Practicalism

Pragmatism is not appealing. Neither American Pragmatism nor Kantian Pragmatism appeal to me. As a Practicalist, I hold that our top focus in life should be to create not just any value, but value that is functionally reliable. The difference between me and a Pragmatist is that I focus on what works, and Pragmatists focus on analyzing statements which congrue with their axiom that a belief is true if it works in practice. I don't have any axiom about truth in the first place. Anyway, practicalism is a disposition toward action and pragmatism is a theory of truth. American Pragmatism in particular has strange ideas of truth. Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey can be considered the three fathers of American Pragmatism, starting with Peirce: Peirce defines truth as "the opinion that would be agreed upon at the end of inquiry by an ideal community of investigators." James defines truth as "a belief that is verifiable, workable, and fits experience in a...

Professor Destroys Relativism in 4 Minutes! This video is full of nonsense. I will have to pick it apart one piece at a time. A direct way to expose nonsense is to provide a practical counterexample. Professor Fortin's views imply that a mathematician working on Euclidean geometry cannot communicate with a mathematician working on non-Euclidean geometry. This implication is wrong; the two mathematicians can easily communicate with each other. Truth can be relative without communication becoming impossible. Hence, Fortin is spewing nonsense. If I'm a truth relativist speaking with another truth relativist, then I do not have to choose between yielding to their truth or forcing them to yield to my truth. Our truths are grounded in our axioms, and we can state our axioms and statements so they can be understood by us and understood by people in general without requiring acceptance of our views. Joel Christensen said that the mark of an educated individual is the ability to enterta...