Pragmatism: The Restoration of Its Scientific Roots

Pragmatism was intended, by C. S. Peirce, its founder, as a doctrine for the rational substantiation of knowledge claims. For Peirce, objective efficacy, not personal satisfaction, is what matters for fixing opinion in a community of rational inquirers. According to Nicholas Rescher, later pragmatists saw the matter differently. They envisioned subjective satisfactions, rather than objectively determinable functional effectiveness, as being the aim of the enterprise. The two pragmatisms are complete opposites, Rescher argues, in terms of claims and intentions. He seeks to examine and explore pragmatism dialectically, with a conviction that brings pragmatism to life for specialist and generalist alike.