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AUDIENCE COMMENTS |
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An opportunity for the audience to have their say on In Our Time. |
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PRAGMATISM
Kenny Mann - Pragmatism
When I took a basic philosophy course at a "community college" in Califonia, the instructor gave us the standard phrase-definition for pragmatism: "What works is true." My immediate thought was: " ...until it doesn't work any more." Other than limiting our understanding of any truth beyond "practical" matters and so determining what those practical matters might be, my problem with pragmatism is that its effectiveness is, in truth, governed by time. According to its own logic, truth is always beyond the horizon. It's akin to the popular American idea that, "What you don't know won't hurt you," and our double entendre, "No news is good news." Pragmatism itself may be at the heart of our current debate in Kansas over evolution. Is it pragmatic to believe that there is nothing evolving over the horizon? In America, pragmatism is also associated with "cost effectiveness," but since evolving ideas imply costly mistakes, we expect to be given assurances about what is over the horizon and yet in a very real sense, Americans -- contrary to our perceived entrepreneurial character -- don't want to think about what's over the horizon. Most Anericans avoid that kind of talk in our day-to-day affairs.
Robert Carnegie - Pragmatism
Tiresome as it is to add to the roster of untrained Radio 4 listeners trying to be philosophers, it seems to me, on the matter of an actual reality or truth from which Pragmatists are somewhat estranged(!), that Descartes' "Cogito ergo sum" requires that some reality exists in some sense - the reality that contains yourself. Of course then the question of the true nature of that reality arises, and the question of how large that reality is and what happens at its borders. But there is somewhere certain to start from; from yourself. I have been troubled by the reflection that in, for instance, a Newtonian mathemtical universe (the quantum universe is rather different), the life of an imaginary particle or person is indistinguishable from a real one, from the point of view of the particle. But more recently I've reflected that it's like a tune; the same tune played on piano, guitar, written on paper, or only heard in the composer's head. Now as for the revolutionary physics of the twentieth century, I do not think it was philosophical, except for the uncomfortable uncertainties of quanta. It did depend on the previous century's advances in non-Euclidean geometry. On the other hand, Einstein re-opened the question of whether scientific instruments - clocks, rulers, weighing scales, thermometers - actually do produce faithful measurements of continuing properties of the real world, or whether they produce meaningless, unreliable, even variable numbers - the question of what is true and how it is measured.
Patrick Coppock (Bologna, Italy) - Pragmatism
Many thanks to Melvin Bragg for an excellent initative! Making scientific and philosophical debate accessible globally via radio in this way for a wider public, in an entertaining but non banalising form is certainly the way to go! I very much enjoyed listening to the program on pragmatism and liked the informal style of the conversation which made accessible for a broad audience many central aspects of pragmatist thinking. Just a couple of comments in this connection: It would, given the current news-media picture with many-levelled debates in Europe and the rest of the world on conflicts (of interest and beliefs) between different religions, have been interesting to have heard some more about the treatment of the problem of religious belief in Peirce's writings (James, I think, is much weaker on this particular point, which is in fact why he and Peirce "fell out" at a certain stage over the definition of pragmatism) , since Peirce always maintained strongly that religion has to do with sentiment, not reason or logic (as James also did later, but from a rather different point of view, since he held that religious belief also had to do with a willed decision), while Peirce said that it is in some sense inevitable that we as human beings always tend to begin to speculate about metaphysical matters like the how's, why's and wherefore's of the world we live in because we seem to have some kind of "innate" capacity, or tendency, to feel a profoundly aesthetic sense (or sentiment) of wonder at the exquisite beauty and complexity of the natural world. In Peirce's view, it is this selfsame sentiment of wonder and curiosity that has also given birth to our advanced reasoning abiilities, and language, and hence all philosophical and scientific inquiry which causes us to seek truth (as a hypothetical final agreement on the opinion which explains in the most reasonable way, on the basis of the longest imaginable possible process of scientific trial and error, how things might all hang together and work in the world, and indeed in the cosmos) within a wider community oif philosophers/ inquirers. The main difference between the institutions (or communities) of science and theology is for Peirce its methodology, and the basic premises for this methodology. Science cannot, and must not presume to (except in the idealised regulative hypothesis of humanity sometime reaching the conclusion of an idealised, infinitely long run of inquiry in an ever expanding community of inquirers) prove conclusively that there IS an "ens necessarium" (or first cause). But it cannot either presume to prove (or "warrant" in Dewey's terms) that there is NOT. Therefore the (theological, metaphysical or ontological) question of God's existence must remain open as long as inquiry is able to proceed. But philosophical and scientific inquiry must never be "blocked" by religious or other beliefs. There is nothing wrong with a scientist believing in God if he feels this is the right thing for him at a certain point in his or her life, but this belief alone must not ever form the basis for his or her actual methods and application in reasoning and research. Clearly this way of seeing things will have some important consequences in the context of the current creationism-darwinism debate too. Finally, I'd also like to say that I felt (and here is my own sentiment coming in) rather disappointed that one of our most gifted contemporary european pragmatist thinkers, the italian semiotician Umberto Eco, was not mentioned at all in the program. This seems to me a great pity, since the lack of reference any any other contemporty pragmatist philosphers than Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam (whose excellent qualifications are beyond discussion) who are the most important living pragmatist philosphers. And here, too, I think it would have been important to underline that in a great number of European countries, and indeed in the rest of the world, the pragmatist philosophical tradition is alive and kicking and still growing, and that there are many
