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Truth, Justice, and the American Pragmatist Way Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism More Examples of Operational Definitions Truth, Justice, and the American Pragmatist Way Thomas Burke Department of Philosophy University of South Carolina Latest version: April 7, 2012 1 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism More Examples of Operational Definitions Abstract Throughout his many writings Peirce occasionally presented examples of how to use the pragmatist method of defining one’s terms, having insisted that pragmatism is just that: a methodological stance concerning how best to clarify one’s terminology. One of the more remarkable examples is his definition of the word ‘reality’ with the corollary definition of the word ‘truth’ (Peirce 1878). I argue below that this definition also supplies for free a corollary definition of the word ‘knowledge’. Moreover, the same type of definition (involving a long-run perfectionist ideal of some sort) can be given for the words ‘democracy’ and ‘justice’. 2 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism More Examples of Operational Definitions Outline 1 Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Pragmatic Maxim Inferentialism and Operationalism 2 The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Some of Peirce’s Examples Some of James’s Examples Other Examples 3 More Examples of Operational Definitions Reality and Truth (Peirce’s template) Knowledge Democracy Justice 3 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Pragmatic Maxim The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Inferentialism and Operationalism More Examples of Operational Definitions The Pragmatic Maxim Pragmatism in its original form was a methodological perspective or stance regarding the nature of meaning (semantic, pragmatic) drawing on a particular package of views about the nature of belief, action, habit, thought, and inquiry. (Burke ms1). The pragmatic maxim is crucial to this view—originally presented by Peirce as a way to achieve a “3rd grade of clearness” of meaning over and above the so-called “clarity and distinctness” characteristic of axiomatic mathematics: “Consider what effects, which might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.” [Peirce 1878, EP1:132] 4 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Pragmatic Maxim The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Inferentialism and Operationalism More Examples of Operational Definitions The Pragmatic Maxim Peirce insisted that this maxim is about meaning—a “maxim of logic”—promoting no particular doctrine but only a method for more clearly defining one’s terms. Nevertheless, the maxim is ambiguous. Differences and disagreements between Peirce and James have not helped matters in the meantime. There are at least a couple of valid readings of the maxim depending on how you characterize “conceivable effects” and “practical bearings”: an inferentialist reading (James’s emphasis) an operationalist reading (essential for Peirce, though he seems to have embraced if not conflated the two readings) 5 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Pragmatic Maxim The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Inferentialism and Operationalism More Examples of Operational Definitions Inferentialism and Operationalism Sellars, Quine, Rorty, Brandom, et al., have developed inferentialist aspects of pragmatism. E.g., what’s the meaning of ‘2 ’? Inferentialist answer: It’s a matter of how the symbol is used as part of a larger vocabulary (of set theory, for instance). (Note: This won’t work for first-order languages. It is not possible to characterize a standard conception of natural numbers inferentially using only a first-order axiomatic “vocabulary” since there are nonstandard models for any such axiomatization. Inferentialism thus cannot focus solely on first-order languages.) James’s view, broadly stated, is that not just the meanings of terms but the truth values of hypotheses couched in such terms are a function of how well they work as part of a larger language and system of beliefs. 6 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Pragmatic Maxim The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Inferentialism and Operationalism More Examples of Operational Definitions Inferentialism and Operationalism The focus in this presentation is on operationalist aspects of pragmatism. E.g., what’s the meaning of ‘2 ’? Operationalist answer: It’s derived from how we identify, compare, and manipulate collections of things—in herds, boxes, baskets, sacks, buckets, pockets, bank accounts, etc.—putting things in, taking things out, etc. James was mostly blind not to empiricist aspects of pragmatism but to operationalist aspects of pragmatism. Peirce (trained in the laboratory) often illustrated proper use of the pragmatic maxim with none other than operational definitions (examples below). 7 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? The Pragmatic Maxim The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Inferentialism and Operationalism More Examples of Operational Definitions Inferentialism and Operationalism At the same time, Peirce in 1902 mentioned the “furthering of concrete reasonableness” as a “4th grade of clearness” and as “the highest of all aims” (see Pfeifer 2011). This would amalgamate inferentialist and operationalist aspects of pragmatism: reasonableness (inferential in nature) would be gauged by the combined coherence of abductive, deductive, and inductive methods addressed to a common subject matter; concreteness would be achieved by operationally grounding one’s grasp of that subject matter (that is, by operationally defining one’s terms). Some of Peirce’s examples of using the pragmatist method were inferential rather than operational. 8 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? Some of Peirce’s Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Some of James’s Examples More Examples of Operational Definitions Other Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Peirce supplied a number of operational definitions designed to illustrate what pragmatism is. For instance: transubstantiation (wine vs. blood) (Peirce 1878) hard, weight, force (Peirce 1878) lithium (Peirce 1903) hard (again; anti-nominalist), diamond (Peirce 1905) time (an inferential definition?) (Peirce 1905) 9 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? Some of Peirce’s Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Some of James’s Examples More Examples of Operational Definitions Other Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism If you look into a textbook of chemistry for a definition of lithium, you may be told that it is that element whose atomic weight is 7 very nearly. But if the author has a more logical mind he will tell you that if you search among minerals that are vitreous, translucent, gray or white, very hard, brittle, and insoluble, for one which imparts a crimson tinge to an unluminous flame, this mineral being triturated with lime or witherite rats-bane, and then fused, can be partly dissolved in muriatic acid; and if this solution be evaporated, and the residue be extracted with sulphuric acid, and duly purified, it can be converted by ordinary methods into a chloride, which being obtained in the solid state, fused, and electrolyzed with half a dozen powerful cells, will yield a globule of a pinkish silvery metal that will float on gasolene; and the material of that is a specimen of lithium. The peculiarity of this definition—or rather this precept that is more serviceable than a definition—is that it tells you what the word lithium denotes by prescribing what you are to do in order to gain a perceptual acquaintance with the object of the word. (Peirce 1903, EP2:286) 10 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? Some of Peirce’s Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Some of James’s Examples More Examples of Operational Definitions Other Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism James was less helpful in this regard. For example: going around a squirrel—can be cast in operationalist terms (James 1907a) In contrast: several messy metaphysical issues discussed in operationalist-friendly inferentialistic terms—substance vs. attributes, personal identity, matter vs. spirit, evolution vs. intelligent design, free will vs. determinism (James 1907b) 11 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Pragmatism? What’s Pragmatism? Some of Peirce’s Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Some of James’s Examples More Examples of Operational Definitions Other Examples The Operationalist Aspect of Pragmatism Some other illustrations: the debate about instant replay in Major League Baseball: first, eliminate the confusion, not unlike James’s “going around” example (Burke & Colley 2011ms) Jane Addams and the Settlement Movement: participation versus reform (Burke 2010) Gibson’s ecological psychology: “sensation” as extraction of invariants (Burke ms1) Euclidean geometry: compass-&-straightedge abilities versus theorems (Mathematica demo) A first-order “blocks language”: an operational semantics and a respective sound and complete proof system, mimicking dynamic logic but with an operational twist (Burke ms2; Barwise & Etchemendy 1999) 12 of 46 Burke Truth, Justice, Pragmatism Reality and Truth
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