The essential lesson is one of humility rather than scepticism.Īs the pragmatist philosopher Edgar Singer quipped in the 1930’s, “A fact is that which is not contradicted by any other fact.” This maxim is useful to keep in mind when dealing with various Trumpian attacks on science and the media as well as the fake news that has become routine on social media.Īll knowledge is incomplete and defective. The contribution of pragmatic philosophy has been to establish truth as a necessary ideal but error as an equally necessary condition of inquiry. The criteria of right thinking change about as frequently as what is thought. Often confused with ‘vulgar relativity,’ Pragmatism is really a recognition that none of us actually knows what constitutes reason. The intention of the first ‘pragmaticists’ (as Peirce called them) was to release the world from the doctrinaire use of reason that they perceived led to that conflict. Peirce in the 19th century to Richard Rorty in the 21st century have their origins in a specific national tragedy, the American Civil War. The Metaphysical Club documents this thesis in its analysis of the roots of American Pragmatism.įew might recognise today that the various schools of American Pragmatism associated with philosophers from C. It is therefore frequently less about the concepts it makes explicit - knowledge, truth, correct action - than it is about dealing with the lingering consequences of profound social upset. Philosophy is, more often than it likes to admit, a response to traumatic political events. They also thought that the survival of any idea depends not on its immutability but on its adaptability.ĭenying the Privilege and Presumption of Power They do not develop according to some inner logic of their own but are entirely dependent - like germs - on their human carriers and environment. They thought that ideas are produced not by individuals, but by groups of individuals - that ideas are social. Holmes, James and Peirce all believed that ideas are not things out there waiting to be discovered but are tools people invent - like knives and forks and microchips - to make their way in the world. The one thing we know that came out of it was an idea - an idea about ideas. The club was probably in existence for about nine months. Its members included Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, founder of modern jurisprudence William James, the father of modern American psychology and Charles Sanders Peirce, logician, scientist and the founder of semiotics.

The Metaphysical Club was an informal group that met in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1872, to talk about ideas.

The metaphysical club