The Method of Tenacity and the Method of Science: Are They Really in Conflict?
Mauro Dorato

This paper wants to inquire into two different, apparently opposite ways of “fixing our beliefs”, one based on what Peirce called “the method of tenacity”, the second based on he referred to as the “method of science”. The former recommends to stick to our beliefs even in the face of assailing doubts, the latter suggests to submit them to a transcendent world order, independent of our thoughts and will. Within the former method, our desires and preference may overrule evidence. Within the latter, the main goal is to capture mind-independent regularities on which to base our conduct, and openness to revising our beliefs on the basis of evidence is the essential ingredient. The first method pushes toward a certain form of pragmatism, while the second toward naturalism. I will argue that despite the obvious contrasts, in the ethics of belief formation the two methods should coexist, as they do in decision theory. In order to argue for my case I will illustrate the importance of a pragmatic solution to the free-will determinism problem, often discussed in a purely metaphysical setting.

Integrative Pragmatism as Social Epistemology of Science
Melinda Fagan

I propose a way to integrate a controversial form of naturalized epistemology, socio-historical constructivism (e.g., Fleck 1979[1935]), and normative epistemology of science. This method of integrating disparate approaches to scientific knowledge is pragmatic in its focus on practice and empirical inquiry. Furthermore, results of its application resemble Peirce’s original pragmatic account of scientific beliefs. ‘Integrative pragmatism’ reconciles sociological and normative approaches to scientific knowledge by using the two approaches in concert within an inclusive social action framework. The end result is a normative ideal of scientific objectivity implicit in social interactions in scientific practice.

Deflationism, Pluralism, and Normativity
Paul Horwich

This paper represents the beginnings of an attempt to develop a neo-Wittgensteinian account of normative concepts (such as OUGHT, WRONG, JUSTIFIED, and OBLIGATORY). I can't claim that it articulates or elaborates what Wittgenstein actually says (or would have said) on the issues provoked by these notions. I don't know if or where he addresses them in his mature writings. But I do think that he might well have sympathized with the account I'll be suggesting, since it is the product of his central commitments. It comes from applying, to normative discourse, his deflationism about truth, his naturalistic conception of meaning as 'use', his conservative (non-revisionist) meta-philosophy, his pragmatist view of language as an instrument, and his pluralistic appreciation of the variety of functions and meanings (i.e. concepts) that it needs to encompass.

Pragmatism, Naturalism and Semantic Normativity
Henry Jackman

It has often been suggested that meaning is, in some important sense, normative. However, the normativity thesis, if true, would seem to rule out ‘use-based’ theories of meaning, and this might give the naturalist prima facie reason for being suspicious of the normativity thesis. That said, it will be argued here that the normativity thesis is on the right track, and that use-based theories can accommodate the normativity of meaning by allowing that while meaning supervenes upon use, the function from use to meaning is a normative one.

The Sky over Canberra
Andrew Jorgensen

I examine how someone who takes seriously the programme of conceptual analysis advocated by the Canberra School could minimise the eliminative consequences the Ramsey-Carnap-Lewis recipe of conceptual analysis is likely to have for many folk discourses. The objective is to find a stable means to preserve the constative appearance of folk discourse and to find it generally successful in its attempts to describe an external world, albeit in non-scientific terms that do not reflect the nature of things. The view I settle on, quasifictionalism, is modelled on a modified version of Kendall Walton’s account of prop-oriented games of make-believe.

Naturalism versus Pragmatism
Jonathan Knowles

In this paper, I explore the relationship between (epistemological) naturalism and pragmatism in the light of the fall of first philosophy and argue that the former is the preferable option. Naturalism proposes modern science as the fund of all true knowledge. At the same time, naturalism incorporates (following Hume and Quine) the permanent possibility that our scientific categories should turn out to be wildly out of kilter with objective reality (something it seems science itself could indicate). Further, our scientific belief system, though fundamental for us today in the West, is in principle and perhaps in practice only one legitimate doxastic option amongst many. Pragmatism does not want to deny humanity’s place in the natural world but it forswears ideas of ’belief systems’ and ’objective truth’, and thereby also scepticism and relativism – though not fallibilism. Spontaneous use of reason in the public sphere is the only ’unmoved mover’. I argue that this commitment is itself in tension with pragmatism’s otherwise broad acceptance of the scientific world-view. Furthermore, admitting fallibilism is at root indistinguisable from the Humean practical attitude towards knowledge. Nor can relativism and scientifically motivated scepticism be so easily shrugged off. Naturalism emerges as the more stable anti-foundational option.

