“Pragmatisms (Plural) Part 1: Classical Pragmatism and Some Implications for Empirical Inquiry”
The institutional economics originating in America with Thorstein Veblen generally claims pragmatism as its philosophical basis, especially the classical pragmatism 1 of Dewey and Peirce. However, pragmatism is said to undercut the search for truth in the philosophy of science. Pragmatism is taken as synonymous with shifting, expedient morality. Pragmatism is seen as underwriting the futility of choosing among competing theories on the basis of empirical evidence. (On underdetermination, see Laudan and Leplin 1991 and Newton-Smith 2001b.) Pragmatism is seen as the concern with the immediate utilitarian benefits of knowledge, accompanied by an indifference to theoretical issues (Worra1l200l). Especially for American Institutional Economics, the obvious question is whether the "pragmatism" claimed by institutional economists is the same as the "pragmatism" that undercuts truth, undermines the role of empirical evidence and dismisses the importance of theory. The short answer is that these pragmatisms are not the same thing at all. I would argue that the philosophical tradition following Charles S. Peirce and John Dewey (and continuing in contemporary classical pragmatism) provides the most constructive philosophical complement to inquiry in the social sciences or the natural sciences, for that matter.2 This belief motivates the following discussion. I do not expect all readers to share this belief. However, I do hope to overcome to some small degree, the gross distortions that accompany notions of pragmatism. The Association for Evolutionary Economics includes those who follow other research traditions but who share various notions of an evolutionary process as an important component of the analysis rather than as an afterthought or a trivial departure from comparative statics.3 Classical pragmatism is the first post-Darwinian