Contents Articles Lawrence Cahoone: Local Naturalism Mark Dietrich Tschaepe: Pragmatics and Pragmatic Considerations in Explanation Stephen S. Bush: Nothing Outside the Text: Derrida and Brandom on Language and World Scott F. Aikin: Prospects for Peircean Epistemic Infinitism Guy Axtell and Philip Olson: Three Independent Factors in Epistemology Stephen M. Fishman and Lucille McCarthy: John Dewey on Happiness: Going Against the Grain of Contemporary Thought Jay Schulkin: Life Experiences and Educational Sensibilities Discussion J. Caleb Clanton and Andrew T. Forcehimes: Can Peircean Epistemic Perfectionists Bid Farewell to Deweyan Democracy? Robert B. Talisse: Reply to Clanton and Forcehimes

Contents Rosa Maria MAYORGA: Rethinking Democratic Ideals in Light of Charles Peirce Lara M. TROUT: ¿Colorblindness¿ and Sincere Paper-Doubt: A Socio-political Application of C. S. Peirce¿s Critical Common-sensism James R. WIBLE: The Economic Mind of Charles Sanders Peirce James Ronald STANFIELD and Michael C. CARROLL: The Pragmatist Legacy in American Institutionalism Mike O¿CONNOR: The Limits of Liberalism: Pragmatism, Democracy and Capitalism Dwayne A. TUNSTALL: Cornel West, John Dewey, and the Tragicomic Undercurrents of Deweyan Creative Democracy Eric Thomas WEBER: Religion, Public Reason, and Humanism: Paul Kurtz on Fallibilism and Ethics Jerome A. POPP: John Dewey¿s Ethical Naturalism Book Notes David BOERSEMA: Pragmatism and Reference. Robert BRANDOM: Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism. Larry A. HICKMAN: Pragmatism as Post-postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey. Mark JOHNSON: The Meaning of the Body: Aesthetics of Human Understanding.

Pragmatism and American Experience provides a lucid and elegant introduction to America's defining philosophy. Joan Richardson charts the nineteenth-century origins of pragmatist thought and its development through the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, focusing on the major first- and second-generation figures and how their contributions continue to influence philosophical discourse today. At the same time, Richardson casts pragmatism as the method it was designed to be: a way of making ideas clear, examining beliefs, and breaking old habits and reinforcing new and useful ones in the interest of maintaining healthy communities through ongoing conversation. Through this practice we come to perceive, as William James did, that thinking is as natural as breathing, and that the essential work of pragmatism is to open channels essential to all experience.

The Things in Heaven and Earth develops and applies the American philosophical naturalist tradition of the mid-twentieth century, specifically, the work of three of the most prominent figures of what is called Columbia Naturalism: John Dewey, John Herman Randall, Jr., and Justus Buchler. The book argues for the philosophical value and usefulness of this underappreciated tradition for a number of contemporary theoretical and practical issues, such as the modernist/postmodernist divide and debates over philosophical constructivism. Pragmatic naturalism offers a distinctive ontology of constitutive relations. Relying on Buchler's ordinal ontology and on the relationality implicit in Dewey's instrumentalism, the book gives a detailed an account of this approach, in chapters that deal with issues in systematic ontology, epistemology, constructivism and objectivity, philosophical theology, art, democratic theory, foreign policy, education, humanism, and cosmopolitanism.

The notion of "feminist pragmatism" or "pragmatist feminism" has been around since Charlene Haddock Seigfried introduced it two decades ago. However, the bulk of the work in this field has been directed toward recovering the feminist strain of classical American philosophy, largely through renewed interest in the work of Jane Addams. This exploration of the origins of feminism and pragmatism has been fruitful in building a foundation for theoretical considerations. The editors of this volume believe the next logical step is the contemporary application to both theory and experience. Contemporary Feminist Pragmatism is the first book to address the modern significance of the nexus of feminism and pragmatism. The issues explored here include the relationship between community and identity, particularly around the impact of gender and race; reframing political practice regarding feminist pragmatist commitments including education, sustainability movements, and local efforts like community gardens; and the association between ethics and inquiry including explorations of Buddhism, hospitality, and animal-human relationships.

