Pragmatic (or pragmatism) is the philosophical tradition that understands knowing the world to be inseparable from acting within it. Unlike other philosophical traditions that focus on concepts such as truth, reality, and meaning, pragmatism concentrates on action and its consequences. As such, pragmatists have made important contributions to political philosophy, ethics, law, education and even religion.
Historically, first generation pragmatists such as Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and Josiah Royce all theorized inquiry, meaning and the nature of truth, although Royce was influenced by an absolute idealism while Peirce was a skeptic of rationalism. The second generation pragmatists turned their attention to extending the ideas of these philosophers into practical applications, especially in the fields of social work, philanthropy and educational reform.
The pragmatists’ philosophy was further popularized in the 20th century by Harvard University philosopher Hilary Putnam, who at times aspired to the prospect of a ‘pragmatist enlightenment’ (Putnam 2004). A core aspect of this philosophy is a rejection of skepticism and a willingness to embrace fallibilism. This stance makes pragmatism a natural partner to the scientific method, and pragmatists have been influential in the development of sociology, cognitive science and semiotics.
There are many different approaches to pragmatics, including those that view it as a philosophical project focused on speakers’ communicative intentions and their use of language in context, and those that consider its interaction with grammar and an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation. However, pragmatism’s broad philosophical and practical applications are a key reason for its continued relevance to philosophy today.
In its classical form, pragmatism emphasized that the’meaning’ of an utterance is derived not from a semantic value such as ‘true’ or ‘false’ but rather from its ‘practical’ or ‘functional’ meaning. It also emphasised that the nature of truth is a matter of how useful a belief system is in solving real problems and improving human life, rather than as a static concept with a fixed meaning. Today, pragmatism continues to attract new adherents and is a vibrant research field, with significant contributions being made in philosophy, cognitive science, linguistics, semiotics and the social sciences. For example, there are now sophisticated models of utterance interpretation that are informed by a Gricean approach to pragmatics, and a growing number of scholars have developed formal theories of pragmatics, often employing probabilistic or Bayesian methods. These frameworks offer an alternative to traditional semantics (treating propositional contents as either true or false) and intuitionistic semantics (dealing with illocutionary forces).
