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The working hypothesis of this essay is: If we upgraded pragmatism from the old, classic version to the newer version, public administration would work better.
I very much appreciated Patricia M. Shields's wonderful article on "The Community of Inquiry" in the November 2003 edition of Administration & Society. She draws scholarly attention to the pragmatic frame of reference and thereby contributes mightily to public administration theory and epistemology. But I wish she would take a closer look at the work of Richard Rorty (1999). Rorty, a great admirer of John Dewey, is the leading pragmatist today and America's most famous living philosopher. His work is amazingly accessible given its level of sophistication. Writing in the pragmatist vein, McSwite (1997) and Box (2002) have appreciated Rorty's work. But Evans (2000), Snider (1998), Stever (2000), and now Shields have ignored it.
The exclusion of Rorty's new pragmatism is significant because he poses some formidable challenges to old pragmatism. Between the time of Dewey and Rorty, something happened: the postmodern assault on foundations. Old pragmatists would do well, it seems to me, to come to grips with this.
THE ASSAULT ON FOUNDATIONS
After Kuhn (1962), scientific paradigm shifts were seen as a sociological phenomenon rather than a better-argument victory for the more scientifically rigorous theory. Epistemology had a rough time digesting this new material, and many methodologists still do not understand the shift that has taken place. The Kuhnian insight did not hit pragmatism especially hard, because pragmatism was already oriented toward the problematic situation rather than generalized, universal truth, as Shields (2003) well appreciates. But the faith in science that Shields seeks to affirm is no longer present in new pragmatism, as it was a century ago for Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Although pragmatism remains mostly intact after the anti-foundational assault, new pragmatism does not abide the correspondence theory implied by the scientific attitude that Shields continues to celebrate.
Correspondence theory posits a direct, denotative link between words and facts. Empirical research is one application of correspondence theory; experiential research is another. According to Shields (2003), "John Dewey's process of inquiry begins and ends in experience" (p. 519). But the foundational link between language and reality that Dewey relied on has been abandoned...