Latest / Logic Library / 02 Part 2 - What Pragmatism Means - Pragmatism - William James

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02 Part 2 - What Pragmatism Means - Pragmatism - William James · Logic Library

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I need not multiply instances. A new opinion counts as true just in proportion
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as it gratifies the individual's desire to assimilate the novel in his experience to his
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beliefs in stock. It must both lean on old truth and grasp new fact
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and its success. As I said a moment ago, in doing this is
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a matter for the individual's appreciation. When old truth grows, then by new
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truth's addition, it is for subjective reasons we are in the process and obey
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the reasons that new idea is truest, which performs most felicitously its function of
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satisfying our double urgency. It makes itself true, get itself classed as true
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by the way it works grafting itself, then upon the ancient body of truth,
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which thus grows much as a tree grows by the activity of a new
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layer of cambium. Now Julie and Schiller proceed to generalize this observation and to
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apply it to the most ancient parts of truth. They also once were plastic.
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They also were called truth for human reasons. They also mediated between still
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earlier truths and what in those days were novel observations purely objective truth, truth
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in whose establishment the function of giving human satisfaction in marrying previous parts of experience
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with newer parts played no role. Whatever is nowhere to be found. The
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reasons why we call things true is the reason why they are true, for
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to be true means only to perform this marriage function. The trail of the
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human serpent is thus over everything. Truth independent, truth that we find merely
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truth, no longer malleable to human need, truth incorrigible. In a word,
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such truth exists indeed superabundantly, or is supposed to exist by rationalistically minded
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thinkers, But then it means only the dead heart of the living tree,
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and its being there means only that truth also has its paleontology and its prescription,
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and may grow stiff with years of veteran service, and petrified in men's
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regard by sheer antiquity. But how plastic even the oldest truths nevertheless really are,
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has been vividly shown in our day by the transformation of logical and mathematical
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ideas, a transformation which seems even to be invading physics. The ancient formulas
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are reinterpreted as special expressions of much wider principles principles that our ancestors never got
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a glimpse of in their present shape and formulation. Mister Schiller still gives to
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all this view of truth the name of humanism. But for this doctrine too,
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the name of pragmatism seems fairly to be in the ascendant, so I
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will treat it under the name of pragmatism in these lectures. Such then would
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be the scope of pragmatism, first a method, and second a genetic theory
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of what is meant by truth. And these two things must be our future
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topics. What I have said of the theory of truth will, I am
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sure, have appeared obscure and unsatisfactory to most of you, by reason of
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us brevity. I shall make amends for that. Hereafter, in a lecture
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on common sense, I shall try to show what I mean by truths growing
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petrified by antiquity. In another lecture, I shall expatiate on the idea that
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our thoughts become true in proportion as they successfully exert their go between function.
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In a third, I shall show how hard it is to discriminate subjective from
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objective factors in truth's development. You may not follow me wholly in these lectures.
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And if you do, you may not wholly agree with me, but
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you will, I know, regard me at least as serious and treat my
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effort with respectful consideration. You will probably be surprised to learn, then,
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that mister Schiller's and Jewish theory have suffered a hailstorm of contempt and ridiculle all
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rationalism has risen against them in influential quarters. Mister Schiller, in particular has
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been treated like an impudent schoolboy who deserves as banking. I should not mention
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this but for the fact that it throws so much side light upon that rationalistic
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temper to which I have posed the temper of pragmatism. Pragmatism is uncomfortable away
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from facts. Rationalism is comfortable only in the presence of abstractions. These pragmatists
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talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the
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success with which they work, et cetera, suggest to the typical intellectualist mind
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a sort of coarse, lame, second rate makeshift article of truth. Such
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truths are not real truth. Such tests are merely subjective. As against this
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objective truth must be something non utilitarian haughty, refined, remote, august exalted.
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It must be an absolute correspondence of our thoughts with an equally absolute reality.
