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What is Pragmatism?

Ratheius Netheros
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Posted 08/05/09 - 05:42 PM: Subject: What is Pragmatism?	#1
I'm 400 pages into Pragmatism: Old and New, by Susan Haack. I've still only got a rough idea what "pragmatism is" in contrast to say, logical positivism. A pragmatist says something is true because "it works." However, the pragmatists still seem to believe in coherency and an objective reality. Supposedly, these notions are consistent with the idea that truth is what "works." However, what if they don't match up. How can truth be "what works" and based off an objective reality? Is the sole appeal of what "works" left up to the individual and their egoistical ends? If so, why not dismiss a scientific theory simply because you dislike its results? Why is pragmatism so set on avoiding contradictions as opposed to the idea of epistemological anarchism. For instance, why is believing in objectivity or coherence, in all cases, necessarily pragmatic? Couldn't the logical positivist, theist, or any ideology simply call themselves pragmatists? What separates it from the positivists and why did Russell dislike the pragmatists? Thanks Edited by Ratheius Netheros on 08/05/09 - 08:16 PM

Ghosthack
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Posted 08/05/09 - 07:26 PM:	#2
Ratheius Netheros wrote: However, the pragmatists still seem to believe in coherency and an objective reality. It shouldn't be surprising that pragmatists believe in coherency and an objective reality. A coherent theory of truth is a part of the pragmatist conception of truth and an objective reality is better suited to a relative view of truth. Ratheius Netheros wrote: Supposedly, these notions work. What does this mean? Ratheius Netheros wrote: However, what if they don't. Is the sole appeal of what "works" left up to the individual and their egoistical ends? This may be true but generally only of non-scientific truths, such as a belief in God or the truth of a monist view of the universe. Scientific truths are meant to be arrived at by consensus. Ratheius Netheros wrote: If so, why not dismiss a scientific theory simply because you dislike its results? The scientific theory is supposed to give you results which you can use and act on. If you dismiss the results, you are not being pragmatic and cannot use the knowledge obtained from results in practice. Ratherius Netheros wrote: Why is pragmatism so set on avoiding contradictions as opposed to the idea of epistemological anarchism. Pragmatism is not bent on avoiding contradictions and epistemological anarchism would like to avoid them when it can. As I pointed out, one pragmatist may hold a monistic view of the universe while another may hold a pluralistic view, and pragmatism cannot inject itself into this argument as an arbiter to decide which one is the correct view. Pragmatism and epistemological anarchism are not opposed to each other, but each can be useful to the other. Ratheius Netheros wrote: What separates it from the positivists... Positivists hold a correspondence theory of truth while pragmatists do not. Ratheius Netheros wrote: ...and why did Russell dislike the pragmatists? I'm not aware of what Russell has said but I would venture a guess that he disliked them because of their relativising of truth and their acceptance of mystical doctrines.

MarchHare
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Posted 08/05/09 - 07:42 PM:	#3
If I remember my Russell correctly, his best criticism of pragmatism (of the Peirce variety) was that they mistook indicators of truth for truth itself. I suspect Peirce would say that Russell was doing a superficial reading of his work, since Peirce did a lot of work on the nominal and non-nominal definitions of truth which, I confess to say, I couldn't understand. "Ghosthack" wrote: Scientific truths are meant to be arrived at by consensus. A point so good it's worth repeating. Pragmatism puts a lot of stress on the social aspect of knowledge and inquiry; Peirce, Dewey and co. were certainly ahead of their time. These days, every epistemologist and her auntie Liz seem to be thinking they're amongst the first people to notice that "knowing p" has very little to do with sitting by a Cartesian fireside and a lot to do with social inquiry into reality. I suppose, just as every generation (due to considerable psychological incentives) thinks it invented sex, so modern analytical philosophers need to think they invented anything they like that was produced by those suspicious cowboy American pragmatists.
Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. The correct response to a question isn't always to try to give the question's answer.

