Valid Pragmaticness
Actually written MAY 12, 2016
Philosophical pragmatism holds that true beliefs are teleologically laden, i.e. that they serve some “purpose” – gratify some value.
“Truth is what our culture makes it. Anything goes as long as we get the majority to agree.”
Hence pragmatism is just relativism – teleological relativism. And relativism refutes itself through self-contradiction and is therefore incoherently wrong.
But I believe there is a valid kind of “pragmaticness” that isn’t self-contradictory. This valid pragmaticness depends on the distinction between form and object proposed by objectivist philosopher, David Kelley, in his book, The Evidence of the Senses, a Realist Theory of Perception. In that distinction, the form is where all the relativism happens, while the object is where all the absolutism happens. And they happen together, entangled in one another. Can’t have one without the other. As such, we have a sophisticated realist theory (as opposed to a naive one) that can accommodate the facts of relativity. Likewise, we have a realist theory that can accommodate pragmaticness, as long as that pragmaticness is limited to the form, and not the object.
So I’d like to propose that while true beliefs are not pragmatic, the form of our beliefs are.
True beliefs are not teleologically laden, not goal-directed.
But the form of our true beliefs are teleologically laden and goal-directed.
This is because true beliefs are derived from perception. And perception is form laden. And the forms of our perception are pragmatic – teleologically laden.
Given that our perceptual faculties could have operated in many of several random ways, generating relational forms in correspondingly random ways, the way that our human perceptual faculties does happen to operate also “works for us,” facilitating the gratification of our values.
This is not to say that our values determine or create our perceptual forms.
But I’d say that our perceptual forms and our values place constraints on one another, so long as there is generational evolution. (Species of conscious beings that do not engage in generational evolution would either have no such mutual constraints, or some other type of mutual constraints.)
Saying that a species has “generational evolution” means that the species reproduces, and does so under a scheme of mutation and subsequent natural selection of the successful mutations. And this generational evolution sets the terms for both our perceptual forms and our values.
As such, our perceptual forms and our values co-evolve under the global constraints of generational evolution. And co-evolution means they constrain one another. Perceptual forms and values cooperate (constrain one another) to facilitate and maximize survival and reproductive success.
Generational evolution is a teleologically void process. Therefore, our perceptual forms and our values evolve for no teleological purpose, to gratify no goal or value. They just evolve by the mechanism of natural selection from among normalities and mutations. The process doesn’t “have to work” by some teleological decree from a deity or something. It could just as well fail and the species die out. The sustained generational evolution of a species is simply evidence that their reproductive scheme happens to work in their normal environment.
And part of what makes it work may be their perceptual forms and values.
This seems to be the case for we humans.
And as such, the overarching process is not pragmatic at all, since it is teleologically void.
But, insofar as values do constrain perceptual forms in their co-evolution, perceptual forms are teleologically laden and therefore pragmatic.
In no way does this support philosophical (truth) pragmatism. At best it gets us what we might call “perceptual form pragmatism.”
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