Pragmatic is a philosophy that focuses on practicality and real-world results. Pragmatists tend to be skeptical of strategies that are not grounded in facts or evidence and can help team members avoid wasting resources on unrealistic plans. Having this pragmatic perspective fosters efficiency in brainstorming sessions and can help teams reach more tangible goals.
Being a pragmatic individual involves having an attitude that adjusts to changing circumstances and discarding old beliefs that don’t work anymore. For example, a pragmatist would settle a lawsuit because it’s cheaper than taking it to trial and potentially losing their business. Similarly, a pragmatist would take a more pragmatic approach to saving wildlife than an idealistic one.
The concept of pragmatism has been around for centuries and can be found in many different cultures throughout the world. The most popular philosophies and theories of pragmatism include those by William James, Charles Sanders Pierce, and Dewey. It has been used in a variety of fields including ethics, psychology, communication studies, and research methods.
In the field of language, pragmatics is a subfield that focuses on the context-dependent nature of language use. Its main concerns are the meanings of words, what speakers mean by uttering them, and how a speaker’s actions influence the meaning of an utterance. It is also concerned with the role that grammar plays in determining the meaning of an utterance.
Some neo-pragmatists develop their own theory of truth that is different from the correspondence theories of truth developed by Peirce and Dewey. This neo-pragmatism is known as pragmatic truth. Its central idea is that truth can be viewed as a matter of what can be warranted for assertibility over time in a community.
Another area that neo-pragmatism has been applied is the development of pragmatic theories of semantics and grammar. These pragmatic theories have developed from a dissatisfaction with the metaphysical framework of the traditional correspondence theory. Those who have followed this path of development have generally developed an empirical psychological theory of utterance interpretation that is based on perception and rule-following augmented by some species of ampliative inference, e.g., induction, Bayesian reasoning, or perhaps a special application of general principles that is special to communication, as conceived by Grice.
Pragmatic theory can also be applied to a variety of fields in the social sciences and humanities, such as education, management, public policy, and law. A pragmatist approach to these fields requires that researchers consider the practical consequences of their actions and the outcomes of those actions on others in their environments. It also encourages the use of multiple methods, measures, and researchers. This is sometimes referred to as the multi-methodology approach and is associated with the pragmatist perspective of inquiry (Creswell 2013; Morgan 2014a). The main issues that arise in applying this method are: how can one be sure that the outcome of an action will be beneficial for all parties involved, how does this theory translate into research methodology, and how can we guarantee that the outcomes of an action will be practical for the whole population?