Could the Occupy movement Become the Realization of Democratic Experimentalism’s Aspiration for Pragmatic Politics?

Abstract

Critics of sometimes complain that pragmatist insistence only upon what works misunderstands that means can only be defined in terms of ends. Yet pragmatists do not deny need for ends. In both ordinary life and in politics, instead insists only that ends are provisional, subject to being revised through exploration of means. The Occupy movement may be an illustration of pragmatist politics in action. Derided by its critics for lacking a substantive agenda, Occupy is best understood as a democracy movement that aims to substitute empowered citizen decision making for elite rule. Seen this way, Occupy could provide fertile ground for nurturing institutions of democratic experimentalism.In common parlance, pragmatism connotes flexibility with respect to means. People who are deeply committed to or, worse, ideology, will insist on particular approaches to accomplish ends they favor. Ideological monetarists will reject Keynesian stimulus; committed foreign-policy idealists will refuse to deal with regimes that violate core principles idealists hold; strict church-state separationists will oppose government funding of faith-based organizations to deliver social services. By contrast, in each of these examples and countless others, pragmatists will not rule out options that hold out hope of working based on abstract principle or ideology. In practice, of course, lies on one end of a spectrum, with principle and ideology at other. Still, we understand ordinary-language sense of as entailing two core ideas: to be a pragmatist is to be flexible about means and to hold commitments of principle or ideology only weakly. Thus, it may be thought somewhat ironic that when used in philosophical sense, pragmatism itself entails a kind of deep commitment. Philosophical pragmatists appear deeply committed to notion that they hold no fixed ends whatsoever. William James put point most starkly when he wrote that no dogmas, and no doctrines save its and that method, in turn, is to ascertain whether some particular idea or program has desirable consequences, nothing more.1Pragmatism's critics have tended to object to pragmatism's seemingly dogmatic anti-dogmatism on two distinct grounds. First, James and his followers, especially Richard Rorty, appeared to offer not only as a guide to action but as an account of our understanding of physical world, a kind of alternative metaphysics.2 That view struck many as obscure, obtuse, or both. What exactly did Rorty mean when he said that it was obvious that ... were here before we talked about them, but aimed to set aside the question of whether Reality as It Is In Itself, apart from way it is handy for human beings to describe it, has mountains in it?3 Rorty and other pragmatists were either attributing peculiar views to non-pragmatists who argued about metaphysical questions or, worse, were endorsing sort of skepticism that Samuel Johnson may be thought to have refuted with a good hard kick.4Although I hold views that are, in many respects, close to those expressed by James, I must confess that I find this meta-metaphysical argument even less useful than metaphysical arguments that is meant to displace. And, although I shall not elaborate point, I have a similar reaction to metaethical debates about character of ethical propositions. Accordingly, here I simply note existence of ongoing controversy about pragmatist view of truth and move on.I turn now to pragmatist response to a second criticism of pragmatism. Non-pragmatists often complain that pragmatist insistence on pursuing what works misunderstands what it means for an idea or program to work. For an idea or program to work, critics complain, idea or program must successfully accomplish some goal. Working, in this nonpragmatist view, is necessarily defined relative to some fixed end or ends. …