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Department of History and Philosophy of Science

 

The Pragmatism Reading Group is held on Mondays at 11am–12noon in the Board Room and on Zoom.

Organisers: Niall Roe (nrr32), Damon Kutzin (dtk23), Ruward Mulder (ram202)

Lent Term 2024: Cheryl Misak's Cambridge Pragmatism

'The insight at the heart of pragmatism is that any domain of inquiry – science, ethics, mathematics, logic, aestethics – is human inquiry, and our philosophical accounts of truth and knowledge must start with that fact' (Misak 2016, p. iv).

For Lent, the Pragmatism Reading Group will explore Cheryl Misak's Cambridge Pragmatism: From Peirce and James to Ramsey and Wittgenstein (OUP, 2016), which we will interlace with primary sources. This will serve as a crash course to both pragmatist philosophy and its historical lore at this very university (yes, also the other Cambridge, across the Atlantic).

We look only briefly (to our regret) looking at the details of how Peirce's ideas reached Wittgenstein via Ramsey, and the impact of Russell's ambivalence towards James on the history of philosophy, but focus on the third story threading through the book: the story about the tension between James' and Peirce's conceptions of 'truth as usefulness', culminating in the late Wittgenstein and his legacy, persisting through to today.

22 January

Cheryl Misak 'Introduction' (10 pages).
Cheryl Misak 'Chapter 2: James' (21 pages).

29 January

Cheryl Misak 'Chapter 1: Peirce' (27 pages).

5 February

Cheryl Misak 'Chapter 3: Bridges across the Atlantic' (10 pages). [on F.C.S. Schiller, Victoria Welby, C.K. Ogden.]

12 February

William James 'Lecture III: Some Metaphysical Problems Pragmatically Considered' (16 pages).
William James 'Lecture V: Pragmatism and Common Sense' (12 pages).
In Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907). Longmans, Green & Company.

19 February

Charles S. Peirce (1877). 'The Fixation of Belief.' Popular Science Monthly 12 (1) (15 pages).

26 February

Cheryl Misak 'Chapter 7: Wittgenstein Post-Tractatus.' Sections 1–4 (23 pages).

4 March

Cheryl Misak 'Chapter 7: Wittgenstein Post-Tractatus.' Sections 5–8 (27 pages).

11 March

Ludwig Wittgenstein 'On Certainty' (11 pages).
Cheryl Misak 'Conclusion' (8 pages).