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« Define pragmaticsDefinepragmatist »Go to Dictionary DefinitionGo to User ContributedDictionaryGo to Extensive DefinitionGo to Synonyms, Antonyms and RelatedWordsDictionary Definitionpragmatism1 (philosophy) the doctrine that practicalconsequences are the criteria of knowledge and meaning andvalue2 the attribute of accepting the facts of lifeand favoring practicality and literal truth [syn: realism]User ContributedDictionaryEnglishEtymologyFrom etyl grc πρᾶγμα + -ism.Pronunciationa UK/ˈpɹagmətɪzəm/The pursuit of practicality over aesthetic qualities; aconcentration on factsrather than emotions or ideals.The idea that beliefs are identified with the actions of abeliever, and the truth of beliefs with success of those actions insecuring a believer's goals; the doctrine that ideas must be lookedat in terms of their practical effects and consequences.1902, William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience,Folio Society 2008, p. 378:Our conception of these practical consequences is for us thewhole of our conception of the object [...] This is the principleof Peirce, the principle of pragmatism.The theory that political problems should be met with bypractical solutions rather than ideological ones.Related termsalternativismrelativismidealismTranslationsttbc Croatian:pragmatizamttbc German: Pragmatismusttbc Portuguese:pragmatismottbc Spanish:pragmatismottbc Dutch:pragmatismeExtensive DefinitionPragmatism is a philosophic school generallyconsidered to have originated in the late nineteenth century withCharlesPeirce, who first stated the pragmaticmaxim. It came to fruition in the early twentieth-centuryphilosophies of WilliamJames and John Dewey.Most of the thinkers who describe themselves as pragmatistsconsider practical consequences or real effects to be vitalcomponents of both meaning and truth. Other important aspects ofpragmatism include anti-Cartesianism,radicalempiricism, instrumentalism,anti-realism,verificationism,conceptualrelativity, a denial of the fact-valuedistinction, a high regard for science, and fallibilism.Pragmatism began enjoying renewed attention fromthe 1950s on, because of a new school of philosophers who put fortha revised pragmatism that criticized the logicalpositivism that had dominated philosophy in the United Statesand Britain since the 1930s, notably in the work of analyticphilosophers like W.V. O. Quine and WilfridSellars. Their naturalizedepistemology was further developed and widely publicized byRichardRorty, whose later work grew closer to continentalphilosophy and is often considered relativistic. Contemporarypragmatism is still divided between those thinkers who workstrictly within the analytic tradition, and a more relativisticstrand in the wake of Rorty and lastly neoclassical pragmatistslike Susan Haackwho stay closer to the work of Peirce, James and Dewey.OriginsAs a philosophical movement, pragmatismoriginated in the UnitedStates in the late 1800s. The thoughtand works of CharlesSanders Peirce () and WilliamJames (both members of TheMetaphysical Club) as well as John Dewey andGeorgeHerbert Mead figured most prominently in its overall direction.The term pragmatism was first used in print by James, who creditedPeirce with coining the term during the early 1870s. Prompted byJames' use of the term and its attribution to him, Peirce beganwriting and lecturing on pragmatism to make clear his owninterpretation. Peirce eventually coined the new name pragmaticism to mark whathe regarded as the original idea, for clarity's sake and possibly(but not certainly) because he disagreed with James (cf. Menand2001 on the former interpretation; below on the latter). He claimedthat the term was so ugly, nobody would be tempted to steal it(Haack 1998).James and Peirce were inspired by several earlierthinkers, notably AlexanderBain, who examined the crucial links among belief, conduct, anddisposition bysaying that a belief is a proposition on which a person is preparedto act. Earlier thinkers that inspired the pragmatists includeFrancisBacon who coined the phrase "knowledge is power", David Hume forhis naturalistic account of knowledge and action, Thomas Reidfor his directrealism, ImmanuelKant for his idealism and from whom Peirce derives the name"pragmatism", Georg Hegel for his introduction of temporality intophilosophy (Pinkard in Misak 2007), and J.S. Mill forhis nominalism and empiricism.Pragmatist epistemologyThe epistemology of the earlypragmatists was heavily influenced by Darwinian thinking.Pragmatists were not the first to see the relevance of evolutionfor theories of knowledge: the same rationale had for exampleconvinced Schopenhauerthat we should adopt biological idealism because what's useful toan organism to believe might differ wildly from what is actuallytrue. Pragmatism differs from this idealist account because itchallenges the assumption that knowledge and action are twoseparate spheres, and that there exists an absolute ortranscendental truth above and beyond the sort of inquiry thatorganisms use to cope with life. Pragmatism, in short, provideswhat might be termed an ecological account of knowledge: inquiry isconstrued as a means by which organisms can get a grip on theirenvironment. 