[Lecture Seven] Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present
by Dr. Leonard Peikoff
Total Time: 2 hours, 38 minutes
Course summary: Presented as two complementary twelve-lecture courses—Founders of Western Philosophy: Thales to Hume and Modern Philosophy: Kant to the Present—The History of Philosophy covers the whole of western philosophy from its discovery in Ancient Greece to the twentieth century, including Objectivism. Dr. Peikoff argues that philosophy is the means by which we can understand any human culture and, more broadly, the history and changing course of a civilization. Read more »
In this lecture: This lecture explores the Pragmatist school of philosophy. Dr. Peikoff shows how the American pragmatists responded to elements in Descartes, Kant, and Hegel to produce their philosophy of practicality. In epistemology, the pragmatists’ theory of meaning led them to preach doing “whatever works” as an approach to truth. Peikoff illuminates how this approach led to subjectivism in both the individual and social varieties.
Study Guide
This material is designed to help you digest the lecture content. You can also download below a PDF study guide for the entire course.
| Explain how pragmatism developed from implications of each of Descartes, Hegel, and Kant. |
| Why is dis-ease considered to be the origin of thinking? |
| How do pragmatists differentiate between something that is doubtful and something that is dubitable? |
| Why is the pragmatist mantra “the true is what works” a reversal of the correct view? |
| Explain the pragmatist theory of meaning. Why is this contentless? |
| What is the difference between how the two sub-schools of pragmatism define “desirable consequences”? |
Q&A Guide
Below is a list of questions from the audience taken from this lecture, along with (approximate) time stamps.
| 2:06:20 | Will you distinguish between “meaning” and “truth” as those terms are used in the philosophic context? |
| 2:08:06 | Please tell the story about a mouse, which you once told at a lecture on pragmatism but left out tonight because of time. |
| 2:10:52 | Pragmatism would require that all ideas held by men on their deathbed must be false for all men since such ideas will not yield practical consequences for all men. An idea that’s held by dying men can have no consequences for dying men. |
| 2:12:27 | How do pragmatists explain that they can be certain that nothing is certain. Isn’t this an absolute? |
| 2:14:26 | Isn’t Bentham’s major error not that he said that there are degrees of pleasure and seeks to measure same, which seems eminently reasonable, but rather that the activity is not dissociated from universal ethical hedonism? |
| 2:17:04 | Is not the statement “if it works it’s true” an example of the stolen concept fallacy? It’s counting on an understanding of true properly, that is that, if it’s true, it will work. |
| 2:18:30 | If identity results from investigation and is indeterminate prior to this, what is the nature of existence in relation to one person who has not investigated and who is unaware of the identity which has been assigned through the investigation of a second person or group of people? |
| 2:20:58 | Could you please review how if 1) all situations are indeterminate apart from man’s interpreting of them and 2) reality is unknowable, irrelevant, unthinkable and 3) man’s consciousness creates identity, why wouldn’t any ideas formulated and acted upon produce desirable effects? Why do some ideas work and others don’t? |
| 2:23:41 | Scientific pragmatism considers the simplicity of an explanation a criterion of truth. Is the Peirce criterion of simplicity valid? |
| 2:27:02 | How can one reason with a pragmatist when one is trying to protect a value? How would you reason with a pragmatist in general? |
| 2:29:03 | Inasmuch as Ayn Rand describes herself as a man-worshipper, could you sharply distinguish the implication of her use of this term in its several aspects from the ideas held by Comte? |
| 2:33:03 | How can any pragmatist ever reject his admittedly tentative (i.e., dubitable) theory of pragmatism? |
| 2:35:04 | According to pragmatists, how should scientists proceed in their work? Why do scientists make such elaborate pretenses as if the outcome of the experiment was not determined by them, i.e., scientists can’t appeal to a preexisting community of scientists? |