Reddit reviews W. V. Quine (Philosophy Now)

Alright so if I had to recommend a singular book, it would be (Pragmatism: Critical Concepts in Philosophy)[ https://www.amazon.com/Pragmatism-Critical-Philosophy-Russell-Goodman/dp/0415288495]. It has a good overview of the entire pragmatist movement from the classical to the neo-pragmatists.

If you want specifics it’s a little harder, but I can try. I’ll try to avoid saying “read the entirety of their works,” and point you to specific sections or papers.

Peirce is amazing (glance at his wiki), no question about it. One of the greatest polymaths ever, in my books, but that’s part of the problem. He’s covered so much, and a lot of his writing presumes a strong basis in formal logic/math. I’m not sure if you do or don’t have that. So I’ll recommend two texts to you. The first is the Routledge profile on him. I’m a big fan of Routledge companion readers, and I admit I’ve never read this specific book. BUT, I recommended this to an ex, and she said it was a really great read. If you want a specific paper, I’d recommend “Some Consequences of Four Incapacities.” It provides a basic overview of the pragmatist project, many of the themes found here will be echoed throughout the tradition.

So I’m not a great fan of William James myself, but others tell me he’s amazing. I’d suggest picking up The Writings of William James Comprehensive Edition. Focus on sections 2 and 3, and read the essays “The Stream of Thought,” “The Will to Believe” (its really similar to the previous Peirce paper I recommended) and “Necessary Truths and the Effects of Experience.”

I like John Dewey a lot myself and would recommend a lot of his work, but I'll limit myself to two texts by him: “Studies in Logical Theory" and "The Quest for Certainty.” With all that said, I should mention that some of what the classical pragmatists argue for has shown to be quite problematic. I would read them more of their themes, but that’s just my opinion.

Moving onto the conventionalists, I found something rather brilliant. This is a link to a publically published chapter, prior to editing and uploaded by the author, of a book covering the conventionalists on academia.edu. I skim read it, and it’s a good overview and assumes very little background familiarity and eschews overly technical language on the part of the reader.

The Neo-pragmatists are a little trickier for me. I’m not that familiar with Rorty, I must admit. That said, his most famous text is “Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,” which I believe contains most of his views. IDK, even that recommendation is really no better than me saying “read his SEP or IEP page," I'm coming from a place of ignorance.

With regards to Putnam, he’s sort of a pragmatist in denial, or a more appropriate way would be to say that he’s not a “full-blooded” pragmatist. He’s written quite a bit of commentary on the classical pragmatists, and he’s also written quite a lot on some interesting topics. Two texts that come to mind are “The Meaning of ‘Meaning’” and “Realism with a Human Face.” Putnam’s a rather fun guy to read and I’d recommend reading up on the change(s) he made in his philosophical life.

Robert Brandom, haven’t read much of him. But I would recommend “Making it Explicit.”

Concerning Quine… well I can recommend this. You can of course check out his famous “Two Dogmas of Empiricism” paper, and “Word and Object” (if you got the time), but there’s a really good “overview” of sorts, given by Paul Boghossian in his paper "Analyticity Reconsidered".

Other great pragmatists or philosophers that are related to the movement, include: CI Lewis (modal logic, attack on moderate foundationalism, etc.) Philip Kitcher (my experience of Rorty being largely composed of what I assume are caricatures, he seems to be the sensible Rorty), Wittgenstein (later Wittgenstein proves rather influential- especially his general method), and Carnap (one can see it in his goal for what a scientific language ought to be, and his principle of tolerance.). Pragmatism is a rather odd thing, it's not exactly easy to pick out what makes one a pragmatist or not. From what I can see it's normally a rejection of a priori metaphysics, naturalism, support of science, and a concern that all our conceptual resources be of some practical use. I hope all this helped. And if I got anything wrong/missed out on a crucial text/author please feel free to point out.

I'd say /u/MaceWumpus got it right.

If you want to know the details, I'd recommend this book. It's--in my opinion, at least--a really nice, readable introduction to Quine's ideas.