Editing Pragmatism (section)

== Core tenets ==

A few of the various but often interrelated positions characteristic of philosophers working from a pragmatist approach include:

*[[Epistemology]] (justification): a [[Coherentism|coherentist]] theory of justification that rejects the claim that all knowledge and justified belief rest ultimately on a foundation of noninferential knowledge or justified belief. Coherentists hold that justification is solely a function of some relationship between beliefs, none of which are privileged beliefs in the way maintained by [[foundationalism|foundationalist]] theories of justification.
*[[Epistemology]] (truth): a [[Deflationary theory of truth|deflationary]] or [[Pragmatic theory of truth|pragmatic]] theory of truth; the former is the epistemological claim that assertions that predicate the truth of a statement do not attribute a property called truth to such a statement while the latter is the epistemological claim that assertions that predicate the truth of a statement attribute the property of useful-to-believe to such a statement.
*[[Metaphysics]]: a [[Pluralism (philosophy)|pluralist]] view that there is more than one sound way to conceptualize the world and its content.
*[[Philosophy of science]]: an [[Instrumentalism|instrumentalist]] and [[scientific anti-realism|scientific anti-realist]] view that a scientific concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes objective reality.
*[[Philosophy of language]]: an anti-[[representationalist]] view that rejects analyzing the [[Semantics (natural language)|semantic meaning]] of propositions, mental states, and statements in terms of a correspondence or representational relationship and instead analyzes semantic meaning in terms of notions like dispositions to action, inferential relationships, and/or functional roles (e.g. [[Behaviorism#Behaviorism in philosophy|behaviorism]] and [[inferentialism]]). Not to be confused with [[pragmatics]], a sub-field of [[linguistics]] with no relation to philosophical pragmatism.
*Additionally, forms of [[empiricism]], [[fallibilism]], [[verificationism]], and a [[Naturalized epistemology|Quinean naturalist]] metaphilosophy are all commonly elements of pragmatist philosophies. Many pragmatists are [[Factual relativism|epistemological relativists]] and see this to be an important facet of their pragmatism (e.g. [[Joseph Margolis]]), but this is controversial and other pragmatists argue such relativism to be seriously misguided (e.g. [[Hilary Putnam]], [[Susan Haack]]).

===Anti-reification of concepts and theories===
Dewey in ''The Quest for Certainty'' criticized what he called "the philosophical fallacy": Philosophers often take categories (such as the mental and the physical) for granted because they don't realize that these are [[Nominalism|nominal]] concepts that were invented to help solve specific problems.<ref name="Hildebrand 2003">{{cite book |last=Hildebrand |first=David L. |date=2003 |title=Beyond realism and antirealism: John Dewey and the neopragmatists |series=The Vanderbilt library of American philosophy |location=Nashville |publisher=[[Vanderbilt University Press]] |isbn=082651426X |oclc=51053926 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/beyondrealismant0000hild }}</ref> This causes metaphysical and conceptual confusion. Various examples are the "[[Absolute (philosophy)|ultimate Being]]" of [[Hegelian]] philosophers, the belief in a "[[Absolute intrinsic value denial|realm of value]]", the idea that logic, because it is an abstraction from concrete thought, has nothing to do with the action of concrete thinking.

David L. Hildebrand summarized the problem: "Perceptual inattention to the specific functions comprising inquiry led realists and idealists alike to formulate accounts of knowledge that project the products of extensive abstraction back onto experience."<ref name="Hildebrand 2003"/>{{rp|40}}

===Naturalism and anti-Cartesianism===
From the outset, pragmatists wanted to reform philosophy and bring it more in line with the scientific method as they understood it. They argued that idealist and realist philosophy had a tendency to present human knowledge as something beyond what science could grasp. They held that these philosophies then resorted either to a phenomenology inspired by Kant or to [[Correspondence theory of truth|correspondence theories of knowledge and truth]].{{Citation needed|date=February 2016}} Pragmatists criticized the former for its [[A priori and a posteriori|a priori]]sm, and the latter because it takes [[Correspondence theory of truth|correspondence]] as an unanalyzable fact. Pragmatism instead tries to explain the relation between knower and known.

