Lachs Centennial Professor of Philosophy Philosophy Department 111 Furman Hall Vanderbilt University Nashville, TN 37240 United States

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 179–181

Editions Rodopi © 2009

Epistemic Pragmatism (A Reply) Nicholas Rescher

A reply to John Lach’s article, “Rescher’s Cognitive Pragmatism,” published in this issue of Contemporary Pragmatism.

I have always viewed it as an ironic fact that in philosophy criticism is a mode of collaboration. For it provides its target both with an incentive to clarify his or her position and with an indication of the places where further clarification would strengthen the case. Accordingly, I welcome this present demarche of my acute critic. The main criticism that is here made regarding my position is that its focus on knowledge, inquiry, and communication overintellectualizes the pragmatism that I espouse. As my critic sees it, I overindulge an academic predisposition in favor of knowledge. He views me as an ivory-tower intellectualist indulging a facile optimism in believing that the expansion of knowledge invariably makes for an improvement of life, and so places me among the “cheerleaders of reason” who devalue the noncognitive side of human life. Now I acknowledge that if this charge held good it would put my pragmatic position into a decidedly questionable light. But as I see it, the charge simply fails to hold. For one thing, any such a charge of intellectualism, rests on a fundamental bifurcation, being predicated on an underlying contrast between theoretical needs and practical needs (information, say, vs. food). And for this reason, so I submit, that the charge being made does not stick. For as a pragmatist walking in Dewey’s footsteps, I flatly reject this underlying bifurcation as a unwarranted dualism. Knowledge and information are, as I see it, by their very nature something eminently practical. For there are many ways in which a creature can create a life-niche in this world and project itself and its kind down the corridor of time. The swiftness of jaguars, the multitude of ant eggs, or the toughness of turtle shells are all instrumentalities of species bio-survival. With us humans, however, things stand very differently. Neither physical strength nor the guidance of action by automaticity or instinct affords our human competitive advantage, but rather the guidance of action through information. For humans,

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information is a completely practical resource: the very food we eat requires selections and processing in an information-guided way. In short, intelligence is pivotal with us. We have evolved within nature into the ecological niche of an intelligent being. In consequence, the need for understanding, for “knowing one’s way about,” is one of the most fundamental demands of the human condition. Man is Homo quaerens. The need for knowledge is part and parcel to out nature. A deep-rooted demand for information and understanding presses in on us, and we have little choice but to satisfy it. No doubt, once the ball is set rolling it keeps on under its own momentum – well beyond the limits of strictly practical necessity. But the fact remains that knowledge is a situational imperative for us humans. Homo sapiens is a creature that must, but its very nature, feel cognitively at home in the world, the requirement for information is as pressing a human need as that for food itself. The basic human urge to make sense of things is a characteristic aspect of our makeup – we cannot live a satisfactory life in an environment we do not understand. For us intelligent creatures, cognitive orientation within our environment is itself a practical need. Cognitive disorientation is physically stressful and distressing to us. On this basis I would submit that according prominence and emphasis to information and its processing and exchange is not a matter of inappropriate intellectualism but a matter of the hard-nosed practicalism. Accordingly, in charging me with overemphasizing the role of cognition in satisfying our practical needs, my critic and I differ very decidedly. For I am convinced that this role cannot really be overemphasized because humans are so constituted that beliefs invariably guide action. We eat in the belief that so doing will relieve hunger, we drink in the belief that so doing will slack thirst, we light fires in the belief that they will warm us, we avoid the cave in the belief a bear went in shortly before. There is little that we intelligent creatures wittingly do that is not guided by information (or misinformation). My critic may be right in saying that “the overt search for knowledge does not occupy a central position in the broad range of our activities,” but this is only because a good deal of knowledge comes without overt searching and a little of it often goes a long way. But the fact remains that there is virtually nothing we do – breathing included – that we would not do differently if our beliefs in the matter were suitably different. (Who would not hold their breath and run off if they thought the air contained a poisonous vapor?) My critic moves in very different circles from mine if he is seriously convinced of his claim that: “beliefs are not separate realities that govern actions, and knowledge of a propositional sort plays a relatively minor role in the process of life.” Moreover, anyone who, like this present critic, inclines to number me among those who are “cheerleaders of reason” that exaggerate the role of cognition should be reminded that throughout my discussion of these issues I maintain a sharp distinction between science and scientism and am a persistent critic of the latter. In my (relevantly entitled) Limits of Science (University of

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California Press, 1984; 2nd edn. University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999) a whole chapter is devoted to “The Limited Province of Natural Science,” maintaining that “science omits from its register of facts worthy of being taken at face value the whole affective, emotional, feeling-oriented side of our cognitive life” and insists that there is more to life than is dreamt of in our science. It is an ongoing leitmotiv of my work on the topic that science is a twoway street along which there move powerful forces both for good and evil. After all, pragmatism does not – should not – see knowledge as an unconditional good. It is, for pragmatists, an instrument or tool and as such is – like any other instrument or tool – capable alike of use and abuse.

