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02 Part 1 - What Pragmatism Means - Pragmatism - William James · The Philosophy Insights Collection

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Lecture two what pragmatism means. Some years ago, being with a camping party
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in the mountains, I returned from a solitary ramble to find every one engaged
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in a ferocious metaphysical dispute. The corpus of the dispute was a squirrel,
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A live squirrel supposed to be clinging to one side of a tree trunk,
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while over against the other trees opposite side. A human being was imagined to
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stand. This human witness tries to get sight of the squirrel by moving rapidly
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round the tree. But no matter how fast he goes, the squirrel knows
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as fast in the opposite direction, and always keeps the tree between himself and
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the man, so that never a glimpse of him is caught. The resultant
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metaphysical problem now is this, does the man go round the squirrel or not?
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He goes round the tree, sure enough, and the squirrel is on
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the tree. But does he go round the squirrel? In the unlimited leisure
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of the wilderness, discussion had been worn threadbare. Every one had taken signs
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and was obstinate, and the numbers on both signs were even each side when
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I appeared. Therefore, appealed to me to make it a majority. Mindful
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of the scholastic adage that whenever you meet a contradiction, you must make a
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distinction, I immediately sought and found one. As follows. Which party is
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right, I said, depends on what you practically mean by going round the
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squirrel. If you mean passing from the north of him to the east,
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then to the south, then to the west, and then to the north
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of him again, obviously the man does go round him, for he occupies
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these successive positions. But if, on the contrary, you mean being first
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in front of him, then on the right of him, then behind him,
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then on his left, and finally front again, it is quite as
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obvious that the man fails to go round him, for by the compensating movements
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the squirrel makes, he keeps his belly turned towards the man all the time,
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and his back turned away. Make the distinction, and there is no
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occasion for any further dispute. You are both right and both wrong, according
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as you conceive the verb to go round in one practical fashion or the other.
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Although one or two of the Hotter disputants called my speech a shuffling evasion,
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saying they wanted no quibbling or scholastic hair splitting, but meant just plain
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honest English round The majority seemed to think that the distinction had assuaged the dispute.
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I tell this trivial anecdote because it is a peculiarly simple example of what
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I wish now to speak of as the pragmatic method. The pragmatic method is
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primarily a method of settling metaphysical dispute that otherwise might be interminable. Is the
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world one or many? Fated or free? Material or spiritual? Here are
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notions, either of which may or may not hold good of the world,
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and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is
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to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference
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would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true.
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If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically
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the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious,
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we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from
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one side or the others being right. A glance at the history of the
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idea will show you still better what pragmatism means. The term is derived from
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the same Greek word pi row alpha gammamu alpha, meaning action, from which
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our words practice and practical come. It was first introduced into philosophy by mister
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Charles Perce in eighteen hundred and seventy eight in an article entitled how to make
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our Ideas Clear in the Popular Science Monthly for January of that year. Footnote
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translated in the Review Philosophy for January eighteen hundred seventy nine, volume seven.
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Mister Piers, after pointing out that our beliefs are really rules for action,
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said that to develop a thought's meaning, we need only determine what conduct it
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is fitted to produce. That conduct is for us its soul significant, and
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the tangible fact at the root of all our thought distinctions, however subtle,
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is that there is no one of them so fine as to consist in anything
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but a possible difference of practice. To attain perfect clearness in our thoughts of
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an object, then we need only consider what conceivable effects of a practical kind
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the object may involve, What sensations we are to expect from it, and
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what reactions we must prepare. Our conception of these effects, whether immediate or
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remote, is then for us the whole of our conception of the object,
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so far as that conception has positive significance at all. This is the principle
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of purse, the principle of pragmatism. It lay entirely unnoticed by anyone for
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twenty years until I, in an address before Professor Howinson's Philosophy Union at the
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University of California, brought it forward again and made a special application of it
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to religion. By that date eighteen hundred and ninety eight, the time seemed
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ripe for its reception. The word pragmatism spread, and at present it fairly
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spots the pages of philosophic journals. On all hands. We find the pragmatic
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movement spoken of, sometimes with respect, sometimes with contumely, seldom with clear
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understanding. It is evident that the term applies itself conveniently to a number of
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tendencies that hitherto have lacked a collective name, and that it has come to
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stay. To take in the importance of Percy's principle, one must get accustomed
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to applying it to concrete cases. I found a few years ago that Ostwald,
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the illustrious Leipzig chemist, had been making perfectly distinct use of the principle
