Pragmaticism

Pragmatism, as a school of philosophy, is a collection of many different ways of thinking. Given the diversity among thinkers and the variety among schools of thought that have adopted this term over the years, the term pragmatism has become all but meaningless in the absence of further qualification. Most of the thinkers who describe themselves as pragmatists point to some connection with practical consequences or real effects as vital components of both meaning and truth. The precise character of these links to pragmata is however as diverse as the thinkers who do the pointing.

Some pragmatists object to the view that beliefs represent reality, and instead argue that beliefs are dispositions which qualify as true or false depending on how helpful a disposition proves in accomplishing the believer's goals. For this type of pragmatist it is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that theories acquire meaning, and only with a theory's success in this struggle that it becomes true. As a rule, however, pragmatists do not hold that anything that is practical or useful, or that anything that helps to survive merely in the short-term, should be regarded as true. Instead, most of them argue that what should be taken as true is that which contributes the most good over the longest course. In the case of C.S. Peirce's pragmatism, this means that theoretical claims should be tied to verification practices — that is, one should be able to make predictions and test them. Truth is defined, for Peirce, as the ultimate outcome of inquiry by a (usually) scientific community of investigators. For William James and many of his followers, the meaning of any term consisted, rather, in the grasping of the consequences for action that the acceptance of the truth of the term entails. Truth itself, on this view, is not that which contributes the most good to the community, but that which contributes the most good to the individual.

Themes
As a concerted philosophical movement, pragmatism originated in the United States in the late 1800s, with the thought and works of Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead figuring most prominently in its overall direction. These originators, however, typically point back to the influence of several earlier thinkers, with especial mention of Immanuel Kant and Alexander Bain, the latter having forged the crucial links among belief, conduct, and disposition by saying that a belief is that on which a person is prepared to act.

Like any philosophical movement, the nature and content of pragmatism is subject to considerable debate, whether it is one of exegesis (determining what the original pragmatists thought it was) or subtantive philosophical theory (what is the most defensible theory that satisfies certain goals). The term pragmatism was first used in print by James, who attributed the main ideas of this "old way of thinking" to Peirce. But Peirce would go on to criticize certain directions that the movement took, coining the new name pragmaticism to mark what he regarded as the original idea.

What is common to all three thinkers' philosophy — and with other loosely affiliated thinkers such as Oliver Wendell Holmes — is a broad emphasis on the importance of practical effects in connection with theoretical ideas as they impact on the human way of life in general and the life of inquiry in particular. One famous aspect of this view is Peirce's insistence that contrary to Descartes' famous and influential method in the Meditations on First Philosophy, doubt cannot be feigned or created for the purpose of conducting philosophical inquiry. Doubt, like belief, requires justification, that is, it arises from confrontation with some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (from what 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.

The questions of meaning, reality, and truth are inextricably linked in pragmatic thinking, making what is more tersely called the pragmatic theory of truth a central topic in the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey, however differently each thinker may have expressed himself on the subject. James especially had a penchant for the well-turned phrase, not all of whose consequences for misunderstanding he foresaw in the act of utterance, and many of his best-turned phrases — "truth's cash value" (1907, p. 200) and "the true is only the expedient" (1907, p. 222) — would be taken out of context and turned against the utterer afterwards. As a result, the pragmatic account is often caricatured in contemporary literature as the view that 'truth is what works', or that any idea that has practical utility is true. In reality the theory is a great deal more subtle, and bears a striking resemblance to better-respected contemporary views, particularly Crispin Wright's 'superassertibility' (see his book Truth and Objectivity).

Late in the 20th century Hilary Putnam (1994, p. 152) "cursorily summarized" a group of theses that he regarded as being "the basis of the philosophies of Peirce, and above all of James and Dewey", namely these:


 * Antiskepticism. The thesis that doubt requires justification just as much as belief.
 * Fallibilism. The thesis that there is no metaphysical warrant that a given belief will never need modification.
 * Fact-value continuity. The thesis that there is no fundamental dichotomy between descriptive facts and normative values.
 * Primacy of practice. The thesis that, in a certain sense, practice is primary in philosophy.

Putnam goes on to suggest that the reconciliation of antiskepticism and fallibilism is the central claim of American pragmatism.

James
[Pragmatism]. The doctrine that the whole "meaning" of a conception expresses itself in practical consequences, consequences either in the shape of conduct to be recommended, or in that of experiences to be expected, if the conception be true; which consequences would be different if it were untrue, and must be different from the consequences by which the meaning of other conceptions is in turn expressed. If a second conception should not appear to have other consequences, then it must really be only the first conception under a different name. In methodology it is certain that to trace and compare their respective consequences is an admirable way of establishing the differing meanings of different conceptions. (James 1902, cf. Peirce, CP 5.2).

Variations
Pragmatism is word in ordinary use, with senses that range from a term of abuse to a term of art. From time to time, a professional philosopher will pick up the banner of pragmatism with very little awareness, or little more than a nodding acknowledgment, of those who bore it before, and run off in a direction that bears but token kinship to the aims of its forebearers.

