10/9/2015

Neopragmatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neopragmatism
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Neopragmatism, sometimes called linguistic pragmatism is a contemporary term for a philosophy which
reintroduces many concepts from pragmatism. The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy (2004) defines
"Neo-pragmatism" as "A postmodern version of pragmatism developed by the American philosopher Richard
Rorty and drawing inspiration from authors such as John Dewey, Martin Heidegger, Wilfrid Sellars, Quine, and
Jacques Derrida". It repudiates the notions of universal truth, epistemological foundationalism, representationalism,
and epistemic objectivity. While traditional pragmatism focuses on experience, Rorty centers on language. It is a
nominalist approach that denies that natural kinds and linguistic entities have substantive ontological implications. In
Neopragmatism language is contingent on use, and meaning is produced by using words in familiar manners. The
self is regarded as a "centerless web of beliefs and desires". Rorty denies that the subject-matter of the human
sciences can be studied in the same ways as we study the natural sciences.[1] (Bunnin & Yu, 467)
It has been associated with a variety of other thinkers including Hilary Putnam, W.V.O. Quine, Donald Davidson[2]
and Stanley Fish though none of these figures have called themselves "neopragmatists".

Contents
1 Background
1.1 "Anglo-analytic" influences
1.2 "Continental" influences
1.3 Wittgenstein and language games
2 Richard Rorty and anti-representationalism
3 Neopragmatism as distinguished from idealism and epistemic relativism
4 See also
5 Notes
6 References
7 Further reading
8 External links

Background
"Anglo-analytic" influences
Neopragmatists, particularly Rorty and Putnam, draw on the ideas of classical pragmatists such as Charles Sanders
Peirce, William James, and John Dewey. Putnam, in Words and Life (1994) enumerates the ideas in the classical
pragmatist tradition, which newer pragmatists find most compelling. To paraphrase Putnam:
1. Complete skepticism (the notion that a belief in philosophical skepticism requires just as much justification as
other beliefs);
2. Fallibilism (the view that there are no metaphysical guarantees against the need to revise a belief);
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

1/5

10/9/2015

Neopragmatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

3. Antidualism about "facts" and "values";

4. That practice, properly construed, is primary in philosophy. (WL 152)
Neopragmatism is distinguished from classical pragmatism (the pragmatism of James, Dewey, Pierce, and Mead)
primarily due to the influence of the linguistic turn in philosophy that occurred in the early and mid-twentieth century.
The linguistic turn in philosophy reduced talk of mind, ideas, and the world to language and the world. Philosophers
stopped talking about the ideas or concepts one may have present in one's mind and started talking about the
"mental language" and terms used to employ these concepts. In the early twentieth century philosophers of language
(e.g. A.J. Ayer, Bertrand Russell, G.E. Moore) thought that analyzing language would bring about the arrival of
meaning, objectivity, and ultimately, truth concerning external reality. In this tradition, it was thought that truth was
obtained when linguistic terms stood in a proper correspondence relation to non-linguistic objects (this can be
called "representationalism"). The thought was that in order for a statement or proposition to be true it must give
facts which correspond to what is actually present in reality. This is called the correspondence theory of truth and is
to be distinguished from a neo-pragmatic conception of truth.
There were many philosophical inquiries during the mid-twentieth century which began to undermine the legitimacy
of the methodology of the early Anglo-analytic philosophers of language. W.V.O. Quine in Word and Object,[3]
originally published in 1960, attacked the notion of our concepts having any strong correspondence to reality.
Quine argued for ontological relativity which attacked the idea that language could ever describe or paint a purely
non-subjective picture of reality. More specifically, ontological relativity is the thesis that states that the things we
believe to exist in the world are wholly dependent on our subjective, "mental languages". A 'mental language' is
simply the way words which denote concepts in our minds are mapped to objects in the world.
Quine's argument for ontological relativity is roughly as follows:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.

8.

