The Pragmatist Challenge Pragmatist Metaphysics for Philosophy of Science

The Pragmatist Challenge lays out a programmatic view for taking a pragmatist approach to topics in philosophy of science and metaphysics. Pragmatism involves a collection of specific views as well as comprising a general approach that can be applied to multiple topics. For topics at the intersection of philosophy of science and metaphysics, pragmatism as explored in this volume is an effective way to take entrenched debates and re-frame them in ways that move past old dichotomies and offer more fruitful paths forward. Each chapter explores a dual vision of pragmatism: specific pragmatist views are developed, demonstrating how to take a distinctively pragmatist approach to some particular issue or subfield; and the general shape of what it means to take a pragmatist approach is elucidated as well. The chapters thus tend to be synoptic in scope. Collectively, they offer a new approach that can be taken up in constructively reframing other discussions, ready to be applied to new specific topics.

Pragmatism is an especially potent tool that sits at the interface between methodological and applied questions coming directly from sciences, and the underlying ontological or metaphysical commitments that are implied by or support the methodological discussions. The goal of the volume is to articulate a variety of ways to be a pragmatist without having to commit to a single specific set of -isms in order to make use of it, while highlighting the common themes that manifest across different discussions. The chapters offer a heterogenous yet programmatic approach to pragmatism.

H. K. Andersen, Department of Philosophy, Simon Fraser University, Sandra D. Mitchell, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh

Dr. Andersen received her B.Sc. in Physics at Montana State University, and completed an M.Sc. at the London School of Economics. She completed her dissertation in 2009 at the University of Pittsburgh History and Philosophy of Science Department. Since then, she has been a professor at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia.


Professor Mitchell received a BA in Philosophy from Pitzer College, an MSc in Logic, Philosophy and Scientific Method from the London School of Economics, and a PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Pittsburgh. She taught at the Ohio State University and University of California, San Diego before returning to HPS. She has been a research fellow at the Zentrum für Interdisziplinare Forschung, Universität Bielefeld, the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin, Center for the Philosophy of Science at Pitt, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Witten/Herdecke University and Max Planck Institute for History of Science.

1. Pragmatism for Philosophy of Science, H. K. Andersen and Sandra D. Mitchell
2. Sketch of some themes for a pragmatist philosophy of science, James Woodward
3. Trueing, H. K. Andersen
4. The Bearable Thinness of Being: A Pragmatist Metaphysics of Affordances, Sandra D. Mitchell
5. Respectful Deflationism, Edward Hall
6. Pragmatism and the challenge of scientific (dis)unification, David Danks
7. Pragmatism, Perennialism, and the Physics of Ignorance, Laura Ruetsche