James Post

Post for presentation. Post 4 is at the end

James, in lecture seven gives us his pragmatic account of the meaning of truth and its usefulness inn philosophy and everyday life. He first talks about common notion of truth as correspondence. We have a laundry list of ideas about the world some false and some true. Our ideas are true in a sense when they agree with reality. He says the pragmatist would agree with this dictionary definition, but one has to be more precise what is taken to be “agreement” and “reality”. He discusses some other views under a more the dualistic model of thinking. The “Intellectualist” notion is that we gain a share of truth when ideas are copies of the absolutes eternal way of thinking. This mode of thinking, James explains, makes truth out to be something static and a once and for all kind of thing. Here inquiry stops and you have reached your rational destination. From this view truth is taken more as something possessed and inflexible.
Pragmatism instead looks at truth in a different way, a way in which the truth of an idea is assessed in terms of the cash value it has in helping us cope with the external world. An idea, a true one, in a sense is not true by definition or true in any sort of a priori way of thinking. Assimilating a new idea is a process in which the idea becomes true. Beliefs become true through a method of verification. For the pragmatist it is the agreement with past belief and of fruitful connections that come from it. To be accepted the belief has to agree or fit in with ones previously defined web of beliefs that have been gained by the same process. A new belief that is deemed true becomes a guide for action, one that is helpful in connecting other ideas and beliefs in a way that will be beneficial in coping with our environment. He uses a simple example to elucidate this idea. If one is lost in the woods and believes they have come upon a cow path the belief that there is a house at the end of it (the object of the belief) becomes valuable in that situation. The pragmatic value of the idea comes from the importance of the object to us. The importance of the object is defined by the situation. At times truths like there is a house at the end of the path are obviously irrelevant. However, a stockpile of true beliefs serves as sort of an insurance policy for future situations where they might be invaluable. So upon seeing the house we have verification, that is verification through experience.
Of course this is not the only sort of verification process if it was our true beliefs would be very limited pertaining to only things we have experienced directly. Often indirect evidence must serve to verify and it does so in two ways. These are, that it coheres to our overall worldview (it has a certain degree of “fit”) and leads eventually to some sensible end. For example one could consider the inner workings of a clock. It is useful to believe the clock functions properly in a consistent pattern even though one may not know how it actually functions. Always, we are sacrificing for the sake of time and economy, verification for verifiability. James writes, “Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system.” Our super structure of beliefs hinges on a mutual exchange of beliefs. We trust that beliefs we exchange with others are in fact verified. Without this fabric the conception of truth collapses like a financial institution with no cash basis.
There are another kind of beliefs that James discusses these are the purely mental abstractions which are just as real as those which are concretely verifiable. Such as mathematical truths or the idea that white differs from black more than it does from gray. All are true in same leading sense as the house or the clock examples. These truths are verified in their pragmatic consequences. We use these principle, definitions, and relations in the same sense as the idea of the house and our ideas must be in agreement with reality be it abstract or concrete.
Truth essentially becomes a sort of verification process such as health or strength are a process in life. For the rationalist to accuse the pragmatist of putting the cart before the house is like attributing wealth as an essential quality to a rich man. The process is verified by the evidence and becomes true of someone who takes part in. Obviously rationalists have problems with the pragmatic account of truth. Experience has a way of boiling over and for showing past theory expedient in its time to be relative truth. Eventually these truths have to be reformulated. One could look at Aristotelian logic, or Ptolemy’s explanation of planetary movement to see this. These can now only be called relative truths limited to the experience they had access to. James sees the necessity for reformulation and to for living day to day with these temporary truths we have. To him there is nothing wrong with that. We have to be willing to use and to have faith in the truths we have today to guide us but at the same time be ready to pronounce them false tomorrow. Here the rationalist and pragmatist’s would certainly be at odds. The whole process is a function of prior knowledge and new experience which leads to adaptation and creation of new belief. Here the rationalist would argue that this is instead a process of accretion. The movement is not towards mutation and adaptation, but toward true reality which is objective and independent of experience.
