Seth Payne

Pragmatism, as a philosophical method, was introduced in 1878 by Charles Pierce and later formalized by William James between 1898 and 1907. As James explains: “the pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable.” (James 1907) Unlike other philosophical methods that focus on abstract notions of truth, pragmatism “interpret[s] each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences.” Pragmatism asserts: “whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right.” Further, “to develop a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance.” Thus, “to attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object … we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind the object may involve – what sensations we are to expect from it, and what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object, so far as that conception has positive significance at all.”

For James, if “rival views mean practically the same thing … [then] meaning … there is for us none.”1 James contends: “it is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to [the] simple test of tracing a concrete consequence.” He argues: “there can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere – no difference in abstract truth that doesn’t express itself in a difference in concrete fact and in conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed on somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen.” Further “the whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, and definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.”

Pragmatism is “both more radical” and “less objectionable” than empiricism as “a pragmatist turns his back resolutely and once for all upon a lot of inveterate habits dear to professional philosophers” and “turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems and pretended absolutes and origins.” Rather, the pragmatist “turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power.” Perhaps most importantly, pragmatism “does not stand for any special result” and “is a method only.” (emphasis added)

The pragmatist seeks to move beyond metaphysics. This is not to say that metaphysics are unimportant but rather, that the study of metaphysics merely allows us identify words and names for the “universe’s principle.” Yet “if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any such word as closing your quest.” Rather, “you must bring out each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.” Pragmatism then, is not a “solution [but rather,] a program for more work, and more particularly [an] indication of the ways in which existing realities may be changed.” In pragmatism, “theories … become instruments [and are] not answers to enigmas, in which we can rest.” Consequently “pragmatism unstiffens our theories, limbers them up and sets each one at work.” Most importantly, pragmatism represents “the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities; and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.“

James, W. (1907). Pragmatism, A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. New York, Barnes & Noble.