Ramsey
My pragmatism is derived from Mr Russell; and is, of course, very vague and undeveloped. The essence of pragmatism I take to be this, that the meaning of a sentence is to be defined by reference to the actions to which asserting it would lead, or, more vaguely still, by its possible causes and effects. Of this I feel certain, but of nothing more definite. (Ramsey 1927/1990, p. 51).

Quine
Carnap, Lewis, and others take a pragmatic stand on the question of choosing between language forms, scientific frameworks; but their pragmatism leaves off at the imagined boundary between the analytic and the synthetic. In repudiating such a boundary I espouse a more thorough pragmatism. Each man is given a scientific heritage plus a continuing barrage of sensory stimulation; and the considerations which guide him in warping his scientific heritage to fit his continuing sensory promptings are, where rational, pragmatic. (Quine 1951/1980, p. 46).

Contemporary echoes
In the twentieth-century, the movements of logical positivism, behaviorism, and ordinary language philosophy all have similarities with pragmatism. Like pragmatism, logical positivism provides a verification criterion of meaning that is supposed to rid us of nonsense metaphysics. However, there is not the stress on action in logical positivism as there is in pragmatism. Furthermore, the pragmatists rarely used their maxim of meaning to rule out metaphysics as nonsense. Usually, pragmatism was put forth to construct correct metaphysical doctrines (empirically verifiable ones) rather than reject metaphysics.

Ordinary language philosophy does not resemble pragmatism in many respects, but it does lay stress upon the connection between meaning and action in a way logical positivism does not.

Pragmatism has important ties to process philosophy. Each of the classical pragmatists formulated a type of process metaphysics, and much of their work developed in dialogue with process philosophers like Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead, who aren't usually considered pragmatists. Richard Rorty has pointed to strong connections between pragmatism and existentialism. Nietzsche is also sometimes considered a process philosopher, and his work has other similarities with pragmatism. Nietzsche and pragmatism also share a common influence in the work of Ralph Waldo Emerson. . A form of pragmatism has also been attributed to Heidegger.

Some scholars have noted a similarity between pragmatism and some elements in Buddhist philosophical thought.

Notable pragmatists
Classical pragmatists


 * John Dewey (prominent philosopher of education, referred to his brand of pragmatism as instrumentalism)


 * William James (influential psychologist and theorist of religion, as well as philosopher. First to be widely associated with the term "pragmatism" due to Peirce's lifelong unpopularity.)


 * Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was the founder of American pragmatism (later called by Peirce pragmaticism), an extender of the Scotistic theory of signs (called by Peirce semeiotic), an extraordinarily prolific logician and mathematician, and a developer of an evolutionary, psycho-physically monistic metaphysical system. A practicing chemist and geodesist by profession, he nevertheless considered scientific philosophy, and especially logic, to be his vocation. In the course of his polymathic researches, he wrote on a wide range of topics, from mathematical logic to psychology.


 * George Herbert Mead (philosopher and social psychologist)


 * Reinhold Niebuhr (theologian and social critic, though many deny he was a pragmatist; he was extremely critical of Dewey)


 * Giovanni Papini


 * Giovanni Vailati


 * Josiah Royce (colleague of James who employed pragmatism in an idealist metaphysical framework, he was particularly interested in the philosophy of religion and community; his work is often associated with neo-Hegelianism)


 * George Santayana (often not considered to be a canonical pragmatist, he applied pragmatist methodologies to naturalism (philosophy), exemplified in his early masterwork, The Life of Reason)


 * F.C.S. Schiller (one of the most important pragmatists of his time, Schiller is largely forgotten today)

Neo-classical pragmatists


 * Susan Haack (teaches at the University of Miami, sometimes called the intellectual grand-daughter of C.S. Peirce)


 * Richard A. Posner (Judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, law professor, and prolific author of scholarly articles and books)


 * Hilary Putnam

[Neo-pragmatists] (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism)


 * Cornel West (important thinker on race, politics, and religion; operates under the sign of "prophetic pragmatism")


 * Richard Rorty (author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature)


 * Barbara Herrnstein Smith

Pragmatists in the extended sense


 * Willard van Orman Quine (pragmatist philosopher, concerned with language, logic, and philosophy of mathematics)


 * Wilfrid Sellars (broad thinker, attacked foundationalism in the analytic tradition)


 * Rudolf Carnap (important exponent of logical positivism, teacher of Quine)


 * Clarence Irving Lewis
 * Frank P. Ramsey
 * Karl-Otto Apel
 * Nicholas Rescher

Legal pragmatists


 * Stephen Breyer (U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice)
 * Richard Posner (Judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.)
 * Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (justice of the Supreme Court of the United States)

Notes and references

 * 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 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 (intro.), Southern Illinois University 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., Bibliography.


 * Peirce, C.S., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–6, Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.), vols. 7–8, Arthur W. Burks (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.