Pragmatist Empiricism (Towards a Conception of Human Being)

Abstract The paper discusses the relation of philosophical pragmatism to empiricism as the backdrop to understanding human being. The crux of the problem is the relation between language and experience. The author argues that pragmatist empiricism is based on the concept that human practices are transactions, which includes both non-linguistic as well as linguistic practices. Within pragmatist anthropological philosophy, experience is a complex of transactions between humans and reality. Humans are both natural/physical and cultural/linguistic beings, whose living experience involves transactions with both the natural and the sociocultural environment. The dualism between language and experience is false and should be abandoned.