Pragmatism is a
philosophical tradition
A tradition is a belief or behavior (folk custom) passed down within a group or society with symbolic meaning or special significance with origins in the past. A component of cultural expressions and folklore, common examples include holidays o ...
that considers words and thought as
tool
A tool is an object that can extend an individual's ability to modify features of the surrounding environment or help them accomplish a particular task. Although many animals use simple tools, only human beings, whose use of stone tools dates ba ...
s and instruments for
prediction,
problem solving, and
action
Action may refer to:
* Action (narrative), a literary mode
* Action fiction, a type of genre fiction
* Action game, a genre of video game
Film
* Action film, a genre of film
* ''Action'' (1921 film), a film by John Ford
* ''Action'' (1980 fil ...
, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes.
Pragmatism began in the United States in the 1870s. Its origins are often attributed to the philosophers
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
,
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, and
John Dewey. In 1878, Peirce described it in his
pragmatic maxim {{C. S. Peirce articles, abbreviations=no
The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce. Serving as a normative recommendation or a regulative princ ...
: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object."
[Peirce, C.S. (1878), " How to Make Our Ideas Clear", ''Popular Science Monthly'', v. 12, 286–302. Reprinted often, including ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 388–410 and ''Essential Peirce'' v. 1, 124–141. See end of §II for the pragmatic maxim. See third and fourth paragraphs in §IV for the discoverability of truth and the real by sufficient investigation.]
Origins
![Charles Sanders Peirce theb3558](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a4/Charles_Sanders_Peirce_theb3558.jpg)
Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the United States around 1870.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
(and his pragmatic maxim) is given credit for its development,
along with later 20th-century contributors,
William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
and
John Dewey.
[Biesta, G.J.J. & Burbules, N. (2003). ''Pragmatism and educational research''. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield.] Its direction was determined by
The Metaphysical Club
The Metaphysical Club was a name attributed by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, in an unpublished paper over thirty years after its foundation, to a conversational philosophical club that Peirce, the future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wend ...
members Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and
Chauncey Wright
Chauncey Wright (September 10, 1830 – September 12, 1875) was an American philosopher and mathematician, who was an influential early defender of Darwinism and an important influence on American pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce and Wi ...
as well as John Dewey and
George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded a ...
.
The first use in print of the name ''pragmatism'' was in 1898 by James, who credited Peirce with
coining the term during the early 1870s. James regarded Peirce's "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series (including "
The Fixation of Belief" (1877), and especially "
How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (1878)) as the foundation of pragmatism. Peirce in turn wrote in 1906 that
Nicholas St. John Green had been instrumental by emphasizing the importance of applying
Alexander Bain's definition of belief, which was "that upon which a man is prepared to act". Peirce wrote that "from this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism". John Shook has said, "Chauncey Wright also deserves considerable credit, for as both Peirce and James recall, it was Wright who demanded a
phenomenalist and
fallibilist
Originally, fallibilism (from Medieval Latin: ''fallibilis'', "liable to err") is the philosophical principle that propositions can be accepted even though they cannot be conclusively proven or justified,Haack, Susan (1979)"Fallibilism and Nece ...
empiricism as an alternative to rationalistic speculation."
Peirce developed the idea that inquiry depends on real doubt, not mere verbal or
hyperbolic doubt
Cartesian doubt is a form of methodological skepticism associated with the writings and methodology of René Descartes (March 31, 1596Feb 11, 1650). Scruton, R.''Modern Philosophy: An Introduction and Survey''(London: Penguin Books, 1994). Leiber, ...
, and said that, in order to understand a conception in a fruitful way, "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object",
which he later called the
pragmatic maxim {{C. S. Peirce articles, abbreviations=no
The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce. Serving as a normative recommendation or a regulative princ ...
. It equates any conception of an object to the general extent of the conceivable implications for informed practice of that object's effects. This is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of experimentational mental reflection arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and disconfirmatory circumstances—a method hospitable to the generation of explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the employment and improvement of verification. Typical of Peirce is his concern with inference to explanatory hypotheses as outside the usual foundational alternative between deductivist rationalism and inductivist empiricism, although he was a
mathematical logician and a
founder of statistics.
Peirce lectured and further wrote on pragmatism to make clear his own interpretation. While framing a conception's meaning in terms of conceivable tests, Peirce emphasized that, since a conception is general, its meaning, its intellectual purport, equates to its acceptance's implications for general practice, rather than to any definite set of real effects (or test results); a conception's clarified meaning points toward its conceivable verifications, but the outcomes are not meanings, but individual upshots. Peirce in 1905 coined the new name
pragmaticism
"Pragmaticism" is a term used by Charles Sanders Peirce for his pragmatic philosophy starting in 1905, in order to distance himself and it from pragmatism, the original name, which had been used in a manner he did not approve of in the "literary ...
"for the precise purpose of expressing the original definition", saying that "all went happily" with James's and
F. C. S. Schiller's variant uses of the old name "pragmatism" and that he nonetheless coined the new name because of the old name's growing use in "literary journals, where it gets abused". Yet in a 1906 manuscript, he cited as causes his differences with James and Schiller. and, in a 1908 publication,
[Peirce, C.S. (1908) "]A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes' ...
", ''Hibbert Journal'' 7, reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 6, paragraphs 452–85, ''Essential Peirce'' v. 2, 434–450, and elsewhere. After discussing James, Peirce stated (Section V, fourth paragraph) as the specific occasion of his coinage "pragmaticism", journalist, pragmatist, and literary author Giovanni Papini
Giovanni Papini (9 January 18818 July 1956) was an Italian journalist, essayist, novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and philosopher. A controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century, he was the earliest and ...
's declaration of pragmatism's indefinability (see for example "What Is Pragmatism Like", a translation published in October 1907 in ''Popular Science Monthly'' v. 71, pp. 351–358, Google Book
Eprint
. Peirce in his closing paragraph wrote that "willing not to exert the will (willing to believe)" should not be confused with "active willing (willing to control thought, to doubt, and to weigh reasons)", and discussed his dismay by that which he called the other pragmatists' "angry hatred of strict logic". He also rejected their nominalist
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings th ...
tendencies. But he remained allied with them about the falsity of necessitarianism and about the reality of generals and habits understood in terms of potential concrete effects even if unactualized. his differences with James as well as literary author
Giovanni Papini
Giovanni Papini (9 January 18818 July 1956) was an Italian journalist, essayist, novelist, short story writer, poet, literary critic, and philosopher. A controversial literary figure of the early and mid-twentieth century, he was the earliest and ...
. Peirce in any case regarded his views that truth is immutable and infinity is real, as being opposed by the other pragmatists, but he remained allied with them on other issues.
Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century" ...
and
Wilfrid Sellars
Wilfrid Stalker Sellars (May 20, 1912 – July 2, 1989) was an American philosopher and prominent developer of critical realism, who "revolutionized both the content and the method of philosophy in the United States".
