Browsing by Author "Sorrell, K."

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Open Access
Our better angels: Empathy, sympathetic reason, and pragmatic moral progress
(University of Illinois Press, 2014) Sorrell, K.
The article explores research on neuroscience, empirical psychology, and primatology supporting an emphatic understanding of human nature. Topics discussed include the Darwinian paradigm, the book "The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society," by Frans de Waal, and the loyalty of people to a nation, group, or religion. Also mentioned are the views of science journalist Maia Szalavitz, child psychiatrist Bruce Perry, and psychologist Steven Pinker on empathy.
Open Access
Peirce, immediate perception, and the "New" unconscious: neuroscience and empirical psychology in support of a "Well-Known Doctrine"
(Penn State University Press, 2015) Sorrell, K.
This article defends Charles Peirce's "doctrine of immediate perception." This realistic view holds that conscious agents, due to the work of unconscious mind, directly perceive the world and often know objects, events, and persons as they truly are, independently of how we might prefer to think of them (what is known as our realist intuition). The doctrine provides a promising alternative to more recent views insisting that all experience of the world and other persons is ineluctably mediated by language, along with the categories and biases language inevitably imposes. Peirce's view is further explicated in terms of what neuroscientists now call the "new" unconscious (but to which Peirce contributed to earlier) and supported by recent work in both neuroscience and empirical psychology, especially experiments involving infants. The article supports the conclusion that, while much experience is mediated by language (often helpfully so), direct (and desirable) access to a world that informs and often surprises us persists throughout conscious experience. Copyright © 2015 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, PA.
Open Access
Pragmatism and moral progress: John Dewey's theory of social inquiry
(Sage, 2013) Sorrell, K.
John Dewey developed a pragmatic theory of inquiry to provide intelligent methods for social progress. He believed that the logic and attitude of successful scientific inquiries, properly conceived, could be fruitfully applied to morals and politics. Unfortunately, his project has been poorly understood and his logic of inquiry neglected as a resource. Contemporary pragmatists, like Richard Rorty, for example, dismiss his emphasis on method and avoid judgments of moral progress that are in any way independent of the biases of particular cultures. In this article, I argue that Dewey's theory of inquiry indeed provides intelligent methods and intellectual criteria for engaging moral and political matters. Inquiry, as Dewey conceives it, issues in judgments that are increasingly objective, reliable and refined in application. These judgments are rooted in particular times and places, in actual 'situations', but are not entirely hostage to specific cultures. I then apply Dewey's theory to two standard moral problems to demonstrate how it works. The conclusion is that Dewey's theory of inquiry gets it just right: it provides solid ground for criticism and moral progress while remaining acutely sensitive to cultural differences and changing circumstances. © The Author(s) 2013.