The Pragmatic Theory Of Truth As Developed By Peirce, James, And Dewey Part 2

It will be seem that James has not in 1902 differentiated between pragmatism as a method and as a theory of truth. Leaving out the one reference to truth, the definition is an excellent statement of the Peircian doctrine of clearness. This is especially to be noticed in the last two sentences, which are perfectly 'orthodox' statements of method alone.

In 1904 and 1905 James published two papers in Mind on the truth question. The first, "Humanism and Truth", may be called his 'border-line' article. In this he is attempting to give a sympathetic interpretation of the humanistic theory of truth--which he later said is exactly like his own--but is still making the interpretation as an outsider. In the second article he has definitely embraced the humanistic theory and is defending it.

The first article begins as follows:[7] "Receiving from the editor of Mind an advance proof of Mr. Bradley's article for July on 'Truth and Practice', I understand this as a hint to me to join in the controversy over 'Pragmatism' which seems to have seriously begun. As my name has been coupled with the movement, I deem it wise to take the hint, the more so as in some quarters greater credit has been given me than I deserve, and probably undeserved discredit in other quarters falls also to my lot.

[7] Mind, N. S. 13, p. 457.

"First, as to the word 'pragmatism'. I myself have only used the term to indicate a method of carrying on abstract discussion. The serious meaning of a concept, says Mr. Peirce, lies in the concrete difference to someone which its being true will make. Strive to bring all debated questions to that 'pragmatic' test, and you will escape vain wrangling: if it can make no practical difference which of two statements be true, then they are really one statement in two verbal forms; if it can make no practical difference whether a given statement be true or false, then the statement has no real meaning. In neither case is there anything fit to quarrel about; we may save our breath, and pa.s.s to more important things.

"All that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should _have_ practical consequences. In England the word has been used more broadly, to cover the notion that the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, and particularly in their being good consequences. Here we get beyond affairs of method altogether; and since this pragmatism and the wider pragmatism are so different, and both are important enough to have different names, I think that Mr.

Schiller's proposal to call the wider pragmatism by the name of 'Humanism' is excellent and ought to be adopted. The narrower pragmatism may still be spoken of as the 'pragmatic method'.

"If further egotism be in order. I may say that the account of truth given by Messrs. Sturt and Schiller and by Professor Dewey and his school ... goes beyond any theorizing which I personally had ever indulged in until I read their writings. After reading these, _I feel almost sure that these authors are right in their main contentions_, but the originality is wholly theirs, and I can hardly recognize in my own humble doctrine that concepts are teleological instruments anything considerable enough to warrant my being called, as I have been, the 'father' of so important a movement forward in philosophy".[8] (Italic mine).

[8] This paragraph appears as a footnote.

"I think that a decided effort at a sympathetic mental play with humanism is the provisional att.i.tude to be recommended to the reader.

"_When I find myself playing sympathetically with humanism_, something like what follows is what I end by conceiving it to mean". (Italics mine).

Such is the conservative tone in which the article is begun. Yet before it is ended we find these pa.s.sages: "It seems obvious that the pragmatic account of all this routine of phenomenal knowledge is accurate". (p.468). "The humanism, for instance, which I see and try so hard to defend, is the completest truth attained from my point of view up to date". (p.472).

In a supplementary article, "Humanism and Truth Once More", published a few months later in answer to questions prompted by this one, the acceptance of humanism is entirely definite. And here James finds that he has been advocating the doctrine for several years. He says, "I myself put forth on several occasions a radically pragmatist account of knowledge". (Mind, v. 14, p. 196). And again he remarks, "When following Schiller and Dewey, I define the true as that which gives the maximal combination of satisfaction ...". (p.196).

THE THEORY OF TRUTH IN 'PRAGMATISM' AND 'THE MEANING OF TRUTH'.

In 1907 when he published his book "Pragmatism", James, as we all know, was willing to accept the new theory of truth unreservedly. The hesitating on the margin, the mere interpreting of other's views, are things of the past. From 1907 James' position toward pragmatism as a truth-theory is unequivocal.

Throughout the book, as I should like to point out, James is using 'pragmatism' in two senses, and 'truth' in two senses. The two meanings of pragmatism he recognizes himself, and points out clearly the difference between pragmatism as a method for attaining clearness in our ideas and pragmatism as a theory of the truth or falsity of those ideas. But the two meanings of 'truth' he does not distinguish.

And it is here that he differs from Dewey, as we shall presently see.

He differed from Peirce on the question of the meaning of pragmatism--as to whether it could be developed to include a doctrine of truth as well as of clearness. He differs from Dewey on the question of 'truth'--as to whether truth shall be used in both of the two specified senses or only in one of them.

_The Ambiguity of 'Satisfaction'_--The double meaning of truth in James' writing at this date may be indicated in this way: While truth is to be defined in terms of satisfaction, what is satisfaction? Does it mean that I am to be satisfied _of_ a certain quality in the idea, or that I am to be satisfied _by_ it? In other words, is the criterion of truth the fact that the idea leads as it promised or is it the fact that its leading, whether just as it promised or not, is desirable?

