Pragmatism and the Ethic of Meliorism

Abstract

The founding pragmatists were meliorists, arguing for the possibility of improvement in the human condition. At the same time, they did not think that progress was something inevitable. It was constrained by a tragic order that would prevent any movement toward a utopian ideal and could always lead to regress. Because they could not abide the notion of an absolute, predetermined sense of the good, they did not subscribe to a moral perfectionism as well. Instead, Peirce, James and Dewey argued in different ways that progress was made through the correction of error and the solution of problems as they presented in the experiments of life. Thinkers sympathetic to this understanding of the pragmatist tradition, such as James Wallace, Frederick Will, Larry Laudan and Philip Kitcher, build on these insights. The aim of this article is to show how the work of these thinkers provides the basis for a problem-based ethic that can assist in determining what changes to the practices and institutions of practical life can count as progressive or regressive.