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C. I. Lewis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Susan Haack
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Extract

Lewis, according to Kuklick, was ‘a private person’, of ‘unsparing honesty and … utter dedication to the rational pursuit of truth’. He was, Kuklick continues, ‘equally uncompromising in what he expected of his readers, and as a result wrote for and lectured to a tiny group of scholars’. I hope that—since I occasionally find myself borrowing from him and frequently find myself arguing with him—I may count myself as one of the ‘tiny group of scholars’ for whom Lewis wrote. And perhaps, by arguing with him again here, I may persuade some of you of the enduring interest of his work.

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 19: American Philosophy , March 1985 , pp. 215 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1985

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References

1 Sources: Schilpp, P. A. (ed.), The Philosophy of C. I. Lewis (Open Court, 1968)Google Scholar; Kuklick, B., The Rise of American Philosophy (Yale University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

2 Kuklick, , 561.Google Scholar

3 Lewis, C. I., Mind and the World Order (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1929), Ch. 1.Google Scholar

4 Lewis, C. I., ‘A Pragmatic Conception of the A Priori’, Journal of Philosophy XX (1923), 169–177CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in Reading in Philosophical Analysis, Feigl, H. and Sellars, W. (eds.) (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), 286–294Google Scholar; Mind and the World Order, Ch. VII, VIII, IX; An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (Open Court, 1946)Google Scholar, Book I; ‘Autobiography’ in Schilpp, 14.

5 ‘Modal’ logics are those with operators representing ‘necessarily’ and/or ‘possibly’. See Lewis, C. I., ‘Implication and the Algebra of Logic’, Mind XXI (1912), 522–532CrossRefGoogle Scholar; ‘The Calculus of Strict Implication’, Mind XXIII (1913), 240–247Google Scholar; ‘The Issues Concerning Material Implication’, Journal of Philosophy XIV (1917), 350–356Google Scholar; A Survey of Symbolic Logic (University of California Press, 1918).Google Scholar

6 Lewis, C. I., Mind and the World Order, Ch. IX, XGoogle Scholar; An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, Book II.

7 Lewis, C. I., An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, Book IIIGoogle Scholar; Values and Imperatives, Lange, J. (ed.) (Stanford University Press, 1968).Google Scholar

8 Haack, S., Theories of Knowledge: An Analytic Framework', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society LXXXIII (1982–1983), 143–157.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Lewis, , ‘Autobiography’, in Schilpp, 9ff.Google Scholar

10 Quine, W. V. O., ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (1951), in From a Logical Point of View (Harper Torchbooks, 1952)Google Scholar; ‘The Pragmatists' Place in Empiricism’, in Pragmatism: Its Sources and Prospects, Zeltner, Philip M. (ed.) (South Carolina University Press, 1981), 21–39.Google Scholar

11 Goodman, N., ‘Sense and Certainty’, Philosophical Review 61 (1952), 160–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Reichenbach, H., ‘Are Phenomenal Reports Absolutely Certain?’, Philosophical Review 61 (1952), 147–159CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cf. also Scheffler, I., Science and Subjectivity (Bobbs-Merrill, 1967), Ch. 2Google Scholar; Firth, R., ‘Lewis on the Given’Google Scholar, in Schilpp, and Lewis's reply; Pastin, M., ‘C. I. Lewis's Radical Foundationalism’, Noûs 9 (1975), 407–420.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 My sketch of Lewis's theory is intended simply to supply the background necessary for the critical commentary in the following sections. For this reason I have kept my account as neutral as possible. This has meant that, at certain points, I have papered over (what I regard as) cracks in Lewis's theory. These points will be sorted out later. I shall base what I have to say about Lewis's theory of empirical knowledge largely on his account in An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (and page references in the text will be to this book). Lewis comments in his ‘Autobiography’ on the ways in which this book improves on the treatment given in Mind and the World Order (Schilpp, 17–18).Google Scholar

13 Including Reichenbach, in ‘Are Phenomenal Reports Absolute Certain?’Google Scholar and Goodman, in ‘Sense and Certainty’.Google Scholar

14 My thanks to K. Schwartzberg for drawing this point to my attention This also seems to be how Lewis approaches the matter in Mind and the World Order.

15 Goodman, , in ‘Sense and Certainty’, 161–162Google Scholar, makes what is essentially the same point, though not, of course, using my terminology of substantial versus trivial certainty.

16 To make the ‘qua’ precise, we can use the method introduced by Burdick in ‘A Logical Form for the Propositional Attitudes’, Synthese 52 (1982), 185–230.Google Scholar

17 Opthalmologists distinguish between what they call ‘objective’ and what they call ‘subjective’ vision tests. Tests where the optician directly examines the patient's eyes are called ‘objective’; tests where he asks the patient for reports on how things look to him are called ‘subjective’. Objective tests are used to confirm the results of subjective tests, as well as the other way round. Subjective tests are standardly repeated, to check on possibly mistaken reports by the patient. See Asher, H., Experiments in Seeing (Basic Books, 1961)Google Scholar, Ch. 10. Both Goodman and Reichenbach make the point that phenomenal beliefs must be consistent with other beliefs; Reichenbach mentions the danger of wishful thinking.

18 Lewis, C. I., ‘The Given Element in Empirical Knowledge’, Philosophical Review 61 (1952), 173.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19 An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation, Ch. X, is devoted to a discussion of the concept of probability; but the distinction which concerns me is actually clearer in Ch. XI.

20 E.g. Reichenbach, in ‘Are Phenomenal Reports Absolutely Certain?’Google Scholar; see also Van Cleve, J., ‘Probability and Certainty; an Examination of the Lewis/Reichenbach Debate’, Philosophical Studies 32 (1977), 323–334.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Cf. Goodman, , ‘Sense and Certainty’, 163.Google Scholar

22 Quine, W. V. O., From a Logical Point of View., 41.Google Scholar

23 Lewis discusses the relations between Pragmatism and Positivism in ‘Logical Positivism and Pragmatism’ (1941) in Collected Papers, Goheen, J. and Motherhead, J. L. Jr, (eds) (Stanford University Press, 1970), 92–112Google Scholar; cf. his reply to W. H. Hay in Schilpp.

24 Carnap, R., The Logical Structure of the World (1982), trans. George, R. A. (Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967).Google Scholar