Pragmatic is a philosophical tradition that – broadly speaking – understands knowing the world to be inseparable from agency within it. This general idea has attracted a rich and at times contradictory range of interpretations, which have influenced a wide array of other philosophical traditions. Some examples of these include: that all knowledge is pragmatic in nature (as opposed to epistemic realism, which argues that all knowledge can be tested by scientific experimentation); that philosophical concepts have little or no practical value and should be rejected unless they are useful; that the experience of the world consists primarily in transacting with rather than representing it; that articulate language rests on a deep bed of shared human practices that can never be fully ‘made explicit’. It has also been embraced by the pragmatic philosophers of the Chicago Club, such as George Herbert Mead and John Dewey, who were active in social reform work and women’s rights activism, and by a variety of liberatory and environmentalist philosophical projects.
The term pragmatism is also used to refer to a philosophical approach that emphasizes results and consequences over ideas about what should be, or the best way to get there. This is sometimes contrasted with idealism, which is the view that an ideal is worth striving for.
In linguistics, pragmatism has been associated with pragmatics, which studies how language is used in context to determine meaning. In contrast to semantics, syntax and semiotics, which study the rule systems that determine literal linguistic meaning, pragmatics looks at how the physical or social context of an utterance affects its meaning.
For example, the sentence ‘I have two sons.’ is ambiguous, in that it could imply the speaker only has two daughters instead. The context of the utterance, such as the preceding question and the social setting, helps to resolve this ambiguity.
This pragmatism also applies to other areas of philosophy, such as political philosophy and ethics. The pragmatist philosopher William James saw his philosophy as an attempt to bring the ‘inner dynamism’ of human life into philosophical analysis, so that we can ‘take up our own spiritual challenge’ and learn from life as it unfolds.
Pragmatism is a prominent strand of continental European and Latin American philosophy, as well as in Asian thought and Aboriginal philosophies. It has also been a major influence on analytic philosophy in the USA, where it has competed with logical positivism and the utilitarian school as a dominant methodological orientation.
A growing number of academics, especially in the field of environmental philosophy, are beginning to embrace pragmatism as a methodological framework for research. This is reflected in the growth of vibrant pragmatist research networks in South America, Scandinavia and more recently central Europe and China. In addition, a growing number of liberatory philosophical projects in fields such as feminism, ecology and Native American philosophy are currently looking to the pragmatist tradition for inspiration. This is largely due to the broad and inclusive nature of pragmatism as a tradition.