The approach to epistemology, metaphysics, meaning, and truth that emerged in the writings of Peirce and James. Pragmatism is given various formulations by both writers, but the core is the belief that the meaning of a doctrine is best understood through the practices of which it is a part. In James the position issues in a theory of truth, notoriously allowing that beliefs, including for example belief in God, are true if the belief ‘works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word’. On James's view almost any belief might be respectable, and even true, provided it works. The apparently subjectivist consequences of this were energetically assailed by Russell, Moore, and others in the early years of the twentieth century (see Clifford), but were also repudiated by Peirce himself.

Peirce’s own approach to truth is in terms of what (suitable) processes of enquiry would tend to accept if pursued to an ideal limit (See superassertability). But the driving motivation of pragmatism is not any such analysis of truth, but rather the idea that we should avoid ‘metaphysical’ questions such as ‘what are numbers?’, ‘what are values?, ‘what is truth?’, ‘what are reasons?’ in favour of asking ‘what are our practices of thinking in terms of numbers, values, truth, reasons—and what do they accomplish for us?’ As Peirce put it ‘We must not begin by thinking of pure ideas—vagabond thoughts that tramp the public roads without any human habitation,—but must begin with men and their conversation’. In its contemporary form pragmatism opposes the idea that the fundamental explanation of linguistic practice is given in classical semantic terms, such as representation, reference, or truth. It holds that it can dig deeper, to a ‘meta-semantic’ account in which these notions are themselves given an explanation (often called a genealogy) in terms of more basic practices, and connections between linguistic behaviour and success in action. Pragmatism continues to play an influential role in the theory of meaning and of truth, descending through expressivism, and the theoretical writings of Ramsey, Wittgenstein, Rorty, Brandom, Price and others. See also instrumentalism; logical positivism; naturalism; Pascal's wager; science, philosophy of; success semantics, will to believe.

http://www.philosophytalk.org/pastShows/Pragmatism.html An audio discussion of pragmatism by three American philosophers

http://www.phillwebb.net/History/TwentiethCentury/Pragmatism/Pragmatism.htm A bibliography on pragmatism, with links for individual thinkers