PRAGMATISM

it is pretty much doing wtv it is in your best interest.if you want to go deep into it you might also want to read about "self interest" in the Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith.

philosophizer wrote:

pragmatism...WHAT THE HELL IS IT. i have read the definitions and the textbooks but i just don't get what it really means. every answer is too complex or just doesn't seem to make sense

4. According to James, what is pragmatism? What kinds of “habits that are dear to professional philosophers” does James specifically reject? Why does he reject such habits? How does the pragmatist theory of truth differ from the intellectualist and idealist theories of truth which he outlines?

that is the question i have to answer...im finding it almost impossible to answer, too many other things to incorporate.

philosophizer wrote:

pragmatism...WHAT THE HELL IS IT. i have read the definitions and the textbooks but i just don't get what it really means. every answer is too complex or just doesn't seem to make sense

yea i just read that site and it still if confusing...anyway to put it terms as if your trying to explain it to a 10 year old..because that is how i feel about this shit right now...cant grasp the concept

That question is obviously based on some reading you were assigned. Do the reading and you'll understand.

James though it unfortunate that philosophers spend so much time and energy on ideas and theories that make no practical difference in our life. For James, thinking is connected with acting, and ideas and theories should have "cash value." To underscore his belief in the practical nature of thinking, he called his philosophy pragmatism, a word that derives from the Greek pragma (deed, action)-the same Greek term that is the origin of the English words "practical" and "practice." According to James, "The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me at definite instants of our life, if this world formula or that world formula be the true one."

That is what i was supposed to read....i just cant understand what it really means, i want to understand the concept...not clicking

1.Pragmatism is more a way of orienting yourself towards all of experience. Think about it that way.

2. Everyone has beliefs, values, etc, but these change in relation to how useful they are to us at a specific moment in time.

3. Pragmatism says that truth and reality are always changing because what is useful one day may not be the next.

So what if we take pragmatism seriously?

Then you will not claim that any idea is absolutely true. You could not, for example, say that the Trinitarian God is 'true' for all time. You have to look at how that idea manifests itself in the way people act. Along with that, James would look at history to say that even Trinitarian doctrine has changed because it needed to "work" for different people at different times.

In case that isn't simple enough.

Read the book "Pragmatism" by James. It explains pragmatism better than any book you are reading.

Pragmatism is not self-interest.

philosophizer wrote:

James though it unfortunate that philosophers spend so much time and energy on ideas and theories that make no practical difference in our life. For James, thinking is connected with acting, and ideas and theories should have "cash value." To underscore his belief in the practical nature of thinking, he called his philosophy pragmatism, a word that derives from the Greek pragma (deed, action)-the same Greek term that is the origin of the English words "practical" and "practice." According to James, "The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me at definite instants of our life, if this world formula or that world formula be the true one."

That is what i was supposed to read....i just cant understand what it really means, i want to understand the concept...not clicking

In a nutshell, he saw way too many philosophers coming up with theory that had no practical application. The fact that is had no practical application was insignificant to them. He suggested that the value of a proposition was meaningful not by what you supposed it meant (a priori), but, by what it meant when applied (a posteriori). In a way, he was Aristotlean, only in the sense that he allowed truths to arise from things after they had been experienced. Neo-platonists, not to say James and those guys were replying to Neo-platonists, but, merely to extend the previous notion, were more apt to come up with an idea and say damn the consequences. In the end, it all boils down to how you respond to Plato anyway.

thanks for the feed back guys....this is what i have currently as the answer to that big question i posted before

James says that thinking is connected with acting, and ideas and theories should have ‘cash value.’ He says the whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to you and me at definite instants of our life. He rejects or turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins. He does so because instead he believes you should turn towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action and towards power. Idealists say things are true whenever they are what God means that we ought to think about that subject. Intellectualists say that truth means essentially an inert static relation. Once you’ve got your true idea of anything, there’s an end of the matter. Pragmatist theory of truth says true ideas are those we can assimilate, validate, corroborate and verify. False ideas are those that we cannot.