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Comparison And Contrast: Charles Sanders Peirce And William James

Comparison And Contrast: Charles Sanders Peirce And William James

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The two authors I chose to compare and contrast are Charles Sanders Peirce and William James. One outstanding similarity between these two authors is that they both promoted the philosophy of Pragmatism. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines pragmatism as: “A reasonable and logical way of doing things or of thinking about problems that is based on dealing with specific situations instead of on ideas and theories”. The core of pragmatism is what is known as the pragmatist maxim. This is essentially a rule for generating hypotheses (Hookway, 2012).
Both James and Peirce used truth as their primary pragmatist maxim. For James’s he attempted to answer a single question: How can you believe in the claims of modern science, yet hold onto your faith

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