All ideas and perceptions concerning reality are given to our minds in terms of our own mental language.
Mental languages specify how objects in the world are to be constructed from our sense data.
Different mental languages will specify different ontologies (different objects existing in the world).
There is no way to perfectly translate between two different mental languages: there will always be several,
consistent ways in which the terms in each language can be mapped onto the other.
Reality apart from our perceptions of it can be thought of as constituting a true, object language, that is, the
language which specifies how things actually are.
There is no difference in translating between two mental languages as translating between the object language
of reality and one's own mental language.
Therefore, just as there is no objective way of translating between two mental languages (no one-to-one
mapping of terms in one to terms in the other) there is no way of objectively translating (or fitting) the true,
object language of reality into our own mental language.
And therefore, there are many ontologies (possibly an infinite number) that can be consistently held to
represent reality.

(see Chapter 2, in Word and Object).

The above argument is reminiscent of the theme in neopragmatism against the picture theory of language, the idea
that the goal of inquiry is to represent reality correctly with one's language.
A second critically influential philosopher to the neo-pragmatist is Thomas Kuhn who argued that our languages for
representing reality, or what he called "paradigms", are only as good as they produce possible future experiments
and observations. Kuhn, being a philosopher of science, argued in The Structure of Scientific Revolutions[4] that
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

2/5

10/9/2015

Neopragmatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"scientific progress" was a kind of a misnomer; for Kuhn, we make progress in science whenever we throw off old
scientific paradigms with their associated concepts and methods in favor of new paradigms which offer novel
experiments to be done and new scientific ontologies. For Kuhn 'electrons' exist just so much as they are useful in
providing us with novel experiments which will allow of to uncover more about the new paradigm we have adopted.
Kuhn believes that different paradigms posit different things as existing in the world and are therefore
incommensurable with each other. Another way of viewing this is that paradigms describe new languages which
allow us to describe the world in new ways. Kuhn was a fallibilist; he believed that all scientific paradigms (e.g.
classical Newtonian mechanics, Einsteinian relativity) should be assumed to be, on the whole, false but good for a
time as they give scientists new ideas to play around with. Kuhn's fallibilism, holism, emphasis on
incommensurability, and ideas concerning objective reality are themes which show up in neopragmatist writings
often.
Wilfrid Sellars argued against foundationalist justification in epistemology and was therefore also highly influential to
the neopragmatists especially Rorty.[5]

"Continental" influences
Philosophers such as Derrida and Heidegger and their views on language have been highly influential to
neopragmatist thinkers like Richard Rorty.

Wittgenstein and language games

The "later" Ludwig Wittgenstein in the Philosophical Investigations [6] argues contrary to his earlier views in the
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus [7] that the role of language is not to describe reality but rather to perform certain
actions in communities. The language-game is the concept Wittgenstein used to emphasize this. Wittgenstein
believed roughly that:
1. Languages are used to obtain certain ends within communities.
2. Each language has its own set of rules and objects to which it refers.
3. Just as board games have rules guiding what moves may be made so do languages within communities where
the moves to be made within a language game are the types of objects that may be talked about intelligibly.
4. Two people participating in two different language-games cannot be said to communicate in any relevant
way.
Many of the themes found in Wittgenstein are found in neopragmatism. Wittgenstein's emphasis of the importance
of "use" in language to accomplish communal goals and the problems associated with trying to communicate
between two different language games finds much traction in neopragmatist writings.

