Pragmatism as an attitude - Frank Martela

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asic but attempting to find underlying continuities between them. Viewing reality as continuous and flowing rather than static and distinct is thus very much at the core of pragmatic view of the world 14 . As James (2005:253) stated "the essence of life is its continuosly changing character." Looking forward One of the most characteristic features of the pragmatic outlook is its forward-looking nature. The attitude of looking towards last things, fruits and consequences is an attitude that is first and foremost interested in the future – in the question of how can we best influence our future through our thinking. In pragmatism, ideas, theories and attitudes are in the end judged by their prospective consequences – through their capacity for impact. Ideas are “essentially intentions”, plans and methods through which we attempt to have an effect on our future (Dewey 1908:86). James sees that the essential contrast between pragmatism and more traditional philosophy of rationalism is that reality “for pragmatism is still in the making” (James 1991:113). The future is open and our actions and thinking can have impact on it so it is this end that our philosophical inquiry should serve. “What you want is a philosophy that will not only exercise your powers of intellectual abstraction, but that will make some positive connexion with this actual world of finite human lives” (James 1991:12). Thinking and the resulting theories are put to work, they are used in our practical endeavors. “We don’t lie back upon them, we move forward, and, on occasion, make nature over again by their aid” (James 1991:26). This forward-looking role that pragmatism gives to thinking can be connected to James understanding of the human condition. For James consciousness is teleological in nature, “understanding of all mental activity and its products must include reference to the agent’s purposes and interests” (Suckiel 2006:32). Still it should be clear that looking forward is very much an attitude rather than a fixed theoretical doctrine. It is an attitude through which a pragmatist views all theories, ideas, believes and other attitudes put forward him. More deeply, it could be stated that it is an attitude through which a pragmatist lives her life in which intellectual inquiry is but one element. Transcending the fact-value dichotomy At this point it doesn’t come as a surprise that part of the pragmatic attitude is a denial of any categorical distinction between facts and values. This attitude flows naturally from the careful appreciation of the human condition that is part of pragmatism. The way we see the world is never direct, it is inescapably ‘contaminated’ by our ways of perceiving it. These ways of perception affect what we pay attention to, how we perceive certain features of the world, what we see as being together and what we see as separate, not to mention the emotional and behavioral reactions that are triggered automatically by certain perceptive patterns. Thus when we build up our ‘neutral’ perception of the world we do it through 14 If one would start to develop this attitude more systematically one might end up with some form of process philosophy in which “natural existence consists in and is best understood in terms of processes rather than things — of modes of change rather than fixed stabilities” (Rescher 2008) If gross generalizations are allowed one might also note that the process viewpoint on reality is at the core of many Oriental worldviews while the fixed viewpoint is more what modern Western thinking has been about.
appreciating such cognitive values as coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy; without any such values to guide our perception we would not have any sensible view of the world; it would be mere obscure sensations. (Putnam 1990a.) Pragmatism then doesn’t see any foundational distinction between these types of cognitive values and other types of values such as ethical values. Putnam (1990a:139), for example, sees these cognitive values as “part of our holistic conception of human flourishing”, contributing to good live through an ideal of theoretical intelligence. Constructing a view of the world out of ‘sensory stimulations’ we need an intentional, valuational, referential work of ‘synthesis’ (Putnam 1990a:141). So instead of viewing distinctions between facts and values as ontologically primary pragmatism starts from the human condition where our perception is already contaminated by values. Only after acknowledgment of this condition is it time to start seeing if there are any functionally sensible distinctions to be made between different forms of sensations and different forms of values. Meliorism Reality for pragmatism “is still in the making” and as human beings we take an interest in our future. In looking towards last things, fruits and consequences it is quite natural to assume that we are interested in positive rather than negative kind of consequences. This interest in improving our human lives is what meliorism is about. This attitude is most visible in Dewey, for whom pragmatism seems to be a way of employing intelligence for the betterment of both individual life and humankind in general (Jackson 2006:60). But defined like that meliorism can be interpreted in at least four different ways. The first is a thesis about the way the world is. It is a doctrine according to which “the world is neither the worst nor the best possible, but that it is capable of improvement” (Century Dictionary 1889-1991) 15 . It thus positions itself against both optimism and pessimism believing that “the specific conditions which exist at one moment, be they comparatively bad or comparatively good, in any event may be bettered” (Dewey MW 12:181-182). The first formulation of meliorism being about the way of the world the second is about the nature of human being. According to it as human beings we are interested in improving our future and all our endeavors – even the seemingly purely intellectual ones – are in the end in service of such improvement. This is what Dewey seems to be after when he sees pragmatism as a form of thinking that “gives birth to distinctive act which modify future facts and events in such a way as to render them more reasonable, that is to say, more adequate to the ends which we propose for ourselves” (Dewey LW 2: 18). Framing our intellectual endeavors to be at the bottom line about the improvement of human life is thus the second interpretation of meliorism. In addition to these two views on meliorism there is an openly normative thesis that can be derived from this kind of meliorism. According to it philosophy should be the instrument for improving human life, not just a way of understanding it. Dewey (MW 10:46) calls for a recovery of philosophy as “a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the 15 This characterization of meliorism is alleged to Peirce (see Bergman 2009). Whether or not meliorism is part of Peirce’s idea of pragmatism is a complicated question but what is clear is that he was not a proponent of meliorism in any such straightforward sense as Dewey was (again, see Bergman 2009).
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Pragmatism as an attitude - Frank Martela

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