Pragmatics and Semantics

A lot of contemporary philosophical theories are based on semantics. For instance, Brandom focuses on linguistic meaning (albeit from a pragmatic viewpoint).

Others take a more holistic perspective on pragmatics, such as relevance theory, which attempts to study the underlying of the processes that lead to an utterance being made by a listener. This approach tends to ignore other aspects of pragmatics, like epistemic discussions on truth.

What is pragmatism, exactly?

Pragmatism provides a different perspective to continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. Charles Sanders Peirce initiated it and William James extended it. Later, Josiah Royce developed the philosophy. It was influential in a variety of areas of inquiry ranging from theology to philosophy of science and also found its place in the philosophy of ethics, politics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and social theory. The pragmatist tradition continues to develop.

The underlying principle of classical pragmatism is the pragmatic maxim, a rule to clarify the meaning of hypotheses by tracing their 'practical consequences that they have for the experience of specific circumstances. This leads to an epistemological view that is a form 'inquiry epistemology based on inquiry' and an anti Cartesian explanation of the rules that govern inquiry. The early pragmatists were divided on whether pragmatism was a scientific philosophy that was based on the view that truth is a monism (following Peirce) or a broad alethic pluralitism (James &amp