Pragmatism: Defining America's Philosophy

Pragmatism is a “philosophy” in two senses of the term. It is a general outlook on life and an academic theory of the universe and our place in it. In this program, Aaron Zimmerman, professor and chair of the Philosophy Department at UC, Santa Barbara, discusses the nature of America's pragmatism. The axiom of pragmatism is Alexander Bain’s (1865) theory of belief, which was subsequently developed by Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. Despite its Scottish origins, pragmatism is distinctively American, as philosophers, like Dewey and Rawls (in his later work), adapted American’s founding creed to the changes wrought by the Darwinian revolution in biology, offering a pragmatic rationale for natural rights originally grounded in creationist biology. Series: "GRIT Talks" [Humanities] [Show ID: 40130]