(汤姆·伯克斯坦福博士》的作者杜威的新逻辑是南卡罗莱纳大学的哲学副教授(http://people.cas.sc.edu/burket/)。我邀请他的博客主题的实用主义,他不认为我们很公正地在几周前我们的节目。- jp)

实用主义是什么?

由汤姆伯克
部门哲学
南卡罗来纳大学

像任何哲学上的“主义”,实用主义本身容易驳斥稻草人的特征;在任何情况下,毫无疑问,有劣质(短视的,自私的,精明的,无原则的)形式的实用主义。但是皮尔斯的各种视图,詹姆斯,杜威,米德,和其他更复杂的比人们想象在回顾这些肤浅的特征。麦克德莫特教授声称,实用主义与其说是一个特定的哲学立场,因为它是一个哲学的态度。这轻松的处理关键策略旨在破坏实用主义作为一种特殊的哲学立场,但更需要说如果我们想要理解什么是实用主义。

首先,实用主义不是一个单一的哲学。没有单一的实用主义认识论,没有一个实用主义者形而上学。更特别,不仅仅是一个实用主义者的真理理论。相反,实用主义哲学是一种风格或方法。因此,它允许不同的意见任何哲学主题。它不能直接证实或反驳,但只会失败或成功的哲学风格的方式失败或成功。所以问题是:它是什么?我们如何描述实用主义,明显区别于其他方面的哲学?

可以说各种可能的实用主义哲学是一种家族相似性。不会很有启发性的。我会要求(而不是事后诸葛亮在历史画比在任何特定的实用主义者曾经所说),符合实用主义者哲学需要满足只有一个标准:它必须本质上和实质上支持务实的格言。这个格言已经以多种方式阐述和解释,这样的多样性是不可避免的。不过我认为必须制定一个实用主义者哲学,解释它,基本上取决于它是否作为一个基本的假设或来自其他基本假设。它是那么简单。

詹姆斯1898年伯克利讲座,他第一次公开实用主义事实上引用和讨论了皮尔斯的原始1878声明这条箴言:“考虑什么影响,它可能可以想象实际的轴承,我们想象的对象概念。然后,我们的这些效应概念的整个概念的对象。”It is clearly not a trivial matter to determine what this maxim actually says. James interpreted and used it in ways that Peirce apparently abhorred, and Peirce himself reformulated it a number of times in following years. But adherence to some version of this maxim is the one common feature of their respective views that makes those views pragmatist, no matter how much they disagree otherwise.

它可能帮助,然后,制定一个更精确的表述务实的格言,皮尔斯的原始声明是这样一个复杂的纠结。我们应该注意,实用主义(符合这个词的词源本身)强调实践和行为,也影响或后果。这是明显在皮尔斯的强调可能的影响可能的做法,即。与想象,可能影响实际的轴承。这些理由,工作很久以后,罗蒂是我们所说话语的实用主义者的行为和影响他在本质上是关心完全散漫的——不是话语都是他关心的是必然,但这仅仅是关于谈话,一些版本的务实的格言在罗蒂哲学任何工作。当然,其他类型的实用主义承认大范围的可能的行动及其可能的影响。强调实用主义可能不同于单纯的话语如何实用主义,否则表明多么深的务实格言能够达到,召回奎因的名言,“是一个变量的值。”This is not itself a metaphysical claim though it places certain constraints on how to formulate metaphysical claims. It reflects a style or way of doing philosophy, as it were, that is fundamentally oriented to possible "entities" or "things" rather than to possible effects of possible actions. A pragmatist alternative to Quine's dictum might say something to the effect that "to be the possible effect of a possible action is to be the value of a variable," which is to say that variables associated with particular ways of acting would range over respective ranges of possible outcomes, basic propositions would pertain to relations holding between such outcomes and/or ways of acting, and so forth. This is hardly typical of a standard first-order semantics, in which case we would want to rethink the entire formal-logical foundation upon which contemporary analytic philosophy rests. The point here is that pragmatism, no less than Quine's first-order-logicism, puts constraints on how to formulate philosophical views by stipulating what one may take to be semantically basic. For Quine, our philosophical language takes entities or things as a semantic basis for devising theories and models of how the world works. For a pragmatist, one's philosophical language takes actions and their effects as a semantic basis for devising theories and models of how the world works. This is what Peirce meant, I claim, by asserting that possible effects of possible actions must ground our fundamental terminology for formulating and clarifying our ideas. The latter couple of sentences constitute what I think is a more precise statement of the pragmatic maxim.

大家都说,一个可能(只)现在开始考虑各种实用主义者的真理,或如何和一个实用主义者是否会或可能不是一个现实主义者。我希望很明显,一个地图可以在哲学关于这些话题的同时仍然作为一个实用主义者,就像一个可以在哲学虽然是一阶logicist地图。

特别是,一个实用主义者不需要,据称,“意义和真理的任何想法(函数)的实际结果。”A pragmatist might try to defend such a claim. But another pragmatist might reasonably hold that this statement is just too simple if not wrong in the way it sidles from talk about effects of actions to outcomes of ideas. What does it even mean to say that ideas have outcomes? That may be meaningful, but some kind of story is needed to connect such a claim with the pragmatic maxim. By itself, then, such a claim is not sufficient as a characterization of pragmatism. Likewise, a pragmatist may otherwise find such a statement hopelessly incoherent, in which case we could not say that it is a necessary feature of pragmatism either.

也称“实用主义者反对所有形式的专制主义和坚持原则被视为工作假设必须在生活经验中结出果实。”Okay, some if not all existent pragmatists may have so insisted in one way or another; but it is not obvious that this is an essential feature of pragmatism given that one can insist thusly without being a pragmatist, i.e., with no cognizance whatsoever of the pragmatic maxim. Once again, talking in terms of experiential fruits of hypotheses may be understood, e.g., in purely Quinean first-order-logicist terms with no regard at all for the pragmatic maxim. Such a claim, then, is not sufficient as a characterization of pragmatism. Nor is it necessary, given that the pragmatic maxim does not by itself rule out all forms of absolutism. Not very many (if any) pragmatists have gone down that particular road, but that road is not obviously blocked by the pragmatic maxim alone.

所有这一切的结果是,理解务实的格言是理解什么是实用主义的关键。确定一个哲学立场是实用主义者,看看是否,以及它如何把这个格言。如果这个格言是找不到,或者即使它可以发现,但它没有基本哲学工作,职位,无论它可能是,不是实用主义者。