Pragmatic is a result-oriented approach to solving a problem. It is the opposite of theory, which contemplates what could or should be. Being pragmatic means paying attention to factual conditions that lead to a certain outcome.
Pragmatism is a philosophy that stresses the role of experience in generating knowledge and that posits no ontological commitment to the belief that anything is “true” just because it works. The pragmatists, including William James and John Dewey, argue that knowledge is a disposition to act in specific situations and that a belief is only true when it helps us survive. This does not necessarily deny the validity of religious beliefs, but it does leave room for the possibility that there are transcendent realities.
Historically, pragmatism has been associated with the American philosophical tradition and a neo-positivist strain of empiricism that emphasizes experience as the source of truth. It also shares some of its concerns with the problems of realism and naturalism, especially the questions of the limits of science and of the nature of meaning and value. In modern times, however, pragmatism is associated with several other traditions and approaches to philosophical inquiry:
The term has also been used to refer to the practical applications of a particular theory, as in “the pragmatics of linguistics.” Linguists who study the pragmatics of language are known as pragmaticians and their work evaluates how context contributes to meaning. Pragmatics is a subfield of linguistics, and it has been influenced by a wide range of philosophy, such as philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.
There are many forms of pragmatics, and the field is continually evolving. Pragmatists with a narrower view of the philosophy may focus on its interaction with grammar or language acquisition. Others focus on its interactions with empirical psychological theories of utterance interpretation. Still others, such as those with a more general conception of pragmatism, have sought to integrate pragmatics into their epistemology.
One of the most influential and controversial developments in pragmatism has been the application of pragmatics to science. The field of computational pragmatics, for example, seeks to improve computer systems by using contextual information in ways that better approximate human language and information processing abilities. Reference resolution, the process of determining when two objects are different or the same, is an important aspect of this effort.
Another area in which pragmatism has been applied is in bioethics. In an essay titled “Pragmatic Bioethics,” Micah Hester and Griffin Trotter developed a theory of pragmatic bioethics that drew from classical American pragmatists such as Dewey, Peirce, and Royce. Their work challenged the principalism theory then in vogue in bioethics and won praise within the field of classical American philosophy and criticism from bioethicists. The work was later published as an anthology titled Pragmatic Bioethics.
