Pragmaticism - Pragmatic Maxim

Pragmatic Maxim

Whether one chooses to call it "pragmatism" or "pragmaticism"—and Peirce himself was not always consistent about it even after the notorious renaming—his conception of pragmatic philosophy is based on one or another version of the so-called "pragmatic maxim". Here is one of his more emphatic statements of it:

Pragmaticism was originally enounced in the form of a maxim, as follows: Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object (CP 5.438).

In the 1909 Century Dictionary Supplement, the entry for pragmaticism, written, it now appears, by John Dewey, was

pragmaticism (prag-mat′ i-sizm), n. A special and limited form of pragmatism, in which the pragmatism is restricted to the determining of the meaning of concepts (particularly of philosophic concepts) by consideration of the experimental differences in the conduct of life which would conceivably result from the affirmation or denial of the meaning in question.

He framed the theory that a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life. . . . To serve the precise purpose of expressing the original definition, he begs to announce the birth of the word "pragmaticism." C. S. Peirce, in The Monist, April, 1905, p. 166.