Pragmatic describes a person who thinks about things in a practical way rather than idealistically. People who are pragmatic are able to remain calm in stressful situations and think logically instead of being swayed by emotions. The opposite of pragmatic is dogmatic, a person who sticks to certain morals and thinking even in the face of opposing views.
Pragmatism is a philosophical movement that originated in the United States during the latter part of the nineteenth century. Its proponents believe that a proposition or ideology is true only if it has practical consequences and that unpractical ideas should be rejected. Its influence extends beyond philosophy to law, education, psychology, politics, sociology, and literary criticism.
The pragmatists who developed the theory of pragmatism were not all philosophers but were largely Harvard-educated men with diverse backgrounds. They included the proto-positivist Chauncey Wright, future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the psychologist William James. Each of them had a major influence on American philosophy.
A central tenet of pragmatism is that knowledge is based on experience and that a person’s perceptions of reality are shaped by their social experiences. Because the social environment shapes our experiences, pragmatists believe that all knowledge is social knowledge (Goldkuhl 2012). Because of this, pragmatists do not view knowledge as reality and do not see it as something that one can prove objectively. Rather, knowledge is constructed for the purpose of better managing one’s existence and taking part in the world (Morgan 2014a).
One of the most important aspects of pragmatism is that truth is not synonymous with factual accuracy. For pragmatists, what matters is whether a belief is true to one’s values and beliefs.
In addition, pragmatists believe that there is a process of discovery through which new beliefs and behaviors develop. They also emphasize the importance of actions, because they are how we change reality. They understand that the world is in a state of becoming, and that it is through action that we create meaning in our lives.
Because of the many philosophical issues that pragmatism raises, its proponents have often disagreed about what it means to be a pragmatist and about the major issues in pragmatism. For example, pragmatists have had different positions on truth, realism, skepticism, perception, justification, fallibilism, and realism.
Despite these differences, the pragmatists who have developed a theory of pragmatics share several features, including the emphasis on contextual information and the importance of a hierarchy of intentions in utterance interpretation. In addition, they all reject the Cartesian picture of reality and mind and the traditional empiricism-rationalism divisions in philosophy. As a result, pragmatism is not easily categorized as either postpositivism or constructivism, although it has been classified by some as an American variation of postpositivism.