What pragmatism is
January 5, 2026 | 935 words | 5min read
Paper Title: What pragmatism is
Link to Paper: https://www.jstor.org/stable/27899577?seq=1
Date: 1905
Paper Type: Philosophy, System
Short Abstract: In What Pragmatism Is, Charles S. Peirce presents his own framework of pragmatism, which is not simply a form of empiricism or positivism, but rather a method for clarifying philosophical concepts and questions. Pragmatism, for Peirce, is a rule for determining meaning: in order to understand a concept, one must consider the effects it would have on possible conduct. The conception of these effects constitutes the entire conception of the object. Concepts do not possess an inner, hidden essence beyond this; they are defined entirely by their conceivable consequences.
1. The Experimentalist
Peirce begins the paper by describing the mindset of the experimentalist, an empirically trained scientist such as a chemist or experimental physicist. For an experimentalist, any meaningful claim is implicitly understood as part of a conditional experiment, for example: “If you do X under conditions Y, then Z will result.”
If one tells an experimentalist that the goal of science is to “seek something deeper than the laws connecting objects of experience,” or to uncover a “physical reality” hidden behind experiments, the experimentalist will find this unintelligible. For them, there is no hidden nature or inaccessible reality behind experience; what exists is what can, in principle, be shown through experiment.
Peirce identifies himself as belonging to this experimentalist type, and insists that his philosophical method should be understood in light of this attitude. He names this method pragmatism, deliberately choosing the term to emphasize purposeful, rational action, rather than Kant’s notion of praktisch, which Peirce associates with a region of thought lacking firm experiential grounding.
2. Terminology and Philosophy as a Science
Before explaining pragmatism itself, Peirce makes a methodological point: the natural sciences have advanced largely because they developed precise technical vocabularies, with terms whose meanings are fixed and shared. Philosophy, by contrast, suffers from endless confusion because terms are used loosely, rhetorically, or idiosyncratically. Peirce argues that philosophy must adopt similar terminological discipline if it is ever to become a genuinely cooperative and cumulative science.
3. The Pragmatic Maxim
The central claim of pragmatism is this:
The entire meaning of a concept consists in its conceivable effects on conduct.
More precisely: if one can specify all possible experimental consequences that would follow from affirming or denying a concept, then one has completely defined that concept. Anything left over is meaningless.
This does not mean that pragmatism identifies truth with what is useful, nor that ideas are true simply because they “work.” For Peirce, meaning is always conditional, general, and future-oriented. It concerns what would happen under certain conditions, not merely what has happened in the past.
4. Belief, Doubt, and the Rejection of Radical Skepticism
Peirce introduces pragmatism by rejecting the method of radical or methodological doubt associated with Descartes, namely the attempt to begin philosophy “from scratch” by pretending to doubt everything.
For Peirce, philosophy must start where we actually are, not from artificial skepticism. One cannot doubt at will, nor can one genuinely doubt everything. Doubt is not a voluntary act; it arises only when a settled belief is disrupted by experience.
- Belief is a habit of action, usually unconscious and stable.
- Doubt is the breakdown or absence of such a habit.
Inquiry begins only when real doubt occurs, not when doubt is merely professed.
5. Truth and the Long Run of Inquiry
Peirce rejects the notion of a metaphysical “truth-in-itself” that exists entirely beyond belief and doubt. As he writes:
“But if by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in any way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing, and which Ockham’s razor would clean shave off.”
Instead, Peirce proposes that we should understand truth as:
“a state of belief unassailable by doubt.”
More fully, truth is the belief that rational inquiry would converge upon in the long run. As Peirce writes elsewhere:
“Truth is that concordance of an abstract statement with the ideal limit towards which endless investigation would tend to bring scientific belief.” (CP 5.565)
Thus, a true belief is one that would survive indefinite rational inquiry. Truth is not a matter of correspondence with a mysterious, inaccessible realm, but neither is it relative or subjective. It is anchored in the ideal limit of communal inquiry.
6. Meaning, the Future, and Experimental Phenomena
For Peirce, meaning is not a past event, a private mental experience, or a single experiment. Rather, it is a conditional claim about future experience. When scientists speak of a “phenomenon,” they do not mean a one-time occurrence, but a general, law-like pattern: something that will happen again under specified conditions.
Meaning is therefore future-directed, because only future conduct is subject to rational self-control.
7. Generals, Reality, and Normativity
A crucial part of Peirce’s view is that general concepts and laws are real. Although only individuals exist in the sense of concrete particulars, reality without generality would be chaos—and chaos is nothing.
Peirce defends a form of scholastic realism:
- Laws of nature are real
- General truths are real
- Habits, norms, and meanings are real insofar as they guide conduct
Human beings are not isolated individuals but exist within a community of inquiry, which functions in some respects like a collective organism. It is this communal and temporal dimension that allows us to distinguish between mere belief and truth, and between isolated events and genuine laws.
Thus, pragmatism does not reduce reality to isolated experimental events. On the contrary, it affirms the reality of generals—laws, meanings, and norms—as indispensable features of the world.
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