Pragmatic is a word that refers to people who are realistic and practical in their approaches to life. They tend to prioritize practicality, efficiency and real-world results over abstract theories or principles. Pragmatic people are able to set aside their emotions and big-picture ideals when making decisions in challenging situations, such as when they’re trying to solve a problem in a crisis or navigating a complex business deal.
The first recorded use of pragmatic was sometime around 1580-90, and it’s ultimately derived from the Greek pragma (“deed; state business”). Related words include down-to-earth, efficient, hardheaded, logical, and practical, among others.
Pragmatist is a philosophical tradition that holds that knowledge of the world is inseparable from one’s agency within it. In its classical form, pragmatism emphasizes the importance of scientific experimentation in establishing empirical truth (in other words, that we learn about the world through experience and by applying reason to it), but contemporary pragmatists have taken a wide range of positions on this topic, from arguing that all philosophical concepts should be tested experimentally to claiming that all ideas are only true if they contribute to social progress.
It’s also important to note that pragmatic is not synonymous with dogmatic, as the latter term is used to describe a person who adheres strictly to certain beliefs or rules. The right candidate for the job will be pragmatic and able to take the time to understand how their vision will work in the context of current events, as opposed to a dogmatic person who will refuse to consider changing their views on an issue.
A pragmatic person is able to set their feelings aside and make clear, calm calls in a crisis, such as when they’re helping to resolve an ethical dilemma. They don’t get caught up in the bigger picture ideals and instead focus on a practical solution, such as weighing the cost of potential harm versus the benefits of taking a risk to save lives in war.
The practical, realistic and sensible approach that pragmatic people take to problems, issues and decision-making is also reflected in the way they think about language. Pragmatics is a discipline that studies the context-dependent nature of language, and it distinguishes itself from semantics by looking at the significance that’s conventionally or literally attached to individual words, sentences and even whole phrases, as well as the additional meaning that can be worked out based on contextual information.
Pragmatics scholars, such as Brandom, argue that a theory of meaning needs to account for this contextual nature in order to reconstruct a framework for understanding the logical relations between different vocabularies. These pragmatic theories of language are used in a number of liberatory philosophical projects, such as feminism, ecology, and Native American philosophy, among others. The Blackwell Companion to Philosophy (Davies, 1995) notes that these newer pragmatic approaches to language challenge the traditional analytic assumptions about reference and truth.
