While classical pragmatism quickly became identified with the theory of truth that dominated critical discussions of it, both of its founders, Charles Sanders Peirce and William James, understood pragmatism essentially as a method. The article compares Peirce’s conceptions of pragmatism with James’s view that the pragmatic method would allow us to resolve many disputes in philosophy, and argues that their differences undermine any purely ‘Peircian’ reading of James’s Pragmatic Maxim. It then examines the advantages and drawbacks of three other readings (...) of James’s maxim: the “activist” reading, the “subjectivist” reading, and the “practical” reading. (shrink)

The study of color expanded rapidly in the 20th century. With this expansion came fragmentation, as philosophers, physicists, physiologists, psychologists, and others explored the subject in vastly different ways. There are at least two ways in which the study of color became contentious. The first was with regard to the definitional question: what is color? The second was with the location question: are colors inside the head or out in the world? In this chapter, we summarize the most prominent answers (...) that color scientists and philosophers gave to the definitional and location questions in the 20th century. We identify some of the different points at which their work intersected, as well as the most prominent schisms between them. One overarching theme of the chapter is the surprising proliferation of different views on color. Whereas some assume that progress in science must take the form of convergence, the 20th century history of color exhibited a marked divergence in views. This chapter leaves it an open question whether an ultimate unification of views is possible, or whether the only thing that ties together the study of “color” is the shared inheritance of a word. (shrink)

"We wish this volume to be a sure companion to the study of free will, broadly construed to include action theory, moral and legal responsibility, and cohort studies feathering off into adjacent fields in the liberal arts and sciences. In addition to general coverage of the discipline, this volume attempts a more challenging and complementary accompaniment to many familiar narratives about free will. In order to map out some directions such accompaniment will take, in this introduction we anchor the thirty (...) contributions to this volume in some common history from which they arise, and attempt to indicate where future work in free will and moral responsibility will–and has already begun to–depart from that history." -Excerpt from Introduction. ... ... To read full introduction, (1) download attached file or (2) follow wiley_dot_com link below, click "Read An Excerpt", then click :Excerpt 3:(pdf)". (shrink)

A. J. Ayer’s Language, Truth, and Logic had been responsible for introducing the Vienna Circle’s ideas, developed within a Germanophone framework, to an Anglophone readership. Inevitably, this migration from one context to another resulted in the alteration of some of the concepts being transmitted. Such alterations have served to facilitate a number of false impressions of Logical Empiricism from which recent scholarship still tries to recover. In this paper, I will attempt to point to the ways in which LTL has (...) helped to foster the various mistaken stereotypes about Logical Empiricism which were combined into the received view. I will begin by examining Ayer’s all too brief presentation of an Anglocentric lineage for his ideas. This lineage, as we shall see, simply omits the major 19th century Germanophone influences on the rise of analytic philosophy. The Germanophone ideas he presents are selectively introduced into an Anglophone context, and directed towards various concerns that arose within that context. I will focus on the differences between Carnap’s version of the overcoming of metaphysics, and Ayer’s reconfiguration into what he calls the elimination of metaphysics. Having discussed the above, I will very briefly outline the consequences that Ayer’s radicalisation of the Vienna Circle’s doctrines had on the subsequent Anglophone reception of Logical Empiricism. (shrink)

The terms ‘compatibilism’ and ‘incompatibilism’ were introduced in the mid-20th century to name conflicting views about the logical relationship between the thesis of determinism and the thesis that someone has free will. These technical terms were originally introduced within a specific research paradigm, the classical analytic paradigm. This paradigm is now in its final stages of degeneration and few free-will theorists still work within it (i.e. using its methods, granting its substantive background assumptions, etc.). This chapter discusses how the ambiguity (...) of the terms ‘incompatibilism’ and ‘compatibilism’ took root as the classical analytic paradigm declined and why this matters to the contemporary debate. Among other things, I explain why the ambiguity of these anachronistic terms, though relatively innocuous when they were first introduced, is now encouraging theorists to tolerate and perpetuate serious philosophical errors (e.g. to conflate relations as different in kind and importance as correlation and causation, to promote uncontentiously invalid arguments, and to equivocate in ways that keep the free-will debate mired in pseudo-stalemates). I also suggest a new framework for anyone looking for relief from the confusion and deadlock created by quixotic attempts to redefine classical narratives and jargon so that they adequately describe the dialectical contours of the contemporary free-will debate. In addition, this new framework allows philosophers to start cross-pollinating work on free will and other famous problems of luck and control, e.g. the paradox of moral luck. (To see the distinctions applied to the philosophical problems of causal luck, constitutive luck, and moral luck, please see my essay "Free Will, Self-Creation, and the Paradox of Moral Luck" (Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 2019). -/- . (shrink)

