Hugh McDonald
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Contact
Dr. Hugh P. McDonaldNew York City College of Technology 300 Jay St. Rm. N627 Brooklyn, NY 11201
# (718) 858-1904
E-mail: hmcdonald@citytech.cuny.edu ; (also humcdonald@aol.com )
Videointerview
McDonald #07Democracy (Liberalism and Socialism)
»The end of democracy is a radical end. For it is an end that has not been adequately realized in any country at any time. It is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural.« (LW 11: 298f)
Universalism/Contextualism
»Habits of speech, including syntax and vocabulary, and modes of interpretation have been formed in the face of inclusive and defining situations of context ... We are not explicitly aware of the role of context just because our every utterance is so saturated with it that it forms the significance of what we say and hear ... Now thought lives, moves, and has its being in and through symbols, and, therefore, depends for meaning upon context as do the symbols ... I should venture to assert that the most pervasive fallacy of philosophic thinking goes back to neglect of context.« (LW 6: 4-5)
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Re/de/constructions
Construction (experience)
»I have used the word construction" to denote "the creative mind, the mind that is genuinely productive in its operations. We are given to associating creative mind with persons regarded as rare and unique, like geniuses. But every individual is in his own way unique. Each one experiences life from a different angle than anybody else, and consequently has something distinctive to give others if he can turn his experiences into ideas and pass them on to others.« (LW 5: 127)
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Reconstruction (habit)
»There is no one among us who is not called upon to face honestly and courageously the equipment of beliefs, religious, political, artistic, economic, that has come to him in all sorts of indirect and uncriticized ways, and to inquire how much of it is validated and verified in present need, opportunity, and application.« (LW 5: 142)
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Deconstruction (criticism)
»Creative activity is our great need; but criticism, self-criticism, is the road to its release.« (LW 5: 143)
»We cannot permanently divest ourselves of the intellectual habits we take on and wear when we assimilate the culture of our own time and place. But intelligent furthering of culture demands that we take some of them off, that we inspect them critically to see what they are made of and what wearing them does to us« (LW 1: 40)
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Truth and Warranted Assertions (Experimentalism)
»... the term ‘warranted assertion' s preferred to the terms belief and knowledge. It is free from the ambiguity of these latter terms, and it involves reference to inquiry as that which warrants assertion« (LW 12: 17)
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Experience and the Real
»... the question ... is what the real is. If natural existence is qualitatively individualized or genuinely plural, as well as repetitious, and if things have both temporal quality and recurrence or uniformity, then the more realistic knowledge is, the more fully it will reflect and exemplify these traits« (LW 1: 127)
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Experience and Language
»If existence in its immediacies could speak it would proclaim: ‘I may have relatives but I am not related.' In aesthetic objects, that is in all immediately enjoyed and suffered things, in things directly possessed, they thus speak for themselves.« (LW 1: 75f)
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Communication and Participation
»Of all affairs, communication is the most wonderful. That things should be able to pass from the plane of external pushing and pulling to that of revealing themselves to man, and thereby to themselves; and that the fruit of communication should be participation, sharing, is a wonder by the side of which transubstantiation pales.« (LW 1: 132)
»Communication is the process of creating participation, of making common what had been isolated and singular; and part of the miracle it achieves is that, in being communicated, the conveyance of meaning gives body and definiteness to the experience of the one who utters as well as to that of those who listen« (LW 10: 248f).
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Democracy (Liberalism and Socialism)
»The end of democracy is a radical end. For it is an end that has not been adequately realized in any country at any time. It is radical because it requires great change in existing social institutions, economic, legal and cultural.« (LW 11: 298f)
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Democracy (Experience and Education)
»Democracy is the faith that the process of experience is more important than any special result attained, so that special results achieved are of ultimate value only as they are used to enrich and order the ongoing process. Since the process of experience is capable of being educative, faith in democracy is all one with faith in experience and education.« (LW 14: 229)
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Democracy (Culture and the Power of Imagination)
“Imagination is the chief instrument of the good” (LW 10: 350), because only “imaginative vision elicits the possibilities that are interwoven within the texture of the actual.” (LW 10: 348)
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Democracy (Intelligence and Local Communities)
»In a word, that expansion and reinforcement of personal understanding and judgment by the cumulative and transmitted intellectual wealth of the community which may render nugatory the indictment of democracy drawn on the basis of the ignorance, bias and levity of the masses, can be fulfilled only in the relations of personal intercourse in the local community ... Vision is a spectator; hearing is a participator ... We lie, as Emerson said, in the lap of an immense intelligence. But that intelligence is dormant and its communications are broken, inarticulate and faint until it possesses the local community as its medium.« (LW 2: 371f)
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Education as Growth
»Since growth is the characteristic of life, education is all one with growing; it has no end beyond itself. The criterion of the value of school education is the extent in which it creates a desire for continued growth and supplies means for making the desire effective in fact.« (MW 9: 58)
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Special question to the scholar
You have been very much influenced by Schiller and Dewey. What are your further interests in connecting these approaches with environmental studies?
