Is Pragmatism Destroying the Economy?

Daktoria · Feb 14, 2012

ashurbanipal said:
Pragmatism was coined (IIRC) by Charles Sanders Peirce near the end of the 19th century. Basically, in a process of inquiry, when a question is discovered to have defined answers, none of which make any difference to what any individual experiences, the one most in agreement with already accepted views is taken to be true. It was a way to classify metaphysical statements as to their meaningfullness, and also as a means of choosing between them when no empirical option for doing so would ever be available. William James later took the term and broadened its application, such that the pragmatic belief is the one that best connects an individual's experiences. Thus, if I believe I have a million dollars in my closet, and I attempt to go purchase a new ferrari with the dirty clothes which are stuffed in the bottom of my closet, and I am denied the trade, I should revise my belief since the one I currently have does not connect my experiences. The most pragmatic belief is that my dirty clothes are not a million dollars.

This doctrine had an interesting effect when considering questions about the existence of God, which James examined in his famous essay "The Will to Believe." He is commonly misunderstood as saying that we should believe whatever we want. Nothing could be further from the truth. What James said was that we should believe what best connects our experiences. If it turns out that belief in God is what connects our experiences in a cohesive manner, then we should believe in God even in the absence of firmer evidence (ditto non-belief in God).

Pragmatism has absolutely nothing to do with what you've stated in this thread. Again, you seem to be taking words that have a settled meaning (more or less) and then changing those meanings, and casting aspersions on those you classify into those mistaken categories. Why not just say that myopaeia and a philosophy of complete selfishness are destroying the economy? That's what you seem to mean.

Myopia doesn't quite cut it. It isn't just short sightedness, but an obsession with concrete sensation over abstract intuition. People believe sensing what's in front of them qualifies as accommodating all possible variations of what an object can actually be. For example, as a pragmatist, if I've only seen green triangles, it would be practical to believe all triangles are green and/or the color green establishes three sided/cornered shapes.

I'm not familiar with pragmatism having any metaphysical stance at all actually, and it's always seemed hyper-empirical. I'll read your essay, but if you have anything else to suggest, that would be great as well.

Anyway, I'm aware that pragmatism is about conceiving practical effects and recycling them into intelligent practice. You'll notice I actually directly cited the pragmatic maxim here: http://www.debatepolitics.com/economics/119004-pragmatism-destroying-economy-2.html#post1060198190

ashurbanipal · Feb 14, 2012

Daktoria said:
Myopia doesn't quite cut it.

That's why I said myopaeia and a philosophy of selfishness (by which, I just meant a general attitude of being selfish at every turn).

Daktoria said:
It isn't just short sightedness, but an obsession with concrete sensation over abstract intuition.

There are some people who might think that's a species of shortsightedness. I'd almost be one of them.

Daktoria said:
People believe sensing what's in front of them qualifies as accommodating all possible variations of what an object can actually be.

Some people obviously do, but pragmatists, generally speaking, clearly did not. C.S. Peirce said so in his essay "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." What we know objects to be can only be complete at the end of all inquiry, which, Peirce would have said, was an almost infinite number of years away.

Daktoria said:
For example, as a pragmatist, if I've only seen green triangles, it would be practical to believe all triangles are green and/or the color green establishes three sided/cornered shapes.

It might if you were, say, three years old. Experience itself is seldom so one-sided. This is a point that the pragmatists made expressely, though each of them worked it in through slightly different language. However, one of the cornerstones of pragmatism is that we have to start where we are; philosophy has to begin with the human being and with human experience, or its worth is diminished. Though I would admit, this is something the pragmatists banked on. Josiah Royce had a similar intuition on which he based his critique of James. Even he stopped short of calling the pragmatists the root of all evil. How you get from this point to that is not clear to me, I'm afraid.

Daktoria said:
I'm not familiar with pragmatism having any metaphysical stance at all actually, and it's always seemed hyper-empirical.

It's radically empirical, but that hardly disqualifies it from taking metaphysical positions. Some observers have remarked that pragmatism was an attempt to save metaphysics in the face of harder-line verificationist tendencies which were on the horizon.

Daktoria said:
Anyway, I'm aware that pragmatism is about conceiving practical effects and recycling them into intelligent practice. You'll notice I actually directly cited the pragmatic maxim here: Page Not Found - Debate Politics Forums (Is Pragmatism Destroying the Economy?)

It's one thing to recite something Peirce said. It's a totally different thing to understand what he meant. Even James, his lifelong benefactor and friend (about his only one) didn't fully understand him. He was essentially updating Plato's argument, presented in The Sophist, that existence is power.

Daktoria · Feb 16, 2012

ashurbanipal said:
Some people obviously do, but pragmatists, generally speaking, clearly did not. C.S. Peirce said so in his essay "How to Make Our Ideas Clear." What we know objects to be can only be complete at the end of all inquiry, which, Peirce would have said, was an almost infinite number of years away.

It might if you were, say, three years old. Experience itself is seldom so one-sided. This is a point that the pragmatists made expressely, though each of them worked it in through slightly different language. However, one of the cornerstones of pragmatism is that we have to start where we are; philosophy has to begin with the human being and with human experience, or its worth is diminished. Though I would admit, this is something the pragmatists banked on. Josiah Royce had a similar intuition on which he based his critique of James. Even he stopped short of calling the pragmatists the root of all evil. How you get from this point to that is not clear to me, I'm afraid.

How does pragmatism decide how much time to dedicate to inquiry?

It's radically empirical, but that hardly disqualifies it from taking metaphysical positions. Some observers have remarked that pragmatism was an attempt to save metaphysics in the face of harder-line verificationist tendencies which were on the horizon.

It's one thing to recite something Peirce said. It's a totally different thing to understand what he meant. Even James, his lifelong benefactor and friend (about his only one) didn't fully understand him. He was essentially updating Plato's argument, presented in The Sophist, that existence is power.

I might create a thread about pragmatic metaphysics after reading that essay you referred to before, but it will really help if you have something more to supplement it with.