•  479
    Deflating Truth: Pragmatism vs. Minimalism
    The Monist 81 (3). 1998.
    It seems that no philosopher these days wants a theory of truth which can be accused of being metaphysical. But even if we agree that grandiose metaphysics is to be spurned, even if we agree that our theory of truth should be a deflated one, the controversy does not die down. A variety of deflationist options present themselves. Some, with Richard Rorty, take the notion of truth to be so wedded to metaphysics that we are advised to drop it altogether. Others, with Paul Horwich, take the disquota…Read more
  •  423
    Charles Sanders Peirce on Necessity
    In Adriane Rini, Edwin Mares & Max Cresswell (eds.), Logical Modalities from Aristotle to Carnap: The Story of Necessity, Cambridge University Press. pp. 256-278. 2016.
    Necessity is a touchstone issue in the thought of Charles Peirce, not least because his pragmatist account of meaning relies upon modal terms. We here offer an overview of Peirce’s highly original and multi-faceted take on the matter. We begin by considering how a self-avowed pragmatist and fallibilist can even talk about necessary truth. We then outline the source of Peirce’s theory of representation in his three categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness, (monadic, dyadic and triadic r…Read more
  •  241
    The pragmatist view of politics is at its very heart epistemic, for it treats morals and politics as a kind of deliberation or inquiry, not terribly unlike other kinds of inquiry. With the exception of Richard Rorty, the pragmatists argue that morals and politics, like science, aim at the truth or at getting things right and that the best method for achieving this aim is a method they sometimes call the scientific method or the method of intelligence – what would now be termed deliberative democ…Read more
  •  219
    Peirce, Levi, and the aims of inquiry
    Philosophy of Science 54 (2): 256-265. 1987.
    Isaac Levi uses C. S. Peirce's fallibilism as a foil for his own "epistemological infallibilism". I argue that Levi's criticisms of Peirce do not hit their target, and that the two pragmatists agree on the fundamental issues concerning background knowledge, certainty, revision of belief, and the aims of inquiry
  •  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
  •  163
    Pragmatism on solidarity, bullshit, and other deformities of truth
    Midwest Studies in Philosophy 32 (1): 111-121. 2008.
    No Abstract
  •  127
    Icu psychosis and patient autonomy: Some thoughts from the inside
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 30 (4). 2005.
    I shall draw on my experience of being an ICU patient to make some practical, ethical, and philosophical points about the care of the critically ill. The recurring theme in this paper is ICU psychosis. I suggest that discharged patients ought to be educated about it; I discuss the obstacles in the way of accurately measuring it; I argue that we must rethink autonomy in light of it; and I suggest that the self disintegrates in the face of it.
  •  124
    The Subterranean Influence of Pragmatism on the Vienna Circle: Peirce, Ramsey, Wittgenstein
    Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 4 (5). 2016.
    An underappreciated fact in the history of analytic philosophy is that American pragmatism had an early and strong influence on the Vienna Circle. The path of that influence goes from Charles Peirce to Frank Ramsey to Ludwig Wittgenstein to Moritz Schlick. That path is traced in this paper, and along the way some standard understandings of Ramsey and Wittgenstein, especially, are radically altered.
  •  108
    Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth (review) (review)
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 42 (2): 279-282. 2006.
    In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of TruthCheryl MisakRobert B. Westbrook Democratic Hope: Pragmatism and the Politics of Truth Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2005. xvi + 246 pp.Robert Westbrook, who in my view is our best intellectual historian of pragmatism, has written what is sure to be a major contribution to the study of pragmatist political theory, a branch of political theory which has rec…Read more
  •  102
    The Pragmatic Maxim
    The Harvard Review of Philosophy 17 (1): 76-87. 2010.
  •  94
    Verificationism is the first comprehensive history of a concept that dominated philosophy and scientific methodology between the 1930s and 1960s,surveying the precursors,the main proponents and the rehabilitators. This title available in eBook format. Click here for more information . Visit our eBookstore at: www.ebookstore.tandf.co.uk.
  •  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
  •  89
    Book-Reviews
    Mind 95 (377): 138-140. 1986.
