Talk:Pragmatism (disambiguation)

Notes & Queries
JA: That last factoid is making an inference that cannot be supported without more detail. Jon Awbrey 19:04, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

OED Entry on "Pragmatist"
1. A pragmatical person, a busybody.

1640 BP. REYNOLDS Passions xvi. 176 We may [say] of Pragmatists, that their eyes looke alwaies save onely inward. 1863 COWDEN CLARKE Shaks. Char. viii. 209 He is a moral teetotaller, a formalist, a pragmatist.

2. a. An adherent of the doctrine called pragmatism. Also, an adherent of historical pragmatism (cf. PRAGMATISM 3).

1892 W. WALLACE tr. Hegel's Logic (ed. 2) 257 The motives which must be viewed by the pragmatist as really efficient. 1903 Hibbert Jrnl. Mar. 578 A contemporaneous review of an American pragmatist. 1906 H. JONES ibid. Apr. 567 It is quite true, as the Pragmatists or Personal Idealists aver, that our purposes define the meaning of things. 1907 Ch. Times 8 Feb. 178 The pragmatist takes religion as he finds it, a working life;..he studies the Christian life, and considers that the best way to study it is to live it;..he is content to leave many things unexplained. 1932 C. MORRIS Six Theories of Mind ii. 71 In this insistence that mind cannot be divorced from the world certain new realists and pragmatists are at one with the absolute idealists. 1937 Logical Positivism iv. 46 Two groups which at first sight might seem in opposition, namely: the pragmatists (or biological positivists), and the Wiener Kreis (the logical positivists).

2. b. attrib. or as adj. Of or according to pragmatism.

1903 Hibbert Jrnl. Mar. 578 The evidence for a pragmatist interpretation of the reason. 1906 W. JAMES in Jrnl. Philos. III. 337 (heading) Papini and the pragmatist movement in Italy. 1965 E. E. EVANS-PRITCHARD Theories Prim. Relig. iii. 48 The emotionalist explanations of primitive religion which I have discussed have a strong pragmatist flavour. Hence pragmatistic a.; pragmatistically adv.

1906 W. JAMES in Jrnl. Philos. III. 341 Subjective factors..are in some degree creative, then; and this carries with it..the admissibility of the entire Italian pragmatistic program. 1907 Pragmatism 40 The pragmatistic philosophy..preserves as cordial a relation with facts. Ibid. 281 Concretely he means..just the pragmatistically unified and ameliorated world. Ibid. 301 What I take the liberty of calling the pragmatistic or melioristic type of theism. a1914 C. S. PEIRCE Coll. Papers (1958) VIII. II. ix. 247 But if this occasion did in actuality not arise, such habit of thought as the conditional proposition might produce would be a nullity pragmatistically and practically. 1961 Proc. Aristotelian Soc. LXI. 180 Basic concepts,..if chosen pragmatistically, would be like Quinian ‘posits’. 1971 J. J. SHAPIRO tr. Habermas's Toward Rational Society v. 68 The successful transposition of technical and strategic recommendations into practice is, according to the pragmatistic model, increasingly dependent on mediation by the public as a political institution. 1974 R. A. HOCKS (title) Henry James and pragmatistic thought.

JA: I'll take your word for it at present, but I can't really say that the above is all that convincing yet with regard to the implied claim about the ordinary meaning of the word in Peirce's neck of the woods. Would be nice to know, for sure. Jon Awbrey 19:45, 13 July 2006 (UTC)