Category Archives: Pragmatism
Brand and pluralism
The free market is at least partially redeemed by the emergence and development of brand positioning. Brand positioning is strategic pluralism.
Morality and experiment
What is the pragmatic “cash value” of a person’s moral vision? I propose this: Where is that person motivated or resistant to experiment, at what cost and at what risk? * Where: What possibilities of reality does the experimenter wish … Continue reading
Latour on the Baby Boomers
I found this passage from Latour’s Inquiry into Modes of Existence persuasive and moving. I myself belong to the generation designated as baby boomers, at least until age has earned us the dreadful replacement moniker “golden agers.” Without this indispensable reference … Continue reading
Protected: The truth next door
There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
A quick list of reality conceptions
I felt like making a list of what can be meant when we talk about “reality”.
OPP
Obligatory Passage Point (OPP) is going to be a useful concept. From Wikipedia: Obligatory passage points are a feature of actor-networks, usually associated with the initial (problematization) phase of a translation process. An OPP can be thought of as the … Continue reading
From, for and within
Just as science is not really a body of knowledge on what is true about things, but rather the record of disciplined interactions human beings have with things, with a focus on the patterns that predictably occur when certain conditions … Continue reading
Usable philosophies
WARNING: THE FOLLOWING POST CONTAINS A COMPUTER ANALOGY APPLIED TO MIND [Apologies in advance]
Crediting James
Graham Harman, from Prince of Networks: Bruno Latour and Metaphysics: We are now amused to think that there used to be two kinds of physics, one for the earth and one for the sky. But it is equally absurd that … Continue reading
Actor-network theory is practical pragmatism
Extending my post from a couple of days ago, “ANT = Practical pragmatism”: When you are temperamentally theoretical, it is tempting to stop at theorizing about practice, and never to practice anything but theorizing. When pragmatism begins to apply its … Continue reading
ANT = Practical pragmatism
Actor-network theory is practical pragmatism.
Explaining away
Worldviews include within them accounts of alien worldviews held by others. These accounts sometimes also include reasons for why these alien worldviews are invalid and do not require consideration and understanding. Such invalidating accounts protect one’s worldview from the consequences … Continue reading
Supra-individual mind
Every thought thinkable by an individual mind has already been thought. Future thoughts will come from people who know how to think collaboratively beyond their own individual capacity as responsible participants in a supra-individual mind. This idea should not be … Continue reading
Conserving, simplifying, forgetting
When a person calls himself a “conservative” what precisely is it that is conserved? Is it ideas? Do conservatives wish to keep valued ideas intact and pure? Or is it a wish to conserve our limited store of moral energy? … Continue reading
Pluralism, education, competition, and brand
Some forms of competition support pluralism, and some forms of competition undermine it. This fact has become conspicuous to me looking at the issue of school competition. If K-12 schools were to compete like universities, creating areas of distinction, basing … Continue reading
Proud not to be right
It is easy to see how we are right. It is much more challenging — morally and intellectually — to see how we are not right, or less right than we wish to be. To see ourselves as right, all … Continue reading
Experience design
Experience design is the disciplined practice of pluralism.