Pragmatism - A truly American philosophy

Philosophy can be more than wishy-washy flim-flam. It can be practical. The United States is normally not considered the birthplace of philosophical ideas, but leave it to America to come up with one of the most productive philosophical schools ever created.
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Wiki:
Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that began in the United States around 1870.[1] Charles Sanders Peirce, generally considered to be its founder, later described it in his pragmatic maxim:
Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.[2]
Pragmatism considers thought an instrument or tool for prediction, problem solving and action, and rejects the idea that the function of thought is to describe, represent, or mirror reality.[3] Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are all best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes. The philosophy of pragmatism “emphasizes the practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences”.[4] Pragmatism focuses on a “changing universe rather than an unchanging one as the Idealists, Realists and Thomists had claimed”.[4]
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Hashtags: #history #pragmatism #philosophy #CSPeirce #WilliamJames #JohnDewey #neopragmatism

[thomaswaithe]

Why do people resist pragmatism? As it's been said, "Magical thinking will persist so long as the truth is terrifying".

[RocketPropelledMexican]

The sad part is that pragmatism is no longer practiced in the US anymore
It's one of the reasons why the federal political dynamics are so shit

[ozymandias]

I love pragmatism. In a sea of uncertainty, arbitrary interpretation, and a history of just unhelpful philosophy, pragmatism stands out as one of the greats to me. Any youtubers who dedicate some of their time to this legacy gets my sub. Cheers.

[FirefoxisredExplorerisblueGoog]

"So the current truth is merely who holds the best argument that fits the current evidence available".

Yeh, I like this guy. That's the kind of rationale that science is build on nowadays. As accurate as can be, yet capable of improvement.

[CJusticeHappen]

My boss, a German fellow, enjoys explaining his "personal philosophical discoverys" to me. And I sit there, listen, and pretend that he isn't describing pragmatism word for word.

[gunterke]

Why does pragmatism gets overlooked? Well, I think it doesn't. I'm a European philosophy master and I came across the three major pragmatists (Pierce, James and Dewey) in my sudies. Every time they were mentioned, they were absolutely held in high regard. Our university also granted an honorary title to the late Richard Rorty who was a very friendly scholar, eager to talk with us students. We had a course on one of his books and it certainly wasn't the worst class I ever took.

[jcrass]

Thanks for doing these videos. I've been ignoring my countries achievements in philosophy and history for to long, you vids have sent me to look more into even my home state of Texas' history. Keep it up, sir!

[TheDavid]

Thank God somebody did a Pragmatism video!! I really appreciate that you did this!

[A_Box]

I came looking for copper and found gold.
This is an understatement for someone to whom conventional schools of thought have never been appealing.

[jimgleaves]

I recently had a chance to use pragmatism when discussing with a friend whether our universe is a simulation. It went something like:

Him: We might be in a simulation! It's incredible! It's so mind blowing!
Me: That's an interesting idea. If we were in a simulation how would that impact our decisions?
Him: Huh? It would change everything! It calls into question our whole reality!
Me: But I don't think I would do anything differently. Especially since I can't know for sure. Even if we DID know does it really have an practical implications? At all?
Him: But reality! The universe! It might not be real!
Me: I think it would still be real in a different way that it is hard to describe. Is there a single real thing you would do differently tomorrow if you knew this was a simulation?
Him: You don't seem to understand that everything would be different.
Me: A difference that makes no difference IS no difference. It's just fun and freaky, like saying everything could be a dream in the mind of God. In fact, the statements "we are a simulation inside of a computer we can't understand" and "we are a dream in the mind of God" seem to be almost exactly the same thing. And the feeling that they matter is just an illusion with no practical implications. At least none that I can think of. It's a model with no evidence to support it, and no implications. Why spend any time trying to figure it out?
Him: (silence).

[JMMRanMA]

I've always insisted that I am a Deweyan. In the late 60's and early seventies, I was studying to be a teacher at one of the oldest teacher training institutions in MA, Bridgewater State College. John Dewey and Horace Mann were the main focus of the education curriculum, including EdPsych. The slogan is still with me, "what is best is what works best."

