Pragmatics and pragmatickr Semantics
Many contemporary philosophical theories of pragmatics concentrate on semantics. For instance, Brandom focuses on linguistic meaning (albeit from a pragmatic viewpoint).
Others take a more comprehensive view of pragmatics, such as relevance theory, which attempts to understand the processes of an utterance by a listener. This method tends to overlook other aspects of pragmatics, such as epistemic discussions about truth.
What is pragmatism?
Pragmatism is a philosophical outlook that provides a different perspective to continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. It was conceived by Charles Sanders Peirce, and extended by his colleague and friend William James, and later developed by Josiah Royce. It was influential in a variety of areas of inquiry that span from philosophy of science to theology, but also found a place in ethics and politics, aesthetics, philosophy of language, and social theory. The pragmatist traditions continues to develop.
The core of classical pragmatism is the pragmatic maxim, which is a guideline to clarify the significance of hypotheses by exploring their 'practical implications and their implications for the experience of specific situations. This leads to an epistemological view that is a form of 'inquiry-based epistemology', and an anti-Cartesian interpretation of the rules that govern inquiry. The early pragmatists were divided on whether pragmatism was a scientific philosophy that adopted the view that truth is a monism (following Peirce) or a broad alethic pluralitism (James and Dewey).
Understanding knowledge is a major concern for pragmatics. Certain pragmatists like Rorty tend to be skeptical of any notion of knowledge that is based on a foundation of 'immediate' experiences. Others, such as Peirce or James are skeptical of the theory of correspondence, which states that the true beliefs are those that accurately reflect reality.
Pragmatism also examines the connection between beliefs, reality and human rationality. It examines the importance of virtues and values, and the meaning and purpose of existence. Pragmatists have also developed a wide range of methods and ideas in fields such as semiotics and philosophy of language, the philosophy of religion and ethics, philosophy of science, and theology. Some, such as Peirce and Royce are epistemological relativists. However, others contend that this kind of relativity is a serious misguided idea. A resurgence of the interest in classical pragmatism in the latter part of the 20th century resulted in a myriad of new developments, including a 'near-side' pragmatics that is concerned with resolution of ambiguity and vagueness as well as the use of proper names, indexicals and demonstratives and anaphors and a 'far-side pragmatics that focuses on the semantics of discourses.
What is the connection between what is said and what happens?
Semantics and Pragmatics can be viewed as being on opposite sides of the continuum. On the near side, semantics is viewed and pragmatics is on the far side. Carston, for example asserts that there are at least three main lines of contemporary pragmatics that are: those who see it as a philosophical concept along the lines of Grice