Philosophical pragmatism, pragmatic agency, and the treatment of evidence in social work

Abstract

From the influential evidence-based practice (EBP), to the increasingly persuasive evidence-informed practice (EIP), in the last decades, the field has sought to adequately allocate scientific evidence within social work’s practice. While this development suggests a move away from positivism, it is less clear towards where. Thus, this article advances classical pragmatism as a plausible philosophy of science for the treatment of evidence to account for this transition and the way forward. Pragmatism regards humans and their contexts as part of a continuity, constantly changing each other, always becoming. As such, it challenges what counts as ‘evidence’ and demands healthy awareness and criticism of preferences and biases, whether personal or contextual, in the self and in the subjects of interest. This opens up the door to plurality, to harness practical reason to solve practical problems, turning indeterminate situations into determinate ones, thereby generating warranted assertions.