Browsing by Subject "Pragmatism"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Bartleby Goes to College: A Pragmatist Critique of Writing in Schools
    (2012-06) Williams, Matthew Clark
    Writing instruction, particularly at the post-secondary level, stands at a crossroads. Since the attainment of some level of post-secondary education has become a near mandatory requirement for participation in the contemporary economy, students increasingly describe their decision to go to college as a foregone conclusion. The university level first-year writing course, itself a traditional gate-keeper to post-secondary education, thus occupies a critical space at the confluence of these powerful and interrelated forces. Further, because of this alignment to the economic demands of college preparedness, most if not all levels of writing instruction will be affected in various ways. Unfortunately, these elements enter into a dangerous contradiction when the economic growth everything is predicated upon falters--precisely what has occurred during the "Great Recession" that started in 2007.Based on fieldwork conducted in a high school level college preparation writing class, this dissertation explores the consequences of these contradictions. In particular, this project starts with an observed phenomenon in the classroom in which many students simply "preferred not to" work on their writing assignments. Using this "Bartleby Syndrome" as a mechanism of problematizing the field of post-secondary writing instruction, this project builds a philosophical critique of the relationship between human action and the social, political, and economic environment in which students write. Central to this task is a reconsideration of what American Pragmatism, specifically John Dewey's work, can offer the field of composition. In doing so, this study not only offers a different perspective on some of composition's most vexing challenges, but also builds on the Pragmatist tradition to suggest ways the field of writing instruction can retain and revitalize its long standing project of expanding democracy in the United States.
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    The Commonwealth of Social Science: The American Social Science Association and a Pragmatist Politics of Expertise
    (2014-09) Anderson, Joshua
    Historians of the social sciences have noted that for the first generation of social scientists in the United States immediately after the Civil War, there was no distinction between politics and scholarship. While this equation has been understood either as an indication of the immaturity of the early social sciences or as a distinctive moment in time that has been lost to history, this dissertation argues that the political relevance of the social sciences does not rest exclusively in their direct advocacy work but in other activities such as constructing audiences to respond to their research and the manner in which that audience is engaged, terms on which the political relevance of the modern social sciences can be understood as well. Using the work of the classical pragmatists (Peirce, James, and Dewey) as an interpretive lens to study one early social scientific organization in particular, the American Social Science Association (ASSA), this dissertation urges an understanding of social scientific knowledge in terms of experiences that are worked upon by diverse audiences through a shared set of practices. Drawing on archives of ASSA documents at Yale University and a reading of the Journal of Social Science, the central claim of the dissertation is that the social sciences have been a political project from their beginning. Both pragmatism and the social sciences emerged at a moment in American history of great uncertainty as well as social and political change. To the degree that these conditions endure, so too do the underlying politics of the social sciences.
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    Divided Together: Traffic and Democratic Life in Bogotá
    (2017-06) Cesafsky, Laura
    The dissertation is based on 12 months of mixed-methods, qualitative research into the traffic problem in Bogotá, Colombia, and the ways that citizens and the local government have responded to it. It proposes an alternative—and more specifically, a philosophically pragmatic—reading of urban democracy that highlights different aspects of the ‘democratic question’ than do the political theories typically forwarded in critical urban geography: liberal and radical democratic theory. The dissertation argues that the ‘failure’ of political institutions to remedy traffic in Bogotá has left the problem to linger and nurture democratic life in the form of collaborative and contestatory public practice. Traffic’s hyper-presence as an engulfing, ‘lived’ environmental situation means that it is readily available to emergent subjects, publics and counter-publics as a living laboratory in which possibilities for engagement and activism are sustained. Moreover, because the mobility problem is an inescapable everyday reality even for elites, it forces Bogotanos into an antagonistic political situation that makes them grapple productively with their troubled togetherness. Although the ability to influence the mobility situation is by no means equal, I further argue that there is a notably accessible quality to traffic: it is an ‘issue’ that Bogotanos from all classes literally walk out into everyday and ‘make their voices heard’ in, in the sense that they can transform the common condition through deliberate action—and often to the frustration of elites who are trying to manage behavior in traffic in the service of their own interests. These arguments are inspired by the work of the American pragmatist John Dewey (1859-1952), the dissertation’s central philosophical interlocutor. Political democracy, for Dewey, is an inventive practice of taking care of the serious trouble in which strangers who do not share a way of life find themselves collectively implicated.
