ASEBL Journal Volume 13 Issue 1 January 2018 | Page 40

ASEBL Journal – Volume 13 Issue 1, January 201 8 Experience and its objects have the same preconditions. This is the momentous dis- covery Kant calls a second Copernican revolution. Hegel rejects Hume’s empiricism, which consists of raw extroversion, at the beginning of The Phenomenology of Spirit. Instead, Hegel’s experience is the road, though windy, full of false starts and switch- backs, to science. James disavows the metaphysical scaffolding on which he believes his predecessors’ conclusions depend. Pragmatism, local and site-specific, dismisses and deflates all of this, rendering “x is good” as “x works well.” Taking up James’s commitments is what grounds Freeman’s praise for pluralism. When teleology is plu- ral, when the ends are multiple, we get an alternative to metaphysically monological substance. Thus Freeman prefers Hegel or James to Spinoza, or a certain interpreta- tion of Spinoza, for Spinoza’s philosophy as pure position, all substance no subject, works against the pragmatic values Freeman prescribes to help us along our road. The article’s major strengths are the methodological insights of its conclusion. Free- man imagines and recommends thorough public debate about the future we will either inherit by hapless accident or engineer by careful purpose. Present decisions have far- reaching consequences. William James’s brother Henry gets at the shortcomings of the accidental inheritance view in the first volume of The Wings of the Dove, when he writes of “people […] in motion, on such a scale and with such an air of being equipped for a profitable journey, only to break down [and] stretch themselves in the wayside dust without a reason[.]” Human-directed evolution deserves a careful debate. Planning is a prudent first step before high-stakes decisions are made, if we are to avoid the wayside dust. But if plat- itudes praising critical conversation are insufficient, if knowledge of the future re- mains unavailable, if best guesses, probabilities and keen foresight are our best tools to manage the upcoming public hearing, what can philosophy contribute? First, as Freeman acknowledges, it can contribute order, collecting, organizing and, more con- troversially, explicitly ranking views according to consistent standards. Second, as Freeman implies, it can promote a wider historical view on these matters, for transi- ence and immediacy are truncated perspectives to talk about evolution even or espe- cially on pragmatic grounds. But third, he prescribes a “neutral ground” as a medium for claims’ assessments. I am not so sure about this purported neutrality. What is needed instead is an interrogative ground. Fox Keller’s first published work shows how, for example, Barbara McClintock is suspicious of objectivity as a snapshot taken afield of what is to be understood and endorses instead an engaged feeling for the or- ganism. Objectivity is not what happens when we subtract subjectivity. Pragmatist s do not have to make a straw man of the truth to win compelling conclusions. Responsible pragmatism depends on what Kenji Yoshino calls reason-forcing conversations, in other words, sincere and meaningful questions, more than it does a neutral view from nowhere. ▬ 40