In 1868,<ref>{{cite journal |last=Peirce |first=C. S. |date=1868 |title=Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed for Man |journal=[[Journal of Speculative Philosophy]] |volume=2 |issue=2 |pages=103–114 |jstor=25665643 |jstor-access=free |url=http://www.peirce.org/writings/p26.html}} Reprinted in ''Collected Peirce'' v. 5, paragraphs 213–263, ''Writings'' v. 2, pp. 193–211, ''Essential Peirce'' v. 2, pp. 11–27, and elsewhere.</ref> C.S. Peirce argued that there is no power of intuition in the sense of a cognition unconditioned by inference, and no power of introspection, intuitive or otherwise, and that awareness of an internal world is by hypothetical inference from external facts. Introspection and intuition were staple philosophical tools at least since Descartes. He argued that there is no absolutely first cognition in a cognitive process; such a process has its beginning but can always be analyzed into finer cognitive stages. That which we call introspection does not give privileged access to knowledge about the mind—the self is a concept that is derived from our interaction with the external world and not the other way around.<ref>De Waal 2005, pp. 7–10</ref> At the same time he held persistently that pragmatism and epistemology in general could not be derived from principles of psychology understood as a special science:<ref>{{cite journal |last=Kasser |first=Jeff |date=Summer 1999 |title=Peirce's Supposed Psychologism |journal=Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society |volume=35 |issue=3 |pages=501–526 |jstor=40320777 |url=https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/aboutcsp/kasser/psychol.htm}}</ref> what we do think is too different from what we should think; in his "[[Charles Sanders Peirce bibliography#illus|Illustrations of the Logic of Science]]" series, Peirce formulated both pragmatism and principles of statistics as aspects of scientific method in general.<ref>Peirce held that (philosophical) logic is a [[normative]] field, that pragmatism is a method developed in it, and that philosophy, though not deductive or so general as mathematics, still concerns positive phenomena in general, including phenomena of matter and mind, without depending on special experiences or experiments such as those of [[optics]] and [[experimental psychology]], in both of which Peirce was active. See quotes under "[http://www.helsinki.fi/science/commens/terms/philosophy.html Philosophy]" at the ''Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms''. Peirce also harshly criticized the Cartesian approach of starting from hyperbolic doubts rather than from the combination of established beliefs and genuine doubts. See the opening of his 1868 "Some Consequences of Four Incapacities", ''Journal of Speculative Philosophy'' v. 2, n. 3, pp. 140–157. Reprinted ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 264–317, ''Writings'' v. 2, pp. 211–242, and ''Essential Peirce'' v. 1, pp. 28–55. [http://www.cspeirce.com/menu/library/bycsp/conseq/cn-frame.htm Eprint].</ref> This is an important point of disagreement with most other pragmatists, who advocate a more thorough naturalism and psychologism.

Richard Rorty expanded on these and other arguments in ''[[Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature]]'' in which he criticized attempts by many philosophers of science to carve out a space for epistemology that is entirely unrelated to—and sometimes thought of as superior to—the empirical sciences. [[Willard Van Orman Quine|W.V. Quine]], who was instrumental in bringing [[naturalized epistemology]] back into favor with his essay "Epistemology Naturalized",<ref>{{cite book |last=Quine |first=W. V. O. |date=1969 |chapter=Epistemology naturalized |title=Ontological relativity and other essays |series=The John Dewey essays in philosophy |location=New York |publisher=[[Columbia University Press]] |pages=[https://archive.org/details/ontologicalrelat0000quin/page/69 69–90] |isbn=0231033079 |oclc=51301 |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/ontologicalrelat0000quin/page/69 |chapter-url-access=registration}}</ref> also criticized "traditional" epistemology and its "Cartesian dream" of absolute certainty. The dream, he argued, was impossible in practice as well as misguided in theory, because it separates epistemology from scientific inquiry.

[[File:Hilary Putnam.jpg|thumb|right|Hilary Putnam said that the combination of antiskepticism and fallibilism is a central feature of pragmatism.<ref name=Putnam1994/><ref name=Rescher2007/><ref name=Tiercelin2014/>]]