Ratheius Netheros
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Posted 08/05/09 - 08:26 PM:	#4
Ghosthack wrote: I'm not aware of what Russell has said but I would venture a guess that he disliked them because of their relativising of truth and their acceptance of mystical doctrines. Does pragmatism necessarily accept mystical doctrines? What are the arguments against the relativism of truth? Also, it's my understanding that Rorty and others are proponents of this view, but the classical pragmatists only held an "open question" view of truth as opposed to a radically relativistic one? MarchHare, how does pragmatism mistake the "indicators of truth for truth itself." I assume you mean what "works" is what is "true" instead of "what is true" simply "works" by virtue of it being a truth? How exactly can truth be verified in any other way aside from that it "works?" Consider a thought experiment where it is shown logically inconsistent to continue living. Is such an experiment "impossible" or would it be pragmatic simply to deny the reasoning? It seems like the indicators of truth "are" truth, as far as I can tell. Again, my philosophy education is mainly familiarizing myself with the basics of individual thinkers. On another note, I am curious why Quine is often lumped into the pragmatist as well as the logical positivist camp. Are the two compatible in some way?

Ghosthack
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Posted 08/05/09 - 10:19 PM:	#5
Ratheius Netheros wrote: Does pragmatism necessarily accept mystical doctrines? In accepting a mystical doctrines, all pragmatism is doing is discerning the meaning of the mystical doctrine. The meaning is: how would this doctrine affect our behavior if it is held to be true. The acceptability of metaphysical discourse within pragmatism, is one of the things that separates it from logical positivism. Logical positivism, taking its cue from the Tractatus although not wholly aligned with Wittgenstein's actual though, views metaphysics with disdain, something which must be passed over, of which we can not talk about. Ratheius Netheros wrote: On another note, I am curious why Quine is often lumped into the pragmatist as well as the logical positivist camp. Quine could be considered a pragmatist and a logical positivist, although I wouldn't want to apply these terms to him. Quine might be considered a pragmatist because of his idea of confirmation holism. This is a coherency theory of truth and sounds very much like what a pragmatist's conception of truth. Quine would be considered a logical positivist because his work continues a direction started by the logical positivists and Wittgenstein, which has guided the work of all those we want to lump into analytical philosophy. Quine is not as dogmatic as the logical positivists (I dont believe anyone after WWII was) but his work does bear their stamp, i.e. he does not talk about metaphysics and he focuses on language and an appropriate langauge of science in which to codify our observations. But he was not as stringent as the logical positivists: they wanted to reduce all theoretical terms to observational terms whereas Quine did not subscribe to such a doctrine. Ratheius Netheros wrote: Are the two compatible in some way? Pragmatists may say yes and positivists may say no. A positivist will believe in a verification theory of meaning. To the positivists this will probably render statements about religion, philosophy etc. meaningless. But a pragmatist may apply the verification theory of meaning to such topics and find them to have meaning. Ratheius Netheros wrote: Consider a thought experiment where it is shown logically inconsistent to continue living. Is such an experiment "impossible" or would it be pragmatic simply to deny the reasoning? An experiment can't prove something is logically inconsistent and i'm not sure what you mean by "logically inconsistent to continue living". Pragmatism has no problem with an inconsistency and would not "deny the reasoning". Say that both A and ~A can be derived from a given set of axioms and rules of logical inference. The meaning of A and ~A can be treated as any other statement that we apply pragmatism to. Chances are the truth of these two statements carry vastly different consequences. And at the point of our inquiry, we would have to say both are true because they can be derived from our axioms (beliefs). Now unfortunately, this fact will blow up our entire system and make everything trivially true. Not desiring such a system we will amend our axioms or rules of inference or something else and recalibrate the truth of A and ~A in the new system.

ciceronianus
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Posted 08/06/09 - 07:29 AM:	#6
Yeesh. That must be one hell of a book you're reading. And I wouldn't pay any attention to what Bertie Russell has to say about pragmatism, or any philosophy but his own which, arguably, he understoood. He seems to have been incapable of understanding certain views (Wittgenstein's for example, as well as those of the pragmatists). The "truth is whatever works" thing is one of Russell's many misunderstandings of pragmatism (although it's arguable he was being deliberately obtuse--he didn't like Dewey personally). I think it's fair to say that generally, pragmatism has problems with the correspondance theory of reality as I understand it, and the belief human mind is merely a passive mirror. Dewey in particular felt that knowledge is the result of our interaction with the world, and that thought and logic develop from that interaction. We're confronted with situations, problems, and we try to resolve them or deal with them through the use of intelligence. We don't sit in ivory towers contemplating eternal truths, and it's a mistake to view truth as limited to mathmatical constructs or anything similar. Dewey was a big fan of the experimental method, as was Peirce (maybe James as well, I'm not certain). Dewey, at least, recommended the application of that method to all issues, including moral ones. Dewey and Peirce both, I think, viewed human knowledge as communal. That which most independent observers, experimenters, problem-solvers came through application of inquiry and experimental method to conclude was the case is "true" as much as we can say something is true. Dewey preferred to use the phrase "warranted assertability." Peirce and James could get rather mystical, Dewey, its seems, not at all. Peirce seems to have felt that our minds are in some fashion attuned to the universe, and that we could not understand it as we do unless it--an we--had been fashioned to be understood and to understand. James was intrigued by the fact that religious/mystical experiences appear universal, and viewed them as data to be studied, which point to the existence of something like God. Now, there are those who maintain that Rorty was a pragmatist. I don't. I don't think he ever really understood Dewey, who he claimed was the first postmodernist. Others such as Mead, Hook, Putnam, and even Quine seem more in line with the pragmatic tradition, to me at least.
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