David McShane, Pragmatism
How can Pragmatism can be described as a Philosopy? Isn't it just an epistimological doctrine, a method for getting at Truth? And if so, hasn't the programme wronged William James, in particular, by ignoring what was actually his Philosophy -- Radical Empiricism, a Philosophy which is deep in its implications, which was orginal, which was the next important Philosophical step after Nietzche and Marx, and whose deep and subtle implications the thinking world is still trying to grasp today? But the omission of Radical Empiricism aside, I wonder if Mr. Bragg did indeed make a good-faith effort at assembling a panel equal to the task of depicting Pragmatism, at least James's variety thereof. Bergson said of Pragmatism: "People picture Pragmatism as something that must be necessarily simple and capable of being summed up in a formula. I ceaselessly repeat that on the contrary pragmatism is one of the most subtle and nuancees doctrines that have ever appeared in Philosophy" (Bergson, 1909). But A. C. Grayling did just that; he described James's Pragmatism as 'if it works, it's true'. And the other panelists didn't object. And putting aside the fact that Pragmatism is a method, not a Philosophy, why did the title of the programme imply that Pragmatism is merely practical, or merely "American", a "practical philosophy fit for 20th century America"? Jacques Barzun said of the debate over Pragmatism: "...its opponents tried to discredit the principle by boiling down: 'Truth is what will be steadily borne out by subsequent experience' to 'Truth is what you can get away with'. European critics, seizing upon James's birthplace, said that his thesis was typically American, "a theory for engineers" -- minds limited to action and deaf to ideas...' Mr. Bragg, your show is brilliant and I am a dedicated listener (proselytizer), but I feel like we missed something here. Perhaps we could go back and revisit William James more thoroughly at some time in the future?
norman defoe -in our time
Like so many others I cannot praise this programme enough. I too find little to interest me on BBC. I have dumped the TV as it is totally trivial. I will soon have to give up Radio 3 as it too has started to broadcast advertisements between programmes. (calling them trails doesn't mean they are not advertisements.
Ann Aungles: Pragmatism
A question I'd appreciate an answer to:what distinguishes the materialist philosphy of Marxism and neo marxism from Pragmatism? Is there something missing in the Pragmatic approach that inhibits it from addressing issues of power relationships?
Tony Duncan - Pragmatism
Melvyn - I'm so glad I signed up for your newsletter. It has been such a gratifying surprise to find you so relaxed and chatty. Your comments on Pragmatism have been so succinct and accurate that all I can say is - I wish you lived next door! Thanks very much!
Charles Adler - Pragmatism
It struck me that Einstein's revolutionary breakthrough came from the very pragmatic notion that time and space are just what a clock and a ruler say they are. I wonder whether there is any connection there?
John Hamilton Pragmatism
Thank you so much for this, and all the other "In our Times". It's a great way to start the day, and a reminder of how important public service broadcasting is. (I can't imagine a washing powder company sponsoring such a programme)! Please keep going indefinitely - there's still a universe of topics to explore.
David McDonagh The Pragmatists
The pragmatists seemed to think they were cutting things down with thier idea of "warrented assertion" but the assumption is, alone, good enough to get the truth with. One does not need a warrant. Moreover, the truth will work, ipso facto, as Pearce held. James was merely absurd with his idea of personal truth. Like most philosophers, they all conflated epistemology with metaphysics when they thought that the method was, or even could be, relevant to the truth. As deduction begins strongest & then tends to go downhill, so has pragmatism from its beginnings; for James was worse than Pearce, Dewey way worse than James, Putnam merely confused & Rorty a complete deadhead. Hence his worship of that other deadhead, Heidegger. I have left out Quine, as he is a bit of an anomoly in this account. He was quite good.
Andrea Teti - Pragmatism
Great programme - very informative. There are, however, a few 'elephants' in the room of the debate on Pragmatism. 1. Relativism: Pragmatism entails a very particular kind of 'relativism', one which saves the possible existence of a 'Truth' (whether or not it is retrievable, or desirable to do so). Contemporaries of the Pragmatists were Nietzsche, and later Wittgenstein: both challenge the idea of a single and objectively discernible 'truth' in a much more fundamental way. Later, the Frankfurt School and post-structuralists (and its more radical counterparts) also challenge such ideas. 2. Consequences of Pragmatist knowledge: if knowledge can change the world, *how* does it change it? If the answer is somehow ontological (i.e. action changes the *nature* of the world) then it is difficult to implicitly (Dewey) or explicitly (Pearce) 'save' the existence of an underlying truth. If the answer is not ontological, then the radical import of Pragmatism is greatly reduced. 3. The fortunes of Pragmatism & its critical counterparts. The really obvious question is: given that the critical, 'European' counterparts of Pragmatism are more radical and at the same time more logically coherent, and given also that they too have emancipatory goals (e.g. Nietzsche, Frankfurt School), why is it that Pragmatism enjoys so much more respect in Anglo-American phiolosophical and political circles than its counterparts? The answer, to my mind, has much to do with the political and moral unpalatability of the latter than with their relative philosophical weight.
Dycella Cummings-Palmer, Pragmatism: Contributors
All very good this week but congratulations for inviting Mirander Fricker onto the programme. A superb speaker. She packed in the information in a very clear and entertaining way. Please invite her on again If only all my lecturers had been as good!
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