Representationalism and pragmatism

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Piotr Szalek (Catholic University of Lublin, Poland)
• Friday 13 June 2014, 12:00-13:00
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact tlb29.

One of the most striking readings of Berkeley’s philosophy is offered by two founders of the classical American Pragmatism. Both Charles Sanders Peirce and William James regarded Berkeley as a pragmatist. The paper seeks to explain the alleged proto-pragmatist elements in Berkeley’s philosophy in order to trace the historical relation between representationalism (resp. anti-representationalism) and pragmatism. The explanation will be offered in terms of the two famous Sellarsian categories of the ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images of the world and human beings. The ‘manifest’ image is regarded as a refinement of the ordinary way of conceiving things, and the scientific image is seen as a theoretical picture of the world provided by science. The paper argues that the modern pragmatism could be seen as an effect of an attempt to synthesize the ‘manifest’ and ‘scientific’ images by creating one unified synoptic vision of the world after the modern scientific revolution (that caused a conflict between the images) and the failure of the representationalism of Descartes and Locke (as a part of a new conceptual framework within which these two images were supposed to be combined).

This talk is part of the HPS Philosophy Workshop series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• All Talks (aka the CURE list)
• Cambridge talks
• Department of History and Philosophy of Science
• Featured lists
• HPS Philosophy Workshop
• History and Philosophy of Science long list
• Philosophy Events
• Philosophy and History of Science
• Seminar Room 1, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
• Trust & Technology Initiative - interesting events
• hc446
• jer64's list

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.