[colorint]

Keynes sort of sums up this sentiment, just replace economist with philosopher:

>Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

The bottom line is, all "practical" viewpoints begin from some particular way of looking at the world, which usually gets hammered out in philosophy. In this sense, I find that pragmatism is usually just someone taking for granted the etiology of their own ideas, which makes pragmatism one of the least interesting positions.

Obviously I don't know what you in particular believe, so I'm just talking about the kinds of people who I've personally seen advance these kinds of positions.

[yesenadam]

A good point. One thing: I've studied philosophy quite a lot, and even I don't know, or have forgotten, the meaning of 'etiology'. So I assume there's no chance the person you're responding to knows what it means. It's technical philosophy jargon.