Pragmatism (from Ancient Greek πράγμα, genitive case πράγματος — «deed, action») — a philosophical movement based on practice as the criterion of truth and meaningful significance. Its origin is associated with the name of the 19th-century American philosopher Charles Peirce, who was the first to formulate the «maxim» of pragmatism. Pragmatism was further developed in the works of William James, John Dewey, and George Santayana. Among the principal directions of pragmatism are instrumentalism, fallibilism, antirealism, radical empiricism, verificationism, and others.

The philosophy of pragmatism denies the meaningfulness of metaphysics and redefines truth in a given field of knowledge as a temporary consensus among the people who study that field.

Attention to pragmatism grew significantly in the second half of the 20th century with the appearance of a new philosophical school that focused on critiquing logical positivism, relying on its own version of pragmatism. These were representatives of analytic philosophy such as Willard Quine, Wilfrid Sellars, and others. Their conception was then developed by Richard Rorty, who later moved toward continental philosophy and was criticized for relativism. Contemporary philosophical pragmatism then split into analytic and relativist directions. Besides these, there is also a neoclassical direction, represented in particular by the works of Susan Haack (English).

Pragmatism in historical science — a term used with rather different meanings. The adjective «pragmatic» (Greek πραγματικός) was first applied to history by Polybius, who called pragmatic history (Greek πραγματική ίστορία) that depiction of the past which concerns matters of state, with the latter examined in connection with their causes, accompanying circumstances, and consequences, the depiction of events being aimed at conveying a certain lesson.

A pragmatist — a follower, an adherent of pragmatism as a philosophical system. In the everyday sense, a pragmatist is a person who builds his system of actions and views on life around obtaining practically useful results. «What is best for us to believe is true,» asserted the founder of pragmatism W. James.

Pragmatism as a philosophical movement of the 20th century

History

As a philosophical movement, pragmatism arose in the last decades of the 19th century. The foundations of the philosophical conception of pragmatism were laid by Charles Peirce.

Pragmatism became popular from 1906, when Peirce's follower William James delivered a course of public lectures that were published under this title.

The third most prominent representative of pragmatism was John Dewey, who developed his own variant of pragmatism, called instrumentalism.

The epistemology of pragmatism

Early pragmatism was under the strong influence of Darwinism. A similar mode of thinking had earlier been held by Schopenhauer: an idealistic conception of reality, useful to the organism, might differ greatly from reality itself. Pragmatism, however, moves away from this idealistic conception, dividing cognition and other actions into two independent spheres of activity. Pragmatism therefore acknowledges the existence of an absolute and transcendent truth standing above the cognitive activity that underlies an organism's actions in sustaining its life. Thus a certain ecological component of cognition appears: an organism must have a conception of its surrounding environment. The notions of the «real» and the «true» are, in this respect, considered terms of the process of cognition and have no meaning outside that process. Pragmatism, consequently, acknowledges the existence of objective reality, though not in the usual strict sense of the word (which Putnam termed metaphysical).

Although some of William James's statements gave grounds to consider pragmatism a form of subjective idealism, the view that beliefs make reality true did not find broad support among pragmatist philosophers. In pragmatism, nothing useful or practical is necessarily true, just as nothing that helps an organism survive at some brief moment is necessarily true. For example, the belief that a deceiving spouse remains faithful helps the deceived husband feel better at the present moment, but will certainly not help him in the long run if that belief does not correspond to the truth.

The conception of truth

According to James, an expressed truth is not final; together with objective reality we «create» truths. From this follow two of its features: 1) truth is changeable, and 2) truth depends on the conceptual scheme in which we place it.

The changeability of truth

Among pragmatist philosophers there is no unified opinion as to whether beliefs can turn from true to false and back again. For James, beliefs are not true until they are confirmed in the process of verification. He held that assumptions become truth if they demonstrate their usefulness to a particular person over a long period of time. The opposite process is not falsification; the belief simply falls out of use. F. Schiller stated directly: «If I want to know how to get home, any answer that helps me solve the task at hand will be correct. If later I have a different task, the same answer may turn out to be false. As the task and the ways of solving it change, so do the properties of truth.»

