Pragmatic is a philosophical outlook that emphasizes the connection between thought and action. Its tenets have been incorporated into a wide range of applied fields, such as business, political science, and leadership studies. Pragmatism is most closely related to pragma, which is the pragmatic meaning of language in a particular context or situation.
William James (1842-1910) pressed the term “pragmatism” into service in his 1898 essay, “Philosophical Conceptions and Their Practical Results.” He scrupulously swore that he had not borrowed the phrase from his compatriot Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914). Peirce, however, was an important influence on James’s philosophy and he had authored the original term for his own approach to truth that he called “pragmatism.”
Classical pragmatists, such as Dewey, Peirce, and James, focused on action and its consequences. This stance was sometimes referred to as instrumentalism. More recently, two major approaches to pragmatism have evolved. One, associated with Rorty, flirts with relativism and suggests that truth is not the central philosophical concept that it has long been assumed to be. The other, associated with Morris, is closer to realism and views truth as the norm of inquiry and assertion.
Unlike many other philosophical movements, there is no pragmatist creed, no neat list of articles or essential tenets that are endorsed by all pragmatists and only by pragmatists. Nevertheless, there are some ideas that have loomed large in the pragmatist tradition.
For example, classical pragmatists tended to reject the correspondence theory of truth. This theory, which holds that a statement is true when it corresponds to a state of affairs, has been challenged by modern philosophers who have dubbed themselves neo-pragmatists. These modern neo-pragmatists have reduced truth to verification or warranted assertibility and they have also emphasized the value of inquiry.
A key element of pragmatism is the idea that truth depends on a person’s perspective or point of view. If, for example, a person is trying to determine whether or not capitalism or socialism will lead to a better life, then the truth will be whatever that person decides it to be.
Another tenet of pragmatism is that truth must be derived through experience. This is a crucial insight that has led to practical applications in fields such as psychotherapy, public administration, and organizational development. In the field of psychology, a school of thought known as behaviorism incorporated pragmatism into its methodology. In computer technology, a subfield of linguistics known as computational pragmatics applies the principles of pragmatism to the process of natural language processing and information retrieval. This is especially important in reference resolution, the process of determining what two objects are referring to when they are being described to each other. This is an essential part of the process of information search and acquisition in artificial intelligence. It is this aspect of pragmatics that has given rise to a branch of computer science called machine learning. See also Computational Pragmatics, Semantics, and Metaphor.
