Pragmatics and Semantics
A lot of contemporary philosophical theories focus on semantics. For instance, Brandom focuses on linguistic meaning (albeit from a pragmatic perspective).
Others take a more holistic approach to pragmatics, like relevance theory, which aims to study the underlying processes involved in an utterance made by a hearer. But this approach tends to ignore other aspects of pragmatism, like epistemic debates over truth.
What is pragmatism, exactly?
Pragmatism is a viable alternative to continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. It was developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, and expanded by his colleague and friend William James, and later developed by Josiah Royce. It had a profound impact on the fields of inquiry from theology and philosophy to philosophy of science, but also on ethics, politics and philosophy of language. The pragmatist tradition continues to develop.
The pragmatic maxim is at the center of classical pragmatism. It is a rule that clarifies the meaning of hypotheses through their 'practical implications' or their implications for the experiences of specific situations. This gives rise to a distinctive epistemological outlook that is a form of 'inquiry-based epistemology' and an anti-Cartesian explication of the rules that govern inquiry. The early pragmatists had a split on whether pragmatism was a science-based philosophy that embraced a monism regarding truth (following Peirce) or a broad alethic pluralitism (James &