Thinking about Animals: James, Wittgenstein, Hearne

Authors

  • Russell B. Goodman University of New Mexico

Keywords:

animals, James William, Wittgenstein Ludwig, Hearne Vicki

Abstract

In this paper I reconsider James and Wittgenstein, not in the quest for what Wittgenstein might have learned from James, or for an answer to the question whether Wittgenstein was a pragmatist, but in an effort to see what these and other related but quite different thinkers can help us to see about animals, including ourselves. I follow Cora Diamond’s lead in discussing a late paper by Vicki Hearne entitled “A Taxonomy of Knowing: Animals Captive, Free-Ranging, and at Liberty” (1995), which draws on Wittgenstein and offers some insights that accord with pragmatist accounts of knowledge.

Author Biography

Russell B. Goodman, University of New Mexico

Russell B. Goodman received degrees in philosophy from the University of Pennsylvania, Oxford and Johns Hopkins, and is now Professor of Philosophy and Regents’ Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico. He is the author of American Philosophy and the Romantic Tradition (Cambridge, 1990), Wittgenstein and William James (Cambridge, 2002), and American Philosophy before Pragmatism (Oxford, 2015); and editor of Pragmatism: A Contemporary Reader (Routledge, 1995), Pragmatism: Critical Concepts in Philosophy (Routledge, 2005), and Contending with Stanley Cavell (Oxford, 2005).

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Published

2016-06-27