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of pragmaty in his lectures on the philosophy of science, though he had not
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called it by that name. All realities influence our practice, he wrote me,
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and that influence is their meaning for us. I am accustomed to put
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questions to my classes in this way, in what respects would the world be
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different if this alternative or that were true. If I can find nothing that
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would become different, then the alternative has no sense. That is, their
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rival views mean practically the same thing, and meaning other than practical, there
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is for us none. Ostwald, in a published lecture, gives this example
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of what he means. Chemists have long wrangled over the inner constitution of certain
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bodies called toutomeros. Their properties seemed equally consistent with the notion that an instable
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hydrogen atom of us inside of them, or that they are instable mixtures of
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two bodies. Controversy raged, but never was decided. It would never have
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begun, says Ostwald, if the combatants had asked themselves what particular experimental fact
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could have been made different by one or the other view being correct, for
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it would then have appeared that no difference of fact could possibly ensue, and
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the quarrel was as unreal as if theorizing in primitive times about the raising of
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dough by yeast, one party should have invoked a brownie, while another insisted
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in elf as the true cause of the phenomenon footnote theory und praxis, zeit
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shift dis uster reichichan echeneur on the Architect and Foreighness, nineteen hundred and five,
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Number four, Volume six. I find a still more radical pragmatism than
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Ostwald's in an address by Professor W. S. Franklin. I think that
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the sicklest notion of physics, even if a student gets it, is that
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it is the science of masses, molecules, and the ether. And I
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think that the healthiest notion, even if a student does not wholly get it,
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is that physics is the science of the ways of taking hold of bodies
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and pushing them science January Tewod, nineteen hundred and three. It is astonishing
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to see how many philosophical disputes collapse into insignificance the moment you subject him to
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this simple test of tracing a concrete consequence. There can be no difference anywhere
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that doesn't make a difference elsewhere, no difference in abstract truth that doesn't express
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itself in a difference in concrete fact, and in conduct consequence upon that fact
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imposed on somebody, some how, somewhere and some when. The whole function
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of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it will make to
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you and me a definite instance of our life, if this world formula or
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that world formula be the true one. There is absolutely nothing new in the
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pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it, Aristotle used it methodically.
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Locke, Berkeley, and Hume made momentous contributions to truth by its means.
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Shadworth Hodgen keeps insisting that realities are only what they are known as. But
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these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments. They were preluders. Only not
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until in our time has it generalized itself, become conscious of our universal mission,
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pretended to a conquering destiny. I believe in that destiny, and I
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hope I may aim by inspiring you with my belief pragmatism represent a perfectly familiar
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attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude. But it represents it as it seems
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to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than
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it has ever yet assumed. A pragmatist turns it back resolutely and once for
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all, upon a lot of invertate habits. Dear to professional philosophers. He
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turns away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal solutions, from bad a priori
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reasons, from fixed principles, closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins.
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He turns towards concreteness and adequacy, towards facts, towards action, and towards
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power. That means the empiricist temper regnant and the rationalist temper sincerely given up.
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It means the open air and possibilities of nature as against dogma, artificiality,
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and the pretense of finality in truth. At the same time, it
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does not stand for any special results. It is a method only, but
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the general triumph of that method would mean an enormous change in what I have
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called in my last lecture the temperament of philosophy. Teachers of the ultra rationalistic
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type would be frozen out, much as the quartier type is frozen out in
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republics, as the ultramontane type of priest is frozen out in Protestant lands.
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Science and metaphysics would come much nearer together, would in fact work absolutely hand
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in hand. Metaphysics has usually followed a very primitive kind of quest. You
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know how men have always hankered after unlawful magic, and you know what a
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great part in magic words have always played. If you have his name or
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the formula of incantation that binds him, you can control the spirit, genie,
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afrite, or whatever the power may be. Solomon knew the names of
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all the spirits, and having their names, he held them subject to his
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will. So the universe has always appeared to the natural mind as a kind
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of enigma which the key must be sought in the shape of some illuminating or
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power bringing word or name. That word names the universe's principle, And to
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possess it is, after a fashion, to possess the universe itself, God,
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matter, reason, the absolute energy. Are so many solving names you
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can rest when you have them. You are at the end of your metaphysical
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quest. But if you follow the pragmatic method, you cannot look on any
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such word as closing your quest. You must bring out of each word its
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practical cache value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.
