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This chapter exposes a fallacy commonly committed in arguments concerning the philosophy of semantics. The Pragmatic Fallacy consists in inferring a semantic property of an expression from the illocutionary act that a speaker accomplishes in using the expression, e.g., ‘A asserts p is uttering S in context c; therefore S semantically expresses p with respect to c’. Wettstein's argument for semantic significance of Donnellan's referential-attributive distinction is analyzed as committing the Pragmatic Fallacy.

The chapter examines the strategies councillors develop in dealing with political conflict and devising political action. It introduces the concept of RealLokalPolitik as a framework within which to explore whether and how councillors approach political issues from an ideological, party-centric view or from a pragmatic view based on assessment of what can realistically be achieved in any political circumstances. It also provides two models of councillor action: the corporate and associated councillor – which reflect the relationship councillors have to working inside or outside of the council; and the lay or professional councillor, which assess the nature of the approach councillor take to their office. The chapter provides two vignettes which explore these models in action

As Britain prepared for the 1997 change of sovereignty, it became common to cite Hong Kong as an example of the British talent for “good governance”, and to name the establishment of rule of law and governing institutions as one of Britain’s most important legacies. Yet this emphasis on good governance was not only a parting reflection, but was a constant theme throughout the post-war period. Before the late 1960s, commentary emphasized minimal government and indirect rule, with magistrate Austin Coates likening himself to a Confucian “mandarin”. After the 1967-68 riots, the Government emphasized more proactive attempts to connect to their subjects, and to close the “gap” that had emerged between rulers and ruled. In this context, especially under Governor Murray MacLehose, it pursued numerous administrative and social reforms, established the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and significantly expanded its public relations efforts, while steadily avoiding any move toward democratization, even as such activists as Elsie Elliott called for it. Only once the change of sovereignty was inevitable did the British countenance serious democratic reforms, as the Christopher Patten government sought to leave a legacy. Throughout all these changes, the discourse of “good governance” constantly emphasized its pragmatic character.

Agricultural policy is an area in which policy reform tends to be incremental rather than far-reaching, partly due to powerful farm interests. This chapter analyses two decades of debate in US agriculture on the role of direct payments to farmers as an appropriate policy instrument of state intervention, explaining why they could be constructed as a feasible policy solution in the debate on the 1996 and 2002 farm bills, but were later considered problematic, resulting in their discontinuation in the 2014 farm bill. This chapter provides an explanation for this policy shift by focusing on the discursive construction of problems and solutions, particularly how actors develop arguments binding particular problems and solutions, while delegitimating alternative problem-solution associations proposed by opponents. The case study highlights the importance of policy context variables (e.g. fiscal constraints, state of the economy) in the interaction with policy actors’ interests and discursive strategies, explaining why binding of particular problem-solution associations was successful at specific points in time, and not viable at others.

Chapter 2 introduces the meta-concepts inspired from French pragmatic sociology in order to develop an analytical model to map the plurality of moral and normative structures that are used to justify and criticise policies in public debate and lead to reforms in the governing of unemployment. The model is compared to other ideational perspective, mainly discursive institutionalism, discourse analysis and governmentality studies. Finally, the chapter presents how the model is operationalised through choices of case selection, data selection and coding procedures.

This chapter returns to James’s pragmatist philosophy of religion, with special emphasis on its connections with his moral philosophy and the ethical grounding of metaphysics available in Jamesian pragmatism and pragmatic pluralism. It is particularly important, given the main concerns of the book, to determine what exactly we should mean by “pluralism” (or “pragmatic pluralism”); James’s version of pluralism is therefore revisited in detail. The chapter suggests that Jamesian pluralism can be used--in its plural meanings--as a (meta-)context within which different approaches to the philosophy of religion, especially to the issue of God’s reality, can be non-reductively evaluated. Thus, it is a context intended to operate against narrow-mindedness and dogmatism, tying the different approaches together in a shared effort to understand humanly natural search for religiously relevant meaning. Pluralism and the pragmatic method are, it is argued, intimately connected with each other, especially in James. Indeed, pluralism itself can be defended by showing how to effectively apply the pragmatic method to key debates in the philosophy of religion, such as the one between evidentialism and fideism as well as the one between realism and antirealism, beyond which the Jamesian pragmatist seeks to move.

Beauty is about economy; nevertheless, it is also about ideology. This chapter discusses the political implications of China’s booming beauty economy. A main driving force of cosmetic surgery in China is pragmatism. This pragmatism is not only produced by the instability of the transitional Chinese social structure, but is also channelled by the Chinese Communist Party’s pragmatic ideology as exemplified by its ”cat theory” and “xiaokang” concepts. It affects an individual’s choice to undergo cosmetic surgery and the state’s policy of developing its beauty industry. Moreover, using the Miss World competition and the ceremony hostesses of Beijing Olympics as examples, the author discusses how beautiful female bodies have been appropriated into a nationalist agenda in China. Female body image and alteration practices have become both a reflection of personal identity, and a site of ideological contestation, of which state power and market forces reconfigure their power structures to form a new bodily regime.

