The nominalism versus realism debate: toward a philosophical rather than a political resolution

Educational Theory

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 275-311

  Prawat, Richard S ^a  

^a MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 65249131137     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.2003.00275.x     Document Type: Article

References (115)

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3. Friedrichueberweg, History of Philosophy: From Thales to the Present Time (New York Scribner, 1871 J, 461.
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5. William F. James, The Meaning of Truth, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 38.
6. William F. James, "Stanford's Ideal Destiny," in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Populaz Phlosophy: Human Immortolity 11906; reprint, New York: Dover, 1956), 362.
7. John Dewey, John Dewey: The Early Works, vol. 5, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969), 85. This five-volume collection, with volume and page numbers, will be cited as EW in the text in subsequent references.
8. Howard Gardner, The Unschooled Mind (New York Basic Books, 1991).
9. David B. Tyack and Larry Cuban, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995).
10. Eugene Rochberg-Halton, Meaning and Modernity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986).
11. Allan Wolter, O.F.M., The Philosophical Theology of John Duns Scotus (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 19901, 169n, emphasis added.
12. Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vol. 2, eds. Charles Hartshome and Paul Weiss (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 19311, 96. This eight-volume collection, with volume and page numbers, will be cited as CP in the text in subsequent references.
13. John F. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism: A Study of Peke's Relationship to John Duns Scotus (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 19631, 20.
14. Ibid., 20.
15. Charles S. Peirce, Writings of Charles Sanders Peirce:A Chronological Edition, vol. 1, ed. PeirceEdition Project (Bloomingtwn: Inmana University Press, 19821,361. This six-volume collection, with volume and page numbers, will be cited as CE in the text in subsequent references.
16. John Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy (2150-1350) (London: Routledge, 1987), 171.
17. Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy [New York Simon and Shuster, 1945).
18. John Skorupski, "Mill on Language and Logic," in The Cambridge Companion to Mill, ed. John Skorupski (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998), 35.
19. William F. James, Pragmatism, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975).
20. Richard Rorty, Essays on Heidegger and Others (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 126.
21. Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989],27.
22. Marenbon, Later Medieval Philosophy (1150-1350), 171.
23. Steven Ozment, "Mysticism, Nominalism, and Dissent," in The Pursuit of Holiness in Late Medieval and Renaissance Religion, eds. Charles Trinkaus and Heiko O. Oberman (Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 19741, 78.
24. This argument, incidentally, has been raised anew by philosophers like Susan Haack, who views the realist alternative to nominalism as a potential solution to the increasingly acrimonious "science wars" that pit philosophers and educators against practicing scientists. See Susan Haack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate: Unfashionable Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998).
25. Scientists, not surprisingly, take issue with nominalists [that is, "constructivists" who maintain that order or lawfulness is a mental creation. Steven Weinberg, for one, does not mince words in hts insistence that the laws of physics are real in the same sense that rocks in the field are real. Neither law nor rock, he adds, represents a "construction" in the modem or postmodem nominalist sense. See Steven Weinberg, "Sokal's Hoax," New York Review of Books (August 1996): 11-15.
26. Allan Wolter, O.F.M., Duns Scotus on the Will and Morality (Washington, DC: The Catholicuniversity of America Press, 1986), 4.
27. JohnDewey, John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 12, ed. Jo AnnBoydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1981), 40,230. This seventeen-volume collection, with volume and page numbers, will be cited as LW in the text in subsequent references.
28. Max H. Fisch, "Charles Sanders Peirce," in Peirce, Semiotic, and Pragmatism: Essays by Max H. Fisch, eds. Kenneth L. Ketner and Christian J.W. Kloesel (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 19861, 1.
29. Charles S. Peirce, The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, vol. 2, ed. Peirce Edition Project (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998), 70. This two-volume collection, with volume and page numbers, will be cited as EP in the text in subsequent references.
30. Max H. Fisch, "A Chronicle of Pragmaticism, 1865-1879," in Peirce, Semiotic, and Pragmatism, eds. Ketner and Kloesel, 116.
31. Max H. Fisch, "Evolution in American Philosophy," in Peirce, Semiotic, and Pragmatism, eds. Ketner and Kloesel, 29.
