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?
Could you clarify if you have in mind any other characteristics that determine whether someone is or isn't a philosophical pragmatist aside from "[believing] that we can reason our way toward capital-T Truth"? Although I've encountered discussions of philosophical pragmatism before, it's definitely not my area of expertise. Additionally, I've not had this conversation about philosophical pragmatism with many EAs.
That being said, I think it's reasonable to say that many if not most EAs probably believe "objectively verifiable 'Truth' is not attainable (but that doesn't mean nothing matters or nothing is actually True)." It's possible I'm slightly biased by my own beliefs, but in my experience such a point seems fairly non-controversial among thoughtful people: there are a lot of wrong ways to interpret the claim (e.g., "Truth is subjective")—including bad assumptions regarding the implications for action and thought (e.g., "it's impossible to reason about anything")—but once you peel away the poor interpretations and highlight basic examples like "we can't verify whether there is a demon tricking us all into thinking 2+2=4; we can't verify that we don't exist in a simulated reality with fake laws of logic", most (thoughtful/non-offended) people will admit "okay, maybe we can't be 100% certain about anything, but it's still pretty close to 100% and those hypotheticals shouldn't really influence our actions."
There are also like 3 different ways 2+2!=4.
Outer universe with different math - We're a simulation inside a different universe that runs on different math where 2+2!=4, but the math inside our universe is consistent. This is the same as 2+2=4 for most purposes. This is imaginable, I think...
Active demon - there's a demon that controls all your inputs, in a way that's inconsistent with any reasonable mathematics, but you can't tell. This is the least likely, and if it were true I wouldn't even consider myself a person.
Math is flawed - the whole concept of ... (read more)