Pragmatism in Transition : Contemporary Perspectives on C.I. Lewis PDF
Preview Pragmatism in Transition : Contemporary Perspectives on C.I. Lewis
Pragmatism in Transition PeterOlen(cid:129)CarlSachs Editors Pragmatism in Transition Contemporary Perspectives on C.I. Lewis Editors PeterOlen CarlSachs Philosophy MarymountUniversity Lake-SumterStateCollege Arlington,VA,USA Clermont,Florida,USA ISBN978-3-319-52862-5 ISBN978-3-319-52863-2(eBook) DOI10.1007/978-3-319-52863-2 LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2017941282 ©TheEditor(s)(ifapplicable)andTheAuthor(s)2017 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher,whetherthewholeorpartofthematerialisconcerned,specificallytherightsof translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilarmethodology nowknownorhereafterdeveloped. Theuseofgeneraldescriptivenames,registerednames,trademarks,servicemarks,etc.inthis publicationdoesnotimply,evenintheabsenceofaspecificstatement,thatsuchnamesare exemptfromtherelevantprotectivelawsandregulationsandthereforefreeforgeneraluse. Thepublisher,theauthorsandtheeditorsaresafetoassumethattheadviceandinforma- tioninthisbookarebelievedtobetrueandaccurateatthedateofpublication.Neitherthe publishernortheauthorsortheeditorsgiveawarranty,expressorimplied,withrespectto thematerialcontainedhereinorforanyerrorsoromissionsthatmayhavebeenmade.The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutionalaffiliations. Coverimage©BombayMix/AlamyStockPhoto Printedonacid-freepaper ThisPalgraveMacmillanimprintispublishedbySpringerNature TheregisteredcompanyisSpringerInternationalPublishingAG Theregisteredcompanyaddressis:Gewerbestrasse11,6330Cham,Switzerland A CKNOWLEDGMENTS The idea for the present volume emerged from a panel on C.I. Lewis (organized by Jacqueline Kegley) for a meeting of the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy in Grand Rapids, MI in March 2015. We are grateful to Jacqueline for having assembled the panel out ofwhichthisbookemerged,aswellastotheSAAPconferenceorganizers. Additional interest and organization were supported by the American PhilosophicalSociety’s Franklin ResearchGrant. WewouldalsoliketothankoureditorsatPalgraveforencouragingthe project and enduring our frequent requests for extensions on the final deadline.WearealsothankfultoPhilGetzforhisroleinsecuringapproval by the boardat Palgraveforpublication. Finally,wewouldliketothankthecontributorsthemselvesforagreeing to writenew essaysabout C.I. Lewisforthe presentoccasion. v C ONTENTS 1 Introduction 1 Peter Olen andCarlSachs 2 C.I.Lewis?A SignificantFigurein American Pragmatism: TracingLines ofInfluenceandAffinities ofThemes and Ideas 11 Jacquelyn AnnK. Kegley 3 C.I.Lewis: From ConceptualPragmatism to ContemporaryMetaethics 35 Diana B. Heney 4 DivergingPaths? ConceptualPragmatism andLogicalEmpiricism 63 Peter Olen 5 TheGiven, thePragmatic APriori, andScientificChange 79 Juan V. Mayoral 6 Pragmatism,Apriority,andModality: C.I.Lewis AgainstRussell’sMaterial Implication 103 Sanford Shieh vii viii CONTENTS 7 ThePragmatic Theoryof the APriori 147 David J. Stump 8 Empiricism,PragmaticRealism,andthe A Priori inMind andthe WorldOrder 169 Kenneth R. Westphal 9 SellarsandLewisonthe Given andEmpiricalKnowledge 199 Tomasz Zarębski Index 219 CHAPTER1 Introduction Peter Olen and Carl Sachs WHY LEWIS? Once widely recognized as a leading twentieth-century philosopher, Clarence Irving Lewis has been largely forgotten in the minds of con- temporary philosophers. Though Lewis has never been without his defenders, such as Roderick Firth and Sandra Rosenthal, and there are signs of a nascent Lewis renaissance (e.g., recent works by Murray G. Murphey and Cheryl Misak), he is more commonly confused with David Lewis or C. S. Lewis than remembered for his philosophical views. Given the neglect of Lewis’s work, our introduction will address two questions: What has caused Lewis to be largely forgotten, and why is a Lewis revival in order? One reason is that Lewis is difficult to place in our contemporary historiographyofphilosophy.HehaddeeprootsinAmericanpragmatism, butheisusuallyneglectedbycontemporaryscholarsofpragmatism.Atthe same time,he wasinfluential in the American reception of analytic philo- sophy,andhisconcernssometimeseemclosertothoseofCarnapthanto P.Olen(*) Philosophy,Lake-SumterStateCollege,Clermont,Florida,USA C.Sachs MarymountUniversity,Arlington,VA,USA ©TheAuthor(s)2017 1 P.Olen,C.Sachs(eds.),PragmatisminTransition, DOI10.1007/978-3-319-52863-2_1 2 P.OLENANDC.SACHS Dewey. The ahistorical tendency of much twentieth-century analytic philosophy has led most analytic philosophers to take little interest in their own history, though the history of analytic