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A maxim is a moral rule or principle, which can be considered dependent on one's philosophy. A maxim is often pedagogical and motivates specific actions. The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy defines it as: Generally any simple and memorable rule or guide for living; for example, 'neither a borrower nor a lender be'.
The pragmatic maxim, also known as the maxim of pragmatism or the maxim of pragmaticism, is a maxim of logic formulated by Charles Sanders Peirce.Serving as a normative recommendation or a regulative principle in the normative science of logic, its function is to guide the conduct of thought toward the achievement of its purpose, advising on an optimal way of "attaining clearness of apprehension".
[18] For example, if maxims equivalent to 'I will break a promise when doing so secures my advantage' were universalized, no one would trust any promises, so the idea of a promise would become meaningless; the maxim would be self-contradictory because, when universalized, promises cease to be meaningful. The maxim is not moral because it is ...
The Golden Rule in its prohibitive (negative) form was a common principle in ancient Greek philosophy. Examples of the general concept include: "Avoid doing what you would blame others for doing." – Thales [12] (c. 624 – c. 546 BCE) "What you do not want to happen to you, do not do it yourself either." – Sextus the Pythagorean. [13]
Towards the beginning of the 19th century, the maxim began to play a significant role in German philosophy. Immanuel Kant ( Metaphysics of Morals , 1797) wrote that "know thyself" should be understood as an ethical commandment to know one's own heart and to understand the motives behind one's actions, in order to harmonize one's will with one's ...
Universalizing a maxim (statement) leads to it being valid, or to one of two contradictions—a contradiction in conception (where the maxim, when universalized, is no longer a viable means to the end) or a contradiction in will (where the will of a person contradicts what the universalisation of the maxim implies).
Another example is Mark Johnson whose embodied philosophy [43] shares its psychologism, direct realism and anti-cartesianism with pragmatism. Conceptual pragmatism is a theory of knowledge originating with the work of the philosopher and logician Clarence Irving Lewis .
The concept of universalizability was set out by the 18th-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant as part of his work Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals.It is part of the first formulation of his categorical imperative, which states that the only morally acceptable maxims of our actions are those that could rationally be willed to be universal law.