#  Colloquium Lecture: Cheryl Misak (University of Toronto) 

 



####  calendar\_today Date and Time 

 **February 10, 2023** 

 02:00PM - 04:00PM EST 

 



 


###  Harvard Department of Philosophy Colloquia Lecture Series

###    ![Misak Lecture Flyer](/sites/g/files/omnuum4436/files/styles/hwp_1_1__720x720_scale/public/phildept/files/misak_lecture_flyer.png?itok=siUDvqmn) 

 



###  **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.

   ![Cheryl Misak portrait](/sites/g/files/omnuum4436/files/styles/hwp_1_1__360x360_scale/public/phildept/files/misak-photo-2_copy_2.jpg?itok=eXs0dB22) 

 

###  **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.*



 

 



 

 

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