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- DictionaryPrag·ma·tism/ˈpraɡməˌtiz(ə)m/
noun
- 1. a pragmatic attitude or policy: "ideology was tempered with pragmatism"
- 2. an approach that assesses the truth of meaning of theories or beliefs in terms of the success of their practical application.
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The meaning of PRAGMATISM is a practical approach to problems and affairs. How to use pragmatism in a sentence.
PRAGMATISM definition: 1. the quality of dealing with a problem in a sensible way that suits the conditions that really…. Learn more.
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in ...
Pragmatism is a way of dealing with problems or situations that focuses on practical approaches and solutions—ones that will work in practice, as opposed to being ideal in theory. The word pragmatism is often contrasted with the word idealism, which means based on or having high principles or ideals.
- Overview
- Major theses of philosophic pragmatism
pragmatism, school of philosophy, dominant in the United States in the first quarter of the 20th century, based on the principle that the usefulness, workability, and practicality of ideas, policies, and proposals are the criteria of their merit. It stresses the priority of action over doctrine, of experience over fixed principles, and it holds that ideas borrow their meanings from their consequences and their truths from their verification. Thus, ideas are essentially instruments and plans of action.
Achieving results, i.e., “getting things done” in business and public affairs, is often said to be “pragmatic.” There is a harsher and more brutal connotation of the term in which any exercise of power in the successful pursuit of practical and specific objectives is called “pragmatic.” The character of American business and politics is often so described. In these cases “pragmatic” carries the stamp of justification: a policy is justified pragmatically if it is successful. The familiar and the academic conceptions have in common an opposition to invoking the authority of precedents or of abstract and ultimate principles. Thus, in law judicial decisions that have turned on the weighing of consequences and probable general welfare rather than on being deduced from precedents have been called pragmatic.
During the first quarter of the 20th century, pragmatism was the most influential philosophy in the United States, exerting an impact on the study of law, education, political and social theory, art, and religion. Six fundamental theses of this philosophy can be distinguished. It is, however, unlikely that any one thinker would have subscribed to them all, and even on points of agreement, varying interpretations mark the thought and temper of the major pragmatists. The six theses are:
1. Responsive to idealism and evolutionary theory, pragmatists emphasized the “plastic” nature of reality and the practical function of knowledge as an instrument for adapting to reality and controlling it. Existence is fundamentally concerned with action, which some pragmatists exalted to an almost metaphysical level. Change being an inevitable condition of life, pragmatists called attention to the ways in which change can be directed for individual and social benefit. They were consequently most critical of moral and metaphysical doctrines in which change and action are relegated to the “merely practical,” on the lowest level of the hierarchy of values. Some pragmatists anticipated the more concrete and life-centred philosophy of existentialism by arguing that only in acting—confronted with obstacles, compelled to make choices, and concerned with giving form to experience—is the individual’s being realized and discovered.
2. Pragmatism was a continuation of critical empiricism in emphasizing the priority of actual experience over fixed principles and a priori (nonexperiential) reasoning in critical investigation. For James this meant that the pragmatist
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turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action.…It means the open air and possibilities of nature, as against…dogma, artificiality, and the pretence of finality in truth.
noun [ U ] us / ˈpræɡ.mə.tɪ.z ə m / uk / ˈpræɡ.mə.tɪ.z ə m / Add to word list. the quality of dealing with a problem in a sensible way that suits the conditions that really exist, rather than following fixed theories, ideas, or rules: The council has operated much more effectively since pragmatism replaced political dogma.
Aug 16, 2008 · Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as inseparable from agency within it.
