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2014 Dawes Hicks Symposium
The Practical Turn — Pragmatism in Britain in the Long Twentieth Century

The British Academy, October 2, 2014

The Pragmatist approach to philosophical problems focuses on the role of disputed notions — e.g., truth, value or necessity — in our practices. As a self-conscious philosophical stance, Pragmatism arose in America in the late nineteenth century, in the work of writers such as Charles Peirce, William James and John Dewey. Since then, many distinguished British philosophers have also taken this practical turn, even if few have explicitly identified themselves as Pragmatists. This symposium traces and assesses the influence of American Pragmatism on British philosophy, with particular emphasis on Cambridge in the inter-war period, on post-war Oxford, and on recent developments.

Programme

9.45 Registration & Refreshments
10:15  Introductory Remarks
Professor Huw Price, FBA, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge

10:30

Pre-War Cambridge 
Chair: Professor Hugh Mellor, Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge

 

Professor Cheryl Misak FRSC, Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto 
Ramsey and the advance of pragmatism

 

Dr Anna Boncompagni, Roma Tre University
The "middle" Wittgenstein (and the “later" Ramsey) on the pragmatist conception of truth

12:30

Lunch Break

13:30

Post-War Oxford
Chair: Professor David Wiggins FBA, Emeritus Wykeham Professor of Logic, University of Oxford

Professor Hans Johann Glock Professor of Philosophy, University of Zurich 
Wittgenstein's rain in the “philosophical desert”: pragmatist ideas on meaning and concepts in post-war Oxford

 

Professor Hans Johann Glock Professor of Philosophy, University of Zurich 
Wittgenstein's rain in the “philosophical desert”: pragmatist ideas on meaning and concepts in post-war Oxford

 

Professor David Bakhurst, Charlton Professor of Philosophy, Queen’s University, Canada.
The spirit of pragmatism in the quads of Oxford

15.30

Refreshments

16.00

The Long Now
Chair:  Professor Simon Blackburn FBA, Emeritus Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy, University of Cambridge, Professor, New College of the Humanities, and Distinguished Research Professor, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

 

Professor Jane Heal FBA, Professor Emeritus, Cambridge University 
Anscombe, pragmatism and the first person

 

Professor Hallvard Lillehammer, Professor of Philosophy, Birkbeck, University of London
Smile when you're winning: how to become a Cambridge Pragmatist

Commentator-at-large: Professor Ian Rumfitt, Professor of Philosophy, University of Birmingham

18.00       

Drinks Reception


Registration

Please register for this event here.

Date: 
Thursday, 2 October, 2014 - 09:45 to 18:00
Event location: 
The British Academy