Pragmatism and Emergentism

 

A few words from Chauncey Wright, famously of the "Metaphysical Club" that gave rise to the pragmaticism of Peirce and the pragmatism of James.  

"The derivation of this power [self-consciousness], supposing it to have been observed by a finite angelic (not animal) intelligence, could not have been foreseen to be involved in the mental causes, on the conjunction of which it might, nevertheless, have been seen to depend. The angelic observation would have been a purely empirical one. The possibility of a subsequent analysis of these causes by the self-conscious animal himself, which would afford an explanation of their agency, by referring it to a rational combination of simpler elements in them, would not alter the case to the animal intelligence, just as a rational explanation of flight could not be reached by such an intelligence as a consequence of known mechanical laws, since these laws are also animal conditions, or rather are more material ones, of which our angelic, spherical intelligence is not supposed to have had any experience. Its observation of the conditions of animal flight would thus also be empirical." 

This is from his article "The Evolution of Self-consciousness" in NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW (1873).

There is a lot to unpack there.  A task for another day, but I have put the marker down here.  That is Chauncey Wright, portrayed above.