How Pragmatists Commit Hubris

I am editing the last major chapter of my book. By now, I have completed a synoptic reading of Dewey's metaphysics and phenomenology with emphasis on its processional and temporal elements, and begin critiquing his concept of valuation. The problem? Dewey's analysis of valuation is incomplete, and most subsequent scholars follow him in this blindness, which leads them to commit hubris. They promise more of Deweyan method that it can accomplish, rarely admit its short-comings, and thereby hamstring any attempt to rectify deficiencies. Below I give you the introduction to the last chapter.

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We have come full circle. In the beginning I asked how intelligence and agency are possible when impulsivity and desire are their root. For many, this formulation might have come as a shock, for western thinkers frequently understand the two to be opposites. John Dewey championed the view that intelligent inquiry is the transformation of impulsive desire through harmonizing it to ideal ends. However, I challenged his view because he promised more of our transformative capabilities than is warranted. He presumes that individuals are either more transparent to themselves or more integral of character than they are, and thereby assumed that desire is always ideational and available for reflective control at least in principle. Since I broached the question and criticism, I have presented a synoptic vision of Dewey’s philosophy focused on his metaphysics and phenomenology through the lens of Alexander coming to the following conclusion.

Every reflection is grounded upon what does not come to light, and this insight is fundamental to Dewey’s theory of experience. Experience is a process in which the unconscious phase occurs first and constitutes the conscious phase that becomes reflection. The “unconscious phase” includes the local environment, the active human body, the situation, habits ranging from instinct to the finest refinements of culture, etc., although I focus on only one strand of the unconscious phase, the process inclusive of “desire” or motivated human purposiveness that is a species of valuation. Our habits give us purposes without conscious intentions, and these purposes are the coordinated activity of biological impulses. When these purposes are sufficiently disrupted, the tension in ongoing activities may give rise to emotion and affectivity or a “felt difficulty” that initiates reflection and a problematic situation. Only then may we be an intelligent agent rather than rely on intelligently educated habit. However, the original impulsivity continues to constitute the situation, and supposing otherwise ignores the continuity of thought. The problem that confronts us is not whether an individual has a felt difficulty that provokes thought, but whether the individual may interpret the situation to re-educate habits and engender future felt difficulties that otherwise may not have been likely.

We cannot assume that every disruption launches us into reflection or reveals every unthought purpose. The conundrum is that only physical resistance necessarily provokes a felt difficulty, but the problem might be symbolic rather than physical. Symbolic resistance is possible only when a person interprets an event as a sign for a particular meaning. That is, morality does not walk across the street and slap sense into you. Racism is not only about conscious intention, but about attitudes, preconceptions, behaviors, and the material endurance of institutions that are frequently unthought. Culture is as much symbolic as physical, but only interpretation converts the physical into the symbolic. Intelligence requires resisting impulsive behavior, but when the event requires a symbolic resistance, talk about the possibilities of the situation become narrowed to the possibilities of interpretation.

In the process of experience, the unconscious phase occurs first and constitutes the conscious phase in which intelligence and agency occur. Part of the unconscious phase includes instinctual and habitual impulse that are primary in the direction of semi-autonomous behavior, and they function as gatekeepers of what might become conscious or what we might experience as meaningful. Every reflection is grounded upon what does not come to light, and this insight is fundamental to Dewey’s theory of experience. While there is no necessity for the occurrence of any particular event, the asymmetric flow is necessary, which establishes the enduring possibility of unconscious habits fragmented behavior from the reflective apprehension of their meaning. This is an unavoidable limitation of Dewey’s theory of intelligent inquiry that he did not adequately address.

Where I've Been Hiding

I took a break.

That's why I haven't posted regularly in some weeks. For those who follow my articles, blog, and FB posts, one might get the correct impression that I work non-stop seven days a week. I do. I'm a perfectionist about pedagogy, obsessive about scholarship and interpretation, and teach through the summer. I plan to start posting again, though more slowly.  Speaking of.....

A Kantian Meditation on Bacon

A colleague of mine, Randall Auxier, offered this fine meditation on Facebook, and I couldn't help but share.


A doubt has become a real problem for me. We all know that bacon is sort of an end in itself. It's almost a Kantian Idea of Reason --God, freedom, immortality, and bacon-- the ideas without which nothing else can really be good. And home grown tomatoes, while certainly a widely acknowledge intrinsic good, are commonly seen as contributors to other goods, but still very, very good all alone (with a bit of salt, perhaps). But here is the problem: I can't shake the feeling that bacon and homegrown tomatoes, even with good bread, can become a mayonnaise delivery system. Now, I know what you're thinking: "bacon isn't a system in the service of anything but itself." I know, I know. BUT HEAR ME OUT. How can you KNOW that unless you leave the mayonnaise off of the BLT? And no one has ever done that, and no one ever will. That's MY point. It's not just French ancestry speaking here. I am asserting that bacon CAN be subordinated in the hierarchy of goods, or at least, it is impossible to prove that it CAN'T BE, since no one is going to test this.

The Morality of Killing: Drone Strikes

The morality of the American use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) has been debated much recently. Consider the recent New York Times discussion at The Stone. A colleague directed me to an argument by Bradley Strawser in the Journal of Military Ethics. To his argument in favor of the use of drones, I have the following reply.

