Since man has started to write down thoughts for how the world works, there has been a division among thought systems on the source of truth. Each side has been clarified over the years and there have been additions and tangents off of each main branch, yet the division has been the same. There has been a problem with the two main views though. One major view saw the world seeking truth within the spiritual ideals like the Platonist, while the other saw the physical world, itself, as truth within categories like the empiricist. These were the disagreements within the philosophic framework. There was still a disconnect between the two systems of truth and the truth observed in real life. William James put it this way when talking about a student:
I wish that I had saved the first couple of pages of a thesis which a student handed me a year or two ago. They illustrated my point so clearly that I am sorry I cannot read them to you now. This young man, who was a graduate of some Western college, began by saying that he had always taken for granted that when you entered a philosophic class-room you had to open relations with a universe entirely distinct from the one you left behind you in the street. The two were supposed, he said, to have so little to do with each other, that you could not possibly occupy your mind with them at the same time. The world of concrete personal experiences to which the street belongs is multitudinous beyond imagination, tangled, muddy, painful and perplexed. The world to which your philosophy-professor introduces you is simple, clean and noble. The contradictions of real life are absent from it. Its architecture is classic. Principles of reason trace its outlines, logical necessities cement its parts. Purity and dignity are what it most expresses. It is a kind of marble temple shining on a hill. (5)
Philosophy sees the world as clean and tidy, even within the two systems. This divide that the student observed within the classroom is what James is trying to solve with his philosophy. He wanted to build a useful philosophy. One that was not stuck on the shelf or in a book, but one that could actually be used in daily life. This paper will explore how James accomplishes this by first looking at the divide within philosophy, how he blended the divide together, and finally the impact this system had on truth within the individual’s life.
The goal of philosophers has always been to understand the world around them, to find the unifying truth of the universe, and to make sense of the world. People have done this differently over the course of history, and James notices that most of the time, people fell into two general camps of thought even if people used different names. James usefully summarizes the vast majority of thought systems into the two main systems.
Historically we find the terms ‘intellectualism’ and ‘sensationalism’ used as synonyms of ‘rationalism’ and ‘empiricism.’ Well, nature seems to combine most frequently with intellectualism an idealistic and optimistic tendency. Empiricists on the other hand are not uncommonly materialistic, and their optimism is apt to be decidedly conditional and tremulous. Rationalism is always monistic. It starts from wholes and universals, and makes much of the unity of things. Empiricism starts from the parts, and makes of the whole a collection—is not averse therefore to calling itself pluralistic. Rationalism usually considers itself more religious than empiricism. (2-3)
Here James links intellectualism to rationalism, idealistic, optimistic, monistic, and universalist as a set of similar thought systems. On the other side, he links sensationalism to empiricism, materialistic, conditional, tremulous, and pluralistic. This is not merely a breakdown of Plato against Aristotle or Descartes against Hume. This is taking all of these thinkers and showing where their thoughts lead. The first group looks at the world to see what it is shooting for and has hope in the future, while the second group looks at what the world is and is more pessimistic in their approach to life. The last line of the quote does point to where each system has their source of truth. The rationalist looks to the ideals of the world and sees something beyond the merely physical. There is a spiritual nature to the world that cannot be quantified yet is still believed almost necessarily. As an example, the common designs within all of life had to have come from somewhere or some mind. On the other hand, the empiricist deals first with what can be sensed. The spiritual would be outside of this possibility and thus negated which tends to lead to a more irreligious philosophy. The minute differences between the patterns that are seen as common designs before are now looked upon as inaccuracies or chance occurrences. These two splits are how James viewed the world of philosophy.
From here, James looks at how to meld these two works together. He sees a need and an opportunity to unite these two systems in a way that is practical and useful without losing the main identity of both systems. This is to make them interact with the real world. He wants to make philosophy more useful in human interactions and the real, physical world. To introduce the topic from his own words:
It is at this point that my own solution begins to appear. I offer the oddly-named thing pragmatism as a philosophy that can satisfy both kinds of demand. It can remain religious like the rationalisms, but at the same time, like the empiricisms, it can preserve the richest intimacy with facts. I hope I may be able to leave many of you with as favorable an opinion of it as I preserve myself. (7)
James sought a system that could combine what is good and right from the rational perspective with what is good and right from the empirical perspective. He is looking to meld and mix the religion of the spiritual with the fact of the physical. The way that the pragmatic system does this is interesting, unique, and a paradigm shift.
