Editing Pragmatism (section)

==Origins==
[[File:Charles Sanders Peirce theb3558.jpg|thumb|Charles Peirce: the American [[polymath]] who first identified pragmatism]]

Pragmatism as a philosophical movement began in the United States around 1870.<ref name="Stanford 2013">{{Cite SEP |last=Hookway |first=Christopher |title=Pragmatism |url-id= pragmatism |edition=Spring 2010 |access-date=13 September 2013 |date=16 August 2008}}</ref> Charles Sanders Peirce (and his pragmatic maxim) is given credit for its development,<ref name= "HaackLane2006">{{cite book|
first1= Susan| last1= Haack| first2= Robert Edwin | last2=!Lane| author-link=Susan Haack|title=Pragmatism, old & new: selected writings|date=11 April 2006| publisher= Prometheus Books|isbn=978-1-59102-359-3|pages=18–67}}</ref> 
along with later 20th-century contributors, William James and John Dewey.<ref name= "BiestaBurbules">Biesta, G.J.J. & Burbules, N. (2003). ''Pragmatism and educational research''. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.</ref> Its direction was determined by [[The Metaphysical Club]] members Peirce, Dewey, James, [[Chauncey Wright]] and [[George Herbert Mead]].

The word pragmatic has existed in English since the 1500s, borrowed from French and derived from Greek via Latin. The Greek word ''pragma'', meaning business, deed or act, is a noun derived from the verb ''prassein'', to do.<ref>{{cite encyclopedia | encyclopedia = Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology| title = pragmatic | year =| page =| publisher =| isbn=}}</ref>
The first use in print of the name ''pragmatism'' was in 1898 by James, who credited Peirce with [[Neologism|coining the term]] during the early 1870s.<ref>James, William (1898), "Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results", delivered before the Philosophical Union of the University of California at Berkeley, August 26, 1898, and first printed in the ''University Chronicle'' 1, September 1898, pp. 287–310. ''Internet Archive'' [https://archive.org/stream/philosophicalcon00jameuoft#page/n4/mode/1up Eprint]. On [https://archive.org/stream/philosophicalcon00jameuoft#page/290/mode/1up p. 290]: {{quote|I refer to Mr. Charles S. Peirce, with whose very existence as a philosopher I dare say many of you are unacquainted. He is one of the most original of contemporary thinkers; and the principle of practicalism or pragmatism, as he called it, when I first heard him enunciate it at Cambridge in the early [1870s] is the clue or compass by following which I find myself more and more confirmed in believing we may keep our feet upon the proper trail.}}
James credited Peirce again in 1906 lectures published in 1907 as ''[[s:Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking|Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking]]'', see Lecture 2, fourth paragraph.</ref> James regarded Peirce's "Illustrations of the Logic of Science" series—including "[[s:The Fixation of Belief|The Fixation of Belief]]" (1877), and especially "[[s:How to Make Our Ideas Clear|How to Make Our Ideas Clear]]" (1878)—as the foundation of pragmatism.<ref>{{Cite book|last=James|first=William|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=wRMXL4uYEegC&pg=PA124|title=The Will to Believe: And Other Essays in Popular Philosophy|date=1896|publisher=Longmans, Green|isbn=978-0-7905-7948-1|language=en}}</ref><ref>In addition to James's lectures and publications on pragmatist ideas (''Will to Believe'' 1897, etc.) wherein he credited Peirce, James also arranged for two paid series of lectures by Peirce, including the 1903 Harvard lectures on pragmatism. See pp. 261–264, 290–2, & 324 in Brent, Joseph (1998), ''Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life'', 2nd edition.</ref> 
Peirce in turn wrote in 1906<ref>Peirce, C.S., "The Founding of Pragmatism", manuscript written 1906, published in ''The Hound & Horn: A Harvard Miscellany'' v. II, n. 3, April–June 1929, pp. 282–285, see 283–284, reprinted 1934 as "Historical Affinities and Genesis" in ''[[Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography#CP|Collected Papers]]'' v. 5, paragraphs 11–13, see 12.</ref> that [[Nicholas St. John Green]] had been instrumental by emphasizing the importance of applying [[Alexander Bain (philosopher)|Alexander Bain]]'s definition of belief, which was "that upon which a man is prepared to act". Peirce wrote that "from this definition, pragmatism is scarce more than a corollary; so that I am disposed to think of him as the grandfather of pragmatism". John Shook has said, "Chauncey Wright also deserves considerable credit, for as both Peirce and James recall, it was Wright who demanded a [[phenomenalist]] and [[Fallibilism|fallibilist]] [[empiricism]] as an alternative to rationalistic speculation."<ref>{{Cite web|last= Shook|first=John|title=The Metaphysical Club|url=http://www.pragmatism.org/research/metaphysical_club.htm |website= pragmatism.org | publisher = | access-date=2023-03-14}}</ref>