Which, in short, are we to take as truth,--fulfilled expectations or value of results?

It is in failing to distinguish between these two that James involves himself, I believe, in most of his difficulties, and it is in the recognition and explicit indication of this difference that Dewey differentiates himself from James. We may pa.s.s on to cite specific instances in which James uses each of these criteria. We will find, of course, that there are pa.s.sages which can be interpreted as meaning either value or fulfillment, but there are many in which the use of value as a criterion seems unmistakable.

The following quotations may be instanced: "If theological views prove to have value for concrete life, they will be true, for pragmatism, in the sense of being good for so much. For how much more they are true, will depend entirely on their relation to the other truths that have also to be acknowledged". For example, in so far as the Absolute affords comfort, it is not sterile; "it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function. I myself ought to call the Absolute true 'in so far forth', then; and I unhesitatingly now do so". (p.72).

"On pragmatic principles, if the hypothesis of G.o.d works satisfactorily in the widest sense of the word, it is true. Now whatever its residual difficulties may be, experience shows that it certainly does work, and that the problem is to build out and determine it so that it will combine satisfactorily with all the other working truths". (p. 299).

"The true is the name for whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief, and good, too, for definite, a.s.signable reasons". (p. 76).

"Empirical psychologists ... have denied the soul, save as the name for verifiable cohesions in our inner life. They redescend into the stream of experience with it, and cash it into so much small-change value in the way of 'ideas' and their connections with each other. The soul is good or '_true_' for just so much, but no more". (p. 92, italics mine).

"Since almost any object may some day become temporarily important, the advantage of having a stock of extra truths, of ideas that shall be true of merely possible situations, is obvious.... Whenever such extra truths become practically relevant to one of our emergencies, it pa.s.ses from cold storage to do work in the world and our belief in it grows active. You can say of it then either that _'it is useful because it is true' or that it is 'true because it is useful'_. _Both these phrases mean exactly the same thing_.... From this simple cue pragmatism gets her general notion of truth as something essentially bound up with the way in which one moment in our experience may lead us towards other moments _which it will be worth while to have been led to_. Primarily, and on the common-sense level, the truth of a state of mind means this function of _a leading that is worth while_".

(pp. 204-205, italics mine).

"To 'agree' in the widest sense with reality can only mean to be guided either straight up to it or into its surroundings, or to be put into such working touch with it as to handle either it or something connected with it better than if we disagreed. _Better either intellectually or practically!..._ An idea that helps us to deal, whether _practically or intellectually_, with either reality or its belongings, that doesn't entangle our progress in frustrations, that fits, in fact, and adapts our life to the reality's whole setting, will----hold true of that reality". (pp. 212-213).

"'The true', to put it very briefly, is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as the 'right' is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. _Expedient in almost any fas.h.i.+on_; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course". (p. 222).

We may add a pa.s.sage with the same bearing, from "The Meaning of Truth". In this quotation James is retracting the statement made in the University of California Address that without the future there is no difference between theism and materialism. He says: "Even if matter could do every outward thing that G.o.d does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for a G.o.d on modern men's part is for a being who will inwardly recognize them and judge them sympathetically. Matter disappoints this craving of our ego, and so G.o.d remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remain so for definite pragmatic reasons". (p. 189, notes).

The contrast between 'intellectual' and 'practical' seems to make his position certain. If truth is tested by practical workings, _as contrasted with_ intellectual workings, it cannot be said to be limited to fulfilled expectation.

The statement that the soul is good _or_ true shows the same thing.

The relation of truth to extraneous values is here beyond question.

The other pa.s.sages all bear, more or less obviously, in the same direction.

As James keeps restating his position, there are many of the definitions that could be interpreted to mean either values or fulfillments, and even a few which seem to refer to fulfillment alone.

The two following examples can be taken to mean either:

"'Truth' in our ideas and beliefs means ... that ideas (which themselves are but parts of our experience) become true just in so far as they help us to get into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get about among them by conceptual short-cuts instead of following the interminable succession of particular phenomena. Any idea upon which we can ride, so to speak; any idea that will carry us prosperously from one part of our experience to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying, saving labor, is true for just so much, true in so far forth, true instrumentally". (p.58).

"A new opinion counts as true just in proportion as it gratifies the individual's desire to a.s.similate the novel in his experience to his beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old truth and grasp new fact; and its success ... in doing this, is a matter for individual appreciation. When old truth grows, then, by new truth's addition, it is for subjective reasons. We are in the process and obey the reasons.

The new idea is truest which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying this double urgency. It makes itself true, gets itself cla.s.sed as true, by the way it works." (p.64).

But we can turn from these to a paragraph in which truth seems to be limited to fulfilled expectations alone.