'Real' and 'true' are labels that have a function ininquiry and cannot be understood outside of that context. It is notrealist in a traditional robust sense of realism (what HilaryPutnam would later call metaphysicalrealism), but it is realistin that it acknowledges an external world which must be dealtwith.A general tendency by philosophers to push allviews into either the idealist or realist camp, as well as WilliamJames' occasional penchant for eloquence at the expense of publicunderstanding, resulted in the widespread but falsecharacterization of pragmatism as a form of subjectivism or idealism. Many of James'best-turned phrases — "truth's cash value" (James 1907, p. 200) and"the true is only the expedient in our way of thinking" (James1907, p. 222) — were taken out of context and caricatured incontemporary literature as representing the view that any idea thathas practical utility is true. William James writes:In reality, James asserts, the theory is a greatdeal more subtle. (See Dewey 1910 for a 'FAQ')Pragmatists do disagree with the view thatbeliefs must represent reality to be true - "Copying is one [andonly one] genuine mode of knowing" says James (James 1907, p. 91) -and argue that beliefs are dispositions which qualify as true orfalse depending on how helpful they prove in inquiry and in action.It is only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with thesurrounding environment that theories acquire meaning, and onlywith a theory's success in this struggle that it becomes true.However most pragmatists do not hold that anything that ispractical or useful, or that anything that helps to survive merelyin the short term, should be regarded as true. For example, tobelieve that my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel betternow, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-termperspective because it doesn't accord with the facts (and istherefore not true).Concept of truthGoing back to James, pragmatists haveoften spoken of how truth is not ready-made, but that jointly weand reality "make" truth. This idea has two senses, one which isoften attributed to William James and F.C.S. Schiller, and anotherthat is more widely accepted by pragmatists: (1) that truth ismutable, and (2) truth is relative to a conceptual scheme.(1) Mutability of truthOne major difference among the pragmatists aboutthe definition of 'truth' is the question of whether beliefs canpass from being true to being untrue and back. For James, beliefsare not true until they have been made true by verification. Jamesbelieved propositions become true over the long term throughproving their utility in a person's specific situation. Theopposite of this process is not falsification, but rather a beliefceasing to be a "live option." F.C.S. Schiller, on the other hand,very clearly asserted that beliefs could pass into and out of truthsituationally. Schiller held that truth was relative to specificproblems. If I want to know how to return home safely, the trueanswer will be whatever is useful to solving that problem. Lateron, when faced with a different problem, what I came to believewhen faced with the earlier problem may now be false. As myproblems change and as the most useful way to solve a problemshifts, so does the property of truth.C.S. Peirce thought the idea that beliefs couldbe true at one time but false at another (or true for one personbut false for another) was one of the "seeds of death" by whichJames allowed his pragmatism to become "infected." Peirce avoidedthis position because he took the pragmatic theory to imply thattheoretical claims should be tied to verification practices (i.e.they should be subject to test), not that they should be tied toour specific problems or life needs. Truth is defined, for Peirce,as what would be the ultimate outcome (not any outcome in realtime) of inquiry by a (usually scientific) community ofinvestigators. John Dewey, while agreeing broadly with thisdefinition, also characterized truthfulness as a species of thegood: to state that something is true means stating that it istrustworthy or reliable and will remain so in every conceivablesituation. Both Peirce and Dewey clearly connect the definitions oftruth and warranted assertability. Hilary Putnam also developed hisinternalrealism around the idea that a belief is true if it is ideallyepistemically justified. About James' and Schiller's account,Putnam says this:Rorty has also weighed in against James andSchiller:(2) Conceptual RelativityPart of what James and Schiller mean by thephrase 'making truth' is their idea that we make things true byverifying them. This sense of 'making truth' has not been adoptedby many other pragmatists. However, there is another sense to thisphrase that nearly all pragmatists do adopt. It is the idea thatthere can be no truths without a conceptual scheme to express thosetruths. That is,F.C.S. Schiller used the analogy of a chair tomake clear what he meant by the phrase that truth is made: just asa carpenter makes a chair out of existing materials and doesn'tcreate it out of nothing, truth is a transformation of ourexperience but that doesn't imply reality is something we're freeto construct or imagine as we please.Central pragmatist tenetsThe primacy of practiceThe pragmatist proceeds from thebasic premise that the human capability of theorizing is integralto intelligent practice. Theory and practice are not separatespheres; rather, theories and