[xmca] Pragmatism's Advantage

[Larry Purss <lpscholar2@gmail.com>]

I have been fascinated with the discussion that has over 60 posts on one
thread.  The ideas certainly spiral through a maze of reflections.
The other post was getting so long I've decided to start a new one  that
brings the Pragmatist Joseph Margolis  into the conversation.  He has just
published a book "Pragmatism's Advantage: American and European Philosophy
at the End of the 20th Century"  What appeals to me in his writing is his
exploration of the centrality of historicized development  in reflecting on
the human  story. Joseph believes Pragmatism is ready for a return to center
stage in its dialogue with the other two  dominant philosophical approaches
of the 20th century, Analytical Philosophy, and Continental Philosophy.  He
sees all three approaches as  centrally focused on alternative notions of
the  nature of REALISM.  Following is Joseph's list of the themes which he
believes must be reflected on in the 21st century when exploring  accounts
of the nature of realism:

1) is it constructivist
2) is it naturalistic
3)is it nonreductive and nondualistic
4)is it responsive to the nearly unique abilities of the human being
5)that there is no privileged, transcendentalist cognizing FACULTIES and no
unconconditional necessities or invariances in reality or thought
6)opposed to any hierarchized, disjunctive, or modular order at the level of
reflexively acknowledged human competencies [as between practical and
theorizing powers or between perceptual and conceptual powers
7)Darwinian, in the sense that linguistic and other cultural competences
presuppose and are emergent from and incarnate in the biology of the
species, though evolutionary in a sense distinct from, or DISCONTINUOUS
with, biological evolution itself
8)constrained by conditions of reflexive reportage, hence primarily
phenomenological rather than phenomenal [in the sense of being
PRESUPPOSITIONLESS]
9)prepared to concede that the human PERSON or self is best construed as a
"second-natured" HYBRID ARTIFACT indissolubly and emergently embodied in the
members of Homo Sapiens, though having INTERNALIZED the language and culture
of one or another HISTORICAL society
10)HISTORICIZED, in the sense [irreducible to the merely biological or
biochemical] in which our conceptual resources are themselves continually
formed, enlarged, reduced, altered, transformed, as a RESULT OF CHANGES in
the ongoing formative, communicative, and sustaining processes of cultural
life itself
11)not opposed in principle to admitting OBJECTIVE JUDGEMENTS of a
relativistic or incommensurabilist sort, should they prove to be
self-consistent and coherent
12) prepared to account for the NORMATIVE features of meaning, logic,
validity, justifiability, in theoretical and practical matters, knowledge,
legitimation, factuality, rationality, communication, in thoroughly
NATURALISTIC terms
13)cast entirely in terms of a SELF-REFLECTING inquiry that replaces Kant's
or any Kant-like pretensions [transcendentalist] with self-reflection that
is within the bounds of "nature" [second-natured as cultural]

Joseph believes Pragmatism can be defined in terms of just these 13
commitments and he also suggests the classic Pragmatists fit these
commitments surprisingly well and therefore he gives Pragmatism an advantage
over Analytic and Continental approaches in understanding the nature of
reality.  Joseph believes Pragmatism is commited [however inadequately at
times] to the entire tally. However, it is for the 21st century to
successfully reconcile all of the 13 themes.

To give a sense of how these themes play out or are applied to general
problems I will summarize how Joseph reflects on "information"

"Information" is normally treated as abstract [similar to the way "number"
or "meaning" is abstract] Joseph, from a Pragmatist perspective, reminds us
that "information" is always abstracted FROM some actual, incarnate, or
embodied instantiation, whether a genome or a conversation, and some human
paradigm takes precedence since semiotics is always anthropomorphized.
"Information" furthermore, even when abstracted from content, is best
treated TOP DOWN rather than BOTTOM UP, since information must be INCARNATE
or EMBODIED in some way. Otherwise there would be no way to model the
transmission, reception, or grasp of semiotized information from physical
events alone.

Joseph then follows incarnate or embodied information with the recognition
that information belongs to the human paradigm as a communicative activity
among persons or selves, as the complex, emergent, HYBRID, indissoluble
"content" of a human utterance [adequate for conveying meaning, intention,
significance]  This utterance as a communicative activity can be by speech,
gesture, sign, symbol, act or action, manufacture, creation, interpretation
as COMMUNICATIVE activity or utterances.

Therefore, for Joseph, "information" is easily rendered in naturalistic
terms, without conceptual extravagence and distortion, or privileging the
extranaturalistic.  "Utterance" is not an externally causal notion since the
"RELATION" BETWEEN utterer and utterance is TOO CLOSE FOR EXTERNAL
RELATIONS. Uttering is like raising your hand, inasmuch as both are open to
semiotized ATTRIBUTION and both signify the exercise of AGENCY.
"Information" and semiotic content are "decoded" [understood] in culturally
formed or transformed space. Therefore, information is NOT in any primary or
paradigmatic sense, abstract, open to reductionist formulation or capable of
being DETERMINATELY FIXED in any privileged or CERTAIN way.

Joseph summarizes his thoughts on "information" by pointing out that to
begin with information in a contextless and contentless way is already to
favour reductionism and BOTTOM -UP analyses over TOP-DOWN ones.

As I read Joseph's reflections on the advantages of the pragmatic approach I
see many points of congruence with the CHAT perspective.
The themes of materiality, the real, and the ideal that are reflected on in
CHAT are being explored in other traditions. Josephis approaching these
themes from a neo-Pragmatic framework

Larry
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