Pragmatism

24 Jun 2026–02 Sep 2026

Status: Ideation

Category: Philosophy

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Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object. C.S. Peirce, the Pragmatic Maxim as stated in How to make our ideas clear

[…] ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience […] William James, What Pragmatism Means (Lecture II of the Pragmatism Lectures, collected in Pragmatism and Other Writings)

The intellect, hitherto regarded as essentially eternal, now had to be accounted for in terms of evolution. Instead of having existed before the mountains were brought forth, it now appeared to have originated in time—not all at once, but through the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest. It was an instrument, a tool, an asset in the struggle; and those possessing it had survived because of its great practical value. Now it was recalled that Kant already had insisted that we cannot apprehend ultimate reality, and that what we know are but phenomena. In other words, the world of our experience is not a likeness of the “real” world. And as Kant’s philosophy was fused with Darwin’s theory, the doctrine developed that our “truths” are not accurate descriptions of a transcendent reality, but simply statements that “work” and thus fit us for survival” Walter Kaufmann, in Nietzsche: Philosopher, Pscyhologist, Antichrist

Background

Pragmatism is a varied philosophical tradition very loosely united by an interest in a notion of knowledge as a form of agency (Legg and Hookway 2024). Its origins are in several discussions at the ‘Metaphysical Club’ in Harvard in the early 1870s when C.S. Peirce conceived his key ideas, which he then developed across several publications. The crucial paper in these publications is How to make our ideas clear in which he coined the Pragmatic Maxim. Responding to an emphasis in philosophy on ‘clear and distinct’ ideas (originating in Descartes), Peirce coins what is now known as the pragmatic maxim, quoted above.

The core claim of this maxim is that our conception of the effects an object has is our whole conception of the object. In many ways this is a straightforwardly phenomenalist statement, aligning Peirce’s (early) pragmatism somewhat with positivism. Implicitly, if two concepts of the same thing share identical consequences, then the maxim entails that there is no difference between these concepts. Pragmatism up to this point is an account of the meaning of our ideas.

James popularised Pragmatism, drawing on an interpretation of Peirce’s maxim as a theory of truth. The mainstream (though not uncontested) theory of truth in philosophy is the correspondence theory of truth, where my belief is true to the extent it corresponds to reality. James does not dispute the correspondence theory of truth directly, but argues that we know whether a belief ‘agrees’ with reality because it enables us to do one of two things:

  1. To be guided straight to it [reality]
  2. To be able to handle it [reality] better (whether intellectually or practically) than if it [the belief] disagreed with reality

So here the representational understanding of a belief or of truth is only one way in which a belief can ‘agree with’ (or correspond) to reality.

Rorty’s neopragmatism draws on James and Dewey but explicitly rejects any notion of correspondence to reality. Beliefs, instead, are simply useful. For me, this reaches the point where one has to ask what makes a belief useful. It seems to me that in some domains correspondence or representation are criteria for usefulness (e.g. in physics, engineering, medicine). That being said, other criteria can also exist, which nonetheless makes this an incredibly fruitful definition of knowledge. It is particularly useful in pushing back against the relativist idea that we lack foundations for our ethical or political beliefs because there is nothing to correspond to (e.g. God’s will or Human Nature with capitals): there are many forms of justification beyond a search for first principles.

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