This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...) and neighbouring fields, including those of mathematics, psychology, literature and film, and neuroscience. (shrink)

This article investigates the history of the relation between idealism and pragmatism by examining the importance of the French idealist Charles Renouvier for the development of William James's ‘Will to Believe’. By focusing on French idealism, we obtain a broader understanding of the kinds of idealism on offer in the nineteenth century. First, I show that Renouvier's unique methodological idealism led to distinctively pragmatist doctrines and that his theory of certitude and its connection to freedom is worthy of reconsideration. Second, (...) I argue that the technical vocabulary and main structure of the argument from the ‘Will to Believe’ depend upon Renouvier's idealist theory of knowledge and psychology of belief, and that taking account of this line of influence is of crucial importance for establishing the correct interpretation of James's work. (shrink)

My objective in this essay is to argue for two things. The first is that intellectual mental states are not physicalistically reducible, just as qualia are not reducible. The second is that thoughts and qualia are not as different as is sometimes believed, but not because thoughts are qualia-like by being mental images, but because qualia are universals and their apprehension is a proto-intellectual act. I shall mainly be concerned with the first of these topics.

The concept of empiricism evokes both a historical tradition and a set of philosophical theses. The theses are usually understood to have been developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. But these figures did not use the term “empiricism,” and they did not see themselves as united by a shared epistemology into one school of thought. My dissertation analyzes the debate that elevated the concept of empiricism (and of an empiricist tradition) to prominence in English-language philosophy. -/- In the 1870s and (...) ’80s a lively debate about psychology emerged. Neo-Kantian idealists criticized the very idea that the mind can be studied scientifically. A group of philosopher-psychologists responded, often in Mind. They were among the first to call themselves “empiricists,” arguing that psychology could provide a scientific basis for philosophical progress. Idealists held that empirical psychology depended on premises developed by Locke, Berkeley, and Hume. These premises were allegedly absurd because they rendered ideas of extension, as well as other ideas crucial to natural science, unreal. Those who wanted to advance psychology towards becoming a legitimate science were forced to engage these philosophical attacks, while at the same time to develop empirical theories that could successfully explain some characteristics of experience. I show how James’s theory of space perception accomplished both tasks. -/- In developing this theory, James found he had to reject the Lockean notion that reality is associated with passively-registered sensations. James also abandoned Berkeley and Hume’s claim that ideas are ultimately derived from atomic sensations. Instead, James presented experimental evidence that sensation is a continuous stream. The mind must actively parse this stream if it is to gain a coherent representation of its environment. I argue that James’s stream-of-thought thesis served as a presupposition of his entire psychology. The thesis showed how the labor of investigating the mind could be divided between philosophers and scientists, and in a manner sensitive to the concerns of both. The stream thesis also provided a scientific basis for a new philosophical empiricism that, I argue, has a hidden legacy in the history of analytic philosophy. (shrink)

Many edusemiotic writers have begun to closely align edusemitoics to biosemiotics; the basic logic being that, if the life process can be defined through the criterion of semiotic engagement, so can the learning process :373–387, 2006). Thus, the ecological concept of umwelt has come to be a central area of investigation for edusemiotics; allowing theorists to address learning and living concurrently, from the perspective of meaning and significance. To address the conceptual and experiential foundations of the edusemiotic perspective, this paper (...) will focus its attention on the basic semiosic processes that sustain the learner’s primary modelling system or umwelt—the world of meaning and sensory engagement that the organism is immersed in. This focus enables us to identify and explore four basic principles that an ecologically concerned edusemiotic perspective can be said to rest upon; the Iconicity Hypothesis, the Principle of Suprasubjective Relation, the Natural Learning Flow Principle, and the Continuity Principle. The identification and elaboration of these basic philosophical orientations will help establish the importance and relevance of the edusemiotic perspective for educational philosophy and theory in general. This task requires the methodological framework of Sebeok and Danesi’s Modelling Systems Theory, which; provides a biosemiotically grounded approach to understanding the diversity of modelling phenomena across all species, and; contextualizes the specific focus of this study within the broader forms of learning and knowing encompassed by a semiotic theory of learning. Hopefully such attention to the foundational doctrina of this new perspective will encourage more educational research to take what Semetsky has called the edusemiotic turn. (shrink)

