Concept
Pragmaticism
Overview
"Pragmaticism" is a term used by Charles Sanders Peirce for his pragmatic philosophy starting in 1905, in order to distance himself and it from pragmatism, the original name, which had been used in a manner he did not approve of in the "literary journals".
Peirce in 1905 announced his coinage "pragmaticism", saying that it was "ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers" (Collected Papers (CP) 5.414). Today, outside of philosophy, "pragmatism" is often taken to refer to a compromise of aims or principles, even a ruthless search for mercenary advantage. Peirce gave other or more specific reasons for the distinction in a surviving draft letter that year and in later writings. Peirce's pragmatism, that is, pragmaticism, differed in Peirce's view from other pragmatisms by its commitments to the spirit of strict logic, the immutability of truth, the reality of infinity, and the difference between (1) actively willing to control thought, to doubt, to weigh reasons, and (2) willing not to exert the will, willing to believe. In his view his pragmatism is, strictly speaking, not itself a whole philosophy, but instead a general method for the clarification of ideas. He first publicly formulated his pragmatism as an aspect of scientific logic along with principles of statistics and modes of inference in his "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series of articles in 1877-8.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
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Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism, but there is much to say about this claim, so I merely mention it. It is a true claim when the individual rationalist is what is called a man of feeling, and when the individual empiricist prides himself on being hard-headed. In that case the rationalist will usually also be in favor of what is called free-will, and the empiricist will be a…
William James, Pragmatism
States what Pragmaticism is; the author is tied to Pragmaticism in the knowledge graph.
It almost reconciles one to being no logician that one thereby escapes so much abstractionism. Abstractionism of the worst sort dogs Mr. Russell in his own trials to tell positively what the word 'truth' means. In the third of his articles on Meinong, in Mind, vol. xiii, p. 509 (1904), he attempts this feat by limiting the discussion to three terms only, a proposition, its content, and an object, abstracting from…
William James, The Meaning of Truth
States what Pragmaticism is; the author is tied to Pragmaticism in the knowledge graph.
Summing up, we may say that Peirce’s pragmaticism is a doctrine concerning the meaning, conception, or rational purport of objects, namely, that these consist in the “effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”[84] “Our idea of anything is our idea of its sensible…
Charles S. Peirce, Chance, Love, and Logic
States what Pragmaticism is; opens on Pragmaticism.
Philosophers who discussed Pragmaticism
Related ideas
- Empiricism
- Foundationalism
- The Varieties of Religious Experience
- Alexander Bain (philosopher)
- James Mark Baldwin
- John Dewey
- Cartesian doubt
- Karl-Otto Apel
- Niccolò Machiavelli
- Prediction
- Scientific method
- Coherentism
- Fallibilism
- Susan Haack
- George Herbert Mead
- United States
- Zeno's paradoxes
- Inductive reasoning
- Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography
- Disposition
- Josiah Royce
- Correspondence theory of truth
- Paul Weiss (philosopher)
- Charles Hartshorne
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.