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Nick Gall
Nick Gall

504 Followers

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Sep 14

Dewey’s Bewildering Anti-Melioristic Backsliding: Scientific Inquiry is Only Justified by a Remote Asymptotic Ideal of Complete Agreement

It’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 Dewey

3 min read

Dewey’s Bewildering Anti-Melioristic Backsliding: Scientific Inquiry is Only Justified by a Remote…
Dewey’s Bewildering Anti-Melioristic Backsliding: Scientific Inquiry is Only Justified by a Remote…
John Dewey

3 min read


Jul 17

Aspiring to Novel Values

I 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…

Hope

12 min read

Aspiring to Novel Values
Aspiring to Novel Values
Hope

12 min read


Nov 17, 2022

Reestablishing The Elpistikoi: Philosophers of Hope

I 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…

Philosophy

5 min read

Reestablishing The Elpistikoi: Philosophers of Hope
Reestablishing The Elpistikoi: Philosophers of Hope
Philosophy

5 min read


Nov 10, 2022

A Matrix of Hopes

This is my response to the following Twitter thread:

Hope

4 min read

A Matrix of Hopes
A Matrix of Hopes
Hope

4 min read


Nov 9, 2022

Your 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 read

1 min read


Nov 8, 2022

The Inspiration of Philosophy

This essay is my response to the following Twitter thread:

Religion

3 min read

The Inspiration of Philosophy
The Inspiration of Philosophy
Religion

3 min read


Sep 9, 2022

Rorty’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 Rorty

6 min read

Rorty’s sublime
Rorty’s sublime
Richard Rorty

6 min read


Jul 22, 2022

Historical Relativism

This 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 Rorty

4 min read

Historical Relativism
Historical Relativism
Richard Rorty

4 min read


Jun 6, 2022

Our ultimate moral duty
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Nick Gall

I 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 read

1 min read


Apr 20, 2022

Dewey’s evolutionary non-cumulative, retrospective meliorism

This 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…

Dewey

20 min read

Dewey’s evolutionary non-cumulative, retrospective meliorism
Dewey’s evolutionary non-cumulative, retrospective meliorism
Dewey

20 min read

Nick Gall

Nick Gall

504 Followers

I am an Ironist: http://wikiwand.com/en/Ironism . I am a Rorty stan. More contact info: about.me/ironick .

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