Nicholas Rescher University Professor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy 1012 Cathedral of Learning University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Pennsylvania 15260 United States

Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 6, No. 1 (June 2009), 183–195

Editions Rodopi © 2009

A “Pragmatist” among Disputed Pragmatists: Robert Brandom’s Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism Joseph Margolis

Robert Brandom’s book Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism does not incorporate the larger views of any of the “pragmatisms” he deliberately invokes, such as those of the classical American pragmatists, apart from an “analytic” cohort of Wittgenstein-inspired pragmatisms that he himself favors.

Robert Brandom’s Between Saying and Doing (2008) is a strenuous but rewarding book: not exactly what unguarded readers might expect but fair enough, given Brandom’s use of such terms as “pragmatic,” “pragmatics,” “analytic pragmatism.” Brandom does not attempt to extend, here, the innovations of classic American pragmatism or the mode of analysis of figures like Dewey or the later Wittgenstein or Kuhn – or Hegel, for that matter – all of whom he reads as “pragmatists” of a sort congenial to his intended contribution to formal semantics (familiar from the work of Frege, Tarski, Sellars, Kripke, David Lewis and others) extended (here) by attention to the “pragmatics” or “the proprieties [of the] use [of linguistic expressions beyond what counts as the analysis of] the “meanings of expressions” (p. xii). Brandom does indeed name the enlarged account “analytic pragmatism”; but thus far at least, the picture sketched does not incorporate (in any easily legible way) the larger views of any of the “pragmatisms” he deliberately invokes (apart from the “analytic” cohort he himself favors). His “pragmatism is,” as he says, “inspired [italics added] by ... the later Wittgenstein, who situates concern with the meanings of expressions in the broader context of concern with proprieties governing their use” (p. xii). I think this is quite precisely put. Brandom explains throughout the book the sense in which he pursues his own innovations by co-opting lessons (like this one) from the “history of philosophy” (embracing Hegel, Wittgenstein, the pragmatists, Heidegger, and similar figures – very unlikely advisors to any strictly formalist cause) along the lines of mitigating, by exploring the prospects of an inferentialist modeling of “use” (as Brandom understands use) ranging over vocabularies (intentional,

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deontic, also holistic, historicized, embedded in habituated practice) that classical formal semantics usually ignores. There is, I think, a deeply equivocal cast to Brandom’s “pragmatist” project, which Brandom cannot (as yet) completely dispel. You can feel it in the following opening lines of the book: Pursuing those pragmatist ideas [regarding the linkage between meaning and use just mentioned] in an analytic spirit is rejecting the antitheoretical and anti-systematic conclusions that are often drawn from them. Instead, we can, the claim is, think about the relations between meaning and use every bit as rigorously and systematically as it has proven possible to think about the sorts of relations between meanings that are codified and explored in classical formal semantics, for instance as developed within the dominant Tarskian model-theoretic and possible worlds frameworks. (p. xii) This is too sanguine, given what Brandom has actually produced; or it’s too lax, given what formal semantics claims to have accomplished apart from Brandom’s own proposal. “Classical formal semantics” tends to regard its own analyses as capturing, literally or by a needed idealization – assuming the inherent logical imperfections of ordinary discourse: a thesis Wittgenstein excoriates, having Frege in mind – the formal structure of natural-language discourse. It would regard its efforts as a failure if its formal model served essentially to help us “think about,” understand – by heuristic application, in inferentialist terms, what regarding its pragmatist features cannot, on the evidence, actually be expected to yield to any literal algorithmic modeling. Brandom acknowledges that it’s too early to promise to deliver on any undertaking of the first sort; and skeptics will say that we understand well enough the semantic and pragmatic (and inferential) subtleties of ordinary discourse precisely by way of contrasting what the champions of formal semantics advocate and what an understanding of ordinary language requires: notably, an analysis of the holist, contextual, societally embedded, historicized, tacit, profoundly informal, improvisational, consensually tolerated, and practically effective forms of discourse. But I find it more than unlikely that Brandom would be satisfied with the verdict that his conception was hardly more than a heuristic prop catering to the interests of a stubborn cohort of skillful specialists who are committed nevertheless to a project that was probably impossible. You grasp the point of my mentioning the difference if you acknowledge that Brandom does not explore, say, the details of Wittgenstein’s sense of what he means by replacing “meaning” with “use” or the counterpart proposals of figures like Dewey or Peirce or Hegel or Heidegger or Gadamer or Derrida – to collect a pertinent “motley.” It would be a mistake to suppose that Brandom’s