distinctions are tools or maps forfinding our way in the world. As John Dewey put it, there is noquestion of theory versus practice but rather of intelligentpractice versus uninformed, stupid practice and noted in aconversation with William Pepperell Montague that "[h]is effort hadnot been to practicalize intelligence but to intellectualizepractice". (Quoted in Eldridge 1998, p. 5) Theory is an abstractionfrom direct experience and ultimately must return to informexperience in turn. Thus an organism navigating his or herenvironment is the grounds for pragmatist inquiry.Anti-reification of concepts and theoriesDewey, in TheQuest For Certainty, criticized what he called "the philosophicalfallacy": philosophers often take categories (such as the mentaland the physical) for granted because they don't realize that theseare merely nominalconcepts that were invented to help solve specific problems. Thiscauses metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples arethe "ultimate Being" of Hegelian philosophers, the belief in a"realm of value", the idea that logic, because it is an abstractionfrom concrete thought, has nothing to do with the act of concretethinking, and so on. David L. Hildebrand sums up the problem:"Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprisinginquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts ofknowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction backonto experience." (Hildebrand 2003)Naturalism and anti-CartesianismFrom the outset,pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in linewith the scientific method as they understood it. They argued thatidealist and realist philosophy had a tendency to present humanknowledge as something beyond what science could grasp. Thesephilosophies then resorted either to a phenomenology inspired byKant or to correspondence theories of knowledge and truth.Pragmatists criticized the former for its a priorism, andthe latter because it takes correspondence as an unanalyzable fact.Pragmatism instead tries to explain, psychologically andbiologically, how the relation between knower and known 'works' inthe world.In "TheFixation of Belief" (1877), C.S. Peirce denied thatintrospection and intuition (staple philosophical tools at leastsince Descartes) were valid methods for philosophicalinvestigation. He argued that intuition could lead to faultyreasoning, e.g. when we reason intuitively about infinity.Furthermore, introspection does not give privileged access toknowledge about the mind - the self is a concept that is derivedfrom our interaction with the external world and not the other wayaround. (De Waal 2005, pp. 7-10) By the time of his HarvardLectures in 1903, however, he had become convinced that pragmatismand epistemology in general could not be derived from principles ofpsychology: what we do think is too different from what we shouldthink. This is an important point of disagreement with most otherpragmatists, who advocate a more thorough naturalism andpsychologism.Richard Rorty expanded on these and otherarguments in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature in which hecriticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out aspace for epistemology that is entirely unrelated to - andsometimes thought of as superior to - the empirical sciences. W.V.Quine, instrumental in bringing naturalizedepistemology back into favor with his essay EpistemologyNaturalized (Quine 1969), also criticized 'traditional'epistemology and its "Cartesian dream" of absolute certainty. Thedream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguidedin theory because it separates epistemology from scientificinquiry.The reconciliation of anti-skepticism andfallibilismHilaryPutnam suggests that the reconciliation of antiskepticism andfallibilism is thecentral goal of American pragmatism. Although all human knowledgeis partial, with no ability to take a 'God's-eye-view,' this doesnot necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude. Peirce insistedthat contrary to Descartes' famous and influential methodology inthe Meditations on First Philosophy, doubt cannot be feigned orcreated for the purpose of conducting philosophical inquiry. Doubt,like belief, requires justification. It arises from confrontationwith some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey calleda 'situation'), which unsettles our belief in some specificproposition. Inquiry is then the rationally self-controlled processof attempting to return to a settled state of belief about thematter. Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academicskepticism in the wake of Descartes. The pragmatist insistence thatall knowledge is tentative is actually quite congenial to the olderskeptical tradition.Pragmatism in other fields of philosophyWhile pragmatismstarted out simply as a criterion of meaning, it quickly expandedto become a full-fledged epistemology with wide-rangingimplications for the entire philosophical field. Pragmatists whowork in these fields share a common inspiration, but their work isdiverse and there are no received views.Philosophy of scienceIn the philosophy of science,instrumentalismis the view that concepts and theories are merely usefulinstruments whose worth is measured not by whether the concepts andtheories somehow mirror reality, but by how effective they are inexplaining and