PRAGMATISM: Criticism
[The article chaotically examines aspects of pragmatism from the perspective of free thought]
If an olympics of practicality were to be held, citizens of the United States of America would undoubtedly take first place. Pragmatism is one of the philosophical schools born of the American mind. In academic circles, it never achieved widespread popularity outside the US.
Pragmatism can be so-called high, or elite. But far more often, its low, or vulgar form occurs. Generally, it can be argued that common pragmatism is the most widespread philosophical thought. The paradox lies in the fact that the masses do not perceive it as philosophy at all. For them, pragmatism is almost a given. The broad layers of the population associate philosophy as such with high philosophy, such as the worldview of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, etc. That is, with what they believe is detached from everyday reality. But after all, philosophy is not only reflections on the universe or the knowledge of the world, but also thoughts about values and the meaning of life.
Like any broad movement, pragmatists are not a homogeneous mass with a clearly defined canon. Roughly speaking, pragmatism is a philosophical movement that primarily values the practicality of an idea rather than its other qualities (truthfulness, ethicality, or meaning for life). Entire sections of philosophy, such as ontology, gnoseology, epistemology, and phenomenology are superfluous because they have no direct application. According to evolutionary biology[1], our brain is adapted primarily for the survival of ourselves and our group. Therefore, it is not at all surprising that our psyche searches primarily for practicality for itself. Because of this, the brain is poorly adapted for seeking the truth of a statement, as this is a long, costly, or even futile occupation. As a result, pragmatism, having certain neurophysiological prerequisites, is perceived by most people as self-evident.
LOGICAL FALLACIES
First, let us examine the consequence itself from the perspective of a discipline such as logic.
Appeal to consequences (Latin: argumentum ad consequentiam) is a logical fallacy that uses consequences as a basis for a conclusion about the truth of an opinion.
The argument has two types.
Positive example:
• If X is correct, then it is understood that people may lean toward Y;
• Y is objectively or subjectively good and has positive consequences;
• Accordingly, X is correct.
Negative example:
• If X is correct, then it is understood that people may lean toward Y;
• Y is objectively or subjectively bad and has negative consequences;
• Accordingly, X is incorrect.
This argument is inadequate when it serves as a justification for the truth of any statement. The assessment of consequences resulting from accepting the correctness of a certain opinion is irrelevant to the truth of the opinion itself. After all, both positive and negative consequences can follow from true statements, and the same applies to untrue statements. The Russian philosopher Nikiforov aptly said: “Indeed, in many situations, the idea that the Sun revolves around the Earth[2] may seem useful, for example, when I am making my way out of a forest and navigating by the position of the Sun in the sky. But it is unlikely that anyone on this basis would recognize this idea as true.”
But this argument is correct when applied to decision-making that cannot be objective, where the desirability rather than the truth of an opinion plays a role. For example, this applies to political, commercial, everyday, or simply personal benefit.
It must be recognized that the bulk of actions have both positive and negative consequences. Incidentally, consequences can be unintended and unpredictable. Additionally, it is worth pointing out that consequences have a different cost in the short and long term. Furthermore, the concept of “usefulness” is subjective and is re-evaluated several times by the exact same person throughout their life. As a conclusion from this: the appeal to consequences is unreliable and must be applied with caution.
Also, using this argument in decision-making can produce an incorrect conclusion. In particular, people may perceive relatively small negative consequences as a basis for refusing certain actions, while ignoring much more important positive effects. As popular wisdom says: “You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs.”
Survivorship bias is a logical fallacy that consists of giving preference to things or people that “survived” a certain process. The reverse process is ignoring what did not “survive,” even though reliable data on it is lacking. This leads to several variants of erroneous conclusions. Those that survived can be people (as in a medical study) or subjects of an experiment — that is, anyone or anything that has already undergone selection before further consideration. Consequently, they do not represent the entire group of people or objects, and their analysis is not an analysis of the entire group. Survivorship bias leads to excessive optimism because failures are not taken into account. This bias can cause a false belief that successes in a group have some special cause rather than being accidental.
Anecdotal evidence — the use of personal experience or a well-known incident as an argument in a dispute. One such application is the refutation of statistical data in particular or scientific research in general.
The Russian biologist and skeptic Alexander Panchin notes: “Most people are convinced that the best proof of the effectiveness of a [medical] remedy is testing it from personal experience. But reality is much more complex. As the philosopher David Hume said: ‘We see what was before and what came after, but we cannot see causal relationships.’ Unfortunately, our intuitive conclusions about the causes of certain events are often wrong. It is not that individuals are not clever enough, but that the personal experience of even the smartest people is often rather meager[3].”
