Frances to Chris... For the pragmatist, all judgement is critical and is fundamentally based on skeptical doubt, but eventually may lead to fallible belief. If any object like architecture ever could conceivably be nice and right and true, then it probably will be in the long run, regardless of whether it ever actually will be. It is the search that counts, and not some absolute finality, which is unattainable in any event. It is enough to satisfy the tenets of pragmatism if a thinker merely believes in this optimistic likelihood. The truth of a theory in science furthermore is not dependent on any concrete practical concerns in everyday life. Those concerns the pragmatist will leave to the bankers and builders and busters.
You wrote... One of the many "conceivable practical consequences of signs" is that they can be ignored, and if those ignored signs will be taking up space on a city street, eventually they will be demolished (or never built in the first place) Which is why the sword of judgment hangs heavier above architecture than upon any other imaginative art. How can a "pragmatist" ignore it? The pragmatist, who is concerned with architecture, needs to propose on what that judgment should be based. For Sullivan, judgment should be based on responsibility to the public - specifically, his American public with their "subtle ideal of self-government", and "altruistic conception of a fundamental right to the pursuit of happiness", the "luminous spirit of Democracy", at his historical moment when the "national adolescence has passed" on "the threshold of a new era" Sullivan wants the forms of architecture to exemplify that responsibility -- to lift Americans out of their "narrow groove of self interest" for which the social fabric "exists only for personal profit and exploitation" He would attack those buildings which "signify the morbid brain" "Nothing more clearly reflects the status and tendencies of a people than the character of its buildings. They are emanations of the people; they visualize for us the soul of our people. They are an open book. And by this sign, the tendency of today is disquieting" (above quotes taken from "Kindergarten Chats", chapter XIX, "Responsibility: the Public") Frances wrote: My understanding is that the pragmatist is presumably concerned with the "conceivable" practical consequences of signs, such as the truth signified by theories. It is the "concept" of likely effects that is made concrete in experience by theories that are made from facts.
