Is predictive power a criterion for pragmatism?
In inference to the best explanation, one of the criteria is prognostic power. Does this criterion refer to pragmatism?
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Empiricists and rationalists all use IBE along with pragmatists though the source of their prognostic power lie in different things obviously if they really exist at all...– Double KnotCommented Sep 6, 2023 at 19:42
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One of them, yes. What distinguishes pragmatists is that that they take pragmatic value ("practical bearings", as Peirce put it) into account more broadly. For example, presuppositions of a methodology that leads to formulating successful hypotheses, or to more efficient testing of them, are taken as "confirmed" even if they do not make any predictions.– ConifoldCommented Sep 6, 2023 at 23:01
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1 Answer
Yes and no. It also depends on the pragmatist. I'll restrict my response to the classic pragmatists, C.S. Peirce and William James. Afterwards, I think you'll see it's not quite the same as how scientists use the phrase "predictive power," but not wholly unrelated either.
C.S. Peirce: Back to his pragmatic maxim, the issue concerns on whether two differently named concepts are in meaning any different. One does so by thinking about the consequences of the two concepts being true. That is, what differences if any appear if we presume them to be true. Scientists are not concerned with meaning as they are with a falsifiable hypothesis.
William James: James goes a step further, and for him meaning is determined not by the consequences one conceives or imagines (as it is with Peirce), but the consequences one experiences in their own life. This feeds directly into his pluralism. Scientists are, in the end, concerned with physical experiments, but scientists would reject personal experiences as being at the forefront as they are for James.