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    The Nature of Human Truths: The Pragmatism of FCS Schiller and Cognitive Science
    (2024-01) Tebbitt, Brian
    Over the past several decades, Cognitive Science has been experiencing a “pragmatic turn” as a result of philosophers within the field examining the literature of classical Pragmatism. One outgrowth of the current “turn” has been the development of various enactivist models of cognition and perception. In his 1990 book, The Fragmentation of Reason, philosopher and cognitive scientist Stephen Stich promotes the adoption of what he calls an “epistemic pragmatism” and arrives at the startling conclusion that truth and true beliefs have no value whatsoever, either intrinsic or instrumental. I understand Stich’s conclusion about truth to be motivated by what I refer to as a “predicament” (i.e. that traditional analytic approaches to evaluating beliefs are limited and idiosyncratic, their deployment ultimately resting on subjective intuitions) and an apparent “dilemma” (i.e. the perception that there is an essential and unavoidable bifurcation between truth and practical success). While I agree with the majority of Stich’s assessment of traditional analytic methods of cognitive evaluation, I take exception with his conclusion that truth and true beliefs have no value. Furthermore, I consider his “dilemma” to be false, or at least only applicable in a case where one accepts certain analytic notions of truth. Refuting Stich’s conclusion regarding the value of truth serves as the first aim of this project. The second aim (though it is perhaps more prominent throughout) regards the presentation of a pragmatic theory of truth from a prolific classical pragmatist philosopher, F.C.S. Schiller (b. 1864), a close friend and colleague of William James, whose work has gone largely unconsidered since his death in 1937. Schiller’s comprehensive and detailed account of truth dissolves the apparent horns of Stich’s “dilemma” and provides a strong basis for examining truth within the conceptual framework of enactivism. In presenting Schiller’s account of truth, I hope to further elucidate and strengthen the relationship between classical Pragmatism and Cognitive Science, while also contributing to the ongoing “turn” by presenting an approach to truth that fits within the broader enactivist paradigm. The three main chapters of this dissertation (2-4), present an overview of Schiller’s pragmatic understanding of metaphysics (2) and truth (3), offer various criticisms of at least one version of the correspondence theory of truth (3), and provide some answers to common objections raised against the pragmatic theory of truth (4), particularly its dimensions of relativity and subjectivity.
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    Pragmatic ecocriticism and equipments for living.
    (2010-02) Werner, Brett Alan
    Over the last two centuries, books by American nature writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, and John Muir have shaped individual behavior, inspired the creation of environmental organizations, and influenced public policy. Ecocritical scholars have shown how such texts encourage non-anthropocentric values and awareness of nature. Yet these classics of environmental literature, and subsequent ecocritical scholarship, have unintentionally promoted absolutist views of nature that entrench environmental conflicts and shut down communication, a problem rhetorical scholars call "ecospeak." In this dissertation I examine how writers might overcome ecospeak. I not only argue for alternative environmental narratives, but also propose a new approach to reading all environmental texts. I call this approach "pragmatic ecocriticism" as it draws significantly on John Dewey's philosophical pragmatism, by weakening dualist understandings such as that of "humans and nature"; by examining value pluralism; and by focusing on narratives in which writers make decisions and take action in the face of complex and uncertain social-environmental situations. Such a rhetorical approach draws heavily on Kenneth Burke's notion that literary texts serve as equipment for living through dramatic rehearsal's role in moral imagination. I examine whether and how three recent texts avoid the problem of ecospeak by offering more pragmatic narratives: The Pine Island Paradox by Kathleen Dean Moore (2004); Hunting for Hope by Scott Russell Sanders (1998); and Having Faith by Sandra Steingraber (2001). Although all of these books are part of the larger genre of environmental writing and literature, they pragmatically engage the complexity of contemporary social and environmental issues facing readers today. Moore links human-centered and nature-centered ethics and values in the context of decisions Moore encounters daily. Sanders emphasizes social hope and bounded conflict rather than despair and divisiveness in the face of social-environmental crisis. Steingraber addresses the relationship between human health and environmental pollution in the context of pregnancy and childbirth. As a result, these texts constitute a sub-genre of environmental writing, representing more pragmatic texts able to move beyond ecospeak and encourage readers to engage each other in more productive ways.
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    Pragmatic family life education: moving beyond the expert-based, content-driven model of serving families
    (2014-08) Hardman, Alisha Marie
    The field of family life education (FLE) is shifting from an expert-based, content-driven model of education that is rooted in a positivistic epistemology of practice to a more collaborative, strength-based model that integrates scientific knowledge from family sciences with the values and experiences of families in communities. This study employs John Dewey's version of pragmatism as the guiding epistemology of practice for this emerging approach to FLE. A pragmatic approach to FLE is proposed through a summary and synthesis of concepts derived from a variety of perspectives, disciplines and fields that comprise the overall conceptual framework, which is comprised of two parts. The first is the philosophical framework, which draws from three principal perspectives: (a) family science, (b) critical science, and (c) human ecology. The second is the practical framework, which extends Bronfenbrenner's (2001/2009) bioecological model of human development to inform the development of interventions aimed as families; integrates concepts from disciplines and fields such as: the attunement perspective, helping relationships, home economics, and positive psychology in order to inform strategies and approaches for outreach and engagement; and finally reviews principles central to the philosophy of education.The study employs a convergent, multi-level intervention mixed methods design and is based on the evaluation of an existing demonstration project entitled Co-Parent Court. The existing Co-Parent Court evaluation design utilized a quasi-experimental, randomized control group with a pre, post and follow-up survey. Co-Parent Court is used as a critical case to explore and examine the pragmatic model of FLE articulated in this study. Findings indicate that intervention parents were more likely to be doing well on several substantively significant dimensions of family well-being than those in the control group. Lessons learned regarding what worked and what did not work in the particular case of the Co-Parent Court project are discussed in order to ground the findings in the immediate programmatic context. Additionally, eight promising principles of a pragmatic approach to FLE were developed based on a triangulation of practitioner wisdom (stakeholder interviews) and social science theory (conceptual framework) in order to contribute knowledge to the field of FLE generally.