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Area of Specialization:
Value theory, Moral Philosophy, Environmental Ethics
Areas of Competence:
Social and political philosophy, applied ethics including environmental ethics and biomedical ethics, Pragmatism, the history of philosophy and ethics, metaphysics, philosophy of nature, philosophy of mind.
Education:
- Ø Ph.D. Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty of the New School University.
- Ø M.A. Philosophy at the Graduate Faculty of the New School.
- Ø B. A. Philosophy, State University of New York, College at Purchase.
Dissertation:
(Ph.D.) "Pragmatism and the Problem of the Intrinsic Value of the Environment." Advised by Prof. Richard Bernstein, Prof. Agnes Heller and Dmitri Nikulin.
(B.A. Dissertation:) "The Theme of Sophiacracy in Western Political Philosophy." Advised by Prof. Robert Neville (BU) and Asst. Prof. Alan Gettner.
Academic Positions:
Appointed to Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Social Science, New York City College of Technology May 2003. Tenured November 2007.
Adjunct Professor at:
Department of Social Sciences, Borough of Manhattan Community College.
Department of Philosophy and Religion, New Jersey City University.
Department of Humanities, New School University Adult Division.
Prelude to Success Program, Hunter College of the City Univ. of NY.
Department of Social Science, New York City Technical College.
Department of Philosophy, Marymount Manhattan College.
Publications:
Political Philosophy and Ideology (University Press of America, 1996).
Radical Axiology, a First Philosophy of Values, Rodopi/Value Inquiry Book Series, 2004.
John Dewey and Environmental Ethics, SUNY Press, 2004.
2. I have completed two other books and submitted them to publishers for consideration.
Creative Actualization. This book proposes a new theory of values.
Speculative Evaluations. This book covers certain speculative issues such as space, time, principles, being, nature and others.
B. Philosophy Articles:
"Does Nature Exist?" Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. XXI, #5 & 6, Sept./Oct and Nov./Dec 2000.
(A short version of this article was presented at the Spring 2000 Pacific APA Conference, in Albuquerque.)
"Toward a Deontological Environmental Ethics," Environmental Ethics, 23/4, Winter 2001.
(A short version of this article was presented at a Philosophy Conference at New Jersey City University in November)
"Dewey's Naturalism," Environmental Ethics, 24/2, Summer 2002.
"First Philosophy in the Pragmatic Humanism of F. C. S. Schiller" International Philosophical Quarterly, December 2003. (A short version of this article was presented TO the New York Pragmatist Forum in September, 2004)
"The Problem with Brain" Contemporary Pragmatism, December 2005.
"Creative Actualization as a Theory of Value" Contemporary Pragmatism, December 2006
"Axiology" for the Routledge Encyclopedia of American Philosophy 2008.
2. Under review
"Values as Constitutive of the Will to Power" under review by The Continental Philosophy Review.
"Principles: the Principle of Principles," under review by The Pluralist.
"The Metaphysics of Pragmatism" under review by Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society.
"In Defense of Species," under review by Environmental Ethics
C. Botanical Articles
"A Review of Calochortus, section Cyclobothra, (Calochortaceae)" Herbertia, Vol. 55, 2000.
"A new species of Calochortus from Western Mexico," co-authored with Dr. Bryan Ness and Dr. Thomas Patterson, submitted to Madrono and under review (on a new species that I discovered).
D. Horticultural Articles
"Magnificent Mariposas," in American Horticulturist, Dec. 95
"The Genus Calochortus in California," Fremontia, July 96 and Jan. 97. The latter article includes publication of my photography of the plants.
"Fairy Lanterns and Pussy Ears," Focus on Plants, Vol. 5, No. 3, Summer 1991.
"The Horticulture of Calochortus," Hobby Greenhouse, 12/4, Fall 1990.
I have also published other articles on Calochortus, a family of western flower bulbs.
E. Conference Presentations
1. Invited presentations
"Environmental Pragmatism"
Two day seminar, summer seminar, held at the University of Colorado at Boulder, July, 2006,
Sponsored by the Society for Advancement of American Philosophy.
"Radical Axiology" and "Creative Actualization,"
Invited lectures and discussions, held at the University of Warsaw, Poland, January 2007.
"In Defense of Species,"
Paper presented at a Philosophy and Biology Conference, University of Illinois at Carbondale,
February, 2007.
2. Other presentations
"Ideology and Power"
Society for the Study of Genocide and the Holocaust, Pacific APA, Los Angeles, March 1998.
"Does Nature Exist?"
Pacific APA, Albuquerque, April 2000.
"Dewey's Holism"
Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy Conference in Las Vegas, NV, March 2001
"Toward a Deontological Environmental Ethics,"
Presented at a Philosophy Conference at New Jersey City University in November, 2000.
"The History of Value Inquiry: Value as First Philosophy and the Pragmatic Humanism of F.C.S. Schiller"
Conference on Value Inquiry, University of North Dakota, Grand Forks, ND, April, 2003, sponsored by the American Society for Value Inquiry and the International Society for Value Inquiry.