philosophy has recently emerged as a distinct area of intensive research. Pragmatism, though reports of its demise are greatly exaggerated, tends to divide into a classical period that ends with Dewey’s passing and a period of neopragmatism that begins with Rorty and Putnam. C.I. Lewis falls into this gap; he is too much of a pragmatist for the analytic philoso- phers and too much of an analytic philosopher for the pragmatists. Likewise, he is too much of a classical pragmatist for neopragmatists (e.g., by making experience into an important epistemological con- cept) and also too much of a proto-neopragmatist for the classical pragmatists (e.g., by taking a keen interest in kinds of logics). Happily, these disciplinary distinctions no longer have the firm grip they did and the moment is opportune for a reexamination of C.I. Lewis. A deeper problem with Lewis is that his intellectual formation took place in a climate of ideas somewhat removed from the present day. In the early twentieth century, a central preoccupation of professional American philosophers was the debate between idealism and two ver- sions of realism – ‘new realism’ and ‘critical realism’. At a time when American philosophy was just beginning to professionalize, these debates do not neatly fit under the contemporary categories of meta- physics,epistemology,philosophyofmind,andphilosophyoflanguage. Since Lewis’s philosophical innovations are shaped by his intervention in these earlier debates, his work must accordingly be interpreted with sensitivity to distinct but overlapping disciplinary concerns. Hopefully an awareness of this fact will make Lewis intriguing to philosophers working on all these fields, thereby contributing to a deeper apprecia- tion of Lewis today. In the remainder of this introduction, we present a brief overview of Lewis’s most important contributions, a discussion of his historical con- text andcontemporaryrelevance,anda summary ofthe collected essays. MAJOR CONTRIBUTIONS Two important aspects of Lewis’s thought must be made explicit for any ensuing examination. The first is that Lewis belongs to the tradition of Americanpragmatism.Thesecondisthat,althoughheisanheirtoPeirce INTRODUCTION 3 andtoJames,heisalsoacritic(thoughnotanentirelyunsympatheticone) of Dewey. Lewis agreed with all three major pragmatists (as well as with his mentor Josiah Royce) about the indispensable role of action in thought,afuture-orientedaccountofconceptualmeaning,andaminimal sort of naturalism that at least does not contravene Darwinism. At the same time, however, Lewis’s intellectual background was, unlike James and Dewey but very much like Peirce, fundamentally about logic and epistemology, and not about empirical sciences (e.g., psychology and biology).Theideathatbiologyandpsychologyarerelevanttoepistemol- ogyandlogic–anideaattributabletoDewey–isonethatLewisexplicitly and unequivocally rejects. Thus, in order to appreciate Lewis as a philo- sopher,itisnecessarytoappreciateboththatheisapragmatistandthathe isnot aDeweyan pragmatist. The hallmark of Lewis’s thought is what he called ‘conceptual pragma- tism’:therearemanydifferentconceptualframeworks,allofwhichareuseful fordifferentpurposes.1Toclassifysomethingisalreadytoattributeaspecific role within a larger framework of human needs and interests. What is classified,specified independently of all classification, issimply what Lewis calls‘thegiven’.Thegiven,asseveralcontributionsheremakeclear,isnot (contrathestandardreading)directlyexperienced,butratherwhatisposited asnecessaryforustohaveanyexperiencesatall.Ifnothingweregiven,no categoriescouldbeaboutanythingbeyondthemselves.Atthesametime,if therewerenocategories,therecouldbeneitherthoughtsnorevenactions. All experiences of a structured, ordered world in which coherent thought andactionarepossibleisaresultofconceptualinterpretationofthegiven. An illuminating example of conceptual pragmatism is its application to theoldproblemofaprioriknowledge.OnastrictlyKantianview,whatisa prioriarethenecessaryconditionsofanypossibleexperience.Theapriority oftheformsofsensibleintuitionandthecategoriesoftheunderstandinglies intheimpossibilityofanyconsciousnessofanykindofobjectandanykind ofself-consciousnessthatdoesnotconformtothoseformsandcategories. But for Lewis, the orthodox Kantian view gets things exactly backward: it is the concepts that we employ in interpreting the given that are under our control, and can be freely varied and invented however we want to. 1Lewis’s position also invites comparison with Huw Price’s ‘discursive plural- ism’,whichisexplicitlyindebtedtoCarnapandthelaterWittgenstein.SeePrice (2011,2013).
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