
William James
Pragmatism asks
its usual question. "Grant an idea or belief to be true," it says, "what
concrete difference will its being true make in anyone's actual life? How will the truth
be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the
belief were false? What, in short, is the truth's cash-value in experiential terms?"
--Pragmatism (1907)
More
William James

ORGANIZATIONS
Centers
for pragmatism
Societies involved with pragmatism
Past
conferences
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P RAGMATISM
Society for the
Advancement of
American Philosophy
Centro de Estudos em Filosofia
Americana
Groupe
d'Etudes sur le Pragmatisme
et la Philosophie Américaine
Charles S.
Peirce Society
Arisbe:
The Peirce Gateway
Institute
for Studies in Pragmaticism
William James Society
William James
Cybrary
John Dewey
Society
Center for
Dewey Studies
The
Mead Project
MORE LINKS...
The Pragmatism
Cybrary is a not-for-profit site for academic research and communication, and receives no
compensation for links to other websites.
visitors since
August 1999
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What is
Pragmatism?
Pragmatism
is a major movement
of American Philosophy, which started in the 1870s
with the
Metaphysical Club.
Pragmatists have impacted politics, law, education, religion, and every
academic discipline.
Pragmatism is closely aligned with
Naturalism. Read introductions to pragmatism and pragmatists in
the Web
Companion to Pragmatism. Also read a survey of the History of
Pragmatism.
Who are
Pragmatists?
Locate
scholars around the world whose interests include pragmatism.
The Library
of Living Pragmatists lists
dozens of major contemporary pragmatists. Read
autobiographical statements by scholars about
Falling in Love with Pragmatism. Visit
The
Genealogy Center for the major
schools of pragmatism (Cambridge, Chicago, Columbia) and their branches.
Where do
Pragmatists
Come From?
Nearly 300 scholars are included in the Cybrary's lists of
philosophy professors whose
research and teaching interests include pragmatism. Where did they come
from? Which doctoral programs turn out graduates who learned about
pragmatism and maintained that interest in their careers? The Pragmatism
Cybrary won't rate PhD programs for quality or job placement, but these
numbers let you draw your own conclusions. The Cybrarian only notes that
most of these programs have turned out pragmatists for generations.
Columbia University, 19
Fordham University, 14
Southern Illinois University, 13
Vanderbilt University, 12
Pennsylvania State University, 11
University of Chicago, 11
Saint Louis University, 10
SUNY at Stony Brook, 10
University of Notre Dame, 10
Yale University, 10
Boston University, 9
Harvard University, 9
Princeton University, 8
University of Pennsylvania, 8
Emory University, 7
Purdue University, 6
University of Texas, 6
Boston College, 5
Claremont Graduate University, 5
Loyola University, Chicago, 5
University of Miami, 5
University of Oregon, 5
City University of New York, 4
Tulane University, 4
Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 4
University of Michigan, 4
University of Western Ontario, 4 |
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Upcoming
Events
CS Peirce Society event
calendar
SAAP meetings and events
News
John E. Smith (Yale) died 8 December 2009.
From Bob Neville:
"I just received word from John E. Smith's daughter, Diana, that he
died last night of 'a massive stroke occasioned by an infection.' He
was one of the most important figures in the recovery of American
philosophy in our time, important to all the societies with which you
are associated. He was president of the Metaphysical Society, one of
the founders of the Royce Society and the first major scholar of
Royce, a supporter of the Santayana project, an important person
within the Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy,
president of the Peirce Society and who knows all the rest. I would
be obliged if you could communicate this news to your constituencies
and friends who would know John. Doubtless these 'constituencies'
have considerable overlap.
There will be a private burial next week and a public memorial early
in the next year when we can get it organized. Condolences for now
can be sent to his daughter, Diana, at John's old address where she
will be soon, 300 Ridgewood, Hamden, CT., 06517."
Reading Pragmatism
Book
publishers
Journals about pragmatism
Books on Pragmatism:
1990-1999,
2000-2009
Pragmatism Bibliography Center
The Eclipse of Pragmatism?
There has been much talk of pragmatism's
"eclipse" during analytic philosophy's greatest dominance from 1950 to
1990. The myth must be corrected: pragmatism was
never eclipsed. While pragmatism was a prominent competitor with rival neo-idealisms and new realisms during the first two decades
of the 20th century, pragmatism had few representatives across the top twenty philosophy departments.
Already quite marginalized in the 1920s and 1930s, the handful of pragmatist professors such as Dewey at Columbia and Mead at Chicago
encouraged many of their students to go into psychology, sociology, anthropology, linguistics,
education, and economics. Many of the best new minds
favorable towards pragmatism strongly influenced the
social sciences during the 1940s - 1980s.
In philosophy departments, pragmatism remained marginalized. However, Harvard and
Columbia were still fairly pragmatic and carried on the debate.
C.I. Lewis, Morton White, and W.V. Quine at Harvard, along with Ernest Nagel, Signey Morgenbesser, and Isaac Levi at Columbia,
each pursued some pragmatist themes. Many of their students have in turn defended
selected pragmatist views, much diluted and transformed, but still
consistent with pragmatic naturalism (eg. views seen in
Putnam, Davidson, Dennett, Churchland, etc). Supplemented by the efforts of renegade analytic philosophers such as Richard Rorty, pragmatism remained marginalized,
yet very potent and defended by a few major figures at prominent philosophy departments. Visit The
Genealogy Center for details. When philosophy became more interdisciplinary in the
1990s, its encounters with linguistics, anthropology, cognitive
science, semiotics, etc., brought it back into
contact with flourishing pragmatist views.
In summary, pragmatism has been a small but potent philosophy before and after WW II.
Its contemporary vitality is enhanced by philosophy's re-engagement with the social and cognitive sciences.
Spotlight:
Pragmatism in Philosophy
of Mind
Pragmatism was the original functional psychology and cognitive
science that (1) explains intelligence in terms of deliberate purposive
conduct, and (2) explains knowledge as successful predictions about
manipulating nature. Experience and mind are not limited to, or
reducible to, brain events -- experience, mind, and the like are
evolving natural systems of organism-environment transactions.
You can read defenses of some or all of these principles in the recent works
of:
Andy Clark
(Edinburgh, UK)
Susan Hurley (Bristol, UK)
Alva Noë (UC Berkeley,
USA)
Mark Rowlands
(Hertfordshire, UK)
Robert Wilson (Alberta,
CAN)
Teed Rockwell (Sonoma,
USA)
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DON'T MISS!
SAAP
2010 Conference
Charlotte, North Carolina March 11-13,
2010
Contemporary
Pragmatism
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