Pragmatics is a philosophy that studies the way people interpret and understand each other. It is a major branch of philosophy that encompasses a range of different disciplines. The field of pragmatics includes philosophical, linguistic and psychological approaches to language and meaning. Its influence extends across a broad spectrum of academic fields including philosophy, psychology, sociology, cognitive science and education. It also has applications in the areas of business, law and health care.
A pragmatist is someone who takes practical considerations into account in decision making. This type of person is willing to compromise in order to get the results they want. They are more interested in practical things and how theory can be turned into practice than they are in idealistic dreamers.
One of the major tenets of classical pragmatism was the idea that knowledge is based on experience. This influenced the development of many applied fields such as public administration, political science and leadership studies. For example, the birth of public administration in America coincided with the period of greatest influence for classical pragmatism and its adherents like Dewey and James. It is also believed that Jane Addams and Mary Parker Follett were pragmatists who worked with the Hull House community and women’s rights groups.
Contemporary pragmatic philosophers generally fall into two categories. The ‘Literalists’ think that semantics is basically autonomous with little pragmatic intrusion; the ‘contextualists’ take the basic outlines of the Relevance Theory view of the importance of pragmatics at every level while perhaps demurring on many of the details and the psychological orientation. Many pragmatists are epistemological relativists although others think that this is seriously misguided (e.g. Richard Rorty).
The pragmatic approach to truth differs from the common notion of truth as correspondence. It defines truth as something that works for human beings and is useful to them. This means that a path through a forest that gets a person to the exit is “true” for that individual. It may not be the most scenic or direct route but it gets the job done.
Many pragmatists have taken up forms of empiricism, fallibilism and verificationism and a Quinean naturalist metaphilosophy. Some, such as neopragmatists like Susan Haack and Hilary Putnam believe that all knowledge is pragmatically relative but other pragmatists reject this interpretation of their philosophy and see relativism as seriously misguided. A key issue in the debate is how to reconcile anti-skepticism and fallibilism.