There is a popular American saying: “If you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?”. This is an example of an argument to the purse, specifically its subtype: the appeal to wealth.
Example:
• X is rich;
• The rich person says that Y is true;
• X speaks the truth.
Short-sighted people can be rich, and smart people (including prominent philosophers) can be poor, and vice versa.
A similar one is the argument to social failure. In a blunt form, it sounds like this: “you have achieved nothing, therefore you are wrong.” In reality, a true statement made by an outsider does not cease to be such, just as a false one remains false if it is spoken by a successful person.
COGNITIVE BIASES
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Our brain is far from perfect, and pragmatists (as well as others) can hold a number of erroneous opinions, which are briefly presented below.
Naive realism is a position in philosophy and everyday consciousness according to which what is real is what a normal person perceives under ordinary conditions and describes in commonly accepted language. From the perspective of a naive realist, the real is what he personally perceives through his senses, and accordingly, what he thinks and knows about the surrounding world. In everyday life, such a position hinders adequate cognition, because it makes it very difficult for a person to revise their opinions. In science, naive realism leads to an uncritical perception of theoretical concepts and to dogmatism.
Self-serving bias. A biased opinion according to which a person evaluates contradictory data in a method that best suits their interests. It can also be an erroneous tendency to take more responsibility for one’s victories than for one’s failures.
Hyperbolic discounting. The tendency to give greater preference to current rewards as opposed to those that will occur later. This tendency intensifies when both rewards are closer to the current moment.
The “strike while the iron is hot,” or “hot hand” fallacy, is a social bias that a person who has a successful outcome has a better chance of winning in the immediate subsequent attempts. Although previous success in performing a task can indeed change psychological attitude and a person’s subsequent success rate, researchers for many years found no evidence of a “hot hand” in practice.
However, studies using modern statistics show that there is some evidence of a “hot hand,” particularly in sporting events.
The illusion of control is a person’s tendency to overestimate their ability to control events. For example, this occurs when people feel control over outcomes that they do not actually influence. But the illusion of control is a positive illusion. The latter is a self-deception that promotes good mood and reduced discomfort, and also boosts self-esteem, albeit for a short time.
The American atheist essayist Sam Harris argues: “It seems that many people simply do not understand that without a lot of luck, you cannot achieve anything in this life, no matter how hard you work. Being hardworking is also luck. Luck, if you are smart, healthy, and did not go bankrupt in your prime due to your wife’s illness.”
Look closely at the biography of any self-made person, and you will find that they owe their success to a mass of circumstances that they did not create, but which they successfully exploited. There is no human being on this earth who chose their genome, or their country of birth, or the political and economic conditions at critical moments for themselves[4].”
Outcome bias is an error where a decision is evaluated as good or bad when the consequence of this decision is already known. Such a bias effect is observed when there is a bad outcome, and this is reinforced when the behavior that caused such a consequence is condemned. Surprisingly, with a good outcome, such a cognitive bias does not arise, even when the consequence is accidental.
People usually evaluate past decisions by their results as opposed to evaluating the quality of the decisions themselves at the moment of their making in accordance with the data that was available then. Consequently, this is an erroneous opinion, because no one would make a decision knowing for sure whether this risk is justified. The actual consequence of a decision is often accidental, where certain risks are justified and others are not. A person who falls prey to such a bias tends to argue that the decision-maker is indeed responsible for the consequences. At the same time, it is not taken into account that the person making the decision cannot control everything.
The planning fallacy is an erroneous assessment where people underestimate the amount of time needed to complete a certain task. Virtually always, a person plans to spend less time on a task than it takes in reality. In doing so, even existing experience regarding similar tasks is frequently ignored. When a person evaluates someone else’s work, however, they predict more time spent on completing the task than if they were evaluating themselves.
The Israeli psychologist Daniel Kahneman proposed complementing the definition with the tendency to underestimate the time, risks, and costs of future actions, while simultaneously overestimating the benefits of such actions. Consequently, the planning fallacy results not only in the overexpenditure of time, effort, and funds, but also in the under-realization of benefits compared to what was planned.
