American Pragmatism in the 20th

American Pragmatism in the 20th Century Pragmatism, as general maxim, endeavored to trace the truth of the theory in its practical consequences. Early 20th century pragmatism, pioneered by William James, expanded on by CI Lewis and John Dewey, applied this perspective to truth in general. Neo- or analytical pragmatism that appeared late in the century revered to traditional pragmatism of Pierce and expanded the theory to science, epistemology in general, logic, and arithmetic.

James' system of pragmatism largely developed from an unknown paper of Pierce ('How to Make our Ideas Clear') that was published in the late 19th century. James popularized his ideas and developed it into a philosophy that he called pragmatism. Pragmatism was the attempt to merge empirical and moral thinking.

Rather than being diametrical as they were considered at the time, James pointed out in his famous analogy of men going counter clockwise around a tree to catch a squirrel: The resultant metaphysical problem now is this: Does the man go round the squirrel or not? (1907: 27f)) lies in the answer that both sought the same goal although they may be going in opposite directions. James' pragmatism was an endeavor to resolve Descartes' epistemological problem; about how and whether one can know the 'truth'; what the ' truth' / reality is.

Later thinkers, such as Dewey and CI Lewis expanded pragmatism to science and logic. Thus, whilst James could be seen as exponent of 'narrow' pragmatism', neo-pragmatists (starting from Dewey) were founders of what became known as 'wider-pragmatism'.

The difference between Pierce and James is that whilst Pierce argued that pragmatism could be posited to explain the substance of science and reality -- namely that reality could be proved since it was practical to us, proved useful to us, James differed in that he applied the theory to religion and systems of truth and demonstrated that since belief depended on that which served our needs there could, ipso facto, be relative truth, or various 'truth's that were equally true at the same time.

This necessarily led to and later reinforced American predilection (particularly in the '60s and '70s) towards relativism (that there could be different kinds of truths (James, 3:2) and therefore pragmatism became an intrinsically American philosophy. Pragmatism and Pluralism.

Pluralism I, as characterized by Manley (1983) refers to the American legal / political system where, contrary to the popular opinion, that sees political power distributed according to greatest resources and influences, Pluralism I saw the possibility of different elites gaining different (or relative) amounts of political power regardless of resources and influence as long as a specific party felt passionately enough about a specific political issue.

Pluralism II (or 'neo' or 'post pluralism) emerged with the widening of gaps between the two classes, the Watergate scandal, the influence of corporations, and unemployment amongst other factors, and, starting with Dahl in 1967, posited multiple centers of power and limited popular sovereignty as the two fundamentals of American pluralism. According to Pluralism II, this could work for American advantage since the multiple forces of power served to subdue any one single influence as well as promoting the consent of all citizens and encouraging peaceful settlement of conflict.

I see American pragmatism of the early 20th century, albeit applied to religions and 'truth, as more congruent to Pluralism II than to Pluralism I. James saw all religions and beliefs as being equally 'true;' in that each led to practical ends in terms of providing the practitioner with a sense of stability, community, pleasure and, all-in-all an instrument with which to lead his life. In the economic sense of the term, therefore, they were 'rational' in that they served man's purpose.

According to this sense of 'truth', therefore, all religions were equally' true'. As James famously opined: The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite assignable reasons. (1907: 42) And later: 'The true', to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as 'the right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole, of course.

(1907: 106) And furthermore: Any idea upon which we can ride & #8230;; any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, saving labor; is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally. (1907: 34) Each of these multiple agendas in Pluralism II sees political truth from its own orbit, with there existing no central orbit of dominating truth or sovereignty.

In this way, all serve as multiple facets to achieving a certain pragmatic political purpose and each serves as checks to any one central factor (as e.g. The Presidency)) asserting itself as 'true'. Pragmatism and Public Choice The American public is deluded into thinking that politics is a disinterested field where politicians work for the good of the public.

Economists, in the name of public choice theory, see politics as a rational field where politicians work towards their own ends and that any official, at whatever level he or she be, ultimately works for his own self-interests, and that these ends may, if not controlled, proceed to particularly distrustful and dangerous conclusions. Public choice has similarities and disparities to Pragmatism. On the tone hand, it is seen as fragmented groups of perspectives of politics each containing its own subscription to its own particular selfish 'truth'.

On the other hand, these refer to individuals rather than to groups and differ to early pragmatism in that the later was scripted in connection with a more ideal, wider definition of 'truth' i.e. As referring to a system of global beliefs and ways of thinking, primarily in the religious sense. Public Choice refers to a mercenary and narrow sense of 'truth' as particularly applied to individual selfish ends and serving the individual's grope to personal power.

Buchanan's observation, however that: [Public Choice] is nothing more than common sense, as opposed to romance. To some extent, people then and now think about politics romantically. Our systematic way of looking at politics is nothing more than common sense. (Felkins, 1990) instinctively reminds me of pragmatism's observation that they were more in tune with reality and commonsense that other truth-analyzing movements (such as Cartesianism) since, observation of world revealed that naturally people chose what served their ends and rejected that which did not. 'Truth' therefore, served commonsensical ends.

Elite theory Elite theory is the very reverse of both Pluralism I and Pluralism II in that it asserts that a small minority of elite figures, demarcated by power and affluence control and regulate political affairs. This may be economic powers (such as corporations) and political powers as well as networks and that, in short, no true democracy exists at all. Rather, democracy as it is understood is a myth. Elite theory contravenes pragmatism, which is inherently the essence of democracy and relativism granting each its right.

Pragmatism accords to each unit of knowledge, system, and so forth be it what it will an equal capability of power and authenticity, regardless of extraneous characteristics such as money and power. Elite theory, on the other hand, sees one authority, 'new system of ' so-called 'truth' dominating the whole, and it is this system that dictates and regulates media, government, social processes, and ultimately the way citizens act, think, believe, hence elevating one manufactured 'truth' above that of numerous other systems.

Regime theory Regime theory, on the other hand, is more in touch with early ideas of pragmatism in that it sees international institutions or regimes as having their own particular perspective of 'truth, but that this serves as control and regulation to the behavior of any oen state and that therefore cooperation and peaceful resolve of conflict is possible.

With all system benign relative in their individual assertion of their own value / equal value, conflicts can be reasonably solved, since, as James said: Ideas & #8230; become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience. (1907: 34) Cooperation occurs despite differences in points-of-view since "instiituions [i.e.

regimes] principles, norms, rules, and decision making procedures around which actor expectations converge in a given issue-area." (Krasner, 1983, p.26) neoliberal policy theories Another theory that may be seen as either similar to or contradictory to Elite theory is.