Pragmatism(实用主义).pptx

pragmatism SES 1301010519 Sodi WangCataloguePart One: Brief Introduction...Part two: Three Pragmatists...Part Three: Developing in China...1Pragmatism A philosophical tradition began in the United States around 1870 It means thinking of and dealing With problems in a practical way rather than by using theory or abstract principles.The philosophy of pragmatism emphasizes “the practical application of ideas by acting on them to actually test them in human experience”. Pragmatism focuses on “changing universe rather than an unchanging one as the Idealists, Realists and Thomists had claimed” 2Classical PragmatistsCharles Peircethe father of pragmatism An American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and scientist. Peirce, like James, saw pragmatism as embodying familiar attitudes, in philosophy and elsewhere, elaborated into a new deliberate method for fruitful thinking about problems. Peirce differed from James and the early John Dewey, in some of their tangential enthusiasms, in being decidedly more rationalistic and realistic, in several senses of those terms, throughout the preponderance of his own philosophical moods.William JamesFather of American psychology James went on to apply the pragmatic method to the epistemological problem of truth. He would seek the meaning of true by examining how the idea functioned in our lives. A belief was true, he said, if it worked for all of us, and guided us expeditiously through our semihospitable world. Beliefs were ways of acting with reference to a precarious environment, and to say they were true was to say they were efficacious in this environment. In this sense the pragmatic theory of truth applied Darwinian ideas in philosophy; it made survival the test of intellectual as well as biological fitness.John Deweyan American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer Dewey is one of the primary figures associated with the philosophy of pragmatism and is considered one of the founders of functional psy