===Reconciliation of anti-skepticism and fallibilism===
[[Hilary Putnam]] has suggested that the reconciliation of anti-skepticism<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|last=McKinsey|first=Michael|title=Skepticism and Content Externalism|date=2018|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/skepticism-content-externalism/|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|access-date=2023-03-14|edition=Summer 2018|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University}}</ref> and [[fallibilism]] is the central goal of American pragmatism.<ref name=Putnam1994>{{cite book |last=Putnam |first=Hilary |date=1994 |chapter=Pragmatism and moral objectivity |title=Words and Life |location=Cambridge, MA |publisher=Harvard University Press |page=[https://archive.org/details/wordslife0000putn/page/152 152] |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/wordslife0000putn/page/152 |chapter-url-access=registration |isbn=9780674956063 |oclc=29218832 |quote=that one can be both fallibilistic ''and'' antiskeptical is perhaps ''the'' unique insight of American pragmatism}}</ref><ref name=Rescher2007>{{cite book |last=Rescher |first=Nicholas |author-link=Nicholas Rescher |date=2007 |chapter=Pragmatism |editor-last=Boundas |editor-first=Constantin V. |title=Edinburgh Companion to Twentieth-Century Philosophies |location=Edinburgh |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |page=[https://books.google.com/books?id=9jAkDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA137 137] |chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=9jAkDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA137 |isbn=9780748620975 |oclc=85690580}}</ref><ref name=Tiercelin2014>{{cite book |last=Tiercelin |first=Claudine |chapter=Why we should take a stand, and the stand we should take |date=2014-10-14 |chapter-url=http://books.openedition.org/cdf/3658 |title=The Pragmatists and the Human Logic of Truth |series=Philosophie de la connaissance |location=Paris |publisher=Collège de France |isbn=978-2-7226-0339-4 |access-date=2022-05-31}}</ref> Although all human knowledge is partial, with no ability to take a "God's-eye-view", this does not necessitate a globalized skeptical attitude, a radical [[philosophical skepticism]] (as distinguished from that which is called [[scientific skepticism]]). Peirce insisted that (1) in reasoning, there is the presupposition, and at least the hope,<ref>{{cite web |last=Peirce |first=C. S. |date=1902 |title=The Carnegie Institute Application, Memoir 10, MS L75.361-2 |url=https://arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu/menu/library/bycsp/L75/ver1/l75v1-01.htm |website=arisbe.sitehost.iu.edu |access-date=2023-04-04}}</ref> that truth and the real are discoverable and would be discovered, sooner or later but still inevitably, by investigation taken far enough,<ref name=Peirce1878/> and (2) contrary to Descartes's famous and influential methodology in the ''[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]'', doubt cannot be feigned or created by verbal fiat to motivate fruitful inquiry, and much less can philosophy begin in universal doubt.<ref>{{cite journal |last=Peirce |first=C. S. |date=1868 |title=Some Consequences of Four Incapacities |journal=[[Journal of Speculative Philosophy]] |volume=2 |issue=3 |pages=140–157 |jstor=25665649 |jstor-access=free |url=http://www.peirce.org/writings/p27.html}} [https://books.google.com/books?id=YHkqP2JHJ_IC&pg=RA1-PA140 Google Books]. See opening pages. Reprinted in ''Collected Papers'' v. 5, paragraphs 264–317, ''Writings'' v. 2, pp. 211–242, ''Essential Peirce'' v. 1, pp. 28–55.</ref> Doubt, like belief, requires justification. Genuine doubt irritates and inhibits, in the sense that belief is that upon which one is prepared to act.<ref name=Peirce1878/> It arises from confrontation with some specific recalcitrant matter of fact (which Dewey called a "situation"), which unsettles our belief in some specific proposition. Inquiry is then the rationally self-controlled process of attempting to return to a settled state of belief about the matter. Note that anti-skepticism is a reaction to modern academic skepticism in the wake of Descartes. The pragmatist insistence that all knowledge is tentative is quite congenial to the older skeptical tradition.

===Theory of truth and epistemology===
{{main|Pragmatic theory of truth}}
Pragmatism was not the first to apply evolution to theories of knowledge: [[Schopenhauer]] advocated a biological idealism as what's useful to an organism to believe might differ wildly from what is true. Here knowledge and action are portrayed as two separate spheres with an absolute or [[Transcendental idealism|transcendental]] truth above and beyond any sort of inquiry organisms used to cope with life. Pragmatism challenges this idealism by providing an "ecological" account of knowledge: inquiry is how organisms can get a grip on their environment. ''Real'' and ''true'' are functional labels in inquiry and cannot be understood outside of this context. It is not ''realist'' in a traditionally robust sense of realism (what [[Hilary Putnam]] later called [[metaphysical realism]]), but it is [[Philosophical realism|realist]] in how it acknowledges an external world which must be dealt with.{{citation needed|date=June 2018}}

Many of James' best-turned phrases—"truth's cash value"<ref>James 1907, p.&nbsp;200</ref> and "the true is only the expedient in our way of thinking" <ref>James 1907, p.&nbsp;222</ref>—were taken out of context and caricatured in contemporary literature as representing the view where any idea with practical utility is true. William James wrote:

{{quotation|It is high time to urge the use of a little imagination in philosophy. The unwillingness of some of our critics to read any but the silliest of possible meanings into our statements is as discreditable to their imaginations as anything I know in recent philosophic history. Schiller says the truth is that which "works." Thereupon he is treated as one who limits verification to the lowest material utilities. Dewey says truth is what gives "satisfaction"! He is treated as one who believes in calling everything true which, if it were true, would be pleasant.<ref>James 1907, p.&nbsp;90</ref>}}

In reality, James asserts, the theory is a great deal more subtle.<ref group="nb">See Dewey 1910 for a "FAQ."</ref>

The role of belief in representing reality is widely debated in pragmatism. Is a belief valid when it represents reality? "Copying is one (and only one) genuine mode of knowing".<ref>James 1907, p.&nbsp;91</ref> Are beliefs dispositions which qualify as true or false depending on how helpful they prove in inquiry and in action? Is it only in the struggle of intelligent organisms with the surrounding environment that beliefs acquire meaning? Does a belief only become true when it succeeds in this struggle? In James's pragmatism nothing practical or useful is held to be [[Logical truth|necessarily true]] nor is anything which helps to survive merely in the short term. For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it doesn't accord with the facts (and is therefore not true).