Michael Bacon at Psyche:
In the everyday sense of the term, the pragmatist is the person who ‘gets results’. The term can be intended as either a compliment or a criticism; it can be applied equally to effective and to unscrupulous managers and politicians. These connotations carry over, typically in misleading ways, into the philosophical sense of pragmatism.
Pragmatism is the United States’ most important contribution to philosophy, emerging in the late 19th century, developing throughout the 20th, and flourishing today. At its heart is a rejection of what one of its founders, John Dewey (1859-1952), calls ‘the spectator theory of knowledge’. This theory, which can be traced to Plato, holds that reality is composed of two discrete entities: the world of objects, which exist independently of us, and the minds, which perceive and seek accurately to represent that world. In the alternative account offered by pragmatists, the mind is, rather, a part of the world, in which it plays an active role. Pragmatists, accordingly, describe us not as seeking to represent reality as it exists independently of us, but rather as developing more effective and imaginative ways of coping with the circumstances in which we find ourselves.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.