Pragmatism in Transition : Contemporary Perspectives on C.I. Lewis

222 Pages·2017·16.627 MB·English

by  Peter Olen, Carl Sachs (eds.)

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
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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).