Historians have shown that philosophical discussions about the implications of relativity significantly shaped the development of European philosophy of science in the 1920s. Yet little is known about American debates from this period. This paper maps the first responses to Einstein’s theory in three U.S. philosophy journals and situates these papers within the local intellectual climate. We argue that these discussions (1) stimulated the development of a distinctly American branch of philosophy of science and (2) paved the way for the (...) logical empiricists, who emigrated to the United States in the years before World War II. (shrink)

American philosophical realism developed in two forms: “new” and “critical” realism. While the new realists sought to ‘emancipate’ ontology from epistemology and defended a direct theory of perception, the critical realists promoted a representationalist account of perception and thus argued for an epistemological dualism. Bertrand Russell’s early philosophical writings figured prominently in both of these American realist camps. However, while the new realists quite enthusiastically embraced the Russellian analytic style of reasoning (and Russell himself appreciated the American new realists as (...) anti-idealist allies), the critical realists were significantly more reserved toward Russell’s point of view. In the present paper, I identify the reasons for this difference in reception. In particular, I will show that the critical realists’ reservations pertained primarily to a more traditionalist—‘continental’—account of philosophy, whereas the neo-realists proved instrumental in setting the stage for later full-blown analytic philosophy in the United States. (shrink)

This paper examines Ralph Barton Perry's analysis of the ‘ego-centric predicament’. It will be shown that Perry convincingly argued against prevailing contemporary versions of idealism and that it makes perfectly good sense to consider him a precursor of subsequent trends in American analytic philosophy. Perry's appraisal and promotion of the contemporary logic of relations in the framework of early twentieth-century American neorealism provides further evidence of his being a proto-analytic philosopher. His personal acquaintance with Bertrand Russell proved instructive in this (...) regard. On the whole, Perry's distinctive approach to philosophy was instrumental in establishing the analytic style of reasoning in the United States. This paper is devoted to substantiating this claim. It is thus hoped that a clearer picture of early twentieth-century American philosophy will begin to emerge. (shrink)

The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate over ‘internal’ and ‘external’ relations is well explored, as far as its course in Britain is concerned. F. H. Bradley’s idealistic internalism, on the one hand, and Bertrand Russell’s realistic externalism, on the other, were at the center of this debate. Less well known, however, is that there was also a discussion about relations in the United States at the time. The central figures in this discussion were Edward Gleason Spaulding and John Dewey. (...) Like Russell, Spaulding advocated a realist-inspired externalism, while Dewey criticized this viewpoint from a pragmatist perspective. The aim of the present paper is to reconstruct the exchange between Spaulding and Dewey and to elaborate the specifics of this exchange. In doing so it will emerge, among other things, that, in contrast to Bradley’s idealist rejection of externalism, Dewey’s pragmatist attempt at a refutation was more in line with common sense and science and that Spaulding’s version of externalism differed markedly from Russell’s in its strong empirical orientation. Overall, an undeservedly forgotten chapter in the history of early twentieth-century American philosophy is revisited and reassessed. (shrink)

Résumé Cet article vise à restituer le contexte historique dans lequel la notion de donné a été introduite avant que Sellars n’en propose la critique systématique. À travers l’étude des textes fondateurs de C. I. Lewis et H. H. Price et des objections auxquelles ils se sont efforcés de répondre, on exposera la nature des débats à la fois métaphysiques et épistémologiques qu’a, dès les années 1930, suscité la thèse selon laquelle l’expérience fournirait à la connaissance un donné fondamental qui (...) seul permettrait d’en assurer la validité empirique. Parce que le donné pur, indépendant de tout ce que l’esprit peut lui adjoindre lorsqu’il lui applique ses concepts, semble devoir demeurer ineffable et inconnaissable pour nous, il était dès l’origine tout à fait problématique non seulement d’en reconnaître l’existence, mais encore plus de chercher à bâtir sur une telle base – comme bien des empiristes ont pourtant prétendu le faire au vingtième siècle – une conception réaliste des rapports entre l’esprit et le monde (insistant sur leur indépendance réciproque) et une conception fondationnaliste de la structure de la connaissance. C’est néanmoins à Sellars qu’il reviendra de démontrer la vacuité d’un tel projet. (shrink)