Time and experience have a way of exceeding the limits of systems, like Ptolemy’s planetary motion and Aristotle’s syllogisms. Truths once taken as a priori absolutes can only be seen as true of their time. They are a limiting case of a further developing conception of truth revealed by experience. These beliefs become something solid because they are part of the experience of the later generation. They are part of the cumulative experience of society and are a step in the mutation of a new set of beliefs. If there is an absolute truth out there it is not something that will be discovered but made. He doesn’t seem to believe that what we are aiming for though. What is important is the journey and moving towards a cohesive and fruitful set of beliefs that will benefit society in the long run. He explains the formulation of truth as dual process it’s an interrelation between facts and beliefs with our experience as the catalyst. The facts determine our beliefs on a provisional level and through experience new facts emerge which alter these provisional truths. The truth once again rolls into fact. This is a continual process where truth belief is determined it is found lacking and adapts to new evidence. He uses a snowball as a metaphor its shape and size depend on the one had the push of the boys and on the other side the distribution of the snow.
The world is so full of similar kinds and associations and one verification serves for others of its respective kind. For the pragmatist the social dynamic of sharing and thinking create a body of knowledge that is verifiable is most important. The social structure of these beliefs are perhaps of greater importance than the singular verification. Truth ante rem becomes most important in a world of countless ideas and experiences. James avoids falling into the “rationalist trick” of calling the name the preexisting entity. Truth instead by the pragmatist view exists no more or less than reference to the objects themselves. This points again to the maxim that truth is made to discovered that this theory seems to hinge on.
A) James objects Rationalism because they are unwilling to accept to any degree the mutability of reality. They peer down a narrow tunnel backward towards their eternal truths while James argues for the flexibility of the three levels of reality and that we do play a role in the creation of it. For James truth has got to be dependent on experience and the whole point of his argument is that they do and they are true because they play a role in our lives.
James has a problem with the rationalist conception of truth beyond just correspondence. They seem to separate their eternal truth (like pure reason, or justice) from all of the muddy experience that it comes from. Why pursue the truth? for pragmatists this is easy because they are entirely interconnected and effect reality that we live. The rationalist separate truth from reality and claim the pursuit of it is from imperative duty. James finds this characterization of truth pragmatically and theoretically flawed. Truth is to be pursued for the same reasons as health and wealth because it pays to pursue them. This is an important notion for pragmatists first in their rejection of many of the ideas of modern philosophy and secondly the problems they have with rationalist’s dualistic approach to knowledge. As James explains the rationalist are essentially loosing sight of the purpose of knowledge. What good can a truth be to us if it is so far removed from the reality which we must apply it?
To me a lot of what James is writing seems like relativism and by the way he argues he would have to allow for conflicting truths. Now this is something that I can understand in the historical sense. For example Ptolemy worked with what he had technologically which was pretty much his own two eyes and he was able to come up with an instrumentally sound explanation of mars orbit. One could argue that he wasn’t wrong in a sense as I think James would, he was right given the experience he had. James talks about experience boiling over. Eventually his theory naturally couldn’t hold up when Galileo came around with his telescope. I can sort of understand calling them both right in there own time period. The kind of coherence that James puts forth in replace of correspondence doesn’t allow for individualistic relativism that perhaps one could argue that Emerson fell into. He does however allow for this sort of group coherence. As he says a big part of the ways our realities are defined are within the framework of society. I guess the main question I have is who exactly counts as a members of the group and are the beliefs we have as a group really all that coherent and tight?
I do think that the Pragmatist conception of truth is an adequate notion. Certainly it brings great criticism from other philosophies especially rationalism. It is problematic of course from the rationalism perspective because the idea of relative truth essentially violates the P&C. At this point I really don’t know what to make of the pragmatist dependent truth. However, it certainly has its strengths. It is an honest look at the way truth operates in individuals and as an entity in society. Humans don’t really seem to operate by constantly referring to static maxims as a guide for action.
They have to cope with an environment that is constantly changing and an environment that is constantly affecting our perceptions and attitudes. The pragmatic notion of truth brings to mind Dewey’s account of the reflex arch. We are all essentially little scientist trying comes to term with this changing world. We are constantly thrown of balance by our new experiences and need to find a level stabilization. They have attempted to develop an entirely new program in assessing the way we should look at truth and what it means to have true ideas. In the most pragmatic sense there is value to be gained from it.