Peirce did not agree that one and the same statement could be true for one person and false for another. He demanded that theoretical statements be tied to practical verification (that is, to testing), rather than to current tasks and needs. According to Peirce, truth is the final result (not any intermediate result) of an investigation carried out by some community (usually a scientific one). Dewey generally agreed with Peirce's definition, but also characterized truth as a kind of value. If something is true, this simultaneously means that it is reliable, and that one can always depend on the truth, since it does not change depending on the situation. Both Peirce and Dewey linked the definition of truth to guaranteed verifiability. Putnam also developed the idea of an ideal epistemological justification of truth. Of the views of James and Schiller he stated:

Truth cannot simply be reasonable acceptability, for one basic reason: it is supposed to be a property of a statement that cannot become false, while justification can be lost over time. The statement "The Earth is flat" was perhaps acceptable 3000 years ago, but in our time it is unacceptable. Moreover, one cannot say that 3000 years ago the Earth WAS flat, since it did not change its shape.

Rorty also spoke out against the view of James and Schiller:

Truth, of course, is absolute; statements such as "true for you, but not for me" or "valid for your culture, but not mine" are vague and indeterminate. The same holds for the expression "true once, but not now"... James might better have said that a phrase like "it is better to believe this or that" is equivalent to the term "justified," not "true."

Conceptual relativity

Similarly, the idea that truth depends on the accepted conception gives rise to disagreement. James and Schiller maintained that we make truth in the process of verification, a view other pragmatist philosophers do not share. But almost all of them agree that truth can only be expressed within the framework of some conception, outside of which it loses its meaning.

Until we agree on what the terms "object," "existence," and the like mean, the question "how many objects exist" has no meaning whatsoever. But once we have decided how to use that terminology, the answer to the question posed, within the framework of the accepted conception or its "version," as Nelson Goodman put it, is no longer a matter of "agreement."

F. Schiller, to explain his ideas about the «production» of truth, used the analogy of a chair: just as a carpenter makes a chair from materials at hand, creating nothing out of nothing, truth is a transformation of our experience, but this does not mean that we are free to create an imaginary reality at will.

Basic principles of pragmatism

At the basis of pragmatism lies the following maxim: «Consider what practical effect may be associated with a given object, and our understanding of that object will consist in the sum of our knowledge of its practical applications.»

The primacy of practice

The pragmatist proceeds from the basic premise of a person's ability to theorize, which is an integral part of his intellectual practice. Theory and practice are not opposed as different spheres of activity; on the contrary, theory and analysis are tools or «maps» for finding the right path in life. As Dewey maintained, one should not separate theory and practice, but rather one can distinguish intellectual practice from dull, uninformed practice. He also said of William Montague that «his activity consisted not in the practical application of the mind, but in the intellectualization of practice.» Theory is an abstract representation of immediate experience and, in turn, must necessarily enrich experience with its information. Thus, an organism orienting itself in its environment is the primary subject of study for pragmatism.

Against reifying theories and concepts

In his work «The Quest for Certainty», Dewey criticized philosophers who accept categories (mental or physical) as given, on the grounds that they fail to understand the nominal nature of any concepts invented by human beings to solve one problem or another. This leads to metaphysical or conceptual confusion. Among the examples one may list the absolute being of the Hegelians, or the idea that logic, as an abstraction derived from concrete thought, has nothing in common with the latter. D. L. Hildebrand summarized this problem as follows: «A palpable inattention to the specific functions of cognition leads both realists and idealists to formulate knowledge that projects the product of abstraction onto experience.»

Naturalism and anti-Cartesianism

Pragmatist philosophers have always sought to reform philosophy by bringing the scientific method into it. They criticize both materialists and idealists for attempting to present human knowledge as something more than what science can provide. Such attempts fall mainly into two categories: phenomenology, going back to the philosophy of Kant, and correspondence theories of knowledge and truth (that is, that knowledge corresponds to objective reality). Pragmatists condemn the former for apriorism, and the latter for taking correspondence as a fact not subject to analysis. Pragmatists instead seek to explain, chiefly in psychological and biological terms, how the subject and object of cognition relate to one another, and how this relation bears on reality.

Peirce, in his work "The Fixation of Belief" (1877), denied the role of introspection and intuition in philosophical inquiry. He believed that intuition could lead to errors in reasoning. Introspection likewise does not grant access to the workings of the mind, since the "self" is a concept derived from our relations with the surrounding world, rather than the reverse. By 1903 he had also come to the conclusion that pragmatism and epistemology are not derived from psychology, and that what we actually think differs from what we ought to think. In this respect his views differ substantially from the philosophy of the other pragmatists, who were more committed to naturalism and psychologism.

Rorty, in his work "Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature," likewise criticized attempts by philosophers of science to carve out a space for epistemology independent of, or even superior to, the space of the empirical sciences. Quine, in "Epistemology Naturalized" (1969), criticized "traditional" epistemology and its Cartesian dream of absolute certainty. He asserted that in practice this dream had proved unattainable, and in theory false, since it led to the separation of epistemology from scientific inquiry.