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It appears less as a solution, then, than as a program for more
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work, and more particularly as an indication of the ways in which existing realities
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may be changed. Theories thus become instruments, not answers to enigmas in which
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we can rest. We don't lie back upon them. We move forward,
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and on occasion make nature over again by their aid. Pragmatism unstiffens all our
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theories, limbers them up, and sets each one at work. Being not
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thing essentially new, It hormonizes with many ancient philosophic tendencies. It agrees with
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nominalism, for instance in always appealing to particulars, with utilitarianism in emphasizing practical
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aspects, with positivism in its disdain for verbal solutions, useless questions, and
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metaphysical abstractions. All these, you see, are anti intellectualist tendencies against rationalism
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as a pretension and a method. Pragmatism is fully armed and militant, but
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at the outset at least it stands for no particular results. It has no
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dogmas and no doctrines save its method. As the young Italian pragmatist Papinas well
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said, it lies in the midst of our theories, like a corridor in
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a hotel. Innumerable chambers open out of it. In one you may find
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a man writing on an atheistic volume. In the next, someone on his
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knees praying for faith and strength. In a third, a chemist investigating our
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body's properties. In a fourth, a system of idealistic metaphysics is being excogitated.
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In a fifth, the impossibility of metaphysics is being shown. But they
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all own the corridor, and all must pause through it if they want a
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practical way of getting into or out of their respective rooms. No particular results
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then, so far, but only an attitude of orientation is what the pragmatic
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method means, the attitude of looking away from first things principles, categories,
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supposed necessities, and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.
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So much for the pragmatic method. You may say that I have been
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praising it rather than explaining it to you, But I shall presently explain it
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abundantly enough by showing how it works on some familiar problems. Meanwhile, the
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word pragmatism has come to be used in a still wider sense, as meaning
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also a certain theory of truth. I mean to give a whole lecture to
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the statement of that theory, after first paving the way. So I can
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be very brief now, But brevity is hard to follow. So I ask
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for your redoubled attention for a quarter of an hour. If much remains obscure,
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I hope to make it clearer in the later lectures. One of the
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most successfully cultivated branches of philosophy in our time is what is called inductive logic,
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the study of the condition under which our sciences have evolved. Writers on
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this subject have begun to show a singular unanimity as to what the laws of
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nature and elements of fact mean when formulated by mathematicians, physicists, and chemists.
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When the first mathematical, logical and natural uniformities the first laws were discovered,
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men were so carried away by the clearness, beauty, and simplification that
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resulted that they believed themselves to have deciphered authentically the eternal thoughts of the Almighty
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his mind. Also thundered and reverberated in syllogisms. He also thought in conic
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sections, squares and roots and rages, and geometrized like Euclid. He made
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velocity increase proportionally to the time in falling bodies. He made the law of
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the science for light to obey when refracted. He established the classes orders,
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families and genera, or plants and animals, and fixed the distances between them,
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thought the archetypes of all things, and devised their variations. And when
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we rediscover any one of these his wondrous institutions, we seize his mind in
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its very literal intention. But as the sciences have developed further, the notion
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has gained ground that most, perhaps all, of our laws are only approximations.
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The laws themselves, moreover, have grown so numerous that there is no
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counting them, and so many rival formulations are proposed in all the branches of
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science that investigators have become accustomed to the notion that no theory is absolutely a
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transcript of reality, but that any one of them may, from some point
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of view, be useful. Their great use is to summarize old facts and
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to lead to new ones. They are only a man made language are conceptual
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shorthand, as someone calls them, in which we write our reports of nature,
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and languages, as is well known, tolerate much choice of expression and
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many dialects. Thus, human arbitrariness has driven divine necessity from scientific logic.
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If I mention the names of Sigwart, mach Ostwald, Pearson, Milhard,
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poincreduham Raisin, those of you who are students will easily identify the tendency I
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speak of, and will think of additional names. Writing now on the front
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of this wave of scientific logic, misters Schiller and Dewey appear with their pragmatistic
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account of what truth everywhere signifies. Everywhere these teachers say, truth in our
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ideas and believes means the same thing that it means in science, it means.