Assertional Commitments as Normative Language-World Relations
Dominique Kuenzle

Pragmatist and inferentialist approaches to semantic content are best combined with a content-constitutive language-world relation, retaining a clear sense in which seemingly descriptive assertions are about the world, and thus blocking global expressivism. I will show, within a broadly Brandomian framework, how we can understand assertional commitments as commitments to extra-linguistic necessary permission conditions, and how this can be combined with a pragmatically underwritten inferentialist individuation of content.

Sellars’ Pragmatic Naturalism: Reasons, Causes, and the Janus-Faced Character of Language
Jim O’Shea

Wilfrid Sellars defended the irreducibility of the normative ‘space of reasons’ along lines that have recently beendeveloped in well known ways by Robert Brandom, John McDowell, and others. Sellars himself, however, simultaneously defendedan uncompromisingly comprehensivescientific naturalism in his ontology in ways that have been rejectedby the thinkers justmentioned. I will argue that what Sellars called “the Janus-faced character of languagingsas belonging to both the causal order and the order of reasons” is the key to understanding how he attempted to defend both the pragmatic irreducibility of the normative and an explanatorily reductionist scientific naturalism.

A Pragmatist Interpretation of the Science of Consciousness
Herman de Regt

The paper offers a pragmatist perspective on how to scientifically study consciousness in a “hybrid way” (using first and third person research) without manoeuvering ourselves into a position in which we must either deny the very possibility of a scientific explanation of consciousness, or accept the currently hybrid methodology of psychology as expressinga duality in the ontology of the world. The recent enactive mind approach is criticized and the paper then offers a revamped version of pragmatism in order to interpret psychology as a science of experience in which a scientific understanding of consciousness is possible.

Naturalism and Truth
Kevin Scharp

There are at least two major forms of naturalism—reductive and methodological. By far the most familiar is reductive; methodological naturalism as a distinct project receives very little attention. However, this paper explores the strategy of using measurement theory as a basis for methodological naturalistic projects. In particular, it considers a methodological naturalist theory of truth that is inspired by Davidson’s views on the role a theory of truth plays in a broader measurement theoretic account of rationality. Davidson has also been called a pragmatist by Rorty and others, so the discussion of Davidson’s views on truth provides an opportunity to investigate the relations between naturalism and pragmatism as they apply to theories of truth.

Pragmatism in Formal Modeling: Two Case Studies
Jan Sprenger

The interplay of pragmatic and epistemic goalsin experimental practice is a well known and thoroughly discussed issue in philosophy of science. Philosophers have, however, paid less attention to pragmatic elements in formal modeling. In order to close that gap, I present two case studies. One of them focuses on formal modeling in science (here: statistical model building), the other focuses on formal modeling in philosophy (here: models of judgment aggregation). This comparison helps us to see which kind of pragmatic considerations are typical of formal modeling in science and philosophy, respectively.

Scientific Representation: Against All Metaphysics
Mauricio Suárez

In this talk I expand on the inferential conception of scientific representation that I have developed elsewhere (Suárez, 2002, 2004). In particular I emphasise that on this conception representation is not identified with a relation between sources or targets, but with representational activities instead. Semantic notions are understood inferentially or in terms of a set of social commitments and entitlements regarding the representational force of sources in modeling contexts. Thus the inferential conception, as has been argued elsewhere, is suitably minimal: it avoids commitment to any metaphysics of the relation of representation. The inferential conception is then defended against some recent critics (French, 2003 and Contessa, 2007, both published in Philosophy of Science).

