A Sketch of the Vision of Pragmatism
For a couple years I hung out with a really smart guy who was a systems engineer and he was really into pragmatism and we talked about it a lot. He told me about the originators and the different versions and broad positions on current topics in pragmatism. I looked it up and read about it occasionally over the years, so I had a decent exposure to it. Yet, I don’t remember much of these conversations and research because it never clicked with me. I had studied a lot of philosophy in college and pragmatism never sounded significantly different from other stuff I had heard or studied. I have always felt like I was a slow learner, so I am familiar with feeling like I don’t understand something and with pragmatism this persisted for years.1
The first idea that finally resonated was an idea from C. S. Peirce. Peirce often used a mathematical limit as an analogy (“asymptotic behavior”). Peirce said “the end of inquiry”, “[if] properly carried on will reach some definite and fixed result or approximate indefinitely toward that limit” (1.485). In other words: we don’t have truth – we are ever approaching it, by degrees. Then, after years of feeling like I was missing something, I read The Metaphysical Club (TMC) by Louis Menand. I really enjoyed this the first time through, but it still hadn’t clicked with me. After letting TMC settle for a while, it finally dawned on me that Darwin’s On the Origin of Species came out when Peirce was 20 and was a blockbuster bestseller and changed the world. Members of The Metaphysical Club corresponded with Darwin; they were all presently dazzled by Darwin. Then pragmatism clicked for me. The following is a sketch of the “center of... [the] vision”2 of pragmatism.
Prior to Darwin, and from time immemorial, we (humans) assumed we were specially equipped with physical and metaphysical powers and were distinct from the rest of “creation”. We have morality and principles and we have an independence from our basic instincts, among others. Philosophers could still assume humans were equipped with a special intellectual insight or faculty into the nature of things. The originary pragmatists were some of the first thinkers to see that evolution demands that this assumption be updated. In addition to being inspired by Darwin, the first pragmatists were heavily influenced by Immanuel Kant who argued that our experience is enabled by a mental vocabulary of “categories” and our experience is ultimately limited by these categories – we can only think in the terms we have, and we can’t get beyond our thoughts to a nature independent of our conception of it.
We are an evolved and evolving species and the human brain is an evolved and evolving organ. There is no reason to believe that our conceptual faculties have evolved to a breakthrough form that can conceive the true nature of things and there is overwhelming reason to the contrary. As the brain evolves and our powers of conception, memory, and association increase, so our picture/conception3 of nature also increases in resolution. As we once had no clear conception of logic and number, so we will one day conceive things we can’t now. The pragmatist says that our conceptional scheme/picture is ever provisional.4
This paragraph is a detour to present a distinction that is useful for illustrating pragmatism: concepts and conceptions. A concept is the one true meaning of a word — what the word actually means. Conceptions, on the other hand, are idiosyncratic and particular to an individual mind – e.g. I use the word ‘art’ slightly differently from you. In other words, everyone could have a different conception of X, but everyone must have the same concept of X, if anybody has it. Pragmatism would say that we only ever have conceptions, not concepts.5 If our conceptions largely overlap with each other’s, we are able to communicate without having to stretch our imagination too far, but it is not hard to find cases where two conceptions do not line up.
From an evolutionary perspective, we must admit the provisional status of our present biological form. Our experience and understanding of nature are allowed by these evolved resources, as well as limited by them. Kant’s picture mirrors this evolved position. Kant said that the content of experience is allowed by this conceptual vocabulary and our experience is also limited to this vocabulary. In this picture, there is a fundamental divide between what we can experience and what we cannot experience, phenomena and noumena, in Kant’s terms. As we learn and evolve, so our new conceptions allow new experience and understanding, albeit provisional. As minded organisms, the reality beyond our experience is imperfectly reflected in our provisional conceptions of it. We are fundamentally alienated from the truth beyond our conception of it and we can only try to aim in the right direction.6 I claim that this is the starting position of the originary pragmatists.
For a final example of this fundamental division between experience and beyond: we never encounter certainty in the natural world. In other words, we can always be surprised by worldly outcomes. It is possible that a different outcome may occur until the crux of the moment when the rubber hits the road. Before the batter swings, it is still possible that the batter may hit the ball, or not. There is an apparent contingency to nature. Likewise, indeterminacy can be found in all empirical data. With sensitive enough equipment we find unpredictability/indeterminacy in any motion. Additionally, empirical evidence is always particular: the data is always particular readings or particular cases, never more. Together, our empirical/experienced picture is always particular, contingent, and probabilistic.7 The punchline is that we humans can effortlessly conceive of certainty and frequently deceive ourselves into possessing it.8 Pragmatism forces us to keep the provisional status of this picture in the foreground at all times.
The founder of American pragmatism, Charles Sanders Peirce, took the name ‘pragmatic’ from a passage in Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason where Kant discusses a type of belief that he compares to “betting.” A “pragmatic belief” is one where the believer also acknowledges that they could be wrong and someone else could have a better belief (A284/B852). As Louis Menand puts it in The Metaphysical Club, “Kant thought of ‘pragmatic belief’ as one of several kinds of belief; Peirce thought it was the only kind of belief” (227). Peirce himself said, “[Kant] is nothing but a somewhat confused pragmatist” (CP, 5.525).
Peirce identified Kant’s “pragmatic beliefs” with a theory of belief proposed by Peirce’s friend Nicholas St. John Green: “what a man really believes is what he would be ready to act upon, and to risk much upon” (226). The language of “risk” and “betting” is a hallmark of pragmatism. This language is also inspired by probability theory because Peirce was very familiar with probability theory and statistical science.9 Probability theory began from an analysis of games of chance and betting. The stronger your belief, the more you are willing to risk — and you must play a card.
Considering again that most-to-all of our best scientific theories have been wrong in significant details and our conceptions are imperfect and limiting, pragmatism says we must be fallibilists about everything (except perhaps arithmetic, logic and geometry). This is the starting position for pragmatism. Beyond this, instead of chasing imponderables, pragmatism says we should do what “works,” which can be spelled out in different ways. Here is my slogan for pragmatism: it’s working hypotheses all the way down – you will never find the bottom – it would be wise to move on.
I think this is because of anxiety. Anxiety often blocks me from processing things fully. Philosophy seminars were brutally stressful for me and I just never said anything and was not able to follow most of it, perhaps because I was so wound up, but also because I was not up to the level of discourse on it. I could derail the whole discussion with my novice questions or just hold on and try to follow it. So, I always feel like I don’t understand things.
William James said of Hegel, “Any author is easy if you can catch the centre of his vision.” https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/11984/pg11984.html
The conception/picture analogy is apt for a few reasons. A photo is very clearly distinct from what it represents. The data is not the reality.
W. V. O. Quine’s holism also fits nicely here.
The history of philosophy is lined with exchanges where one person offers a definition and another person points out a counterexample, and repeat. Even philosophers, who excel at distinctions and definitions, can’t nail down definitions for common stuff like ‘art,’ ‘justice,’ and ‘truth.' Numbers and extremely precise operational definitions of scientific objects are the best examples of such a “one true meaning," but there are irreducible ambiguities, always.
Empirical evidence must always be ambiguous – there are always multiple empirically irresolvable theories for any evidence. This is sometimes called the “underdetermination of theory by data” or “radical underdetermination." Theories can be objectively better/worse in relation to each other, but not in relation to an absolute standard like Truth.
Even the simplest life is exquisitely evolved to cope with this seemingly fundamental uncertainty. This is likely the ultimate source of life’s staying power.
Certainty may also be at least temporally prior to uncertainty.
Quantum physics’ use of “probability clouds” would have made perfect sense to Peirce.