Pragmatism – Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914)

Pragmatists claim that a proposition is true if it works satisfactorily, that the meaning of a proposition is to be
found in the practical consequences of accepting it, and that unpractical ideas are to be rejected. Practicality
of ideas, policies, and proposals are the criteria of their merit. Pragmatism originated in the United States
during the latter quarter of the 19th century. The term was coined by Peirce.
Pragmatism’s key ideas originated in discussions at a so-called ‘Metaphysical Club’ that met in Harvard
around 1870. Peirce summarized his own contributions to the Metaphysical Club's meetings in two articles
now regarded as founding documents of pragmatism: “The Fixation of Belief” (1877) and “How To Make
Our Ideas Clear” (1878). In this latter paper, Peirce introduces a maxim, or principle, which allows us to
achieve the highest grade of clarity about the concepts we use.

Peirce identifies three grades of clarity or understanding. The first grade of clarity about a concept is to
have an unreflective grasp of it in everyday experience. For instance, my inclination to keep some part of my
body in stable contact with a supported horizontal surface at all times suggests that I have an underlying
grasp of gravity. The second grade of clarity is to have, or be capable of providing, a definition of the
concept. This definition should be general. So, my ability to provide a definition of gravity (as, say, a force
which attracts objects to a point, like the center of the earth) represents a grade of clarity or understanding
over and above my unreflective use of that concept in walking, remaining upright, etc.

For Peirce, these two grades of clarity are only part way to a full understanding of a concept; there is a richer
level of clarity. It is at this point that he introduces his own third grade of clarity. Peirce says:

Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our
conception to have. Then the whole of our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the
object. (p. 132)

On this account, then, to have a full understanding of some concept we must not only be familiar with it in
day to day encounters, and be able to offer a definition of it, we must also know what effects to expect from
holding that concept to be true.

For instance, a full understanding of the concept of “vinegar” comes from possessing all three grades of
clarity about it. If I am able to identify vinegar and use the concept appropriately in my everyday
experiences, I display the first grade of clarity about this concept. My ability to define “vinegar” as a diluted
form of acetic acid, which is sharp to the taste, displays the second grade of clarity. Finally, from the use of
“vinegar” in definitional propositions like “vinegar is diluted acetic acid” and “vinegar is sharp to taste,” I
can derive a list of conditional propositions which indicate what to expect from actions upon, and
interactions with, this concept. So, for instance, “vinegar is acetic acid” would lead me to form the
expectation that “If vinegar is acetic acid, then if I dip litmus paper into it, it will turn red.” Having a list of
conditional propositions like this, which express the differences this concept can make to expected
experiences, allows me to achieve the highest grade of clarity about that concept. This third and final grade
of clarity is the earliest statement of what we now know as the pragmatic maxim; it is the crux of Peirce’s
early theory of pragmatism.

For Peirce, understanding the practical upshot of our concepts means exploring and experimenting upon the
conditional hypotheses that we formulate with them. This reflects his broader notion of philosophy as a
practical laboratory science.

For Peirce, the attainment of truth comes from taking investigation and inquiry as far as it can go. The beliefs
we find ourselves accepting at the limit of inquiry represent the truth. The only way to take inquiry to its
limit is through the adoption of a scientific method. The pragmatic maxim allows us to see what difference
the truth of certain concepts would make to our lives.
Peirce’s second use for the pragmatic maxim is to identify those propositions of metaphysics that turn out to
be meaningless. For Peirce, the pragmatic maxim enables us to steer clear of metaphysical distractions. The
bulk of “ontological metaphysics,” by which Peirce means metaphysics conducted by a priori reasoning
alone, has no practical bearing and so will make no contribution to the final fixed state of beliefs. This
renders them meaningless.

William James (1842-1910)

He was the close friend and colleague of Peirce who further developed and popularized pragmatism. For
Peirce and James, a key application of the Maxim was clarifying the concept of truth. James published a
series of lectures on ‘Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking’ in 1907. The challenge is to
show how to reconcile ‘the scientific loyalty to facts’ with ‘the old confidence in human values’. Pragmatism
is presented as the ‘mediating philosophy’. William James thus presented pragmatism as a ‘method for
settling metaphysical disputes that might otherwise be interminable.’

He advocates a more dynamic and practical interpretation of the word ‘truth’, a true idea or belief being one
we can incorporate into our ways of thinking in such a way that it can be experientially validated. He is a
fallibilist, seeing all existential truths as, in theory, revisable given new experience.

Before determining if any given philosophical claim is true, James first thought it necessary to determine the
“cash-value” of the claim—that is, what function it had and what difference it would make if it were true.
According to the pragmatic theory, the purpose of our intellectual activity is to attempt to resolve difficulties
that arise while dealing with experience. The cash-value of our ideas is to be found in the use to which ideas
can be put. According to James, we think only in order to solve our problems, so that our theories are
instruments that we employ in order to solve problems in our experience, and the theories, therefore, ought
to be judged in terms of their success at performing this function.

James maintained the only reason we have for asserting that anything is true is that it works. Any
claims about the independent, objective, absolute nature of truth are meaningless, as far as we can ever
determine from our experience and judgments. One consequence of the pragmatic theory of truth is, then,
that truth is something that happens to an idea, rather than being a fixed property of an idea. Before one
discovers whether an idea, a theory, or belief, works, it is neither true nor false. Through the process of
testing the view in terms of its consequences and its compatibility with other beliefs, the idea becomes true or
false, or more true or less true. The ideas become true insofar as they work, and false insofar as they do not.
Thus, an idea might work for a while, and hence become true. Later it might cease to yield satisfactory
results, or no longer be verified by further experience, and so, then, become false. Truth, then, is not
something static and unchangeable; instead, it grows and develops with time.

