C. I. Lewis | |
|---|---|
| Born | April 12, 1883 Stoneham, Massachusetts, U.S. |
| Died | February 3, 1964 (aged 80) Menlo Park, California, U.S. |
| Education | Harvard University (BA, PhD) |
| Era | 20th-century philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Conceptual pragmatism Analytic philosophy Epistemic coherentism |
| Thesis | The Place of Intuition in Knowledge (1910) |
| Doctoral advisor | Josiah Royce |
| Doctoral students | Brand Blanshard, Nelson Goodman, Roderick Chisholm |
| Other notable students | Norman Malcolm[1] Nelson Goodman[2] Willard Van Orman Quine[2] Roderick Chisholm[2] Wilfrid Sellars[2] Roderick Firth[2] Robert Paul Wolff[3] |
Main interests | Epistemology Logic Ethics Aesthetics |
Notable ideas | Conceptual pragmatism Symbolic modal logic Lewis algebra Qualia Strict conditional |
Clarence Irving Lewis (April 12, 1883 – February 3, 1964) was an American academic philosopher. He is considered the progenitor of modern modal logic and the founder of conceptual pragmatism.[5] First a noted logician, he later branched into epistemology, and during the last 20 years of his life, he wrote much on ethics. The New York Times memorialized him as "a leading authority on symbolic logic and on the philosophic concepts of knowledge and value."[6] He was the first to coin the term "Qualia" as it is used today in philosophy, linguistics, and cognitive sciences.[7]