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It must be what we ought to think unconditionally. The conditioned ways in
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which we do think are so much irrelevance and matter for psychology, down with
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psychology, up with logic. In all this question, see the exquisite contrast
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of the types of mind. The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes
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truth at its work in particular cases, and generalizes truth for him become a
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class name for all sorts of definite working values in experience. For the rationalist,
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it remains a pure abstraction to the bare name of which we must differ.
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When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just why we must differ,
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the rationalist is unable to recognize the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken.
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He accuses us of denying truth, whereas we have only sought to trace
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exactly why people follow it, and always ought to follow it. Your typical
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ultra abstractionist fairly shudders at concreteness. Other things equal, he positively prefers the
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pale and spectral. If the two universes were offered, he would always choose
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the skinny outline rather than the rich thicket of reality. It is so much
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purer, clearer, nobler. I hope that, as these lectures go on,
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the concreteness and closeness to facts of the pragmatism which they advocate may be
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what approves itself to you as its most satisfactory peculiarity. It only follows here
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the example of the sister sciences interpreting the unobserved by the observed. It brings
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old and new harmoniously together. It converts the absolutely empty notion of a static
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relation of correspondence. What that may mean, we must ask later between our
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minds and reality into that of our rich and active commerce, that any one
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may follow in detail and understand between particular thoughts of ours and the great universe
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of our experiences in which they play their parts and have their uses. But
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enough of this at present, the justification of what I say must be postponed.
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I wish now to add a word in further explanation of the claim I
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made at our last meeting that pragmatism may be a happy harmonizer of empiricist ways
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of thinking with the more religious demands of human beings. Men who are strongly
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of the fact loving temperament, you may remember me to have said, are
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liable to be kept at a distance by the small sympathy with facts which that
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philosophy from the present day fashion of idealism offers them. It is far too
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intellectualistic. Old fashioned theism was bad enough with its notion of God as an
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exalted monarch made up of a lot of unintelligible or preposterous attributes, but so
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long as it held strongly by their argument from design, it kept some touch
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with concrete realities. Since, however, Darwinism has once for all displaced design
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from the minds of the scientific theism has lost that foothold, and some kind
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of an imminent or pantheistic deity working in things rather than above them, is,
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if any, the kind recommended to our contemporary imagination. Asperance to a
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philosophic religion turn, as a rule, more hopefully nowadays towards idealistic pantheism than
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towards the older dualistic theism, in spite of the fact that the latter still
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counts able defenders, but as I said in my first lecture, the brand
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of pantheism offered is hard for them to assimilate if they are lovers of facts
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or empirically minded. It is the absolutistic brand, spurning the dust and reared
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upon pure logic. It keeps no connection whatever with concreteness, affirming the Absolute
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mind, which is its substitute for God to be the rational presuposition of all
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particulars of fact, whatever they may be. It remains supremely indifferent to what
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the particular facts in our world actually are. Be they what they may,
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the Absolute will father them. Like the sick lion in Essep's fable, all
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footprints lead into his den but nulla vestigia retrusum. You cannot redescend into the
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world of particulars by the Absolute's aid, or deduce any necessary consequences of detailed
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importance for your life from your idea of His nature. He gives you,
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indeed, the assurance that all is well with him and for his eternal way
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of thinking. But thereupon he leaves you to be finitely saved by your own
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temporal devices. Far be it from me to deny the majesty of this conception.
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Or its capacity to yield religious comfort to a most respectable class of minds.
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But from the human point of view, no one can pretend that it
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doesn't suffer from the faults of remoteness and abstractness. It is eminently a product
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of what I have ventured to call the rationalistic temper. It disdains empiricism's needs.
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Its substitutes a pallid outline for the real world's richness. It is dapper.
