Department Colloquium: Cheryl Misak

"Ryle’s Debt: Peirce, Ramsey, and MacDonald on Hypotheses and Laws"

Abstract: It is often said that Ryle’s 1949 The Concept of Mind was heavily influenced by Wittgenstein. But I argue that Ryle helped himself to Margaret MacDonald’s 1937 reading of Ramsey’s idea that laws are inference tickets or rules with which we meet the future. He also helped himself to MacDonald’s distinction between knowing how and knowing that, which she found in Peirce. Not only will this argument bring the superb philosopher Margaret MacDonald back into the light where she belongs, but it will lay out pragmatism’s insights about generalizations and laws, and knock another brick from the wall that is supposed to separate pragmatism and analytic philosophy.

Cheryl Misak is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Toronto.