ABSTRACT
The primary goal of this chapter is to expose and recover the main aims and claims of C. I. Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism in Mind and the World Order. Two problems are at the center of Lewis’s masterpiece: the Kantian problem of the applicability of the a priori to experience – the problem to which the transcendental deduction is allegedly supposed to answer – and the Humean problem of the validity of empirical knowledge – the “old” problem of induction. These two problems are two variants of the problem of the world order. They both are shown by Lewis to be wrongheaded inasmuch as they rely on the presupposition that an absolute lack of world order would be conceivable. The study of Lewis’s treatment of these two problems and their classical answers proves to be one of the most fruitful approaches to his distinctive sort of pragmatism. Two of his major philosophical contributions are indeed at work in his treatment of the problem of the world order: the pragmatic reconception of the a priori and of its two intrinsic features – the necessity and the independence from experience – and the distinctive variety of pluralism integral to Lewis’s conceptual pragmatism.
