Pragmatism's Functionalistic Perspective

The crux of philosophical pragmatism is its insistence. The proper evaluation standard for all human projects—be they cognitive, practical, or normative, and be they personal or social—lies in the effective and efficient realization of appropriate needs and wants. According to pragmatism the merit of things should be judged in terms of their consequences, that merit is to be assessed by functional adequacy in realizing appropriate objectives. The issue of valid goals—of human needs and their properly coordinated desiderata— is thus a pivotal issue for pragmatism. And specifically as regards cognition, pragmatism proposes to see warranted beliefs as those which provide for successful implementation; meritorious actions are those that realize suitable ends; appropriate valuations are those which guide beneficial efforts. Pragmatism as a philosophical doctrine traces back to the Academic skeptics in classical antiquity. Denying the possibility of achieving authentic knowledge (epistêmê) regarding the real truth, they taught that we must make do with plausible information (to pithanon) adequate to the needs of practice. Throughout, functional efficacy in the realization of beneficial objectives is the ultimately correct standard of assessment.

Such pragmatism has many forms and versions. Some settle for the indifference of personal relativism: “Whatever works for you.” Others set objective standards of purposive suitability. Only this later, realistic version will be at issue here. The doctrine that concerns us nails its flag to the mast of functional effectiveness and purposive efficacy in the realizing of appropriate objectives. The correlative mode of pragmatism lies in the consideration that all rational human dealings and practices—cognitive and practical alike—are purposive in nature, and their legitimacy and validity lie in their efficacy and effectiveness in satisfying (meeting) appropriate human requirements (needs and appropriate wants).

We humans live subject to a manifold of processes: physical, chemical, biological, social, economic, and so on. Each such processual realm imposes various purposes upon us, subjecting us to needs, requirements, and desiderata of various sorts. The meeting of these purposes involves us in a wide variety of projects each with its own manifold of purpose-accommodating processes. We are thus committed to such projects as the pursuit of nourishment, or physical security, of comfort, of education, of sociability, of rest and recreation, and the like, designed to meet our requirements for food, shelter, clothing, knowledge, companionship, realization, etc., all equipped with their own complex of needs and desiderata.