Chapter INTRODUCTION Charles Sanders Peirce is quickly becoming the dominant figure in the history of American philosophy. The breadth and depth of his work...

The American thinker Charles Sanders Peirce, best known as the founder of pragmatism, has been influential not only in the pragmatic tradition but more recently in the philosophy of science and the study of semiotics, or sign theory. Strands of System provides an accessible overview of Peirce's systematic philosophy for those who are beginning to explore his thinking and its import for more recent trends in philosophy.

Library of Living Philosophers volume on Hilary Putnam with critical essays, Putnam's autobiography and his replies.

This textbook offers a unique and accessible approach to ethical decision-making for practicing pharmacists and student pharmacists. Unlike other texts, it gives clear guidance based on the fundamental principles of moral philosophy, explaining them in simple language and illustrating them with abundant clinical examples and case studies. The strength of this text is in its emphasis on normative ethics and critical thinking, and that there is truly a best answer in the vast majority of cases, no matter how complex. The (...) authors place high trust in a pharmacist’s moral judgment. This teaches the reader how to think, based on ethical principles, not necessarily what to think. This means navigating between the two extremes of overly theoretical and excessively prescriptive. The cogent framework given in this text uses the language of competing duties, identifying the moral principles at stake that create duties for the pharmacist. This is the balancing act of normative ethics, and of deciding which duties should prevail in a given clinical situation. This work presents a clear-cut pathway for resolving ethical dilemmas encountered by pharmacists, based on foundational principles and critical thinking. Presents a clear-cut pathway for resolving the ethical dilemmas encountered by pharmacists, based on foundational principles and critical thinking. Jon E. Sprague, RPh, PhD, Director of Science and Research for the Ohio Attorney General. (shrink)

In this engaging book, Douglas Anderson begins with the assumption that philosophy—the Greek love of wisdom—is alive and well in American culture. At the same time, professional philosophy remains relatively invisible. Anderson traverses American life to find places in the wider culture where professional philosophy in the distinctively American tradition can strike up a conversation. How might American philosophers talk to us about our religious experience, or political engagement, or literature—or even, popular music? Anderson’s second aim is to find places (...) where philosophy happens in nonprofessional guises—cultural places such as country music, rock’n roll, and Beat literature. He not only enlarges the tradition of American philosophers such as John Dewey and William James by examining lesser-known figures such as Henry Bugbee and Thomas Davidson, but finds the theme and ideas of American philosophy in some unexpected places, such as the music of Hank Williams, Tammy Wynette, and Bruce Springsteen, and the writingsof Jack Kerouac.The idea of “philosophy Americana” trades on the emergent genre of “music Americana,” rooted in traditional themes and styles yet engaging our present experiences. The music is “popular” but not thoroughly driven by economic considerations, and Anderson seeks out an analogous role for philosophical practice, where philosophy and popular culture are co-adventurers in the life of ideas. Philosophy Americana takes seriously Emerson’s quest for the extraordinary in the ordinary and James’s belief that popular philosophy can still be philosophy. (shrink)

The contributors to Pragmatism and the Philosophy of Sport argue that American pragmatism is particularly well suited analyze the experience and development of sport activities. This volume will be a valuable resource in any philosophy of sport class or in a course on pragmatism; it will also be appropriate for kinesiology students. It will give readers a good sense of the themes in the American philosophical tradition as well as those in the burgeoning field of the philosophy of sport.

This article examines peirce's technical use of metaphor. in doing so it looks at certain aspects of his semiotics and, in particular, his division of signs into icons, indexes, and symbols. the upshoot is that, for peirce, metaphor plays a central role in artistic thought while analogy is central to scientific thought.

Drawing on Charles Peirce’s descriptions of his correspondence course on the “Art of Reasoning,” I argue that Peirce believed that the study of logic stands at the center of a liberal arts education. However, Peirce’s notion of logic included much more than the traditional accounts of deduction and syllogistic reasoning. He believed that the art of reasoning required a study of both abductive and inductive inference as well the practice of observation and imagination. Employing these other features of logic, his (...) course foreshadowed a number of developments in twentieth century educational theory: the belief that non-traditional students should be educated, the claim that the art of reasoning was important to all theoretical practices, and that the art of reasoning was important to the overall growth of a person. The upshot is that Peirce’s course in the art of reasoning should make us reconsider making logic courses, under Peirce’s broad conception of logic, required courses in high school and higher education. (shrink)

The essays in this book have grown out of conversations between the authors and their colleagues and students over the last decade and a half.