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“pragmatic” extension of the formal semantics he begins with captures the essential common denominator of any large part of the logical or epistemological conceptions of the figures just mentioned, or provides a convincing clue as to how the salient contribution of any of them can be profitably enlisted in any such extension. Brandom draws inspiration from his “pragmatists” all right, and he gives us a clear picture of the formal features of what he claims to draw from them (most notably, from Wittgenstein and Sellars) in pursuing a “pragmatic” extension of an algorithmically specified formal semantics enriched by his pragmatic reading of “meaning-use analysis” (chap. 1). He does indeed show, for instance, that (regarding a strategic and important dispute), “in spite of the semantic irreducibility of indexical to non-indexical vocabulary [say: from ‘here,’ ‘now,’ to ‘at time t,’ ‘at place x, y, z’], it is possible to say, entirely in non-indexical terms, what one must do in order to be deploying indexical vocabulary correctly: to be saying essentially and irreducibly indexical things” (p. 25). But how much of indexicality – embedded in a deep way in societal practice, exploited inferentially in clearly successful ways in practical life – can be made “explicit,” contextually, by Brandom’s (or Sellars’s) lights, without holding the “non-indexical” account still dependent on “irreducible” indexicality (or contextual complexity)? (See Appendix to chapter 2, especially p. 57.) The proposal suggests a deceptive ease. What Brandom says conveys something of the initial plausibility of his intended project and of the nagging difficulty of actually demonstrating just how far and in what detail the program can be effectively realized (along algorithmic lines comparable to the best work of formal semantics). Brandom’s Afterword gives a temperate and honest appraisal of its prospects and challenges. I see no reason to fault the straightforward simplicity and ingenuity of his approach; but I also cannot see how much ground (or how much more ground) we may expect to gain by such narrowly tailored tactics. The acknowledged irreducibility (of indexicals) suggests that our “enlarged” inferential strategies, admittedly linked to “meaning” and “use” and the “pragmatic metavocabularies” (of Brandom’s preference) meant to extend canonical semantic analysis, may be pretty well confined to the gain thus gained (see pp. 6-10). I trust Brandom will not find it unfriendly, therefore, if I say that the book before us proceeds, as his previous books also have (in their very different ways), by one or another segue in his reflections on the importance and limitations of the views of Wilfrid Sellars and – somewhat more distantly, more tantalizingly – in his postponed promises regarding Hegel’s dialectical vision. This small bit of advice to the reader must be acknowledged if we are to gain a proper grasp of what Brandom has accomplished here and what he has not, relative to the mounting number of books he’s published that appear to be addressed, somehow, in the way of a response to Richard Rorty’s challenge. That is, the challenge of his teacher and friend, and of the principal provocateur

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regarding the need to reconcile pragmatism and analytic philosophy in a fresh direction, whether or not informed by his (Brandom’s) developing work on inferentialism (or “material inference”). Or, say, going beyond Sellars and Kant, in order to demonstrate the close relationship between what Brandom takes himself to have contributed in Between Saying and Doing and Hegel’s contribution to dialectical reasoning; or, for that matter, Wittgenstein’s or Dewey’s or Lyotard’s laxer “semantic” and “logical” policies, when compared with Brandom’s formalist stricture. To be candid, I find Brandom’s contribution to be largely programmatic (in the “philosophical” sense he himself broaches), which calls for a close analysis of the work of the “pragmatists” he admires (say, Wittgenstein, Dewey, Sellars, and Hegel). Accordingly, I find the systematic linkage to the work of the latter promised but not yet delivered. The trouble is that the “inferentialism” Brandom espouses depends on filling in what’s missing – both on the formal semantic side (catching up Sellars’s conception of “material inference”) and on the philosophically textual side (catching up Hegel, Dewey, and Wittgenstein at least). It needs to be said that Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Hegel are the least likely philosophers to be featuring, or harboring, or loosely sketching algorithmic regularities of any kind in their own work. I see no reason to oppose conceding their attention to “material inference” in some sense; but their inferential linkages seem to be decidedly tenuous, ad hoc, imputed, disputatious, interpretive, heuristic – embedded in a deep way in societal practices that are themselves irreducibly informal, plausibly imposed on shifting conceptual sand rather than discovered to be implicit (in Brandom’s seemingly robust sense): “written in flesh and blood, or nerve and sinew,” as Sellars appealingly affirms in the essay “Language, Rules, and Behavior,” which Brandom cites elsewhere (without flinching) and which more than suggests that the requisite “rules” of material inference depend on something very close indeed to being laws of nature. If so, then it may be that Brandom’s formal semantics is itself rightly thought to be only contingently inspired by the approximative intuitions of his favorite philosophers. Brandom says straight out in the Preface – and signals that the matter will be made clearer in the book’s Afterword – that, although Making It Explicit (1994) was also “concerned with “the relations between semantics and pragmatics, and with the nature of [inferential] logic and its role in philosophy, ... this book [Between Saying and Doing] is not a further working-out of the theory presented in that earlier one. The two [books] are largely orthogonal enterprises. I think they are broadly compatible [he says], but I have not worried overmuch about reconciling, or even relating, them in a compare-and-contrast sort of way” (p. xiii). It would ordinarily be mere gossip to draw attention to such a consideration. But I want to make something of its relevance in assessing Brandom’s own undertaking and its larger ambition.

