Things tagged (for better or worse) "research"

Article Could Experience Be More Than a Method: Dewey's Practical Starting Point

"Could Experience Be More Than a Method? Dewey’s Practical Starting Point." In R. Frega (ed.), Pragmatist Epistemologies, Lexington Publishing, Lanham, 2011.

Article Philosophy's Relevance and the Pattern of Inquiry

"Philosophy's Relevance and the Pattern of Inquiry," Teaching Philosophy (December 1999) Philosophy has become largely irrelevant to most undergraduates. Philosophical problems seem disconnected from life, "as something said by philosophers concerning them alone," to quote John Dewey. Avoiding this requires that philosophers match course aims and methods with the abilities and circumstances of those being educated. To this end, this paper describes a pedagogical method incorporating John Dewey's "pattern of inquiry." An application of the method to an introductory text is given. The long range goals of teaching philosophy are discussed.

Article Progress in History: Dewey on Knowledge of the Past.

The Review Journal of Philosophy and Social Science, vol. 25, nos. 1 and 2. (2000) Debates among historiographers and philosophers of history frequently turn on the metaphysical reality of the past and the epistemological foundations of judgments made about that past. It is argued that John Dewey's pragmatism dealt successfully with these history-related issues, as well as with the underlying metaphysical and epistemological ones. It is concluded that Dewey's classical pragmatist resolution of these longstanding problems difficulties has practical application today in debates between empirical realists and postmodernists. THIS IS FINAL PDF VERSION OF THE WORD DOC PUBLISHED VERSION.

Article Does Every Theory Deserve A Hearing

"Does Every Theory Deserve A Hearing? Evolution, Creationism, and the Limits of Democratic Inquiry." Southern Journal of Philosophy XLIV: June 2006, pp. 217-236. It's been 80 years since Dewey bemoaned fundamentalist attacks upon evolutionary biology. Despite staggering progress in science and technology, there are pitched battles over how evolution should be taught and more fundamentally what inquiries are worthy of the label "science." This paper examine the epistemological conflict and discusses some of the resources pragmatists have for repairing the damage done by this conflict to inquiry, community, and democracy.

Article Genuine Doubt and the Community in Peirce's Theory of Inquiry

"Genuine Doubt and the Community in Peirce's Theory of Inquiry." Southwest Philosophy Review (Spring 1996) Full article may be downloaded here (PDF) Peirce defined "inquiry" as the passage from genuine doubt to settled belief; in the long run, a properly-functioning scientific community's inquiries must converge toward Truth. To explain why Peirce believed such convergence is necessary, I examine two notions: community and genuine doubt. Genuine doubt, I find, not only makes convergence possible, but also constitutes the starting point of most inquiries. The exception is philosophical inquiry, where, increasingly in Peirce's later writings, "genuine doubt" is supplanted by "cultivated doubt." This shift creates a tension in his general account of inquiry which I attempt to moderate by offering two interpretations.

Articles and shorter writings

"Could Experience Be More Than a Method? Dewey’s Practical Starting Point." In R. Frega (ed.), Pragmatist Epistemologies, Lexington Publishing, Lanham, 2011. In "The Postulate of Immediate Empiricism" John Dewey's offered a brief admonition to philosophers seeking terminological clarity: "go to experience." Despite its apparent directness, his advice provokes painfully simple questions: Go how? Go where? Dewey’s argument was for philosophers to think of experience more as a method than as a stuff. For immediate empiricism (later coined as the denotative/empirical method) was intended to redirect generations of philosophers away from the bad habit of philosophizing-from-theoretical-starting-points. Dewey sought to convince philosophers that such a starting point not only ignored actual, lived experience—and, so, was bad empiricism—but that by ignoring actual experience, whatever good philosophy could do was diverted into trivial questions, false puzzles, and endless iterations of feckless theory. So, as mentioned, this aspect of Dewey’s view is clear enough. But what remains less clear is where one should go when they "go to experience." In what sense is it a destination for those following Dewey’s denotative method? Where—or better, what—is this "starting point for philosophic thought"? What is experience?Section One examines how Dewey’s attempt to reform empiricism by advancing the radical ambition of denotation. In multiple ways I show how denotation depends upon its correlative stuff, primary experience; I also show that despite his claim that such experience is "ineffable" and "indefinable" Dewey is in fact forced to advance beyond denoting to characterizing (in some detail) traits exhibited by primary experience. Section Two looks briefly at Dewey’s characterizations of the stuff of primary experience as tangled, complex, acculturated, value-laden, and related (to secondary or reflective experience). I conclude by drawing back to what seems to me as the larger conundrum of any discussion of the starting point.