"Creative Actualization as a Theory of Value"
Conference on Value Inquiry, Molloy College, Rockville Centre, NY, April, 2006, sponsored by the American Society for Value Inquiry and the International Society for Value Inquiry.
"The Importance of Environmental Ethics"
Conference on Earth Day, Division of Arts and Sciences, New York City College of Technology, April 2006.
"Nietzsche: Existentialist or Pragmatist?"
New York Pragmatist Forum, January, 2008.
F. Reviews
Review of Ryder and Visnovsky, eds., Pragmatism and Values: the Central European Pragmatist Forum, in the Society for Advancement of American Philosophy Newsletter, 99, Oct. 2004, pp. 48-51.
Review of De Waal, Cornelis, On Pragmatism, in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Spring 2005, Vol. XLI, No. 2, pp. 435-439.
Review of Animal Pragmatism, Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Relationships, ed. by Light, A. and McKenna, E., in Organization and the Environment, Vol. 18, No. 3, Sept. 2005, 381-383.
G. Books in Progress
I am working on other books which extend value philosophy systematically to other areas of philosophy:
Philosophy and Imagination
Evaluation and Norms
Revaluation of Cosmopolitan Ethics
Pragmatic Consequentialism (an examination of the value theory and ethics of the pragmatists).
I am also working on an anthology of value theory from Plato to the present.
I have many other articles in progress
I. Editorship
I am co-editor, with Prof. John Shook, of the project of publishing the Complete Works of the English pragmatist, F.C.S. Schiller. This book has been accepted by Prometheus Books and will be published in 2008.
The Humanistic Pragmatism of F. C. S. Schiller: Selected Writings, 1891-1939
I also started and wrote/edited the newsletter Mariposa for 9 years.
Professional Organizations:
The American Philosophical Association, the Society for Advancement of American Philosophy, the Society for Value Inquiry (treasurer), the International Society for Environmental Ethics, the Calochortus Society (founder) and past member of the California Native Plant Society.
I co-founded the New York Pragmatist Forum, a group devoted to presentation of papers on the classical pragmatists, and application of pragmatism to contemporary issues.
Awards:
N.Y. State Regents Scholar as well as several high school awards.
Other Activities
1. I have become an expert on Calochortaceae, a family of native Western flower bulbs. I have extensive direct field experience of North American botany.
1989-1991 Las Positas College Livermore, CA Obtained certificate in horticulture
- q I earned a certificate in horticulture, a regular degree program which included courses in botany, soils, floriculture, arboriculture, pests and diseases, and landscape. My horticultural project (required for the certificate) was to conduct extensive growing trials for Calochortaceae, a family of western North American flower bulbs. Over 20 such tests were set up including comparison of different media, fertilizers, exposures, germination etc. This was a pioneering effort: the family was relatively unknown prior to this and the horticulture was considered difficult even by experts.
- q I started a newsletter on Calochortus in order to educate others on the horticulture of the bulbs and popularize the appreciation of this beautiful group of flowers. The newsletter involved research into optimum growing conditions (which was begun as part of my horticulture certificate, see above) the results of which were published as articles in the newsletter. There were also research articles on the history of the horticulture of the plants and ecological and climatological studies. The newsletter, a quarterly, also covered one species each issue intensively, including its ecology, botany and horticulture. Writing the newsletter was a volunteer effort which was run without profit for nine years before I passed editorship on to a friend. I also sent free seed to subscribers each year, including seed of the Mexican species, which until then had been practically unknown to horticulture. Publishing the newsletter involved research, writing, editing, photography and communication skills.
- q The ecological studies included extensive travel throughout the range of the plants including almost every county of every state west of the plains in the U.S. and Mexico. In the case of the Mexican species, the information was so scant that no one knew what most of the plants looked like as living specimens. I took habitat photographs and published shots of all the Mexican species including a new one I discovered.
- q I lectured on the bulbs for interested groups. A slide show was presented with all 65 species photographed by me in their native habitat. I also gave horticultural advice, as the flowers were considered difficult to grow.
- q I helped a doctoral candidate in botany who was doing his dissertation on the phylogenic and radiation patterns of the Calochortus family, Dr. Thomas Patterson, by collecting specimens, showing and discussing habitat, and critical remarks.
- q I helped get several species of Calochortus listed as candidates for rare and endangered status after extensive research involving numerous field trips to document extirpation in former, historical ranges.
- q I also have done extensive wildflower photography, some of which has been published.
2. I have experience in performing arts, including both solo and choral work. I have performed in semi-professional opera, oratorio and other forms. I have received vocal training in the classical repertoire.
3. I started and built up a new business growing and selling rare flower bulbs by identifying this as a pioneer market. Also involved was research on growing different kinds of rare bulbs, including their native conditions and ecologyI published a guide to growing the bulbs which reflected my experience and research. During the course of running the business, I grew over 400 botanical species of bulbs.
