Scientific and not Scientistic: the Rich Realism of Pragmatism

Journal title RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA
Author/s Giovanni Maddalena
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/3 Language English
Pages 14 P. 401-414 File size 16295 KB
DOI 10.3280/SF2017-003003
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In the late years, contemporary philosophy turned towards different forms of realism. Classic pragmatism becomes important again because it can grant a realism respectful of both science and common sense. However, the meaning of realism in a pragmatist perspective is not always clear. A fashionable transcendental reading of pragmatism often reduces it to a chapter of the rationalist project that goes from Kant to analytic philosophy or to a plausible amendment of the latter. Eventually, pragmatist defense of science becomes a cultural support of a neo-scientist version of science. This interpretation loses the originality of pragmatism and its revolutionary look at the contemporary enterprise of thought. The paper shows that classic pragmatists proposed a very peculiar kind of realism that is completely at odd with any sort of scientism as much as it is in favor of the real process of scientific inquiry. The paper clarifies the distance between pragmatism and scientism (I), the kind of realism advocated by classic pragmatists - in particular by Peirce - (II), and a different view of science that follows this realism (III).

Keywords: Realism, science, scientism, Peirce, analysis, synthesis.

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  • Charles S. Peirce e la teoria dell'evoluzione di Darwin: alcune osservazioni su un possibile fraintendimento Claudio Davini, in RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA 2/2021 pp.221
    DOI: 10.3280/SF2021-002002
  • Two Neglected Arguments for a Pragmatist Metaphysics: Peirce and James on Individuals and Generals Michela Bella, Maria Regina Brioschi, in RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA 3/2022 pp.511
    DOI: 10.3280/SF2022-003010
  • Semiotics and the Something Rossella Fabbrichesi, in European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy /2018
    DOI: 10.4000/ejpap.1151
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  • Charles S. Peirce and the Struggle Against Cartesian Scepticism. How the Doubt-­Belief Dialectic Can Help Us Ignore the Possibility of a Wholesale Deception Claudio Davini, in RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA 2/2023 pp.213
    DOI: 10.3280/SF2023-002002

Giovanni Maddalena, Scientific and not Scientistic: the Rich Realism of Pragmatism in "RIVISTA DI STORIA DELLA FILOSOFIA" 3/2017, pp 401-414, DOI: 10.3280/SF2017-003003