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It is noble in the bad sense, in the sense in which to
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be noble is to be enapt for humble service in this real world of sweat
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and dirt. It seems to me that when a view of things is noble,
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that or to count as a presumption against its truth, and as a
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philosophic disqualification. The Prince of Darkness may be a gentleman, as we are
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told is, but whatever the God of Earth and Heaven is, he can
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surely be no gentleman. His menial services are needed in the dust of our
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human trials even more than his dignity is needed in the emperian Now, pragmatism
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devoted those should be to facts, has no such materalistic bias as ordinary empiricism
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labors under. Moreover, she has no objection whatever to the realizing of abstractions,
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so long as you get about among particulars with their aid, and they
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actually carry you somewhere. Interested in no conclusions but those which our minds and
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our experiences work out together, she has no a priori prejudices against theology.
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If theological ideas prove to have a value for a concrete life, they will
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be true for pragmatism in the sense of being good for so much. For
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how much more they are true will depend entirely on their relations to the other
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truths that also have to be acknowledged. What I have said just now about
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the absolute of transcendental idealism is a case in point. First I called it
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majestic, and said it yielded religious comfort to a class of minds. And
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then I accused it of remoteness and sterility. But so far as it affords
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such comfort, it surely is not sterile. It has that amount of value.
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It performs a concrete function as a good pragmatist, I myself ought to
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call the absolute true in so far forth then, and I unhesitatingly now do
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so. But what does true in so far forth mean in this case to
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answer, we need only apply the pragmatic method. What do you believe in
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the absolute? Mean by saying that their belief affords them comfort. They mean
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that, since in the absolute finite evil is overruled already, we may,
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therefore, whenever we wish, treat the temporal as if it were potentially the
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eternal, be sure that we can trust its outcome, and without sin,
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dismiss our fear and drop the worry of our finite responsibility. In short,
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they mean, we have a right, ever and anon, to take a
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moral holiday, to let the world wag in its own way, feeling that
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its issues are in better hands than ours and are none of our business.
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The universe is a system of which the individual members may relax their anxieties occasionally
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in which they don't care. Mood is also right for men and moral holidays
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in order that, if I mistaken, is part at least of what the
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absolute is known as. That is the great difference in our particular experiences which
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his being true makes for us. That is part of his cash value.
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When he is pragmatically interpreted farther than that the ordinary lay reader in philosophy who
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thinks favorably of absolute idealism, does not venture to sharpen his conceptions. He
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can use the absolute for so much, and so much is very precious.
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He is pained at hearing you speak incredulously of the absolute, therefore, and
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disregards your criticisms, because they deal with aspects of the conception that he fails
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to follow. If the absolute means this, and means no more than this,
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who can possibly deny the truth of it? To deny it would be
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to insist that men should never relax, and that holidays are never in order.
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I am well aware how odd it must seem to some of you to
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hear me say that an idea is true so long as to believe it is
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profitable to our lives, that it is good forasmuch as it profits. You
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will gladly admit if what we do by its aid is good, you will
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allow the idea itself to be good in so far forth, for we are
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the better for possessing it. But is it not a strange misuse of the
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word truth you will say to call ideas also true? For this reason?
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To answer this difficulty fully is impossible at this stage on my account. You
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touch here upon the very central point of mister Schiller's and Jewish and my own
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doctrine of truth, which I cannot discuss with detail until my sixth lecture.
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Let me now say only this, that truth is one species of good,
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and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinctly good and coordinate with
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it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in
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the way of belief, and good too for definite, assignable reasons. Surely
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you must admit this that if there were no good for life in true ideas,
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or if the knowledge of them were positively disadvantages, and false ideas their
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only useful ones, then the current notion that truth is divine and precious and
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its pursuit of duty could never have grown up or become a dogma. In
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a word like that, our duty would be to shun truth rather, But
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in this world, just as certain foods are not only agreeable to our taste,
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but good for our teeth, our stomach, in our tissues, so
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certain ideas are not only agreeable to think about, or agreeable as supporting other
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ideas that we are fond of, but they are also helpful in life's practical
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struggles. If there be any life that it is really better we should lead,
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And if there be any idea which, if I believed in, would
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help us to lead that life, then it would be really better for us
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to believe in that idea, unless indeed belief in it incidentally clashed with other
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greater vital benefits. What would be better for us to believe? This sounds
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very like a definition of truth. It comes very near to saying what we
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ought to believe, And in that definition none of you would find any oddity.
