The Ethics of Contingency

Moving from pragmatism and drawing on a fascinating and accurate interpretation of Richard Rorty’s work, Rosa Calcaterra’s Contingency and Normativity. The Challenges of Richard Rorty (Brill-Rodopi, 2019) proposes a philosophical investigation of the relationship between normativity and contingency. Calcaterra’s longstanding familiarity with pragmatist philosophy strongly marks her attitude towards these topics and their related issues. The author takes up some of the pragmatists’ constructiv..

Ramón del Castillo, Ángel M. Faerna, & Larry A. Hickman (eds.), Confines of Democracy. Essays on the Philosophy of Richard J. Bernstein

This significant book is the main outcome of an international research program on “Public Sphere, Value-Conflict, and Social Experience: A Pragmatist Approach,” conducted in 2008-11 by Ramón del Castillo. Within this framework, the editors of the book organized, in 2010, an international conference on the philosophy of Richard J. Bernstein. The conference became the highlight of the program as far as the American philosopher not only represents a key-figure of the American philosophical tradi..

The Interlacing of Science and Ethics

Richard Rorty has long been perceived and interpreted as a provocative and groundbreaking philosopher. However, an approach that he calls ‘eirenic’ emerges in his writings. This eirenism should not be confused with a form of sophisticated relativism, but rather it should be understood as a consequence of the profound anti-foundational conviction and anti-authoritarian sentiment that feeds his thought, as well as his reading of the relations of science and ethics. In this article, I focus on Rorty’s recovery of pragmatism and “pragmatist hermeneutics” by considering his understanding of science and ethics as deeply interlaced. Rorty’s perspective on this issue is inspired by Dewey’s and James’s conception of a holistic-syncretic pragmatism. His project takes into account not only the main cultural trends of logical empiricism and continental philosophy, but also the existential needs they conveyed – that is, the search for objectivity and the meaning of life, respectively. The Rortyan proposal of an anti-ideological, historicist or post-positivist reformulation of the conception of scientific rationality as not opposed to ethics aligns with Jamesian efforts to confront scientific dogmatism by questioning the key notion of truth. Within a naturalistic hermeneutical framework, Rorty contests the ontological need for necessary connections or disconnections between moral and scientific discourse. In this sense, the conception of ethics as having to do with what is personal, historical and “irrational” contrasts with the notion of scientific rationality elaborated in modernity as something that, unlike morality, is able to escape human finitude and contingency. Appreciating the Jamesian (and Deweyan) element in Rorty’s pragmatist hermeneutics may contribute to renovating the current lines of debate around Rorty and pragmatism, especially by reevaluating Rorty’s strong cultural connection to the American philosophical tradition and his commitment to making this pluralistic voice relevant again to contemporary conversations

Tra filosofia e biologia: una psicologia integrata e antiriduzionistica

The second half of the nineteenth century was a crucial moment for the institutionalization of psychology from European experimental studies that became increasingly popular in the United States. The relationship between pragmatist philosophy and biology is deeply linked to psychology, and in particular to the physiological and Darwinian psychology elaborated by William James. This article focuses on a portion of the much broader debate involving some of the leading American exponents of the new psychology with the intention of highlighting important methodological and theoretical issues that arose concerning the relationship between biology and philosophy within an evolutionary framework, issues in some ways still relevant today.La seconda metà dell’Ottocento è un momento cruciale per l’istituzionalizzazione della psicologia sulla scorta degli studi sperimentali europei che vanno sempre più affermandosi negli Stati Uniti. Il rapporto tra filosofia pragmatista e biologia è profondamente collegato alla psicologia, e in particolare alla psicologia fisiologica e darwiniana elaborata da William James. In questo articolo, si mette a fuoco una porzione del ben più ampio dibattito che coinvolge alcuni dei principali esponenti statunitensi della nuova psicologia con l’intento di mettere in luce importanti questioni metodologiche e teoretiche che sorsero rispetto al rapporto tra biologia e filosofia entro una cornice evoluzionistica, questioni per certi versi ancora oggi attuali

William James, A Pluralistic Universe

This recent edition of A Pluralistic Universe (1909), edited and introduced by H. G. Callaway, is a recovery and a close examination of James’s pluralism. The editor proposes a study edition of this famous text, which is the latest book published during James’ lifetime. His long preface, his work on lexicon, his notes, and the attention he gives to the historical background are great tools to pragmatism students and scholars for critical reading. In this book, in many ways James argues again..

Novelty and Causality in William James’s Pluralistic Universe

The issue of the emergence of genuinely new events in a paradigm of natural continuity has been analyzed in different fields by Pragmatists authors like Peirce, Dewey, and Mead. Another way to consider the problematic relationship between novelty and continuity is by considering William James’s understanding of causal connections. This article addresses the concept of causality that James repeatedly addressed and deeply rethought throughout his career. I believe that the concept of causality provides an excellent platform from which to view the various aspects that have made James’s epistemological and metaphysical thinking so influential in the history of theories of emergence, and which is experiencing currently a major revival

Robert Schwartz, Rethinking Pragmatism: From William James to Contemporary Philosophy

Nowadays philosophers as intellectuals are strongly encouraged to be more active on their cultural scene and particularly to direct their efforts towards creating or reconstructing possible bridges of communication. As is well known, some of the distances between intellectual worlds are often matters of ‘styles of writing,’ as well as socio-historical controversies which can be reconsidered in a different light at successive generational readings. In this view, both historical and theoretical..

‘Gesto’ e identità personale. Per una epistemologia del sé in chiave pragmatista

This article aims to show the validity of an actualization of William James’s pragmatist epistemology of psychology for the construction of personal identity. Following Giovanni Maddalena’s theoretical hypothesis of “gesture” as a complete synthetic tool for the acquisition of knowledge, an in-depth analysis of the continuous and dynamic conception of personal identity proposed by James may be helpful today to better develop the emotional-somatic dimension of synthetic reasoning. As far as the epistemology of the Self is concerned, significant continuities and discontinuities are drawn from James’s naturalized integrated conception of personal identity in the light of this new Peirce’s inspired interpretation. This attempt is part of a wider project in which recovering the character of psychological and ontological processual continuity in James’s epistemology makes a considerable contribution to the development of a comprehensive understanding of mental models, one that avoids to tighten up these models as it happens in most of the contemporary epistemologies of the self

Benthic foraminifers and siliceous sponge spicules assemblages in the Quaternary rhodolith rich sediments from Pontine Archipelago shelf

The bottom samples (Quaternary in age) of two cores (CS1 and Caro1) collected at 60 and 122 m water depth in the marine area near Ponza Island (Pontine Archipelago, Tyrrhenian Sea) are investigated. In particular, benthic foraminifers and siliceous sponge spicules are considered. The coralline red algae (pralines, boxworks and unattached branches) are abundant in both samples and, particularly, in the CS1 bottom as well as the benthic foraminifers. The siliceous sponge spicules also are very diversified and abundant in the CS1 bottom sample, while in the Caro1 bottom they are rare and fragmented. Benthic foraminiferal assemblage of two samples is dominated by Asterigerinata mamilla and Lobatula lobatula, typical epiphytic species but also able to live on circalittoral detrital seafloors, adapting to an epifaunal lifestyle. Based on these data the bottom of the studied cores represents the upper circalittoral zone, within the present-day depth limit distribution of coralline red algae in the Pontine Archipelago (shallower than 100 m water depth)