C.I. Lewis

The A Priori and the Given

Quentin Kammer, Jean-Philippe Narboux, Henri Wagner, Quentin Kammer, Jean-Philippe Narboux, Henri Wagner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN:
  9780367770860
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351790796
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the a priori and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge forms the core of Lewis's masterpiece Mind and the World Order . While Lewis's conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the a priori as constraining the mind and experience, it also emphasizes the inalterability and the unavoidability of the given that remains the same through any interpretation of it by the mind. The chapters in this book probe Lewis's new account of the relation between the a priori and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in twentieth-century philosophy, including Goodman, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Sellars, and Sheffer. C.I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given represents a focused treatment of a longneglected figure in twentieth-century American philosophy.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Sheffer, Lewis, and the “Logocentric Predicament”
• 2 Strict Implication and the Pragmatic A Priori
• 3 Aims and Claims of C. I. Lewis’s Conceptual Pragmatism
• 4 C. I. Lewis on the Intersubjective and the Constitution of Objectivity
• 5 Relocating the Myth of the Given in Lewis and Sellars
• 6 Spontaneity, Sensation, and the Myth of the Given
• 7 Goodman and the Given: What Goodman Inherits From C. I. Lewis
• 8 C. I. Lewis: The Red and the Good
• List of Contributors and Editors
• Index