American Pragmatism

This course will undertake a critical review of the some of the seminal logical and metaphysical writings of the American pragmatist philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. Peirce made numerous original contributions to the field of mathematical logic, particularly to the fields of relational and quantificational logic, and, in the first part of the course, we will carefully examine some of Peirce's most important writings on the subject. In the second half of the course, we will examine some of Peirce's most characteristic metaphysical doctrines. These include: triadism - the view that all experience may be classified within a tripartite scheme consisting of the categories of "firstness," "secondness," and "thirdness;" tychism - the view that objective chance is an operative feature of the cosmos; haecceitism - the view that individual substances have an essence de re and not merely de dicta; and synechism - the view that the cosmos is fundamentally a continuum, no part of which is fully separate or determinate. (II)

This course is a first introduction to American Pragmatism. We will examine some of the seminal philosophical works of the three most prominent figures in this tradition: Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Our main aim will be to extract from these writings the central ideas and principles which give shape to pragmatism as a coherent alternative to the two main schools of modern philosophical thought, empiricism and rationalism. (B) (III)

This course will survey some of the seminal writings of the early American Pragmatist tradition. We will focus primarily on works by the three most prominent figures in this tradition: C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Our aim in the course will be to extract from these writings the central ideas and principles which give shape to pragmatism as a coherent philosophical perspective, distinct from both empiricism and rationalism. (B) (II)

This course will begin by examining the central writings of the early American Pragmatists, C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. We will compare the early formulations of pragmatism that appear in these works, both against one another other, as well against more recent formulations of pragmatism, as put forward by such philosophers as Putnam, Davidson, and Rorty. (II) (III)

In this seminar will examine the views of the American pragmatist philosopher C.S. Peirce as they pertain to the nature and methodology of science. The course will be organized around a careful reading of the six essays comprising the series “Illustrations of the Logic of Science,” published by Peirce in Popular Science Monthly in the years 1877-78.  Among the many topics addressed in these essays are: (1). What is the aim of scientific inquiry? (2). What are the conditions for the meaningfulness of a scientific hypothesis? (3). What is the role of probability in science (inverse inference vs. hypothesis testing)? (4). Are there natural laws? (5). What are the grounds for inductive inference? (6) How are we to classify the various sciences? In addition to the six essays mentioned above, we will also consider some of Peirce’s later writings on the subject as well as contemporary interpretations of the Peircean view. (II)