School
Pragmatism
Pragmatism is the philosophy that the meaning and truth of ideas lie in their practical consequences and their success in inquiry and action.
It began in the United States in the 1870s with C. S. Peirce and William James, who made the name widely known, and John Dewey extended it to education, democracy and inquiry; C. I. Lewis joined it to logic and the theory of knowledge. They disagreed about truth: Peirce tied it to what inquiry would finally settle, James to what works in experience. Later thinkers such as Richard Rorty and Hilary Putnam revived it. On this site it answers questions on truth, justification, rationality, formal epistemology and consciousness.
Thinkers of this school
Guide: Schools of Philosophy: The Main -isms and the Questions They Answer
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Reading group: William James, The Principles of Psychology, three chapters
William James published The Principles of Psychology in 1890, after twelve years of work. It is two huge volumes, and nobody should read it straight through. But three chapters are among the best things written about the mind, and they read like…
Started by Dana Whitfield5 replies -
Reading group: Clifford’s “The Ethics of Belief” and James’s “The Will to Believe” side by side
These two essays are a classic pairing and they are both short, so I'd like to read them together over four weeks. The question they share is the one at the center of debates about rationality: should you believe only what the…
Started by Dana Whitfield6 replies -
Reading group: William James’s Varieties, from ‘Religion and Neurology’ to the mysticism lectures
James gave the Gifford Lectures here in Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902, and they became The Varieties of Religious Experience. I have walked past the building for decades without reading the book, which seems a poor show for someone who spent his…
Started by Alistair Gow6 replies -
Reading group: Frank Ramsey, “Truth and Probability” (written 1926)
Ramsey wrote “Truth and Probability” in 1926, when he was twenty-three, and it was published only after his death, in the 1931 collection of his papers edited by R. B. Braithwaite. It is the founding text of the idea that degrees of…
Started by Oskar Nyberg5 replies