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Many, and perhaps most, American philosophers will, if pressed, say that they are pragmatists. What they typically mean by this is that they think there is some class of philosophical questions that can’t be answered philosophically. If you don’t think that in the end philosophical arguments can possibly settle metaphysical questions, pragmatism is an appealing response. Pragmatism becomes a kind of default position which one reverts to when one removes a topic from the list of topics that can be reasonably addressed using philosophical methods. When Richard Rorty characterized himself as a pragmatist, he meant that he was in favor of removing topics from philosophy on a wholesale basis, which implied for him the end of philosophy at least as traditionally conceived. Philosophical students of pragmatism weren’t very happy with this formulation, not so much for its conclusions, but because it omitted the content of the default that John Dewey himself had in mind, namely something like...

DOI: 10.1007/s10746-009-9125-1

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