Reconciling anti-skepticism and fallibilism

Anti-skepticism arose in the contemporary academic community as a reaction to Descartes's teaching that the basis of philosophical inquiry is doubt, whose very presence confirms the fact that the one doubting exists. Pragmatism, which is likewise founded on doubt about the reliability of human knowledge, lies well within the old tradition of skepticism.

Nevertheless, Putnam believes that the principal task of American pragmatism is to reconcile anti-skepticism and fallibilism. Although all human knowledge is incomplete, and there is no possibility of ever viewing the world through the eyes of an omniscient God, it is by no means necessary to adopt a position of global skepticism. In his time Peirce insisted that Descartes was not entirely right, and that doubt cannot be created or falsified for the purpose of conducting a philosophical inquiry. Doubt, like belief, must be justified. It arises as a result of encountering certain stubborn facts of existence (which Dewey called a "situation") that undermine our belief in the existing state of affairs. Inquiry thus becomes a rationally self-controlled process of returning to an understanding of the situation, or at least an attempt to believe once more that such an understanding has been achieved.

Use of the term in historiography

When speaking of pragmatic history, one usually has in mind, or especially foregrounds, one of three things: either the purely political content of history (affairs of state), or the manner of historical exposition (the establishment of causal connections), or, finally, the purpose of the historical depiction (moral instruction). This is why the term pragmatism suffers from a certain vagueness.

The central point of pragmatism may be considered the depiction of human actions specifically in history, not necessarily exclusively political ones and not for the sake of moral instruction, but such that above all seeks out their causes and consequences, that is, the motives and goals of the actors involved. In this sense pragmatic history differs from cultural history, which deals not with events made up of human deeds (res gestae), but with the states of society in material, intellectual, moral, and social respects, and connects individual facts with one another not as causes and effects, but as different phases in the development of one form or another. From this point of view, historical facts may be divided into pragmatic ones (events and the human actions comprising them) and cultural ones (states of society and forms of life), and historical connection may be either pragmatic (causal) or evolutionary.

According to this understanding, pragmatism in history should be called the study or depiction of the causal connection existing between the individual actions of individual historical figures, or between entire events in which the actors are not only individuals but also entire groups, for example political parties, social classes, entire states, and so on. This understanding does not contradict the definition given by Polybius and by most historians who have used the term pragmatism.

In any case, pragmatism is interested in the acting individual in history, in his motives and intentions, his character and passions — in a word, his psychology, which is meant to explain his actions: this is the psychological motivation of historical events. Causality, which reigns in the world of phenomena, manifests itself differently in various spheres of this world, which is why the need arises for special studies of causality (for example, causality in criminal law). In the field of history this question has been very little developed (see N. Kareev, "The Essence of the Historical Process and the Role of the Individual in History," St. Petersburg, 1890).

A theory of pragmatic history would have to investigate how some events give rise to others, brought about by various changes in the volitional sphere of the actors under the influence of the events acting upon them, which are themselves, in the final analysis, merely certain actions. Pragmatic history differs from a merely sequential one precisely in its penetration into the inner world of people, with the aim not only of recounting an event, but also of presenting its immediate effect on the thoughts and feelings of contemporaries, and of showing how it itself became necessary in view of the existence, among the people who carried it out, of one or another motive and intention. Cf. E. Bernheim, "Lehrbuch der historischen Methode" (1894).

Assessments

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences, Associate Professor M. A. Tarkhova believes that:

A critique of pragmatism, of the pragmatic approach

In recent years, the leaders of our country have often referred to the importance of a pragmatic approach in state policy. Pragmatism has, in a certain sense, become the banner of those in power, of entrepreneurs, of a certain part of the intelligentsia.

I would like to warn people about the danger of pragmatism, of overestimating the significance of the pragmatic approach.
The pragmatic approach is quite narrow, limited, and can be used only in certain situations.

(These certain cases A. S. Pushkin assessed as follows: «Inspiration is not for sale, But one can sell a manuscript." A good formula. The main thing is creativity, while the pragmatic side matters only to a certain extent. «One can sell a manuscript» — that is, one can derive benefit from creativity, but this is not obligatory [desirable, but not at any cost]).

Pragmatism in fact ignores the fundamental values of life, namely goodness, beauty, truth. It thinks and lives within the coordinates of such rather narrow notions as benefit, usefulness, success. The maxims of a pragmatically minded person: «Truth is that from which you derive benefit» (from the American film «Rounders»). Or: «It pays to be honest.»