Life and career
His father ...
used a revised pragmatism to criticize
logical positivism in the 1960s. Inspired by the work of Quine and Sellars, a brand of pragmatism known sometimes as
neopragmatism
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
...
gained influence through
Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...
, the most influential of the late 20th century pragmatists along with
Hilary Putnam and
Robert Brandom
Robert Boyce Brandom (born March 13, 1950) is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his academic output manifests both sys ...
. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict
analytic tradition
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United St ...
and a "neo-classical" pragmatism (such as
Susan Haack
Susan Haack (born 1945) is a distinguished professor in the humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Haack has written on logic, ...
) that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey.
Core tenets
A few of the various but often interrelated positions characteristic of philosophers working from a pragmatist approach include:
*
Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epis ...
(justification): a
coherentist
In philosophical epistemology, there are two types of coherentism: the coherence theory of truth; and the coherence theory of justification (also known as epistemic coherentism).
Coherent truth is divided between an anthropological approach, whic ...
theory of justification that rejects the claim that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. Coherentists hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by
foundationalist
Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon non-inferential justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises.Simon Blackburn, ''The Oxford Dictio ...
theories of justification.
*
Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics.
Epis ...
(truth): a
deflationary or
pragmatic
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement.
Pragmatism or pragmatic may also refer to:
*Pragmaticism, Charles Sanders Peirce's post-1905 branch of philosophy
*Pragmatics, a subfield of linguistics and semiotics
*''Pragmatics'', an academic journal in ...
theory of truth; the former is the epistemological claim that assertions that predicate truth of a statement do not attribute a property called truth to such a statement while the latter is the epistemological claim that assertions that predicate truth of a statement attribute the property of useful-to-believe to such a statement.
*
Metaphysics
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that studies the fundamental nature of reality, the first principles of being, identity and change, space and time, causality, necessity, and possibility. It includes questions about the nature of conscio ...
: a
pluralist view that there is more than one sound way to conceptualize the world and its content.
*
Philosophy of science
Philosophy of science is a branch of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The central questions of this study concern what qualifies as science, the reliability of scientific theories, and the ult ...
: an
instrumentalist and
scientific anti-realist view that a scientific concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality.
*
Philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
: an anti-
representationalist view that rejects analyzing the
semantic meaning of propositions, mental states, and statements in terms of a correspondence or representational relationship and instead analyzes semantic meaning in terms of notions like dispositions to action, inferential relationships, and/or functional roles (e.g.
behaviorism and
inferentialism). Not to be confused with
pragmatics
In linguistics and related fields, pragmatics is the study of how context contributes to meaning. The field of study evaluates how human language is utilized in social interactions, as well as the relationship between the interpreter and the in ...
, a sub-field of
linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
with no relation to philosophical pragmatism.
*Additionally, forms of
empiricism,
fallibilism
Originally, fallibilism (from Medieval Latin: ''fallibilis'', "liable to err") is the philosophical principle that propositions can be accepted even though they cannot be conclusively proven or justified,Haack, Susan (1979)"Fallibilism and Nece ...
,
verificationism
Verificationism, also known as the verification principle or the verifiability criterion of meaning, is the philosophical doctrine which maintains that only statements that are empirically verifiable (i.e. verifiable through the senses) are cogniti ...
, and a
Quinean naturalist metaphilosophy are all commonly elements of pragmatist philosophies. Many pragmatists are
epistemological relativists and see this to be an important facet of their pragmatism (e.g.
Joseph Margolis
Joseph Zalman Margolis (May 16, 1924 – June 8, 2021) was an American philosopher. A radical historicist, he authored many books critical of the central assumptions of Western philosophy, and elaborated a robust form of relativism.
His philosop ...
), but this is controversial and other pragmatists argue such relativism to be seriously misguided (e.g.
Hilary Putnam,
Susan Haack
Susan Haack (born 1945) is a distinguished professor in the humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Haack has written on logic, ...
).
Anti-reification of concepts and theories
Dewey in ''The Quest for Certainty'' criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy": Philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are
nominal
Nominal may refer to:
Linguistics and grammar
* Nominal (linguistics), one of the parts of speech
* Nominal, the adjectival form of "noun", as in "nominal agreement" (= "noun agreement")
* Nominal sentence, a sentence without a finite verb
* Nou ...
concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems.
This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the "
ultimate Being" of
Hegelian
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (; ; 27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a German philosopher. He is one of the most important figures in German idealism and one of the founding figures of modern Western philosophy. His influence extends a ...
philosophers, the belief in a "
realm of value", the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete thought, has nothing to do with the action of concrete thinking.
David L. Hildebrand summarized the problem: "Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts of knowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience."
Naturalism and anti-Cartesianism
From the outset, pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in line with the scientific method as they understood it. They argued that idealist and realist philosophy had a tendency to present human knowledge as something beyond what science could grasp. They held that these philosophies then resorted either to a phenomenology inspired by Kant or to
correspondence theories of knowledge and truth. Pragmatists criticized the former for its
a priori
("from the earlier") and ("from the later") are Latin phrases used in philosophy to distinguish types of knowledge, justification, or argument by their reliance on empirical evidence or experience. knowledge is independent from current ...
sm, and the latter because it takes
correspondence as an unanalyzable fact. Pragmatism instead tries to explain the relation between knower and known.
In 1868, C.S. Peirce argued that there is no power of intuition in the sense of a cognition unconditioned by inference, and no power of introspection, intuitive or otherwise, and that awareness of an internal world is by hypothetical inference from external facts. Introspection and intuition were staple philosophical tools at least since Descartes. He argued that there is no absolutely first cognition in a cognitive process; such a process has its beginning but can always be analyzed into finer cognitive stages. That which we call introspection does not give privileged access to knowledge about the mind—the self is a concept that is derived from our interaction with the external world and not the other way around. At the same time he held persistently that pragmatism and epistemology in general could not be derived from principles of psychology understood as a special science: what we do think is too different from what we should think; in his "
Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series, Peirce formulated both pragmatism and principles of statistics as aspects of scientific method in general. This is an important point of disagreement with most other pragmatists, who advocate a more thorough naturalism and psychologism.
Richard Rorty expanded on these and other arguments in ''
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' is a 1979 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which the author attempts to dissolve modern philosophical problems instead of solving them by presenting them as pseudo-problems that only exist ...
'' in which he criticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out a space for epistemology that is entirely unrelated to—and sometimes thought of as superior to—the empirical sciences. W.V. Quine, instrumental in bringing
naturalized epistemology
Naturalized epistemology (a term coined by W. V. O. Quine) is a collection of philosophic views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying k ...
back into favor with his essay "Epistemology Naturalized", also criticized "traditional" epistemology and its "Cartesian dream" of absolute certainty. The dream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguided in theory, because it separates epistemology from scientific inquiry.
Reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism
Hilary Putnam has suggested that the reconciliation of anti-skepticism and
fallibilism
Originally, fallibilism (from Medieval Latin: ''fallibilis'', "liable to err") is the philosophical principle that propositions can be accepted even though they cannot be conclusively proven or justified,Haack, Susan (1979)"Fallibilism and Nece ...
is the central goal of American pragmatism. Although all human knowledge is partial, with no ability to take a "God's-eye-view", this does not necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude, a radical
philosophical skepticism
Philosophical skepticism ( UK spelling: scepticism; from Greek σκέψις ''skepsis'', "inquiry") is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even reject ...
(as distinguished from that which is called
scientific skepticism
Scientific skepticism or rational skepticism (also spelled scepticism), sometimes referred to as skeptical inquiry, is a position in which one questions the veracity of claims lacking empirical evidence. In practice, the term most commonly refe ...
). Peirce insisted that (1) in reasoning, there is the presupposition, and at least the hope, that truth and the real are discoverable and would be discovered, sooner or later but still inevitably, by investigation taken far enough,
[ and (2) contrary to Descartes's famous and influential methodology in the '']Meditations on First Philosophy
''Meditations on First Philosophy, in which the existence of God and the immortality of the soul are demonstrated'' ( la, Meditationes de Prima Philosophia, in qua Dei existentia et animæ immortalitas demonstratur) is a philosophical treatise ...
'', doubt cannot be feigned or created by verbal fiat to motivate fruitful inquiry, and much less can philosophy begin in universal doubt. Doubt, like belief, requires justification. Genuine doubt irritates and inhibits, in the sense that belief is that upon which one is prepared to act.[ It arises from confrontation with some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey called a "situation"), which unsettles our belief in some specific proposition. Inquiry is then the rationally self-controlled process of attempting to return to a settled state of belief about the matter. Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academic skepticism in the wake of Descartes. The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative is quite congenial to the older skeptical tradition.
]
Theory of truth and epistemology
Pragmatism was not the first to apply evolution to theories of knowledge: Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work '' The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the pr ...
advocated a biological idealism as what's useful to an organism to believe might differ wildly from what is true. Here knowledge and action are portrayed as two separate spheres with an absolute or transcendental truth above and beyond any sort of inquiry organisms used to cope with life. Pragmatism challenges this idealism by providing an "ecological" account of knowledge: inquiry is how organisms can get a grip on their environment. ''Real'' and ''true'' are functional labels in inquiry and cannot be understood outside of this context. It is not ''realist'' in a traditionally robust sense of realism (what Hilary Putnam later called metaphysical realism), but it is realist in how it acknowledges an external world which must be dealt with.
Many of James' best-turned phrases—"truth's cash value" and "the true is only the expedient in our way of thinking" —were taken out of context and caricatured in contemporary literature as representing the view where any idea with practical utility is true. William James wrote:
In reality, James asserts, the theory is a great deal more subtle.[See Dewey 1910 for a "FAQ."]
The role of belief in representing reality is widely debated in pragmatism. Is a belief valid when it represents reality? "Copying is one (and only one) genuine mode of knowing". Are beliefs dispositions which qualify as true or false depending on how helpful they prove in inquiry and in action? Is it only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that beliefs acquire meaning? Does a belief only become true when it succeeds in this struggle? In James's pragmatism nothing practical or useful is held to be necessarily true nor is anything which helps to survive merely in the short term. For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it doesn't accord with the facts (and is therefore not true).
In other fields
While pragmatism started simply as a criterion of meaning, it quickly expanded to become a full-fledged epistemology with wide-ranging implications for the entire philosophical field. Pragmatists who work in these fields share a common inspiration, but their work is diverse and there are no received views.
Philosophy of science
In the philosophy of science, instrumentalism
In philosophy of science and in epistemology, instrumentalism is a methodological view that ideas are useful instruments, and that the worth of an idea is based on how effective it is in explaining and predicting phenomena.
According to instrumenta ...
is the view that concepts and theories are merely useful instruments and progress in science cannot be couched in terms of concepts and theories somehow mirroring reality. Instrumentalist philosophers often define scientific progress as nothing more than an improvement in explaining and predicting phenomena. Instrumentalism does not state that truth does not matter, but rather provides a specific answer to the question of what truth and falsity mean and how they function in science.
One of C. I. Lewis' main arguments in ''Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge'' (1929) was that science does not merely provide a copy of reality but must work with conceptual systems and that those are chosen for pragmatic reasons, that is, because they aid inquiry. Lewis' own development of multiple modal logics is a case in point. Lewis is sometimes called a proponent of conceptual pragmatism because of this.
Another development is the cooperation of logical positivism and pragmatism in the works of Charles W. Morris and Rudolf Carnap. The influence of pragmatism on these writers is mostly limited to the incorporation of the pragmatic maxim {{C. S. Peirce articles, abbreviations=no
The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce. Serving as a normative recommendation or a regulative princ ...
into their epistemology. Pragmatists with a broader conception of the movement do not often refer to them.
W. V. Quine's paper "Two Dogmas of Empiricism
"Two Dogmas of Empiricism" is a paper by analytic philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine published in 1951. According to University of Sydney professor of philosophy Peter Godfrey-Smith, this "paper ssometimes regarded as the most important in all o ...
", published in 1951, is one of the more celebrated papers of 20th-century philosophy in the analytic tradition. The paper is an attack on two central tenets of the logical positivists' philosophy. One is the distinction between analytic statements (tautologies and contradictions) whose truth (or falsehood) is a function of the meanings of the words in the statement ('all bachelors are unmarried'), and synthetic statements, whose truth (or falsehood) is a function of (contingent) states of affairs. The other is reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets its meaning from some logical construction of terms which refers exclusively to immediate experience. Quine's argument brings to mind Peirce's insistence that axioms are not a priori truths but synthetic statements.
Logic
Later in his life Schiller became famous for his attacks on logic in his textbook, ''Formal Logic''. By then, Schiller's pragmatism had become the nearest of any of the classical pragmatists to an ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is a philosophical methodology that sees traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting how words are ordinarily used to convey meaning in ...
. Schiller sought to undermine the very possibility of formal logic, by showing that words only had meaning when used in context. The least famous of Schiller's main works was the constructive sequel to his destructive book ''Formal Logic''. In this sequel, ''Logic for Use'', Schiller attempted to construct a new logic to replace the formal logic that he had criticized in ''Formal Logic''. What he offers is something philosophers would recognize today as a logic covering the context of discovery and the hypothetico-deductive method.
Whereas Schiller dismissed the possibility of formal logic, most pragmatists are critical rather of its pretension to ultimate validity and see logic as one logical tool among others—or perhaps, considering the multitude of formal logics, one set of tools among others. This is the view of C. I. Lewis. C. S. Peirce developed multiple methods for doing formal logic.
Stephen Toulmin's ''The Uses of Argument'' inspired scholars in informal logic and rhetoric studies (although it is an epistemological work).
