Ramsey’s 1929 Pragmatism

This chapter argues, contrary to the received view, that Frank Ramsey was not part of the logical analyst programme of the early Russell and the Tractarian Wittgenstein. He did not identify a primary language comprising observation and logic and then go on to argue that open generalizations and scientific laws must be given a different, pragmatist, treatment. Rather, he started from the pragmatist account of belief as a habit of behaviour and came to a global pragmatist account of belief and its evaluation.

Epilogue: Ramsey’s Ubiquitous Pragmatism

Ramsey’s late piece ‘General Propositions and Causality’ (GPC) begins with a discussion of the logical status of unrestricted generalizations—claims of the form ‘(x)F(x)’. Ramsey argues against his own earlier view that a sentence of this form should be treated as an infinite conjunction. However, as he puts it, ‘if it isn’t a conjunction, it isn’t a proposition at all’. He goes on to put causal judgements in the same non-propositional box, noting that what he has offered is a ‘psychological analysis’ of causal judgement, not a metaphysics of causation—the later, he thinks, turns out to be the wrong mode of inquiry in this case. In modern terms, what Ramsey has sketched is a pragmatist or expressivist view of causation. This chapter relates Ramsey to later manifestations of the same pragmatist move, in Cambridge and elsewhere, and discusses the question whether Ramsey himself does or should think that this pragmatism is a ‘global’ view, applicable to all our judgements.

Pragmatism and Anscombe on the First Person

Anscombe’s famous paper on the first person makes claims which may seem bewildering or absurd, that we have ‘unmediated conceptions’ of some of our states and actions, that these conceptions are ‘subjectless’, and also, very controversially, that ‘I’ does not refer. Anscombe would not have identified herself as a pragmatist. But we can gain insight into and sympathy with some of these claims (even if we do not end up fully endorsing all of them) by seeing that they arise from her asking central pragmatist questions about ‘I’, that is how we use the word and why using it that way is important for us. Her answer centres on what she calls ‘self-consciousness’, that is, our ability to speak for ourselves, to say how things are with us, or what we are doing without checking to make sure that it is really ourselves we are speaking about.

Tempered Pragmatism

This chapter assesses the prospects of a pragmatist theory of content. It begins by criticizing the theory presented in D. H. Mellor’s essay ‘Successful Semantics’, then identifies problems and lacunae in the pragmatist theory of meaning sketched in chapter 13 of Dummett’s The Logical Basis of Metaphysics. It contends that the prospects are brighter for a tempered pragmatism, in which the theory of content is permitted to draw upon irreducible notions of truth and falsity. It sketches the shape of such a theory and illustrates the role of its pragmatist elements by showing how they point towards a promising account of the truth conditions of indicative conditionals. A feature of the account is that it validates Modus Ponens whilst invalidating Modus Tollens.

The Spirit of Pragmatism in the Quads of Oxford

This chapter discusses the influence of pragmatism in Oxford in the second half of the twentieth century. It begins by identifying five characteristic components of pragmatism: (1) a doxastic theory of truth; (2) a broadly empiricist account of meaning; (3) a fallibilist, dynamic, inquiry-centred account of knowledge; (4) a hostility to dualism; and (5) an affirmation of the primacy of practice. It then shows that each of these ideas finds expression in the writings of one of the great figures of Oxford philosophy—P. F. Strawson. Nevertheless, it argues that there are aspects of Strawson’s conception of philosophy—particularly his commitment to descriptive metaphysics—that are alien to the spirit of pragmatism in a way that reflects something deep about the style of Oxford philosophy of the period.

Introduction

This chapter introduces the tradition of pragmatism as it first appeared in America in the mid-1800s, outlines its migration to Britain, and traces the reception of pragmatism in Britain and the influence of pragmatism on British philosophy. It also provides summaries of the contributions of the various authors in the volume and ties them together.

Smile When You’re Winning: How to Become a Cambridge Pragmatist

This chapter traces the development of a particular current of thought known by the label ‘pragmatism’ during the last part of the twentieth century and at the beginning of the twenty-first, and latterly associated with the work of Simon Blackburn and Huw Price. Three questions are addressed. First, how did this current of thought actually develop? Second, does this current of thought constitute a single, coherent, theoretical outlook? Third, does this current of thought constitute an attractive philosophical outlook? In answering these questions, attention is drawn to a tension between the two main proponents of this current of thought, namely the different attitudes they take to the naturalist ‘master narrative’ on which it depends.

Pragmatism: All or Some or All and Some?

This chapter explores what is at stake in debates about expressivism and pragmatism. The background is that deflationism about truth and other semantic terms makes it difficult to make sense of old oppositions between realism on the one hand and expressivism or pragmatism on the other. The chapter sees the issue in terms of a desire for naturalistic explanation, or ‘perspicuous representation’ of what we are doing with various parts of discourse and how different elements in discourse contribute variously to its structure. Drawing on work by Jonathan Bennett and Donald Davidson, it sketches an approach to understanding the arrival of fully-fledged linguistic capacities, in terms of the practices and doings that they make possible.

Wittgenstein’s Rain in the ‘Philosophical Desert’: Pragmatist Ideas in Post-War Oxford

Although Wittgenstein described post-war Oxford as a ‘philosophical desert’, his ideas greatly fertilized Oxford philosophy. This chapter deals with the role pragmatist ideas played in this influence. Neither Wittgenstein nor Oxford conceptual analysts (Ryle, Austin, Strawson, Grice) were part of the historical movement of ‘Pragmatism’ (Peirce, James, Dewey, Mead, Lewis), yet both display intriguing similarities and dissimilarities with ideas that are pragmatist in a looser sense. They subscribe to the fundamental tenet that philosophically contentious concepts must be elucidated by characterizing their role within human practices. There is a shared tendency to avoid both epistemological naturalism and ontological super-naturalism, and contrasting attitudes towards meta-philosophical naturalism and matters of philosophical style. As regards meaning, there are parallel transitions from reference to use. Whereas Wittgenstein and the Oxonians are alethic realists, pragmatist theories make truth dependent on our beliefs or expediences. At the same time, they all acknowledge an anthropological dimension to the bearers of truth-values—propositions—which are understood as thinkables and sayables.

The ‘Middle’ Wittgenstein (and the ‘Later’ Ramsey) on the Pragmatist Conception of Truth

This chapter examines some remarks Ludwig Wittgenstein expressed on pragmatism in manuscripts and lectures during the first half of the 1930s. These remarks focus principally on the Jamesian conception of truth, according to which, roughly, a belief or a proposition is true if it is useful. Wittgenstein acknowledges that this conception is able to capture some characters of ordinary language, but at the same time, he criticizes some aspects of it, and his criticism strongly resembles Frank Ramsey’s attitude towards the same topics. In this sense, it is argued that Ramsey had a role both for Wittgenstein approaching pragmatism, and for the partly negative attitude with which he came to judge it. Yet, the two thinkers’ general perspectives diverge when it comes to the place of theory in philosophical activity.