"True ideas are those which we can a.s.similate, validate, corroborate, and verify. False ideas are those which we cannot. That is the practical difference it makes to us to have true ideas; that, therefore, is the meaning of truth, for it is all that truth is known as....

"But what do validation and verification themselves pragmatically mean? They again signify certain practical consequences of the verified and validated idea.... They head us ... through the acts and other ideas which they instigate, into or up to, or towards, other parts of experience with which we feel all the while ... that the original ideas remain in agreement. The connections and transitions come to us from point to point as being progressive, harmonious, satisfactory. This function of agreeable leading is what we mean by an idea's verification". (pp.201-202).

_The Relation of Truth to Utility_--It seems certain from the foregoing that James means, at least at certain times, to define the true in terms of the valuable. Satisfaction he is using as satisfaction _by_ rather than satisfaction _of_. As we have pointed out, one may be satisfied of the correctness of one's idea without being at all satisfied by it. This distinction has been most clearly set forth by Boodin, in his discussion of 'What pragmatism is not', in the following words: "The truth satisfaction may run counter to any moral or esthetic satisfaction in the particular case. It may consist in the discovery that the friend we had backed had involved us in financial failure, that the picture we had bought from the catalogue description is anything but beautiful. But we are no longer uncertain as regards the truth. Our restlessness, so far as that particular curiosity is concerned, has come to an end".[9]

[9] Boodin: Truth and Reality, pp. 193-4.

It is clear then, that the discovery of truth is not to be identified with a predominantly satisfactory state of mind at the moment. Our state of mind at the moment may have only a grain of satisfaction, yet this is of so unique a kind and so entirely distinguishable from the other contents of the mind that it is perfectly practicable as a criterion. It is simply "the cessation of the irritation of a doubt", as Peirce puts it, or the feeling that my idea has led as it promised.

The feeling of fulfilled expectation is thus a very distinct and recognizable _part_ of the whole general feeling commonly described as 'satisfaction'. When 'utility' in our ideas, therefore, means a momentary feeling of dominant satisfaction, truth cannot be identified with it.

And neither, as I wish now to point out, can truth be identified with utility when utility means a long-run satisfactoriness, or satisfactoriness of the idea for a considerable number of people through a considerable period of time. The same objection arises here which we noted a moment ago--that the satisfaction may be quite indifferent to the special satisfaction arising from tests. As has been often shown, many ideas are satisfactory for a long period of time simply because they are _not_ subjected to tests. "A hope is not a hope, a fear is not a fear, once either is recognized as unfounded.... A delusion is delusion only so long as it is not known to be one. A mistake can be built upon only so long as it is not suspected".

Some actual delusions which were not readily subjected to tests have been long useful in this way. "For instance, basing ourselves on Lafcadio Hearn, we might quite admit that the opinions summed up under the t.i.tle 'Ancestor-Wors.h.i.+p' had been ... 'exactly what was required'

by the former inhabitants of j.a.pan". "It was good for primitive man to believe that dead ancestors required to be fed and honored ... because it induced savages to bring up their offspring instead of letting it perish. But although it was useful to hold that opinion, the opinion was false". "Mankind has always wanted, perhaps always required, and certainly made itself, a stock of delusions and sophisms".[10]

[10] Lee: Vital Lies, vol. 1, pp. 11, 31, 33, 72.

Perhaps we would all agree that the belief that 'G.o.d is on our side'

has been useful to the tribe holding it. If has increased zeal and fighting efficiency tremendously. But since G.o.d can't be on both sides, the belief of one party to the conflict is untrue, no matter how useful. To believe that (beneficial) tribal customs are enforced by the tribal G.o.ds is useful, but if the tribal G.o.ds are non-existent the belief is false. The beautiful imaginings of poets are sometimes useful in minimizing and disguising the hard and ugly reality, but when they will not test out they cannot be said because of their beauty or desirability to be true.

We must conclude then, that some delusions are useful. And we may go on and question James' identification of truth and utility from another point of view. Instead of agreeing that true ideas and useful ideas are the same, we have shown that some useful ideas are false: but the converse is also demonstrable, that some true ideas are useless.

There are formulas in pure science which are of no use to anyone outside the science because their practical bearings, if such there be, have not yet been discovered, and are of no use to the scientist himself because, themselves the products of deduction, they as yet suggest nothing that can be developed farther from them. While these formulas may later be found useful in either of these senses--for 'practical demands' outside the science, or as a means to something else within the science--they are now already true quite apart from utility, because they will test out by fulfilling expectations.

Knowledge that is not useful is most striking in relation to 'vice'.

One may have a true idea as to how to lie and cheat, may know what cheating is and how it is done, and yet involve both himself and others in most _un_satisfactory consequences. The person who is attempting to stop the use of liquor, and who to this end has located in a 'dry' district, may receive correct information as to the location of a 'blind-tiger'--information which while true may bring about his downfall. Knowledge about any form of vice, true knowledge that can be tested out, may upon occasion be harmful to any extent we like.