Peirce developed the idea that inquiry depends on real doubt, not mere verbal or [[hyperbolic doubt]],<ref>Peirce, C.S. (1877), [[s:The Fixation of Belief|The Fixation of Belief]], ''Popular Science Monthly'', v. 12, pp. 1–15. Reprited often, including ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 358–387 and ''Essential Peirce'' v. 1, pp. 109–123).</ref> and said that, in order to understand a conception in a fruitful way, "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object",<ref name="Peirce1878"/> which he later called the [[pragmatic maxim]]. It equates any conception of an object to the general extent of the conceivable implications for informed practice of that object's effects. This is the heart of his pragmatism as a method of experimentational mental reflection arriving at conceptions in terms of conceivable confirmatory and disconfirmatory circumstances—a method hospitable to the generation of explanatory hypotheses, and conducive to the employment and improvement of verification. Typical of Peirce is his concern with inference to explanatory hypotheses as outside the usual foundational alternative between deductivist rationalism and inductivist empiricism, although he was a [[Charles Sanders Peirce#Mathematics|mathematical logician]] and a [[Founders of statistics|founder of statistics]].{{Citation needed|date=November 2023}}

Peirce lectured and further wrote on pragmatism to make clear his own interpretation. While framing a conception's meaning in terms of conceivable tests, Peirce emphasized that, since a conception is general, its meaning, its intellectual purport, equates to its acceptance's implications for general practice, rather than to any definite set of real effects (or test results); a conception's clarified meaning points toward its conceivable verifications, but the outcomes are not meanings, but individual upshots. Peirce in 1905 coined the new name [[pragmaticism]] "for the precise purpose of expressing the original definition",<ref>{{cite journal |last= Peirce |first=C. S. |date=April 1905 |title=What Pragmatism Is |journal=The Monist |volume=15 |issue=2 |pages= [https://books.google.com/books?id=j6oLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA161 161–181]; see [https://books.google.com/books?id=j6oLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA165 165–166] |doi=10.5840/monist190515230}} Reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 411–437, see 414.</ref> saying that "all went happily" with James's and [[F.&nbsp;C.&nbsp;S. Schiller]]'s variant uses of the old name "pragmatism" and that he nonetheless coined the new name because of the old name's growing use in "literary journals, where it gets abused". Yet in a 1906 manuscript, he cited as causes his differences with James and Schiller<ref>Manuscript "A Sketch of Logical Critics", ''Essential Peirce'' v. 2, pp. 451–462, see pp. 457–458. Peirce wrote:
{{quote|I have always fathered my pragmati''ci''sm (as I have called it since James and Schiller made the word [pragmatism] imply "the will to believe", the mutability of truth, the soundness of Zeno's refutation of motion, and pluralism generally), upon Kant, Berkeley, and Leibniz. ...}}</ref> and, in a 1908 publication,<ref name=NA>Peirce, C. S. (1908). "[[s:A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God|A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God]]", ''Hibbert Journal'' 7, reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 6, paragraphs 452–85, and in ''Essential Peirce'' v. 2, 434–450, and elsewhere. After discussing James, Peirce stated (Section V, fourth paragraph) as the specific occasion of his coinage "pragmaticism", journalist, pragmatist, and literary author [[Giovanni Papini]]'s declaration of pragmatism's indefinability: see, for example, Papini's "What Is Pragmatism Like", published in translation in October 1907 in ''Popular Science Monthly'' v. 71, pp. [https://books.google.com/books?id=DKkWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA351 351–358].</ref> his differences with James as well as literary author [[Giovanni Papini]]. Peirce regarded his own views that truth is immutable and infinity is real, as being opposed by the other pragmatists, but he remained allied with them about the falsity of [[necessitarianism]] and about the reality of generals and habits understood in terms of potential concrete effects even if unactualized.<ref name=NA />

Pragmatism enjoyed renewed attention after [[Willard Van Orman Quine]] and [[Wilfrid Sellars]] used a revised pragmatism to criticize [[logical positivism]] in the 1960s. Inspired by the work of Quine and Sellars, a brand of pragmatism known sometimes as [[neopragmatism]] gained influence through [[Richard Rorty]], the most influential of the late 20th century pragmatists along with [[Hilary Putnam]] and [[Robert Brandom]]. Contemporary pragmatism may be broadly divided into a strict [[Analytic philosophy|analytic tradition]] and a "neo-classical" pragmatism (such as [[Susan Haack]]) that adheres to the work of Peirce, James, and Dewey.{{Citation needed|date=November 2023}}