• James and British analytic philosophy
    In Alexander Mugar Klein (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of William James, Oxford University Press. 2018.
  • Peirce's thwarted career
    In Cornelis De Waal (ed.), The Oxford handbook of Charles S. Peirce, Oxford University Press. 2024.
  •  39
    Pragmatism is the idea that philosophical concepts must start with, and remain linked to human experience and inquiry. This book traces and assesses the influence of American pragmatism on British philosophy, with emphasis on Cambridge in the inter-war period, post-war Oxford, and recent developments.
  •  11
    Grace de Laguna: American pragmatist
    Asian Journal of Philosophy 2 (2): 1-9. 2023.
    This paper explores the under-recognized Grace de Laguna’s relationship to the tradition of American pragmatism, the tradition that was dominant in her time and place and the emerging tradition of analytic philosophy. It argues that while de Laguna mounted some challenges to pragmatism, they do not hit their mark and while de Laguna at times distanced herself from pragmatism, she ought to be seen as part of that tradition, as well as part of the tradition of analytic philosophy.
  • Peirce
    In W. H. Newton‐Smith (ed.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Science, Blackwell. 2017.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) is generally acknowledged to be America's greatest philosopher, although he was never able to secure a permanent academic position and died in poverty and obscurity (see Brent 1993). He founded pragmatism, the view that a philosophical theory must be connected to practice. The pragmatic account of truth, for which he is perhaps best known, thus has it that a true belief is one which the practice of inquiry, no matter how far it were to be pursued, would not imp…Read more
  •  4
    Wittgenstein and Pragmatism
    In Hans-Johann Glock & John Hyman (eds.), A Companion to Wittgenstein, Wiley-blackwell. 2017.
    The question of the affinity between Wittgenstein's philosophy and pragmatism is one that has been often discussed, usually by philosophers sympathetic to a broadly affirmative answer. Pragmatism came into being in 1867 in a reading group in Cambridge Massachusetts, the members of which included Peirce and James. Putnam observes that though the later Wittgenstein may not have been a pragmatist “in the strict sense”, he “shares a central, perhaps the central emphasis with pragmatism: the emphasis…Read more
  •  4
    Pragmatism on Solidarity, Bullshit, and other Deformities of Truth
    In Peter A. French & Howard K. Wettstein (eds.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Blackwell. 2008.
    This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Jamesian/Rortyian Pragmatist Account of Truth The Peircean Account of Truth Genuine Belief and Deformed Belief References.
  •  38
    Reply to Four Instructive Critics
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 49 (3): 434. 2013.
    Allow me to begin by thanking Alex Klein, Bjorn Ramberg, Alan Richardson, and Robert Talisse for providing such an excellent set of commentaries on The American Pragmatists, as well as Henry Jackman, for organizing the session at the Canadian Philosophical Association meetings that provided the first forum for the discussion. In this response, I will speak to the general meta-philosophical questions posed by the four commentators, as well as to the more local challenges set to me.All the authors…Read more
  •  23
    Richardson on the construction of moral norms
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1): 251-256. 2023.
  •  72
    Ramsey's Cognitivism: Truth, Ethics, and the Meaning of Life
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 51 (4): 463. 2015.
    In 1925, the 22 year old Frank Ramsey read a provocative paper to the Apostles titled “On There Being No Discussable Subject”. Many of the papers presented to this ‘Cambridge Conversazione Society’ were not terribly serious, and most have left minimal trace. But after Ramsey died in 1930 just shy of his 27th birthday, this paper was pulled from his manuscript remains by Richard Braithwaite, and printed in the posthumously-published The Foundations of Mathematics, under the title “Epilogue”. A sn…Read more
  •  93
    2011 Presidential Address: American Pragmatism and Indispensability Arguments
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 47 (3): 261-273. 2011.
    In the early- to mid- 1870s, William James started to argue that if one needs to believe something, then one ought to believe it, even if there is no evidence in its favor. It is not easy to unwind the various things that James said about what he called the will to believe, but one thing is clear. He was initially tempted to put forward a very strong point and despite the refinements he was eventually to make, his is the most contentious version of pragmatist indispensability arguments. Most imp…Read more
  •  20
    William H. Newton-Smith (1943–2023)
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 35 (2): 205-208. 2023.
