Date:
Harvard Department of Philosophy Colloquia Lecture Series
Professor Cheryl Misak
University of Toronto
Ryle’s Debt: Peirce, Ramsey, and MacDonald on Hypotheses and Laws
Friday, February 10th
2-4pm
Emerson Hall, Room 305
Lectures are one hour long and are followed by a question-and-answer session.
Colloquia lectures are free and open to the public
Abstract
It is often said that Ryle’s 1949 The Concept of Mind was heavily influenced by Wittgenstein. But I argue that Ryle helped himself to Margaret MacDonald’s 1937 reading of Ramsey’s idea that laws are inference tickets or rules with which we meet the future. He also helped himself to MacDonald’s distinction between knowing how and knowing that, which she found in Peirce. Not only will this argument bring the superb philosopher Margaret MacDonald back into the light where she belongs, but it will lay out pragmatism’s insights about generalizations and laws, and knock another brick from the wall that is supposed to separate pragmatism and analytic philosophy.
About the Speaker
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.
Her books include Frank Ramsey: A Sheer Excess of Powers, Cambridge Pragmatism, The American Pragmatists, Truth and the End of Inquiry, and Truth, Politics, Morality.