Reason, Language, and Life. Frank Lorimer’s Critical Development of Dewey’s Approach

In this paper, I wish to draw scholars’ attention to Frank Lorimer, a much overlooked figure within Pragmatism, by arguing that he provided an insightful contribution to the “naturalism of continuity with difference” (Bernstein 2020) supported by Dewey. Lorimer suggested a continuistic account of the origins of human reason out of previous forms of organic intelligence through the transformation of the latter brought about by the development of human language. Secondly, he worked out a naturalistic interpretation of language development, primarily from an ontogenetic point of view. Particularly insightful are his conception of organic intelligence, his idea of a primarily affective-aesthetic fabric of speech, his thesis about the birth of nomination out of the continuous flow of speech, and the claim that grammar and logic are ultimately grounded in the structures of organic life within a given environment and continue to develop within a symbolic and socially shared medium. Such suggestions prove to be still relevant in the current philosophical debate on naturalism, the intertwining of experience and language in the human world, and the specificities of human cognition with reference to other forms of sense-making.