Scott L. Pratt
Professor of Philosophy
Department Head
Philosophy
Email: spratt@uoregon.edu
Phone: 541-346-5971
Office: 239 Susan Campbell Hall
Office Hours: Office Hours are Tuesdays 3:00-5:00 Pacific Time in person or by Zoom. Use this link (https://calendly.com/spratt-9/office-hours) to schedule a meeting. Other times are available on request.
Research Interests: American Philosophy, History of Philosophy, Logic, Philosophy of Education
Statement
Scott L. Pratt is Professor and Department Head of Philosophy at the University of Oregon. His research and teaching interests are in American philosophy (including pragmatism, America feminism, philosophies of race, and Native American philosophy), philosophy of education, and the history of logic. Pratt is a 2025 Visiting Professor, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Université PSL, Paris. He is co-director of the Central European Pragmatist Forum and of PLURILOG, an international research project for the interdisciplinary and historical study of logic. He served as Executive Vice Provost for Academic Affairs (2017-2019), Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School (2015-2017), and as Associate Dean for Humanities in the College of Arts and Sciences (2006-2009). He also served as Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Philosophy at Oregon and as department head for seven years. Pratt received his BA from Beloit College (Wisconsin) and his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Minnesota. He is a co-founder and past President of the Josiah Royce Society and is Past-President of the society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. He was one of the initial organizers of United Academics of the University of Oregon faculty union.
In addition to articles on the history and implications of logic including “The Logic of Posthuman Inquiry: Affirmative Politics, Validity, and Futurities” (with Jerry Rosiek, 2023) and “Decolonizing Natural Logic” (2021), he is the author, coauthor or coeditor of seven books and many articles. His book, Logic: Inquiry, Argument and Order (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) is the first introductory study of logic framed in terms of problems of identity and knowledge that arise in the context of racial, cultural, and religious diversity. Native Pragmatism: Rethinking the Roots of American Philosophy (Indiana University Press, 2002) examines the influence of Native American thought on European American philosophy, particularly the origins of pragmatism. He is co-author, with Erin McKenna, of American Philosophies from Wounded Knee to the Present (Bloomsbury, 2015; revised edition forthcoming), a comprehensive history of philosophies in North America from 1890 to the present. His current research project is a study of the role of logic (formal and informal) in the colonization of North America and its implications for present-day anti-colonial and decolonial efforts. The project has the working title, Against Critical Reason.
Publications
Books
American Philosophy from Wounded Knee to the Present, co-authored with Erin McKenna, University of Oregon. Bloomsbury Press (2015),second revised edition forthcoming.
Logic: Inquiry, Argument and Order. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing (2010).
Native Pragmatism. Indiana University Press (2002).
Edited Volumes
Race Questions, Provincialism, and Other American Problems, by Josiah Royce, expanded edition. Co-edited with introductions by Scott L. Pratt and Shannon Sullivan. Fordham University Press (2009).
Jimmy Buffett and Philosophy. Co-edited with Erin McKenna. Open Court Press (2009).
The Philosophical Writings of Cadwallader Colden. Co-edited with John Ryder. Humanity Books (2002).
American Philosophy: An Anthology. Co-edited with Leonard Harris and Anne Waters. Blackwell Publishing (2002).
Books in Progress
Posthuman Empiricism: Agency, Ethics, and Politics in Social Inquiry, co-authored with Jerry Rosiek. Under contract. Routledge Press.
Against Critical Reason. (Manuscript in Progress)
Absolute Pragmatism (Manuscript in Progress)
Selected Refereed Articles
Logic and Colonization in North America. The Pluralist. (Forthcoming) Recipient of the 2024 Joseph L. Blau Prize from the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy.
Ezumezu Logic as a Decolonial System of Order. Ezumezu: African Perspectives on Logic, Transhumanism, and AI Ethics, 1 (1), 2024. https://dx.doi.org/10.4314/ezumezu.v1i1.2.
The Logic of Posthuman Inquiry: Affirmative Politics, Validity, and Futurities. Co-authored with Jerry Rosiek. Qualitative Inquiry, forthcoming.
(Mis)Trust and Pragmatism as Grounded Normativity. Recipient of the 2022 Inter-American Philosophy Prize. Inter-American Journal of Philosophy. Forthcoming.
Lessons in Place: Thoreau and Indigenous Philosophy. “Lessons in place: Thoreau and Indigenous philosophy.” Metaphilosophy 53: 371–384, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12563.
Agency and Sovereignty in American Indian Philosophy. Pragmatism Today, Volume 10, 2, Winter 2019, 16-23.
The New Materialisms and Indigenous Theories of Non-Human Agency: The Promise and Necessity of Respectful Anti-Colonial Engagement, co-authored with Jerry Rosiek and Jimmy Snyder. Qualitative Inquiry, 2-27-2019, https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1077800419830135.
Imperial Irony: Rorty, Richard Henry Pratt and the American Indian Genocide. Pragmatism Today, 7 (2) Winter 2016.
Geography, History and the Aims of Education: The Possibility of Multiculturalism in Democracy and Education. Educational Theory, 66, 1-2, April 2016.