With his training in medicine and psychology and the influence of Charles Darwin in the background, James
considered that the main function of thought is to help people establish “satisfactory relations with our
surroundings.” Thus, individuals help to mold the character of reality according to their needs and desires. In
his famous essay “The Will to Believe” (1897) James argued that one may have a reasonable right to hold a
religious or metaphysical belief when the belief supplies a vital psychological and moral benefit to the
believer, when evidence for and against the belief is equal. The essay is a defense of religious faith in the
absence of conclusive logical argumentation or scientific evidence. It focuses on what he calls a “genuine
option,” which is a choice between two hypotheses, which the believer can regard as “living” (personally
meaningful), “forced” (mutually exclusive), and “momentous” (involving potentially important
consequences). Whether an option is “genuine” is thus relative to the perspective of a particular
believer. When you believe that your mother loves you or in the sincerity of your best friend, you have no
conclusively objective evidence. In addition, you will never be able to secure such evidence. Yet it often
seems unreasonable to refuse to commit to believing such matters; if we did so, the pragmatic consequences
would be a more impoverished social life. Indeed, in some cases, believing and acting on that belief can help
increase the chances of the belief being true. Now let us apply this argument to religious belief. What does
religion in general propose for our belief? The two-pronged answer is that ultimate reality is most valuable
and that we are better off if we believe that. Committing to that two-pronged belief is meaningful, as is the
refusal to do so. At any given moment, I must either make that two-pronged commitment or not; and how I
experience this life, as well as prospects for a possible after-life, may be at stake. Whether one makes that
commitment or not, pragmatic consequences can be involved. Nor should we imagine that we could avoid
having to make a choice, as the commitment not to commit is itself a commitment.

John Dewey (1859–1952)

In Dewey's view, traditional epistemologies had drawn too stark a distinction between thought, the domain of
knowledge, and the world of fact to which thought purportedly referred: thought was believed to exist apart
from the world. The commitment of

According to Dewey, what constitutes our brute experience is the interaction between a biological
organism and its environment. Experience is not an object known but, rather, an action performed. In the
course of the organism’s activities, it encounters situations in which it can no longer act. Thinking arises as
a means of dealing with these disturbing situations by working out hypotheses, or guides to future
actions. The merits of these intellectual acts are determined by a practical criterion, by whether the organism
can now function satisfactorily again. Thought, especially scientific thought, is instrumental in problem
solving. The occurrence of problems sets off a chain reaction of mental activity directed toward discovering
a functional solution to the difficulties that confront the organism.

Much of earlier philosophizing, Dewey claimed, is actually a hindrance to the task of problem solving. In
separating theorizing from practical concerns, and searching for absolute solutions to philosophical
questions, philosophers have got away almost completely from the human needs that give rise to thought,
and have also tried rigidly to impose certain preconceived schemes upon human thought, and have refused to
allow any new beliefs and new solutions in human affairs. What is needed nowadays, Dewey insisted, is a
reconstruction of philosophy in terms of the problems that now confront us. In this role, philosophy will no
longer be an abstruse subject, of little or no value in the immediate concerns of the day, but will, instead, be
the overall directive force in developing new instrumental techniques for assisting the human organism in its
struggles with its environment, and in building a better world in which some of the problems now
confronting us will gradually be resolved.

Dewey came to believe that a productive, naturalistic approach to the theory of knowledge must begin with a
consideration of the development of knowledge as an adaptive human response to environing conditions
aimed at an active restructuring of these conditions. Unlike traditional approaches in the theory of
knowledge, which saw thought as a subjective primitive out of which knowledge was composed, Dewey's
approach understood thought genetically, as the product of the interaction between organism and
environment, and knowledge as having practical instrumentality in the guidance and control of that
interaction. Thus Dewey adopted the term "instrumentalism" as a descriptive appellation for his new
approach. He said the world is not passively perceived and thereby known; active manipulation of the
environment is involved integrally in the process of learning from the start.

Three Phases of Process of Inquiry: First phase begins with the problematic situation, a situation where
habitual responses of the human to the environment are inadequate for the continuation of ongoing activity to
fulfill needs. Dewey that the uncertainty of the problematic situation is not inherently cognitive, but practical
and existential.

The second phase of the process involves the isolation of the data which defines the parameters within
which the reconstruction of situation must be done. In the third, reflective phase of the process, the cognitive
elements of inquiry (ideas, suppositions, theories, etc.) are entertained as hypothetical solutions to the
problematic situation. The final test of the adequacy of these solutions comes with their employment in
action. If a reconstruction of the antecedent situation conducive to fluid activity is achieved, then the solution
no longer retains the character of the hypothetical; rather, it becomes a part of the existential circumstances
of human life. Dewey accepted the fallibilism that was characteristic of the school of pragmatism: the view
that any proposition accepted as knowledge has this status only provisionally.

He also addressed the meaning of truth in essays written between 1906 and 1909. Dewey defended this
general outline of the process of inquiry throughout his long career, insisting that it was the only proper way
to understand the means by which we attain knowledge.

Dewey and James maintained that an idea agrees with reality, and is therefore true, if and only if it is
successfully employed in human action in pursuit of human goals and interests, that is, if it leads to the
resolution of a problematic situation in Dewey's terms.