[Mikearice]

Pragmatism made Intellectual History in college actually feel like the most valuable thing I learned in school....stuff like- Truth is what you can get the most mileage out of. No idea is sacred or above question on its own, so you can throw out any idea if it makes sense, but beliefs are all tied together and affect each other, so you can't throw them all out at once. (When you do that is basically equivalent to a crisis of faith.) The soundness of your belief basically comes down to how sound your other beliefs are that support it. How well does it all fit together? At a point, accepting a new idea requires a lot more than just accepting one new belief.

[jelongva]

Thanks for reminding me of one of my more enjoyable philosophy courses from nearly 50 years ago.

[hollin]

Great video. I noticed War is a Racket on the bookshelf. I wish that book was read in civics or early High School American history class

[jpjeon]

Though I am a big fan of this channel, I unfortunately think this video is missing the main thrust of Peirce's brilliant contribution to epistemology and philosophy of science/mathematics. As prime example, your paraphrasing of Peirce's dictum "Absolute truth is what people would rationally conclude if they were given infinite time to inquire and argue" to "unlimited practical inquiry" in other areas of your video does a disservice to and is a mischaracterization of Peirce's fallibilist conception of Truth: sure it might exist, but humans are too fallible to attain Absolute Knowledge thereof; mere reference to the reality -- a la the correspondence theory -- is likewise untenable insofar as there is always a intermediate term (i.e. in Peirce's own terms, representamen) in the process of representation. What Peirce was primarily attempting to articulate was that (1) there is always-already a profoundly logical causlity between all things, present, past, and future, but there is never just one, singular causal pathway in a deterministic way; (2) there is therefore always-already a level of contingency in all things in that the reality-for-us as is today could always have been radically otherwise; and (3) practicality is, modus ponens, the best means by which to attain a 'workable truth' of our times, not that it is ontologically Absolute in the timeless, everlasting sense. Put altogether, Peirce's works can in a way be interpreted as deeply Hegelian.

What he was NOT trying to say was that timeless Absolute Truth need strictly rest only on the laurels of pragmatic considerations, nor was he positing that timeless Absolute Truth is whatever is the best argument available at the time -- not only is this, as a matter of course, contradictory by definition (which I hope was simply a result of your lack of time, rather than of oversight), but it is also inferrable from a careful, coherent systematization of his premises. What is more, as you yourself noted in the description box of this present video, the entire thrust of the Pragmatist stance rests on an ethical belief that 'workable truths' are vital to "changing the universe [in stark contrast to the ideas of] an unchallenging one [of] the Realists, Idealists, and Thomists." To do so would require us to do away with a mischaracterization of Peirce's invaluable insights as what we might term the scientist pragmatism of today -- as you openly admit in the end -- but in not specifying this fallibilist aspect, the video doesn't seem to do full justice to Peirce's works and its deep indebtedness to all other philosophical traditions that -- though unfortunately misguided, some might rightly claim -- simply attempted to produce formal theories of the Absolute Truth.

Still, thanks for bringing into public consciousness the incredible yet oft-unrecognized works of Peirce. He is a staple among my references for my current dissertation in epistemology.

[dronekiller]

I feel like this is one of the few videos which understands how I think about politics. Most people around me are completely left-wing or completely right-wing or libertarians. They don't or can't, think for themselves. This includes university students and faculty profs unfortunately

[languageandmana]

Thank you for explaining it simply! I needed a simple and beautiful explanation like yours🙏🙏✨

[logosvideos]

Your videos are really good dude. You deserve a larger audience! I don't know whether you have already invested in promoting the channel, but if you did - keep doing it. The people will come. :)

[baabaa]

wishy-washy flim-flam is the best series of not-words I have ever seen.

[jeremytaylorfrancisgleaves]

Pragmatism, as outlined in this video, seems inconclusive.
What happens when we ask "Are the core tenets of pragmatism, namely asking if something is useful, useful?"
It seems like we need something underneath pragmatism to hold it up.