Pragmatic is a philosophy that centers around how things work in the real world. It is often seen as a third alternative to the two dominant philosophical traditions of analytic and ‘Continental’ philosophy, and was developed most thoroughly in the United States by Charles Sanders Peirce, who first articulated the concept and William James, who subsequently popularized it. Other influential pragmatists include John Dewey, George Herbert Mead and Josiah Royce, all of whom were originally allied with the absolute idealism that was then dominant in American philosophical thought.
Pragmatists are pragmatic about their beliefs and values, but they are also willing to change them if they discover that the situation has changed. They understand that it’s important to have both logic and creativity in life, and they use both to make their decisions.
People who are pragmatic tend to be more interested in results than they are with ideas or theories. They are more concerned with facts and how things actually work in the real world, which is why it’s easy for them to adapt to new situations. This is also why they often find it easier to get along with other people.
They know that they can’t always say exactly what they mean, and they understand that ambiguity is part of the human language experience. They’re able to disambiguate meaning and navigate misunderstandings in everyday communication.
This is why pragmatics is a critical aspect of experimental studies of human perception and cognition: researchers often strip away task demands from the context in which people interpret utterances, but this is essential to characterizing the role that pragmatics plays in real-world processing. Pragmatists would agree that all language use is pragmatically situated from the start, and that theories of linguistic pragmatics should reflect this fact.
Having pragmatic friends and colleagues can be very useful, because they’re able to help you sort out the realities of a given situation from your own biased assumptions about how it should or must be. They can help you weigh the pros and cons of different courses of action, and they’re also a good source of information about how other people are handling a given problem.
In business, pragmatic people are often more successful than idealistic ones. They’re able to see what needs to be done and then get it done, without getting bogged down in unrealistic or ideological ideas about how it should be done. They’re able to move forward with a project even when there are roadblocks, and they’re able to take advantage of opportunities that other people might miss because they’re caught up in their own preconceived notions about how the world should work. These are the kind of pragmatic leaders that companies want to hire, and they’re a pleasure to work with in any kind of team environment. It takes a lot of work to be a pragmatic leader, but it’s an extremely rewarding career choice. Pragmatics can be found in a wide range of disciplines, including science, law and politics, social policy and psychology.
