{"title":"Technologies and Sustainability – Challenges for Democracy and Education in Our Time","authors":"Stefan Neubert, K. Reich","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10061","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10061","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000In this essay, we discuss some urgent challenges for democracy and education in the Deweyan sense in connection with current developments of technologies and questions of sustainability. We proceed in four major parts, following the systematic distinction of four mutually interrelated levels of technologies in culture found in the late work of Michel Foucault. In part 1, we focus on the technologies of production. We connect Foucault’s perspective with more recent research on questions of social inequality and the production and distribution of wealth. In part 2, we address the level of technologies of sign systems, connecting Foucault’s perspective with critical approaches like Chomsky and Zuboff. In part 3, we turn to the level of technologies of power and domination. We use Crouch’s approach to post-democracy in order to examine some crucial dangers for democracy. In part 4, we look at the level of technologies of the self. We consider connections with contemporary constructivist as well as Deweyan perspectives in education that emphasize the role of relationships and processes of social self-creation. The essay closes with a summary of the most important conclusions of our discussion.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42810299","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Ethics in the Innovation Process: Some Unaddressed Issues for Pragmatists","authors":"P. Thompson","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10062","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10062","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000There are now dozens of proposals for integrating ethics into the early planning and assessment of technological innovation. This paper tracks some of Larry Hickman’s contributions to these trends. While Hickman’s suggestions could be incorporated into virtually many of the new proposals for integrating ethics into technological research, development and dissemination, barriers remain. In this paper, I will explores some reasons why the field remains fragmented, emphasizing weaknesses in the pragmatist approach. First, I acknowledge the significance of obvious explanations: the technical community’s unfamiliarity with ethical inquiry and the lack of both administrative and financial commitment to ethics-oriented research. There is, in short, an epistemic gap between the message that innovators are prepared to hear and the sophisticated response that Hickman’s pragmatism offers. This gap may be a practical limitation to philosophical pragmatism in many of its manifestations.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44732434","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hickman, Buddhism, and Algorithmic Technology","authors":"J. Garrison","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10064","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10064","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper is a further reflection on my dialogue with Larry Hickman, director emeritus of the Center for Dewey Studies, and Daisaku Ikeda, president of the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai International (sgi). One surprising outcome of this dialogue is how similar Deweyan pragmatism is to many forms of Mahayana Buddhism such as sgi. Here I survey some similarities between Hickman’s philosophy of technology and Buddhism by emphasizing value creation and criticism. (Soka Gakkai means value creating society.) I then explore Peter D. Herschock’s, Buddhism and Intelligent Technology relying on Hickman to rectify Herschock’s philosophy of technology before discussing how Herschock’s insightful application of Buddhist ethics to ai and the internet accord with Hickman.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46541847","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Hickman and Dewey: Naturalism’s Hope?","authors":"H. Saatkamp","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10063","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10063","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Larry Hickman has fostered his own analysis, explication and application of Dewey’s philosophy as well as overseen the critical edition of John Dewey’s works at the Center for Dewey Studies. In America our democracy is struggling, making Hickman’s scholarly work even more important. I attempt to explain some of Hickman’s use of Dewey’s philosophy to address current issues that include the roles of religion and education in American democracy. Much of Hickman’s pragmatic naturalism provides hope for democracy as a way of life and as a governmental organization. But will that hope meet contemporary challenges in our society? I suggest some possible limitations to Dewey’s and Hickman’s views but highlight the central role both play in American philosophy.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":"211 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41296698","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Neuropragmatic Tools for Neurotechnological Culture: Toward a Creatively Democratic Cybernetics of Care","authors":"T. Sólymosi","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10059","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10059","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000I address the problem of caring for our body-mind through neuropragmatism, cybernetics, and Larry Hickman’s work on John Dewey and the philosophy of technology. The problems of body-mind health are related to Emma Dowling’s The Care Crisis. I address this crisis by drawing on Jay Schulkin’s conception of viability as the creative tension between stability and precarity. From this, I extend body-mind health to questions of democracy, leading to the proposal of body-mind-world as an elaboration of neuropragmatism’s evolutionary and ecological conception of experience as Œ and Hickman’s distinction between the merely valued nature-as-nature and the valuable nature-as-culture. I conclude with a reimagination of creative democracy as a moral ideal for dealing with the care crisis.