Editorial

Abstract

Cognitio has been regarded as one of the most important publications on classic pragmatism and on its connections with contemporary pragmatism and philosophy, mainly on the international level, as frequently attested by the most renowned scholars in this field of research. Submissions are being continuously received from these scholars, and the papers published during the journal’s thirteen years, to be completed at the end of 2012, are testimony to its irrefutable quality. Certainly the famous names that figured in past issues are ample evidence of the deserved academic respect and editorial seriousness of Cognitio.Spread nowadays throughout major research centers of the world, studies that have classic pragmatism and its theoretical ramifications as key features transcend what has traditionally been characterized as North American philosophy, except when mention is made to the origins of the doctrine effectively originating from the United States. Practically all European countries have their own research centers and have long been promoting international events and publications, bringing together scholars of pragmatism. Also in Canada, Latin America and Japan there are important study centers related to pragmatism. The International Meetings on Pragmatism, held by the Center for Pragmatism Studies of the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, have equally convened senior researchers from many parts of the world, as well as young scholars and foreign students taking masters and doctorate degrees, who submit their papers to the event. This diffusion of interest in pragmatism is conceivably due to the very nature of its theoretical structure, namely, its multiple interfaces open to myriad themes associated with a substantial range of philosophy problems. One cannot delve deeply into the conceptual framework of the field without a serious study of the history of philosophy – to ignore it is to incur in reductionist interpretations and, above all, to disregard the heuristic dialogue that the knowledge of the classics can provide to contemporaneity.On behalf of this dialogue, Cognitio has published essays that show the thematic diversity akin to its specific field of research, as this issue so well illustrates with papers on James and Wittgenstein, Dewey and Foucault, Brandom and Hegel, Marx and Pragmatism, and Logic and Semiotics, as fittingly mentioned in this issue’s jacket. From what we have observed in the most recent research and in the interest shown by researchers, we believe that the theoretical interfaces provided by the study of classic pragmatism tend to spread, linking pragmatism to semiotics, and delving, in an original fashion, into a new interpretation of old and new philosophy problems.

Ivo A. Ibri
Editor