Knowledge is created through conversation – if one is in the knowledge business, one is in the conversation business. The inadequacy of the term “information” is discussed, and a pragmatic model of knowledge is presented based upon Conversation Theory.

Some question the possibility of consensus, others doubt its desirability. Pluralist skeptics argue that consensus is impossible because of social complexity and hyper-pluralism, and cognitive skeptics find consensus to be impossible as a consequence of the limits of rationality. Pluralist critics condemn consensus because it threatens the repression of diversity, and cognitive critics think consensus undesirable because of the risks it poses of poor decision making. The juristic approach to democracy offers responses to each of these clusters of doubt and criticism, providing a normative framework for a path of evolving practical solutions to otherwise intractable problems faced by an emergent system of earth system governance. Consensus is both possible and desirable. Similar pragmatic responses to environmental challenges recur across cultures and populations precisely because they work. Activity in the international public sphere—marked as it is by an unavoidable search for consensus—can lead the way toward more just resolutions of disputes. It does not have to labor under a democratic deficit. With respect to matters environmental, the fruit of the natural and social sciences can be brought to bear on processes of solving concrete problems in ways that increasingly square with identifiable consensual norms about right and wrong.

This chapter explores some of the normative implications of the constructivist turn in the theory and practice of representative democracy, taking as its point of departure the constructivist framework of representative claims set by Michael Saward. Saward’s account succeeds from a descriptive point of view, but does not provide us with normative criteria to evaluate whether a given representative claim is democratic. This chapter finds in the standard account of representation by Hanna Pitkin a conception of representation as composition, which provides a strong democratic criterion to evaluate representation. It distinguishes between two ideal-typical conceptions of representation compatible with constructivism: representation as imposition, developed most notably by Pierre Bourdieu, in which the represented get their social identities from their representative; and representation as proposition, in which the represented acquire in the process of representation not just their identity but also some agency to judge it – a view of representation that is at the core of pragmatic sociology. The conclusion suggests possible criteria for representation as proposition and propose inclusiveness as a democratic criterion that can form the basis of an alternate ideal of representation, inclusive representation.

This chapter examines the letter issued by the faculty of theology at the University of Paris in March 1445 denouncing the Feast of Fools. Those who issued the letter were heirs to an extended campaign against the Feast of Fools, begun in 1400 by Jean Gerson and subsequently backed by the Council of Basel and the Pragmatic Sanction. In January 1445, the Paris theologians had been petitioned by Jean Leguise, bishop of Troyes, for support in his efforts to suppress the Feast of Fools and its perceived assaults on “archiepiscopal dignity” in Troyes. This chapter analyzes the three-stage argument advanced by the Paris theologians in their letter. First, they condemn the “diabolical” and “idolatrous” character of classical Roman festivals in general. Second, they invoke the authoritative condemnation of such festivals by the New Testament writers and early church fathers, calling Saints Paul and Augustine as witnesses. Third, they identify the Kalends masquerades of January in particular as the source of the Feast of Fools.

This chapter deals with the socially oriented, pragmatically naturalist conception of religious faith John Dewey developed in A Common Faith (1934) and elsewhere, as well as Dewey’s influence on later pragmatist and naturalist currents in the philosophy of religion. In particular, Dewey’s distinction between “the religious”, on the one hand, and actual historical religions, on the other, is explained and discussed. According to Dewey--the most important classical pragmatist following James--the religious aspects of experience can be appreciated without metaphysical commitments to anything supernatural. Dewey’s pragmatism thus seeks to emancipate “the religious” from the dogmatism and supernaturalism typical of traditional religious metaphysics. Dewey’s relation to Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion, and the role played by metaphysics and the criticism of metaphysics in both, are also examined.

This chapter discusses Immanuel Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. The chapter takes up the problem articulated by Kant—the relation of “can” and “should” in the self-understanding of anthropos. It argues that this problem is being refigured today in diverse ways as possible solutions to a more general problematization of bios, truth and conduct. The chapter draws especially on Michel Foucault’s exploration of the significance of the text, in his Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology. It takes up Foucault’ indications of the centrality of the Gemüt, the site of self-affectation where subjects work over their capacities - their “can” - and make differences in their “should.”

Pragmatic encroachment, the view that knowledge is sensitive to one’s practical situation, is a marked departure from traditional epistemology. What follows from this view? This chapter gives a partial answer by defending the following conditional: If pragmatic encroachment is true, then it takes more evidence to know that atheism is true than to know that God exists. The chapter begins by introducing and unpacking the technical term ‘practical adequacy’ and then uses it to define pragmatic encroachment. It then connects this version of pragmatic encroachment and Pascal’s Wager. The connection yields an argument for the thesis of the chapter. Importantly, no stand is taken here as to whether one ought to affirm the antecedent or deny the consequent of this conditional. Maybe it takes more to know that atheism is true, but maybe this version of pragmatic encroachment is false.

