PRAGMATISM, is a school of philosophy that included among its exponents C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and George Herbert Mead in the United Sates, F. C. S. Schiller in Britain, and Giovanni Papini in Italy. Its influence can still be seen in contemporary philosophy, notably in the work of W. V. O. Quine.

实用主义(实验主义)，是哲学的一个学派，其中包括它的倡导者，美国的C. S.皮尔士，威廉·詹姆斯，约翰·杜威和乔治·赫伯特·米德，英国的F. C. S. 席勒，意大利的乔瓦尼·帕皮尼。在当代哲学中依然能看到它的影响，尤其是在W. V. O. 奎因的著作中。

Pragmatism is more a method for clarifying concepts than a philosophy doctrine. It stresses the importance of human action and purpose in experience, knowledge, and meaning. Peirce, in characterizing the pragmatic method, wrote: “If one can define accurately all the conceivable experimental phenomena which the affirmation or denial of a concept would imply, one will have therein a complete definition of the concept.”

实用主义与其说是一种哲学学说，不如说是一种阐明概念的方法。它强调人类行为和目的在经验、知识和意义中的重要性。皮尔士，在描述实用主义的方法中写道“如果人能准确地定义概念所包含的所有可想到的肯定或否定的实验现象，那么人就会因此拥有完整的概念定义”。

Peirce developed this “pragmatic maxim” in the 1870’s, in part as a result of discussions at the Metaphysical Club in Cambridge, Mass. William James, another member, first presented his version of pragmatism in 1898. It was James who was primarily responsible for the development of pragmatism into an influential school.

皮尔士在19世纪70年代发展了这种“实用主义的准则”，在某种程度上是在马萨诸塞州坎布里奇市的形而上学俱乐部讨论的结果。威廉·詹姆斯，俱乐部的另一位成员，在1898年首次提出了他实用主义的版本。詹姆斯是将实用主义发展成一种有影响力学派的主要人物。

Philosophic antecedents.  Pragmatism had a rich intellectual ancestry. Peirce derived the word “pragmatic” from Kant’s application of the German “pragmatisch” to empirically conditioned laws. Other influences were as diverse as the thought of the 13^th century philosopher Duns Scotus and the 19^th century Scottish psychologist Alexander Bain. James was particularly influenced by the British empiricists. Both Peirce and James acknowledged their debt to other members of the Metaphysical Club, including Oliver Wendell Holmes and the positivist Chauncey Wright, champion of J. S. Mill and Charles Darwin. The founders of pragmatism were sensitive to scientific as well as philosophical ideas; Peirce, a physicist, and James, a psychologist, were distinguished scientists themselves.

哲学的先行词。实用主义拥有丰富的知识分子血统。皮尔士从康德将德语“务实”运用于以经验为条件的法律中衍生出“实用主义的”一词。其它影响就像13世纪哲学家邓斯·司各脱和19世纪苏格兰心理学家亚历山大·贝恩的思想一样多种多样。尤其是詹姆斯受到英国经验主义者的影响。皮尔士和詹姆斯都承认形而上学俱乐部其他成员的贡献，包括奥利弗·温德尔·霍姆斯和J. S. 密尔和查尔斯·达尔文的拥护者，实证主义者昌西·莱特。实用主义的创始人对科学和哲学观点都很敏感；皮尔士和詹姆斯，一位物理学家，一位心理学家，他们本身就是杰出的科学家。

Aware of the significance in science of such developments as the theory of evolution and the emergence of statistical inference, the pragmatists rejected the traditional view that science is a fixed body of knowledge. Instead, they emphasized the experimental and cooperative character of scientific method.

意识到进化论这种发展在科学中的意义，以及统计归纳的出现，实用主义者拒绝了科学是一种固定知识体系的传统观点。相反，他们强调了科学方法的实验和与合作的特性。

Peirce.  Each of the pragmatists made his distinctive contribution to their shared themes. Peirce attacked Cartesian epistemology, which represented knowledge as an edifice built on a foundation of indubitable beliefs. He espoused a “contrite fallibilism,” in which inquiry begins with the beliefs of common sense, submits them to critical scrutiny, and concludes with hypotheses that claim no more than provisional acceptance. For Peirce, a pioneer of modern logic, only the scientific method can satisfy the aim of inquiry, namely the establishment of a stable belief or a settled habit of action. And the truth is that opinion on which the users of the scientific method would eventually agree.

