Pragmatic is a word that is often contrasted with idealistic, but in actuality it can also be used to praise someone as practical, down-to-earth, or sensible. As a philosophical movement, pragmatism argues that ideologies or propositions are only true if they work satisfactorily and that non-workable ideas should be rejected. It also argues that the best way to know whether something works is to try it and see, rather than analyze its underlying concepts or principles. While pragmatics has been used by philosophers, it is also widely embraced by non-philosophers in fields such as law, education, politics, sociology, psychology, and literature.
The first pillar of pragmatism is that there are no objective truths, only the outcomes of an idea or belief. Thus, in order to determine if a theory or belief is true, it must be tested in practice. This is a very broad definition of truth, and it can lead to many different conclusions about the nature of reality. Pragmatism has been used to critique a wide range of social institutions, including religion and education, as well as arguing for a more scientific approach to ethics.
Some pragmatists, such as Peirce and James, attempted to bring science into philosophy. A later generation of pragmatists, such as Dewey and Jane Addams, turned the concept of pragmatism towards social issues and the improvement of human society.
Although pragmatics has been embraced by non-philosophers in fields like law, education, politics, sociology, and psychology, it is most commonly associated with the study of language and communication. The field of pragmatics seeks to answer questions such as how words and gestures are understood by others, the circumstances under which a particular set of linguistic expressions is used, and what sort of meaning is conveyed by those expressions. It is important to note that whereas semantics studies rule systems which determine the literal linguistic meaning of words, syntax examines how words are combined in sentences, and semiotics concerns signs and symbols, pragmatics deals with the use and interpretation of both.
While there is a great deal of overlap between pragmatics and Theory of Mind (ToM), the former is primarily concerned with what is said, while the latter involves understanding what another person is thinking. For example, a simple hand gesture that indicates “stop” in the United States may be highly offensive in Greece.
One school of pragmatics, called Critical Pragmatics, attempts to define the’reflexive’ and’referential content’ of an utterance. The former is determined by conventional meanings of the expressions used and their modes of composition, while the latter includes facts about the utterance that are not determined by those conventional meanings, such as resolution of ambiguity and reference. This definition of pragmatics is a far cry from the ‘third way’ that some pragmatists claim to offer, which is a more rigorous form of semantic analysis.