Fall Reading Group and CyberSeminar
The AIPCT is pleased to announce that this years’ fall reading group will be a survey of “Pragmatism and Philosophical Anthropology,” led by John Shook, co-director and co-founder of AIPCT, who teaches at Georgetown University and Bowie State University. If you have always intended to get informed about pragmatism, here is a free opportunity to do so. Sessions will begin at 7 PM central time (US) every Thursday evening.
Readings: All readings, including Shook’s Pragmatism manuscript (not yet published) will be provided free. Pdfs will be posted online as the seminar proceeds. There is no fee for materials or for the seminars themselves.
To participate please send an e-mail to: jshook@pragmatism.org
TOPICS READINGS
Sept 9 Pragmatism and knowledge of nature Shook, Pragmatism, chaps 1-8
Sept 16 Pragmatism on bio-cultural co-evolution Shook, Pragmatism, chaps 9-11
Sept 23 Empirical searches for human nature handouts on human proclivities
Sept 30 What are human universals and how do they function handouts on human universals
Oct 7 Debates over human nature and universals handouts on human nature
Oct 14 Hominid universals, Homo universals, and technology handouts on paleoanthropology
Oct 21 Homo Sapiens universals, the individual, and the person handouts on paleoanthropology
Oct 28 Human symbolic spheres, language, and culture handouts on symbolic forms
Nov 4 Symbolic spheres in their correct historical ordering handouts on cultural practices
Nov 11 The ten praxes and humanity’s single culture handouts on theories of culture
Nov 18 The eight Ur-disciplines and their study of humanity handouts on the disciplines
Dec 2 Why disciplines disagree about “human nature” handouts on human nature debates
Dec 9 Academic arguments contra “human nature” handouts on human nature
Dec 16 Pragmatic naturalism and philosophical anthropology
Dr. John R. Shook is a philosophy professor living in the D.C. region. He currently teaches philosophy at Bowie State University and Georgetown University. Dr. Shook has published extensively across the history of American philosophy and American intellectual history. Among his books are Dewey’s Empirical Theory of Knowledge and Reality (2000), Pragmatic Naturalism and Realism (2003), and The God Debates (2010). His edited volumes include the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers (2005), the Dictionary of Early American Philosophers (2012), Historical Essays in 20th-Century American Philosophy (2015), and The Bloomsbury Encyclopedia of Philosophers in America (2016).