predicting phenomena. Instrumentalism does not statethat truth doesn't matter, but rather provides a specific answer tothe question of what truth and falsity mean and how they functionin science.One of C.I. Lewis'main arguments in Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory ofKnowledge was that science does not merely provide a copy ofreality but must work with conceptual systems and that those arechosen for pragmatic reasons, that is, because they aid inquiry.Lewis' own development of multiple modal logicsis a case in point. Lewis is sometimes called a 'conceptualpragmatist' because of this. (Lewis 1929)Another development is the cooperation oflogicalpositivism and pragmatism in the works of CharlesW. Morris and RudolphCarnap. The influence of pragmatism on these writers is mostlylimited to the incorporation of the pragmaticmaxim into their epistemology. Pragmatists with a broaderconception of the movement don't often refer to them.W. V.Quine's paper "TwoDogmas of Empiricism," published 1951, is one of the mostcelebrated papers of twentieth-century philosophy in the analytictradition. The paper is an attack on two central tenets of thelogical positivists' philosophy. One is the distinction betweenanalytic truths, statements which are true simply in value of themeanings of their words ('all bachelors are unmarried'), andsynthetic truths, which are grounded in empirical fact. The otheris reductionism, the theory that each meaningful statement gets itsmeaning from some logical construction of terms which refersexclusively to immediate experience. Quine's argument brings tomind Peirce's insistence that axioms aren't a priori truths butsynthetic statements.LogicLater in his life Schiller became famous for hisattacks on logic in his textbook "Formal Logic." By then,Schiller's pragmatism had become the nearest of any of theclassical pragmatists to an ordinary language philosophy. Schillersought to undermine the very possibility of formal logic, byshowing that words only had meaning when used in an actual context.The least famous of Schiller's main works was the constructivesequel to his destructive book "Formal Logic." In this sequel,"Logic for Use," Schiller attempted to construct a new logic toreplace the formal logic he had just decimated in "Formal Logic."What he offers is something philosophers would recognize today as alogic covering the context of discovery and thehypothetico-deductive method.Whereas F.C.S. Schiller actually dismissed thepossibility of formal logic, most pragmatists are critical ratherof its pretension to ultimate validity and see logic as one logicaltool among others - or perhaps, considering the multitude of formallogics, one set of tools among others. This is the view of C.I.Lewis. C.S. Peirce developed multiple methods for doing formallogic.Stephen Toulmin's The Uses of Argument inspiredscholars in informal logic and rhetoric studies (although it isactually an epistemological work).MetaphysicsJames and Dewey were empirical thinkers in themost straightforward fashion: experience is the ultimate test andexperience is what needs to be explained. They were dissatisfiedwith ordinary empiricism because in the tradition dating from Hume,empiricists had a tendency to think of experience as nothing morethan individual sensations. To the pragmatists, this went againstthe spirit of empiricism: we should try to explain all that isgiven in experience including connections and meaning, instead ofexplaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimatereality. Radicalempiricism, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants togive a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them awayas subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.William James gives an interesting example ofthis philosophical shortcoming: F.C.S.Schiller's first book, "Riddles of the Sphinx", was publishedbefore he became aware of the growing pragmatist movement takingplace in America. In it, Schiller argues for a middle groundbetween materialism and absolute metaphysics. The result of thesplit between these two explanatory schemes that are comparable towhat William James called tough-minded empiricism and tender-mindedrationalism, Schiller contends, is that mechanicistic naturalismcannot make sense of the "higher" aspects of our world (freewill,consciousness, purpose, universals and some would add God), whileabstract metaphysics cannot make sense of the "lower" aspects ofour world (the imperfect, change, physicality). While Schiller isvague about the exact sort of middle ground he is trying toestablish, he suggests metaphysics as a tool that can aid inquiryand is only valuable insofar as it actually does help inexplanation.In the second half of the twentieth century,StephenToulmin argued that the need to distinguish between reality andappearance only arises within an explanatory scheme and thereforethat there is no point in asking what 'ultimate reality' consistsof. More recently, a similar idea has been suggested by thepostanalytical philosopher DanielDennett, who argues that anyone who wants to understand theworld has to adopt the intentional stance and acknowledge both the'syntactical' aspects of reality (i.e. whizzing atoms) and itsemergent or 'semantic' properties (i.e. meaning and value).Radical Empiricism gives interesting answers toquestions about