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Hypotheses as expectations : Ramsey and Wittgenstein 1929In Florian Franken Figueiredo (ed.), Wittgenstein's philosophy in 1929, Routledge. 2023.
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James and British analytic philosophyIn Alexander Mugar Klein (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of William James, Oxford University Press. 2018.
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Peirce's thwarted careerIn Cornelis De Waal (ed.), The Oxford handbook of Charles S. Peirce, Oxford University Press. 2024.
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43The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century (edited book)Oup/Ba. 2016.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.
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22Grace de Laguna: American pragmatistAsian 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.
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3PeirceIn 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
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10Wittgenstein and PragmatismIn 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
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9Pragmatism on Solidarity, Bullshit, and other Deformities of TruthIn Felicia Ackerman (ed.), Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. 1981.This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Jamesian/Rortyian Pragmatist Account of Truth The Peircean Account of Truth Genuine Belief and Deformed Belief References.
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42Reply to Four Instructive CriticsTransactions 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
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27Richardson on the construction of moral normsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research 106 (1): 251-256. 2023.
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78Ramsey's Cognitivism: Truth, Ethics, and the Meaning of LifeTransactions 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
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1082011 Presidential Address: American Pragmatism and Indispensability ArgumentsTransactions 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
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72Debate: Pragmatist Epistemology and Democratic Theory: A Reply to Eric MacGilvrayJournal of Political Philosophy 22 (3): 366-376. 2014.
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31William 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...
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7Wittgenstein, Ramsey and the Vienna CircleIn Friedrich Stadler (ed.), Wittgenstein and the Vienna Circle: 100 Years After the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Springer Verlag. pp. 209-221. 2023.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.
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24Meaning, Truth, and the Limits of Analysis: Ten Studies, by David WigginsMind. forthcoming.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.
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Ch. 38. Pragmatism and analytic philosophyIn Michael Beaney (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press. 2013.
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Ramsey's 1929 pragmatismIn Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oup/ba. 2016.
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IntroductionIn Cheryl Misak & Huw Price (eds.), The Practical Turn: Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century, Oup/ba. 2016.
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Nothing scoundrelous about truthIn Melissa Schwartzberg & Philip Kitcher (eds.), Truth and evidence, Nyu Press. 2021.
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52A Sensible Pragmatist Conception of TruthPhilosophy 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.
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184Truth and the end of inquiry: a Peircean account of truthOxford University Press. 1991.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
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21Life After the Storm: Surviving COVID-19Perspectives 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
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45Williams, Pragmatism, and the LawRes 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
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17Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of PowersOxford 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.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Areas of Specialization
Social and Political Philosophy |
The Nature of Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |
Areas of Interest
Social and Political Philosophy |
The Nature of Philosophy |
American Pragmatism |