PRAGMATISM, THEN AND NOW Society for the Advancement of实用主义然后现在社会的进步.pptVIP

PRAGMATISM, THEN AND NOW Susan Haack -- an interview with Sun Yong SY: Let me begin by asking you to clarify the history of pragmatism. Thomas English Hill tells us that Peirce declined the honor of being the founder of pragmatism; that he did not, like James, apply the PM to the concept of truth; that many of his major contributions are irrelevant to, even incompatible with pragmatism. but your book, Meaning and Action SH: the classical pragmatist tradition was a late C19th movement in American philosophy growing out of discussions between Peirce and James at the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, MA, in the early 1870s both Peirce and James stressed that pragmatism was less a body of doctrine than a method -- the method expressed in the Pragmatic Maxim of meaning this core idea was first expressed in CSP’s ”How to Make Our Ideas Clear” (1878) but the word “pragmatism” (in its philosophical sense) didn’t appear in print until James used it, in 1898 -- acknowledging that the idea was CSP’s why didn’t Peirce use the word? at the time he wrote, its meaning in ordinary language was “officious meddlesomeness” which was SO off-putting that (Peirce later wrote) he didn’t dare use it in print! so Hill’s account needs correction so far from “declining the honor,” in 1903 Peirce took his bows as the founder of pragmatism even when, in 1906, he introduced the word “pragmaticism” for his version, he says it is NOT to dissociate himself from James, Dewey -- or even Schiller moreover both Peirce and James saw the PM as the core idea of pragmatism to be used both negatively -- to dissolve meaningless metaphysical disputes positively -- to explain hard concepts both apply the PM to the concept of truth James in Pragmatism (1907) and The Meaning of Truth (1909) but Peirce much earlier, in “How to Make our Ideas Clear” moreover Hill compounds his mistakes by identifying “pragmatism” with a bunch of doctrines held by James, Dewey, or C. I. Lewis then saying