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Pragmatism and Analytic Philosophy

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Answer the following questions in a total of 200 to 300 words: How are pragmatism and analytic philosophy uniquely American movements? What ideas make them different from the way Europeans of the same period were thinking?

The pragmatism and analytic philosophy are uniquely American movements because pragmatists (C.S. Peirce, William James, and John Dewy) rejected the idea that there is such thing as fixed, meaning absolute truth. They believed that truth is relative to a time, place, purpose, and is ever changing when new data is introduced. Analytic philosophy deals with analysis of ideas that are complicated and make them easier to understand. Basically what it does is turn complicated propositions or concepts into simpler ones. Kant, Hegel, and Bertrand Russell were idealist. Kant thought that knowledge is possible if we limit our inquiries to things as they are experienceable, because the mind imposes categories on experienceable objects. Hegel expanded Kant’s knowledge, he believed that that the categories of thought are the categories of being. Bertrand Russell started having interest in philosophy was because he studied mathematics and wanted to find a satisfactory account of numbers and mathematics. He got into philosophy when he started to make irrelevant assumptions when trying do so, basically he stumbled upon it and just pursued it.
What made them different from the way that Europeans of the same period were thinking, was that European philosophers took more of a common sense approach to philosophy. If an idea made sense to one philosopher then the idea was deemed true. An example of this would be that European philosophers believe in the existence of the Gods of Olympus. American analytical philosophers did not follow that belief. They believed that philosophically there was no reason to believe in the Gods of Olympus existence without solid data. American and European philosophers had many different beliefs. In America there was much more of a free, more adventurous spirit in the country and therefore introducing new ideas was more acceptable while Europeans were not prone to accepting new ideas and data.

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