William James
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)

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CLASSICAL
PRAGMATISTS
Charles S. Peirce
William James
Josiah Royce
F. C. S. Schiller
John Dewey
George H. Mead
Jane Addams
James Tufts
Addison Moore
Edward S. Ames
Alain Locke
Sidney Hook
Charles Morris
C. I. Lewis
RECENT
PRAGMATISTS

W. V. Quine
Hilary Putnam
Richard Rorty
Nicholas Rescher
Joseph Margolis
John McDermott
Paul Kurtz
Susan Haack
Cornel West

ORGANIZATIONS

Centers for pragmatism
Societies involved with pragmatism

Past conferences

MORE PRAGMATISM

 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...

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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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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)

 

 

       



Web Talk on Pragmatism

Perspectives of Pragmatism

The Spotlight
John McDermott on Pragmatism

DON'T MISS!

SAAP 2010 Conference

Charlotte, North Carolina

March 11-13, 2010

Contemporary
Pragmatism