Discover published sets by community

Author: William James Summary: This essay defends the rationality of faith and argues that it is permissible to adopt a belief without prior evidence of its truth under certain conditions, shaping James's distinctive brand of pragmatism.

Author: William James Summary: Serving as a sequel to 'Pragmatism', this collection of essays continues to explore the nature of truth and defends the pragmatic method against critics, stressing the role of beliefs in shaping the reality we experience.

Author: John Dewey Summary: Dewey outlines his philosophy of pragmatism, emphasizing that experience exceeds what can be encapsulated by science and traditional metaphysics, advocating for a naturalistic approach to understanding experience.

Author: John Dewey Summary: This book is a response to Walter Lippmann's 'The Phantom Public', defending the possibility of a competent public in democratic societies and proposing a deeper, more interactive form of democracy.

Author: William James Summary: As a series of lectures given at the University of Edinburgh, this text examines different religious experiences across cultures and time, offering a psychological study that contributes to pragmatic thought by considering faith and religious life as phenomena.

Author: William James Summary: This series of lectures describes pragmatism as a method and a theory of truth that argues for the practical consequences and effects of concepts and beliefs in guiding our actions and satisfying our needs.

Author: William James Summary: This foundational work by William James expounds on his early psychological theories, some of which were precursors to his later pragmatic philosophy, emphasizing the function of the mind in enabling adaptation to one's environment.

Author: John Dewey Summary: Dewey presents his views on education through a pragmatic lens, arguing for a relationship between education and democratic society, and for learning as a social and interactive process.

Author: John Dewey Summary: Dewey's work on logical theory suggests that logic is not a rigid, static code, but an evolving body of knowledge that develops through the process of inquiry and the scientific method.

Author: Willard Van Orman Quine Summary: Quine discusses his views on logic and ontology, influencing pragmatism by questioning the distinction between analytic and synthetic statements and emphasizing the revisability of all knowledge.

Author: Clarence Irving Lewis Summary: This book outlines Lewis's conceptual pragmatism, distinguishing between the immediacy of experience and the abstractions of the conceptualized world, and emphasizing the role of a priori knowledge in the form of the conceptual framework within which knowledge is gained.

Author: John Dewey Summary: Dewey critiques the traditional quest for certainty in philosophy, arguing for an understanding of ideas and beliefs as tools for problem-solving and adapting to the ever-changing environment.

Author: Jürgen Habermas Summary: While Habermas is not typically classified as a pragmatist, his work here looks at knowledge from a practical standpoint, interrogating the human interests that drive different forms of inquiry and the implications for understanding rationality and reason.

Author: Thomas S. Kuhn Summary: Although not a pragmatist text per se, Kuhn's description of how science progresses through paradigms shifts is often associated with pragmatic concepts in that it sees scientific theories as tools that fit certain purposes within a context of a 'paradigm'.