The distinguishing scheme of philosophical pragmatism is that effectiveness in practice provides a sort of criterion for the resolution of truth in explanations, correctness in actions, and worth in assessments. Yet it is the first of these perspectives, the question of meaning and truth, that is traditionally the most important.
philosophical principle
Pragmatism as a philosophical principle goes back to the academic skeptics of classical antiquity. They disproved the probability of attaining genuine knowledge (episteme) of true truth and taught that we must make do with credible information (to pithanon) that satisfies the demands of practice. Also important for the progress of the principle was Kant’s clarification “contingent belief, which justifies the effective use of means for certain actions, I justify pragmatic belief” (Critique of Pure Reason, A 824/B 852). Another crucial step was Schopenhauer’s insistence that the intellect is unanimously subordinate to the will, a line of thought detailed by not a few German neo-Kantian thinkers. Moral utilitarianism, with its study of the adequacy of styles of action in terms of their ability to provide the greatest good from the maximum number, was another advance in pragmatic contemplation. For it too evokes essentially the ทดลองเล่นสล็อต pragmatic game same utility maximization model, and there is a profound structural parallel between the argument that a service is correct when its outcomes fall back on “the greatest good of the greatest number” and the thesis-oriented account of a pragmatic theory of truth that asserts that an experimental proposition is correct when its reception is maximally useful.
Nonetheless, pragmatism as a specific philosophical principle stems from the work of Charles Sanders Pierce. For him, pragmatism was above all a theory of meaning, in which the connotation of every idea that has a function in the real world resides in the relationships that connect experiential circumstances of application with visible results. But by the “practical consequences” of acknowledging an idea or debate, Pierce meant the results for experimental practice – “experimental effects” or “observational results” – so that for him the meaning of a statement is decided by the fundamentally positivist standard of his experiential results in strictly observational terms. And going a step further, Peirce also taught that pragmatic efficacy involves a quality control of human cognition – although here, too, the practical matter is the scientific practical and the efficacy criterion focuses on the question of the most predictive success. Peirce built his pragmatism as opposed to idealism by observing that examining application success can lead to simple theorizing hitting the hard rock of truth. But his descendants moderated the principle until, with today’s “pragmatists,” the effectiveness of ideas resides in their simple acceptance by the community, rather than in the achievement that the community may (or may not!) meet when incorporating those views into the community implemented in practice.
Charles Pierce writes:
“Generals can not only be real, but they can also be physically efficient, not in any metaphysical sense, but in the common sense sense in which human purposes are physically efficient. Metaphysical nonsense aside, no sane person doubts that if I feel the air in my study is stuffy, that thought may prompt the window to be opened. Admittedly, my thought was an individual event. But what compelled him to take the particular determination he did was partly the general fact that stuffy air is unhealthy, and partly other forms that Dr. Carus caused so many men to think – or rather, through the truth and the general truth that Dr. Carus’ spirit was determined to forcefully speak this much truth. For truths, on average, have a greater tendency to be believed than falsehoods. Would it be different considering that there are myriads of false hypotheses responsible for a given phenomenon versus a single true one (or if you will). I say so, against any truthful one), the first step to real knowledge must have been next to a miracle. So when my window was opened, due to the fact that stuffy air is bad, a physical exertion was brought into being through the effectiveness of a common and non-existent truth. It sounds funny because it’s unfamiliar; but accurate analysis is for and not against; and it also has the immense benefit of not blinding us to grand facts — such as that the ideas of “justice” and “truth,” notwithstanding the injustice of the world, are the most powerful forces moving them. Indeed, generality is an indispensable part of reality; for mere individual existence or reality without regularity, all is vanity. Chaos is pure nothing.” [WHAT PRAGMATISM IS by Charles Sanders Peirce The Monist, 15:2 (April 1905), pp. 161-181]
developed pragmatism
Although Pierce developed pragmatism into a major philosophical theory, it was William James who placed it on the intellectual map in his extremely powerful Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (New York, 1907). Nonetheless, James changed Peirce’s pragmatism and, in Peirce’s opinion, ruined it. For while Peirce observed pragmatism as a way to distant and objective standards, James gave it a personalized and subjective twist. With James, it was the individual (and probably distinctive) thought of particular people’s effectiveness and achievement that provided the pragmatic heart, rather than a vague community of ideally rational influences. For him, pragmatic effectiveness and application-oriented performance did not translate to an impersonal community of scientists, but to an expanded plurality of flesh-and-blood individuals. Thus, for James, reality is what reality drives and compels human individuals to accept; It is a substance of “what is paid by faith” in relation to the route of human activity in the surrounding environment, and its attainment is more of a creation than a revelation. For James, the tangibility of a hypothesis in relation to its empirical results is decided in a far broader than observational notion—a logic that also accepts the sentimental realm.
James’ first book, The Colossal Principles of Psychology (1890), recognized him as one of the most powerful thinkers of his time. The work promoted a belief in functionalism in psychology, thereby removing psychology from its conventional position as a subdivision of philosophy and establishing it among the laboratory sciences based on experimental processes.
