Denton Loring Geyer

“ There can be no difference which does not make a difference—no difference in the abstract truth which does not express itself in a difference of concrete fact, and of conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed upon somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen.... The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it would make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the one which is true”. ”

“ In the famous discussion of How To Make Our Ideas Clear, Peirce pointed out that by a clear idea is meant, according to the logicians, one which will be recognized wherever it is met with, so that no other will be mistaken for it. But since to do this without exception is impossible to human beings, and since to have such acquaintance with the idea as to have lost all hesitancy in recognizing it in ordinary cases amounts only to a subjective feeling of mastery which may be entirely mistaken, they supplement the idea of ‘clearness’ with that of ‘distinctness’. ”

“ All the followers of science are fully persuaded that the processes of investigation, if only pushed far enough, will give one certain solution to every question to which they can be applied.... Different minds may set out with the most antagonistic views, but the progress of investigation carries them by a force outside of themselves to one and the same conclusion.... This great law is embodied in the conception of truth and reality. That opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate, is what we mean by truth, and the object represented in this opinion is the real. ”

“ The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition.
“The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no more differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing a different tune.” ”

“ This, James recognizes, was counter to all the scientific ideals of many of the workers in science, for the essence of their procedure, as they saw it, was to put all desire as to outcomes behind them and to try to find out how things actually prove or test out to be, quite apart from how we would like them to be. To introduce the general value of an outcome, then, as a criterion for truth, seems to destroy what the scientist had been thinking of as ‘pure research’, and to involve control by an outside influence that would determine which things are or are not valuable and worth investigating. ”

“ Truth, then, is simply a matter of confirmation of prediction or of fulfilment of expectation. An idea is made true by leading as it promised. And an idea is made false when it leads to refutation of expectation. There seems to be no necessity here for an absolute reality for the ideas to conform to, or ‘correspond’ to, for truth is a certain kind of relation between the ideas themselves—the relation, namely, of leading to fulfilment of expectations. ”

“ An idea’s relation to the other parts of reality is conceived more broadly. Thus pragmatism’s “only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of life’s demands, nothing being omitted. If theological ideas should do this, if the notion of God, in particular, should prove to do it, how could pragmatism possibly deny God’s existence? She could see no meaning in treating as ‘not true’ a notion that was pragmatically so successful. ”

“ Then passing on to apply his method for clearness he finds that “reality, like every other quality, consists in the peculiar sensible effects which things partaking of it produce”, and adds that “the only effects which real things have is to cause belief, for all the sensations which they excite emerge into consciousness in the form of beliefs”. Reality is the sum of its sensible effects, its sensible effects are beliefs, so reality is a sum of beliefs. ”

“ I have little doubt myself that this old quarrel might be completely smoothed out to the satisfaction of all claimants, if only the maxim of Peirce were methodically followed here. The current monism on the whole still keeps talking in too abstract a way. It says that the world must either be pure disconnectedness, no universe at all, or absolute unity. It insists that there is no stopping-place half-way. Any connection whatever, says this monism, is only possible if there be still more connection, until at last we are driven to admit the absolutely total connection required. ”

“ If ideas terminate in good consequences, but yet the goodness of the consequence was no part of the intention of the idea, does the goodness have any verifying force? If the goodness of consequences arises from the context of the idea rather than from the idea itself, does it have any verifying force? If an idea leads to consequences which are good in the one respect only of fulfilling the intent of the idea, (as when one drinks a liquid to test the idea that it is a poison) , does the badness of the consequences in every other respect detract from the verifying force of these consequences? ”

“ In contrast with these, and especially with the a priori method, a method must be discovered which will determine truth entirely apart from individual opinion. This is the method of science. That is, “To satisfy our doubt ... it is necessary that a method should be found by which our beliefs may be caused by nothing human, but by some external permanency—by something upon which our thinking has no effect.... It must be something which affects, or might affect, every man. ”

“ There is also a suggestion of the ‘subjectivity’ of James’ later theory of truth, which would differentiate him even at this time from Peirce on the question of truth. He has said that a true idea must indeed resemble reality, but who, he asks, is to determine what is real? He answers that an idea is true when it resembles something which I, as critic, think to be reality. “When [the enquirer] finds that the feeling that he is studying contemplates what he himself regards as a reality he must of course admit the feeling itself to be truly cognitive”. ”

