Although pragmatists mostly reject relativism, they are often accused of it, not least because of their avowed "pluralism," a position that originates in James's A Pluralistic Universe, Varieties of Religious Experience and Pragmatism. Pluralism runs through the work of contemporary neopragmatism, for example in Nelson Goodman’s "The Way the World Is" (1960), where he states that "the world is many ways." Goodman does not embrace an indiscriminate relativism: there are many ways the world is not. But he denies that there is just one way (for example that of some "completed" science) that the world is.
We will begin the week by discussing Goodman's paper, a section of Putnam's The Many Faces of Realism, and Isaiah Berlin's "Herder and the Enlightenment." Berlin contrasts the Enlightenment view that all genuine questions have one true answer and that these answers form a unified system of "timeless truths" with a contrary pluralistic tradition in Giambattista Vico and Johann Gottfried von Herder, according to which there is a multiplicity of "equally valid" but incompatible ideals.
On Thursday and Friday, Maria Baghramian, of University College, Dublin, will join us. She is the author of Relativism (Routledge, 2004) and Hilary Putnam: Language, Mind and the World, (Blackwell, 2007), and the editor of Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity (Routledge, 2000).
On Thursday, she will lead us in considering some of the main types of pluralism: conceptual, epistemological, and normative.
On Friday, we will focus on the tensions between pluralistic views of knowledge, values, and conceptual frameworks, and the perceived need for a univocal account of truth, paying particular attention to John McDowell's critique of Richard Rorty.
Readings:
Selections from Maria Baghramian and Attracta Ingram, eds., Pluralism: The Philosophy and Politics of Diversity;
Isaiah Berlin, "Herder and the Enlightenment," in Vico and Herder, and "The Pursuit of the Ideal," in The Crooked Timber of Humanity;
William James, selections from A Pluralistic Universe, The Varieties of Religious Experience, and Pragmatism;
John McDowell, "Towards Rehabilitating Objectivity," in Robert Brandom, ed., Rorty and His Critics.
Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5
To receive more detailed information on the seminar review this website. You may also write: pragma@unm.edu.
We look forward to responding to your interest and seeing you here!
Pragmatism: A Living Tradition
Russell B. Goodman, Project Director
pragma@unm.edu