French abstract: L’article étudie la relation de Peirce à Comte, en partant des critiques formulées dans ses écrits de jeunesse. Son enjeu est double : il relève d’abord d’une question d’histoire de la philosophie étonnamment peu traitée, alors même que Peirce lit, commente et critique Comte. Le second enjeu est épistémologique et métaphysique : Peirce voit dans la théorie comtienne des hypothèses une position proche du pragmatisme qu’il développe, mais grevée de présupposés nominalistes qui la rendent finalement intenable, à moins (...) que l’on n’en adopte une lecture « charitable ». La confrontation avec Comte semble alors être l’occasion privilégiée d’une explicitation de son propre pragmatisme. -/- English version (see link below on Cairn international) This article discusses Peirce’s relationship to Comte, based on criticisms made by Peirce in his early writings. It has a twofold purpose : firstly, addressing an important question in the history of philosophy that is surprisingly overlooked, even if Peirce reads, comments and criticizes Comte. The second issue is epistemological and metaphysical : Peirce sees in Comte’s theory of hypotheses a position close to the pragmatism he develops, but burdened with nominalist presuppositions that ultimately make it untenable, unless one adopts a “charitable” reading of it. The confrontation with Comte then seems to be a privileged opportunity, for Peirce, to clarify his own pragmatism. (shrink)

Although culturally prominent modernist influences account for much of Skinner's early behaviorism, the subsequent changes in his views are appropriately considered as postmodern and are indebted to other sources. These changes are strikingly apparent in his 1945 publication. "The Operational Analysis of Psychological Terms." In that publication. Skinner introduced a probabilistic three-term contingency for verbal behavior with an expanded contextualism and an increased emphasis on consequence with a clear alignment to pragmatism. Instead of reaffirming the mechanistic and necessitarian values of (...) modernism that he had previously embraced, Skinner was aligning himself with the postmodern values of pragmatism and selectionism. (shrink)

This dissertation responds to the question, "To what extent can the pragmatist theories of truth of Peirce and James be defended against the major philosophical criticisms that have been used to dismiss them?" The answer to this depends to a great degree on the kind of formulation given these theories. Hence, one of the major goals of this dissertation is to express precisely and systematically Peirce's and James's theories of truth in such a way that only one of various possible (...) alternative expressions is identified as the interpretation that most remains faithful to the intentions of Peirce and James. Rather than offer merely a historical overview of these theories, I attempt a critical reformulation of them in the sense that I intervene to correct errors and aberrations in the theories as promulgated, either on my own responsibility or by reference to authoritative statements. The investigation consists of these parts: a comparison and contrast of Peirce's and James's pragmatic methods, in which it is suggested that James's medical background led him to a theory of meaning rather more broad in principle than Peirce's; an investigation of Peirce's theory of truth, in which his most famous formulation receives detailed exegesis; an investigation of James's theory of truth, in which it is argued that this theory should more properly be understood as a theory of knowledge; and an enumeration and evaluation of those major philosophical criticisms aimed at these theories, in which it is argued that the pragmatist theories have, indeed, been misunderstood, and that when correctly interpreted, they may be defended against these objections. (shrink)

This article focuses on the intimate relationship between German aesthetic theory, particularly the philosophies of Kant and Schiller, and the pragmatic tradition of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I argue that many aspects of Kantian aesthetic theory – his development of reflective judgement, genius, and common sense – are reflected in the thinking of C. S. Peirce. I conclude, however, that such a comparison risks selling short the way that German idealism influenced American thinkers and instead suggest that it (...) is more fruitful to concentrate on ‘aesthetic experience’. I argue that attending to the aesthetic dimensions of experience might re-orient contemporary approaches to pragmatism that continue to focus on the way that pragmatism might intervene in debates in epistemology and philosophy of language. (shrink)

Une certaine conception censément traditionnelle du signe le présente comme une entité binaire comportant un aspect sensible et un aspect intelligible. Selon Derrida, cette conception serait tributaire du logocentrisme et solidaire de la métaphysique de la présence. L'article passe en revue certaines caractérisations clefs du signe pour déconstruire l'opposition simple et simpliste entre un signifiant censément sensible et matériel, et un signifié censément intelligible et immatériel. Distinguant la conception factorielle du signe et sa conception constitutive, il conclut que "le signe (...) est peut-être moins un indice de la métaphysique occidentale que la soi-disant métaphysique occidentale ne serait l'indice d'une conception relativement rétrécie du signe". (shrink)