Pragmatic is an adjective that describes people who are concerned more with what matters than with what should be or could be. For a pragmatic person, the real world is all that counts. A pragmatic approach to life is often more successful than an idealistic one.
The word pragmatic derives from the Latin root pragma, meaning “to deal with” or “to take up.” The philosophy of pragmatism was originally developed by William James and Josiah Royce in 1907 in their work, ‘Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking’. They began by identifying ‘The Present Dilemma in Philosophy’: a fundamental and seemingly irresolvable clash between two different ways of thinking, with the tough-minded empiricist commitment to experience on the one hand and the tender-minded appeal to ‘a priori principles’ on the other. They promised that pragmatism would resolve this clash by focusing on what actually works in practice.
As a practical philosophical movement, pragmatism was not without its critics. In particular, the pragmatists were opposed by mainstream variants of foundationalism in the analytic tradition, including those associated with Wittgenstein, Dewey, and Russell. However, a more recent generation of philosophers have been reviving the philosophies of James and Royce, and developing it in various directions, ranging from a ‘pragmatist metaphysics’ to a theory of inquiry (see below).
Several issues divide pragmatism into near side and far side pragmatics. The near side concerns semantics and the ways in which utterances are meaningful, and how their meanings vary according to the context of their use. This includes, for example, the resolution of ambiguity and vagueness, the reference of indexicals and demonstratives, and the interpretation of anaphors. The far side of pragmatics is more general and relates to the nature of truth, and how to distinguish between true and false claims. This includes the problem of a posteriori truth, as well as the theory of inference.
A key characteristic of pragmatics is its rejection of dichotomies like fact/value, mind/body, and analytic/synthetic. It also rejects skepticism, and embraces fallibilism. It views knowledge as a process of discovery, not a static and objective state, and emphasizes the value of inquiry.
The pragmatists’ ideas have been applied to areas as diverse as sociology, economics, and politics. In the latter, it has been used to argue for an empirical perspective on democracy and for policies that promote social justice. It has been applied to the study of race and racism, as in the work of Mary Parker Follett and Robert C. Kaag, and to the study of education, as in the work of John Dewey. It has also been used to describe the philosophical underpinnings of behavioral science and decision theory, and the methodology of scientific research. A prominent analytic philosopher, who has a strong relationship with pragmatism and with Peirce’s work, is Richard Rorty. He has argued for the importance of pragmatism as a way to reintegrate analytic and continental philosophy, and has promoted ‘cultural pragmatism’ as an alternative to neopragmatism and postmodernism.