OTHER
Pragmatism one way or another acts as anti-intellectualism. The very essence of intellectualism was conveyed by the American journalist and essayist Christopher Hitchens: “We [free thinkers] may disagree on many things, but we are united by a respect for free speech, open-mindedness, and the pursuit of answers for their own sake[5].” The aforementioned Sam Harris complements: “Only a fundamental willingness to use our reason — that is, to make corrections to our beliefs in accordance with new facts and new evidence — can guarantee a choice in favor of dialogue[6].” Denying the value of the truth of a statement can lead to certain errors.
If we take high philosophy, the universe generates the rules in which we will live. All our applied fields are merely the consequence of the laws of the universe that operate in reality. The English classic of science fiction, H. G. Wells, put it succinctly: “But facts are not mindful of human hopes[7].” And the famous German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted, albeit critically: “The everyday Christian. — If Christianity were right in its assertions regarding a punishing God, universal sinfulness, grace by election, and the danger of eternal damnation, it would be a sign of imbecility and lack of character not to become a priest, apostle, or hermit, and to work with fear and trembling at one’s own salvation; it would be nonsensical to lose sight of eternal benefit for the sake of temporary convenience[8].” The example with Christianity can be safely transferred to other worldview positions as well.
There is a Latin phrase: “Who benefits?” (Latin: Cui bono? / Cui prodest?). Initially, it was proclaimed in the jurisprudence of Ancient Rome. However, what is appropriate in the field of law is inadequate in the evaluation of social processes. Pragmatists are quite prone to conspiratorial thinking. After all, they are used to looking for benefit in everything, and, accordingly, the rest of the people are also suspected of the same. This gives rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories: there is a disaster, someone profits from it, therefore the disaster is the brainchild of a conspiracy. In reality, as always, everything is more complex. Profiteering from problems (epidemics, terrorist attacks, etc.) does not automatically mean that they were artificially and purposefully created. For example, corruption in emergency services does not prove that they created a natural disaster.
Pragmatism can correlate with moral relativism. For if one proceeds from practicality, then general systems of moral values, whether religious or secular, are inappropriate. After all, every situation is almost unique and requires its own solution. At the same time, a substitution of the concepts of morality and practicality is possible, since immorality is beneficial for its perpetrator in the short term. One can recall the ethical egoism of Adam Smith or the even more radical objectivism of Ayn Rand. As Smith himself noted, the honesty of a merchant is sustained not by altruism, but by pragmatic calculation: “A dealer does not cheat his customer, not because he is tormented by conscience, but because the loss of reputation and regular customers would cost him much more than a one-time profit.”
Finally, it is worth pointing out that practice comes from theory, namely: a theoretical foundation is required for certain practical applications. The American astronomer Carl Sagan noted: “Suppose you are, by the Grace of God, Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Defender of the Faith…
And now, in the year 1860, a bold idea occurs to you, an idea so fantastic that even Jules Verne’s publishers would have rejected it: you wish to construct an apparatus that will carry your voice and moving pictures of the glory and beauty of the Empire into every home in the Kingdom…
And so, with the support of the Prime Minister, you assemble the cabinet, the General Staff, and the best scientists and engineers in the Empire… It does not matter how they achieve this goal, as long as it works. And we will call this project ‘Westminster.’
Probably there would be some useful inventions emerging out of such an endeavour — “spin-off.” There always are when you spend huge amounts of money on technology. But the Westminster Project would almost certainly fail. Why? Because the underlying science hadn’t been done[9].”
P.S. But despite everything mentioned above, in everyday matters, it would not hurt to be pragmatic at least sometimes.
[1] According to biologist and science popularizer Richard Dawkins in his public appearance “Dawkins & Krauss: Life, The Universe, And Everything”.
[2] “A Study in Scarlet” by Conan Doyle features a scene where Sherlock Holmes shocks Dr. Watson by professing geocentrism and considering that such information has no professional application.
[3] Popular science publication “Defense Against the Dark Arts: A Guide to the World of Paranormal Phenomena.” Context of the quote: people trust alternative medicine based on their experience.
[4] The article “The Free Will That Does Not Exist.” Context of the quote: the consequences of the absence of free will.
[5] Non-fiction publication “God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.” Context of the quote: asserting free thought as an alternative to religion.
[6] The article “What Is Atheism.” Context of the quote: the necessity of criticizing religion.
[7] The sci-fi novel “The Sleeper Awakes.”
[8] Philosophical work “Human, All Too Human.” Context of the quote: criticism of Christianity.
[9] Popular science publication “The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark.” Context of the quote: an examination of biases against science and scientists.
