Pragmatic is a term used to describe an approach that takes into account real world application of ideas. It is also a philosophy that understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it. It is a broad philosophical tradition that has attracted a remarkably rich and at times contrary range of interpretations.
Classic pragmatists were Dewey and Peirce. Their key ideas originated in discussions at a so-called metaphysical club that met at Harvard in the 1870s. They both developed them in various publications. They emphasized that philosophical concepts must be tested via scientific experimentation, that a claim is true if and only if it is useful (relatedly: if a philosophical theory does not contribute directly to social progress then it is not worth much), that experience consists in transacting with rather than representing nature, and that articulate language rests on a deep bed of shared human practices that can never be fully’made explicit’.
As the Deweyan era passed and American culture shifted, so too did the outlook of those who remained committed to pragmatism. In particular, the rise of analytic philosophy largely put pragmatism on the sidelines. However, by the turn of the twenty-first century a pragmatist revival had begun to gain momentum. The neo-pragmatists of today are heavily influenced by philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars, Quine and Richard Rorty, as well as historical readings in thinkers like Kant and Hegel.
The most distinctive feature of neo-pragmatism is that it no longer takes experience as its explicit philosophical theme. Unlike Dewey, neo-pragmatists such as Rorty have no qualms about dropping ‘experience’ from the philosophical agenda and pursuing a ‘philosophy of language’. This involves focusing on the relationships between the meanings of words, how these meanings are constructed and what it is that makes a particular utterance ‘work’ in particular contexts.
It is the articulation of this sort of ‘pragmatic maxim’ that neo-pragmatists call the ‘pragmatics of language’. It is a rich philosophy that has important applications in linguistics, sociology and philosophy of mind.
Other features of neo-pragmatism include forms of empiricism, fallibilism, verificationism and a Quinean naturalist metaphilosophy. Many pragmatists are epistemological relativists (though this is by no means universal). They tend to hold that knowledge and science have their roots in the struggles of intelligent organisms with their environment. This is a very different view from traditional ‘epistemology’, which holds that the most reliable form of knowledge is that which was derived from direct observation and experiment. For more on this topic see the entry for Epistemology.