Philosophy of Pragmatism

Traditional philosophies of knowledge explore what is true, while other areas of philosophy deal with what is real and what is good or beautiful. To say that knowing what is true involves both knowledge and truth is to appreciate two distinct branches of philosophical investigation. Epistemology is the name given to the theory of knowledge (Moser & Nat, 1995, p. 3). But what it is important to point out is that knowledge per se is only one aspect of philosophy, unless what is known can be confidently held to be accurate, i.e., true. What is known must involve a condition of the mind, but it may also involve a condition of the physical senses. This leads to a distinction between knowledge that is an attribute of belief and knowledge that is an attribute of experience. Moser and Nat cite (1995, p. 3) the distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, the former having to do with solely mental proces

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vant. Moser and Nat (p. 5) cite Peirce's distinction between a dispositional and state-object view of beliefs. They explain that the former refers to a mental attitude that represents a "disposition to behave" in a certain way, which means that the behavior may or may not follow from the disposition's being a part of the mental apparatus. The state-object condition seems to be roughly equivalent to an a posteriori condition, for it makes the transition from mental to physically verified knowledge, representing "a special relation between a person and an object of belief [what is believed]" (p. 6). But to attempt to identify pragmatic epistemology with traditional categories of knowledge, whether a priori or a posteriori, seems to miss the real point of pragmatic philosophy. That is because of pragmatism's focus on verification of the condition of the "special relation" between the believer and the object of belief, between the statement of truth and the truth-object. Verification implies method, and method is of paramount importance in pragmatism: The pragmatic method . . . is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rathe
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