    William (Bill) Newton-Smith was a renowned Canadian philosopher of science who spent his career largely in Oxford and then at the Central European University in Hungary.Newton-Smith was born in Ori...
  •  4
    This paper will explore the engagement of Wittgenstein, Ramsey and the Vienna Circle (mostly Schlick and Carnap) in the 1920s. This is before Wittgenstein became what we know as the later Wittgenstein and one upshot of the paper will be that it was Ramsey who turned Wittgenstein away from the quest for a pure and objective language (a quest he shared with the Vienna Circle) and turned him towards the pragmatist idea that meaning is bound up with use.
  •  19
    There are few finalities in philosophy. No one sees this as sharply as David Wiggins, who is always refining and improving his views. Here he has revised and re.
  • Nothing scoundrelous about truth
    In Melissa Schwartzberg & Philip Kitcher (eds.), Truth and evidence, Nyu Press. 2021.
  • Introduction
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 24 1-8. 1998.
  •  44
    A Sensible Pragmatist Conception of Truth
    Philosophy 97 (3): 275-294. 2022.
    This essay traces the evolution of the pragmatist elements in Wiggins's distinctive view of truth and shows its connections to the founder of pragmatism, C.S. Peirce and one of Peirce's greatest successors, F.P. Ramsey. Wiggin's pragmatism, like that of Peirce and Ramsey, is a pragmatism that attempts to arrive at what Wiggins calls ‘a sensible subjectivism’ – an account of truth that respects both the human inventiveness and the objectivity that are each a part of our search for the truth.
  •  12
    The Women Are Up to Something (review)
    The Philosophers' Magazine 96 107-111. 2022.
  •  164
    C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, argued that truth is what we would agree upon, were inquiry to be pursued as far as it could fruitfully go. In this book, Misak argues for and elucidates the pragmatic account of truth, paying attention both to Peirce's texts and to the requirements of a suitable account of truth. An important argument of the book is that we must be sensitive to the difference between offering a definition of truth and engaging in a distinctively pragmatic project. The pra…Read more
  •  10
    Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers
    The Philosophers' Magazine 91 65-69. 2020.
  •  18
    Life After the Storm: Surviving COVID-19
    Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 63 (3): 494-501. 2020.
    Critical care medicine is suddenly, and unfortunately, in the news, with staggering numbers of COVID-19 patients requiring treatment in intensive care units around the world. Talk on the street, in those countries in which talk on the street is allowed, is of ventilators, ARDS, and cytokine storms—the overcharged immune response that itself is a killer. These technical terms are now in everyday use, and questions that have been restricted largely to critical care, infectious diseases, and public…Read more
  •  35
    Williams, Pragmatism, and the Law
    Res Publica 27 (2): 155-170. 2020.
    This paper views Bernard Williams through the lens of the pragmatist tradition. The central insight of pragmatism is that philosophy must start with human practice, in contrast to high theory or metaphysics. Williams was one of the twentieth century’s most able proponents of this insight, especially when considering the topics of ethics and the law. Williams never saw himself as a pragmatist, because he took Richard Rorty’s radical relativism to be the exemplar of the position. But I shall sugge…Read more
  •  11
    Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers
    Oxford University Press. 2020.
    Frank Ramsey was a brilliant Cambridge philosopher, mathematician, and economist who died in 1930 at 26 having made landmark contributions to decision theory, game theory, mathematics, logic, semantics, philosophy of science, and the theory of truth. This rich biography tells the story of his extraordinary life and intellectual achievement.
  •  2
    Truth and Historicity
    Philosophical Quarterly 46 (182): 122-124. 1996.
  •  11
    Making Disagreement Matter
    In Robert B. Talisse & Scott F. Aikin (eds.), The Pragmatism Reader: From Peirce Through the Present, Princeton University Press. pp. 471-484. 2011.