Pragmatic is a philosophy of language and meaning. It is an approach to understanding and using words which focuses on results and consequences rather than ideas of what things should be like. The word pragmatic comes from the Greek pragmatikos, meaning practical, and it is related to the Latin praxis, meaning practice.
The core of pragmatics is a theory of how people interpret the meaning of other people’s speech, which takes into account what they will do with what they have heard. This includes a consideration of turn-taking norms and other social contexts, which is known as conversational pragmatism or pragmatic discourse analysis. This theory is sometimes also called ‘pragmatic semantics’ although there are differences between the two theories, particularly in terms of the discipline and methodology involved.
During the 1970s and 1980s, pragmatism experienced something of a revival. This was largely due to Richard Rorty’s iconoclastic attacks on mainstream epistemology, which were motivated by the desire to rectify what he saw as its crucial mistake: naively conceiving of language and thought as’mirroring’ the world. Rorty’s pragmatist reformulation of epistemology birthed so-called neopragmatism, to which many influential recent philosophers have contributed (e.g. Hilary Putnam, Robert Brandom and Huw Price).
Neopragmatists differ from classical pragmatists in several respects. They include a rejection of the notion that truth is a substantive metaphysical property of some propositions (though they may accept that some statements have a stronger claim to being true than others) and they deny that the logical relations between utterances are determined by a ‘rule of inference’, which would impose a structure on the way language-users think about the world (but they still agree that a statement’s truth depends on how it is used).
For example, William James, an early advocate of pragmatism, maintained that something is true only in so far as it works. His view meant that the ontological claims of religions are not true, but they may be useful for soothing people in times of anxiety.
In this sense, pragmatism is often associated with ‘functionalist’ or ‘instrumentalist’ epistemology. Functionalist pragmatism is a philosophy of knowledge which sees epistemic justification as a matter of practical effectiveness, as opposed to the more traditional epistemological concerns with verisimilitude or coherence.
The term pragmatic has been applied to a variety of topics, from political science and management theory to the arts, sociology and psychology. For example, a pragmatic politician is one who takes into account the views of the public when making decisions. Similarly, a pragmatic psychologist tries to find ways to improve patients’ functioning in everyday life by examining their current beliefs, attitudes and behaviours.
More generally, a pragmatic approach is likely to be more effective in achieving its goals than an idealistic approach. For example, when it comes to saving wildlife, a pragmatic approach to resolving conflict usually leads to better outcomes than an absolutist one. Similarly, it is more practical to work towards peace than try and win a war.