Abstract
My paper compares Wittgenstein to the three classical pragmatist, Charles Sanders Peirce, William James , and John Dewey . It is well known that Frank Ramsey read and cited Peirce, although we can only conjecture what, if anything, he may have communicated of Peirce to Wittgenstein or if Wittgenstein ever read him for himself. Through Ramsey, we will explore some of the similarities between Wittgenstein and Peirce, including the typically pragmatist emphasis on intelligent action and its relation to doubt. One important difference is Peirce and pragmatism’s emphasis on embodied habits. We will also examine the well-documented influence of James on Wittgenstein. Many of Wittgenstein’s criticisms of psychology can most likely be traced to errors he initially found in James. However, there are many likely sources of positive influence on Wittgenstein as well including perhaps the notion of an inherited world picture, his unique theory of universals along with his holism, historicism, and anti-foundationalism . While Wittgenstein has many positive things to say about James , he is entirely negative in his remarks about Dewey. Ironically, we will find that Dewey is the pragmatist with whom most commentators have identified thematic resonances to Wittgenstein.
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Notes
- 1.
Following convention, titles for Wittgenstein’s works are abbreviated (TLP = Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, PI = Philosophical Investigations, Z = Zettel, OC = On Certainty, LR = Letters to Russell, keynes, and moore, RFM = Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics, CV = Culture and Value, L = Lectures), with section (§) or page number (p.), with full citation and initials (e.g., RFM) in the References.
- 2.
Peirce is here rejecting Kantian transcendentalism.
- 3.
It would be interesting to compare Peirce’s “speculative grammar” as the division of his logic dealing with “the general conditions to which thought or signs of any kind must conform in order to assert anything” (CP: §206) to what Wittgenstein means by “grammar.”
- 4.
Nowhere has emphasis been added to any citation.
- 5.
This passage also connects to Peirce and Wittgenstein’s anti-foundationalism.
- 6.
While they concede, we cannot complete the quest for certainty , pragmatists are anti-skeptics that consider skepticism an impregnable fortress from whence the enemy cannot attack. If they do, they lose.
- 7.
Goodman (2002: 3). Goodman provides many instances of Wittgenstein referring directly to James in his correspondence or remembrances published by friends and students or, as here, letters. This is the definitive work on the many likely influences of James on Wittgenstein.
- 8.
Of course, we may perform the activity of taking and using signs reflexively. It is worth adding that entire body performs such activity.
- 9.
Some believe this essay was the most important single philosophical paper of the twentieth century. According to Quine (1953), pragmatism is one of the major effects of rejecting the two dogmas.
- 10.
1939.07.22 (09313): John Dewey to Corinne Chisholm Frost.
- 11.
Instead, logical properties emerge from biological and social functioning and when they do they transform such functioning.
- 12.
Wittgenstein could have derived this metaphor from James’s chapter on “The Stream of Consciousness” in Principles.
- 13.
Wittgenstein writes: “When I think in language , there aren’t ‘meanings ’ going though my mind in addition to the verbal expressions : the language is itself the vehicle of thought” (PI §329). Linguistic behavior is irreducible to psychic mental functioning, although there are no doubt neurophysiological concomitants including linguistic habits.
- 14.
Quine’s quotes are from (LW 1, 1925), but he had already shown the primacy of socially coordinated action (i.e., behavior) at least as early as 1916.
- 15.
Skinnerian and earlier forms of behaviorism cannot account for linguistic behavior.
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Garrison, J. (2017). Wittgenstein and Classical Pragmatism. In: Peters, M., Stickney, J. (eds) A Companion to Wittgenstein on Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-3136-6_21
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