Pluralist 

About: Pluralist is an academic journal published by University of Illinois Press. The journal publishes majorly in the area(s): Pragmatism & American philosophy. It has an ISSN identifier of 1930-7365. Over the lifetime, 406 publications have been published receiving 1360 citations.

Varieties of Twentieth Century American Naturalism

Abstract: naturalism dominated twentieth century American philosophy.1 Naturalism is a philosophical worldview that relies upon experience, reason, and especially science for developing an understanding of reality. Naturalism demands that these three modes of understanding together shall control our notion of reality. Varieties of naturalism emerge because the many essential factors of experience, reason, and science can be coherently related in numerous ways. All naturalisms demand that experience, reason, and science be taken most seriously so that no fourth mode of understanding can be permitted to override them. This triadic unity moderates the excesses of phenomenalism and idealism, and filters out spiritualism and supernaturalism for their introduction of radical and mysterious discontinuities into knowledge and reality. Scientific method and knowledge play a crucial role in all naturalisms. Varieties of naturalism may be distinguished along three dimensions: the degree of ontological confidence given to science; the breadth of explanatory discretion given to science; and the number of scientific fields permitted to describe reality. From the logically possible combinations resulting from these dimensions, seven viable varieties of naturalism are distinguished and contrasted. Each of these varieties of naturalism has had champions in the course of twentieth century American philosophy, such as Dewey, Whitehead, Santayana, Quine, Sellars, Davidson, Churchland, Putnam, and Searle. The conclusion discusses the three major competitors during the twentieth century for the title of the “genuine” naturalism: Reductive Physicalism, Non-Reductive Physicalism, and Perspectival Pluralism. The struggles among these great naturalisms and the other viable varieties of naturalism have been bequeathed to the twenty-first century, and their outcomes may decide the ultimate fate of naturalism itself.

James and Dewey on Abstraction

Abstract: ion is “indispensable”; it “re-energize[s]” our inferences and activities. Yet, abstractions by themselves are “irrespirable,” and processes of inference, concept-formation, and classification can be abused. For instance, Dewey presents “the philosophical fallacy”5 with a different water metaphor: [T]he philosophical fallacy . . . consists in the supposition that whatever is found true under certain conditions may forthwith be asserted universally or without limits and conditions. Because a thirsty man gets satisfaction in drinking water, bliss consists in being drowned. (Human Nature and Conduct 123). For both thinkers, the abstraction-reification account in a nutshell amounts to recognizing that abstraction is powerful and liberating,6 yet has a dark side. This article elucidates the abstraction-reification account diagnosed by James and Dewey and locates it in contemporary scientific work. Section 2 explores the complex process of abstraction in James and Dewey, and with a nod to C. S. Peirce. Identifying three stages in the abstraction process— singling out, symbolizing, and systematizing—clarifies the parallels between James’s and Dewey’s analyses. Section 3 investigates these pragmatists’ warnings against committing abstractionist fallacies, and identifies pernicious reification as neglecting three kinds of context: functional, historical, and analytical-level. Both philosophers implored everyday reasoners, scientists, and philosophers to attend to context. Reification, qua pathology of abstraction, results in disease symptoms such as universalized, narrowed, and/ or ontologized abstractions. Acknowledging the importance of biographical and social conditions, the genealogy and mutual influence of James’s and Dewey’s perspectives are traced, especially in endnotes. Section 4 explores how James and Dewey avoid reifying the very distinction with which they are weaving their analysis: the abstract vs. the concrete. Finally, following the pragmatic forward-looking attitude, a gesture is made in the conclusion toward developing medicines (pluralism and assumption archaeology) out of the abstraction-reification account. After all, pernicious reification is to abstraction as disease is to health. Such treatments permit de-reifying ill models in contemporary science.

Nations of Immigrants: Do Words Matter?

Abstract: perhaps it is unfair, but i often ask my undergraduate students a trick question. The question is “What country in the world, in the year 2000, had the highest proportion of foreigners living on its national territory?” It is probably no surprise that the largest number of them answer “the United States.” When asked to explain, the least articulate students give the most revealing responses. They tend to report, accurately, that “everyone knows that the United States is a ‘nation of immigrants.’” Students are then surprised to learn that the correct answer to the question is not the United States but the United Arab Emirates, where 85 percent of the resident population in 2000 was foreign-born and where most foreigners worked on short-term labor contracts with the expectation they would return home again. Is the United Arab Emirates a nation of immigrants? My students do not think so, and neither do most of the leaders or natives of the United Arab Emirates. Switzerland, a country that has a longer history of importing temporary labor, today has a resident population of about 23 percent foreigners—almost twice the comparable figure for the foreign-born of the United States in 2000 (12.5 percent). Most Swiss vigorously deny they are a “nation of immigrants,” while many Americans insist on it (HoffmannNowotny 302). In 2005, again based on shares of population rather than numbers, the United States does not even make it into the top ten worldwide (Migration Policy Institute). Clearly, it is not just a matter of numbers. Although unfair, my trick question is a good way to open discussion. What difference does it make if we call someone a foreigner, an immigrant, an emigrant, a migrant, a refugee, an alien, an exile, or an illegal or clandestine? To ponder this question is to explore the vastly differing ways that human population movements figure in nation-building and in the historical imagi-