Simon’s Heuristics, Reliabilism and Habits
Konrad Talmont-Kaminski

Simon’s heuristics-based account of reasoning has been highly influential in a number of areas. In presenting reasoning as bounded, ecological and driven by satisficing it provides a well-developed pragmatist, naturalist account that is made all the more powerful by the detailed empirical work Simon has carried out. The usefulness of what Simon has wrought can be seen when his ideas are applied to Goldman’s reliabilism and to Hume’s habits – in both cases the accounts are significantly improved.

Naturalistic Epistemology and Priviliged Intuitions
Dorette van der Tholen

The results of recent experiments that have been performed on epistemic intuitions, imply that the philosophical method of conceptual analysis can have no normative force. In my paper, I will challenge these conclusions by showing, first, that abandoning the goal of normativity is not necessary in the face of disquieting experimental outcomes, and, second, that philosophy that utilizes experimental data in order to refute the normativity of conceptual analyis based on intuitions is a self-referentially incoherent philosophy.

Against Causal Objectivism: A Pragmatist Account of Two Concepts of Causation
Erik Weber and Leen de Vreese

In our talk we will argue against causal objectivism by demonstrating that only a pragmatist interpretation of causal concepts is viable. We will argue on the basis of two cases: a causal-mechanistic concept of causation and a probabilistic concept of causation. These two examples will ground our position, which might be called causally perspectivalistic. However, the defended position is causally perspectivalistic in a different way than Huw Price’s causal perspectivalism is. We defend a heterogeneous kind of causal perspectivalism, which is nonetheless compatible with Price’s homogeneous causal perspectivalism.

Pragmatists, Minimalism and Expressivism
Michael Williams

Although pragmatists tend to be sympathetic to expressivist accounts of certain vocabularies, it is not clear that they have any right to their sympathy. Expressivists take the edge off metaphysical problems-such as that of placing values in a world of fact--problems by arguing judgments can conform to the logical syntax of fully assertoric discourse but not be robustly representational. Thus although moral discourse is assertoric moral predicates do not get their meanings by referring to moral properties. Rather, moral judgments are ultimately expressive because more intimately related to decision and action than to belief. (Its ability to capture the motivational force of moral judgments makes moral expressivism plausible independently of its capacity to solve a placement problem.) But while it is not surprising that pragmatists should look kindly on such a view, which after all offers a local example of an anti-representationalist meaning-analysis, the question is whether expressivist insights survive the adoption of the global anti-representationalism to which pragmatists are committed. Expressivists say not: semantic minimalism elides the distinction between expressive and descriptive vocabularies, enforcing a “seamless” view of language. To meet this challenge, it is not sufficient to argue that global anti-representationalism permits some differentiation: that it tolerates “functional pluralism”, as Price says. What has to be shown is that the demarcation lines fall more or less where expressivists want to draw them, and for reasons having some connection with those that expressivists give. It is not obvious that this can be done, once explanatory uses of semantic concepts are off limits. Meeting this challenge to pragmatism requires detailed investigation of what it is to give an explanation of meaning in terms of use, as well as when and how such such explanations are minimalist or deflationary. Such an investigation allows us to see that the heart of so-called expressivist analyses of problematic forms of discourse are really better seen as minimalist or deflationary.

Epistemic Practices: An Inferentialist-Naturalist Approach
Jesús Zamora Bonilla

I propose a framework for the study of knowledge and action, inspired by the Sellarsian metaphor of rationality as the ability of being a player in the space of reasons (as interpreted within Robert Brandom's inferntialism), David Lewis' reading of Wittgensteinian language games as governed by a set of scorekeeping rules, and the pragma-dialectical theory of argumentation. Deliberations are modelled as processes governed by inferential norms, in which each speaker becomes committed to some claims because of the assertions she has made, because of the happening of some other publicly observable facts (including the assertions of some other people), or because of the way the relevant inferential rules govern how some previous commitments give place to others. The obligations and entitlements a speaker has in a certain moment constitute her deontic score, which not only includes the propositions she must or can assert, but also the actions she must or is allowed to perform. It is shown how this model can help to naturalise some fundamental notions in epistemology and in (individual and collective) action theory.