In the first week we will consider the origins of pragmatism in the philosophy of William James. James was a medical doctor, painter, psychologist and philosopher before he officially became a pragmatist, and in our first session on Monday morning we will consider "Some Remarks on Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence" (1878), where James writes:
"...the knower is not simply a mirror floating with no foot-hold anywhere, and passively reflecting an order that he comes upon .... The knower is an actor, and co-efficient of the truth on one side, while on the other he registers the truth which he helps to create."
This extraordinary statement contains several of the pragmatist themes we will be examining in the seminar: the role of action in constituting the order that we find in nature, the creation as well as the registration of truth, the rejection of the mirror as the proper model of the human knower (a criticism that appears a hundred years later in Rorty's Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979)). We shall also consider some early statements of James's pluralism —in his letters, his essay "On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,” and in The Varieties of Religious Experience, where he writes that the universe is “a more many-sided affair than any sect, even the scientific sect, allows for.”
In our second session on Tuesday we will look at two chapters from James's Pragmatism. "What Pragmatism Means" illustrates the variety of things that pragmatism is said to be, and "Pragmatism and Humanism" sets out James's humanistic epistemology, according to which "the trail of the human serpent is over everything." This is a phrase that becomes a mantra in Hilary Putnam's The Many Faces of Realism (1987).
In our third session, we consider some criticisms and defenses of James's pragmatism by Bertrand Russell, J. B. Pratt, William James, and Hilary Putnam. Russell respected James as a philosopher but he objected to pragmatism, which he saw as replacing a conception of objective truth with a Nietzschean appeal to force. Pratt accuses James of confusing a psychological with a relational view of truth. James's reply in The Meaning of Truth (1909) affirms his belief in truth as a relation between an idea and a "reality outside of the idea," but argues that Pratt, and by implication Russell and other critics, are fixated on "abstract trueness," and ignore "concrete" forms of "verifiability." Finally we will consider the attempt of a major neopragmatist, Hilary Putnam, to sort out what is right and what is wrong in James's theory of truth.
I will meet with all participants in the first week to discuss their projects and obtain some early feedback on our discussions. On Saturday I will lead an expedition to the nearby Sandia Mountains, where we will hike two and a half miles to the 9500-foot high ridgeline for lunch and the view out over the New Mexico mesa-land.
Readings:
William James, "On Spencer's Definition of Mind as Correspondence,”
"On a Certain Blindness in Human Beings,”
selections from Pragmatism, The Letters of William James, and
The Principles of Psychology, "Professor Pratt on Truth";
Bertrand Russell, "Pragmatism";
J. B. Pratt, "The Pragmatic View of the Truth Relation;"
Hilary Putnam, "James's Theory of Truth," in The Cambridge Companion to William James
Week 1 • Week 2 • Week 3 • Week 4 • Week 5
To receive more detailed information on the seminar review this website. You may also write: pragma@unm.edu.
We look forward to responding to your interest and seeing you here!
Pragmatism: A Living Tradition
Russell B. Goodman, Project Director
pragma@unm.edu
