Pragmatic is a word that describes choices or actions that are practical and reasonable. It is often used to praise politicians who take a pragmatic approach that takes arguments from both sides into account rather than a more extreme position. The word pragmatic can also be applied to situations where we take into consideration the consequences of an action or decision. For example, we might decide to settle a lawsuit because it would be more cost effective than taking the case all the way through trial. This type of pragmatic decision making is considered a good thing because it helps to save money.
The term pragmatic is most often used in the context of philosophical thought, but it can also be applied to other areas. For example, we might say someone is a pragmatic person because they know how to balance family life and work without getting stressed out. The word pragmatic is also used in the context of project management when we discuss whether to eliminate an action that may impact the delivery date of a product or service. Taking the pragmatic view allows us to make better decisions in order to ensure that we meet our project goals.
A pragmatist approach is one that is guided by the principle of maximizing the benefits to be gained while minimizing the costs associated with the action taken. This is an approach that can help to reduce stress and improve the overall outcome of a project. A pragmatist perspective can also help to reduce the number of risks involved in a project by allowing the team members to evaluate their risks and come up with solutions that are more beneficial to the entire organization.
Pragmatism is a philosophy that first appeared in the United States around 1870 and presents a growing third alternative to both analytic and ‘Continental’ philosophical traditions worldwide. Its originators were the so-called classic pragmatists Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), who coined the term, and his close friend and colleague William James (1842-1910). Peirce’s Harvard colleague Josiah Royce (1855-1916), although officially allied with absolute idealism, was also a pragmatist in practice.
Peirce complained that analyzing definitions did not enable a higher grade of clarity, so he relabeled his philosophy pragmaticism and hoped that this name was ugly enough to keep it safe from kidnappers. Later, pragmatist philosophers such as Dewey and his disciples and imitators, and more recently neo-pragmatists like Brandom, have developed sophisticated accounts of how a concept can be’retrieved’ by examining its pragmatically meaningful uses in the language-game.
Pragmatism has also been embraced by liberatory philosophical projects in areas such as feminism (Seigfried 1996), ecology (Alexander 2013), and Native American philosophy (Pratt 2002). The discourse ethics that Habermas developed to scaffold authentic communication free of distortions of power and ideology owes much to the pragmatist notion of community of inquiry. This is a rich heritage that, despite Quine’s qualified enthusiasm for some aspects of the pragmatist legacy and the unqualified disdain of others (such as by Ludwig Wittgenstein), mainstream analytic philosophy tended to ignore until the early 1980s.