“ Since a true idea is defined, then, as one which leads as it promised, it is obvious that truth will not be concerned in any way with incidental or accidental values which might be led to by the idea. It has no relation to whether the goal is worth while being led to or not. James speaks of truth as a leading that is worth while. For Dewey the goal may be valuable, useless, or even pernicious,—these are entirely irrelevant to truth, which is determined solely by the fact that the idea leads as it promised. ”

“ 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 God does, the idea of it would not work as satisfactorily, because the chief call for a God 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 God remains for most men the truer hypothesis, and indeed remain so for definite pragmatic reasons”. ”

“ THE PRAGMATIC DOCTRINE AS ORIGINALLY PROPOSED BY PEIRCE.
Pragmatism has been described as an attitude of mind, as a method of investigation, and as a theory of truth. The attitude is that of looking forward to outcomes rather than back to origins. The method is the use of actual or possible outcomes of our ideas to determine these ideas’ real meaning. The theory of truth defines the truth of our beliefs in terms of the outcome of these beliefs. ”

“ And if, as we have said, the quality that distinguishes belief from meaning is the fact that it involves expectation, then we appear to be on the verge of a new theory of truth,—a theory saying that truth is simply the fulfillment of these expectations. ”

“ If, by assuming the truth of the one, you can foresee no practical consequence to anybody, at any time or place, which is different from what you would foresee if you assumed the truth of the other, why then the difference between the two propositions is no real difference—it is only a specious and verbal difference, unworthy of future contention.... ”

“ James, and who would apply the method to the determination of the meaning of objects, the intent and worth of ideas as ideas, and to the human and moral value of beliefs, when these problems are carefully distinguished from one another, do not know whether they are pragmatists or not, because they are not sure whether the ‘practical’, in the sense of the desirable facts which define the worth of a belief, is confused with the practical as an attitude imposed by objects, and with the practical as a power and function of idea to effect changes in prior existences. ”

“ If the content of the feeling occurs nowhere else in the universe outside of the feeling itself, and perish with the feeling, common usage refuses to call it a reality, and brands it as a subjective feature of the feeling’s constitution, or at most as the feeling’s dream. ”

“ 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”. ”

“ Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth, as to reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or class of meanings”, it seems that truth is to be confined to retrospective experience. The truth of an idea means that it allows one at its fulfilment to look back at its former meaning and think of it as now confirmed. ”

“ Here the professional logicians leave the subject, but it is easy to show that the doctrine that familiar use and abstract distinctness make the perfection of apprehension, “has its only true place in philosophies which have long been extinct”, and it is now time to formulate a method of attaining “a more perfect clearness of thought such as we see and admire in the thinkers of our own time”.
The action of thought is excited by the irritation of a doubt, and ceases when belief is attained; so that the production of belief is the sole function of thought. ”

“ Defining these things in terms of sensible effects, we could say that we know their meaning in the sense that we understand which sensible effects would be involved if they did exist. But to have a belief about them would mean that we would expect these sensible effects. In other words, a belief involves the possibility of fulfillment or frustration of expectation. To believe in anything is therefore a distinct step beyond understanding it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The most important of these, it may be said again, is that he construes the test of truth of an idea to be, not merely that the idea leads to expected consequences, but that it leads to predominantly desirable consequences. The outcomes which stand as evidence for truth are then not merely outcomes bringing fulfilled expectations but outcomes bringing happiness. ”

“ The difference between knowledge and truth is then a difference in the time at which the developing experience is examined. If one takes the experience at the appearance of the knowing odor, he gets acquaintance; if one takes it at the stage at which it has developed into a confirmation, he gets truth. Knowledge may be either stage of the experience of verification, but truth is confined to the later, confirmatory, stage. ”

“ Truth we have found to have no necessary or invariable connection with general value, for many ideas would be acknowledged to be perfectly true while at the same time being either useless or harmful. For Dewey this matter of value has no place in relation to the test of the truth of an idea, for its truth means nothing more than its ability to lead as it promises. ”

“ Such false distinctions do as much harm as the confusion of beliefs really different. “One singular deception of this sort, which often occurs, is to mistake the sensation produced by our own unclearness of thought for a character of the object we are thinking. Instead of perceiving that the obscurity is purely subjective, we fancy that we contemplate a quality of the object which is essentially mysterious; and if our conception be afterwards presented to us in a clear form we do not recognize it as the same, owing to the absence of the feeling of unintelligibility.... ”

“ 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. ”