32. Richard S. Prawat, "Dewey and Peirce, the Philosopher's Philosopher," Teachers College Record 103, no. 4 (2001): 667-721.
33. This article is also available at 〈http://www.tcrecord.org/Content. asp?ContentID=10779〉 Last accessed 7 October 2003.
34. This thesis has spawnedalively interchange with Jim Garrison and others. See Garrison's response, "Dewey and Eros: A Response to Prawat," Teachers College Record 103, no. 4 (2001): 722-738;
35. also available at 〈http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentlD= 10775〉 Last accessed 7 October 2003.
36. JohnDewey, John Dewey: TheMiddle Works, vol. 6, ed. Jo AnnBoydston (Carbondale: SouthernIllinois University Press, 1976), 119. This fifteen-volume collection, with volume and page numbers, will be cited as MW in the text in subsequent references.
37. William F. James, Manuscript Essays and Notes, eds. FrederickH. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988 ), 259.
38. William F. James, The Principles of Psychology, vol. 1 (1890; reprint, New York Dover Publications, 1950),112. This book, with volume and page numbers, will be referred to as PP in the text for all subsequent citations.
39. William F. James, The Will to Believe, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 92.
40. William F. James, Essays in Psychology, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983), 19.
41. Ralph B. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, 1935), 455.
42. James, Manuscript Essays and Notes, 244.
43. Ibid, 234-235.
44. David C. Lamberth, William James and the Metaphysics of Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
45. Paul D. Forster, "Peirce and the Threat of Nominalism," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28, no. 4 (1992): 691-724.
46. Lamberth, William lames and the Metaphysics of Experience, 181.
47. William F. James, A Pluralistic Universe, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skiupskelis [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 217.
48. Charlene H. Seigfried, William James's Rachcal Reconstruction of Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1990), 35.
49. It is based on experience but is not in reality. Generalizations are created to meet individual needs, according to the nominalists; not, as Peirce claimed, because they "forcibly recommend themselves to us" (CP,v ol. 7, 669).
50. William F. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), 22-23.
51. James, The Meaning of Truth, 7.
52. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, 45-59.
53. William F. James, Pragmatism, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1975), 6344. This essay will be referred to as P in the text for all subsequent citations.
54. James, Essays in Radical Empiricism, 15.
55. Ibid, 13.
56. John E. Smith, Purpose and Thought: The Meaning of Pragmatism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1978), 42.
57. Barbara Guzzetti and Cynthia Hynd, Perspectives on Conceptual Change (Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1988).
58. William F. James, Some Problems of Philosophy, eds. Frederick H. Burkhardt, FredsonBowers, and Ignas K. Skrupskelis [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979],200.
59. Vincent G. Potter, Charles S. Peirce on Norms and Ideals [Worcester: University of Massachusetts Press, 19671, 65.
60. Current critics of this view, like John D. Caputo, reject the notion that language functions as a cognitive gatekeeper. Because of this assumption, Caputo adds, postmodern nominalists are caught in a kind of "linguistic house arrest," "a mirror play of words in which words lead to more words but never to the matter itself" (that is, "generals" in the world). See John D. Caputo, "The Thought of Being and the Conversation of Mankind The Case of Heidegger and Rorty," Review of Metaphysics 36, no. 3 (1983): 661-685.
61. Arthur I. Miller, Imagery in Scientific Thought (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987).
62. Ibid., 99.
63. MaxH. Fisch, "Alexander Bainandthe Genealogy of Pragmatism," in Peirce, Semiotic, and Pragmatism, eds. Ketner and Kloesel, 79-109.
64. James was one of the original members of the Cambridge Metaphysical Club, as was Wright, who is described, interestingly enough, as "an avowed nominalist." Other members of this distinguished group included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nicholas St. John Green, John Fiske, and Francis Ellingwood Abbot. Peirce's pragmatic maxim is generally regarded as the most important outcome of this club.
65. Fisch, "Alexander Bain and the Genealogy of Pragmatism."
66. Peter Skagestad, The Road of Inquiry: Charles Peirce's Pragmatic Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), 61.
67. Peirce, CarlHausman explains, tookpains to substitute the term "idea" for "belief" in the reformulation of his pragmatic maxim. "Belief" has a linguistic, hence nominalist, connotation that is less evident when the term "idea" is used. See Carl R. Hausman, Charles S. Peirce's Evolutionary Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993),38.
68. Rorty, who repeatedly cites James as his inspiration, chimes in on this issue, insisting that beliefs (as opposed to ideas) possess two key qualities: intentionality and the absence of "phenomenal properties." See Richard Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979), 24.
