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American Pragmatism

American Pragmatism. Introduction. American Pragmatists. Who are the main American Pragmatists? How are they related?. Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) William James (1842-1910) John Dewey (1859-1952). Other Pragmatists. Josiah Royce (1855-1916) George Herbert Mead (1863-1931)

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American Pragmatism

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  1. American Pragmatism Introduction

  2. American Pragmatists Who are the main American Pragmatists? How are they related? Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) William James (1842-1910) John Dewey (1859-1952)

  3. Other Pragmatists Josiah Royce (1855-1916) George Herbert Mead (1863-1931) George Santayana (1963-1952) F.C.S. Schiller (1864-1937) F.P. Ramsey (1903-1930) C.I. Lewis (1883-1964) Sidney Hook (1902-1982) W.V. Quine (1908-2000) Morton White (1917- ) Nelson Goodman (1906-1998) Hilary Putnam (1926- ) Richard Rory (1931-2007 ) Susan Haack (1945- )

  4. Charles Sanders Peirce Born on September 10, 1839 and died April 19, 1914. His formal degree from Harvard in Chemistry. His father was a prominent Harvard Mathematics Professor.

  5. Peirce 1859-91 worked for the US Coast Survey. John Hopkins University (1879-84) Milford, Pennsylvania (1887-1914) Died in Poverty

  6. Reading List of Peirce’s Works The Fixation of Belief (1877) The Consequences of Four Incapacities (1868) How To Make Our Ideas Clear (1878) Pragmatism and Pragmaticism (1902, 1905 and 1907) The Categories (1867/1903)

  7. William James Born in Jan. 11, 1842 and died in August 26, 1910. Trained as a physician. Father of American Psychology. Most famous for his work on psychology and religious mysticism.

  8. Reading List of James’s Works Pragmatisms Conception of Truth (1906) What Pragmatism Means (1906)  The Will to Believe (1896)

  9. John Dewey Born on October 20, 1859 and died on June 1, 1952. His most popular work is on the philosophy of education, social political thought (democracy and liberalism), art, and ethics. University of Chicago (1894-1904) and Columbia University (1904-1930).

  10. Reading List of Dewey’s Works School Conditions and the Training of Thought (1910) Truth and Consequences (1911) Quest for Certainty (1929) Common Sense and Scientific Inquiry (1938) Philosophy and Democracy (1919)

  11. Themes in American Pragmatism • Evolution • Empiricism • Scientific method • Fallibilism

  12. Descartes and Pragmatism • Pragmatism consist in a rejection of the central elements of Cartesian philosophy. • Rejection of a priori method (i.e., rationalism) • Rejection of its radical individualism. • Rejection of its methodical doubt. • Rejection of absolute certainty.

  13. Kant and Pragmatism Greek “Pragma” means deed or act. The word comes from Kant’s use of the concept pragmatisch. 1) Pragmatism is related to consequences and not practicality (praktisch). 2) Architectonic structure 3) Categories-Idealism

  14. Mental and Private/Physical and Public Pragmatism connects the mental with the public through the pragmatic maxim. Beliefs are connected to actions Ideas are connected to consequences.

  15. Pragmatic Maxim “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” “If one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept could imply, one will have a complete definition of the concept, and there is absolutely nothing more in it.”

  16. Substance vs. Process • Substance philosophy refers to the classical traditional view of the world introduced by Plato and Aristotle: there are individual substances and these substances can be explained through the principles of form and matter (hylomorphism). • All substances have a substantial form that provides a thing’s essence.

  17. Darwin, Evolution and Essence • Darwin's evolutionary theory conflicts with the idea of Platonic and Aristotelian essences. • All essences are really essences-in-transition, and there are no such things as eternal essences or forms. • Instead, the world and things in it are in a continuous evolutionary process.

  18. Spectator Philosophy • Spectator philosophy assumes that we obtain information about the world and that we DO NOT affect the information. • In the learning process we are more like spectators in a game than like players. • Pragmatism rejects this view of knowledge. • Pragmatists claims that we DO affect the the knowledge process and thus we are more like players than spectators.

  19. A Theory of Signs – Semiotics Everything is a sign. Knowledge is only possible through signs. Even the act of perception is performed through signs. Therefore, all knowledge requires INTERPRETATION. Nothing is given as is.

  20. Seminary to the Laboratory • Pragmatism is essentially a method and not a philosophy. • The method is scientific and empirical in nature. • It requires observation and verification. • It shares some similarities with a logical positivism, but it is not scientistism, and it does not reject metaphysics.

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