Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical school of American origin, generally and internationally acknowledged as a genuine American contribution to the world philosophical heritage (the word “pragmatism” has its origin in the Greek “pragma”—“action,” “affair”). It reflects the broader American social experience and cultural context with its roots in Puritan theology, with Calvinistic ethics of hard work in the precariousness of frontier life, with a desire for success in the New World experiment, with the encouragement of inventiveness, and a practical sense of making the ideal of good life work, and so on, having provided the necessary, though not sufficient, background for emerging such a philosophy. The first tenets of pragmatist thought sprang from seminal discussions of the Metaphysical Club in the academic milieu of Cambridge, MA, in the 1870s. This narrow circle of various scholars included polymath Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914),psychologist William James (1842–1910), mathematician Chauncey Wright (1830–1875), historian John Fiske (1842–1901),Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935), philosopher Francis Ellingwood Abbot (1836–1903), and Nicholas St. John Green (1830–1876). However, Peirce and James as renowned progenitors of pragmatism were modest enough to mention several non-American predecessors (such as the Greek schools of Sophists and Skeptics, F. Bacon, G. Berkeley, A. Schopenhauer, J. S. Mill, A. Bain, Ch. Darwin, and, notably, I. Kant.), who provided similar ideas and attitudes, such as an evolutionary approach to nature, life, and reason, theory of the practical and inferential nature of knowledge, the purposive character of belief, and the role of will and desire in forming belief. Based on the integration of these concepts, Peirce established the principle of pragmatism in his 1878 paper, “How to Make Our Ideas Clear,” as follows: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” This principle was intended to serve as the method of finding the meaning and testing the truth and value of scientific concepts and theories and as providing an objective criterion for an empirical (experimental and observational) scientific practice (owing to which pragmatism is, improperly, identified with positivism). Twenty years later Pierce's colleague, James, in a lecture titled “Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results,” and delivered at the University of California in 1898,modified and subsequently popularized this principle, while crediting Peirce as the father of pragmatism, as follows: “The ultimate test for us of what a truth means is indeed the conduct it dictates or inspires.” Pragmatism, according to James, is not only a “a new name for some old ways of thinking” but much more a “temper of mind, an attitude; it is also a theory of the nature of ideas and truth; and finally, it is a theory about reality.” To this extending of the principle to human practical life and action in general, Peirce reacted with disgust and suggested rather to label his conception as “pragmatism,” a “term ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers.” The move, made by James, had meant for Peirce the departure from objectivity to subjectivity and from science to religion. Whereas Peirce felt it important to find a method of true science, James believed that human happiness was important. James's project was to show that truth is a much broader concept that extends the lines of science and relates to human life and action not only as an epistemological ideal but also as a practical value and need. Thus, science and [Page 1925]religion are both legitimate endeavors in human life, while both have different purposes. Pragmatism appreciates science but is by no means a scientism. It makes substantial room for human values, ethics, education, and social life. Roughly at the same time, in the late 1890s, John Dewey (1859–1952), who was partially inspired by both Peirce and James and partially influenced by Hegel and Darwin, accomplished definitely the move in the same direction by forming his experimental school at Chicago and formulating his “instrumentalism.” Dewey regarded science as important but only a fraction of the human process of inquiry. He believed that science is being developed and corrected in the name of human happiness. The value of science is subordinated to the values of life, which are of a communal nature. By collaborating with Dewey, the trio of the founding fathers of pragmatism had been completed and the three versions of classical pragmatism formed: scientific/methodological, which incorporates logic and semiotics as the theory of signs and language (Peirce); psychological/humanistic, which incorporates ethic and religious belief (James); and social/political, which incorporates culture and education (Dewey). Thus pragmatism provides and develops the relationship of philosophy to these three important areas: science and knowledge, life and action, community and democracy.

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