Pragmatic is an approach to philosophy which stresses the importance of achieving practical results in the real world. It prioritizes results over ideas and theories, and is willing to compromise in order to get there. People who are pragmatic are able to see the benefits of both short-term and long-term consequences, and are able to make decisions based on those considerations.
Philosophers who are considered pragmatists include John Dewey, Charles Peirce, and William James. During the first half of the twentieth century, American pragmatist philosophers influenced a wide range of intellectual fields. In philosophy, pragmatism was used to attack mainstream variants of foundationalism in analytic philosophy, and to offer alternative approaches to philosophical problems. In the social sciences, pragmatism was used to explore issues in sociology and history.
The term pragmatic is derived from the Latin word “pragmati,” meaning “to make practical.” This is a philosophy which emphasizes how a person or group behaves in a given situation, rather than the principles behind that behavior. A pragmatist will weigh the pros and cons of various options and decide on an action which is most likely to result in positive outcomes.
For example, if milk turns sour, a pragmatic person will decide to use it to make cheese. This is a way of maximizing the value of a resource.
Similarly, a pragmatic approach is also used in business. A company which focuses on measurable goals and achieving practical results is likely to be more successful than one that is idealistic and tries to push the boundaries of what is possible.
One disadvantage of a pragmatic approach is that it may ignore important ethical considerations. A pragmatist will often prioritize practical outcomes and consequences, which can be problematic in situations where the pragmatic solution conflicts with moral principles or values.
In addition, a pragmatic philosophy places an emphasis on the idea that a situation is always changing and that there is no fixed set of rules or guidelines which can be applied to all cases. This can lead to a lot of confusion, especially for those who are new to the field.
Experimental pragmatics emerged in the 1970s as psychologists, including those who specialize in developmental psychology and psycholinguistics, began to examine how people understand the pragmatic meaning of utterances. This was a significant departure from the more traditional emphasis in psycholinguistics on lexical, syntactic and semantic processing of sentence meaning. At the time, there were some critics who were skeptical about the ability to make proper scientific order out of an approach which is so dependent on real-world context and individual experience.
Despite the criticisms, experimental pragmatics has proved to be a valuable research area. It has revealed, among other things, that there are large within-individual variations in people’s pragmatic abilities, and that averages over many different experimental conditions may not capture important differences in how people behave. Moreover, pragmatics provides an empirical framework which is complementary to linguistic theory.