It recognizes an ethical quality also in the pragmatism of the “willingness to believe,” since this form is implicitly close to the criterion of the voluntary construction of experimental hypotheses that contribute to modify – positively or negatively – our beliefs. In the two writings published at a short distance on “Leonardo” – i.e Le varietà del pragmatismo (November 1904) and Variazioni sul pragmatismo (February 1905) – Calderoni defines three forms of pragmatism: 1) the “critical” pragmatism, which, in harmony with Peirce’s pragmatic maxim, aims at eliminating as unsubstantiated issues all those philosophical (and non-philosophical) questions that do not refer to “actual or even simply possible expectations of ours” 2) the pragmatism of “the will to believe,” which temporarily or definitively refrains from pronouncing itself on the question of the truth or falsity of beliefs (with clear reference to the James-Schiller-Prezzolini trend of thought) 3) “a third variety which recognizes the great role played by active and voluntary transactions in the progress of our knowledge, which draws different methodological consequences from it, relating to the sphere of definitions, hypotheses and experiments.” This third form is clearly inspired by the idea of pragmatism as a philosophical ratification of the experimental scientific method.
We could define this choice as ethically founded, that is, as linked to the typically Peircean attribution of a strong ethical value to the scientific-experimental method.Ģ The ethical choice in favor of Peirce’s pragmatism seems to be confirmed as long as Calderoni identifies a third form of pragmatism, in addition to the Peircean and Jamesian versions. This controversy was one with his philosophical choice in favor of Peirce’s pragmatism.
1 Calderoni’s pragmatism is characterized by a polemical stance towards some important William James’s theses.
0 kommentar(er)
