Perception, Empiricism, and Pragmatist Realism

Contemporary Pragmatism 8 (1):191-210 (2011)
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Abstract

The essay compares Peirce's pragmatist approach to the problem of perceptual experience as a fallible foundation of knowledge to a sophisticated empiricist take on the issue. The comparison suggests that, while empiricism can accommodate the idea of perception as fallible, theoretically laden, and containing conjectural elements, the cardinal difference between pragmatism and empiricism consists in the pragmatist insistence on the intrinsic intelligibility of experience, which also serves as the ultimate source of all forms of intelligibility; whereas empiricism retains a penchant for fitting experiences into abstract conceptual schemes.

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Serge Grigoriev
Ithaca College

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References found in this work

Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.Wilfrid Sellars - 1956 - Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 1:253-329.
A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive.John Stuart Mill - 1843 - New York and London,: University of Toronto Press. Edited by J. Robson.
The collapse of the fact/value dichotomy and other essays.Hilary Putnam - 2002 - Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
The development of Peirce's philosophy.Murray G. Murphey - 1961 - Cambridge, Mass.,: Harvard University Press.

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