The word pragmatic is often used to describe people who are practical and logical. It’s also sometimes used to describe actions that are based on fact, rather than on ideals. The term is derived from the Greek word pragma, which means “to do” or “to proceed.” In philosophical terms, pragmatics refers to the principle that something is true only insofar as it works.
Pragmatics is a branch of philosophy that deals with how language works in human communication. It’s sometimes contrasted with semantics, the study of meaning itself. One important difference is that semantics focuses on what the words of a sentence mean, while pragmatics focuses on how they are actually used in a conversation.
Different philosophers have focused on different aspects of pragmatics. One broad approach is known as near-side pragmatics, while another involves examining the features of the speech context in which a sentence is spoken. Still another view is to look at what’s involved in generating the implicatures that emerge from certain speech acts or from the context in which they are performed.
Many of the early pragmatics criticized formal logic, including Schiller in his book Formal Logic. However, the majority of pragmatists today do not reject the possibility of such logic altogether. Rather, they are critical of its pretension to ultimate validity and see it as just one tool among others in the toolbox of the rationalist.
Philosophical pragmatism also is a school of thought that aims to reconcile anti-skepticism with fallibilism. That’s because it is difficult to believe that any of our knowledge is absolutely true or false. It’s more reasonable to accept that our knowledge is limited by our human capabilities and the environment in which we live. This is sometimes called the pragmatic theory of truth or the pragmatic criterion for truth.
Other uses of the word pragmatic are as follows:
a person who is pragmatic is someone who is concerned with results and consequences. A pragmatic person will take a realistic assessment of the situation and choose a course of action that is most likely to lead to a positive outcome.
A pragmatic politician will seek to get things done, even if it means bending the rules occasionally. A pragmatic teacher will try to teach students what they need to know for life and encourage them to develop their own interests. A pragmatic therapist might use short-term cognitive behavioral therapy to help patients change their thoughts and behaviors in order to improve their lives.
The science of pragmatics is important in computer technology, especially in natural language processing (a subdiscipline of artificial intelligence). It’s important for computers to be able to recognize the intentions of humans, and that’s why scientists work on pragmatic models of understanding. One example of a pragmatic computer application is the development of voice recognition software that can understand spoken English with the same accuracy as software designed to process written English. In addition, researchers are working on pragmatic models of emotion and cognition to give computers more realistic abilities.