author

Addison Webster Moore

1866–1930

A leading American pragmatist, this University of Chicago philosopher wrote about knowledge, reality, and the practical meaning of ideas. He was especially associated with the instrumentalist side of early twentieth-century philosophy and with the intellectual circle around John Dewey.

1 Audiobook

Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude

Creative Intelligence: Essays in the Pragmatic Attitude

by Boyd Henry Bode, Harold Chapman Brown, John Dewey, Horace Meyer Kallen, George H. Mead, Addison Webster Moore, Henry Waldgrave Stuart, James Hayden Tufts

About the author

Born in Plainfield, Indiana, in 1866, Addison Webster Moore became an American philosopher best known for his work in pragmatism. Reliable sources from this search identify him as a longtime member of the University of Chicago faculty and a defender of instrumentalism, a view that treats ideas and knowledge as tools for dealing with experience.

Moore wrote on major philosophical questions including knowledge, meaning, and reality. His books include Existence, Meaning, and Reality in Locke's Essay and in Present Epistemology and Pragmatism and Its Critics, works that helped explain and defend pragmatic philosophy during a formative period in American thought.

He died in 1930. Although he is less widely known today than some of his contemporaries, he remains part of the early Chicago pragmatist tradition and is remembered for giving careful, systematic shape to instrumentalist philosophy.