pragmatism
A philosophy contending that what counts as knowledge is determined by its usefulness to human agents situated in changing historical and geographical circumstances. Originating in the late 19th century in the United States, pragmatism rejects the idea that philosophy is a privileged form of knowledge because it can disclose once-and-for-all the foundations of all human knowledge. Consequently, for pragmatists a statement said to be ‘true’ is not accepted by people because it mirrors reality in language, but because enough people find they can agree on its content and practical implications. Revived by Richard Rorty and others from the 1980s, pragmatism has had a wide influence on the contemporary humanities and social sciences, including human geography. It attends to the way knowledge gets made, the rhetorics used by its creators to claim epistemological legitimacy, and the grounds for agreement and debate among interlocutors. Human geographers have drawn on pragmatist ideas in order to examine their own construction of knowledge, as well as that of those they study. For instance, ... ...
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