I strongly disagree with Strawser, and am almost tempted to accuse him of sophistry. Objection 6 covers my principle objection to the use of UAVs; it lowers the threshold for what counts as a just war (jus ad bellum) action. Below is his summary of the objection and response.

“Hence, although it is certainly possible that use of UAVs could lower the costs of going to war for a given state and, thereby, lower the threshold for going to war such that a state might have an increased likelihood of engaging in a war that is unjust, such predictions cannot be the basis for demanding an intentional violation of PUR given our present epistemic limitations.” (361)

 The author’s rebuttal shifts the focus of moral concern to what is owed the offensive combatant per the “PUR” principle (protect our soldiers), and not the societal and political issues of lowering the threshold. Not only does he shift the focus, from one issue to another, but he assumes that we would seek the same war action regardless of the technology. That is, his PUR principle, upon which his defense of UAVs is based, only works assuming that we seek the same war actions regardless of technology.

In sum, the arguments for objection 6 are beside-the-point, on the edge of fallacious if not fully committed, because of the shifting of focus and assumptions. They do not address the core concerns of such objections, and thus the whole argument is also implicitly a straw man argument, because the author posits that the objectors share the same assumptions, but they do not; the argument would be successful if they did.

CFP: THE SOCIETY FOR GERMAN IDEALISM

THE SOCIETY FOR GERMAN IDEALISM

Call for Papers

The Society for German Idealism will meet at the APA Pacific Division.

Papers must not exceed a length of 3000 words. Include the following ten items:

(1) word count -- 3000 words maximum!
(2) author's name
(3) academic status (professor, unaffiliated, graduate student)
(4) highest earned degree (BA, MA, PhD)
(5) institutional affiliation (if any)
(6) mailing address
(7) email address
(8) telephone number
(9) the paper's title
(10) an abstract -- 100 words maximum!

Include this information in the body of your email and on the first
page of your paper.

No more than one submission by the same author will be considered.

Email a copy of your paper, as an attachment, in Microsoft Word
(.doc), Rich Text Format (.rtf), or Adobe Portable Document Format
(.pdf) to idealism@lclark.edu.
Label your attachment as follows:
YourLastName_YourFirstName -- for example, Hegel_Georg.doc

Papers must be received by SEPTEMBER 1.

Papers will be reviewed by a committee. Three papers will be selected
for presentation, and each paper will have a commentator.
Notification of acceptance will be made via email in October.
Submissions whose authors cannot be contacted through email will be
rejected.

If you would like to serve as a commentator, please email
idealism@lclark.edu by September 15.


http://legacy.lclark.edu/~idealism/SGI.html has more information about
The Society for German Idealism.

Pragmatism and Existential Philosophy

I translated an article by Hans Lipps that discusses the relationship of pragmatism and existential philosophy, including Heidegger. It might be of interest to readers, and is available here in the Journal of French and Francophone Philosophy.


Abstract
Hans Lipps compares pragmatism (William James and John Dewey) existentialism (Friedrich Nietzsche, Soren Kierkegaard, and Martin Heidegger) in this 1936 article translated from French. He claims that they aim at the same goals, e.g., a return to lived experience and a rejection of the Cartesian legacy in philosophy. While summarizing the commonalities of each, he engages in a polemic against philosophy then that remains relevant now into the next century.

Is Abduction a Transcendental Method?

Is abduction a transcendental method? It can be construed as such, and I occassionally refer to it in that way, but that misses the core of abduction.

If "transcendental" means "arguing from a fact to the conditions of the possibility of that fact"--what must be true for this to occur--then abduction can be understood to be "transcendental." However, that is not the core of Peirce's intention or even more so how its used, because that ignores temporality. Abduction proposes a hypothesis given some facts understood to be evidence, and the hypothesis is true if it allows for the prediction and control of later events and facts. Let me phrase abduction in terms of how it is used to combat modern epistemology.

 In short and in Humean terminology, pragmatists no longer say, in a strict sense, that the thing causes the idea and the idea is like the thing, because you cannot beat Hume that way. Instead, we say that an idea is "true" if having and acting on the idea allows us to predict and control the flow of further ideas (experiences). This is abduction, the heart of scientific method, only it forms the basis of a theory of meaning and a phenomenology. However, unlike Hume and the whole modern tradition including Kant, we don't drink the Cartesian Kool-Aid and presume that the mind is radically separate from the body or the world. Hence, we shift the idea of knowledge from correspondence and related issues of representation to semiotics and how to represent ideas such that we can predict and control further experiences. However, the ideas have a real relation to the world even if it is neither direct causation nor representation; they cannot fail to be real without invoking solipsism or paradoxes. In this way we respond to Kant, a topic that I have discussed in more detail previously.

Perhaps you see how this relates to temporality. If an idea is true insomuch as an anticipated future occurs, and we say that reflective thought is abduction (literally), then knowledge and temporality are irreducible in any account of truth, knowledge, meaning, inquiry, etc. Transcendental method does not have this relationship to time.

Leon of After Nature asked me this question, and I thought that I would roll in a few other things while responding.