Empirical Ties

from Pragmatism Commentary by Claude Empirical Ties What is “experiential connection”?

The “experiential nexus” is one of the key concepts that characterize the pragmatism worldview.

Pragmatists do not see the relationships between the elements that make up the world as a priori and absolute, but as practical connections that are confirmed through experience. In other words, the relationships between things are functional bonds found in our concrete experiences.

For example, cause and effect relationships are derived inductively from the succession of events we observe in our daily lives and are not determined a priori. Also, the similarity of things is based on the practical commonalities we find in our experiences.

Thus, the pragmatist asserts that the unity of the world is secured not by a priori principles, but by a network of relationships found empirically. This position is in contrast to the rationalist view of the world, which seeks absolute unity.

In a modern context, this emphasis on experience can be seen in attempts to gain insight from empirical data, such as inductive approaches based on big data and analysis of complex network structures. Pragmatism’s concept of “empirical connections” may be said to have been a precursor to the modern way of thinking about the world as “flexible and dynamic.

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