Fall Reading Group: Pragmatism and Philosophical Anthropology, beginning September 9, 2021

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).

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