Sylabus
Each class meeting will consist of a combination of lecture and discussion; students will be assigned a series of readings to be discussed each week in class. The focus of which will include: 1: Introduction and overview: what is experience, and what does it mean to learn from it? 2: A short history of empiricism and its radical reconstruction – Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 3: Foreshadowing radical empiricism – Emerson 4: The influence of Darwin on philosophy – Dewey 5: The work of narrative, metaphor as truth, and truth as propositional – James 6: The function of truth in a pluralistic universe – James 7: The role of belief in a material world – Peirce 8: Continuity and relatedness, the immortality of having acted – Peirce 9: Reconstruction in knowing as a radical continuity of being – Dewey 10: Conclusion: is radical empiricism a valid path to truth?
Anotace
This course explores the notion of experience - those thing/event/fact/encounters that impress on us and make learning possible. Radical Empiricism begins with the realization that experience cannot justify truth claims - but turns this into a foundational redefinition of experience.
This has both enlarged and challenged all extant schools of thought - and served in the origination of much contemporary discourse. Yet it remains a challenge today.
The methodology of Radical Empiricism goes by the name ‘Pragmatism’ – and is commonly and correctly described as a ‘relativistic’ philosophy. But pragmatism and relativism are not to be confused with ‘pragmatismus’ and ‘relativismus’ of European philosophy.
We will read and discuss selected essays by leading thinkers: Emerson, James, Pierce, and Dewey, and gain a working knowledge of this philosophy and its importance in contemporary thought.