A concise, reader-friendly overview of pragmatism, the most influential school of American philosophical thought.
Pragmatism, America’s homegrown philosophy, has been a major intellectual movement for over a century. Unlike its rivals, it reaches well beyond the confines of philosophy into concerns and disciplines as diverse as religion, politics, science, and culture. In this concise, engagingly written overview, John R. Shook describes pragmatism’s origins, concepts, and continuing global relevance and appeal. With attention to the movement’s original thinkers—Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead—as well as its contemporary proponents, he explains how pragmatism thinks about what is real, what can be known, and what minds are doing. And because of pragmatism’s far-reaching impact, Shook shows how its views on reality, truth, knowledge, and cognition coordinate with its approaches to agency, sociality, human nature, and personhood.
Author(s): John R. Shook
Series: The MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series
Publisher: The MIT Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 294
City: Cambridge
Contents
Series Foreword
Preface
1: Pragmatism
Pragmatism, a System
Pragmatism, in Conception
Pragmatism, in Context
Summary
2: Principles of Pragmatism
Pragmatism, in Theory
Pragmatism, in Process
Pragmatism, in Practice
Summary
3: Permanence and Impermanence
Being and Plurality
Knowledge and Objectivity
Rationalism and Dualism
Summary
4: Context and Reality
Knowledge is Constructive
Reality is Effective
Emergence is Creative
Summary
5: Truth in Consequences
Minds at Rest
Concepts at Work
Knowledge on Trial
Summary
6: Being and Thinking
Thinking with Reality
Being and Thinking
Thinking and Objectivity
Summary
7: Pragmatism versus Epistemology
Objective Knowledge
Knowing Knowledge
Paradoxes of Knowledge
Summary
8: Transactional Knowledge
Realizing Realities
Realistic Knowing
Futures for Truth
Summary
9: Ecological Mentality
Mind–Matter Mutuality
Conscious Relationality
Embodied Mentality
Summary
10: Society, Self, and Mind
Social Cognition
Group Intentions
Collaborative Thinking
Summary
11: Culture and Person
Biocultural Co-evolution
Cultural Performance
Summary
Acknowledgments
Glossary
Notes
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Further Reading
Charles Sanders Peirce
William James
John Dewey
George Herbert Mead
Secondary Literature
Index
