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StephenR comments on A Pragmatic Epistemology - Less Wrong
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Pragmatists from Pierce through the positivists to Rorty have agreed with you that the goal is to avoid wasting time on theories of truth and meaning and instead focus on finding practical tools; they've only spoken of theories of truth when they thought there was was no other way to make their points understandable to those too firmly entrenched in the philosophical mainstream (or, even more often, had such theories attributed to them by people who assumed that must be what they were up to despite their explicit disavowals). I'm not saying all of those people agreed with you about everything (the positivists, for example, thought the fact/value distinction was a useful tool, although of course they didn't think it represented any fundamental truth about reality), but I think you greatly exaggerate your originality here. Of course, one might reasonably insist that originality is not as important as whether the theories actually are useful, but while I tend to be in sympathy with the pragmatist tradition, the fact that it has been around for quite a while without seeming to have radically triumphed over all rivals does provide some reason for doubt about the extent of its world-beating potential.
I thought it might come across that way, but didn't want to invest a bunch of time listing my intellectual debts (the post is long enough already). For the record, I'm aware that my ideas aren't entirely original, and I suspect that when I think they are I would be able to find similar ideas in others' writing independently.
I think that part of the problem here is that pragmatists didn't spend nearly as much energy on the details of applying their ideas as, say, Carnap and Popper did. They also tended to keep their discussion of pragmatism to philosophical circles, rather than engaging with scientific circles about their research. There's a lot of inertia to fight in order to shift scientific paradigms and the pragmatists didn't engage in the social and political organisation necessary to do so.
I think I've provided a fair summary of some of the benefits of wearing a pragmatic thinking cap. And I'll be outlining those and others in more detail later.