There is a practical way of looking at the problem. Instead of asking the question in the way we have been posing it, instead ask, “Of what use is a real world versus an ideal world?” Formulated this way, it is less important to determine the factuality of existence than to determine its utility. Pragmatists do not require that beliefs must accurately reflect reality to be true. Instead they hold that the validity of beliefs depend on how helpful they are in action and inquiry. Simplistically, the large questions revolve around “what works?” rather than “what is true?” They emphasize practical outcomes and consequences as the most important element of their philosophy. As the name implies, it is an eminently practical philosophy, not overly concerned with metaphysics, unless there is some useful advantage of one metaphysical position over another. Scientific "instrumentalists" are pragmatists. They are less concerned with how much their theories correspond to an objective reality, and more with the utility of those theories. For instrumentalists, a concept or theory should be evaluated by how effectively it explains and predicts phenomena, as opposed to how accurately it describes the external world.
As with all the other positions and opinions discussed in this “Revolt against Idealism” section, Pragmatists concern themselves with many more issues than with questions related to reality, but they do generally take a stand on this question.
Descartes (who was not a Pragmatist) began his investigations with absolute doubt. Not accepting this starting point, pragmatists don’t insist on wiping the slate clean at the beginning of their inquiries to find a neutral and supposition-free starting-point. Not requiring skepticism regarding every aspect of the universe, Pragmatists instead watch for something to be sincerely doubtful of and send their investigations in that direction. Reality is not one of those things.
C. S. Peirce, one of the several creators of modern Pragmatism, utilized this way of approaching problems to help refine the modern outlines of the Scientific Method. He popularized the concept that claims of scientific knowledge can only be held to be true provisionally, as there is always the possibility that some future discovery will alter them or prove them to be false. According to his doctrine of Fallibilism, the conclusions of science are always tentative. Science does not demand absolute certainty in all its conclusions, but instead relies on the usefulness of its discoveries and on its inherent self-corrective nature. Science can detect and correct its own mistakes, and by doing so evolve toward greater understanding.
With respect to the notion of Reality, Peirce’s empirical method presumed that the objects of knowledge are real, that the properties of those real objects are independent of our perceptions of them, and that all persons who experience those real things will have basic agreement on the content of their experience. The classic “is the chair really there” problem is not of any interest to Pragmatists, unless some compelling reason emerges to doubt its presence. No special revelation or personal traits give one person an advantage over another – anyone can see that the chair is really there. The chief interest of the Pragmatists was not in exploring the nature of Reality. Because there was no convincing reason to doubt it, they accepted it as a given. The onus of responsibility, in their view, would be for others to disprove it.
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