Richard Kenneth Atkins, Associate Professor, Boston College
Talk Title: Pragmatism as a Theory of Ideas
Date and Time: April 6th, 4-5:30pm
Location: Deering 113, The University of Maine
Featured Topic: When understood as a theory of ideas, pragmatism is a radically different approach to philosophical questions from those that dominate the contemporary landscape. Ideas are viewed as like tools to help us attain our aims, be those aims to represent the world, to create works of art, to coordinate action, etc. There are many different kinds of ideas—from maps and melodies to formulae and words—but pragmatists take particular interest in our common nouns, such as ‘water’, ‘book’, etc. These sorts of ideas are social products, forged through a process of making our ideas definite, which we inherit through language acquisition and education. Once we have in view the pragmatist account of these sorts of ideas, the pragmatist theory of truth comes into focus, as does the idea of truth itself.
