The critical work on Realism in the first part of the 20th Century. The development of a constructive realism upon the basis of modern logic and science, and through the criticism of opposed philosophical systems. Edward Gleason Spaulding was a Professor of Philosophy at Princeton, and the President of the American Philosophical Association. He was a member of the "new realism" school of thought. His goal in this book is to "ascertain both what those postulates are from (...) which each philosophical system is logically derivable, and also, whether there is, finally, one body of principles that is common to all systems, and logically presupposed by them.." Contents include: The Problem of the Point of View, The Historical Problems of Philosophy, Methods and Problems of Method, Causation Philosophies, Substance Philosophies: Objective Idealism, and Realism: Function Philosophies. (shrink)

A WORLD OF CHANCE OR WHENCE, WHITHER, AND WHY BY EDWARD GLEASON SPAULDING MCCOSH PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY NEW YORK THE MACMILLAN COMPANY ...

What am I?--The walls of the past.--Why men disagree.--What can I know?--What should I do?--What shall I believe?

The late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century debate over ‘internal’ and ‘external’ relations is well explored, as far as its course in Britain is concerned. F. H. Bradley’s idealistic internalism, on the one hand, and Bertrand Russell’s realistic externalism, on the other, were at the center of this debate. Less well known, however, is that there was also a discussion about relations in the United States at the time. The central figures in this discussion were Edward Gleason Spaulding (...) and John Dewey. Like Russell, Spaulding advocated a realist-inspired externalism, while Dewey criticized this viewpoint from a pragmatist perspective. The aim of the present paper is to reconstruct the exchange between Spaulding and Dewey and to elaborate the specifics of this exchange. In doing so it will emerge, among other things, that, in contrast to Bradley’s idealist rejection of externalism, Dewey’s pragmatist attempt at a refutation was more in line with common sense and science and that Spaulding’s version of externalism differed markedly from Russell’s in its strong empirical orientation. Overall, an undeservedly forgotten chapter in the history of early twentieth-century American philosophy is revisited and reassessed. (shrink)