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The book is a set of six lectures “essentially as I delivered them [Brandom explains] at Oxford, in Trinity Term of 2006” plus two extended technical appendices (completed by the time of delivering the lectures) and an Afterword answering important questions raised particularly by John McDowell and Sebastian Rödl, raised (I gather) at a subsequent presentation of the original lectures, at the University of Buenos Aires, in July 2007 (pp xix–xx). “This work,” he adds, “presents my first big philosophy of language project since the one reported in Making It Explicit” (p. xiii). It’s worth noting that Brandom is quite casual about possible incompatibilities between Making It Explicit and Between Saying and Doing: it suggests the provisional reasonableness of tolerating apparent “incompatibles” (semantic incompatibles, say) in the endlessly piecemeal, ad hoc, opportunistic processes of deciding practice, theory, application, interpretation, the weighing of options and priorities that cannot possibly be mastered totally or as a closed system or unchangeably. Here, there is no clear rule for deciding in detail or once and for all or “absolutely” how we should order the priorities of semantic and logical consistency and existential and practical adjustments and commitments. The very order of the whole of human intelligence and intelligibility – and rationality – may be a “motley” (see, pp. 5, 7). I believe it is a motley – and I see nothing wrong with that. But I also think that conceding all that challenges Brandom’s inferentialism to its core: construes the doctrine as a kind of guardian heuristic rather than a step in a progressive leap to a higher-order formal semantics that co-opts the seemingly unruly bursts of pragmatist priorities. Brandom is onto the problem of course. He admits the fairness of reading the Wittgenstein of the Investigations as a radical opponent of “the possibility of semantic analysis in the classical sense [the sense he associates with ‘the formal, mathematically inspired tradition of Frege, Russell, Carnap, and Tarski, culminating in model-theoretic and possible worlds semantics’ (p. 8), as well as with ‘the pragmatics ... of Kaplan and Stalnaker, which (he says) is really the semantics of token-reflexive expressions’, or ‘of Grice, which addresses conversational heuristics in terms that presuppose a prior, independent, classical semantics’]” (pp. 7–8). Wittgenstein is usually drawn, unnecessarily and unfortunately (in Brandom’s opinion), in the direction of opposing “the classic project of analysis” (which, Brandom supposes, may be turned to the enlarged canon’s advantage): against such a gain, Wittgenstein is read – unhappily – as recommending a “philosophical attitude to [the analysis of] discursive practice [that amounts to little more than] descriptive particularism, theoretical quietism, and semantic pessimism,” which, of course, Brandom rejects but does not stay to defend in any textually explicit way (p. 7). I doubt that “use” and “meaning” in Wittgenstein and Brandom are ever as close “methodologically” as Brandom would have us believe. There’s an intriguing footnote in the vicinity of Brandom’s remarks that suggests “affinities” between Wittgenstein and Hegel in terms of the latter’s