the limits of science if there are any, the natureof meaning and value and the workability of reductionism. Thesequestions feature prominently in current debates about the relationship between religion and science, where it is oftenassumed - most pragmatists would disagree - that science degradeseverything that is meaningful into 'merely' physical phenomena.Philosophy of mindBoth John Dewey inNature and Experience (1929) and half a century later RichardRorty in his monumental Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature(1979) argued that much of the debate about the relation of themind to the body results from conceptual confusions. They argueinstead that there is no need to posit the mind or mindstuff as anontologicalcategory.Pragmatists disagree over whether philosophersought to adopt a quietist or a naturalist stance toward themind-body problem. The former (Rorty among them) want to do awaywith the problem because they believe it's a pseudo-problem,whereas the latter believe that it is a meaningful empiricalquestion.EthicsPragmatism sees no fundamental difference betweenpractical and theoretical reason, nor any ontological differencebetween facts and values. Both facts and values have cognitivecontent: knowledge is what we should believe; values are hypothesesabout what is good in action. Pragmatist ethics is broadly humanist because it sees noultimate test of morality beyond what matters for us as humans.Good values are those for which we have good reasons, viz. theGoodReasons approach. The pragmatist formulation pre-dates those ofother philosophers who have stressed important similarities betweenvalues and facts such as JeromeSchneewind and JohnSearle.William James contribution to ethics, as laid outin his essay The Will to Believe has often been misunderstood as aplea for relativism or irrationality. On its own terms it arguesthat ethics always involves a certain degree of trust or faith andthat we cannot always wait for adequate proof when making moraldecisions. Of the classical pragmatists, John Dewey wrote mostextensively about morality and democracy. (Edel 1993) In hisclassic article Three Independent Factors in Morals (Dewey 1930),he tried to integrate three basic philosophical perspectives onmorality: the right, the virtuous and the good. He held that whileall three provide meaningful ways to think about moral questions,the possibility of conflict among the three elements cannot alwaysbe easily solved. (Anderson, SEP)Dewey also criticized the dichotomy between meansand ends which he saw as responsible for the degradation of oureveryday working lives and education, both conceived as merely ameans to an end. He stressed the need for meaningful labor and aconception of education that viewed it not as a preparation forlife but as life itself. (Dewey 2004 [1910] ch. 7; Dewey 1997[1938], p. 47)Dewey was opposed to other ethical philosophiesof his time, notably the emotivism of Alfred Ayer.Dewey envisioned the possibility of ethics as an experimentaldiscipline, and thought values could best be characterized not asfeelings or imperatives, but as hypotheses about what actions willlead to satisfactory results or what he termed consummatoryexperience. A further implication of this view is that ethics is afallible undertaking, since human beings are frequently unable toknow what would satisfy them.A recent pragmatist contribution to meta-ethics isTodd Lekan's "Making Morality" (Lekan 2003). Lekan argues thatmorality is a fallible but rational practice and that it hastraditionally been misconceived as based on theory or principles.Instead, he argues, theory and rules arise as tools to makepractice more intelligent.AestheticsJohn Dewey's Art as Experience, based on theWilliam James lectures he delivered at Harvard,was an attempt to show the integrity of art, culture and everydayexperience. (Field, IEP) Art, for Dewey, is or should be a part ofeveryone's creative lives and not just the privilege of a selectgroup of artists. He also emphasizes that the audience is more thana passive recipient. Dewey's treatment of art was a move away fromthe transcendental approachto aesthetics in thewake of ImmanuelKant who emphasized the unique character of art and thedisinterested nature of aesthetic appreciation.A notable contemporary pragmatist aesthetician isJosephMargolis. He defines a work of art as "a physically embodied,culturally emergent entity", a human "utterance" that isn't anontological quirk but in line with other human activity and culturein general. He emphasizes that works of art are complex anddifficult to fathom, and that no determinate interpretation can begiven.Philosophy of religionBoth Dewey and James haveinvestigated the role that religion can still play in contemporarysociety, the former in A Common Faith and the latter in TheVarieties of Religious Experience.It should be noted, from a general point of view,that for William James, something is true only insofar as it works.Thus, the statement, for example, that prayer is heard may work ona psychological level but (a) will not actually help to bring aboutthe things you pray for (b) may be better explained by referring toits soothing effect than by claiming prayers are actually heard. Assuch, pragmatism isn't antithetical to religion but it isn't anapologetic for faith either.JosephMargolis, in Historied