This collection provides a thorough grounding in the philosophy of American pragmatism by examining the views of four principal thinkers - Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead - on issues of central and enduring importance to life in human society. Pragmatism emerged as a characteristically American response to an inheritance of British empiricism. Presenting a radical reconception of the nature of experience, pragmatism represents a belief that ideas are not merely to be contemplated but must (...) be put into action, tested and refined through experience. At the same time, the American pragmatists argued for an emphasis on human community that would offset the deep-seated American bias in favor of individualism. Far from being a relic of the past, pragmatism offers a dynamic and substantive approach to questions of human conduct, social values, scientific inquiry, religious belief, and aesthetic experience that lie at the center of contemporary life. This volume is an invaluable introduction to a school of thought that remains vital, instructive, and provocative. (shrink)

Each volume in the Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy examines the fundamental ideas of a single philosopher, presenting one basic text by the thinker in question, and supplementing this by “a very thorough and up-to-date commentary.” The format is most successful when a reasonably short classic work containing the subject’s most important claims can be found. We might expect it to work much less well with a thinker like Peirce, serious study of whose work cannot avoid (...) taking seriously a large number of different papers and lectures: good reasons can be found for regarding any selection of a basic text unsatisfactory. It is thus a pleasure to report that Douglas Anderson met this challenge with considerable success. The commentary is of very high quality; and his choice of texts, although initially surprising, works very well. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: A Method of Inquiry Doubt, Intuition, and Certainty Peirce's Reconstruction of the “method for guiding one's reason” A Transformed Ontology.

SUMMARYThis paper discusses the scientific instruments made and used by the microscopist Antony van Leeuwenhoek. The immediate cause of our study was the discovery of an overlooked document from the Delft archive: an inventory of the possessions that were left in 1745 after the death of Leeuwenhoek's daughter Maria. This list sums up which tools and scientific instruments Leeuwenhoek possessed at the end of his life, including his famous microscopes. This information, combined with the results of earlier historical research, gives (...) us new insights about the way Leeuwenhoek began his lens grinding and how eventually he made his best lenses. It also teaches us more about Leeuwenhoek's work as a surveyor and a wine gauger.A further investigation of the 1747 sale of Leeuwenhoek's 531 single lens microscopes has not only led us to the identification of nearly all buyers, but also has provided us with some explanation about why only a dozen of this large number of microscopes has survived. (shrink)

In 1905 William James wrote an essay in McClure's Magazine recalling the importance to his own work of the Scottish-born philosopher Thomas Davidson. In the essay, James states that Davidson was "essentially a teacher." What is interesting when one looks at Davidson's life and work is that, for Davidson, teaching does seem to be an essential feature of what it means to be a philosopher. Here, I develop how Davidson construes this linking of philosophy and teaching with a concluding emphasis (...) on the two schools he established: Glenmore, a summer philosophy program in the Adirondacks and the "Breadwinners' College," an open school he began for working persons in New York City. I offer this as a discussion paper so that James's recollection of Davidson's importance to his own work may provoke us to consider how we presently understand the linking of teaching and philosophy. This seems especially appropriate for an academic culture such as ours in which much of our time is spent teaching and in which we are often primarily evaluated by a separate category of professional "research." The American tradition has "lost" any number of its important.. (shrink)

The first six chapters of our text laid the ethical foundations for modern pharmacy practice. We considered fundamental ethical theories as well as competing ideas of human value. We then reviewed clinical ethics in historical context, beginning with the ancient traditions of the Hippocratic Oath, to which we added the eighteenth century principle of autonomy. Our historical analysis then examined some terrible departures from these standards in the twentieth century, including the flawed pseudo-science of eugenics and the horrific excesses of (...) Nazi medicine. We concluded the opening chapters by looking at the Tuskegee syphilis trials and the Willowbrook hepatitis study, abuses that both helped to provide the impetus for the 1979 Belmont Code and the development of modern institutional review boards. We now conclude this foundational section with the tenets of pharmacy professionalism, as exemplified in the Ethics Code of the American Pharmacists Association (APhA). Later chapters will then lead us into practical matters in the form of issues and cases. (shrink)