Metaphysics
James and Dewey were empirical thinkers in the most straightforward fashion: experience is the ultimate test and experience is what needs to be explained. They were dissatisfied with ordinary empiricism because, in the tradition dating from Hume, empiricists had a tendency to think of experience as nothing more than individual sensations. To the pragmatists, this went against the spirit of empiricism: we should try to explain all that is given in experience including connections and meaning, instead of explaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimate reality. Radical empiricism
Radical empiricism is a philosophical doctrine put forth by William James. It asserts that experience includes both particulars and relations between those particulars, and that therefore both deserve a place in our explanations. In concrete terms: ...
, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away as subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.
William James gives an interesting example of this philosophical shortcoming:
F. C. S. Schiller's first book ''Riddles of the Sphinx'' was published before he became aware of the growing pragmatist movement taking place in America. In it, Schiller argues for a middle ground between materialism and absolute metaphysics. These opposites are comparable to what William James called tough-minded empiricism and tender-minded rationalism. Schiller contends on the one hand that mechanistic naturalism cannot make sense of the "higher" aspects of our world. These include free will, consciousness, purpose, universals and some would add God. On the other hand, abstract metaphysics cannot make sense of the "lower" aspects of our world (e.g. the imperfect, change, physicality). While Schiller is vague about the exact sort of middle ground he is trying to establish, he suggests that metaphysics is a tool that can aid inquiry, but that it is valuable only insofar as it does help in explanation.
In the second half of the 20th century, Stephen Toulmin argued that the need to distinguish between reality and appearance only arises within an explanatory scheme and therefore that there is no point in asking what "ultimate reality" consists of. More recently, a similar idea has been suggested by the postanalytic philosopher Daniel Dennett, who argues that anyone who wants to understand the world has to acknowledge both the "syntactical" aspects of reality (i.e., whizzing atoms) and its emergent or "semantic" properties (i.e., meaning and value).
Radical empiricism gives answers to questions about the limits of science, the nature of meaning and value and the workability of reductionism. These questions feature prominently in current debates about the relationship between religion and science
The relationship between religion and science involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern u ...
, where it is often assumed—most pragmatists would disagree—that science degrades everything that is meaningful into "merely" physical phenomena
Physical may refer to:
*Physical examination
In a physical examination, medical examination, or clinical examination, a medical practitioner examines a patient for any possible medical signs or symptoms of a medical condition. It generally cons ...
.
Philosophy of mind
Both John Dewey in ''Experience and Nature'' (1929) and, half a century later, Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...
in his ''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' (1979) argued that much of the debate about the relation of the mind to the body results from conceptual confusions. They argue instead that there is no need to posit the mind or mindstuff as an ontological
In metaphysics, ontology is the philosophical study of being, as well as related concepts such as existence, becoming, and reality.
Ontology addresses questions like how entities are grouped into categories and which of these entities exi ...
category.
Pragmatists disagree over whether philosophers ought to adopt a quietist or a naturalist stance toward the mind-body problem. The former, including Rorty, want to do away with the problem because they believe it's a pseudo-problem, whereas the latter believe that it is a meaningful empirical question.
Ethics
Pragmatism sees no fundamental difference between practical and theoretical reason, nor any ontological difference between facts and values. Pragmatist ethics is broadly humanist
Humanism is a philosophical stance that emphasizes the individual and social potential and agency of human beings. It considers human beings the starting point for serious moral and philosophical inquiry.
The meaning of the term "human ...
because it sees no ultimate test of morality beyond what matters for us as humans. Good values are those for which we have good reasons, viz. the good reasons approach. The pragmatist formulation pre-dates those of other philosophers who have stressed important similarities between values and facts such as Jerome Schneewind
Jerome Borges Schneewind (born May 17, 1930) is a Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University.
Life
He received his Bachelor of Arts, B.A. from Cornell University and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University. Schneewind taught ...
and John Searle.
William James' contribution to ethics, as laid out in his essay ''The Will to Believe'' has often been misunderstood as a plea for relativism or irrationality. On its own terms it argues that ethics always involves a certain degree of trust or faith and that we cannot always wait for adequate proof when making moral decisions.
Of the classical pragmatists, John Dewey wrote most extensively about morality and democracy. In his classic article "Three Independent Factors in Morals", he tried to integrate three basic philosophical perspectives on morality: the right, the virtuous and the good. He held that while all three provide meaningful ways to think about moral questions, the possibility of conflict among the three elements cannot always be easily solved.
Dewey also criticized the dichotomy between means and ends which he saw as responsible for the degradation of our everyday working lives and education, both conceived as merely a means to an end. He stressed the need for meaningful labor and a conception of education that viewed it not as a preparation for life but as life itself.
Dewey was opposed to other ethical philosophies of his time, notably the emotivism
Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Hence, it is colloquially known as the hurrah/boo theory. Influenced by the growth of analytic philosophy and logical positi ...
of Alfred Ayer
Sir Alfred Jules "Freddie" Ayer (; 29 October 1910 – 27 June 1989), usually cited as A. J. Ayer, was an English philosopher known for his promotion of logical positivism, particularly in his books '' Language, Truth, and Logic'' (1936) ...
. Dewey envisioned the possibility of ethics as an experimental discipline, and thought values could best be characterized not as feelings or imperatives, but as hypotheses about what actions will lead to satisfactory results or what he termed ''consummatory experience''. An additional implication of this view is that ethics is a fallible undertaking because human beings are frequently unable to know what would satisfy them.
During the late 1900s and first decade of 2000, pragmatism was embraced by many in the field of bioethics
Bioethics is both a field of study and professional practice, interested in ethical issues related to health (primarily focused on the human, but also increasingly includes animal ethics), including those emerging from advances in biology, m ...
led by the philosophers John Lachs and his student Glenn McGee, whose 1997 book ''The Perfect Baby: A Pragmatic Approach to Genetic Engineering'' (see designer baby
A designer baby is a baby whose genetic makeup has been selected or altered, often to not include a particular gene or to remove genes associated with disease. This process usually involves analysing a wide range of human embryos to identify ge ...
) garnered praise from within classical American philosophy and criticism from bioethics for its development of a theory of pragmatic bioethics and its rejection of the principalism theory then in vogue in medical ethics. An anthology published by the MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
titled ''Pragmatic Bioethics'' included the responses of philosophers to that debate, including Micah Hester, Griffin Trotter and others many of whom developed their own theories based on the work of Dewey, Peirce, Royce and others. Lachs developed several applications of pragmatism to bioethics independent of but extending from the work of Dewey and James.
A recent pragmatist contribution to meta-ethics is Todd Lekan's ''Making Morality''. Lekan argues that morality is a fallible but rational practice and that it has traditionally been misconceived as based on theory or principles. Instead, he argues, theory and rules arise as tools to make practice more intelligent.
