pragmatism

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prag·ma·tism

(prag'mă-tizm),

A philosophy emphasizing practical applications and consequences of beliefs and theories, that the meaning of ideas or things is determined by the testability of the idea in real life.

[G. pragma (pragmat-), thing done]

Farlex Partner Medical Dictionary © Farlex 2012

prag·ma·tism

(prag'mă-tizm)

A philosophy emphasizing practical applications and consequences of beliefs and theories; that the meaning of ideas or things is determined by the testability of the idea in real life.

[G. pragma (pragmat-), thing done]

Medical Dictionary for the Health Professions and Nursing © Farlex 2012

pragmatism

1. Action determined by the need to respond to immediate necessity or to achieve a particular practical result, rather than by established policy or dogma.

2. The philosophic principle that the truth and meaning of an idea is entirely relative to its practical outcome.

Collins Dictionary of Medicine © Robert M. Youngson 2004, 2005

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References in periodicals archive ?

Emerson is a seminal figure or precursor for American pragmatism is no

Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. is the use of calling Emerson a pragmatist: a brief and belated response to Stanley Cavell

Such apparent numbness or indifference in the face of profound loss gives fuel to the long-standing criticism that American pragmatism lacks a proper sense of the tragic and, furthermore, that its optimism is, in that sense, naive and partial.

"The Abandonment of ... Precious Things": Richard Ford and the Limits of Pragmatism

However, Kirk's assertion that Burke refutes once and for all an American pragmatism yet to come and his reading of that pragmatism strike me as mistaken.

Pragmatic conservatism: a defense

American pragmatism was for Holmes the linchpin between fixity and flexibility.

Holmes and dissent

It was in this work that Rorty sought to combine his philosophical interest in American pragmatism with a commitment to enlightened social reform, whose high water marks had been the Progressive Era and the New Deal.

White philosophy in/of America

Kallen" and a "Selected Bibliography of Pragmatism in France, 1898-1914." Schultenover could not have chosen a more suitable conclusion, for it leaves readers with tools to continue discussion of the relationship between American pragmatism and Catholic Modernism.

The Reception of Pragmatism in France and the Rise of Roman Catholic Modernism, 1890-1914

This is American pragmatism. That is, White, liberal American politicians (including President Obama!) are interested in the function of ideas and statements and their effects rather than the sources and conditions of their production.

Palestinian Reflections on American Political Ideology

'American pragmatism! And I think I understood American Modernism better than most Americans because all my learning had been overseas in the army in Europe.

A wall for every work: interview with Barney Ebsworth: Barney Ebsworth's proposed bequest to the Seattle Art Museum of 65 great American Modernist paintings is the culmination of a collecting career driven by a businessman's shrewd analysis of undervalued works as well as a deep emotional attachment to art

Perhaps Americans' decision to immerse themselves in the war by reading blow-by-blow accounts of it was American pragmatism at work--the nation was stuck in a bad situation and the people preferred to deal with it as it was.

Give me a good book

Nevertheless, alongside Glaude's moral philosophical embrace of a qualified form of American pragmatism in the wake of the 1960s and 1970s, Saidiya Hartman's Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route offers a rather agnostic approach to diasporic politics and desire.

The Mourning After: Black Political Culture in the Age of Terror

The chapter on comparative epistemology, for instance, is an occasionally amusing traverse of Germanic idealism, Zen Buddhism, and American pragmatism that bridges huge gulfs without being entirely clear, at least for this reader, how "justified belief" translates into moral or ethical imperatives.

Public Ethics and Governance: Standards and Practices in Comparative Perspective