C.I. Lewis

<p>This edited collection explores the philosophy of Clarence Irving Lewis through two major concepts that are integral to his conceptual pragmatism: the <i>a priori </i>and the given. The relation between these two elements of knowledge forms the core of Lewis’s masterpiece <i>Mind and the World Order </i>. While Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism is directed against any conception of the <i>a priori </i>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 <i>a priori </i>and the given in dialogue with other notable figures in twentieth-century philosophy including Goodman Putnam Quine Russell Sellars and Sheffer. <i>C.I. Lewis: The A Priori and the Given </i>represents a focused treatment of a longneglected figure in twentieth-century American philosophy.</p>