Aesthetics
John Dewey's ''Art as Experience'', based on the William James lectures he delivered at Harvard University, was an attempt to show the integrity of art, culture and everyday experience (''IEP''). Art, for Dewey, is or should be a part of everyone's creative lives and not just the privilege of a select group of artists. He also emphasizes that the audience is more than a passive recipient. Dewey's treatment of art was a move away from the transcendental approach to aesthetics
Aesthetics, or esthetics, is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art (its own area of philosophy that comes out of aesthetics). It examines aesthetic values, often expressed t ...
in the wake of Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and ...
who emphasized the unique character of art and the disinterested nature of aesthetic appreciation. A notable contemporary pragmatist aesthetician is Joseph Margolis
Joseph Zalman Margolis (May 16, 1924 – June 8, 2021) was an American philosopher. A radical historicist, he authored many books critical of the central assumptions of Western philosophy, and elaborated a robust form of relativism.
His philosop ...
. He defines a work of art as "a physically embodied, culturally emergent entity", a human "utterance" that isn't an ontological quirk but in line with other human activity and culture in general. He emphasizes that works of art are complex and difficult to fathom, and that no determinate interpretation can be given.
Philosophy of religion
Both Dewey and James investigated the role that religion can still play in contemporary society, the former in ''A Common Faith'' and the latter in ''The Varieties of Religious Experience''.
From a general point of view, for William James, something is true only insofar as it works. Thus, the statement, for example, that prayer is heard may work on a psychological level but (a) may not help to bring about the things you pray for (b) may be better explained by referring to its soothing effect than by claiming prayers are heard. As such, pragmatism is not antithetical to religion but it is not an apologetic for faith either. James' metaphysical position however, leaves open the possibility that the ontological claims of religions may be true. As he observed in the end of the Varieties, his position does not amount to a denial of the existence of transcendent realities. Quite the contrary, he argued for the legitimate epistemic right to believe in such realities, since such beliefs do make a difference in an individual's life and refer to claims that cannot be verified or falsified either on intellectual or common sensorial grounds.
Joseph Margolis
Joseph Zalman Margolis (May 16, 1924 – June 8, 2021) was an American philosopher. A radical historicist, he authored many books critical of the central assumptions of Western philosophy, and elaborated a robust form of relativism.
His philosop ...
in ''Historied Thought, Constructed World'' (California, 1995) makes a distinction between "existence" and "reality". He suggests using the term "exists" only for those things which adequately exhibit Peirce's ''Secondness'': things which offer brute physical resistance to our movements. In this way, such things which affect us, like numbers, may be said to be "real", although they do not "exist". Margolis suggests that God, in such a linguistic usage, might very well be "real", causing believers to act in such and such a way, but might not "exist".
Education
Pragmatic pedagogy is an educational philosophy
The philosophy of education is the branch of applied philosophy that investigates the nature of education as well as its aims and problems. It includes the examination of educational theories, the presuppositions present in them, and the argument ...
that emphasizes teaching students knowledge that is practical for life and encourages them to grow into better people.
Neopragmatism
Neopragmatism
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
...
is a broad contemporary category used for various thinkers that incorporate important insights of, and yet significantly diverge from, the classical pragmatists. This divergence may occur either in their philosophical methodology (many of them are loyal to the analytic tradition) or in conceptual formation: for example, conceptual pragmatist C. I. Lewis was very critical of Dewey; neopragmatist Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...
disliked Peirce.
Important analytic pragmatists include early Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty (October 4, 1931 – June 8, 2007) was an American philosopher. Educated at the University of Chicago and Yale University, he had strong interests and training in both the history of philosophy and in contemporary analytic ...
(who was the first to develop neopragmatist philosophy in his ''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature
''Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature'' is a 1979 book by the American philosopher Richard Rorty, in which the author attempts to dissolve modern philosophical problems instead of solving them by presenting them as pseudo-problems that only exist ...
'' (1979),[Pragmatism – Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy]
/ref> Hilary Putnam, W. V. O. Quine, and Donald Davidson. Brazilian social thinker Roberto Unger
Roberto Mangabeira Unger (; born 24 March 1947) is a Brazilian philosopher and politician. His work is in the tradition of classical social theory and pragmatism, and is developed across many fields including legal theory, philosophy and religion ...
advocates for a radical pragmatism, one that "de-naturalizes" society and culture, and thus insists that we can "transform the character of our relation to social and cultural worlds we inhabit rather than just to change, little by little, the content of the arrangements and beliefs that comprise them". Late Rorty and Jürgen Habermas are closer to Continental thought.
Neopragmatist thinkers who are more loyal to classical pragmatism include Sidney Hook and Susan Haack
Susan Haack (born 1945) is a distinguished professor in the humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Haack has written on logic, ...
(known for the theory of foundherentism
In epistemology, foundherentism is a theory of justification that combines elements from the two rival theories addressing infinite regress, foundationalism prone to arbitrariness, and coherentism prone to circularity (problems raised by the Mün ...
). Many pragmatist ideas (especially those of Peirce) find a natural expression in the decision-theoretic reconstruction of epistemology pursued in the work of Isaac Levi
Isaac Levi (June 30, 1930 – December 25, 2018) was an American philosopher who served as the John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University. He is noted for his work in epistemology and decision theory.
Education and career
Levi wa ...
. Nicholas Rescher
Nicholas Rescher (; ; born 15 July 1928) is a German-American philosopher, polymath, and author, who has been a professor of philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh since 1961. He is chairman of the Center for Philosophy of Science and was fo ...
advocates his version of methodological pragmatism, based on construing pragmatic efficacy not as a replacement for truths but as a means to its evidentiation. Rescher is also a proponent of pragmatic idealism
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
...
.
Not all pragmatists are easily characterized. With the advent of postanalytic philosophy
Postanalytic philosophy describes a detachment from the mainstream philosophical movement of analytic philosophy, which is the predominant school of thought in English-speaking countries. The ''Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' defines the mo ...
and the diversification of Anglo-American philosophy, many philosophers were influenced by pragmatist thought without necessarily publicly committing themselves to that philosophical school. Daniel Dennett, a student of Quine's, falls into this category, as does Stephen Toulmin, who arrived at his philosophical position via Wittgenstein
Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrians, Austrian-British people, British philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy o ...
, whom he calls "a pragmatist of a sophisticated kind". Another example is Mark Johnson whose embodied philosophy
Embodied cognition is the theory that many features of cognition, whether human or otherwise, are shaped by aspects of an organism's entire body. Sensory and motor systems are seen as fundamentally integrated with cognitive processing. The cognit ...
shares its psychologism, direct realism and anti-cartesianism with pragmatism. Conceptual pragmatism is a theory of knowledge originating with the work of the philosopher and logician Clarence Irving Lewis
Clarence Irving Lewis (April 12, 1883 – February 3, 1964), usually cited as C. I. Lewis, was an American academic philosopher. He is considered the progenitor of modern modal logic and the founder of conceptual pragmatism. First a noted logic ...