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“insistence that the metaconceptual categories of Verstand must be replaced by those of Vernunft,” which apparently signifies that Hegel favors “the opposite of Wittgenstein’s conclusions” if read according to the picture just given (p. 7n7). But Vernunft is an interpretive capacity (for Hegel), not a cognitive faculty at all – hence, a condition that supports a deeper opposition to Brandom’s sanguine plan to co-opt the rather unruly scatter of the pragmatics of use (in Wittgenstein’s idiom) for Brandom’s own inventive, higher, more inclusive union of semantics and pragmatics. (The issue is not pursued further in the text now before us.) The following, I think, is as clear a statement of Brandom’s project as we are likely to find: I do not think we are obliged to choose between these approaches [say, the formal semantics of a figure like Frege and the work of the Wittgenstein of the Investigations]. They should be seen as complementing rather than competing with one another [though that, of course, is precisely what Wittgenstein would not concede]. Semantics and pragmatics, concern with meaning and concern with use, ought surely to be understood as aspects of one, more comprehensive picture of the discursive. Pragmatist considerations do not oblige us to focus on pragmatics to the exclusion of semantics; we can deepen our semantics by the addition of pragmatics... If we approach the pragmatists’ observations in an analytic spirit, we can understand pragmatics as providing special resources for extending and expanding the analytic semantic project; extending it from exclusive concern with relations among meanings to encompass also relations between meaning and use. In its most ambitious form, as in the present project [italics added], such an enterprise would aspire to articulate something like a logic of the relations between meaning and use. (p. 8) But that’s just it. What are the reasons for believing that the enlarged undertaking (drawn from the “pragmatists” rather than merely added improvisationally from a plausible account of the “pragmatics” of “use” in speech acts and discursive practices) will lead to a “logic” that might compare favorably with the rigor of “classical semantics” – that its “logic” will not be forever at the mercy of the evolving, shifting, inconstant, diverse, piecemeal, logically labile priorities of practical life? And what, exactly, is the bearing of philosophical pragmatism on Brandom’s largest vision beyond the extension of the logic of “meaning-use” semantics? I don’t see the fuller argument as yet. I don’t believe the pertinent considerations are suitably aired in Between Saying and Doing. I don’t believe they appear anywhere in Brandom’s writings – though they seem to be on the tip of his tongue. I do admire Brandom’s skill. It’s only that I don’t believe he’s quite prepared, in working out the details of his new semantics, to offer us a detailed

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schema fitted to Sellers’s original intuition (see Lecture Four), which must be examined against the promise of the larger philosophies Brandom mentions. Brandom is, finally, silent (in the relevant sense) on all of these matters. In a way, it’s another retreat back to formal semantics, though presented in its own modest and approximative way: tempered by Sellars and Quine and Rorty and Dewey (and possibly Heidegger) and Wittgenstein and Hegel. Brandom’s venture is a bold possibility – a “work in progress,” a “report,” a promissory note. You remember that Tarski began his famous paper on truth in formalized languages with some hope of applying his schema to the analysis of natural-language discourse; but he later added a retraction, partially, I believe, against proposals like Davidson’s, who said he intended to apply Tarski’s model to ordinary discourse. Tarski rendered a judgment against all such large expectations, and Davidson never delivered on the anticipated demonstration. And Dummett (certainly in the Introduction to his Logical Basis of Metaphysics) insists on the (more than doubtful) priority and independence of semantic analysis vis-à-vis metaphysics, which, if the challenge were allowed, would assuredly affect, adversely, the semantics of material inference. My own conviction has it that formal semantics and, of course, the analysis of the logic of natural-language discourse must be embedded in the analysis of all the diverse, evolving forms of practical life and inquiry and the sheer historicity of thought and experience. I’m persuaded that these two sorts of consideration must go together. I don’t mean by that to deny the promise of Brandom’s undertaking in exploring the prospects of “pragmatic” extensions of the semantics of a “logical vocabulary” by way of the modal analysis of contraries and incompatibles that yield “commitment-preserving inferential relations” of a deductive sort – that may then be generalized to include instances of “non-logical material inference” (where the term “material” itself signifies the presence of a semantically rich non-logical vocabulary); or, correspondingly, in exploring “entitlement-preserving inferential relations” of an inductive sort – that may then be pragmatically generalized to mark the “normative relation” of some S to some commitment-preserving relation (pp. 119–120). Such an apparatus is, of course, essential to what Brandom terms “meaning-use analysis,” that is, his pragmatist innovations, his extension of formal semantics by way of the “commitment”- and “entitlement”-preserving processes just mentioned (pp. 176–177). Admittedly, that’s precisely what Brandom means to add by his “new synthesis of pragmatism and analytic philosophy,” which, as he claims, begins with Kant and the Kantian tradition and courses through American pragmatism and Sellars’s reinterpretation of the tradition up through Sellars’s own account of “material inference” (p. 30). Brandom also touches, passingly, on Dewey’s and Wittgenstein’s versions of “pragmatism” (p. 178) and “postpones” (as I say) an account of how, precisely, he means to incorporate Hegel. But the argument is cast entirely from the “side” of formal semantics, an impression Brandom means to “correct” in his final lecture: “But my talk of

