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)

Koopman’s book revolves around the notion of transition, which he proposes is one of the central ideas of the pragmatist tradition but one which had not previously been fully articulated yet nevertheless shapes the pragmatist attitude in philosophy. Transition, according to Koopman, denotes “those temporal structures and historical shapes in virtue of which we get from here to there”. One of the consequences of transitionalism is the understanding of critique and inquiry as historical pro...

This chapter challenges the view that psychology emerged from philosophy about 1900, when each found its own proper sphere with little relation to the other. It begins by considering the notion of a discipline, defined as a distinct branch of learning. Psychology has been a discipline from the time of Aristotle, though with a wider ambit, to include phenomena of both life and mind. Empirical psychology in a narrower sense arose in the eighteenth century, through the application (in Britain and (...) elsewhere) of the observational attitudes of the physical and life sciences to mental phenomena. The experimental psychology of the latter nineteenth century was a transformation of this empirical psychology, although the British version was characterized by new theoretical conceptions (including evolutionary ideas) as well as new empirical techniques. After surveying psychology in and out of universities in this period, the chapter reviews a taxonomy of “schools” of psychology from 1923. Notice of anti-psychological attitudes in British philosophy before and after 1900 is balanced by considering positive conceptions of psychology’s role in connection with epistemology and the problem of the external world. (shrink)

In the last fifteen years, John Dewey’s early philosophy received considerable attention. John Shook’s Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality, Jim Good’s The Search for “Unity in Diversity”: the “Permanent Deposit” of Hegel in John Dewey’s Philosophy, Donald Morse’s Faith in Life: John Dewey’s Early Philosophy, on the top of many articles, critical editions, and reviews: all these texts have contributed to a better understanding of many important aspects of Dewey’s early thought. T...

The journal Mind is now a wholly philosophical journal. At the time of its founding, in 1876, however, its mission was rather different in character. Its aim was to discover whether scientific psychology was a truly viable enterprise and, if so, what its boundaries with philosophy, with other scientific disciplines, and with the earlier generation of discredited attempts at `scientific' studies of the mind (e.g. phrenology, mesmerism) might be. Although at first Mind published mostly philosophical pieces and literature reviews, by (...) the mid-1880s it was publishing primary experimental research, mostly by American psychologists who as yet had few outlets of their own. For a time it was the leading journal of experimental psychology in the English-speaking world. As the international competition among scientific and scholarly journals intensified in the 1890s, however, Mind started to lose its share of experimental contributions, and with the editorial takeover of the journal of George Stout in 1892, the journal soon became one dedicated purely to philosophy. (shrink)

What Russell regarded to be the ‘chief outcome’ of his 1914 Lowell Lectures at Harvard can only be fully appreciated, I argue, if one embeds the outcome back into the ‘classificatory problem’ that many at the time were heavily engaged in. The problem focused on the place and relationships between the newly formed or recently professionalized disciplines such as psychology, Erkenntnistheorie, physics, logic and philosophy. The prime metaphor used in discussions about the classificatory problem by British philosophers was a spatial (...) one, with such motifs as ‘standpoints’, ‘place’ and ‘perspectives’ in the space of knowledge. In fact, Russell’s construction of a perspectival space of six-dimensions was meant precisely to be a timely solution to the widely discussed classificatory problem. (shrink)

In an environment characterized by the emergence of new and diverse (and often opposed) philosophical efforts, there is a need for a conception of philosophy that will promote the exchange and critical consideration of divergent insights. Depending upon the operative conception, philosophical efforts can be viewed as significant, insightful and instructive, or unimportant, misguided and not real philosophy. This paper develops John Dewey's conception of philosophy as a mode of inquiry in contrast with Bertrand Russell's conception of philosophy as a (...) mode of analysis. I argue that while Russell's analytic conception of philosophy justifies the dismissal of non-analytic philosophies, Dewey's conception of philosophy provides a theoretical framework for the comparison, evaluation and interaction of alternatives. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate the transformations undergone by Dewey’s philosophy in the period from 1916 to 1921. By analyzing three different problematic situations with which Dewey found himself confronted (German militarism; the effects of propaganda on American society; the experience of a two-year stay in China), the paper seeks to show the various lines of development at work in his thought. The thesis of the paper is that in the war and immediately post-war years Dewey was concerned with outlining (...) a new account of the nature of theory which was preliminary to the formulation of his social philosophy. The paper presents Dewey’s main philosophical achievements, with the aim of providing some background knowledge that could be useful to understanding that place and significance of the Lectures in China in the overall context of his thought. (shrink)

SummaryThe idea of interdisciplinarity can be articulated in different ways. The aim of the article is to criticise the view that interdisciplinarity is to be treated as a quality of the historian's approach to his subject-matter, and to argue for a constructivist interpretation of that notion. A constructivist account of interdisciplinarity relies on the thesis that the latter is one of the manifold ways in which it is possible to give sense to the historical records of which the historian wants (...) to gain knowledge. In the paper it is maintained that the function of the notion of interdisciplinarity is to account for the clash of languages that can be found when disciplines converge. This new paradigm is highlighted by taking into consideration the history of American pragmatism. (shrink)