Behavioral pragmatism: No place for reality and truth

The current article begins by reviewing L. J. Hayes's claim that pragmatism relies on a correspondence-based truth criterion. To evaluate her claim, t he concept of the observation sentence, proposed by the pragmatist philosop her W. V. Quine, is examined. The observation sentence appears to remove th e issue of correspondence from Quine's pragmatist philosophy. Nevertheless, the issue of correspondence reemerges, as the problem of homology, when Qu ine appeals to agreement between or among observation sentences as the basi s for truth. Quine also argues, however, that the problem of homology (i.e. , correspondence) should be ignored on pragmatic grounds. Because the probl em is simply ignored, but not resolved, there appears to be some substance to Hayes's claim that pragmatism relies ultimately on correspondence as a t ruth criterion. Behavioral pragmatism is then introduced to circumvent both Hayes's claim and Quine's implicit appeal to correspondence. Behavioral pr agmatism avoids correspondence by appealing to the personal goals (i.e., th e behavior) of the scientist or philosopher as the basis for establishing t ruth. One consequence of this approach, however, is that science and philos ophy are robbed of any final or absolute objectives and thus may not be a s atisfactory solution to philosophers. On balance, behavioral pragmatism avo ids any appeal to correspondence-based truth, and thus it cannot be critici zed.