Women in Pragmatism: Past, Present and Future

This book offers a selection of the papers of the Women in Pragmatism International Conference held at the University of Barcelona in January 2020. The conference gathered women and non-binary scholars from twelve different countries. This was the first pragmatist conference organized entirely by women and non-binary persons. It has initiated a stable network of mentoring and support analogous to other women philosophers’ organizations. The book provides paths to reconstruct the roots of pragmatism, integrating the works of women pragmatists of the past and linking them to the current developments of feminist and pragmatist topics. Scholars of different countries, status, and backgrounds serve as a powerful example of the trend toward interdisciplinary cooperation and versatility we might expect for the future of pragmatism. The book is of interest for scholars interested in both pragmatism and feminism, from various perspectives ranging from psychology to semiotics, logic, and sociology, wishing to expand their horizons and understand their relevant interactions.

 

Introduction: Women in Pragmatism: Past, Present and Future.- I. PAST: THE RECOVERY OF THE CLASSICS.- 1 The Growth of Feminist Pragmatism through Cooperative Intelligence.- 2 Unconventional legacy in American Psychology of Self: William James and Mary Whiton Calkins.- 3 Christine Ladd and the form of syllogisms.- 4 Transformative experience and the art of emancipation.- 5 Instigators of Experimental Artwork: Resonances of Jane Addams in arts education.- 6 On Sense, Meaning, and Responsibility. Contributions from Victoria Welby’s Significs.- 7 The educational meaning of children’s play: A comparative study of the Philosophy of Education of J. Addams and N. Noddings.- 8 Looking for pragmatist roots of degrowth ideas: Jane Addams, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Caroline Bartlett Crane.- 9 Towards a pragmatist and feminist theory of oppression: thoughts on gender, race and class.- 10 Pragmatist Feminists as the Conscience of the U.S.: Minding the Social Fabric, 1900’s – 2020.- II. PRESENT: CONTRIBUTIONS TO CURRENT PRAGMATIST DEBATES.- 11 Reason, Truth, and Counterexample.- 12 Pragrammatology: pragmatism after deconstruction.- 13 Reading and interpreting ancient and classical corpus. A discussion concerning linguistics and neopragmatism.- 14 From individuality to personhood in Dewey’s later works.- 15 Blurring the Differences between Hegel and Wittgenstein: a Response to Robert Brandom.- 16 Different forms of inescapability of norms: Brandom, Ramberg, and Rorty on causality and normativity.- 17 Where are ethical properties? Representationalism, Expressivism and Category Mistakes.- 18 Ethnocentrism without relativism? Taking Rorty at face-value.- 19 Holding a world in common: epistemic pluralism and objectivity in pragmatist feminism.- III. FUTURE: INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES.- 20 Sarah Aline Wellan (Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany): Pragmatism andscientific perspectivism.- 21 The Pragmatist Foundations of Philosophy for Children and the Education of Reasonableness.- 22 The educational value of “mental non resistance” and “understanding” to foster intellectual and social life. A lesson from Jane Addams.- 23 Playing between the Fabrics. The roots of the Playground Movement and the actual configuration of the cities.- 24 Towards pragmatist forms of political engagements in architecture.- 25 Teaching Philosophy in Aesthetic Environments: From M. Greene's Blue Guitar lessons to the Picasso Museum of Barcelona.- 26 My Dear Lady Welby: A Peircean-Welby Semiotic Framework for Multicultural and Feminist Understandings of Gulf-Arab Women’s Social Media Practices.

Núria Sara Miras Boronat is Associate Professor in Moral and Political Philosophy at the University of Barcelona. In 2009 she obtained her PhD in Philosophy at the University of Barcelona with a thesis on Wittgenstein and Gadamer: Language, Praxis, and Reason. She has been Visiting Scholar at the Center for the History of Women Philosophers and Scientists at the University of Paderborn (2021-2022), Visiting Lecturer at the University of Parma (2020), Postdoctoral Research Fellow and Associate Instructor at the Universität Leipzig (2009–13), Guest Research Fellow at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2003–7) and Guest Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, 2000). She has written essays on pluralism, philosophy of language, hermeneutics, phenomenology, American pragmatism, philosophy of film and feminism.

 

Michela Bella is Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Molise, and Honorary Research Associate in the Department of Science and Technology Studies at the University College London. In 2015, she received her binationally supervised PhD in philosophy from the University of Roma Tre and the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. She has been Postdoctoral Researcher at the Universities of Nantes and LeMans (2018/2019). She is the author of Ontology After Philosophical Psychology. The Continuity of Consciousness in William James’s Philosophy of Mind (Lexington 2019). She published articles and chapters on American pragmatism and the philosophy of mind