As I understand it, pragmatism is the philosophy where something is true because it works. So the law of gravity is true because you can predict trajectories with it and it always works. Some people claim that belief in God makes people good, so God works and must therefore exist. There was a thread on here last week about exactly that. I'd call myself a part-time pragmatist, as there are plenty of occasions where it's not appropriate; if someone murders someone, you don't ask who it would be most useful to hang.
One area where the pragmatic approach to truth is useful I think, is with emotion. I think you know how you feel because you assert that this sensation in your body is this concept and if, as a child maybe, this interpretation is useful to you, you believe it to be the truth. This would account for the very different and distinct characters you find in other cultures: Different concepts surround you when growing up, so you learn to place different interpretations on the same sensations.
I bring this up because, suppose a child was isolated growing up, would he place any interpretation on those sensations at all? Would 'emotion,' as the word is generally understood, truly exist? I had an experience once where a certain person/situation was causing me some overload problems: ballooning headache, white noise in my mind etc. Then I realised what was distressing me: I was jealous. It wasn't like the overload stuff just disappeared there and then, but the next time I saw the guy I definitely resented him, in fact I wanted to hit him, which I hadn't before and there was no headache or whatever. I wonder if naming the feeling was in some sense the cause of the feeling?
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Tangled up and Blue