Oxford Pragmatism

Ryle and Austin's Debt
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-19-887588-8
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 336 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 241 mm x 164 mm, Gewicht: 652 g

Oxford Pragmatism uncovers and explores the unrecognized impact of American pragmatism on the Oxford linguistic philosophy that thrived from the 1930s to the 1950s, made famous by Gilbert Ryle and J. L Austin. Cheryl Misak argues that Margaret Macdonald, a neglected British analytic philosopher and excellent scholar of American pragmatism, delivered core pragmatist ideas to her friend Ryle: the mind as a set of dispositions to behave; laws as 'inference tickets', and the distinction between knowing that something is true and knowing how to do something. Macdonald found these ideas in the work of the founder of pragmatism C. S. Peirce and his two most impressive followers, Clarence Irving Lewis in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Frank Ramsey in Cambridge, England. Ryle, it is argued, picked them up from Macdonald, though failed to acknowledge them as hers or as pragmatist. A lineage is also traced from American pragmatism to Austin's ideas that when we use words we perform actions, and that definitions must be fit for purpose. This route runs from Peirce and Lewis to Austin and through to contemporary conceptual engineers who follow in Austin's footsteps. Along the way, the views of Wittgenstein, Russell, Schiller, Ayer, and Cook Wilson are canvassed and assessed. In a Postscript, Misak outlines how pragmatism played out in the next generation of Oxford philosophers, such as Strawson and Wiggins.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Misak, Cheryl

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- PART 1. CLASSICAL PRAGMATISM: ITS FRIENDS AND FOES

- 1: C. S. Peirce: Meaning, Action, Habit

- 2: C. I. Lewis: The Web of Belief

- 3: The Pack Ice of Logical Theory

- 4: Russell's Pragmatism(!)

- 5: Ramsey's Pragmatism

- 6: Wittgenstein Turns His Back on the Tractatus

- 7: Wittgenstein on Grammar and Rule Following

- PART 2. PRAGMATISM AND EARLY OXFORD LINGUISTIC PHILOSOPHY

- 8: F. C. S. Schiller: 'Altogether beyond the Pale'

- 9: Cook Wilson and Prichard

- 10: The Early Ryle: The Rise of Oxford Analytic Philosophy

- 11: A. J. Ayer

- 12: Margaret Macdonald

- PART 3. RYLE: KNOWING HOW

- 13: Tracking Ryle's Shift to Pragmatism

- 14: Knowing How and Knowing That

- 15: Exorcising the Ghost in the Machine

- 16: Rule Following and Laws as Inference Tickets

- PART 4. AUSTIN: DOING THINGS WITH WORDS

- 17: Austin's Linguistic Method

- 18: Unearthing the Influences on Austin

- 19: To Say Something Is to Do Something

- 20: Austin and Pragmatism

- 21: Postscript: The Next Generation

Über Autor(innen)

Cheryl Misak is University Professor and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto. She works on American pragmatism, the history of analytic philosophy, ethics and political philosophy, and the philosophy of medicine.