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My research centers on applying John Dewey's philosophy of logic to
contemporary cognitive science. Currently I am working out details of the
connection between classical
pragmatism and dynamic logic. The latter link opens a pdf file that
is a slide-like overview of some key ideas that are part of a larger
project including an exposition of the semantics and a proof system for
ability-based languages. Comments, corrections, and criticisms may be
sent to burke@sc.edu.
My interests also include
conceptions of mind and self as related to the enigma of human origins,
particularly as reflected in the naturalistic evolutionary social psychology
of George Herbert Mead.
I am the author of Dewey's
New Logic and co-editor of Dewey's
Logical Theory: New Studies and Interpretations.
In his Philosophy of Universal History, Hegel asserts that
passion, without doubt, is responsible for all significant accomplishments
in history; but—he qualifies—cool passion. When passion
is simply a frenzy of turbulent emotion, it is of no use at all. Anyone
could be passionate, that way. But it is not easy to maintain that sort
of fire which is both critical and creative, that incandescence so
supplied with thermal energy that it will not be cooled when the two
coldest things in the world come to lodge within it: cool logic and an
iron will. The vulgar, false, impotent sort of passion shrinks in terror
from the proximity of reflective thought, for it senses that at such a
chilly contact it will be frozen out of existence. Hence the symptom of
high creative passion is that it seeks to complete itself by uniting with
the cooler virtues; that it admits of reflective criticism, without losing
its creative energy. It is fire supported with the constancy of clear
understanding and a calm will.
— from José Ortega Y Gasset,
Mission of the University (1944)
The original determinations of analytical truth, and the final court of
appeal with respect to it, cannot lie in linguistic usage, because meanings
are not the creatures of language but are antecedent, and the relations of
meanings are not determined by our syntactic conventions but are
determinative of the significance which are syntactic usages may have.
Once we have penetrated the circle of independent meanings and made genuine
contact with them by our modes of expression, the appeal to linguistic
relationships can enormously facilitate and extend our grasp of analytic
truth. But the first such determinations and the final tests must lie with
meanings in that sense in which there would be meanings even if there were
no linguistic expression of them, and in which the progress of successful
thinking must conform to actual connections of such meanings even if this
progress of thought should be unformulated.
— from C. I. Lewis,
An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946)
The logic of artistic construction is worth more than a passing
notice, whether its product be a painting, a symphony, a statue, a
building, a drama, or a novel. So far as it is not evidence of
conceit on the part of a specialized class, refusal to admit thought
and logic on the part of those who make these constructions is
evidence of the breakdown of traditional logic. ... [The artist's]
logic is the logic of what I have called qualitative thought. ...
Formal necessities, such as can be made explicit, depend upon the
material necessity imposed by the pervasive and underlying quality [of
the work of art]. Artistic thought is not however unique in this
respect but only shows an intensification of a characteristic of all
thought.
— from John Dewey,
"Qualitative Thought" (1930)
Every expansive era in the history of mankind has coincided with the
operation of factors which have tended to eliminate distance between
peoples and classes previously hemmed off from one another. Even the
alleged benefits of war, so far as more than alleged, spring from the
fact that conflict of peoples at least enforces intercourse between
them and thus accidentally enables them to learn from one another, and
thereby expand their horizons. Travel, economic and commercial
tendencies, have at present gone far to break down external barriers;
to bring peoples and classes into closer and more perceptible
connection with one another. It remains for the most part to secure
the intellectual and emotional significance of this physical
annihilation of space.
— from John Dewey,
Democracy and Education (1916)
University of South Carolina |
College of Arts and Sciences |
Philosophy Department
The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the
page author.
The contents of the page have not been reviewed or approved by
the University of South Carolina.
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