ABSTRACT
Pragmatism's appeal lies arguably in its brass-tacks approach to philosophy. The pragmatist holds that philosophical questions are elliptical for problems in experience; they are practical challenges made theoretical. Many of the major historical philosophical movements are largely metaphilosophical programs, systems that begin with an account of how philosophy should be done, and then proceed to address problems according to that metaphilosophical prescription. Nicholas Rescher's work offers a refreshing and fruitful alternative. His program presented in The Strife of Systems and more recently in Philosophical Dialectics presents an identifiably pragmatist metaphilosophy, yet it avoids the insularity and resentment that plagues much of the pragmatist idiom. Jamesian pragmatist metaphilosophy embodies two objectionable features. The first is the deceptive move of introducing a causal thesis then turning it into a normative program. The second is the self-sealing the program performs once in place. The first is a form of genetic fallacy; the second is sheer triumphalist dogmatism.
