Associate ProfessorCatherine Legg

I'm a philosopher working primarily on mind, logic, language and epistemology, with added research interests in education and AI. My expertise lies in American pragmatism, particularly the thought of Charles Peirce, whose ideas I believe have much to offer mainstream debates, particularly his triadic theory of signs. My philosophical writing combines original analytic work with historicist understandings. In this way I am influenced by, and also engage, the 'Pittsburgh School', which descends from Wilfrid Sellars. 

Much of my current work centres around using pragmatist ideas to theorise a rich relational realism, which defies traditional 'Platonic' understandings of realism as true representations - whether actual or ideal. As Peirce wrote in 1893, “Mere knowledge, though it be systematized, may be a dead memory; while by science we all habitually mean a living and growing body of truth”. In my view, this offers an escape from the 20th century turn to various forms of relativism, scepticism and nihilism, which have contributed to a 'post-truth' predicament. This is particularly timely now that generative AI is presenting a giant reckoning to traditional conceptions of reality, truth, research and education, as we struggle to negotiate the 'truth-semblance' of its astounding stream of articulate textual outputs. 

My published work has broad international reach, and includes 40 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters. I currently serve as editor of the entry on "Pragmatism" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the premier source of general-purpose philosophy knowledge worldwide. I have also published two popular philosophy pieces in The Conversation, in 2022 and 2024. 

I joined Deakin in 2017, after working at the University of Waikato, NZ for 12.5 years. I completed my PhD at the Australian National University, in the Research School of Social Sciences. 

Research Groups
PHI Research Group, Deakin University