Indigenous Agencies and The Pluralism of Empire. Philosophical Topics, 41, 2, Fall 2013 [Summer 2015] Envisioning Plurality: Feminist Perspectives on Pluralism in Ethics, Politics, and Social Theory, Edited by Jean Keller and Bonnie Mann.
Jane Addams as a Resource for Developing a Reflexively Realist Social Science Practice, Qualitative Inquiry, co-authored with Jerry Rosiek, 19, 8, October 2013 pp. 578 - 589.
“All Our Puzzles Will Disappear”: Royce and the Possibility of Error, Cognitio: Revista de Filosofia, 11, 2, (July – December, 2010).
Opera as Experience. Journal of Aesthetic Education, 43, 4, Winter 2009.
The Experience of Pluralism. Journal of Speculative Philosophy, 21, 2, 2007, 106-114. Translated by Boris Betancourt Kamenetskaia as La experiencia del pluralism, Andamios: Revista de Investigacion Social 16(40):167
“New Continents”: The Future of Royce’s Logic. History and Philosophy of Logic, 28, 2 (2007), 133-150.
Persons in Place: The Agent Ontology of Vine Deloria, Jr. APA Newsletter on American Indians in Philosophy, 6, 1 (2006), 4-9.
Selected Invited Papers, Chapters in Anthologies, and Special Issues
Ontologies of Possibility and Loss in Posthumanist Inquiry: Lessons from the Study of Systemic Racism. Co-authored with Jerry Rosiek. In Post-Foundational Approaches to Inquiry edited by Lisa Mazzei, forthcoming.
Vital Lies and the Fate of Democracy. In The Oxford Handbook of Jane Addams. Patricia M. Shields, Maurice Hamington, Joseph Soeters, eds. Oxford UP, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780197544518.013.10.
Why Metaphysics? Mary Whiton Calkins as a Pragmatist Feminist. In Pragmatist Feminism and the Work of Charlene Haddock Seigfried. Lee McBride III, Erin McKenna, eds. Bloomsbury Press, 2022.
Decolonizing Natural Logic. In Logical skills, Social Historical Perspectives, edited by Julie Brumberg and Claude Rosental. Studies in Universal Logic, Springer Nature Switzerland AG (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-58446-7_2.
The Relevance of Jane Addams’s Democracy and Social Ethics. The Pluralist, 16, 1 (2021), 128-136.
Spirits and the Limits of Pragmatist: A Response to “Against Discursive Colonialism.” The Pluralist, 16, 1 (2021), 75-83.
To Survive Pandemics, Look to Indigenous Life. Dewey Studies, Vol. 4, 1, 2020, 165-173.
The Edges of Resistance. Pragmatism Today, Vol. 11, 2, (2020), pp. 55-64.
Kathleen Wallace and The Network Self. Metaphilosophy, 51, 5 (2020).
The Aesthetics of Rehearsal. Imagining Dewey: Artful works and dialogue about Art as Experience. Edited by Patricia L. Maarhuis and A.G. Rud. Brill. (2020).
“So much has been destroyed”: Genocide and American Philosophy. The Pluralist, Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 2019, pp. 1-20.
The Metaphysics of Toleration in American Indian Philosophy. In Toleration in Comparative Perspective, edited by Vicki Spencer. Lanham, Boulder, New York, London: Lexington Books (2018).
Philosophy and the Mirror of Culture: On the Future and Function of Dewey Scholarship. Co-authored with Erin McKenna. In The Oxford Handbook of John Dewey, edited by Steven Fesmire. Oxford: Oxford University Press (2017, 2019).
Boundaries as limits and possibilities. John Dewey’s Democracy and Education: A Centennial Handbook. Leonard Waks and Andrea English, editors. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.
Race, Culture, and Pluralism: Royce’s Logical “Primitives.” In The Relevance of Royce, Kelly A. Parker and Jason Bell, editors. Fordham University Press, 2014, 132-150.
American Power, Foucault Studies, No. 11, pp. 76-91, February 2011.
Creation and Liberation: The Ontology of American Indian Origins. In Routledge Companion to Science and Religion, James Haag and Michael Spezio, editors. Routledge, 2011.
Border Agents and Boundary Identities. Central European Pragmatist Forum, Volume 5, Identity and Social Transformation. John Ryder and Emil Visnovsky, editors. Rodopi, 2011, 103-116.
The Politics of Disjunction. Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society, 46, 2, Spring 2011, pp. 202-220.
Fly-Fishing and the Ecology of Music. In Jimmy Buffett and Philosophy. Co-edited with Erin McKenna. Open Court Press (2009).
Teaching
Pratt teaches courses that introduce undergraduate and graduate students to the wide range of thinkers within the American tradition. These courses include a general introduction to American philosophy and a survey of Native American philosophy, as well as courses on the work of John Dewey, William James, Josiah Royce, Jane Addams, C. S. Peirce, and W. E. B. Du Bois. He has also taught graduate seminars on epistemology, philosophy of education, pragmatist social theory, pluralism, and the history of philosophy. In addition, Pratt teaches PHIL 420/520, Native American Philosophy with a focus on the intersection of European American and Indigenous philosophy and its implications for metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics, PHIL 471/571, Advanced Introduction to American Philosophy, and PHIL 426/526, Advanced Logic.