Thought, Constructed World (California,1995), makes a distinction between "existence" and "reality". Hesuggests using the term "exists" only for those things whichadequately exhibit Pierce's Secondness: things which offer brutephysical resistance to our movements. In this way, such thingswhich affect us, like numbers, may be said to be "real", thoughthey do not "exist". Margolis suggests that God, in such alinguistic usage, might very well be "real", causing believers toact in such and such a way, but might not "exist".Analytical, neoclassical and neopragmatismNeopragmatismis a broad contemporary category used for various thinkers, some ofthem radically opposed to one another. The name neopragmatistsignifies that the thinkers in question incorporate importantinsights of, and yet significantly diverge from, the classicalpragmatists. This divergence may occur either in theirphilosophical methodology (many of them are loyal to the analytictradition) or in actual conceptual formation (C.I. Lewis wasvery critical of Dewey; RichardRorty dislikes Peirce). Important analytical neopragmatistsinclude the aforementioned Lewis, W.V.O.Quine, DonaldDavidson, HilaryPutnam and the early RichardRorty. StanleyFish, the later Rorty and JürgenHabermas are closer to continentalthought.Neoclassical pragmatism denotes those thinkerswho consider themselves inheritors of the project of the classicalpragmatists. Sidney Hookand SusanHaack (known for the theory of foundherentism) arewell-known examples.Not all pragmatists are easily characterized. Itis probable, considering the advent of postanalyticphilosophy and the diversification of Anglo-Americanphilosophy, that more philosophers will be influenced by pragmatistthought without necessarily publicly committing themselves to thatphilosophical school. DanielDennett, a student of Quine's, falls into this category, asdoes StephenToulmin, who arrived at his philosophical position via Wittgenstein,whom he calls "a pragmatist of a sophisticated kind" (foreword forDewey 1929 in the 1988 edition, p. xiii). Another example isMarkJohnson whose embodiedphilosophy (Lakoff and Johnson 1999) shares its psychologism,direct realism and anti-cartesianism with pragmatism. Conceptualpragmatism is a theory of knowledge originating with the work ofthe philosopher and logician ClarenceIrving Lewis. The epistemology of conceptual pragmatism wasfirst formulated in the 1929 book Mind and the World Order: Outlineof a Theory of Knowledge.'French Pragmatism' is attended with theoristslike BrunoLatour, MichelCrozier and LucBoltanski and LaurentThévenot. It is often seen as opposed to structural problemsconnected to the French CriticalTheory of PierreBourdieu.Contemporary echoes and tiesIn the twentieth century, themovements of logicalpositivism and ordinary language philosophy have similarities with pragmatism.Like pragmatism, logical positivism provides a verificationcriterion of meaning that is supposed to rid us of nonsensemetaphysics. However, logical positivism doesn't stress action likepragmatism does. Furthermore, the pragmatists rarely used theirmaxim of meaning to rule out all metaphysics as nonsense. Usually,pragmatism was put forth to correct metaphysical doctrines or toconstruct empirically verifiable ones rather than to provide awholesale rejection.Ordinary language philosophy is closer to pragmatism than otherphilosophyof language because of its nominalist character andbecause it takes the broader functioning of language in anenvironment as its focus instead of investigating abstractrelations between language and world.Pragmatism has ties to processphilosophy. Much of their work developed in dialogue withprocess philosophers like HenriBergson and AlfredNorth Whitehead, who aren't usually considered pragmatistsbecause they differ so much on other points. (Douglas Browning etal. 1998; Rescher, SEP)Behaviorism andfunctionalism inpsychology and sociology also have ties to pragmatism, which is notsurprising considering that James and Dewey were both scholars ofpsychology and that Meadbecame a sociologist.Utilitarianismhas some significant parallels to Pragmatism and JohnStuart Mill espoused similar values.CriticismAlthough many later pragmatists such as W.V.O. Quinewere actually analytic philosophers, the most vehement criticismsof classical pragmatism came from within the analytic school.BertrandRussell was especially known for his vituperative attacks onwhat he considered little more than epistemological relativism andshort-sighted practicalism. Realists in general often could notfathom how pragmatists could seriously call themselves empirical orrealist thinkers and thought pragmatist epistemology was only adisguised manifestation of idealism. (Hildebrand2003)Louis Menand argues that during the Cold War, theintellectual life of the United States became dominated byideologies. Since pragmatism seeks "to avoid the violence inherentin abstraction," it was not very popular at the time.Neopragmatismas represented by Richard Rorty has been criticized as relativisticboth by neoclassical pragmatists such as Susan Haack(Haack 1997) and by many analytic philosophers (Dennett 1998).Rorty's early analytical work, however, differs notably from hislater work which some, including Rorty himself, consider to becloser to literarycriticism than to philosophy - most criticism is aimed at