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 RebelSteve33
Amateur Mycologist
Registered: 05/28/02
Posts: 3,774
Loc: Arizona
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 What Pragmatism Means 
#1320381 - 02/19/03 05:28 PM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I take pride in myself for making accomplishments on my own. I take pride in my own creations and try never to rely on other people for anything. The one dilemma I have with myself about these beliefs is that I love learning, and it would be impossible for me to learn anything if it weren't for other people.
Today I learned what pragmatism means from a book called Pragmatism by William James. Here are the first couple pages of the chapter "What Pragmatism Means," or "Lecture Two" from the book. I will post the whole of it in pieces if others find it interesting and wish me to do so.
WHAT PRAGMATISM MEANS
"Some years ago, being with a camping party in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. the corpus of the dispute was a squirrel--a live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree-trunk; while over against the tree's opposite side a human being was imagined to stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly round the tree, but no matter how fst he goes, the squirrel moves as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Everyone had taken sides, and was obstinate; and the numbers on both sides were even. Each side, when I appeared therefore appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction you must make a distinction, I immediately sought and found one, as follows: "Which party is right," I said, "depends on what you practically mean by 'going round' the squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the east, then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north of him again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies these successive positions. But if on the contrary you mean being first in front on his left, and finally in front again, it is quite as obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the compensating movements the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time, and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there is no occasion for any farther dispute. You are both right and both wrong according as you conceive the verb 'to go round' in one practical fashion or the other."
Although one or two of the hotter disputants called my speech a shuffling evasion, saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair-splitting, but meant just plain honest English 'round,' the majority seemed to think that the distinction had assuaged the dispute.
I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of what I wish now to speak of as the pragmatic method. The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?--fated or free?--material or spiritual?--here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. 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.
A glance at the history of the idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The term is derived from the same Greek word "crazy writing" meaning action, from which our words 'practice' and 'practical' come. It was first introduced into philosophy by Mr. Charles Peirce in 1878. In an article entitled 'How to Make Our Ideas Clear,' in the 'Popular Science Monthly' for January of that year Mr. Perice, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action, said that, 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. And the tangible fact at root of all our thought-distinciton, however subtle, is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of an object, then, 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.
This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. It lay entirely unnoticed by any one for twenty years, until..."
So... You guys want more? 
I think it's somewhat interesting. The end started getting a little out there, but the whole beginning made a lot of sense to me. It's very well written. I hate to admit having such a reliance on other people, but I don't know what I would do if there weren't other people around to learn from...
Like all you crazy Shroomerites!  
-RebelSteve
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Namaste.
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Sclorch
Clyster
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
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William James is like an unpoetic Nietzsche... but I still like alot of what he's said.
Actually, I think Peirce renamed his philosophy "pragmaticism" because he didn't like James' and Dewey's version pragmatism.
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Note: In desperate need of a cure...
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Sclorch
Clyster
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
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Oh... btw, pragmatism spawned my heteroabsolutism...
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Note: In desperate need of a cure...
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RebelSteve33
Amateur Mycologist
Registered: 05/28/02
Posts: 3,774
Loc: Arizona
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Re: What Pragmatism Means [Re: Sclorch]
#1320986 - 02/20/03 03:11 AM (20 years, 1 month ago) |
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I will have to read up on "pragmatacism" and heteroabsolutism once I am finished with Pragmatism. James' book is one of the first philosophy texts I've read that is actually clearly written and easy to understand!
Here's a little more, starting from where I left off:
"This is the principle of Peirce, the principle of pragmatism. It lay entirely unnoticed by any one for twenty years, until I, in an address before Professor Howison's philosophical union at the University of California, brought it forward again and made a special application of it to religion. By that date (1898) the times seemed ripe for its reception. The word 'pragmatism' spread, and at present it fairly spots the pages of the philosophic journals. On all hands we find the 'pragmatic movement' spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometiems with contumely, seldome with clear understanding. It is evident that the term applies itself conveniently to a number of tendencies that hitherto have lacked a collective name, and that it has 'come to stay.'
To take in the importance of Peirce's principle, one must get accustomed to applying it to concrete cases. I found a few years ago that Ostwald, the illustrious Leipzig chemist, had been making perfectly distinct use of the principle of pragmatism in his lectures on the philosophy of science, though he had not called it by that name.
"All realities influence our practice," he wrote me, "and that influence is their meaning for us. I am accustomed to put questions to my classes in this way: In what respects would the world be different if this alternative or that were true? If I can find nothing that would become different, then the alternative has no sense."
That is, the rival views mean practically the same thing, and meaning, other than practical, there is for us none. Ostwald in a published lecture gives this example of what he means. Chemists have long wrangled over the inner constitution of certain bodies called 'tautomerou.' Their properties seemed equally consistent with the notion that an instable hydrogen atom oscillates inside of them, or that they are instable mixtures of two bodies. Controversy raged, but never was decided. "It would never have begun," says Ostwald, "if the combatants had asked themselves what particular experimental fact could hav been made different by one or the other view being correct. For it would then have appeared that no difference of fact could possibly ensue; and the quarrel was as unreal as if, theorizing in primitive times about the raising of dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a 'brownie,' while another insisted on an 'elf' as the true cause of the phenomenon."
It is astonishing to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject them to this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. 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. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.
There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley, and Hume made momentous contributions to truth by its means. Shadworth Hodgson keeps insisting that realities are only what they are 'known as.' But these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments: they were preluders only. Not until in our time has it generalized itself, become conscious of a universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny. I believe in that destiny, and I hope I may end by inspiring you with my belief."
That's all for now. If anyone would like more, please let me know. I have no problem typing it up, as it is great practice for my typing skills and helps me understand even better what the text is saying!
-RebelSteve
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Namaste.
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Sclorch
Clyster
Registered: 07/12/99
Posts: 4,805
Loc: On the Brink of Madness
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RebelSteve33: I will have to read up on "pragmatacism" and heteroabsolutism once I am finished with Pragmatism.
The only writings of heteroabsolutism you'll find are on this board... and my harddrive. Maybe I'll compile them one day.
When you're done reading William James... go back and read Nietzsche. I am damn convinced that James wrote dumbed-down versions of what Nietzsche said. A buddy of mine also wrote his thesis on the enlightenment period... that research seems to support my notion. Not that I'm knocking James or anything... I really do like him (a doctor and a philosopher... he was a healer on the personal level and the mass level, what's not to like?).
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Note: In desperate need of a cure...
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 Nomad
Mad Robot
Registered: 04/30/02
Posts: 422
Last seen: 15 years, 3 months
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Does the man go round the squirrel or not? He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on the tree; but does he go round the squirrel?
Of course the man goes round the squirrel. If there is an object in the center, and you circle it, you are going round the object. What the squirrel does is completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. The squirrel could go round the tree, or it could scratch its head, or it could change its colour from blue to yellow. The man is going round the squirrel regardless.
Anyone wants to argue with me? This thread could be at least as productive as the welfare-thread. Let's make a whole fucking academic philosophy about squirrels, completely detached from reality. I love that.
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