-An Interview Series with John Capps–
“…pragmatism is a response to the tragic legacies of our colonial origins,.. that we must see.. as one important, but decentered voice in the emerging tradition of Inter-American philosophy.”
Albert R. Spencer is an Associate Professor of Teaching at Portland State University. He is the author of American Pragmatism: An Introduction (Polity 2020) and his newest book is The Philosophy of Role-Playing Games: Art, Inquiry, & Ritual (Bloomsbury 2025). He has also authored a suite of Applied Ethics eTextbooks with Kendall Hunt
What does American philosophy mean to you?
Ironically, my first book, American Pragmatism: An Introduction (Polity 2020) was on this subject and I still find it as hard to define today as I did ten years ago. First, there is the political-geographic answer of philosophy generated in the United States. Second, there is the historical answer that it’s the work and themes of the Classical Pragmatists (Addams, Dewey, James, & Peirce) and their heirs. However, I still think John Stuhr’s distinction that Pragmatism functions either as a Peircean “theory of truth” or a Jamesian “method of experience” is the most, well, pragmatic definition.
I’m most interested in pragmatism as a method of experience, but unlike the existentialists, who I feel are a parallel tradition, American Philosophers focus on our social rather than subjective experience. Indeed, the thesis of my first book is that pragmatism is a response to the tragic legacies of our colonial origins, such as manifest destiny, chattel slavery, and hetero-normative patriarchy. As such, I agree with Grant Silva’s insistence that we must see pragmatism as one important but decentered voice in the emerging tradition of Inter-American philosophy, which also includes African-American, Indigenous, and Latinx philosophies.
However, I have a deep respect for the Peircean branch of pragmatism and its focus on inquiry, experimentation, and knowledge. Indeed, my newest book returns to these roots to argue that Role-Playing Games (RPGs), like Dungeons & Dragons, function as abductive laboratories where we create, experiment, simulate, and play with new identities and worlds.
How did you become an American philosopher?
I am a first-generation college graduate from a conservative evangelical family in Appalachia. My family had thick religious beliefs, but they also valued higher education and critical thinking. These commitments created a tension that drew me to philosophy to find my own answers. After reading the existentialists fall semester of my junior year at Georgetown College, I became very disillusioned and unable to return to the belief system of my origin. Fortunately, I read Richard Rorty’s Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity the following spring and realized that certainty and conviction are not necessary to live a meaningful and moral life. We are all works-in-progress looking for the vocabulary that best defines our identity, and we can all build solidarity across ideological differences if we focus on solving social problems rather than arguing about the validity of the source of our beliefs.
Rorty also inspired my desire to pursue philosophy professionally. I soon took classes on pragmatism with my undergraduate mentor, Roger Ward, who recommended that I go to graduate school at Baylor University and study with his mentor Carl Vaught. Sadly, Vaught passed away before I could complete my dissertation, but he presented the pragmatists as central to the history of 20th Century philosophy. I then studied with Stuart Rosenbaum who deepened my appreciation of Dewey and became my dissertation chair. He subsequently recommended that I take classes with John McDermott at Texas A&M University. McDermott’s authenticity completely blew my mind, and I cannot stress how affirming it was to watch him use Camus, Nietzsche, & Sartre to explain James, Dewey, & Royce, and vice versa.
Rosenbaum also encouraged me to audit classes with Gregory Pappas as well, but time and logistics did not permit me to do so. However, the work that he, Leonard Harris, Erin McKenna, Scott Pratt, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, and others have done to broaden the canon of pragmatism and to situate it in the broader context of the Americas has informed most of my work for at least the last ten years.
Most important, the members of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy are amazing! Choosing to specialize in a philosophical tradition that centers community, democracy, diversity, and hope was among the best decisions of my life because I am surrounded by a growing number of colleagues who put their ideals into practice.
How would you describe your current research?
I was diagnosed late in life with ADHD which completely transformed my scholarship, teaching, and perspective. Obviously, I had the condition all along, but the diagnosis was the puzzle piece I needed to organize my strengths and challenges into a coherent picture. In fact, I realized the traits I like most about myself spring from this difference.
Consequently, neurodivergence has become the unifying theme of my current work, even if it isn’t the focus. I don’t think it’s a stretch or irresponsible to suggest that most, if not all, of the great philosophers we study were neurodivergent. Assumedly, a neurotypical person would not fret about the esoteric problems that concern us, yet paradoxically philosophers have been obsessed with universal standards for thinking, ethics, etc. Thus, I appreciate the pragmatists more deeply for their commitment to embodied cognition and all forms of pluralism. I think James and Dewey would completely agree that we need neuropluralism to encourage the diversity of thought necessary to ameliorate problems as they arise and to adapt to changing social circumstances.
