The Nineteenth Century · School
Pragmatism
America's native tradition: the meaning of an idea lies in its practical effects, and truth is what works in experience.
Representative figures · 6
Charles Sanders Peirce皮尔士
Founder of pragmatism, pioneer of semiotics and the logic of relations, banished from academia in life and recognised after death as America's most original philosopher.
William James威廉·詹姆斯
Founder of American psychology and of pragmatism: truth is the cash-value of an idea, consciousness is a stream, and the will to believe may decide where evidence cannot.
John Dewey杜威
Completer of pragmatism and father of progressive education: knowledge is an instrument of inquiry, democracy a way of life, and the school a society in miniature. He lectured in China for two years.
W. V. O. Quine蒯因
The two dogmas of empiricism overturned: no analytic–synthetic distinction, no isolated statement facing experience; translation is indeterminate, 'to be is to be the value of a variable', and philosophy is continuous with science.
Hilary Putnam普特南
Functionalism, Twin Earth, brains in a vat, internal realism, the entanglement of fact and value: he devised many of the central arguments of contemporary philosophy of mind and language, then criticised them himself.
Richard Rorty罗蒂
Philosophy is not the mirror of nature: no representation, no foundations, only conversation and solidarity. Leaving analytic philosophy behind, he turned pragmatism into an ironic liberalism that annoyed every camp.