A pragmatist is an individual who avoids ideological arguments and makes decisions based on facts. Such a person tends to focus on facts and consequences, not aesthetics or feelings. A pragmatist tends to be less romantic and more practical, and may view romantic relationships as detached from pragmatic concerns. A pragmatic person may be tempted to rely on scenic value and lightning power rather than the ‘truth’ of their idea.
The term “pragmatic” was coined by Noam Chomsky, who viewed language as a useful instrument for interaction and regarded the literal meaning of an utterance as a secondary concern. Besides considering how words are used to communicate ideas, pragmatism also considers the implied and contingent meanings of a sentence. Pragmatics forms the basis for language interactions and without it, there would be no understanding of language.
The neo-pragmatic approach to truth is more flexible than the ‘traditional’ philosophy of truth. Instead of attempting to provide a full-fledged theory of truth, pragmatism aims to describe the uses of truth – including generalizations, commendation, caution, and so on. While these are remarkably similar, pragmatism does not require any metaphysical lifting.
Clinical trials of medicines that have not been licensed can never be labelled pragmatic because they are required to meet strict regulation. These trials often do not represent the clinical care of a patient, and the rigorous rules that are required to perform them do not allow for this. The term pragmatic is being used more widely by both public and private sponsors. It is now also a useful term for open-label studies and double-blindependant designs. This makes the process much more streamlined.
The ability to use language in a social context is often correlated with general educational success. In fact, deaf and hard-of-hearing children often do worse on tests of pragmatic language ability than their hearing peers. Children with cochlear implants performed much lower on pragmatic language ability tests than children with normal hearing. However, when using the Pragmatics Profile questionnaire, children with cochlear implants did not show significantly different results when compared with children with normal hearing.
In contrast to deflationary theories of truth, pragmatic theories of truth prioritize speech-act and justification projects. They also refuse to restrict the concept of truth to a particular type of inquiry or topic. Rather, pragmatists tend to see truth as a normative concept that guides all speech and inquiry. As a result, pragmatic theories tend to be more conservative than deflationary theories. There are numerous differences between these two schools of thought, and they often focus on the same basic assumptions.
Though some of the arguments against pragmatic theories of truth are relatively recent, some of them date back as far as the history of science. James’ account, for example, was subject to numerous criticisms. Most et al. (2010) argue that these differences in time spent in general education are directly related to their pragmatic language ability. The same holds true for other arguments for the theory. There is little consensus on the validity of pragmatic theories of truth. The arguments that support them are mostly philosophical.