A fresh and rigorous interpretation of William James's ethical theory, showing how experimenting with life's opportunities can transform one's self and life.

This essay examines logical empiricism and American pragmatism, arguing that American philosophy's embrace of logical empiricism in the 1930s was not a turning away from Dewey's pragmatism. It places both movements within scientific philosophy and finds two key points on which they agreed: their revolutionary ambitions and their social engineering sensibility. The essay suggests that the disagreement over emotivism in ethics should be placed within the context of a larger issue on which the movements disagreed: demarcationism and imperialism.

This article argues for an unconventional interpretation of Arthur O. Lovejoy’s distinctive approach to method in the history of ideas. It is maintained that the value of the central concept of the ‘unit-idea’ has been misunderstood by friends and foes alike. The commonality of unit-ideas at different times and places is often defined in terms of familial resemblance. But such an approach must necessarily define unit-ideas as being something other than the smallest conceptual unit. It is therefore in tension with (...) Lovejoy’s methodological prescription and, more importantly, disregards a potentially important aspect of intellectual history – the smaller conceptual units themselves. In response to this, an alternative interpretation of unit-ideas as ‘elemental’ – as the smallest identifiable conceptual components – is put forward. Unlike the familial resemblance approach, the elemental approach can provide a plausible explanation for changes in ideas. These are construed as being either the creation of new unit-ideas, the disappearance of existing ones, or alterations in the groups of unit-ideas that compose idea-complexes. The focus on the movement of unit-ideas and idea-complexes through history can also be sensitive to contextual issues, carefully distinguishing the different meanings that single words may have, in much the way that both Lovejoy and his influential critic Quentin Skinner suggest. (shrink)

The reformist philosophy of the classical pragmatist tradition has gradually evolved into the now-fashionable revolutionary styles of pragmatism, some scientistic, some literary. This evolution is traced from Peirce, James, Dewey, and Mead, through Schiller, Lewis, Hook,and Quine, to Rorty’s literary-political neo-pragmatism. Rather than get hung up on the question of which variants qualify as authentic pragmatism, it is better — more fruitful, and appropriately forward looking— to ask what we can learn from the older tradition, and what we can salvage (...) from the new. (shrink)

Russell Goodman tells the story of the development of philosophy in America from the mid-18th century to the late 19th century. The key figures in this story, Jonathan Edwards, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, the writers of The Federalist, and the romantics Emerson and Thoreau, were not professors but men of the world, whose deep formative influence on American thought brought philosophy together with religion, politics, and literature.

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)