Pragmatic is a philosophy that focuses on action and its practical effects. Its main themes are the “plastic” nature of reality and the importance of change for existence, which can be directed for positive ends.
Pragmatists believe that knowledge is practical and that its meaning depends on how it is used in practice. They also believe that human knowledge is fallible and that a person’s personal truth depends on what he expects from his actions.
The pragmatist perspective is not antithetical to religion. However, it does not view the claims of religions as true, nor as a substitute for faith.
Philosophical pragmatism was developed by John Dewey and George Herbert Mead at the University of Chicago in the early 1900s. It was later influenced by William James, C.S. Peirce, and others, and became influential in the United States and abroad.
Various philosophers have claimed to be pragmatists, and many of them have been devoted to a particular aspect of the theory. Nevertheless, it is difficult to draw a clear definition of pragmatism that is universally accepted and adhered to by all philosophers.
Pragmatics is a multidisciplinary field that investigates how people communicate in everyday situations. It tries to answer questions about the meanings of language, how speakers produce those meanings in conversation, and what they do with their words when they speak. It also examines how people understand those meanings. The study of linguistic pragmatics is very complex and is often characterized by profound variations in the way that people produce and interpret various aspects of communicative meaning.