Having introduced the major ethical theories, we now turn to a discussion of human value. Why should pharmacists and pharmacy students care about this historical debate? The reason is simple: the pharmacy profession is relational. Recent surveys have consistently shown that students enter the pharmacy profession for two main reasons: they love the sciences, and they want to work with people (Hanna et al. 2016; Willis et al. 2006; Keshishian 2010; Capstick et al. 2007). To a substantial degree, people are (...) at the heart of the profession; relating to others and helping them with their healthcare needs is a primary motivator. In this chapter, we will discuss the importance of clear and accurate thinking about the value of people. We will present two possible ways of defining such value, as well as two competing definitions of human dignity. This approach will help the reader better understand how the framing of such ideas affects historical ethical controversies, especially at the beginning of life. (shrink)

So far, this text has presented the foundational principles of pharmacy ethics, followed by clinical applications in a variety of domains: reproductive ethics, end-of-life, conscience claims, vaccines, pandemics, and community pharmacies. It is now time for you, the reader, to begin integrating these concepts into your own clinical and academic work, to help you navigate ethical practice in your day-to-day professional life.

So far, this text has examined the foundations of ethical practice in history and professionalism. We then considered several specific topics: reproductive ethics, end of life, and conscience rights. This chapter will focus on certain specific additional topics not previously discussed. We’ll begin with the fascinating subject of vaccines and their ethical controversies. We’ll then discuss ethical controversies arising during a pandemic crisis, followed by the ethics of unproven treatments.

In the previous chapter, our discussion centered on the Hippocratic principles that undergird modern medical principlism, namely beneficence, non-maleficence, distributive justice, and the more recent idea of personal autonomy, which comes from the eighteenth century. As these theoretical concepts are translated into clinical practice, they retain their influence on clinical decision-making and informed consent. From its earliest beginnings, Hippocratism has always warranted a well-founded and beneficent intent to provide medical treatments to all patients, even when those patients were slaves or (...) other minorities (part of the definition of distributive justice). But economic and social pressures in the late nineteenth century began to erode this default commitment to equality and justice, which became very evident through a pseudoscientific movement called eugenics. (shrink)

We turn now from the beginning of life and reproductive ethics to the other end of the spectrum, when physical life nears its conclusion. The care of terminal patients is often complicated and ethically challenging, as the focus of the healthcare interaction must necessarily change from cure to comfort.

Any study of professional ethics must begin with the basics, so this chapter will open with the question, “What is ethics?” The word ethics is a generic term that could mean many things but generally refers to the study of principles of right and wrong behavior (Fieser 2018). A synonym for ethics is moral philosophy. As a discipline, moral philosophy is broken down into three branches: meta-ethics, normative ethics, and applied or professional ethics. Meta-ethics is the study of how moral (...) philosophy is defined, examining such moral concepts as right, wrong, justice, etc. Normative ethics consists of commonly-held principles or theories that can be used by everyone. Applied or professional ethics takes ethical principles and puts them to work. In our case, this will be the realm of pharmacy ethics (Fieser 2018). (shrink)

Our last chapter focused on time-honored ethical standards for ethics at the end of life. We now turn to some much more controversial concerns: assisted suicide and pharmacist participation in lethal injection.

No historical account of healthcare ethics can fail to mention the enormous influence of Hippocrates on the practice of modern medicine. The ancient Hippocratic Oath, written either by the great doctor himself or his followers, is relatively short. Still, it contains three of the four core ethical tenants found in medical principlism, the modern standard for healthcare ethics. The principles are beneficence, non-maleficence, distributive justice, and autonomy. We briefly mentioned these in Chap. 2, but we will now define and discuss (...) each in turn (Beauchamp and Childress 2019). (shrink)

Having examined foundational principles, specific issues, and practical case scenarios, we now turn to the future. In this final chapter, we will consider some vexing modern questions from the arena of genetics. We will then conclude by mentioning a few newer issues that have not yet received a thorough analysis and close with a challenge to the reader.

