Abstract

This original and important work is a sequel to Conceptual Idealism and The Primacy of Practice. It is a systematic treatment of the "problem of the legitimation of factual knowledge"-a central issue of rational warrant or cognitive rationality. It offers a doctrine of methodological pragmatism, as distinct from theses pragmatism—a distinction analogous to act- and rule-utilitarianism. Theses pragmatism "asserts that a proposition is to be accepted if its adoption is maximally success-promoting," whereas methodological pragmatism "asserts that a proposition is to be accepted if it conforms to an epistemologically warranted criterion and that a criterion is warranted if its adoption as a generic principle for propositional acceptance is maximally success-promoting ". Thus what is offered is a pragmatic justification of cognitive methodology in factual inquiry rather than the pragmatic validation of factual theses.