. The epistemology of conceptual pragmatism was first formulated in the 1929 book ''Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory of Knowledge''.
French pragmatism is attended with theorists such as Bruno Latour
Bruno Latour (; 22 June 1947 – 9 October 2022) was a French philosopher, anthropologist and sociologist.Wheeler, Will. ''Bruno Latour: Documenting Human and Nonhuman Associations'' Critical Theory for Library and Information Science. Libraries ...
, Michel Crozier
Michel Crozier (6 November 1922, Sainte-Menehould, Marne – 24 May 2013, Paris) was a French sociologist and member of the ''Académie des sciences morales et politiques'' from 1999 until his death. He also was a fellow of the American Academy ...
, Luc Boltanski, and Laurent Thévenot. It often is seen as opposed to structural problems connected to the French critical theory of Pierre Bourdieu
Pierre Bourdieu (; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence ...
. French pragmatism has more recently made inroads into American sociology as well.
Philosophers John R. Shook and Tibor Solymosi said that "each new generation rediscovers and reinvents its own versions of pragmatism by applying the best available practical and scientific methods to philosophical problems of contemporary concern".
Legacy and contemporary relevance
In the 20th century, the movements of logical positivism and ordinary language philosophy
Ordinary language philosophy (OLP) is a philosophical methodology that sees traditional philosophical problems as rooted in misunderstandings philosophers develop by distorting or forgetting how words are ordinarily used to convey meaning in ...
have similarities with pragmatism. Like pragmatism, logical positivism provides a verification criterion of meaning that is supposed to rid us of nonsense metaphysics; however, logical positivism doesn't stress action as pragmatism does. The pragmatists rarely used their maxim of meaning to rule out all metaphysics as nonsense. Usually, pragmatism was put forth to correct metaphysical doctrines or to construct empirically verifiable ones rather than to provide a wholesale rejection.
Ordinary language philosophy is closer to pragmatism than other philosophy of language
In analytic philosophy, philosophy of language investigates the nature of language and the relations between language, language users, and the world. Investigations may include inquiry into the nature of meaning, intentionality, reference, ...
because of its nominalist
In metaphysics, nominalism is the view that universals and abstract objects do not actually exist other than being merely names or labels. There are at least two main versions of nominalism. One version denies the existence of universalsthings th ...
character (although Peirce's pragmatism is not nominalist[) and because it takes the broader functioning of language in an environment as its focus instead of investigating abstract relations between language and world.
Pragmatism has ties to ]process philosophy
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. In opposition to the classi ...
. Much of the classical pragmatists' work developed in dialogue with process philosophers such as Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, who aren't usually considered pragmatists because they differ so much on other points.
Behaviorism and functionalism in psychology and sociology also have ties to pragmatism, which is not surprising considering that James and Dewey were both scholars of psychology and that Mead became a sociologist.
Pragmatism emphasizes the connection between thought and action. Applied fields like public administration
Public Administration (a form of governance) or Public Policy and Administration (an academic discipline) is the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment (public governance), management of non-profit est ...
, political science
Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...
, leadership studies, international relations
International relations (IR), sometimes referred to as international studies and international affairs, is the scientific study of interactions between sovereign states. In a broader sense, it concerns all activities between states—such a ...
, conflict resolution, and research methodology have incorporated the tenets of pragmatism in their field. Often this connection is made using Dewey and Addams's expansive notion of democracy.
Effects on social sciences
In the early 20th century, Symbolic interactionism, a major perspective within sociological social psychology, was derived from pragmatism, especially the work of George Herbert Mead
George Herbert Mead (February 27, 1863 – April 26, 1931) was an American philosopher, sociologist, and psychologist, primarily affiliated with the University of Chicago, where he was one of several distinguished pragmatists. He is regarded a ...
and Charles Cooley
Charles Horton Cooley (August 17, 1864 – May 7, 1929) was an American sociologist and the son of Michigan Supreme Court Judge Thomas M. Cooley. He studied and went on to teach economics and sociology at the University of Michigan, was a foundi ...
, as well as that of Peirce and William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
.
Increasing attention is being given to pragmatist epistemology in other branches of the social sciences, which have struggled with divisive debates over the status of social scientific knowledge.
Enthusiasts suggest that pragmatism offers an approach that is both pluralist and practical.
Effects on public administration
The classical pragmatism of John Dewey, William James
William James (January 11, 1842 – August 26, 1910) was an American philosopher, historian, and psychologist, and the first educator to offer a psychology course in the United States.
James is considered to be a leading thinker of the lat ...
, and Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce ( ; September 10, 1839 – April 19, 1914) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician and scientist who is sometimes known as "the father of pragmatism".
Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for t ...
has influenced research in the field of public administration. Scholars claim classical pragmatism had a profound influence on the origin of the field of public administration. At the most basic level, public administrators are responsible for making programs "work" in a pluralistic, problems-oriented environment. Public administrators are also responsible for the day-to-day work with citizens. Dewey's participatory democracy
Participatory democracy, participant democracy or participative democracy is a form of government in which citizens participate individually and directly in political decisions and policies that affect their lives, rather than through elected repr ...
can be applied in this environment. Dewey and James' notion of theory as a tool, helps administrators craft theories to resolve policy and administrative problems. Further, the birth of American public administration
Public Administration (a form of governance) or Public Policy and Administration (an academic discipline) is the implementation of public policy, administration of government establishment (public governance), management of non-profit est ...
coincides closely with the period of greatest influence of the classical pragmatists.
Which pragmatism (classical pragmatism or neo-pragmatism) makes the most sense in public administration has been the source of debate. The debate began when Patricia M. Shields
Patricia M. Shields (born 1951) is a Regents' Professor in the Political Science Department at Texas State University. Since 2001 she has been Editor-in-Chief of the international and interdisciplinary journal ''Armed Forces & Society''. She is ...
introduced Dewey's notion of the Community of Inquiry. Hugh Miller objected to one element of the community of inquiry (problematic situation, scientific attitude, participatory democracy): scientific attitude. A debate that included responses from a practitioner, an economist, a planner, other public administration scholars, and noted philosophers followed. Miller and Shields also responded.
In addition, applied scholarship of public administration that assesses charter schools, contracting out or outsourcing, financial management, performance measurement
Performance measurement is the process of collecting, analyzing and/or reporting information regarding the performance of an individual, group, organization, system or component.
Definitions of performance measurement tend to be predicated upon an ...
, urban quality of life initiatives, and urban planning
Urban planning, also known as town planning, city planning, regional planning, or rural planning, is a technical and political process that is focused on the development and design of land use and the built environment, including air, water, ...
in part draws on the ideas of classical pragmatism in the development of the conceptual framework and focus of analysis.
