4.2 A Personal Pragmatist Manifesto
The ideas that have shaped my personal stance are listed in abbreviated form below.
1) Treat observation, inquiry, and lived experience as fundamental in the construction of any philosophy.
2) Be philosophically informed by human culture
[As we are born in a state of complete ignorance, cultural learning and experience is essential if we are to survive in a way that does not rely exclusively on instincts and direct sensory responses. We are all so immersed in our cultures of doing and knowing that we tend to ignore the overwhelming importance of culturally-based learning. In modern culture Knowing and doing, in the human case, is fundamentally reliant on learning and the use of spoken and written language and other forms of symbolic communication. Without language there would be no pragmatism or any other philosophy. ]
3) Consider that propositional knowledge, as expressed by declarative sentences or by mathematical statements, represents only one kind of knowing. For the pragmatist (and every other sensible person) reading about how to drive a car is definitely not the same thing as actually being able to drive, since they are very obviously different activities. One is embodied in a way the other is not. Going to erotic movies is not the same thing as having sex and then raising a family. Without a practically based ‘knowing how’ there can be no culture (philosophical or otherwise).
4) Cultural development in the natural sciences and other complex human activities, is iterative and so does not usually arise as fully formed and correct narratives in the minds of enquirers. Culture evolves in the course of scientific activity or any other human endeavour.
5) Inquiry is carried out within the context of our education, our institutional and wider culture and our existing biases. In other words our enquiries, and the conclusions that we draw from them, are not value free.
6) Ways of understanding the complexities of the world can be revised even after exhaustive enquiry.
7) Favour ideas that are life enriching, have explanatory power or have some beneficial practical consequence. Or in the words of William James, it is important to cultivate ideas “that make a difference”
8) Avoid dichotomous thinking and false dichotomies within epistemology. I do not wish to be drawn into dichotomies that are not of my own making, especially where there is the possibility of gradations of belief rather than binary choices.
9) Prioritise what can be rationally accepted, as warranted, over unnecessary and idealised claims of truth, especially when they are absolutist.
10) Apply predictive tests of belief to verify or refute ideas and deprioritise ideas that do not permit such testing. However accept that verification and falsification in complex explanatory situations is often neither absolute nor definitive.
11) Do not mistake, ‘being wrong’, with acceptance or toleration of some degree of imprecision of observations or explanations. For example, Newtonian mechanics is not ‘wrong’ or within practical limits not even measurably inaccurate when applied appropriately in everyday life. (Ultra-precise time measurements used for example in GPS satellite based systems are one obvious exception. That very unusual degree of precision is only required because we puny humans want to know exactly where we are located on the map of a large rocky planet.)
12) Abandon the Principle of Charitable Interpretation, i.e. charitable interpretation of what others say or write. Instead apply warranted scepticism where appropriate so that we can adopt a discerning form of pragmatic relativism about our own beliefs and those of others that we encounter. (We should not be intimidated in this goal by the caricatures of relativistic thinking by some, if not most, analytic philosophers, who should really know better. Relativism about belief (as distinct from ‘truth’) make sense especially to those who, like me, are deflationists about truth)
13) Do not treat theoretical work, especially of the mathematical kind, as a substitute for empirical testing or action since numbers and mathematical functions are conceptual and have no physical existence. Indeed much of physic can be thought of as mathematical description, only some of which is useful or will stand the test of further enquiry.
14) Seek a logically coherent synthesis that creates a personally acceptable, although a probably imperfect, web of ideas. However do not look for overly simplistic overarching explanatory theories.
15) Accept that justification terminates where ignorance begins. Our only response to that situation can be to act differently in new forms of enquiry and then coherently elaborate more ideas.
16) Base explanations of the macroscopic world on the notion of observed effects and inferred causes or mechanisms. Accept that chains of causal explanation can often have no ultimate satisfactory terminus.
17) View explanatory regress as virtuous and a requirement for coherence of explanation.
18) Realise that humans have long created explanatory myths and we are probably no different in that respect from those who have gone before us. For example, should we acknowledge that the currently favoured scientific explanation of a universal beginning could easily be a comforting mathematised myth in the face of a haunting and unfathomable endlessness of space and time? It is perhaps too easy to replace theistic myths with scientific ones that give us a comforting starting point.
19) Accept the concept of ‘different levels of description and explanation’ and do not misapply them outside their applicable domains. (Otherwise there is a risk of generating nonsensical talk, such as philosophical psychobabble about neuroimaging.) Of course, metaphorical thinking is critical in the development of understanding since it provides economy of effort and application of established ideas.
20) Apply scepticism where warranted and to the appropriate degree. Sceptical beliefs also need to be justified. As a result do not develop unwarranted and unproductive sceptical fantasies (brains in vats, etc), unless for creative amusement and fictive purposes.
21) Be wary of those who ask me to abandon well established or even common-sense ideas, unless the alternatives they propose are clearly more informative or provide obviously better explanations. For example, despite the dreadful mathematical metaphysics that teaches time is an illusion, look first to your history.
22) Treat semantic paradoxes of self-reference as philosophical pseudo-problems brought about by the incompleteness of language.
23) Treat the natural sciences as our most fruitful way of learning about the natural world without falling in the the trap of scientism about epistemology, logic, ethics, love, enjoyment of life , personal goals, creative activities, aesthetics, social values, legal and political frameworks. (If, for example, you want to reduce feelings of religious ecstasy or the love of great music and poetry to scientific terms then you have really lost the plot! Here I am distinguishing subjective feelings from legitimate reductionist and emergentist explanations of brain function.)
24) Treat the sciences as though they have the ability to be life enhancing, yet also have the potential to be an existential threat.
25) As a tactic for the allocation of time, do not engage in unproductive speculations and refrain from philosophising about domains of human activity or thought that cannot be productively investigated at present. Or as Wittgenstein said, “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent”
26) Judge the value of philosophy by how it betters human life and the lives of other sentient creatures. Consider what it would mean for life to be better.
27) Enquire about views that are contrary to, or more extensive than, my own and be prepared to learn from their originators.
28) Since lived experience is essential to good philosophy, treat others as my teachers, regardless of their social or educational status and philosophical insight. In different words learn from others, both for their triumphs and from their misfortunes.
Further Reading
A more articulate academic account is provided by Richard Shusterman
What Pragmatism Means to Me: Ten Principles by Richard Shusterman, in Revue française d’études américaines 2010/2 (n° 124), pages 59 à 65