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‘vocabularies’ and the practices of deploying them can [he admits] make it look as if all that is in play is words and their use. If the world is left out of the story, what justification could there be for saying that meaning has not been?” (p. 177). Precisely! I can’t imagine a sparer challenge to Brandom’s own undertaking – a challenge out of his own mouth. I don’t find that he’s met it – here at least. Brandom claims he draws his answer from “traditional pragmatism” (effectively, from Dewey and Wittgenstein): “Engaging in discursive practices and exercising discursive abilities is [he explains] using words to say and mean something, hence to talk about items in the world. Those practices, the exercise of those abilities, those uses, establish semantic relations between words and the world.” In effect, we must turn from the priority of “representations and representeds” to “the nature of the doing, of the process, that institutes that relation” (pp. 177–178). I don’t deny that Brandom has touched on the usual formulaic ways of acknowledging the word/world relationship. But what, precisely, may be said, conjectured, argued regarding would-be substantive constraints on the right reading of the new semantics he’s produced? What is to be contributed by invoking classic pragmatism or the Wittgenstein of the Investigations or the Hegel of the Phenomenology and Encyclopaedia? Nothing has been aired here that could be said to be advanced and defended from the “side” of the “world” regarding how language links up with the world. I don’t find any of this more than glancingly mentioned: the canonical semantic materials are not unusual in themselves; it’s the extension of Brandom’s formal semantics along the lines just mentioned that is genuinely novel. What exactly is the force of Brandom’s term “establish” here? It seems to signal discovery rather than recommendation, stable and palpable regularities rather than imposed idealizations, algorithms rather than ad hoc advantages, possible laws of nature rather than passing strategies within a fluxive motley, rigorous descriptions or analyses rather than improvised construals. We needn’t refuse a start in Brandom’s direction, but how far can we expect to go along these lines? “My aim,” Brandom says, is to present a new way of thinking about language, specifically about the relations between meaning and use, or between what is said and the activity of saying it. (p. 1) Yes, of course. But worries about the [inferential] “relations between meaning and use” in actual discourse are not entirely new: Brandom seems already committed to a policy closer to Sellars’s than Sellars was ever able to vindicate. For example: if we suppose (with Hegel, as I read Hegel) that all finite verständlich characterizations of the world are insurmountably provisional until suitably reinterpreted (impossible, finally, in any case, for finite beings like

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ourselves) within the holist totality of Absolute (vernunftig) “knowing.” Or if, as a recent Oxford University Press brochure of new books seems to suggest, Michael Dummett holds that the world is “determinable” (but [?] perhaps not determinate). Or, as with Dewey’s Experience and Nature, that the classic metaphysics of individual substances is inherently distorting. Or that, as with both Peirce and Cassirer, truth must be relegated, regulatively, to the infinite conclusion of every finite continuum of inquiry. Or that, as with the Wittgenstein of the Investigations, we are free to introduce deliberate definitional or essentializing restrictions into discourse, “for special purposes” if we wish – with regard (say) to how to use such resources “here” but perhaps not “there,” where mere usage does not yet vouchsafe any such limitations. Or if, as with Nagarjuna, we agree that “all distinctions arise together,” perhaps then in profoundly plural, relativistic incommensurabilist, historicized, contingent, even transient, and opportunistic ways. I find a puzzling disconnection here between the actual sketch of how to extend semantics to include the inferential patterns of practical action and the actual puzzles raised by such figures as those I’ve just mentioned, which clearly bear on the prospects of extending Brandom’s formal semantics. I take Brandom’s “analyses,” by and large, to be idealized proposals against the backdrop of which the actual “motley” of natural-language discourse may be seen to be orderly enough to support practical life, but not regular enough in their generality to yield more than the broadest inferential “rules of ‘use’”: possibly, for instance, involving undoubted incompatibles – which may never reliably touch Hegel at all! That there may be some algorithmic regularities governing “meaning” and “use” that compare favorably with rules drawn from the work of classic formal semantics is no more than reasonable. On the whole, however, the regularities of ordinary discourse seem rather to pose insuperable problems bearing on the analysis of material inference that are peculiarly resistant to resolution approaching algorithmic or rulelike order. Think, for instance, of Wittgenstein’s subtle treatment of the vagaries of “family resemblances” mentioned in the setting of his reflections on Augustine’s views regarding a child’s learning a first language. (Compare Brandom on Wittgenstein, at pp, 3, 5-6: Brandom’s comments strike me as seriously inaccurate.) I acknowledge that there are “inferential” fluencies here, but they seem extraordinarily informal and complex, embedded in the concrete shifting practices of a living society, perhaps reliably fathomed (but never really “explicitly” in Brandom’s sense) by that society’s members or bilinguals who have been thoroughly immersed in its actual habits of thought and speech. I’m reminded here of studies of the native languages of the so-called primitive peoples of the South Pacific islands, which appear to have only the simplest and most rudimentary grammars but which remain almost impossible to master by Western investigators: the reason seems to be that the profound complexity of such languages is very nearly completely “implicit” in the thick

