Pragmatism is rooted in the linking of practice and theory. It
describes a process where theory is extracted from practice, and
applied back to practice to form what is called intelligent
practice. Pragmatism was intended, by Charles S. Peirce, its
founder, as a doctrine for the rational substantiation of knowledge
claims. For Peirce, what mattered was successful prediction and
control. Practice was to serve as the arbiter of theory. Objective
efficacy, not personal satisfaction, is what matters for fixing
opinion in a community of rational inquirers.
According to Nicholas Rescher, later pragmatists saw the matter
differently. They envisioned subjective satisfactions, rather than
objectively determinable functional effectiveness, as being the aim
of the enterprise. Rescher notes that William James, in particular,
had an agenda different from that of Peirce.
The two pragmatisms are complete opposites, Rescher argues, in
terms of claims and intentions. James's soft pragmatism abandons
the classical idea of inquiry as the paramount of truth; it
believes that truth is an illusion, an unrealizable figment of the
imagination. By contrast, Peirce's hard pragmatism believes that
the classic idea of truth remains valid. Rescher seeks to examine
and explore pragmatism dialectically, with a conviction that brings
pragmatism to life for specialist and generalist alike.
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