Informed by the pragmatism of John Dewey, this book argues the practical benefits for public policy of a rigorous experimentalist approach to applying moral theory.

Uniting Mississippi applies a new, philosophically informed theory of democratic leadership to Mississippi's challenges. Governor William F. Winter has written a foreword for the book, supporting its proposals. The book begins with an examination of Mississippi's apparent Catch-22, namely the difficulty of addressing problems of poverty without fixing issues in education first, and vice versa. These difficulties can be overcome if we look at their common roots, argues Eric Thomas Weber, and if we practice virtuous democratic leadership. Since the approach to addressing poverty has for so long been unsuccessful, Weber reframes the problem. The challenges of educational failure reveal the extent to which there is a caste system of schooling. Certain groups of people are trapped in schools that are underfunded and failing. The ideals of democracy reject hierarchies of citizenship, and thus, the author contends, these ideals are truly tested in Mississippi. Weber offers theories of effective leadership in general and of democratic leadership in particular to show how Mississippi's challenges could be addressed with the guidance of common values. The book draws on insights from classical and contemporary philosophical outlooks on leadership, which highlight four key social virtues: wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice. Within this framework, the author approaches Mississippi's problems of poverty and educational frustration in a novel way that is applicable in and beyond the rural South. Weber brings to bear each of the virtues of democratic leadership on particular problems, with some overarching lessons and values to advance. The author's editorial essays are included in the appendix as examples of engaging in public inquiry for the sake of democratic leadership.

Will the nations of Southeast Asia maintain their strategic autonomy, or are they destined to become a subservient periphery of China? This book’s expert authors address this pressing question in multiple contexts. What clues to the future lie in the modern history of Sino-Southeast Asian relations? How economically dependent on China has the region already become? What do Southeast Asians think of China? Does Beijing view the region in proprietary terms as its own backyard? How has the relative absence, distance, and indifference of the United States affected the balance of influence between the US and China in Southeast Asia? The book also explores China’s moves and Southeast Asia’s responses to them. Does China’s Maritime Silk Road through Southeast Asia herald a Pax Sinica across the region? How should China’s expansionary acts in the South China Sea be understood? How have Southeast Asian states such as Vietnam and the Philippines responded? How does Singapore’s China strategy compare with Indonesia’s? How relevant is the Association of Southeast Asian Nations? To what extent has China tried to persuade the “overseas Chinese” in Southeast Asia to identify with “'the motherland” and support its aims? How are China’s deep involvements in Cambodia and Laos affecting the economies and policies of those countries? “This rich collection,” writes renowned author-journalist Nayan Chanda, answers these and other questions while offering “fresh insights” and “new information and analyses” to explain Southeast Asia’s relations with China.

At a time of potentially radical changes in the ways in which humans interact with their environments - through financial, environmental and/or social crises - the raison d'être of spatial planning faces significant conceptual and empirical challenges. This Companion presents a multidimensional collection of critical narratives of conceptual challenges for spatial planning. The authors draw on various disciplinary traditions and theoretical frames to explore different ways of conceptualising spatial planning and the challenges it faces. Through problematising planning itself, the values which underpin planning and theory-practice relations, contributions make visible the limits of established planning theories and illustrate how, by thinking about new issues, or about issues in new ways, spatial planning might be advanced both theoretically and practically. There cannot be definitive answers to the conceptual challenges posed, but the authors in this collection provoke critical questions and debates over important issues for spatial planning and its future. A key question is not so much what planning theory is, but what might planning theory do in times of uncertainty and complexity. An underlying rationale is that planning theory and practice are intrinsically connected. The Companion is presented in three linked parts: issues which arise from an interactive understanding of the relations between planning ideas and the political-institutional contexts in which such ideas are put to work; key concepts in current theorising from mainly poststructuralist perspectives and what discussion on complexity may offer planning theory and practice.