Until recently, Wilfrid Sellars’s connection to pragmatism was seen mostly as tangential by analytic pragmatists influenced by him and by anti-analytic ‘classicalist’ pragmatists alike. Recent scholarship in the history of pragmatism, however, has begun to recover him as a genuine member of that tradition. Similarly, John Dewey, whom no one would challenge as a genuine pragmatist, is often seen by classicalists as fundamentally opposed to the kind of analytic philosophy that Sellars represents and by analytic pragmatists as having some good ideas but not very successfully bringing them to fruition. This too is conventional wisdom best overturned. A fresh-eyed interpretation of Dewey’s work shows that Dewey is a major influence on the development of Sellars’s pragmatism, namely that Sellars’s account of conceptual intentionality in nature is both a critical reaction to and development of Dewey’s naturalistic view of conceptual meanings. In particular, Sellars’s account of rule-following behavior and pattern-governed behavior builds upon Dewey’s account of the relationship between conceptual activity in reasoned discourse and intelligent habits of action in ordinary affairs. By illuminating this influence of Dewey on Sellars, we see that Sellars and Dewey are in the same pragmatist tradition of thought about mind in nature. Further, appreciating this influence shows that Sellars’ view departs from an important tenet of Dewey’s pragmatism, and in doing so makes his view vulnerable to an objection that Dewey’s is not.

This chapter theorises the embodiment of timbral gesture in electronic dance music (EDM) as a convergence point between the vexed categories of affect and meaning. It is argued that timbre is inseparable from gesture in the listening experience and that the embodiment of synthesised gestures affords listeners new ways of experiencing their body-minds by exercising their perceptual agency through sonic prosthesis. In social EDM settings, the heightened potential for entrainment to both the music and other co-participants, together with the established role of entrainment in facilitating social bonding, suggests that the timbral gestures of EDM could be key to fostering intersubjectivity among those present. Considering this, the imaginative embodiment of timbral gestures is shown to constitute a necessary first step towards the communal rationalisation of the EDM experience and the social emergence of musical meaning.

Several prominent Anglo-American philosophers – the concept theorists, as I shall call them – argue that to engage rationally in inquiry, one must grasp and apply non-linguistic entities called concepts, which, when properly combined, yield non-linguistic entities called propositions, or thoughts that are true or false. Arguments of this sort have a long history that extends at least as far back as Plato. What is distinctive of theorizing about concepts since the late 1930s, however, is its reliance on methods of metalinguistic semantic analysis first devised by Alfred Tarski. My goals in this chapter are to explain this reliance and to reconstruct and evaluate a small but representative selection of the most influential philosophical views on concepts since 1945.

Wittgenstein was associated with conceptual analysis and it is widely presumed that that there is a Wittgensteinian account of concepts, yet sustained treatments of the topic in his work are difficult to find. My contribution shows that this irony is more apparent than real. Wittgenstein discussed concepts at some length in material from the early 1930s and manuscripts and lectures from his final period. On that basis I discuss Wittgenstein’s answers to five crucial questions about concepts – concerning their definition, possession, individuation, function and how best to investigate their nature. Wittgenstein and thinkers who influenced or were influenced by him (Frege, Dummett, Peacock) have contributed substantially to our understanding of concepts in two ways: first, methodological reflections on how to approach philosophically contested concepts, the concept of a concept included; secondly, elucidation of the nature and role of concepts through their connections with linguistic meaning, explanation, understanding, abilities and rules.

Conceptual engineering is, prima facie, the engineering of concepts. But what are concepts? And in what sense, if any, can they be engineered? In this chapter I introduce conceptual engineering and then distinguish three different understandings of concepts. The first, prevalent in parts of cognitive science, is the psychological account, which sees concepts as psychologically real cognitive structures in individuals’ minds. The second, with historical connections to the pragmatism of Carnap, is the semantic account, which sees concepts as semantic meanings determined by conventional principles of use. The third, rooted in Frege’s rationalism and in anti-individualism, is the representationalist account, which sees concepts as publicly accessible components of thought, determined ultimately not by use but by direct relations between individuals and the world. Disagreements over the nature, target and possible implementation of conceptual engineering are, I will claim, ultimately grounded in the more fundamental disagreement over the nature of concepts.

