By Nominis Expers

      Pragmatism, unlike most of the philosophical movements that affect our culture, did not originate in Europe but is rather a system born and reared in the United States.

Harvey Cox was a Harvard professor who, in the 1960's wrote a book he called "The Secular City". He used that title purposely to contrast St. Augustine's classic work, "The City of God". The title points out the change from a society that seeks its values in the supernatural, (that is to say in God), to modern culture which has abandoned the eternal as the reference point for its definition of ethics and values. He cites Pragmatism as the dominant influence for the American lifestyle.

"Urban secular man is pragmatic. He devotes himself to tackling specific problems and is interested in what will work to get something done. He has little interest in what has been termed borderline questions of metaphysical considerations. He wastes little time thinking about ultimate or religious questions."

C.S.Peirce: (1839-1914)

      Peirce's greatest philosophical influence, not surprisngly, was Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804) demonstrably the most important philosopher of modern times. Kant's epistemology, briefly, was skeptical in that in his system one cannot have certain knowledge of the metaphysical. His line of demarcation between the world of appearances (the "phenomenal") and the realm beyond experience (the "noumenal") limited the course of subsequent philosophy to a study of phenomenology and effectively signalled the "death" of metaphysics. We'll look at Kant in detail in another article.

      Peirce saw himself as constructing the philosophical system Kant might have developed had he not been so ignorant of logic. He made major contributions to formal logic and to the study of the logic of science, lectured at Harvard on these topics in the late 1860's, held a lectureship in logic at Johns Hopkins University, and also served as an experimental scientist at the Harvard laboratory.

      The 'Pragmatist Principle' forms part of Peirce's "Theory of Inquiry". It is a rule for clarifying and revealing all the features of the content of concepts and hypotheses that are relevant to scientific investigations. Peirce also argues that it can be used to dismiss some metaphysical hypotheses as "empty" and to clarify (or redefine) our concept of truth and reality. If a proposition is true, he reasons, then anyone who investigated the matter long enough and well enough would eventually acknowledge its truth; accordingly, truth is a matter of long term convergence of opinion.

"The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed upon by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real".

William James: (1842-1910)
"The Variety of Religious Experience"
      In analyzing the religious experiences of individuals, would evaluate how such experiences affected attitudes, behavior patterns, inner feelings, etc. and in cases where it was deemed a positive experience based on these criteria, would reach the conclusion that in that instance we could say that "religion works", and for that person "religion is true". Conversely, if by the same criteria the experience of the same religion by another person was deemed negative, then for that person that religion was not true. What does this say about the existence of God or of objective reality? Remember the Law of Non-Contradiction?

John Dewey: 1859-1952
      Dewey argued that addressing the question of how life should be lived required bridging the gap between morals and science. Knowledge in morals and politics is just as available as in matters of physics and chemistry. What is required is the application of intelligent inquiry, the self-correcting method of experimentally testing hypotheses created and refined from our previous experience.

      Dewey developed the concept of epistemological and moral "fallibilism" - the view that no knowledge claim, no moral rule, principle, or ideal is ever certain, immune from all possible criticism and revision.

      In its epistemology, pragmatism is skeptical or agnostic about the possibility of discovering ultimate truth, and actually attempts to re-define "meaning" and "truth". Pragmatism tests the validity of all concepts by their practical results. If it works, it's right, and if it works it's true. A quote from William James' "Pragmatism's Conception of Truth":

"'The true,' to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behavior."

      While the Pragmatist is concerned with problem solving and practicality, ultimately, pragmatism is the most impractical thing anyone could ever embrace. A skeptical epistemology and ontology such as we find in pragmatism reduces ones values and system of ethics to preferences, rather than relating them to an absolute standard of right and wrong, truth and falsehood. If we believe that God is not worthy of our mental consideration, what kind of impact will that have on our lifestyles and behavior? What will the outcome of that kind of attitude be, considered in practical categories?