Editing C. I. Lewis (section)

===Epistemology===

Lewis (1929), ''Mind and the World Order'', is now seen as one of the most important 20th century works in [[epistemology]]. Since 2005, following [[Murray Murphey]]'s book about Lewis and pragmatism, Lewis has been included among the American [[pragmatism|pragmatists]].<ref name="murphey">Murphey, Murray G., 2005. C.I. Lewis: The Last Great Pragmatist, Albany: State University of New York Press</ref>
Lewis was an early exponent of [[coherentism]], particularly as supported by probability observations such as those advocated by [[Thomas Bayes]].<ref>Olsson, Erik (2017) [https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/justep-coherence/ "Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification"], ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Spring 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta, editor</ref>

He was the first to employ the term "[[qualia]]", popularized by his doctoral student [[Nelson Goodman]], in its generally agreed modern sense.<ref name="mind" />

For Lewis, the mind's grasp of different [[possible worlds]] is mediated by [[facts]]. Lewis defines a fact as “that which a proposition (some actual or possible proposition) denotes or asserts.”<ref>Pg. 383. Goheen, J. D., and J. L. Mothershead. “Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World.” Essay. In Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970.</ref> For Lewis, facts, as opposed to objects, are the units of our knowledge, and facts are able to enter into inferential relationships with other facts such that one fact may imply or exclude another.<ref>Pg. 383-384. Goheen, J. D., and J. L. Mothershead. “Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World.” Essay. In Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970.</ref> Facts relate to each other such that they can form systems that describe possible worlds, but the facts themselves have the same logical relationships whether a world is actual or not. He says, “... the logical relations of facts are unaltered by their actuality or non-actuality, just as the logical relations of propositions are unaffected by their truth or falsity.”<ref>Pg. 384. Goheen, J. D., and J. L. Mothershead. “Facts, Systems, and the Unity of the World.” Essay. In Collected Papers of Clarence Irving Lewis. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1970.</ref>