Pragmatism

The word pragmatism derives from Greek word prasso, "to pass over, to practice, to achieve".

Historical Overview
There are several ‘waves or generations of the pragmatic tradition. The first generation or ‘Classical Period began’ with Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) and William James (1842–1910). The second generation was largely influenced by John Dewey (1859-1952) and Jane Addams (1860-1935) who co-founded Chicago’s Hull house to improve the live of poor Americans (in 1931, Addams became the first American woman to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize). The second wave also includes the philosophy of race that was germinated by African-American philosophers W.E.B Du Bois (1868–1963) and Alain Locke (1885–1954). As the US moved into the Cold War, pragmatism’s influence was challenged by analytic philosophy which became the dominant methodological orientation in most Anglo-American philosophy departments. Third generation figures include C.I. Lewis (1883–1964) and W.V.O. Quine (1908–2000).

American philosopher Richard Rorty (1931–2007) used pragmatism to rectify what he saw as mainstream epistemology’s crucial mistake: naively conceiving of language and thought as ‘mirroring’ the world. Rorty’s attacks on the representation paradigm gave rise to neopragmatism (postmodern version of pragmatism – surrender objectivity to achieve solidarity) to which a number of influential philosophers have contributed: Hilary Putnam (1926-2016), Robert Brandom and Huw Price.

Primary Characteristics
Pragmatism attempts to link practice and theory with the primacy of the practical over the theoretical. Primacy of the concrete over the abstract.  Appeal to the concrete is an appeal to the Hegelian sense - dialect moves from the abstract to the concrete. Doing over thinking: Dewey referred to Locke's empiricism as ‘Spectator Empiricism’, his point being that experience is reduced to a spectator sport rather than active involvement. In ‘thinking over doing’, a la Descartes, in the quest for certainty the pragmatists say all we need is practical certainty.  For James concrete experience is always psychological experience. Not a question of what are you thinking but how are you feeling it? Thinking is in the objectifying sense whereas feelings are the subjective (emotional) sense.

Another characteristic of pragmatism is the emphasis on organic relationships where the pragmatists are critical of the atomistic perspective (ie, Locke’s simple ideas).  William James’ stream of consciousness - a continuous succession of experiences (thoughts, feelings, images, ideas, emotions, etc.)  – is the organic in action.  Dewey speaks of the ‘presence of experience’ – of looking forward to future experience, where his notion of an idea is the idea what we do in the future.  The ‘organic’ implies an interrelatedness of the mind and body, the mental and the physical which is why the pragmatist refuse any dualism of mind and body.  Also refuse any dualism of fact and value (emotion) where values emerge in the context of experience.

Pragmatism, along with fallibilism, is a voice to counter radical philosophical skepticism, as opposed to scientific skepticism.  Peirce insisted that universal doubt hinders fruitful inquiry and philosophy; that advances in truth and reality are feasible if investigations are taken far enough.  Doubt, like belief, requires justification, however we cannot believe in complete doubt because we always miss something. We might not be aware of all of our beliefs.

Reality of Hope
How do you test for the truth?  The last philosophy professor Dr. Arthur Holmes comments: “James’s position is if it provides you with the experience of hope then the theory has 'cash value' - it works. Truth is workability. From the psychological cash value of a belief James backs up a re-definition of truth. He can do this because of this pragmatic view that experience is our reality. So the reality of experience is the reality of hope.

Criticism
Critics of pragmatism claim that pragmatism is the vulgar view according to which “If it works, it’s true” and therefore you’d have no way of distinguishing between competing scientific worldviews if both of them lead to practical success.

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