  •  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
  •  66
    Cheryl Misak argues that truth ought to be reinstated to a central position in moral and political philosophy. She argues that the correct account of truth is one found in a certain kind of pragmatism: a true belief is one upon which inquiry could not improve, a belief which would not be defeated by experience and argument. This account is not only an improvement on the views of central figures such as Rawls and Habermas, but it can also make sense of the idea that, despite conflict, pluralism, …Read more
  •  65
    Deflating Truth
    The Monist 81 (3): 407-425. 1998.
    It seems that no philosopher these days wants a theory of truth which can be accused of being metaphysical. But even if we agree that grandiose metaphysics is to be spurned, even if we agree that our theory of truth should be a deflated one, the controversy does not die down. A variety of deflationist options present themselves. Some, with Richard Rorty, take the notion of truth to be so wedded to metaphysics that we are advised to drop it altogether. Others, with Paul Horwich, take the disquota…Read more
  •  64
    New pragmatists (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2007.
    The best of Peirce, James, and Dewey has thus resurfaced in deep, interesting, and fruitful ways, explored in this volume by David Bakhurst, Arthur Fine, Ian ...
  •  56
    Klein on James on the Will to Believe
    Hopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 5 (1): 118-28. 2015.
    This commentary explores the disagreement between Alex Klein and Cheryl Misak about the core insights of American Pragmatism, against a background of agreement. Both take the history of early American pragmatism to be a vital part of the history of analytic philosophy, not a radical break with it. But Misak argues that James seeks to loosen the usual epistemic standards so that religious and scientific belief can both be justified by a unitary set of evidentiary rules, and Klein argues that Jame…Read more
  •  55
    Pragmatism and bivalence
    International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 4 (2). 1990.
    Abstract The success of the pragmatic account of truth is often thought to founder on the principle of bivalence?the principle which holds that every genuine statement in the indicative mood is either true or false. For pragmatists must, it seems, claim that the principle does not hold for theoretical statements and observation statements about the past. That is, it seems that pragmatists must deny objective truth?values to these perfectly respectable sorts of hypotheses. In this paper, after ex…Read more
  •  53
    The Oxford handbook of American philosophy (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2008.
    Cheryl Misak presents the first collective study of the development of philosophy in North America, from the 18th century to the end of the 20th century.
  •  52
    Pragmatism and Pluralism
    Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 41 (1). 2005.
  •  51
    The pragmatist view of politics is at its very heart epistemic, for it treats morals and politics as a kind of deliberation or inquiry, not terribly unlike other kinds of inquiry. With the exception of Richard Rorty, the pragmatists argue that morals and politics, like science, aim at the truth or at getting things right and that the best method for achieving this aim is a method they sometimes call the scientific method or the method of intelligence – what would now be termed deliberative democ…Read more
  •  50
    The American Pragmatists
    Oxford University Press. 2013.
    Cheryl Misak presents a history of the great American philosophical tradition of pragmatism, from its inception in the 1870s to the present day. She traces the connections between classical American pragmatism and contemporary analytic philosophy, and draws out the continuing influence of pragmatist ideas in the recent history of philosophy
  •  47
    Medically Inappropriate or Futile Treatment: Deliberation and Justification
    with Douglas B. White and Robert D. Truog
    Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 41 (1): 90-114. 2016.
    This paper reframes the futility debate, moving away from the question “Who decides when to end what is considered to be a medically inappropriate or futile treatment?” and toward the question “How can society make policy that will best account for the multitude of values and conflicts involved in such decision-making?” It offers a pragmatist moral epistemology that provides us with a clear justification of why it is important to take best standards, norms, and physician judgment seriously and a…Read more
  •  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.
  •  42
    The Cambridge companion to Peirce (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2004.
    Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), the founder of pragmatism, is generally considered the most significant American philosopher. Popularized by William James and John Dewey, pragmatism advocates that our philosophical theories be linked to experience and practice. The essays in this volume reveal how Peirce developed this concept.
  •  41
    Truth and Objectivity (review)
    Canadian Journal of Philosophy 22 (3): 365-379. 1992.