# Frame Methodology Pack -- Pragmatist (`pragmatist`)

**Source anchor:** Dewey, *Logic: The Theory of Inquiry* (1938); Peirce, fallibilism; SEP, "Pragmatic Theory of Truth."
**Status:** Public-Evaluator. Loaded by Frame Host E3; readable by E2, E4, E5, E8, E9.

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## 1. Methodology

Dewey replaces correspondence-theoretic "truth" with **warranted assertibility** -- the settled outcome of a controlled chain of inquiry that starts from an indeterminate situation, passes through problem-formulation, hypothesis as working tool, experimental operation, and terminates in judgment that can sustain continued inquiry. Peirce's fallibilism sits underneath: every proposition is revisable on further evidence; certainty is a property of settled practice, not of a statement in isolation.

A pragmatist audit reconstructs the inquiry chain behind a RAM claim and asks: was the problem correctly posed? Were hypotheses framed as consequential tests rather than decorative moves? Did the experimental operations actually engage the situation the claim speaks to? Do the resulting judgments function as working tools for the actors whose situation prompted the inquiry? Do they survive continued inquiry or buckle on first contact with a novel case?

The audit does not ask "is the claim true?" in a correspondence sense. It asks whether the claim is **warrantedly assertible** given the inquiry that produced it.

## 2. Claim Types Best-Audited

- Applied / interventional claims ("what works here").
- Instrumental knowledge ("how to do X under conditions Y").
- Claims whose meaning is defined by the consequences of their use.
- Programmatic recommendations whose test is adoption-survival, not citation-count.

## 3. Typical Weaknesses

- Under-specifies non-instrumental claim types (pure description, first-person meaning, historical reconstruction).
- Risks conflating "what works for now" with "what is true," leaving room for short-horizon optimization dressed as epistemology.
- Anti-foundationalism makes cross-audit comparison harder: two pragmatist audits can warrant divergent claims without a shared tribunal.
- Vulnerable to drift when the "inquiry community" is narrow and self-referential.

## 4. Compatibility Profile (Three Kuhnian Dimensions)

- **Methodological signature:** experimental-instrumental. Inquiry is cyclic, test-driven, consequence-traceable.
- **Semantic signature:** consequence-defined. A proposition's meaning is what it entails for future operations.
- **Ontological signature:** pluralist / anti-foundational. No privileged substrate; settled practices are what there is, until they aren't.

Against all three RAM frames (S02 fitness, S03 transportability, S08 saturation), pragmatist is DISTINCT on every dimension. S02 grades evidence; pragmatist grades inquiry-chain completion. S03 locates mechanisms in stratified contexts; pragmatist locates warrant in continued survival of propositions. S08 counts informational redundancy; pragmatist counts consequence-stability.

## 5. Retrieval Hook

- **Corpora:** applied and interventional case literature; SEP entries on inquiry and pragmatic truth; consequence-traceable evidence chains (field trials with follow-up beyond initial publication).
- **Query style:** pair the claim with its consequent-action prediction; seek evidence of the action's survival across re-application.
- **Exclusion rules:** pure-theoretic claims with no specified consequent operations; single-shot evaluations without continued-inquiry follow-up.

## 6. Scoring Hook

- **axis_warrant:** inquiry-chain reconstructibility. Score on whether problem-formulation, hypothesis-as-tool, operation, and judgment are each traceable and whether the transitions between them are defensible.
- **axis_fit:** consequence-stability for the actors the claim addresses. Does the proposition still function as a working tool in the situations where it was advanced?
- **axis_robustness:** survival under continued inquiry. Does the proposition hold when re-applied in novel but situation-relevant conditions, or does it require re-formulation?
- **aggregation_rule:** `non_collapse` (architectural lock).

## 7. Termination Hook

- **rule_id:** `warranted_assertibility`.
- **minimum_artifacts:** 3 inquiry-chain reconstructions across non-adjacent cases.
- **closure_test:** proposition has stabilized as a working tool across iterations; further iterations produce incremental rather than category-changing revision.

## 8. Authors Cited

Dewey, Peirce, SEP "Pragmatic Theory of Truth." No overlap with authors reserved for RAM S02 (Guyatt, Sterne, Hammersley), RAM S03 (Pawson, Tilley, Shadish, Cook, Campbell), or RAM S08 (Glaser, Saunders, Guest, Callaghan).