MarchHare
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Posted 08/06/09 - 10:41 AM:	#7
Ratheius Netheros wrote: MarchHare, how does pragmatism mistake the "indicators of truth for truth itself." I assume you mean what "works" is what is "true" instead of "what is true" simply "works" by virtue of it being a truth? Spot on. So the proposition that "alkaline metals react violently when mixed with water" works because its true, but the claim "It is true" is not semantically the same as "It works". "Ratheius Netheros" wrote: How exactly can truth be verified in any other way aside from that it "works?" Consider a thought experiment where it is shown logically inconsistent to continue living. Is such an experiment "impossible" or would it be pragmatic simply to deny the reasoning? I quite agree, but the fact that the truth of a proposition is verified by its working in practice does not mean that, when we say "It is true that lead is heavier than hydrogen", we mean "It works in practice that lead is heavier than hydrogen". So, while on an epistemological level I'm a die-hard pragmatist, I don't see the pragmatic theory of truth as being an accurate theory of the semantics of the word "truth". "Ratheius Netheros" wrote: On another note, I am curious why Quine is often lumped into the pragmatist as well as the logical positivist camp. Are the two compatible in some way? A wizened old ex-logical positivist once said to me that "There is a certain brotherhood between pragmatism and positivism". That's true: both positivists and pragmatists are very concerned with the limits of meaningful debate; the differences lie in (a) what is regarded as meaningful by the two camps and (b) that pragmatism is more of a "reforming" approach and logical positivism was a more revolutionary movement; pragmatists want, for example, to improve metaphysical debate while logical positivsts sought to do away with it altogether.
Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. The correct response to a question isn't always to try to give the question's answer.

MarchHare
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Posted 08/06/09 - 10:47 AM:	#8
ciceronianus wrote: Now, there are those who maintain that Rorty was a pragmatist. I don't. I don't think he ever really understood Dewey, who he claimed was the first postmodernist. Others such as Mead, Hook, Putnam, and even Quine seem more in line with the pragmatic tradition, to me at least. I think the better ideas in postmodernism have been around for a long, LONG time, especially in certain social sciences like history. I would agree on your assessment of Rorty: he might have a broad affiliation with Dewey, but I think he owes more to William James (:mad than the good pragmatists. To Betrand Russell's credit, I don't think he misunderstood pragmatism any more than William James did, which isn't surprising since William James was the main pragmatist that Russell was familiar with and influenced by. I don't think there's a single thinker, except for perhaps David Hume, that has influenced me as much as John Dewey. Not the most engaging writer ever, but the man's intellectual poise and honesty was incredible. I fully recommend finding collections of his non-book writings, as well as of course books like "Democracy and Education", "Art as Experience", "How We Think" and "The Public and its Problems". The last of that list I would recommend most of all.
Doubt requires a reason to doubt. Nothing is immune from potential doubt. The correct response to a question isn't always to try to give the question's answer.

ciceronianus
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Posted 08/06/09 - 10:55 AM:	#9
MarchHare wrote: I don't think there's a single thinker, except for perhaps David Hume, that has influenced me as much as John Dewey. Not the most engaging writer ever, but the man's intellectual poise and honesty was incredible. I fully recommend finding collections of his non-book writings, as well as of course books like "Democracy and Education", "Art as Experience", "How We Think" and "The Public and its Problems". The last of that list I would recommend most of all. I'm fond of Dewey as well. He is not easy to read, though, as you say. A very reasonable man, and perhaps one of the few philosophers who felt philosophy might make a difference in everyday life.
"Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts."--C.S. Peirce "There is nothing so absurd but some philosopher has said it."--Marcus Tullius Cicero "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device for dealing with the problems of philosophers and becomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men."--John Dewey

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