Sep 14Dewey’s Bewildering Anti-Melioristic Backsliding: Scientific Inquiry is Only Justified by a Remote Asymptotic Ideal of Complete AgreementIt’s hard for me not to feel a bit dismayed and disappointed when one of my favorite philosophers says something that seems to undermine what I understand as their philosophical worldview. It happened with Richard Rorty and I wrote about it in my essay, Rorty’s Bewildering Platonic Backsliding: Truth Claims…John Dewey3 min readJohn Dewey3 min read
Jul 17Aspiring to Novel ValuesI just finished Agnes Callard’s excellent book, Aspiration: The Agency of Becoming. And I wholeheartedly support her call to action: My hope, then, is that this book will generate energy and optimism and good faith toward the construction of ethical theories (of decision, psychological conflict, and responsibility) that comfortably accommodate…Hope12 min readHope12 min read
Nov 17, 2022Reestablishing The Elpistikoi: Philosophers of HopeI am beside myself with joy at having stumbled across a group of ancient philosophers known as the Elpistikoi or the Elpistics. Elpis is the Greek word that roughly overlaps with the English word hope. Hence, one could translate the Elpistikoi as the Hopefulists. I stumbled across a mention of…Philosophy5 min readPhilosophy5 min read
Nov 10, 2022A Matrix of HopesThis is my response to the following Twitter thread:Hope4 min readHope4 min read
Nov 9, 2022Your religious upbringing sounds terrible.Your religious upbringing sounds terrible. I'm happy to hear that you were able to leave it behind, but sad that you've no energy left for creating your own philosophy. I just wrote a two-part essay on the philosophies of hope of the group of philosophers known as Pragmatists. The one that comes closest to mine (which I am still developing) is Richard Rorty's, which I cover at the end of Part 2. I hope this helps.1 min read1 min read
Nov 8, 2022The Inspiration of PhilosophyThis essay is my response to the following Twitter thread:Religion3 min readReligion3 min read
Sep 9, 2022Rorty’s sublime[Edited: 2022–10–07 Major thanks to Paul Hunt for his comment, which triggered a significant edit to the tl;dr and the conclusion!] This is a quick summary of Rorty’s discussion of the sublime in his Preface to Pragmatism as Anti-Authoritarianism. It was sparked by this twitter thread: It’s fair to…Richard Rorty6 min readRichard Rorty6 min read
Jul 22, 2022Historical RelativismThis essay was sparked by this Twitter thread: [Sadly, I just discovered that one of the participants in the discussion deleted their account, and another deleted their tweets, so there’s only my replies left. NG 2022–12–05] I’m delighted two Rorty stans are disagreeing on a Rortian issue — it’s…Richard Rorty4 min readRichard Rorty4 min read
Jun 6, 2022Our ultimate moral duty523Nick GallI found another, early, Rorty passage regarding the 'point' of human existence.I found another, early, Rorty passage regarding the 'point' of human existence. It is a passage in "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" discussing the point of philosophy. But I think it can be fairly read more broadly: «To see keeping a conversation going as a sufficient aim of philosophy…1 min read1 min read
Apr 20, 2022Dewey’s evolutionary non-cumulative, retrospective meliorismThis is a slightly ordered collection of passages from The Good of Activity, Part Four, Section One, of John Dewey’s book Human Nature and Conduct. It was a revelation for me. I’d never seen such a sustained and evocative description of the kind of non-cumulative, retrospective meliorism that I am…Dewey20 min readDewey20 min read
