Exploring Clarence Irving Lewis's Philosophy

This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the a priori and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge forms the core of Lewis’s masterpiece Mind and the World Order. While Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the a priori as constraining the mind and experience, it also emphasizes the inalterability and the unavoidability of the given that remains the same through any interpretation of it by the mind. The chapters in this book probe Lewis’s new account of the relation between the a priori and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in twentieth-century philosophy, including Goodman, Putnam, Quine, Russell, Sellars, and Sheffer. C.I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given represents a focused treatment of a long-neglected figure in twentieth-century American philosophy.