As my username suggests, I'm a fan of the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty as well as William James and others. Are there many EAs who share that view?
Pragmatism demands some things that might seem at odds with EA: it rejects the notion that we can reason our way toward capital-T Truth. The idea of true belief as correspondence to Reality is discarded.
But it also has features that seem to me very compatible with EA. It reorients truth toward usefulness and in so doing centers moral goals, which are central to the EA project as well. In effect, pragmatists make no distinction between epistemology and "applied epistemology"; for them all epistemology is applied.
Pragmatism asks that reasons, arguments, and philosophies make a practical difference -- that they help us achieve goals. That should be a way of thinking that's amenable to a movement that focuses on doing the most good possible and then asks how to do that.
So, are many EAs philosophical pragmatists?
I like your description here a lot. I am no expert but I agree with your characterization that Peirce's pragmatic maxim offers something really valuable even for those committed to correspondence and, more generally, to analytic philosophy.
On Rorty, his last book was just published posthumously and it offers an intriguing and somewhat different take on his thinking. The basics haven't changed, but he frames his version of pragmatism in terms of the Enlightenment and anti-authoritarianism. I won't try to summarize; your mileage might vary but I've fou... (read more)