69. Stephen C. Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 19421,275
70. James, Essays in Psychology, 33.
71. Robert Almeder, The Phdosophy of Charles S. Peirce: A Critical Interpretation (Oxford: BasilBlackwell, 1980), 179.
72. Boler, Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism, 102.
73. Almeder, The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, 165.
74. Kenneth Ketner and ChristianKloesel, "Preface," in Peirce, Semiotic, and Pmgmatism, eds. Ketner and Kloesel, vii.
75. Twentieth-century philosophers have substituted language for experience, albeit for different reasons. Nominalists like himself, Rorty writes, believe that there is no way to get at experience but through language: "The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not" (Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, 5).
76. Morris Cohen, "Some Difficulties in Dewey's Anthropocentric Naturalism," in John Dewey: The Later Works, vol. 14, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1988), 385.
77. Andrew J. Reck, "The Influence of William James on John Dewey in Psychology," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 20, no. 2 (1984): 87-117;
78. and Denis C. Phillips, "James, Dewey, and the Reflex Arc," Journal of the History of Ideas 32, no. 4 (1971): 555-568.
79. Reck, "The Influence of William James on John Dewey in Psychology," 93.
80. Neal Coughlan, Young John Dewey (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19731, 162.
81. Max H. Fisch, "Dewey's Critical and Historical Stuhes," in Guide to the Works of John Dewey, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 315.
82. Reck, "The Influence of William James on John Dewey in Psychology," 114.
83. Jane M. Dewey, "The Biography of John Dewey," in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Schilpp, 23.
84. Andrew Backe, "Dewey and the Reflex Arc: The Limits of James's Influence," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 35, no. 2 (1999): 312-326.
85. Ibid., 317.
86. Ibid., 117.
87. James, Manuscript Essays and Notes, 24.
88. Ibid.
89. John R. Shook, Dewey's Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000), 104-105.
90. Ibid., 104.
91. Ibid., 105 (emphasis added).
92. Ibid., 105.
93. Hans Reichenbach, "Dewey's Theory of Science," in The Philosophy of John Dewey, ed. Paul A. Schilpp (New York: Tudor Publishing, 19511, 161.
94. James, Some Problems of Philosophy, 157.
95. For his complete discussion, see James, PP, vol. 2,325471.
96. Pepper, World Hypotheses, 275.
97. Ibid., 275.
98. Arthur Lovejoy, "Pragmatism Versus the Pragmatist," in John Dewey: The Middle Works, vol. 13, ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 19831,443481.
99. John Dewey, "The Experimental Theory of Knowledge," in The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy (New York: Henry Holt, 19101, 103 n. 1, 88.
100. Dava Sobel, Galileo's Daughter (New York: Walker and Co., 1999), 73.
101. Perry, The Thought and Character of William James, 307.
102. Sidney Ratner, "Introduction," in John Dewey and Arthur F. Bent1ey:A Philosophical Correspondence, 2932-1952, eds. Sidney Ratner and Jules Altman (New Brunswick Rutgers University Press, 19641, 20.
103. Ralph W. Sleeper, The Necessity of Pragmatism: John Dewey's Conception of Philosophy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 19861, 78-105.
104. Ibid., 87.
105. Bronowski's observation appears in Robert Root-Bemstein and Michele Root-Bernstein, Sparks of Genius (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999), 144-145.
106. The 1933 revision of Dewey's 1910 classic, How We Think, contains unmistakable evidence of the shift in his thinking (LW, vol. 8,105352).
107. One example will have to suffice: "The having of ideas is not so much something we do, as it is something that happens to us" (LW, vol. 8, 145).
108. Richard J. Bernstein, "Peirce's Theory of Perception," in Studies in the Philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, eds. EdwardC.Mooreand RichardS. Robin(Amherst: Universityof MassachusettsPress, 1964), 176.
109. Sandra B. Rosenthal, Charles S. Peirce's Pragmatic Pluralism [Albany: SUNY Press, 1994), 40.
110. For a more detailed examination of this question, see Prawat, "Dewey and Peirce, the Philosopher's Philosopher."
111. Almeder, The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, 162.
112. Noah Webster, New Collegiate Dictionary (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Riverside Press, 1958), 40.
113. An effort is underway to develop a curriculum based on this view of knowledge: colleagues and I have developed and field-tested a seventh-grade science unit, and we have obtained what we think are some dramatically different results in the classroom. For more on this project, see Richard S. Prawat, John Bell, and Shane Cavanaugh, The Weather Unit: An Example of a Radical Constructivist Approach to Science Teaching the Learning (East Lansing: College of Education, Michigan State University, 2003)
114. Arthur I. Miller, Insights of Genius: Imagery and Creativityin Science and Art (Cambridge: MIT Press, 19961, vii.
115. Haack, Manifesto of a Passionate Moderate.