hilde45: Like the pragmatism, but not so sure about Pierce (despite mahgister's fondness). And I don't see how we can do away with the ding an sich! The "I'm not a nominalist either" remark was a response to mahgister's opening line.
Mahgister: "It is the strangest claim in the world—raised sometimes, but never lived up to even by those who raise it—that one should present experiences without any theoretical link between them, and leave it to the reader, or the pupil, to form his own convictions. But the mere looking at a thing gradually merges into contemplation, contemplation into thinking, thinking into establishing connections, and thus it is possible to say that every attentive glance which we cast on the world is an act of theorizing. This, however, ought to be done with consciousness, self-criticism, freedom, and, to use a daring word, with irony…." "Theorizing is inherent in all human experience, and the highest intellectual achievement would be to comprehend that everything factual is already theory." Goethe, in a translation by my former teacher Erich Heller.
(Listening now to Mozart's "Linz" symphony in the superlative performance by Berlin and Abbado in a great 20-bit Sony recording.)