1. Which Pragmatism?
“In a word, pragmatism is a method of philosophizing often identified as a theory of meaning first
stated by Charles Peirce in the 1870’s; revived primarily as a theory of truth in 1898 by William James;
and further developed, expanded, and disseminated by John Dewey. (H.S. Thayer, 1981. Meaning and
Action. Indianapolis: Hackett: 5)
“Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that – very broadly – understands knowing the world as
inseparable from agency within it. This general idea has attracted a remarkably rich and at times
contrary range of interpretations, including: that all philosophical concepts should be tested via
scientific experimentation, that a claim is true if and only if it is useful (relatedly: if a philosophical
theory does not contribute directly to social progress then it is not worth much), that experience consists
in transacting with rather than representing nature, that articulate language rests on a deep bed of shared
human practices that can never be fully ‘made explicit’.” (Legg, Catherine and Hookway, Christopher,
"Pragmatism", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2019 Edition)
In ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’, Peirce formulates the view of meaning that is the core of his
pragmatism and that provides the touchstone for many subsequent varieties of pragmatism. Peirce
writes,
“To develop [a thought’s] meaning, we have simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a
thing means is simply what habits it involves. (Collected Papers Vol 5, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press 1931–1958, at 400)
By ‘habit’ Peirce means a standard course of action undertaken in response to specific conditions. For
any thought, then, one may extract its complete meaning by drawing out the proposals for action that it
suggests. This thesis has come to be known as the pragmatic maxim. Peirce expresses the idea thus:
“Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our
conception to have. Then our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object.”
(Collected Papers Vol 5, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press 1931–1958, at 402).
These effects must be both general and rationally intelligible. In Peirce’s terms, “The entire intellectual
purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which, conditionally
upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensue upon the acceptance of the
symbol. (The Essential Peirce Vol. 2, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992–1999: 346).
2. The Pragmatic Maxim behind Greenberg’s Moral Impact theory of law
Moral Progress or the legally assisted Improvement of Moral Situation
Greenberg claims that the actions of legal institutions are supposed to make the moral situation better
by ensuring that the legal obligations they create provide decisive reasons for action. Greenberg makes
this point explicit by combing two claims about the nature of legal systems. The first claim is already
familiar; it states that legal systems are supposed to ensure that the actions of legal institutions generate
legal obligations that are morally binding (Bindingness Hypothesis). The second claim is that ‘it is part
of the nature of law that a legal system is supposed to change our moral obligations in order to improve
our moral situation—not, of course, that legal systems always improve our moral situation, but that they
are defective as legal systems to the extent that they do not.’ (M. Greenberg, ‘The Moral Impact Theory
of Law’, p. 1294.) The combination of these two claims results in the view that a legal system is
supposed not merely to produce binding legal obligations but to do so in a way that improves the moral
situation.
In a footnote to ‘The Moral Impact Theory of Law’ (p. 1324). Greenberg acknowledges the strong
connection between the notion of the legally proper way of changing the moral profile and the
improvement of the moral situation. Despite the fact that he is at pains to fully determine the corpus of
legally proper ways he notes that
“it is part of the Moral Impact Theory that the legal institutions that are relevant for its purposes—the
ones that generate those moral obligations that are legal obligations—are ones that are supposed to
improve the moral situation…this point is really an elaboration of the notion of the legally proper way
of changing the moral profile…That is, in order for a change in the moral profile to come about in the
legally proper way, it must be the result of action by a legal institution that, by its nature, is supposed
to improve the moral situation.”
3. Which Transcendence?
The qualification "transcendental" (‘that which surpasses [something]’) was the accepted medieval term
for any notion that applies to more than one category. Medieval theories of the transcendentals present
an explication of the concept of ‘being’ (ens) in terms of the so-called ‘most common notions’
(communissima), such as ‘one’ (unum), ‘true’ (verum), and ‘good’ (bonum), and explain the inner
relations and order between these concepts.
The term clearly requires a complement, i.e. an indication of what is surpassed in the ‘transcensus’. The
history of the ‘transcendental’ can be described in terms of the variety of its complements:
(a) What surpasses the categorical (sortal, highest kinds or genera) (Scholastics)
(b) What surpasses the dispositional
(c) What surpasses the experiential (Kant)