The health sector's administrators' use of pragmatism has been criticized as incomplete in its pragmatism, however, according to the classical pragmatists, knowledge is always shaped by human interests. The administrator's focus on "outcomes" simply advances their own interest, and this focus on outcomes often undermines their citizen's interests, which often are more concerned with process. On the other hand, David Brendel argues that pragmatism's ability to bridge dualisms, focus on practical problems, include multiple perspectives, incorporate participation from interested parties (patient, family, health team), and provisional nature makes it well suited to address problems in this area.
Effects on feminism
Since the mid 1990s, feminist philosophers have re-discovered classical pragmatism as a source of feminist theories. Works by Seigfried, Duran, Keith, and Whipps explore the historic and philosophic links between feminism and pragmatism. The connection between pragmatism and feminism took so long to be rediscovered because pragmatism itself was eclipsed by logical positivism during the middle decades of the twentieth century. As a result, it was lost from femininist discourse. Feminists now consider pragmatism's greatest strength to be the very features that led to its decline. These are "persistent and early criticisms of positivist interpretations of scientific methodology; disclosure of value dimension of factual claims"; viewing aesthetics as informing everyday experience; subordinating logical analysis to political, cultural, and social issues; linking the dominant discourses with domination; "realigning theory with praxis; and resisting the turn to epistemology and instead emphasizing concrete experience".
Feminist philosophers point to Jane Addams
Laura Jane Addams (September 6, 1860 May 21, 1935) was an American settlement activist, reformer, social worker, sociologist, public administrator, and author. She was an important leader in the history of social work and women's suffrage ...
as a founder of classical pragmatism. Mary Parker Follett
Mary Parker Follett (3 September 1868 – 18 December 1933) was an American social worker, management consultant, philosopher and pioneer in the fields of organizational theory and organizational behavior. Along with Lillian Gilbreth, she was one ...
was also an important feminist pragmatist concerned with organizational operation during the early decades of the 20th century. In addition, the ideas of Dewey, Mead, and James are consistent with many feminist tenets. Jane Addams, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead developed their philosophies as all three became friends, influenced each other, and were engaged in the Hull House
Hull House was a settlement house in Chicago, Illinois, United States that was co-founded in 1889 by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr. Located on the Near West Side of the city, Hull House (named after the original house's first owner Cha ...
experience and women's rights
Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
causes.
Criticisms
In the 1908 essay "The Thirteen Pragmatisms", Arthur Oncken Lovejoy argued that there's significant ambiguity in the notion of the effects of the ''truth'' of a proposition and those of ''belief'' in a proposition in order to highlight that many pragmatists had failed to recognize that distinction. He identified 13 different philosophical positions that were each labeled pragmatism.
Franciscan
, image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg
, image_size = 200px
, caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans
, abbreviation = OFM
, predecessor =
, ...
monk Celestine Bittle presented multiple criticisms of pragmatism in his 1936 book ''Reality and the Mind: Epistemology''. He argued that, in William James's pragmatism, truth is entirely subjective and is not the widely accepted definition of truth, which is correspondence to reality. For Bittle, defining truth as what is useful is a "perversion of language". With truth reduced essentially to what is good, it is no longer an object of the intellect. Therefore, the problem of knowledge posed by the intellect is not solved, but rather renamed. Renaming truth as a product of the will cannot help it solve the problems of the intellect, according to Bittle. Bittle cited what he saw as contradictions in pragmatism, such as using objective facts to prove that truth does not emerge from objective fact; this reveals that pragmatists do recognize truth as objective fact, and not, as they claim, what is useful. Bittle argued there are also some statements that cannot be judged on human welfare at all. Such statements (for example the assertion that "a car is passing") are matters of "truth and error" and do not affect human welfare.
British philosopher Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ...
devoted a chapter each to James and Dewey in his 1945 book ''A History of Western Philosophy
''A History of Western Philosophy'' is a 1946 book by the philosopher Bertrand Russell. A survey of Western philosophy from the pre-Socratic philosophers to the early 20th century, it was criticised for Russell's over-generalization and omissio ...
''; Russell pointed out areas in which he agreed with them but also ridiculed James's views on truth and Dewey's views on inquiry. Hilary Putnam later argued that Russell "presented a mere caricature" of James's views and a "misreading of James", while Tom Burke argued at length that Russell presented "a skewed characterization of Dewey's point of view". Elsewhere, in Russell's book ''The Analysis of Mind'', Russell praised James's radical empiricism, to which Russell's own account of neutral monism
Neutral monism is an umbrella term for a class of metaphysical theories in the philosophy of mind. These theories reject the dichotomy of mind and matter, believing the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words ...
was indebted. Dewey, in ''The Bertrand Russell Case
''The Bertrand Russell Case'', known officially as ''Kay v. Board of Higher Education'', was a case concerning the appointment of Bertrand Russell as Professor of Philosophy of the College of the City of New York, as well as a collection of arti ...
'', defended Russell against an attempt to remove Russell from his chair at the College of the City of New York in 1940.
Neopragmatism
Neopragmatism, sometimes called post-Deweyan pragmatism, linguistic pragmatism, or analytic pragmatism, is the philosophical tradition that infers that the meaning of words is a result of how they are used, rather than the objects they represent.
...
as represented by Richard Rorty has been criticized as relativistic both by other neopragmatists such as Susan Haack
Susan Haack (born 1945) is a distinguished professor in the humanities, Cooper Senior Scholar in Arts and Sciences, professor of philosophy, and professor of law at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
Haack has written on logic, ...
and by many analytic philosophers.[Dennett 1998] Rorty's early analytic work, however, differs notably from his later work which some, including Rorty, consider to be closer to literary criticism than to philosophy, and which attracts the brunt of criticism from his detractors.
List of pragmatists
Classical (1850–1950)
Protopragmatists or related thinkers
Other
Analytic, neo- and other (1950–present)
In the extended sense
See also
* American philosophy
* Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography
This Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography consolidates numerous references to the writings of Charles Sanders Peirce, including letters, manuscripts, publications, and . For an extensive chronological list of Peirce's works (titled in English), s ...
* Doctrine of internal relations
* Holistic pragmatism
* New legal realism New legal realism (NLR) is an emerging school of thought in American legal philosophy.
Although it draws on the older legal realism from the first half of the twentieth century, new legal realism differs in important ways. Notably, it moves beyond ...
* Pragmatism as a tradition of communication theory
* Pragmatic model
* Realpolitik
''Realpolitik'' (; ) refers to enacting or engaging in diplomatic or political policies based primarily on considerations of given circumstances and factors, rather than strictly binding itself to explicit ideological notions or moral and ethical ...
* Realism (international relations)
Realism is one of the dominant schools of thought in international relations theory, theoretically formalising the Realpolitik statesmanship of early modern Europe. Although a highly diverse body of thought, it is unified by the belief that ...
* National interest
The national interest is a sovereign state's goals and ambitions (economic, military, cultural, or otherwise), taken to be the aim of government.
Etymology
The Italian phrase ''ragione degli stati'' was first used by Giovanni della Casa around ...
