Methodological Pragmatism: A Systems-Theoretic Approach to the Theory of Knowledge

by Nicholas Rescher

Book by Rescher, Nicholas

Genres: Philosophy

315 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1977

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Easily one of my favourite treatments of pragmatism, focusing on the key distinction between thesis pragmatism and methodological pragmatism. Fruitful, efficient and effective, methods are what grounds the legitimation of factual knowledge. Pragmatic efficiency in the course of action, production, and control provides the quality-control needed for warranted belief in theses; but theses themselves are not evaluated based on their usefulness or efficiency. Methods produce theses that figure in action, the outcome of which gives grounds for revisiting and revising our original methodological presuppositions. We then revise and improve our methods, giving a coherentist and iterative — non-foundationalist — evolutionary epistemology. Also contains a great discussion of the poverty of Popper’s epistemology and the historical origins of pragmatism beyond the classical views of Peirce, James, and Dewey.