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nonlinguistic practices of the peoples in question – not in any way that can be made “explicit.” Beyond all that, I’m persuaded that there simply are no straightforward general rules or principles governing the inference (or supervenience) of the cognitive on (or from) the phenomenally perceptual or experiential, or of the moral on the nonmoral, or the explanatory on what is said to be “given” in descriptive but distinctly non-explanatory terms – and so on. In any case, I cannot see how the prospects of Brandom’s intended enlargement of formal semantics can be rightly judged without a detailed account of problems of these sorts. I’m reminded of the failure of the positivists’ attempts to formulate what might be deemed a kind of inferentialist account of meaning and meaningfulness. I don’t see any cause for optimism here; but I also see no reason to think that no gains are possible. I have no objection to Brandom’s general undertaking – particularly, with regard to the treatment of contraries and incompatibles (Brandom’s lever in exploring “material inference”); but I don’t see as yet just how what has already been consolidated along the lines of strong entailments augurs significant new gains for forms of material inference that are clearly of much more uncertain or more fickle or more complex sorts. I don’t see how the larger philosophies of Hegel, Wittgenstein, or Dewey help, or can help, Brandom’s special undertaking at all. I’m prepared to venture the opinion that any attempt to reconcile the would-be extension of formal semantics along the lines of “meaning-use analysis” allegedly drawn from Wittgenstein cannot be expected to reach up to the kinds of philosophically contentious applications Brandom apparently believes he can “make explicit” within the terms of Hegel’s Phenomenology and Science of Logic. There’s a hint of the worry (that concerns me here) in Brandom’s closing paragraph of the final lecture (apart from the Afterword): I am going to close with a dark, but I hope intriguing suggestion [he says]. I think the view Hegel is trying to express with his notorious assertion of the identity of subject and substance is that, conceptually, the normative sense of material incompatibility (his “determinate negation”) that applies to subjective commitments, and the modal sense of material incompatibility that articulates objective facts and properties, are two sides of the same coin, each intelligible in principle only in terms of the other, because the activity of taking or treating two commitments to be incompatible in the subjective normative sense just is what it is to take or treat two properties or states of affairs as incompatible in the objective modal sense. I think this pragmatically mediated semantic relation (which has nothing to do with any claim about the causal dependence of how things are on how anyone takes them to be) is the essence of the view he develops under the heading of ‘idealism’. But that is a story for quite another occasion. (p. 200)

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I’m inclined to say that Hegel’s line of reasoning is not primarily addressed to what, in Brandom’s idiom, is “incompatible in the alethic modal sense [that is, where ‘it is necessary that not (p and q)’] ... [or] on the normative deontic sense [that is, ‘that it is indeed required that one not be committed to (p and q), in the sense that one ought not to be, [in spite of the fact, as Brandom adds, that] it does not at all follow that one cannot be, or is in fact not so committed]” (p. 192) It’s here that the sweep of Brandom’s thesis – and its possible limitations – make themselves felt. For if Hegel’s line of reasoning does not fall into line (and, as I see the matter, it cannot), then we begin to see the implicit challenge of isolating inferential patterns that are not easily assimilated to strict entailments or to strong deontic “requirements” (very possibly, for instance, in Wittgenstein’s and Dewey’s accounts). And, of course, pursuing such possibilities, we begin to wonder whether prioritizing inference (along formalsemantic lines) over the analysis of concepts, theories of meaning, larger human inquiries (among social practices and the like) may not actually sacrifice the conceptual parity due the latter. (I think it may.) It explains the importance of Brandom’s postponement of his encounter with Hegel. Consider for instance what Brandom offers regarding “a KaplanStalnaker semantics” (centered on indexicality, briefly mentioned above) in terms of an “algorithmic elaboration” of pragmatically mediated inferences analogized “to [the role] played by logic in semantics” – despite the fact that “indexical vocabulary is not semantically reducible to or analyzable in terms of non-indexical vocabulary” (pp. 56–57): Intentional agency requires the liability of relatively durable states of prior intention (practical commitment) that would be expressed by sentences such as “I shall start the lecture at 5:05 now,” to mature into causally efficacious events of intention-in-action that would be expressed by sentences such as “I shall start the lecture now,” which either immediately bring about or simply consist in the agent’s starting to deliver the lecture. The use of the same locution ‘now’ that appears in the expression of the content of the intention-in-action in making explicit the non-inferentially elicited perception judgment “The clock reads 5:05 now,” makes explicit the necessary mediating role of the observation in connecting the prior intention with the intention-in-action... That connection is forged only when the very subject of a perception at a certain time and place herself acts then and there. (pp. 61–62) Here, what is “necessary” regarding the “mediating role of the observation” in the inferential context belongs to the idealized pragmatic model and the uniquely restricted use of the indexical expression “now”: it does not belong to the analysis of any real-world situation except under ceteris paribus