This insight deeply informs my most recent book, The Philosophy of Role-Playing Games: Art, Inquiry, & Ritual (Bloomsbury 2025). Since their inception half a century ago, RPGs have been a magnet for neurodivergent and other marginalized folks. I think we subconsciously “know” we have a need to step outside our identity to experience the world, even an imagined one, from the perspective of another persona. It’s a playful form of Freudian wish-fulfillment or Jungian shadow work, which allows us to either access parts of ourselves that we aren’t permitted to express in our “normal” life or to practice new competencies that we would like to develop.
In fact, there Is a growing body of research that supports the therapeutic benefits of RPGs for a wide range of populations, but specifically neurodivergent youth. Not only do these games provide entertainment and ludic therapy, but a gaming group, a community, is necessary for play. This fact helps players gain social support that they might have trouble finding in most adult spaces and requires the practice of working across differences. It’s very Deweyan, and my colleague Susan Haarman wrote an amazing dissertation a few years ago that explicitly makes this connection.
Of course, I see these games as a form of Peircean inquiry as well. His concept of musement and how abduction and creativity shape all aspects of our thinking left a strong impression on me. Dungeons & Dragons was a modification of a wargame called Kriegspiel that the Prussian military developed to train officers. Setting these martial and imperial origins aside, it means that these games were originally intended to be pedagogical simulations and thus are form of creative inquiry. When we create a character, they are a psychological hypothesis that we test by playing the game, and when a Gamemaster creates a paracosm, the fictional setting of the game, she is experimenting with the philosophical ideologies that inform its history, politics, religion, and even metaphysics. Thus, these games have an abductive function of generating new ideas and possibilities that I think Peirce would appreciate.
However, thanks to my ADHD my interests are constantly changing, rather than deepening. I enjoy exploring the connections between diverse thinkers and texts, which has resulted in a recent series of articles on the mutual influence between Swami Vivekananda and the Classical Pragmatists. I’ve also written a suite of eTextbooks with Kendall Hunt mostly on Applied Ethics topics, like the Philosophy of Sports, The Philosophy of War, and of course, The Philosophy of Games.
What do you do when you’re not doing American philosophy?
I’d like to say that I spend as much time cycling, hiking, and doing yoga now as I did ten years ago, but games of all sorts have consumed my attention. During the pandemic I organized an online D&D group composed almost entirely of fellow philosophers, which my colleague Edward Hackett dubbed “The Dragons of Misplaced Concreteness.” Five years later, most of the core members continue to meet regularly, but the troupe is always changing as old members go on hiatus and new members join us. If you’re reading this and are a player or just curious about RPGs, please email me or approach me at a conference. We’re usually able to accommodate a walk-on for a session or two.
Of course, the Dragons are not my only group. In the summer of 2024, several colleagues and I gathered remotely to play an indie RPG, Dog Eat Dog. The game was created by Liam Liwanag Burke, a Filipino-Hawaiian designer, and it simulates the assimilation of a Pacific Island after it has been conquered. One person plays the entire Occupation while every other player creates their own Native character. Please note, this game does not make light of colonization at all. Burke created the game as a means of exploring a fierce subject, which demonstrates the potential of RPGs for transformative play. If you’d like to know more, our group co-authored an article on the game which will be in a special issue of The Pluralist.
Clearly, table-top RPGs are my favorite, but I also love video games and board games. In fact, at the recommendation of my colleague Kelly Parker, my wife and I have been addicted to Backgammon since spring. It’s the perfect two-player game with a sublime balance of strategy and luck. It is also very ancient. The modern version dates back to the 17th Century Ireland and precursors, like the Royal Game of Ur, date back as far as 2600 BC Mesopotamia. It’s truly incredible to learn and marvel at how central games have been to our cultures and that we are still able to enjoy games like Backgammon, Chess, and Go that have been played by millions of people across the centuries.
What’s your favorite work in American philosophy? What should we all be reading?
I would say that I have at least four favorite selections that I always love to share and discuss with students: W.E.B. Du Bois’s “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” Vine Deloria Jr.’s “Sacred Places and Moral Responsibility,” Julio Cortázar’s “Axolotl,” and Rorty’s “Looking Back from 2096.” Du Bois’ concept of double consciousness is life changing and once you begin looking at present and past America it becomes impossible not to see the distance between our highest ideals and our lived realities. Deloria always reminds me how ancient and sacred this land is that I call home and that I am part of a web of living spiritual relations that most tragically ignore. Cortázar captures the epistemic dissociation that most scholars crave: that moment when we become so immersed in our subject, we metaphorically become our subject, if only for a fleeting moment.
Finally, I am always struck by how presciently Rorty recognized that the inequalities and contradictions present before the turn of the millennium would morph and metastasize into the wicked problems of the present. Make no mistake, we are in the darkest moment I have witnessed in my lifetime, but Rorty’s essay reminds me to take hope in the fact that this too shall pass and that the way out is through creativity and solidarity. That’s why I feel games in general and role-playing games in particular are so important. They create an excuse to work across differences, to build community, to escape long enough for respite, and to imagine new solutions and possibilities.