Ethics in Pharmacy Practice: A Practical Guide offers a unique and accessible approach to ethical decision-making for practicing pharmacists and student pharmacists. Unlike other texts, it gives clear guidance based on the fundamental principles of moral philosophy, explaining them in simple language and illustrating them with abundant clinical examples and case studies. The strength of this text is in its emphasis on normative ethics and critical thinking, that there is truly a best answer in the vast majority of cases, no (...) matter how complex. The authors place high trust in a pharmacist’s moral judgment. The goal is to teach the reader how to think, based on ethical principles, not necessarily what to think. This means navigating between the two extremes of overly theoretical and excessively prescriptive. The cogent framework given in this text uses the language of competing duties, identifying the moral principles at stake that create duties for the pharmacist. This is the balancing act of normative ethics, and of deciding which duties should prevail in a given clinical situation. Ethics in Pharmacy Practice: A Practical Guide presents a clear-cut pathway for resolving ethical dilemmas encountered by pharmacists, based on foundational principles and critical thinking. (shrink)

As we saw in the preceding chapter, the highly questionable theory of eugenics began to fall out of favor in the United States in the 1930s, for two main reasons: (1) the increasing scientific sophistication of genetics made previous eugenics assumptions untenable, and (2) the terrible abuses of the Nazis cast a moral cloud over eugenic philosophy. However, the movement left behind many subtle social attitudes and biases. It helped to strengthen a strong undercurrent of racism and classism that had (...) long existed in the U.S. since the Civil War and had persisted in the aftermath of World War I. These attitudes would not be completely and publically revealed until the middle of the twentieth century and the civil rights movement. This chapter will discuss key examples of research abuses during the 20th century, and the Belmont Report that eventually arose as a result. (shrink)

To read any book by Paul Weiss is to enter into an ongoing philosophical discussion. Emphatics is no exception. Here Weiss takes up some issues from previous work but from a new angle of vision. Much of what he says also moves beyond the content of earlier writings, which is as it should be. "A creative, systematic philosopher," Weiss says, "is somewhat like a poet rewriting a long poem, preserving some parts of earlier versions in later ones. What has been (...) done is not invalidated, but moved beyond" (37). Another characteristic Weissian feature marks Emphatics: it is difficult to read. The ideas themselves are difficult, and Weiss doesn't go out of his way to coddle his reader. Serving as... (shrink)

Peirce's cosmogony involves an apparent tension concerning the statusof initial ideas. They appear both dependent and independent. Peirce appears to resolve this tension, maintaining elements of both his realism and his idealism in his cosmogony, by asserting that God serves as a necessary condition for the reality of the initial ideas and by holding, through his agapasticism, that the ideas, as firsts, retain an element of spontaneity or freedom. From another angle, it is plausible to suggest that for Peirce God (...) functions as a continuum of other continua. Such a view allows Peirce to understand evolutionas a developmental teleology in which both order and spontaneity playsignificant roles. (shrink)

This volume consists of an intellectual autobiography by world-renowned philosopher Hilary Putnam, 26 critical or descriptive essays, 26 replies by Arthur C. Danto, and a bibliography listing all of Putnam's published writings.

The task at hand is to review work on the history of early American pragmatism from the last ten years. However, writing on the history of pragmatism presents us with a different problem than, say, dealing with historical accounts of Mill’s Logic. The meaning of ‘pragmatism’ is routinely contested and, likewise, who is to count as a pragmatist is contested. The issue, of course, arose soon after William James named “pragmatism” in his 1898 talk at Berkeley titled “Philosophical Conceptions and (...) Practical Results.” The discussions of pragmatism that ensued in journals soon thereafter marked James, Charles Peirce, John Dewey, and F. C. S. Schiller as pragmatists. There were, as well, a number of “friends” of pragmatism such as Addison Moore. There were also clear-cut opponents of pragmatism including the likes of Paul Carus and James E. Creighton. But issues quickly muddied the waters. American idealist Josiah Royce, objecting to what he took to be the intellectually loose Jamesian-Schillerian strand of pragmatism, named them ‘pure pragmatists’, and then... (shrink)

Truth, Rationality, and Self-Control incorporates work from seven previously published essays and five chapters of new material. Sometimes collections of this sort lack continuity. This is not the case with Hookway’s text. With only a few minor exceptions, the essays work well together, developing ideas in increments as the text unfolds. Although Hookway offers no single theme as the book’s project, his decision to focus on Charles Peirce’s notions of truth, rationality, and pragmatism indicates an investigation of Peirce’s overall approach (...) to inquiry. Specifically, he attends to all the features of human experience, from instinctive beliefs to logical constraints, that make scientific inquiry possible. What gives the book a feel of coherence and presence are Hookway’s persistence and penetrating style. He carefully pursues Peirce’s ideas among the manuscripts and published texts to find reasonable interpretations of even the most perplexing issues. (shrink)