Kinds of Pragmatisms and Pragmatic Components of Knowledge

Although there is an eminent history of predecessors of pragmatism (cf. Rescher 1977, ch. xvii), the two official founders of pragmatism are Charles Sanders Peirce and William James (not to forget Dewey and Schiller). There is also a long list of more-or-less strict contemporary followers, including C.I.Lewis, Rescher, Rorty, Putnam, Quine, and in some degree also Carnap and Hempel in their late period. Rorty speaks of a gradual pragmatization of neopositivistic philosophy since the 70ies (Rorty 1982, xiv) and several philosophers have exclaimed a 'pragmatic turn' (Stegmüller 1983, ch. XI; Böhler et al. 1986; Schurz 1988). I will sharply distinguish this broader sense of pragmatically influenced philosophy- which I call pragmatic philosophy- from pragmatism in the narrower sense of the word. 1. Kinds of Pragmatisms Pragmatism is a family of philosophical positions which concern epistemology-the question of truth, or alternatively of justifiedness of knowledge. Thus it is a family of epistemological positions, though it has drastic consequences also for other areas of philosophy. It is, moreover, a family of positions which I call 'pragmatisms'