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They say nothing but this that idea, which themselves are but parts of
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our experience, become true just in so far as they help us to get
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into satisfactory relation with other parts of our experience, to summarize them and get
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about among them by conceptual shortcuts, instead of following the interminable succession of particular
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phenomena, Any idea that will carry us prosperously from any one part or our
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experience, to any other part, linking things satisfactorily, working securely, simplifying,
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saving labor is true for just so much, true in so far forth
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true instrumentally. This is the instrumental view of truth taught so successfully at Chicago,
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the view that truth in our ideas means their power to work, promulgated
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so brilliantly at Oxford. Mister Dewey, Schiller and their allies in reaching this
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general conception of all truths have only followed the example of geologists, biologists,
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and philologists. In the establishment of these other sciences. The successful stroke was
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always to take some simple process, actually observable in operation as denudation by weather,
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say, or variation from parental type, or change of dialect by incorporation
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of new words and pronunciations, and then to generalize it, making it apply
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to all times and produce great results by summating its effects through the ages.
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The observable process which Schiller and Dewey particularly singled out for generalization is the familiar
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one by which any individual settles into new opinions. The process here is always
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the same. The individual has a stock of old opinions already, but it
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meets a new experience that puts them to strain. Somebody contradicts them, or
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in a reflective moment, he discovers that they contradict each other, or he
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hears of facts with which they are incompatible, or desires arise in him which
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they cease to satisfy. The result is an inward trouble, to which his
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mind till then had been a stranger, and from which he seeks to escape
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by modifying his previous mass of opinions. He saves as much of it as
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he can, for in this matter of belief, we are all extreme conservatives.
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So he tries to change first this opinion and then that, for they
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receeast change very variously, until at last some new idea comes up which he
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can graft upon the ancient stock with a minimum of disturbance of the latter,
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idea that mediates between the stock and the new experience and runs them into one
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another, most felicitously and expediently. This new idea is then adopted as the
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true one. It preserves the older stock of truths with a minimum of modification,
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stretching them just enough to make them admit the novelty, but conceiving that
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in ways as familiar as the case leaves possible an outry explanation violating all our
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preconceptions. Would never pause for a true account of a novelty. We should
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scratch around industriously till we found something less eccentric. The most violent revolutions in
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an individual's beliefs leave the most of its old orders standing. Time and space,
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cause and effect, nature and history, and one's owned biography remain untouched.
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New truth is always a go between a smoother over of transitions. It
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marries old opinion to new facts, so as ever to show a minimum of
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jolt a maximum of continuity. We hold the theory true just in proportion to
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its success in solving this problem of maxima and minima. But success in solving
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this problem is eminently a matter of approximation. We say this theory solves it
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on the whole more satisfactorily than that theory, but that means more satisfactorily to
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ourselves, and individuals will emphasize their points of satisfaction differently to a certain degree.
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Therefore, everything here is plastic. The point I now urge you to
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observe particularly is the part played by the older truths. Failure to take account
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of it is the source of much of the unjust criticism level against pragmatism.
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Their influence is absolutely controlling. Loyalty to them is the first principle. In
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most cases, it is the only principle, for by far, the most
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usual way of handling phenomena so novel that they would make for a serious rearrangement
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of our preconceptions is to ignore them altogether, or to abuse those who bear
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witness for them. You doubtless wish examples of this process of truth's growth,
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and the only trouble is their superabundance. The simplest case of new truth is,
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of course, the mere numerical addition of new kinds of facts, or
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a new single facts of all kinds to our experience, an addition that involves
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no alteration in the old beliefs. Day follows day and its content are simply
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added. The new contents themselves are not true. They simply come, and
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are is what we say about them. And when we say that they have
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come, truth is satisfied by the plain additive formula. But often the day's
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contents oblige a rearrangement. If I should now utter piercing shrieks and act like
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a maniac on this platform. It would make many of you revise your ideas
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as to the probable worth of my philosophy. Radium came the other day as
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part of the day's content and seemed for a moment to contradict our ideas of
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the whole order of nature, that order having come to be identified with what
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is called the conservation of energy. The mere sight of radium paying heat away
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indefinitely out of its own pocket seemed to violate that conservation. What to think
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if the radiations from it were nothing but an escape of unsuspected potential energy pre
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existent inside of the atoms, the principle of conservation would be saved the discovery
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of helium as the radiation's outcome opened away. To this belief, so Ramsay's
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view is generally held to be true because although it extends our old ideas of
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energy, it causes a minimum of alteration in their nature. End of Lecture
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two, Part one