SOURCE: "Pragmatic Realism: The Peircean Argument Reexamined," in The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. XXXIII, No. 131, March, 1980, pp. 527-40.

In the following excerpt, Skagestad summarizes Peirce's pragmatic approach to realism.

During the past decade or so, philosophers of science have increasingly recognized that the rationality and progressiveness of science cannot be fully exhibited in syntactic or semantic terms, i.e., by considering science merely as a system of symbols. The idea is rapidly gaining ground that science is fundamentally a way of dealing with the world around us and that the rationality of scientific method essentially depends on the role which it plays within our total conduct.

Two things are not implied by this pragmatic erspective (as I shall call it). It is not implied that science has to be regarded as a purely utilitarian enterprise, any more than any other aspect of human conduct has to be so...