The American Pragmatists - Bryan Magee & Sidney Morgenbesser (1987)

In this program, Sidney Morgenbesser discusses the three classical American pragmatists (i.e. Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey) with Bryan Magee. This is from the 1987 series on the Great Philosophers with Bryan Magee. The full series can be found here: • The Great Philosophers...
#philosophy #bryanmagee #epistemology #pragmatism

[@Philosophy_Overdose]

This is a reupload. I preferred the audio of this version, so that's the main reason I decided to reupload it. I’ll still leave the previous video up as unlisted, so as to not break any external links with it. Sorry about any inconvenience!

[@renton8142]

You deserve all our thanks and gratitude for reuploading this always interesting material.

[@joelturken1724]

Mr. Magee certainly made the correct choice in Professor Morgenbesser for this interview. The sheer breath of his knowledge harks back to a time when graduate students knew their material 150% and their scholarship was expected to be of a world class nature. I am sure if he was awoken at 3am he could answer any of these questions with a quality that is slowly disappearing from the academic landscape. It was a sheer delight to study with him, and though I was not an outstanding student of his (by any stretch), I still appreciate his uncanny ability to use an encyclopedic mind in order to grapple with the issues discussed, whether in this interview or beyond. Question on the office door: What is 'p' and what is 'q'?

[@CesarClouds]

Though not as prominent, Josiah Royce was another noted American pragmatist. John Dewey was one of Will Durant's PhD examiners.

[@roygbiv176]

Royce was more explicitly idealist than the others too.

[@CesarClouds]

@@roygbiv176 Thanks.

[@JeffChen285]

Pragmatism is the first effort to overcome the dualistic dilemma in the sense that the useful truth is located somewhere between value truth and and factual truth, dualism actually doesn't matter. The evolution has determind that our sensing system is limited to detect survival-relevant part of the world only. Because life is a purposeful and internal phenomenon therefore the truth must hold the similar characteristics.

[@connectingupthedots]

Right, but in doing so it becomes relativism and degrades the concept of truth to the point of losing its meaning. Truth in pragmatism is more or less utility according to phenomenal experience which is generally not reliable.

[@JeffChen285]

You are right. Probably a more rational solution is to compromise somewhere in the middle of, say, relativism and absolutism, idealism and empiricism, physical reality and logical certainty, contingency and necessity, valid logic and tautological logic...etc, etc. As chasing absolute certainty is also a pre-hardwired desire and is an unstoppable process therefore a practical atitute is to accept it as a biological truth.

[@bookmarker3]

The lotion of inquiry...

[@user-bl1qk8bp2z]

Unfortunately, I am going to have to agree with others and say that this is the least satisfying of the Magee interviews due to Morganbesser's inability to present the material in a succinct manner for the non-specialist.

[@jackspicerisland]

Was going to make a similar comment, but you put it perfectly

[@JKFlipFlop..]

I understand that many people from NYC use "cooperative overlapping" in conversation, but it rankles me just as much as any other type of interruption.

[@veryshuai]

What a frustrating guest!

[@roygbiv176]

Morgenbesser was not a good guest

[@uchromia]

Why do you think so?

[@roygbiv176]

​@@uchromiaMagee has a great way of presenting complex ideas to a popular audience in terms of their essential themes so that people can come away from a 40 minute segment with a genuine improvement in their understanding. This is what makes this series of interviews so valuable. Morgenbesser didn't seem at any point to have caught on to the purpose of the interview and kept leading it off into somewhat irrelevant tangents that only obscured the topic; he really displayed an astonishing lack of context awareness, and you could see Magee's resulting frustration at times.

[@hydroxytriptamine3554]

@@roygbiv176 N

[@hydroxytriptamine3554]

@@roygbiv176I

[@hydroxytriptamine3554]

@@roygbiv176 G

[@JoshSmith-ff8dw]

Dreadful. The only one of these videos to make me less interested in the subject

[@paulnejtek6588]

The Harvard School? Gonna have to unsubscribe based on that alone