Pragmatic is a word that means to approach situations, problems, or decision-making in a practical and realistic manner. Pragmatic people tend to prioritize practicality and efficiency over theoretical principles or ideals. A pragmatic person also takes into account the impact that an action or decision may have on others.
The term “pragmatic” was first recorded in 1580-90 and comes from the Greek pragma, which means “deed; state business.” The word is often used to describe someone who is efficient, down-to-earth, or practical. Synonyms for pragmatic include practical, realistic, sensible and logical. It is often compared to dogmatic, which refers to a set of strict moral and faith-based principles that aren’t always flexible or accommodating to changing circumstances.
Classical pragmatists include Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914), a logician and mathematician, and William James (1842-1910), a psychologist and moralist with a medical degree. These philosophers viewed truth as the process of verification and held that beliefs were warranted by experience or observation. They also believed that an individual’s innate sense of right and wrong was a powerful guide to what to believe and how to behave.
Peirce, who also coined the word “pragmatism,” saw that there was a need to create a philosophy of science that would allow scientists to avoid being led astray by the beliefs and theories of their peers. He argued that the scientific method of experimentation and observation would lead to valid conclusions about reality, and that this would help scientists develop and maintain an accurate worldview.
Many contemporary philosophers have reworked and extended classical pragmatism into a more general theory of human behavior and cognition. These modern pragmatists are often referred to as New Pragmatists. Some scholars see this movement as a way to bridge analytic and continental traditions of philosophy and to bring pragmatism closer to the everyday experience of human beings.
New pragmatists are concerned with how language functions, and what it does for human beings in terms of communicating and understanding each other. They are interested in the ways that words can have different meanings, how those meanings vary depending on the context and situation of use, how the meaning of an utterance is constructed, and how language changes over time.
There are a variety of subfields of pragmatics, including formal and computational; theoretical and applied; game-theoretic, clinical and experimental; and intercultural, interlinguistic and neuropragmatics. In addition, there are a number of different historical pragmatic schools and approaches.
Some of the most important works in pragmatics are by Charles S. Peirce, William James and John Dewey. For more reading, check out our comprehensive bibliography on this topic in PhilPapers. It is searchable and has links to full texts for most of the books cited. It contains references for many more articles on related topics as well as to collections of writings by Peirce and Dewey. You can also visit the Internet Philosophy Ontology Project for more information about this and other philosophical concepts. The bibliography is updated as new resources become available.