{"product_id":"oxford-pragmatism-cheryl-misak-9780198875888","title":"Oxford Pragmatism: Ryle and Austin's Debt","description":"\u003cem\u003eOxford Pragmatism\u003c\/em\u003e uncovers and explores the unrecognized impact of American pragmatism on the Oxford linguistic philosophy that thrived from the 1930s to the 1950s, made famous by Gilbert Ryle and J. L Austin. Cheryl Misak argues that Margaret Macdonald, a neglected British analytic philosopher and excellent scholar of American pragmatism, delivered core pragmatist ideas to her friend Ryle: the mind as a set of dispositions to behave; laws as 'inference tickets', and the distinction between \u003cem\u003eknowing that\u003c\/em\u003e something is true and \u003cem\u003eknowing how\u003c\/em\u003e to do something. Macdonald found these ideas in the work of the founder of pragmatism C. S. Peirce and his two most impressive followers, Clarence Irving Lewis in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Frank Ramsey in Cambridge, England. Ryle, it is argued, picked them up from Macdonald, though failed to acknowledge them as hers or as pragmatist. A lineage is also traced from American pragmatism to Austin's ideas that when we use words we perform actions, and that definitions must be fit for purpose. This route runs from Peirce and Lewis to Austin and through to contemporary conceptual engineers who follow in Austin's footsteps. Along the way, the views of Wittgenstein, Russell, Schiller, Ayer, and Cook Wilson are canvassed and assessed. In a Postscript, Misak outlines how pragmatism played out in the next generation of Oxford philosophers, such as Strawson and Wiggins.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Cheryl Misak\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0198875886\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780198875888\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford University Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 10\/24\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 336\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover","brand":"Cheryl Misak","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47202105655551,"sku":"9780198875888","price":40.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_d21ec72a-aa9a-44df-a9c9-4792d8156f79.jpg?v=1756819658","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/oxford-pragmatism-cheryl-misak-9780198875888","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}