Syllabus
Introduction, The radical reconstruction of Empiricism. Experience as story telling and metaphor as truth - Circles, Emerson.
A methodology emerges - The influence of Darwin on philosophy, Dewey. The limits of experience - A world of pure experience, James.
A new understanding of truth - The Pragmatist account of truth, James. The limits of knowing - Some consequences of four incapacities claimed for man, Peirce.
The radical continuity of Pragmaticism - Synechism and Immortality, Peirce. The radical empirical ontology - Peirce’s philosophy as method, Feibleman.
How we experience being - Art as Experience, Dewey. Practical applications of this novel philosophical method - Mustain.
Annotation
This course surveys the emergence of American philosophy as a reconstruction of empirical thought. Particular emphasis is given to the philosophical implications of Darwinian Biology, which was the predominate topic of conversation at the famed Metaphysical Club, from which Radical Empiricism and Pragmatism emerged.
The basic questions include: what is the philosophical upshot of Darwinian biology? What does it mean for a living thing to have an experience? How does experience become knowledge? Can ‘principles’ evolve? (Not merely the notion of, but the principles themselves) What is ‘truth’ in an ever-evolving world, and how can we know it? The upshot of the course is our discussion of the practical use (i.e., truth) offered by this weltanshauung.