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46464916","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Education for Technological Threats to Democracy","authors":"E. Weber","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10065","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10065","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000This paper examines Larry A. Hickman’s warnings about the dangers of algorithmic technologies for democracy and then considers educational policy initiatives that are important for combatting such threats over the long term. John Dewey’s philosophy is considered both in Hickman’s work and in this paper’s review of what Dewey called the “Supreme Intellectual Obligation.” Dewey’s insights highlight crucial tasks necessary and called for with respect to education to value and appreciate the sciences and what they can do to serve humanity. At the same time, a significant cultural effort is needed to ensure that schools are empowered to do this vital work and that the public is informed and enabled to demand the leadership and initiatives that democracy needs to safeguard against threats to it.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43951631","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Philosophical Tools for Educational Culture: Reconstructing Data and Assessment Practices","authors":"M. Tschaepe","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10050","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10050","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000Assessment practices have come to dominate much of formalized education, especially within the United States. Currently, learning analytics (la) and educational data mining (edm) are purported by many educational companies and institutions to successfully improve learning through what are often considered as objective collection, classification, and analysis of educational data. Enthusiasm about big data in education has contributed to the naturalization of datafication within the field. Educational data is regarded as a natural resource that exists ‘out there’ to be mined by edm and refined by la. Once refined, it is thought to bear the truth of educational assessment that leads to successful learning outcomes.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2023-02-10","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47941182","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Rorty and the Question of Normativity: Replies to Commentators on Reconstructing Pragmatism","authors":"Christopher J. Voparil","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10058","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10058","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 This response to insightful commentaries on my book, from Richard Shusterman, Susan Dieleman, Raff Donelson, and Colin Koopman, takes up the recurring theme of the nature of normativity on a Rortyan view. To frame my individual replies, I revisit the Davidsonian account of epistemic interaction that influences Rorty’s mature view and suggest that the norms implicit in Davidsonian triangulation are insufficient to support Rorty’s antiauthoritarianism in ethics and epistemology. To address the resulting question of how to account for norms of responsibility and obligation within Rorty’s thought, I highlight key strands of the pragmatic tradition, originating with Peirce but extending through James, Addams, and Dewey, that Rorty reconstructs in the process of developing the full implications of prioritizing democracy over philosophy.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46933621","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Philosophical Definitions: A Pragmatic Approach","authors":"G. Arroyo","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10053","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10053","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 In this paper, I argue for a pragmatic theory of the motivations behind the practice of defining concepts in philosophy. The “correct” definition in philosophy is not, as is usually supposed, the definition that accurately describes some pre-philosophical meaning, but the definition which is useful for the achievement of certain theoretical goals. I consider different examples of definitional debates from the history of philosophy. The analysis of these examples also evidences why philosophers do not usually grant the incidence of pragmatic reason in their conceptual investigations. At the end of the paper, I provide some reasons that explain why the incidence of pragmatic reasons is inevitable.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47642722","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Pragmatism and the Pluralism of Paths: Reflections on Voparil’s Reconstructing Pragmatism: Richard Rorty and the Classical Pragmatists","authors":"R. Shusterman","doi":"10.1163/18758185-bja10054","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1163/18758185-bja10054","url":null,"abstract":"\u0000 After noting Rorty’s rhetorical use of binary oppositions, which belies important continuities (and which is even reflected in the problem of radically opposing classical pragmatism to neopragmatism), I question the idea that progress in pragmatism must go through engagement with Rorty. I do so by arguing that Rorty failed to treat or outright rejected some important philosophical issues. I consequently challenge the famous model for pragmatist pluralism: the metaphor of a single hotel corridor opening to a plurality of rooms with different people doing or believing different things. My paper also makes a case for the central importance of the aesthetic in Rorty’s philosophy despite his avowed rejection of aesthetics.","PeriodicalId":42794,"journal":{"name":"Contemporary Pragmatism","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.1,"publicationDate":"2022-11-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43254096","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}