Rationalism vs. Empiricism vs. Pragmatism

Of course the important point here is that self-evident truths can be genuinely undoubtable, whereas empirical truths are always provisional and can be disproven by new evidence.

Actually...pragmatism may be a kind of empiricism, come to think of it.

Anyway, I'm a bit sketchy on the details but I think what I've written is broadly accurate.

I think both rationalism and empiricism imply that there is a foundation for Truth, either in In Here (in that humans have a kind of innate type of Gaydar that's good at spotting the True) or Out There (there are Scientific Truths waiting to be discovered). Whereas pragmatism is anti-foundationalist, implying truth is just a property of particular sentences and what particular communities decide to agree on.

when people at my work says they're being pragmatic about something it usually just means they can't be bothered to rationalise something to a full extent because it's not that important