RE: [xmca] Pragmatism's Advantage

["Denise Newnham" <dsnewnham@bluewin.ch>]

Sounds like a Dakari :) hope it just as good

Denise

-----Original Message-----
From: xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu [mailto:xmca-bounces@weber.ucsd.edu] On
Behalf Of Andy Blunden
Sent: mercredi 20 octobre 2010 07:22
To: eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity
Subject: Re: [xmca] Pragmatism's Advantage

Very interesting Larry. For people who don't know Vygotsky &c. I 
describe my own philosophy as "Hegelian-Marxism with a pragmatist twist" 
- the pragmatist twist being Vygotsky &c. People from "the other two 
approaches" I think get some idea of where we're coming from that way.

andy

Larry Purss wrote:
> 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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>
>   

-- 
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Andy Blunden*
Home Page: http://home.mira.net/~andy/
Videos: http://vimeo.com/user3478333/videos
Book: http://www.brill.nl/scss


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