Notes
References
Sources
* Baldwin, James Mark (ed., 1901–1905), '' Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology'', 3 volumes in 4, Macmillan, New York, NY.
* Dewey, John (1900–1901), ''Lectures on Ethics 1900–1901'', Donald F. Koch (ed.), Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1991.
* Dewey, John (1910), '' How We Think'', D.C. Heath, Lexington, MA, 1910. Reprinted, Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY, 1991.
* Dewey, John (1929), ''The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action'', Minton, Balch, and Company, New York, NY. Reprinted, pp. 1–254 in ''John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 4: 1929'', Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Harriet Furst Simon (text. ed.), Stephen Toulmin (intro.), Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois.
Board of trustees
The university is governed by the nine member SIU Board of Tr ...
Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1984.
* Dewey, John (1932), ''Theory of the Moral Life'', Part 2 of John Dewey and James H. Tufts, ''Ethics'', Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1908. 2nd edition, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1932. Reprinted, Arnold Isenberg (ed.), Victor Kestenbaum (pref.), Irvington Publishers, New York, NY, 1980.
* Dewey, John (1938), ''Logic: The Theory of Inquiry'', Henry Holt and Company, New York, NY, 1938. Reprinted, pp. 1–527 in ''John Dewey, The Later Works, 1925–1953, Volume 12: 1938'', Jo Ann Boydston (ed.), Kathleen Poulos (text. ed.), Ernest Nagel
Ernest Nagel (November 16, 1901 – September 20, 1985) was an American philosopher of science. Suppes, Patrick (1999)Biographical memoir of Ernest Nagel In '' American National Biograph''y (Vol. 16, pp. 216-218). New York: Oxford University Pr ...
(intro.), Southern Illinois University
Southern Illinois University is a system of public universities in the southern region of the U.S. state of Illinois. Its headquarters is in Carbondale, Illinois.
Board of trustees
The university is governed by the nine member SIU Board of Tr ...
Press, Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL, 1986.
* James, William (1902), " Pragmatic and Pragmatism", 1 paragraph, vol. 2, pp. 321–322 in J.M. Baldwin (ed., 1901–1905), ''Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology'', 3 volumes in 4, Macmillan, New York, NY. Reprinted, CP 5.2 in C.S. Peirce, ''Collected Papers''.
* James, William (1907)
''Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy''
Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, NY.
* James, William (1909)
''The Meaning of Truth, A Sequel to 'Pragmatism''
Longmans, Green, and Company, New York, NY.
* Lundin, Roger (2006
''From Nature to Experience: The American Search for Cultural Authority''
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
* Peirce, C.S., '' Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'', vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne
Charles Hartshorne (; June 5, 1897 – October 9, 2000) was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and ...
and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks
Arthur Walter Burks (October 13, 1915 – May 14, 2008) was an American mathematician who worked in the 1940s as a senior engineer on the project that contributed to the design of the ENIAC, the first general-purpose electronic digital computer. ...
(ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1931–1935, 1958. Cited as CP vol.para.
* Peirce, C.S., '' The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 1 (1867–1893)'', Nathan Houser and Christian Kloesel (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1992.
* Peirce, C.S., ''The Essential Peirce, Selected Philosophical Writings, Volume 2 (1893–1913)'', Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN, 1998.
* Putnam, Hilary (1994), ''Words and Life'', James Conant (ed.), Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
* Quine, W.V. (1951), "Two Dogmas of Empiricism", ''Philosophical Review'' (January 1951). Reprinted, pp. 20–46 in W.V. Quine, ''From a Logical Point of View'', 1980.
* Quine, W.V. (1980), ''From a Logical Point of View, Logico-Philosophical Essays'', 2nd edition, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1980.
* Ramsey, F.P. (1927), "Facts and Propositions", ''Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 7'', 153–170. Reprinted, pp. 34–51 in F.P. Ramsey, ''Philosophical Papers'', David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, 1990.
* Ramsey, F.P. (1990), ''Philosophical Papers'', David Hugh Mellor (ed.), Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.
* Rescher, N. (1977), ''Methodological Pragmatism'', Oxford: Blackwell, 1977.
* Rescher, N. (2000), ''Realistic Pragmatism'', Albany, SUNY Press, 2000.
Further reading
;Surveys
* John J. Stuhr, ed. ''One Hundred Years of Pragmatism: William James's Revolutionary Philosophy'' (Indiana University Press; 2010) 215 pages; Essays on pragmatism and American culture, pragmatism as a way of thinking and settling disputes, pragmatism as a theory of truth, and pragmatism as a mood, attitude, or temperament.
Primary texts
Note that this is an introductory list: some important works are left out and some less monumental works that are excellent introductions are included.
* C.S. Peirce, " The Fixation of Belief" (paper)
* C.S. Peirce, " How to Make Our Ideas Clear" (paper)
* C.S. Peirce, "A Definition of Pragmatism" (paper as titled by Menand in ''Pragmatism: A Reader'', from ''Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce'' v. 8, some or all of paragraphs 191–195.)
* William James, '' Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking'' (especially lectures I, II and VI)
* John Dewey,
Reconstruction in Philosophy
'
* John Dewey, "Three Independent factors in Morals" (lecture published as paper)
* John Dewey,
(chapter)
* W.V.O. Quine,
. (paper)
;Secondary texts
* Cornelis De Waal, ''On Pragmatism''
* Louis Menand, '' The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America''
* Hilary Putnam, ''Pragmatism: An Open Question''
* Abraham Edel
''Pragmatic Tests and Ethical Insights''
* D.S. Clarke, ''Rational Acceptance and Purpose''
* Haack, Susan & Lane, Robert, Eds. (2006). ''Pragmatism Old and New: Selected Writings''. New York: Prometheus Books.
* Louis Menand, ed., ''Pragmatism: A Reader'' (includes essays by Peirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, others)
* For a discussion of the ways in which pragmatism offers insights into the theory and practice of urbanism, see
Aseem Inam, ''Designing Urban Transformation'' New York and London: Routledge, 2013.
.
;Criticism
* Edward W. Younkins
''Dewey's Pragmatism and the Decline of Education''
Ayn Rand Lexicon.
* Albert Schinz, ''Anti-Pragmatism: An Examination into the Respective Rights of Intellectual Aristocracy and Social Democracy''. Boston: Small, Maynard and Company, 1909.
External links
;General sources
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;Journals and organizations
There are several peer-reviewed journals dedicated to pragmatism, for example
* Contemporary Pragmatism, affiliated with th
International Pragmatism Society
European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy
affiliated with th
Associazione Culturale Pragma (Italy)
Nordic Studies in Pragmatism
journal of th
Nordic Pragmatism Network
Pragmatism Today
journal of th
Central European Pragmatist Forum (CEPF)
journal of th
Charles S. Peirce Society
William James Studies
journal of th
William James Society
{{Authority control
Philosophical movements
Philosophy of science
Empiricism
Philosophical schools and traditions
Charles Sanders Peirce
American philosophy
Progressive Era in the United States
William James