Richard Rorty and anti-representationalism

Richard Rorty was influenced by James, Dewey, Sellars, Quine, Kuhn, Wittgenstein, Derrida, and Heidegger. He
found common implications in the writings of many of these philosophers. Namely, he believed that these
philosophers were all in one way or another trying to hit on the thesis that our language does not represent things in
reality in any relevant way. Rather than situating our language in ways in order to get things right or correct Rorty

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

3/5

10/9/2015

Neopragmatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

says in the Introduction to the first volume of his philosophical papers that we should believe that beliefs are only
habits with which we use to react and adapt to the world.[8] To Rorty getting things right as they are "in themselves"
is useless if not downright meaningless.
In 1995 Rorty wrote: "I linguisticize as many pre-linguistic-turn philosophers as I can, in order to read them as
prophets of the utopia in which all metaphysical problems have been dissolved, and religion and science have
yielded their place to poetry."
Rorty and Pragmatism : The Philosopher Responds to His Critics, edited by Herman J. Saatkamp (Nashville:
Vanderbilt University Press, 1995).
This "linguistic turn" strategy aims to avoid what Rorty sees as the essentialisms ("truth," "reality," "experience") still
extant in classical pragmatism. Rorty writes:
"Analytic philosophy, thanks to its concentration on language, was able to defend certain crucial pragmatist theses
better than James and Dewey themselves. [...] By focusing our attention on the relation between language and the
rest of the world rather than between experience and nature, post-positivistic analytic philosophy was able to make
a more radical break with the philosophical tradition."
Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, no. 1 (Winter 1985).

Neopragmatism as distinguished from idealism and epistemic

relativism
One way to understand the motivation and themes of the neopragmatist is to understand how neopragmatism (and
pragmatism in general) distinguishes itself from both idealism and relativism. Neopragmatism is to be distinguished
from idealism primarily in the fact that it does not like idealism believe that what is actually in the world is affected in
any way by what individuals believe concerning it. Neopragmatism holds to the doctrine of a mind-independent
reality while simultaneously maintaining that this world is not knowable in the classical Cartesian sense of the word
"know". The neopragmatist views mind-independent reality to causally influence people's minds but whatever way
that influence may be on the individual mind is up to the individual. Neopragmatism is to be distinguished from
epistemic relativism on the force of the idea that in order to be an epistemic relativist one must be concerned about
getting one's ideas "right" in relation to reality. The neopragmatist thesis views this to be a concern which is of no
use and therefore is to be discarded. Neopragmatists hold that it makes no sense to talk about getting reality right
due to the fact that this adds no utility to do so. The neopragmatist is concerned with developing beliefs and habits
which allow one to adapt to one's environment with success rather than generating pictures used in order to
describe reality. Since neopragmatism lacks any concern for generating descriptive pictures of reality the whole
question of epistemic relativism is meaningless.

See also
Confirmation holism
Constructivist epistemology
Direct and indirect realism
Fallibilism
Linguistic turn
Ontological pluralism
Postanalytic philosophy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

4/5

10/9/2015

Neopragmatism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pragmatism

Notes
1. Bunnin & Yu, The Blackwell Dictionary of Western Philosophy, p. 467
2. Malpas, Jeff, "Donald Davidson", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N.
Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2012/entries/davidson/>
3. Quine, Willard Van Orman (2013). Word and Object. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
4. Kuhn, Thomas S. (1996). The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
5. deVries, Willem, "Wilfrid Sellars", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition), Edward N. Zalta
(ed.), URL=<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2014/entries/sellars/>
6. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (2009). Philosophical Investigations. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
7. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1995). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. New York, NY: Routledge.
8. Rorty, Richard (1996). Objectivity, Truth, and Relativism. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

References
Hylton, Peter, "Willard van Orman Quine", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2013
Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2013/entries/quine/>.

Further reading
Macarthur, David (2009). "Pragmatism, Metaphysical Quietism and the Problem of Normativity".
Philosophical Topics 36 (1): 193209. JSTOR 43154523.
Rorty, Richard (1996). "Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth". Philosophical Papers 1: 158161.
JSTOR 40886990.

External links
Neo-pragmatist Philosophy of Education (http://eepat.net/doku.php?
id=neopragmatist_philosophy_of_education)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Neopragmatism&oldid=677856096"
Categories: Epistemological theories Pragmatism Metatheory
This page was last modified on 25 August 2015, at 23:27.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia is a registered trademark
of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neopragmatism

5/5