what is pragmatism?
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The term is used in different ways (as all commonly used terms eventually are) but at the heart is that a pragmatist evaluates ideas based on their likely effects in real world application, rather than in theory or an idealized setting.
For example, you may truly believe that we should allow people to sell their kidneys to people who need kidney transplants. But say you live in a society that finds that sort of thing horrifying and would never go for it (as most of us do now.) A pragmatic approach would say “the theory of a free market in kidneys is nice but fails in practice. What approach would get us closer to that theoretical result?” Then you find that people are okay with it if you donate a kidney and receive free health care for life in exchange. It’s still a sale of your kidney, in a sense, but it doesn’t create so much resistance. So pragmatically, you take the latter option which, while not leading to as many successful transplants as the theorized approach, solves more of the problem in real life. (Someone who would still only push for a complete free market in kidneys despite its lack of likelihood would likely be called an ideologue.)
Hope this helps.
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