A Pragmatist Theory of Convergence

Abstract

One of the defining characteristics of pragmatism over the years has been its commitment to the primacy of practical over theoretical rationality. This has often been motivated by doubts about the adequacy of the “representationalist paradigm” that has dominated philosophy of mind and epistemology in the modern period. Thus, many pragmatists have sought to replace the notion of representation with one or another explanatory concept derived from the analysis of action or behaviour. But this strategy has encountered persistent difficulties, and precisely where one might expect. Without some primitive notion of representation, it is difficult to provide an account of the conceptual content of our beliefs, the standards of correctness that govern our practices of inference, or the expectation of convergence that informs scientific inquiry. These difficulties, which pertain to the analysis of meaning, justification, and truth respectively, have done a lot to keep pragmatism more a set of promissory notes than a coherent philosophical program.