It is the purpose of this thesis to show that pragmatic philosophy is in operation in the schools of today by giving evidences of living experiences.

This study attempts to resolve the question of Defoe's sincerity through examination of his life, his journalistic writings, and his major works or imagination.

Both intensional and extensional explanations of linguistic meaning involve notions -- linguistic roles and referential relations, respectively -- which are not perspicuous and seem to evade satisfactory explanations themselves. Following Sellars, I make a move away from semantic explanation of the designation relation and of linguistic roles toward an explanation which relates to the use of linguistic and perceptual signs (i.e., pragmatics). In doing so, concerns are raised that seem to be more closely associated with epistemology and phenomenology than with the philosophy of language or logic. In particular, experience is taken to be intentional, i.e., to have a propositional content which is irreducible to the causal order. Along with intentionality, certain essentially autobiographical conditions of experience are neglected in typical conceptions of the problem of meaning. They are reintroduced here. Further, I take as a presupposition the pragmatist notion that each of our conceptual schemes emerges from a community of persons, rather than from individuals. What follows from the preceding starting points is a picture of incomplete personhood in which persons are seen as being inclined both toward experiential wholes which have conceptual content and toward establishing and unifying beliefs which resolve doubts. Because of the conditions of experience constitutive of, and peculiar to, personhood and the necessity of the community for individual inquiry, the notion of incomplete personhood has a central position in my pragmatist conception of the problem of meaning. By emphasizing the pragmatistic conditions of experience and the active role of persons in finding objects and in continually reaching toward a final complete picture, the problems related to objectivity are found to be peripheral to a conception of meaning which captures the practice(s) of persons' living object-directed lives. The result is a new way of conceiving of the problem of meaning. / Master of Arts

Syftet med föreliggande studie är att fördjupa kunskapen om lärares syn på hur konkret material bidrar till hur elever lär sig matematik i årskurs 1–3. Studien baseras på kvalitativa semistrukturerade intervjuer och stöttas av ett pragmatiskt perspektiv. Studiens resultat och slutsats visar att lärare medvetet väljer konkret material efter matematiskt innehåll och elevgrupp. Lärare arbetar frekvent med konkret material i en varierad undervisning på gruppnivå för att tydliggöra, förbättra och fördjupa matematikundervisningen. Resultatet visar att lärares kompetens och engagemang är avgörande för användandet av konkret material i matematikundervisningen.

I address the recognized but largely unexamined affinity between the evolutionary philosophies of John Dewey and Daniel C. Dennett, in order to resolve a problematic tension within Dennett's naturalism that results from his emphasis and dependence on science without having a proper account of science. Briefly, many of Dennett's critics argue that this neglect results in the neopragmatic relativism of Richard Rorty. I argue that there is another alternative by making use of John Dewey's philosophy of inquiry. The role of experimental inquiry is neglected by Rorty yet is central to Dewey's project of reconstruction, as opposed to the neurophilosophical and neopragmatic project of reconciling what Wilfrid Sellars called the scientific and manifest images of humanity. In promoting reconstruction as opposed to reconciliation, the tension in both Dennett and much contemporary neurophilosophy is simply evaded. Moreover, the conflict between the sciences and the humanities can be ameliorated through an emphasis on experimental method. In presenting this neurophilosophical pragmatism, I not only continue Dennett's project of imagining new metaphors for consciousness, I meet Rorty's challenge to Dennett to reconstruct science in light of the new metaphors for consciousness - yet I do so in a way that does not simply reduce science to literature as Rorty professed. This first lengthy presentation of neuropragmatism promises to advance not only rapprochement between science and the humanities but also points a way forward for pragmatism in the twenty-first century that takes seriously the advances in the sciences of life and mind without succumbing to the dangers of much of the neuro-hype found both inside and outside of philosophical circles.

Agency and desire are interdependent. Agency is not a given, but an achievement of ordered desiring. We want to control our desires rather than be controlled by them, but the dilemma is that our selves are separate neither from our desires nor our control. John Dewey articulates this dynamic and proposes a solution; we can control desire and thereby ourselves by an immanent and reflective reconstruction of the meaning and object of desire. However, Dewey over-estimates the cognitive control of meaning and desire, because he presumes that desire is always ideational, rather than explaining how desire comes into cognitive awareness and control to be available for reflective manipulation. This work will extend Dewey's theory of experience and habit by explaining the structural habitual conditions necessary for the cognitive control of desire, e.g., how desire becomes ideational and subsequently an ideal. It offers a constructive criticism and a new heterodox phenomenological method based on the works of John Dewey, Thomas Alexander, and Victor Kestenbaum.

This dissertation carries out a systematic study of the religious thought of the 20th century American philosopher John Dewey. Its motivation is that Dewey’s religious views have been seriously misunderstood and under appreciated by philosophers and Dewey scholars to date. Breaking with the standard interpretation of Dewey as a thoroughly scientific and secular thinker, the dissertation shows that Dewey’s writings reveal a robust and highly original religious naturalism. It further demonstrates that Dewey’s novel understanding of the religious dimensions of nature and the experiencing self can capably meet the challenges posed to philosophy of religion by the ecological turn presently transforming the philosophical landscape. The driving insight of the ecological turn in contemporary philosophy is the need to reconstruct our basic philosophical concepts and principles in light of the results of the ecological sciences, many of which challenge core tenets of modern Western thought. To make the case for Dewey as a serious religious thinker, the dissertation places him into critical-constructive dialogue with other theorists representing a wide range of philosophical and scientific perspectives, including those of pragmatism, naturalism, ecological and Gestalt psychology, deep ecology, and recent cognitive science. Dewey’s religious views are also analyzed in relation to the self-cultivation doctrines of Daoism and Zen Buddhism, highlighting rich connections between Dewey and Eastern thought; all of these thinkers and schools of thought share Dewey’s overriding concern to restore continuity between facts and values, between knowledge and action, between nature and the full range of human experience. The dissertation shows that by recovering Dewey’s religious naturalism, full of ecological insight and relevance, a new paradigm for philosophy of religion can be discerned, one that promises to bring philosophy of religion’s core problems and methods in line with the most up-to-date scientific developments.

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