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Ought we, ever, not to believe? What is better for us
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to believe? And can we then keep the notion of what is better for
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us and what is true for us permanently apart? Pragmatism says no, and
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I fully agree with her, probably also agree so far as the abstract statement
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goes, but with a suspicion that if we practically did believe everything that made
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for good in our own personal lives, we should be found indulging all kinds
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of fancies about the world's affairs and all kinds of sentimental superstitions about a world
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hereafter. Your suspicion here is undoubtedly well founded, and it is evident that
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something happens when you pass from the abstract to the concrete. That complicates the
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situation. I said just now that what is better for us to believe is
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true unless the belief incidentally clashes with some other vital benefit. Now, in
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real life, what vital benefits is any particular belief of ours most liable to
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clash with what, indeed, except the vital benefits yielded by other beliefs,
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when these prove incompatible with the first ones. In other words, words,
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the greatest enemy of any one of our truths may be the rest of our
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truths. Truths have once for all, this desperate instinct of self preservation and
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of desire to extinguish whatever contradicts them. My belief in the absolute, based
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on the good it does me, must run the gauntlet of all my other
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beliefs. Grant that it may be true in giving me a moral holiday.
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Nevertheless, as I conceive it, and let me speak now confidentially as it
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were, and merely in my own private person, it clashes with other truths
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of mine, whose benefits I hate to give up. On its account,
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it happens to be associated with a kind of logic of which I am the
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enemy. I find that it entangles me in metaphysical paradoxes that are inacceptable,
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et cetera, et cetera. But as I have enough trouble in life already
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without adding the trouble of carrying these intellectual inconsistent and says I personally just give
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up the absolute, I just take my moral holidays or else. As a
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professional philosopher, I try to justify them by some other principle. If I
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could restrict my notion of the absolute to its bare holiday giving value, it
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wouldn't clash with my other truths. But we cannot easily thus restrict our hypothesis.
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They carry supernumerary features, and these it is that clash. So my
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disbelief in the absolute means then disbelief in those are the supernumerary features. For
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I fully believe in the legitimacy of taking moral holidays. You see by this
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what I meant when I called pragmatism a mediator and reconcile it, and said,
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borrowing the word from Puppini, that he unstiffens our theories. She has
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in fact no prejudices whatever, no obstructive dogmas, no rigid canons, or
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what I shall count as proof she is completely genial. She will entertain any
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hypothesis, she will consider any evidence. It follows that in the religious field
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she is at a great advantage both of a positivistic empiricism, which is anti
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theological bias, and over religious rationalism, with its exclusive interest in the remote,
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the noble, the simple, and the abstract in the way of conception.
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In short, she widens the field of search for God. Rationalism sticks
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to logic and the emperium. Empiricism sticks to the external senses. Pragmatism is
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willing to take anything to follow, either logic or the senses, and to
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count the humblest and most personal experiences. She will count mystical experiences if they
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have practical consequences. She will take a God who lives in the very dirt
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of private fact, if that should seem a likely place to find him.
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Her only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading
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us, What fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of
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experiences, demands nothing being omitted. If theological ideas should do this, if
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the notion of God in particular should prove to do it, how should pragmatism
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possibly deny God's existence. She should see no meaning in treating as not true
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a notion that was pragmatically so successful. What other kind of truth could there
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be for her than all this agreement with concrete reality. In my last lecture
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I shall return again to the relations of pragmatism with religion. But you see
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already how democratic she is. Her manners are as various and flexible, her
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resources as rich and endless, and her conclusions as friendly as those of Mother
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Nature and of Lecture two.