In 2009-2010, Alfa-Bank ran a television advertising campaign under the slogan «It pays to be honest.» As it seems to me, the slogan "It pays to be honest" is extremely unfortunate. Try saying: "it pays to have a conscience," "it pays to love and be loved," "it pays to live," and you will sense a certain mercenary narrowness in this slogan. I can put it even more bluntly: "It pays to be honest" is roughly the same as saying "a person needs a head in order to eat." This slogan places benefit above honesty. You are honest because it pays... Does it not seem to you that you are making the fundamental moral category of "honesty" dependent on a particular, partial element of activity?!

And besides, honesty does not always go hand in hand with benefit, and in some cases contradicts it. Sometimes it does not pay to be honest. After all, the notion of benefit also includes what is called immediate benefit. And in general, benefit is only one of the results of human activity, a material result. But besides the material result there are also spiritual-moral and, more broadly, existential-vital consequences. In a word, one cannot measure honesty by benefit. The slogan «It pays to be honest» is entirely in the spirit of the philosophy of utilitarianism. Have we really returned to the nineteenth century, to "good old" England? When will we start living by our own minds?!

For a pragmatically minded person, what matters is the result, and only the result. The end justifies the means — that is, to a considerable extent, his philosophy. Pragmatism is wingless, creatively barren. For it, words like «dream,» «ideal» have no meaning. Romanticism is incomprehensible to a person with a pragmatic cast of mind. He often mocks it. A pragmatist easily becomes a cynic, a victim of a cynical philosophy.

Pragmatism is individualistic, utterly devoid of what makes a person a collectivist. Heroism and self-sacrifice are alien to it. The pragmatist is, in essence, Hegel's valet (Hegel, in his "Philosophy of History," observed very precisely: «No man is a hero to his valet—not because the former is not a hero, but because the latter is a valet»).

For the pragmatist, what matters is THE TASK. But LIFE is immeasurably broader than any task. It is not even a chain of tasks. It represents such a totality in which tasks as such constitute only a certain part of it. For example, can love be called a task? No. Further, can the care of parents for their children, and more broadly a person's care for their offspring, for the continuation of the family line, be called a task? Again, no. Can a person's creative impulse-ardor be called a task? Again, no. Beethoven's composing of the Moonlight Sonata — is that a task, a business? One's tongue does not turn to say such a thing.
The reflections of A. Schopenhauer on the difference between creations and deeds deserve attention. He writes:

“Honor may be claimed by everyone, but fame only by exceptional people; for fame is achieved only through extraordinary merits, and these latter are in turn expressed either in deeds or in creations — so that there are two paths open to fame. Along the path of deeds it is chiefly a great heart that leads the way; along the path of creations, a great mind. Each of these paths has its own particular advantages and disadvantages. The main difference between them is that deeds pass away, while creations remain. The noblest deed still has only a temporary significance; a work of genius, however, continues to live and to exert its beneficial and elevating influence for all time. Deeds leave behind them only a memory, which grows ever weaker, more distorted, and more indifferent, and is even doomed to gradual extinction unless history takes it up and hands it down, fixed, to posterity. Creations, on the other hand, themselves possess immortality and can, especially when embodied in writing, outlive all ages. Of Alexander the Great, a name and a memory have survived; but Plato and Aristotle, Homer and Horace, continue to exist themselves, living and acting directly. The Vedas, with their Upanishads, stand before us, while of all the deeds contemporary with them not a single account has come down to us.

(Note by A. Schopenhauer: "It is, therefore, a poor compliment when, as is now fashionable, one seeks to honor creations by calling them deeds. For creations are, by their very nature, higher than deeds.")

Another disadvantage of deeds is their dependence on chance, which must first make their occurrence possible; to this is added the fact that their fame is determined not by inner worth alone, but also by the circumstances that lend them importance and brilliance. Moreover, this fame, if, as in war, the deeds are of a purely personal character, depends on the testimony of many eyewitnesses, and these are not always to be found, nor are they always conscientious and impartial. The advantage of deeds, on the other hand, is that, being something practical, they are accessible to the judgment of people in general... The reverse is true of creations: their coming into being depends not on chance but solely on their creator, and they remain what they are in themselves. On the other hand, they present a difficulty of evaluation that is the greater the higher their order... But then again, the fame of creations is decided not by a single instance alone — here an appeal is possible. For if, as has been said, only a memory reaches posterity from deeds, and even that in the form in which contemporaries hand it down, then creations, by contrast, survive on their own, moreover just as they are, except that individual parts may be lost... Rather, it is often only time that gradually brings forth a few truly competent judges (...): they, one after another, cast their weighty vote, and thus — sometimes, it is true, only after the passage of centuries — a wholly correct assessment is arrived at, one that remains unshakable for all future time. So durable, indeed so utterly unassailable, is the fame of creations. (...) Usually, moreover, the longer fame is destined to endure, the later it appears — for everything excellent ripens only slowly. Fame that is destined to pass on to posterity.”