This chapter describes the distinction between positive and negative xphi, identifying xphi’s negative branch as the book’s main target. It also canvasses five different xphi studies and their perceived connection to traditional philosophical disputes in the philosophy of language, metaphysics, epistemology, and action theory. The chapter describes a phenomenon, “pragmatic distortion,” that stands in the way of deriving accurate information about subjects’ intuitions but concludes that criticism of xphi solely on these grounds is shallow. The chapter also sketches a very minimalist account of the “nature” of intuitions—the No-Theory Theory—and presents the negative xphi critique in a general and perspicuous format.

Williams syndrome (WS) is a rare neurodevelopmental genetic disorder stemming from a hemizygous deletion of about 20–28 genes from chromosome band 7.11.23q (Ewart et al. 1993) including the gene for elastin. Early estimates of incidence proposed 1 in 20,000 live births (Greenberg 1989), but current estimates are 1 in 7,500 (Stromme, Bjornstad, and Ramstad 2002). Williams syndrome was first recognized by a pediatrician, Dr. JCP Williams in 1961, who described a group of children with “elfin facies” and supravalvular aortic stenosis (Williams, Barratt-Boyes, and Lowe 1961). Shortly thereafter, Dr. Alois Beuren (1962) identified another group of children with similar features, including an intolerance to calcium. As such, this syndrome has also been called Williams-Beuren syndrome or infantile hypercalcemia. The early descriptions of children and adolescents with WS noted a set of characteristic facial and behavioral features: “an unusual command of language combined with an unexpectedly polite, gentle and open manner” (von Armin and Engel 1964). Twenty years later, WS caught the interest of cognitive scientists when it was seen as a possible case of spared language in the face of impaired cognition (Bellugi, Sabo, and Vaid 1988; Bellugi, Wang, and Jernigan 1994). The early studies noted that, in spite of IQs ranging from 40–70, with an average full-scale IQ of 55 (Bellugi et al. 2001) and significantly impaired visuospatial cognition, adolescents with WS had excellent language skills (Bellugi, Lai, and Wang 1997; Reilly, Klima, and Bellugi 1990). In the ensuing 20 years, recognizing WS as a unique opportunity to investigate genetic influences on brain development and cognitive and social processes, investigators have approached the puzzles of WS from multiple perspectives. In this chapter, we provide an overview of WS, focusing on its cognitive and neuropsychological profile from a developmental perspective and where known, the possible neural and genetic underpinnings of the WS profile. We close with a brief discussion of therapeutic interventions for WS. The WS deletion invariably includes the gene for elastin (ELN), which codes for an elastic protein in connective tissue that is abundant in large blood vessels such as the aorta (Lowery et al. 1995).

The chapter argues that although intercultural pragmatics is about language use, pragmatic competence should be discussed in the paradigm if we want to understand non-native speakers' linguistic behaviour in intercultural interactions. Pragmatic competence in L2 research is usually defined as the ability to produce and comprehend utterances (discourse) that is adequate to the L2 socio-cultural context in which interaction takes place. Pragmatic competence in the L1 is the result of language socialization. Language and social development in the L1 go hand in hand, and are inseparable. However, this is not the case in L2 or subsequent languages. The socio-pragmatic norms concerning appropriateness developed through L1 are very influential and difficult to change. L2 learners see things in L2 through their L1 socio-cultural mind set. The chapter explains how pragmatic competence develops through conceptual socialization and how this process affects language use of multilinguals. It is demonstrated how the use of situation-bound utterances reflects pragmatic competence. Instead of pragmatic transfer the chapter recommends to talk about bidirectional pragmatic influence.

Chapter 2 lays down the general traits of the Radical Fictionalist analysis of fiction, focusing on the case of homodiegetic narrative. In particular, this chapter stresses the distinction between empty names and fictional names, it explains the role of impartations in fictional discourse, and it motivates the primacy of fictional tellers for a Radical Fictionalist take on fiction. Radical Fictionalism is then compared with some alternative views on the semantics of fictional discourse, with particular attention to Pragmatic Millianism and to theories of semantic ascent. The final sections pause on the Radical Fictionalist approach to speech acts in fiction, and they criticize the idea of a dedicated illocutionary force of fiction-making.

Chapter 22 deals with various aspects of the pragmatic organization of Latin texts and sentences. A distinction is made between constituents that function as topic or as focus in their clause. In addition constituents can be contrastive or emphatic. Emphasis is often made clear through emphatic particles, which are discussed in detail. Three types of extraclausal constituents are distinguished: themes, settings, and tails. Other extraclausal constituents are curses, interjections, and forms of address.