thislatter phase of Rorty's thought.A list of pragmatistsClassical pragmatists (1850-1950)CharlesSanders Peirce (1839-1914): was the founder of Americanpragmatism (later called by Peirce pragmaticism). He wrote ona wide range of topics, from mathematical logic and semiotics topsychology.WilliamJames (1842-1910): influential psychologist and theorist ofreligion, as well asphilosopher. First to be widely associated with the term"pragmatism" due to Peirce's lifelong unpopularity.JohnDewey (1859-1952): prominent philosopherof education, referred to his brand of pragmatism as instrumentalism.F.C.S.Schiller (1864-1937): one of the most important pragmatists ofhis time, Schiller is largely forgotten today.Important protopragmatists or related thinkersGeorgeHerbert Mead (1863-1931): philosopher and socialpsychologist.RalphWaldo Emerson (1803-1882): the American protopragmatist.Josiah Royce(1855-1916): colleague of James who employed pragmatism in anidealist metaphysical framework, he was particularly interested inthe philosophy of religion and community; his work is oftenassociated with neo-Hegelianism.GeorgeSantayana (1863-1952): often not considered to be a canonicalpragmatist, he applied pragmatist methodologies to naturalism(philosophy), exemplified in his early masterwork, TheLife of Reason.Fringe figuresGiovanniPapini (1881-1956): Italian essayist, mostly known becauseJames occasionally mentioned him.GiovanniVailati (1863-1909): Italian analytic and pragmatistphilosopher.Neoclassical pragmatists (1950-)Neoclassical pragmatistsstay closer to the project of the classical pragmatists thanneopragmatists do.Sidney Hook(1902-1989): a prominent New York intellectual and philosopher, astudent of Dewey at Columbia.IsaacLevi (1930): seeks to apply pragmatist thinking in adecision-theoretic perspective.SusanHaack (1945): teaches at the University of Miami, sometimescalled the intellectual granddaughter of C.S. Peirce, known chieflyfor foundherentism.LarryHickman: philosopher of technology and important Dewey scholaras head of the Centerfor Dewey Studies.DavidHildebrand: like other scholars of the classical pragmatists,Hildebrandt is dissatisfied with neopragmatism and argues for thecontinued importance of the writings of John Dewey.NicholasRescherAnalytical, neo- and other pragmatists (1950-)(Oftenlabelled neopragmatism as well.)Willard vanOrman Quine (1908-2000): pragmatist philosopher, concerned withlanguage,logic, and philosophyof mathematics.ClarenceIrving Lewis (1883-1964).RichardRorty (1931 - 2007): famous author of Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.HilaryPutnam: in many ways the opposite of Rorty and thinks classicalpragmatism was too permissive a theory.RichardShusterman: philosopher of art.StephenToulmin: student of Wittgenstein, known especially for his TheUses of Argument.JohnHawthorne: Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism to deal withthe lotteryparadox in his Knowledge and Lotteries.JasonStanley: Defends a pragmatist form of contextualism againstsemantic varieties of contextualism in his Knowledge and PracticalInterest.Arthur Fine:Philosopher of Science who proposed the Natural Ontological Attitude to the debate of scientificrealism.JosephMargolis still proudly defends the original Pragmatists andsees his recent work on Cultural Realism as extending and deepeningtheir insights, especially the contribution of Pierce and Dewey, in the contextof a rapprochement with Continental philosophy.RobertPirsig author of the philosophical novel, "Zen and the Art ofMotorcycle Maintenance", rejects the primacy of the subject-objectdichotomy and gives precedence to a concept he calls "dynamicquality" – the precognitive leading edge of reality. Pirsigconsiders dynamic quality to be the simple, direct stimulus toawareness. Pirsig acknowledges the similarity of his approach tothat of other pragmatists, particularly James.Other pragmatistsLegal pragmatistsOliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.: justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.StephenBreyer: U.S.Supreme Court Associate Justice.RichardPosner: Judge on U.S. Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.Pragmatistsin the extended senseCornel West:thinker on race, politics, and religion; operates under the sign of"prophetic pragmatism".WilfridSellars: broad thinker, attacked foundationalism in theanalytic tradition.Frank P.RamseyKarl-OttoApelRandolphBourneBibliographyIEP InternetEncyclopedia of Philosophy SEP Stanford Encyclopedia ofPhilosophyElizabeth Anderson. Dewey's MoralPhilosophy. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Douglas Browning, William T. Myers (Eds.) Philosophers ofProcess. 1998.Robert Burch. Charles SandersPeirce. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.John Dewey. Donald F. Koch (ed.) Lectures on Ethics 1900–1901.1991.Daniel Dennett. Postmodernismand Truth. 1998.John Dewey. The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation ofKnowledge and Action. 1929.John Dewey. Three Independent Factors in Morals. 1930.John Dewey. The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays. 1910.John Dewey. Experience Education. 1938.Cornelis De Waal. On Pragmatism. 2005.Abraham Edel. PragmaticTests and Ethical Insights. In: Ethics at the Crossroads:Normative Ethics and Objective Reason. George F. McLean, RichardWollak (eds.) 1993.Michael Eldridge. Transforming Experience: John Dewey'sCultural Instrumentalism. 