As my username suggests, I'm a fan of the philosophical pragmatism of Richard Rorty as well as William James and others. Are there many EAs who share that view?
Pragmatism demands some things that might seem at odds with EA: it rejects the notion that we can reason our way toward capital-T Truth. The idea of true belief as correspondence to Reality is discarded.
But it also has features that seem to me very compatible with EA. It reorients truth toward usefulness and in so doing centers moral goals, which are central to the EA project as well. In effect, pragmatists make no distinction between epistemology and "applied epistemology"; for them all epistemology is applied.
Pragmatism asks that reasons, arguments, and philosophies make a practical difference -- that they help us achieve goals. That should be a way of thinking that's amenable to a movement that focuses on doing the most good possible and then asks how to do that.
So, are many EAs philosophical pragmatists?
Thanks for your thoughtful response. Your post piqued my interest enough that I am finally getting around to reading Susan Haack's Evidence and Inquiry, which is a theory of justification that builds on Peirce and has an entire chapter devoted to Rorty. She is very unsympathetic to Rorty, but I suspect that other commentators on pragmatism, such as Cornel West and Louis Menand, are more sympathetic. It may not be a coincidence that the latter folks have more applied, political interests, which would jibe with EA as you say.