Drawing from the "'
practicalist' conception of 'truth'" (1989, 13) Sara Ruddick proposes that "thinking arises from and is tested against practices" (1989, 13).
At least one way of understanding intellectualism should be rejected, and its
practicalist counterpart should be accepted instead.--Correspondence to: sgrimm@fordham.edu
Debates in ethics between perspectives emphasizing justice and perspectives emphasizing care, or between principlism and
practicalist approaches, are moot if morality is itself eclipsed by the commodification imperative.
Unable to admit that such questions cannot yet be answered, the
practicalist may blindly collude in the pretence that they do not exist by ignoring them, especially when the psychological expectations and social rewards are high.
Such an approach is likely to involve grounding these two kinds of reason in some "essential" or "natural" gender difference (an "essentialist" position) or, on a more pragmatist or practicalist account, in the different domains of action and practice that women and men have traditionally been engaged in.
Carol McMillan's (1982) position on reason (more generally) involves an uneasy combination of these two essentialist and practicalist approaches.
A second practicalist, Nixon, advocated similar strategies and offered a reminder that fluent, creative writing is more the result of hard work and of borrowing than of inspiration |94~.
Ribot |108~ and Royce |116~ were leaders a century ago in attempts to debunk what they saw as mystical thinking about writing fluency -- an effort depicted by modern-day practicalists as perpetually unsuccessful |102~.
The earliest practicalists paid attention to internal events in unblocking.
The five user types she finds are enthusiasts,
practicalists, socializers, traditionalists, and guardians.
All the
practicalists and functionalists are at loss, in benefit are those who have good behaviors.