1998.Richard Field. John Dewey (1859-1952).Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.David L. Hildebrand. Beyond Realism Anti-Realism. 2003.David L. Hildebrand. TheNeopragmatist Turn. Southwest Philosophy Review Vol. 19, no. 1.January, 2003.William James. Pragmatism, A New Name forSome Old Ways of Thinking, Popular Lectures on Philosophy.1907.William James The Willto Believe. 1896.George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Philosophy in the Flesh : TheEmbodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. 1929.Todd Lekan. Making Morality: Pragmatist Reconstruction inEthical Theory. 2003.C.I. Lewis. Mind and the World Order: Outline of a Theory ofKnowledge. 1929.Keya Maitra. On Putnam. 2003.Joseph Margolis. Historied Thought, Constructed World. 1995.Louis Menand. The Metaphysical Club. 2001.Hilary Putnam Reason, Truth and History. 1981.W.V.O. Quine. Two Dogmas ofEmpiricism. Philosophical Review. January 1951.W.V.O. Quine Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. 1969.N. Rescher. ProcessPhilosophy. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.Richard Rorty Rorty Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers.Volume 3. 1998.Stephen Toulmin. The Uses of Argument. 1958.Notes and other sourcesPapers and online encyclopedias arepart of the bibliography. Other sources may include interviews,reviews and websites.Gary A. Olson and Stephen Toulmin. Literary Theory, Philosophyof Science, and Persuasive Discourse: Thoughts from aNeo-premodernist. Interview in JAC 13.2. 1993.Susan Haack. VulgarRortyism. Review in The New Criterion. November 1997.Pietarinen, A.V. “Interdisciplinarity and Peirce'sclassification of the Sciences: A Centennial Reassessment,"Perspectives on Science, 14(2), 127-152 (2006).ResourcesImportant introductory primary texts Note thatthis is an introductory list: some important works are left out andsome less monumental works that are excellent introductions areincluded.C.S. Peirce, How to Make Our Ideas Clear (paper)C.S. Peirce, A Definition of Pragmatism (paper)William James, Pragmatism (especially lectures I, II and VI)John Dewey, Reconstruction in PhilosophyJohn Dewey, Three Independent factors in Morals (paper)John Dewey, A short catechism concerning truth (chapter)W.V.O. Quine, Three Dogmas of Empiricism (paper)Secondary textsCornelis De Waal, On PragmatismLouis Menand, The Metaphysical ClubHilary Putnam, Pragmatism: An Open QuestionAbraham Edel, PragmaticTests and Ethical InsightsD. S. Clarke, Rational Acceptance and PurposeHaack, Susan Lane, Robert, Eds. (2006). Pragmatism Oldand New: Selected Writings. New York: Prometheus Books.Louis Menand, ed., Pragmatism: A Reader (includes essays byPeirce, James, Dewey, Rorty, others)Journals There are several peer-reviewed journalsdedicated to pragmatism, for exampleTransactions ofthe Charles S. Pierce SocietyContemporaryPragmatismWilliamJames StudiesOnline resourcesPragmatism CybraryNeopragmatism.orgDutch PragmatismFoundationCharles S. Peirce StudiesBBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme on Pragmatism (requiresRealAudio)A shortfilm about the pragmatist revivalpragmatism in Arabic: براغماتيةpragmatism in Bulgarian: Прагматизъмpragmatism in Czech: Pragmatismuspragmatism in German: Pragmatismuspragmatism in Spanish: Pragmatismopragmatism in French: Pragmatismepragmatism in Ido: Pragmatismopragmatism in Icelandic: Gagnhyggjapragmatism in Italian: Pragmatismopragmatism in Hebrew: פרגמטיזםpragmatism in Lithuanian: Pragmatizmaspragmatism in Hungarian: Pragmatizmuspragmatism in Dutch: Pragmatismepragmatism in Japanese: プラグマティズムpragmatism in Norwegian: Pragmatismepragmatism in Pushto: پراګماتيزمpragmatism in Polish: Pragmatyzmpragmatism in Portuguese: Pragmatismopragmatism in Russian: Прагматизмpragmatism in Sardinian: Pragmatismupragmatism in Slovak: Pragmatizmuspragmatism in Serbian: Прагматизамpragmatism in Finnish: Pragmatismipragmatism in Swedish: Pragmatismpragmatism in Tamil: காரியவாதம்pragmatism in Vietnamese: chủ nghĩa thựcpragmatism in Ukrainian: Прагматизмpragmatism in Urdu: استناجیتpragmatism in Chinese: 实用主义Synonyms, Antonyms and RelatedWordsMarxism, R and D, animalism, atomism, behaviorism, commonsenserealism, control,control experiment, controlled experiment, cut and try, dialecticalmaterialism, down-to-earthness, earthiness, earthliness, empiricism, epiphenomenalism,experiment,experimental design, experimental method, experimental proof,experimentalism,experimentation,freedom from illusion, functional design, functional furniture,functionalism,hardheadedness,historical materialism, hit and miss, hylomorphism, hylotheism, hylozoism, lack of feelings,materialism,matter-of-factness, mechanism, natural realism,naturalism, newrealism, noble experiment, physicalism, physicism, positivephilosophy, positivism,practical-mindedness, practicality, practicalness, pragmaticism, rationality, realism, reasonableness,representative realism, research and development, rule of thumb,saneness, scientism, secularism, sensibleness,sober-mindedness, substantialism, temporality, tentativemethod, tentativeness, testing, trial, trial and error, trying, unidealism, unromanticalness,unsentimentality,utilitarianism,worldliness

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