Over the next decade, James applied his techniques of empirical inquiry to philosophical and religious issues. He discovered the questions of the nature of God, the eternity of the soul, free will and ethical values by referring to human, religious and moral experience as the immediate basis. His views on these subjects were offered in lectures and essays published in books such as The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897), Human Immortality (1898), and The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902). The last is a compassionate psychological explanation of religious and mystical events.
pragmatism
Later lectures, published as Pragmatism: A New Name for Old Ways of Thinking (1907), completed James’ innovative offerings for the theory called pragmatism. James generalized the pragmatic method, taking it from an analysis of the logical basis of science to a basis for evaluating all knowledge. He argued that the meaning of ideas is established only in terms of their likely outcomes. If the results are short, ideas are worthless. James argued that this is the technique used by scientists to describe their assumptions and to test their hypotheses, which, when significant, involve predictions. The hypotheses can be considered correct if the predicted events occur. Conversely, most metaphysical theories are hollow because they contain no testable predictions. Great theories, James disputes, are tools for dealing with difficulties that arise in knowledge.
According to James’ pragmatism, truth is what works. One decides what works by testing suggestions in experience. Through this method one discovers that some statements become true.
Pluralism, Pragmatism, and Instrumental Truth” William James (From A Pluralistic Universe, New York, 1909, pp. 321-4 and Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking [1907], New York, 1909, p. 52 ). -61)
Basically, what is meant by calling the universe many or one?
When interpreted pragmatically, pluralism or the theory of many things only means that the different parts of reality can be related externally. Anything you can think of, no matter how vast or comprehensive, has a truly “external” environment of some sort or quantity from a pluralistic point of view. Things are “with each other” in many ways, but nothing includes or dominates everything. After each sentence, the word “and” drags along. Something always escapes. “Not quite” has to be said of the best attempts anywhere in the universe to achieve all-inclusive. The pluralistic world is more like a federal republic than an empire or kingdom. However much may be gathered, however much may report as being present in any operative center of consciousness or action, something else is self-governing and absent and not reduced to unity.
Monism, on the other hand, insists that when one comes down to reality as such, to the reality of realities, everything is there for everything else in some vast, instantaneous, included completeness – nothing can in any way, functionally or substantially, be of being truly absent from everything else, all things interpenetrate and coalesce in the great total confluence.
For pluralism, all we have to recognize as reality-constitution is what we ourselves find empirically realized in every minimum of finite life. In short, it is that nothing real is absolutely simple, that every morsel of experience is a multum in parvo that is multiply related, that every relationship is an aspect, a character or a function, a way of being taken, or a way she takes things differently; and that a bit of reality, when actively engaged in one of these relationships, is not thereby involved in all of the other relationships at the same time. The relationships are not all what the French call solidaires among themselves. Without losing its identity, a thing can either pick up or drop another thing, like the tree trunk I spoke of, which, picking up new supports and dropping old ones, can travel anywhere with a light escort.
For monism, on the other hand, whether we recognize it or not, everything sweeps the whole universe with it and leaves nothing behind. The protocol starts and arrives with all bearers that support it. According to monism, once a thing was separated, it could never be rejoined. So the pragmatic difference between the two systems is clear. It is just that once a is out of sight of b or out of contact with b, or in short, is “outside” it at all, then according to monism it must always be so, they can never get it together; while pluralism admits that on another occasion they may work together or be reconnected in some way. Monism does not allow such things as “other occasions” in reality – that is, in actual or absolute reality.
METAPHYSICS
Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of search. You know how much people have longed for unlawful sorcery, and you know the great role played by magic words from time immemorial. If you have his name or the formula of the incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, the jinn, the afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of all spirits, and since he had their names, he subjected them to his will. Thus the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind of enigma, to which the key must be sought in the form of an enlightening or empowering word or name. This word names the principle of the universe, and to own it is in a way to own the universe itself. “God”, “matter”, “reason”, “the absolute”, “energy” are so many solution names. You can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical quest. But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot consider such a word as the end of your search. You must extract practical monetary value from every word, let it flow into the stream of your experience. So it appears less as a solution than as a program for more work, and particularly as an indication of how existing realities can be changed.
In this way, theories become instruments, not answers to riddles, in which we can rest. We don’t lean on them, we move forward and occasionally renew nature with their help. Pragmatism loosens up all our theories, loosens them up and puts each one to work. As it is essentially nothing new, it harmonizes with many old philosophical tendencies. For example, it agrees with nominalism in always appealing to particulars; with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical aspects; with positivism in its contempt for verbal solutions, useless questions, and metaphysical abstractions.
anti-intellectual tendencies
All of these, you see, are anti-intellectual tendencies. Against rationalism as claim and method, pragmatism is fully armed and militant. But at least initially, it doesn’t stand for any specific outcomes. It has no dogma and no doctrine except its method. . . [But] the word pragmatism has come to be used in an even broader sense, also denoting a certain theory of truth. . .
One of the most successful branches of philosophy of our pragmatic game time is what is called inductive logic, the study of the conditions under which our sciences have developed. Writers on the subject have begun to show a unique consensus as to what the laws of nature and elements of fact mean when formulated by mathematicians, physicists, and chemists. When the first mathematical, logical, and natural regularities, the first laws, were discovered, people were so enraptured by the resulting clarity, beauty, and simplification that they believed they had authentically deciphered the eternal thoughts of the Almighty. His mind, too, thundered and echoed in syllogisms. He also thought in terms of conics, squares and roots and ratios and geometrized like Euclid. He made Kepler’s laws for the planets to follow; he made the velocity in falling bodies increase proportionally to time; he made the law of sine, which light obeys when broken; he established the classes, orders, families, and genera of plants and animals, and fixed the distances between them. He thought the archetypes of all things and invented their variations; and when we rediscover any of these wondrous institutions, we seize its spirit in its very literal intent.