Abstract: In this chapter, Waks examines John Dewey’s concept of growth in Human Nature and Conduct (1922) and its relation to the good. Growth, for Dewey, is not biological or economic but an evolving moral and intellectual responsiveness to changing circumstances. Dewey defines morality as the “growth of conduct in meaning,” linking ethical life to an expanding awareness of action’s conditions and consequences. As Waks shows, Dewey argues that meaning develops through experience as habits are reconstructed in response to feedback. Conduct, unlike mere behavior, involves conscious ends-in-view, and growth occurs when experience expands our meanings – that is, deepens our understanding of how means connect to our ends. Waks distinguishes between proto-meanings in instinctual behavior and the fully articulated meanings made possible by language. Dewey defines the good as the expansion of meaning resulting from the resolution of conflicting impulses into a unified course of action, rejecting moral absolutism in favor of norms shaped by lived experience. Waks concludes by connecting personal growth with democracy as a moral ideal. The good person, in this view, is one who adapts, learns, and creatively responds to new social challenges and freely communicates with others – that is, the person with a democratic personality.

Following a socially embedded approach to the study of corruption, this chapter shows how corruption, its meaning, and the battle against it are deeply local and temporal. Relying primarily on original party documents and news reports, this chapter traces the chronological order of anti-corruption practices between 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was established, and 2020 to illustrate how the meanings of corruption, types of misbehavior to address, and the type of selected punishment were all articulated temporally.

This chapter lays out two key tasks in reading Scripture that Augustine identifies in the Confessions, and especially in his exegesis of Genesis: “the task of grasping meaning” and “the task of grasping truth.” The first task is that of discerning authorial intention; the second is that of “seeing for oneself that what the author is saying is in fact the case.” The task of grasping meaning is difficult in part because of the peculiar character of the Scriptures; they are both accessible to all, using ordinary language (which is open to misinterpretation), and yet full of profundities that only the wisest readers can come to appreciate. It is also difficult because we cannot really know what is in another person’s mind; any judgments about authorial intention are provisional at best, and only pride would claim to have identified the uniquely correct interpretation. The task of grasping truth is likewise difficult. When it comes to intelligible realities, Truth speaks inwardly, not through any text, even that of Scripture. When it comes to historical realities, including the central truths about the life of the Incarnate Word, we cannot have knowledge in the fullest sense.

How we transform our memories and experiences into fiction beyond the injunction to ‘write what you know’. The imaginative process includes filling in the gaps of memory, embracing the freedom to invent, selecting a viewpoint and adding energy through dialogue. We need to consider not only which details and descriptions to include but which to omit: the balancing of information affects the meaning and impact of the story.

The chapter begins with a reconstruction of Kant’s conception of the relationship between thought and language, which aims to highlight its novelty and distinctiveness, especially in relation to the Wolffian tradition, as well as its affinity with Herder’s view. The analysis then focuses on Kant’s conception of the relation between word and concept in order to show how Kant abandons the ‘auxiliary model’ in favor of an inextricable, essential relation between word and concept. He identifies the particular cognitive force of the word in its nonrepresentational, nondepictional character and its consequent extrinsic relation to the imagination. The issue of how the meaning of empirical concepts/words arises is then addressed. A crucial role is played by the theory of Merkmale (marks): they allow a transition from intuitive traits to the concept and grant the possibility of the original relation of mere designation between the word and its object. On this basis, the process of gradual acquisition of meaning then takes place. The latter yields the synthetic enrichment and correction of the concept. This process is guided by the general transcendental framework that make it possible to identify a phenomenon ‘x’ to be referred to by means of designation.

Chapter 14 examines international legitimacy as a system of reference that influences how actors (primarily states and individuals) experience meaning in the international sphere and, to some degree, at the national level. As a way to unpack what to understand in how a sense of legitimacy can function as a reference and framework of meaning in an international system, this chapter focuses on three points: how the start of an international order can impact its legitimacy, which leads me to argue that it can happen in three ways: force, negotiation, and a combination of the two, each of these ways having an impact on how the sense of legitimacy of international order is perceived; how, once in place, the sense of legitimacy in an international system influences actors (their behavior, identity and values); and how the scope and depth of legitimacy internationally can vary with time and circumstances.