皮尔士。每个实用主义者对他们共同的主题都做出了独特贡献。皮尔士攻击笛卡尔将知识表示为建筑在不容置疑信念上的大厦的认识论。他拥护“悔悟的易谬主义”，其中，探究从常识信念开始，将它们提交严格审议，并以假定为结论，声称只是暂时的接纳。对皮尔士而言，一位现代逻辑的先驱，只有科学方法才能满足探究的目标，即建立一种稳定的信念或固定的行为习惯。而实事是，科学方法的使用者最终都会赞成该观点。

James.  As Dewey shrewdly observed, Peirce was primarily a logician, James a humanist. This difference appears in James’ celebrated elaboration of the pragmatic concept of truth as the verifiable, satisfactory, expedient, or useful beliefs. Applied to straightforward empirical beliefs, James’ view is close to Peirce’s: the truth of a belief is marked by is consistency with new experience, and it is its continued verification that makes it satisfactory. But James also argues that a belief—in God, for example—is at least partially verified if it provides comfort to the believer; the satisfactory consequences of holding the belief, as well as of the proposition believed, are to constitute verification.

詹姆斯。正如杜威敏锐观察到的那样，皮尔斯主要是位逻辑学家，而詹姆斯是位人文主义者。这种差异出现在詹姆斯对实用主义真理概念的著名阐述中，如可验证的，令人满意的，权宜的或有用的信念。如果直截了当地应用到经验的信念中，詹姆斯的观点接近皮尔士的观点：信念的真实是由新经验的一致性为特征的，并且正是它不断的验证才使它令人满意。但詹姆斯也认为，一种信仰—比如，信仰上帝，如果它给信仰者带来安慰，至少是部分得到了证实；持有信念让人满意的结果，以及相信主张都构成了验证。

Dewey and Mead.  Dewey, in describing experience as the result of interaction between the organism and its environment, experiment as deliberate change in the environment, and truth as warranted assertibility, developed themes initiated by Peirce and James. Like Peirce, Dewey stressed the social character of knowledge. Peirce, however, found Dewey’s naturalistic approach to logic too psychologistic.

杜威和米德。杜威，将经验描述为在有机体与其环境之间相互作用的结果，将实验描述为环境中的有意改变，将真理描述为合理的可论断性，发展了皮尔斯和詹姆斯开创的主题。像皮尔斯一样，杜威强调知识的社会特征。然而，皮尔士发现杜威通往逻辑自然主义的路径过于心理学化。

Peirce had suggested that one’s concept of self is not intuitive, as Descartes had argued, but is developed through one’s experience of error. Mead, in his theory of gesture, contributed a detailed account of the development of the self out of social interaction. Mead’s theory of gesture is reminiscent of Peirce’s preoccupation with the theory of signs, of the behaviorism of the American psychologist J. B. Watson, and of Charles Darwin’s account of the EXPRESSION of emotions.

皮尔士人为，人的自我概念并不是直觉的，而是通过人的错误经验发展而来的。米德在他的姿态理论中对社会交往之外的自我发展贡献了详细说明。米德的姿态理论令人想起了皮尔士对符号理论的关注，让人联想到美国心理学家J. B. 沃森的行为主义和联想到查尔斯·达尔文对情绪表达的解释。

Evaluation.  Pragmatism’s emphasis on purposeful action, on the interplay of theory and practice, and its stress on what James called the “cash value” of beliefs led Bertrand Russell to call it an “engineers’ philosophy,” bound to lead to cosmic impiety, if not to fascism. The criticism is as crude as James’s identification of the truth with “the expedient in our way of thinking” was incautious. Pragmatism is rich in subtle and fruitful philosophical ideas, unified by it theme of mediation between science and philosophy, theory and practice.

评价。实用主义强调有目的的行动，强调理论与实践的相互影响，以及它对詹姆斯所说的信念“现金价值”的强调，这导致了伯特兰·罗素称它为“工程师的哲学”，如果不变成法西斯的话，也注定会导致对宇宙的不敬。该批评就像詹姆斯轻率地将真理认同为“我们思维方式中的权宜之计”一样粗糙。实用主义蕴含了微妙而丰富的哲学理念，它统一了科学与哲学，理论与实践之间调解的主题。

                                         SUSAN HAACK

                                   University of Warwick

                                          苏珊·哈克

                                          沃里克大学

                                      2023年2月21日译

（译者注：该词条位列《大美百科全书》1985年版，第22卷，第514页至515页）