Fallibilism and the Future of Pragmatism: an issue of realism and constructivism

Abstract

This paper examines Joseph Margolis’s notion of fallibilism, specifically his distinction between the views of two classical pragmatists, Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey, as well as the reasons why he prefers Dewey’s fallibilism above Peirce’s. In this examination I will trace the Nathan Houser-Margolis debate insofar as it has unfolded itself in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, beginning with Nathan Houser’s 2004 presidential address. Houser’s main objection to Margolis is that he misread Peirce and that as a consequence his favoring of Dewey is misguided. Though Margolis concedes the former, he continues to insist that the future of pragmatism still lies with Dewey, not Peirce. Revisiting the debate, I seek to clear up some of the confusion, so as to get a better idea of the classical pragmatist position that Margolis thinks needs reinventing. In doing so, we will be able an interpretation to the claim that Peirce is to be considered a realist philosophy of the constructivist stripe that does not require us to collapse one conception of fallibilism into the other.