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assumptions that “permit” us to count it as instantiating the model, so that the argument may be viewed as effectively deductive (a thesis favored by Elizabeth Anscombe in her analysis of Aristotle’s practical logic). That’s fine. But then, I would say the strategy also confirms the need for an altogether different, more fundamental analysis of the inherently non-algorithmic nature of other more challenging common cases. One begins to see here another use of the “method” of formal semantics: namely, to display its limitations and the need to make it answer to deeper intuitions that explore the tacit structures (that resist being made explicit) in the work of figures like Wittgenstein and Hegel (and Dewey and Peirce). I take that to be a pertinent clarification of Rorty’s and McDowell’s negative reactions to drafts of Brandom’s own undertaking (see p. 206). All this means that it may be more convincing to subsume Brandom’s idealizations under the canopy of one or another of the philosophical visions of Wittgenstein, Hegel, or Dewey (or others) than to claim to confirm the independent validity of Brandom’s new inferentialist rules suggested (somehow) by the deliberate informalities of the philosophies he finds so attractive. In any case, the contest has not yet been sufficiently joined. Perhaps, then, the question may be put this way: Is it easier for Wittgenstein (or Hegel or Dewey) to absorb Brandom as a rogue pragmatist who seeks invariance in the flux of life and language or for Brandom to absorb the innovations of all three of these “pragmatists” (and of others like them) as primitive but gifted inferentialists who have shown the way to gain a richer formal semantics than has thus far been guessed? If you view matters this way, you cannot fail to see that the very idea of language or discourse must be examined in terms of its emergence within the natural history of the human species, within which, conformably, the very formation of selves or persons obtains, emerges: that is, the formation of the very “entities” that speak, “use” language, “intend” to act meaningfully and in normatively significant ways – all, issues that are already on Brandom’s plate (part of the declared project of his pragmatized formal semantics). How can “use” play the explanatory role Brandom favors adding to the simplifications of formal semantics itself, if “use” (invoked in Wittgenstein, Dewey, Hegel, Heidegger, Sellars and other nearpragmatists, never employed in quite the same way, moving from one to another such figure) must itself be explained in terms of the cultural and historied realities of self and language? Just think of the probable discrepancy between the fluencies of ordinary thought and discourse embedded through habituation in the open-ended “whole” of societal life and the risky idealizations Brandom proposes that cannot fail to rest on a very slim selection of inadequately supple exemplars: you see the difficulty at once. If I may offer a suggestion to Brandom in a respectful way: he may simply have reversed the order of the inquiry. But if so, then he must demote Sellars – and formal semantics – and turn more directly to his admitted heroes. Concessions of different sorts here may well be a matter of philosophical taste. I see the “rational” discipline of entertaining supervenience for instance along the

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lines of Jaegwon Kim’s materialist treatment of mind, Peirce’s use of abduction in favoring fruitful hypotheses regarding the laws of nature, explanations, general truths and the like, and Hegel’s dialectical search for the actual meaning of human history. But I honestly can’t see how any algorithmic reckoning of “pragmatic mediation” can capture in any reasonably realist way the inferential informalities of actual discourse along these and related lines; and I cannot see the point of insisting on Brandom’s sort of labor without conceding its shortcomings and the consequent importance of turning to other modes of analysis. But if you grant all this, then I think we can count on the following findings: (i) Brandom offers no compelling reasons for supposing that the central core of any pragmatic extension of formal semantics can be shown to behave algorithmically; (ii) in fact, no such extension is actually likely to manifest explicit algorithmic order or to be perspicuously illuminated by any effort at algorithmic modeling, unless failure signifies the successful discovery of futility (or minimal benefit); (iii) the best that Brandom shows is what his own would-be extension of formal semantics requires, which does not, for that reason alone, validate its would-be analytic procedures addressed to “use” beyond “meaning” or, accordingly, its preferability relative to other possible strategies of analysis; (iv) Brandom’s account draws attention to the plausible limitations of certain strong forms of analytic philosophy that threaten to overwhelm his own claims; (v) the account provides very little in the way of a comparative assessment of alternative philosophical programs concerned with material inference, practices of “use” beyond formal semantics, complications of history, thick cultural formation, linguistic holism, the idiosyncrasies of intentionality, context, practical interests and the like; (vi) it offers almost nothing in the way of a sustained account of the run of philosophies Brandom himself characterizes as pragmatisms that supposedly inform and strengthen his own treatment of “meaning-use analysis”; and (vii) he nowhere establishes a strong programmatic tie between the various metaphysics, epistemologies, or strategies for analysis among favored pragmatisms and the analytic resources he associates with the “mediating pragmatic metavocabularies” he means to add to those included within the span of canonical formal semantics. Critics, viewing such complaints, are likely to question whether inferentialism is assuredly the promising invention Brandom has himself proclaimed.

Joseph Margolis Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy Philosophy Department 728 Anderson Hall Temple University Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122 United States

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