A. Schopenhauer somewhat exaggerates the difference between deeds and creations, but in principle, by and large, he is right.
The limitedness of a philosophy of the deed is also revealed when word and deed, thought and action, are set side by side. Our speech and our thought are not entirely absorbed by deeds and actions. They play a relatively independent role in life. Moreover, they are sometimes even set in opposition to deed-action. Words are not always directly followed by deeds. And still less is thought always embodied in action. And it is a good thing that not every word and not every thought is embodied in deed-action.

Between word-thought and deed-action there ought to be a certain distance, something like a quarantine, following the principle «measure seven times, cut once.» A good word or thought can be spoiled or distorted by hasty realization. Here it is very important to take account of place and time. And as for bad words and thoughts, there is nothing more to say: it would be better if they were never embodied in deeds-actions at all!
The limitedness of a philosophy of the deed makes itself felt even more when deed and play are set side by side. Play is a very important element of life, and it is far from always bound up with the deed (as an obvious instance of such a bond, one might mention only business gaming).

The philosophy of pragmatism is very close to the philosophy of success, of the successful person. The latter is, in fact, a particular case, or one of the consequences, of the philosophy of pragmatism. And here we see the donkey's ears of a purely pragmatic approach. The philosophy of success forces a person into the Procrustean bed of small, outwardly effective deeds. It largely deprives a person of the ability to take risks, to dare. For risk and daring are inevitably bound up with mistakes and failures, that is, with what constitutes non-success (the opposite of success). A person raised in the spirit of the philosophy of success is extremely inflexible, fragile. A serious failure can break him, kill him, destroy him.

(The philosophy of success has penetrated psychology. Evgenia Belyakova, a psychotherapist, writes: «What soul is there to speak of! The trade in "happiness" among psychologists goes no worse than among sorcerers. It is not for nothing that the greatest demand is for trainings where people are "made successful." When it is said of a person that he is intelligent, or talented, or a high-class professional, that is understandable. But successful – who is that? Someone with neither mind, nor talent, nor professionalism – but who managed to "rake in" money?» - «Beware, Psychologist! From the Notes of a Psychotherapist» — LiveJournal: http://impressionante.livejournal.com/20750.html#comments).

Pragmatism is situational, and therefore anti-intellectual. For the mind-intellect, in the good sense, "sticks its nose" everywhere; everything is its concern, and it tries to look both into the distant past and into the distant future. Farsightedness is the principal trait, the principal mark of the mind-intellect. But pragmatism is shortsighted; as a rule, it deals only with the immediate results-effects of activity, does not look far into the future, does not try to answer the question of what the consequences of an activity are, and still less what its remote consequences might be. Speaking figuratively, the pragmatically minded person is interested only in what is happening "here and now"; as a rule, he does not see beyond his own nose.

Pragmatism can be good in particulars, when you "are digging in the dirt," but bad when you want to look beyond the horizon, when you try to comprehend and assess life as a whole, as a totality (and not only your own life, but the life of people, of humanity, life on Mother Earth).
Adherents of pragmatism may be likened to the blind men of the parable who, feeling the elephant, described it each in a different way.

Here is one version of the parable:
«Four blind men approached an elephant. One touched the elephant's leg and said: «The elephant is like a pillar.» Another touched the trunk and said: «The elephant is like a thick club.» A third touched the elephant's belly and said: «The elephant is like a huge barrel.» A fourth touched the ears and said: «The elephant is like a large basket.» And then they began to argue among themselves about what the elephant was like.
A passerby, hearing their dispute and quarrel, asked what it was about. They told him everything and asked him to judge between them. And the passerby said: «None of you has seen the elephant. The elephant is not at all like a pillar, but its legs are like pillars. And it is not like a barrel, only its belly is like a barrel, and it is not like a basket — its ears are, and it is also not like a club, only its trunk is. The elephant combines all of this together.»

And lastly. Pragmatism as a certain philosophical position-attitude is in many respects an artificial, lifeless mental construction. In real life one practically never encounters hundred-percent (pure) pragmatists. A hundred-percent, pure pragmatism is self-destructive. And people — (with rare exceptions) — are not suicides!

See also

• Critique
• Mercantilism
• Romanticism