William James:

What is Truth?

1. Practical, concrete, individual, particular and effective as opposed to abstract, general and inert
2. Interpretation of practical consequences from an individual perspective – the particular import that a belief has in the life of the individual

“The true is only the expedient in our way of thinking, just as the right is only the expedient in our way of behaving.”

From “The Will to Believe” – treat our absolutist tendency as a weakness of our nature from which we must free ourselves.

What is the traditional conception of truth? A property of our ideas such that they agree with reality.

TRUTH FOR THE INTELLECTUALIST AND FOR THE PRAGMATIST

Intellectualists Inert, static relation Reality stands complete and ready-made for all eternity. Faces backward It is a system of propositions We have a duty to accept the propositions Has nothing to do with practicality or practical application

Pragmatists What difference will a truth make in a person’s life? The true is what we can assimilate, corroborate, validate Truth is something that happens to an idea Truth is not an end, it is a means. “It is useful because it is true, or it is true because it is useful.” They mean the same thing. We don’t have to verify everything. Truth lives on a “credit system” No a theory of truth, but of truths – and truths pay Truth is made, like health and wealth What absolute truth is – a vanishing point – in the meantime, we have to live today by truth today and be prepared to call it false tomorrow. Must I constantly repeat what is true? Truth as a duty is relative

Pragmatism in general:

1. A critical rejection of traditional academic philosophy with positive goals.

2. A focus on what is useful, how to create, how to live.

What Pragmatism Means:

Pragmatic method – settling metaphysical disputes by tracing practical consequences. If no practical difference is made with respect to holding that a belief or claim is true, then the dispute is idle.

Derived from the Greek word for ‘action’

“There can be no difference anywhere that doesn’t make a difference elsewhere….”

Pragmatism is like empiricism in attitude – it is more radical. Pragmatism:

• Turns away from abstraction
• Turns away from verbal solutions
• Turns away from a priori reasons
• Turns away from fixed principles
• Turns away from closed systems
• Turns toward concreteness
• Turns toward adequacy
• Turns toward facts and action and power

“The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it would make to you and me . . . if this world-formula or that world-formula be the true one.”

Claims that Socrates used this method, as well as Locke, Berkeley and Hume.

The pragmatist eschews abstractions, verbal solutions, and bad apriori reasons and the pretence of finality in truth.

Pragmatism is only a method.

The pragmatist wants to see how existing realities may change. Theories are instruments, not answers. We move ahead with them.

Agrees with nominalists in appealing to particulars.

Agrees with utilitarians in emphasizing practical aspects of things.

Agrees with positivism in a disdain for verbal solutions, useless questions and abstractions.

These are all anti-intellectualist tendencies.

Pragmatism has no dogmas. It is an attitude – to look away from principles, categories, necessity. To look to last things, consequences, facts, fruits of inquiry. IS THIS ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM, OR IS IT IN FACT MORE FULLY IN THE SPIRIT OF INQUIRY AND INTELLECTUALISM THAN RATIONALISM?

Ideas become true in so far as they help us get into a satisfactory relations with other parts of our experience.

Pragmatism is uncomfortable away from facts. Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions.

Theories are true in proportion to their success in solving problems. It is a matter of approximation.

True = good. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good for definite, assignable reasons.

“YOUR TYPICAL ULTRA RATIONALIST FAIRLY SHUDDERS AT CONCRETENESS.” NOTE THAT THIS MIGHT BE A STARTING POINT FOR SOME DISCUSSION ABOUT THE TRADITIONAL DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE WORLDLY AND THE HEAVENLY, THE IMPURE VERSUS THE PURE, THE EVIL OR NOT-SO-GOOD AS OPPOSED TO THE GOOD, ETC.

Meaning/truth – evaluate practical consequences, usefulness.

What is good or expedient in our beliefs is true=cash value

The function of thought – to get by in the world. The value of ideas is determined by how they get us from one experience to the other – simplify and save labor.

Justification of moral/religious beliefs – when a person has a belief that satisfies a need, the vital good supplied by the belief in the life of that person justifies the belief. Consider, for example, James’s position in the “Will to Believe.” Note: Pragmatism has no objection to abstractions just so long as they get you somewhere. This is the sense in which pragmatism has no objections to religious belief. “If theological ideas prove to have a value for concrete life, they will be true . . . in the sense of being good for so much. For how much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relations to the other truths that also have to be acknowledged.”

When believers say that their beliefs give them comfort – they dismiss their fear and drop their worries over finite responsibility. They have a right to take a moral holiday – the world is as it is. There is nothing wrong with this. To deny the “truth” of this view would be “to insist that men should never relax, and that holidays are never in order.”

“If there be any life that it is really better we should lead, and if there be any idea which, if believed in, would help us to lead that life, then it would be really better for us to believe in that idea, unless, indeed, belief in it incidentally clashed with other greater vital benefits.”

“Pragmatism’s Conception of Truth”

With respect to the notion of truth, the pragmatist takes this stance: “Suppose an idea is true – what concrete difference will its being true make in anyone’s actual life? How will the truth be realized? What experiences will be different from those which would obtain if the belief were false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash-value in experiential terms?”

Truth happens to an idea, it becomes true. It is made true by events.

Possessing the truth is not an end in itself – it is a means towards other “vital satisfactions.” Example of being lost in the woods and finding a cow path. Now change the example. – if you don’t need the cow path, it doesn’t make much difference to you.

“Yet, since almost any object may some day become temporarily important, the advantage of having a general stock of extra truths . . . is obvious.” So we can say that an idea is useful because it is true or that it is true because it is useful. They mean the same thing.

This doesn’t mean that the Humean distinction between relations of ideas and matters of fact isn’t important. It is. The relations of ideas are absolute, unconditional truths – they are either definitions or principles. Realities are concrete facts or abstract relations that we know intuitively that hold between them.

“Our account of truth is an account of truths in the plural, of processes of leading, realized in rebus, and having only this quality in common, that they pay.” “Truth for us is simply a collective name for verification-processes, just as health, wealth, strength, etc., are names for other processes connected with life, and also pursued because it pays to pursue them. Truth is made, just as health, wealth and strength are made, in the course of experience.”

“THE TRUE . . . IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN OUR WAY OF THINKING, JUST AS ‘THE RIGHT’ IS ONLY THE EXPEDIENT IN THE WAY OF OUR BEHAVING.”

But even for all of this, and even in recognition of the fact that there might be a way in which pragmatism can accept absolute truths, it is still the case that sometimes truth is irrelevant, even when it is absolutely, 100% true. Suppose you ask me what time it is and I tell you I live on Main Street. It might be true, but even though it is true, why, because it is true, would it be my duty to give that information. A false address would have been as much to the purpose as the real address at which I live. It is useless.

SO WHO ARE THE REAL DEFENDERS OF THE RATIONALITY OF THE UNIVERSE? IS IT THE RATIOALISTS WHO ARE MORE GENUINE, OR THE PRAGMATISTS? The answer is clear.