Pragmatic is an adjective that refers to a person or thing that is practical, reasonable, and results-oriented. It is used often to describe a person who thinks of things in terms of their practical effects, such as people who are concerned more with how something will impact them than with the philosophical implications or possibilities of an idea. It is also used in a more positive way to describe someone who is practical and reasonable in their choices or actions, such as when people say that someone takes a “pragmatic” position on a political issue.
Pragmatism is a form of philosophical inquiry that began in the United States around 1870. It was popularized by the influential philosopher William James, although he scrupulously swore that he had borrowed the term from his compatriot C. S. Peirce. James and a number of other pragmatists, including G. H. Mead, Dewey, and Charles Royce, wrote extensively about the nature of inquiry and its place in human life. These writers can be considered the “first generation” of pragmatists.
Despite this initial success, pragmatism’s popularity declined in the mid-20th century. This was primarily because of the emergence of analytic philosophy, which became the predominant methodological orientation in most Anglo-American philosophy departments. Other reasons included the general decline in interest in American philosophy as a whole.
While analytic philosophers like Quine were inspired by some elements of pragmatism, most did not embrace it as a full-fledged philosophical system. As a result, pragmatism is today a minority philosophy.
However, a small but devoted group of pragmatists continues to thrive in the United States and abroad. In recent decades, they have developed a variety of theoretical and applied topics in pragmatic philosophy. These topics include pragmatic metaphysics, social science, the philosophy of religion, and ethics. They have also contributed to the development of a wide range of disciplines, such as the philosophy of education, psychology, and law.
Pragmatic theorists believe that a theory is valid if it can be demonstrated to have practical value. To demonstrate this, they employ a method of interpretation called “pragmatic inference.” This method is based on the principle that any meaningful statement can be interpreted as an assertion with a certain meaning if we know that some of the facts about the statement’s context are true. This is known as near-side pragmatics, and it is a key part of pragmatism’s philosophical heritage.
Some pragmatists have criticized the claim that all statements are meaningful, while others have defended this view. Other pragmatists have been critical of the idea that logic can be used to determine the truth of a statement, or even that a logical system can be defined in terms of rules. These pragmatists can be considered to belong to the second generation of pragmatism. Others have worked on the development of a number of methods of doing formal logic and can be considered to be part of the third generation. These pragmatists may be described as neopragmatists.