The pragmatic method is primarily a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise might be interminable. Is the world one or many?—fated or free?—material or spiritual?—here are notions either of which may or may not hold good of the world; and disputes over such notions are unending. The pragmatic method in such cases is to try to interpret each notion by tracing its respective practical consequences. What difference would it practically make to anyone if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right. (10)
It is interesting that James starts with the implications of the metaphysical world for the pragmatic system. The metaphysics of a system is what the rest of the system is based upon, it is the foundation, which does make it a good place to start. Asking the bigger questions about the universe and creation gets a person down to their roots. What the pragmatic system does is ask why does it matter? What does it matter to a person if the universe is one or many, free or fated? How do these questions and their answers actually change a person’s daily life? If the answers to these big questions make little to no difference to a person’s life, then there is no dispute. If there are no implications for either choice, then either choice is actually legitimate, and a person is free to choose for themselves. The pragmatic system is not concerned about mere thoughts, but the implications of the thoughts. James puts it this way: “our beliefs are really rules for action to develope a thought’s meaning, we need only determine what conduct it is fitted to produce: that conduct is for us its sole significance” (10). Action is the main concern for the pragmatist. Thoughts can be good or bad things. What actions are caused by the thoughts? This is the question that mainly concerns James and those who follow his philosophy.
James does come full circle on his system and gives credit where it is due. He knew from the beginning that he was not developing a new system from the ground up. He was standing and building on the shoulder of the giants that came before him to potentially complete the systems that were already started.
There is absolutely nothing new in the pragmatic method. Socrates was an adept at it. Aristotle used it methodically. Locke, Berkeley and Hume made momentous contributions to truth by its means. Shadworth Hodgson keeps insisting that realities are only what they are ‘known-as.’ But these forerunners of pragmatism used it in fragments: they were preluders only. Not until in our time has it generalized itself, become conscious of a universal mission, pretended to a conquering destiny. I believe in that destiny, and I hope I may end by inspiring you with my belief. Pragmatism represents a perfectly familiar attitude in philosophy, the empiricist attitude, but it represents it, as it seems to me, both in a more radical and in a less objectionable form than it has ever yet assumed. (11)
Socrates, Aristotle, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume were all men that added, moved, and shifted the study of philosophy. James could see the partial pragmatic method in use by them throughout their work. This can be seen by looking at the attitude of finding what is useful and practical, ideas that affect actions was not a new thing in philosophy. Looking at the cause and effect of life was the empiricist way of life. The pragmatist just takes the cause and effect of the physical and applies it to the spiritual in a way that was meant to break down the barriers of belief in order to unite the people towards and in their actions. There are spiritual arguments and beliefs that cannot be proved that James’s philosophy allows people to believe. Pragmaticism wants to deal with the ideas that can be proved and tend to be more practical.
By seeking after the things that can be proved, this exposes the potential downfall of the pragmatic view. The difficulty of negating the beginning of metaphysics for its practical end is the implications on truth. What is the basis of truth for the pragmatist? How does one know when anything is proved to be correct? How does one know when they are on the right path for their existence? To start off this topic, an example for James is useful.
Thus, names are just as ‘true’ or ‘false’ as definite mental pictures are. They set up similar verification-processes, and lead to fully equivalent practical results.
All human thinking gets discursified; we exchange ideas; we lend and borrow verifications, get them from one another by means of social intercourse. All truth thus gets verbally built out, stored up, and made available for everyone. Hence, we must talk consistently just as we must think consistently: for both in talk and thought we deal with kinds. Names are arbitrary, but once understood they must be kept to. We mustn’t now call Abel ‘Cain’ or Cain ‘Abel.’ If we do, we ungear ourselves from the whole book of Genesis, and from all its connexions with the universe of speech and fact down to the present time. We throw ourselves out of whatever truth that entire system of speech and fact may embody. (45)
Looking at the example of naming an object is helpful. Looking at children, after they learn to walk, they learn to talk. In learning to talk, their parents tell them the name of objects and as they learn and memorize the language of their surroundings, they start to be able to communicate. For James, this is the foundation for a society: the ability to communicate. This is the first source of truth for a people group. It is agreement among themselves. Truth is what the populace says it is. There can be problems for individuals though. If a person changes their understanding and definitions of their vocabulary, they effectively remove themselves from society because all basis for truth and community are gone. From simple naming of objects, James moves on to whole fields of knowledge and subjects and analyzes how truth has adapted over time.
Ptolemaic astronomy, euclidean space, aristotelian logic, scholastic metaphysics, were expedient for centuries, but human experience has boiled over those limits, and we now call these things only relatively true, or true within those borders of experience. ‘Absolutely’ they are false; for we know that those limits were casual, and might have been transcended by past theorists just as they are by present thinkers. (47)
These were the scientific truths of human history for thousands of years. Through exploration of the universe, these truths have been found to be wrong. Throughout history, men have been killed for differing from these stated beliefs that have since been proven to be wrong or at least limited in scope. James is not using these ideas to draw judgement of men of the past so much as to prove a point. Truth can change. New revelations within the world and society moves and informs people as things are discovered. From this idea of truth, James makes a delineation. “The ‘facts’ themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them” (47). This is helpful to understand what James is trying to do. There is the fact that the planet Mars moves across the night sky. This fact simply is. It exists because it can be observed. The truth behind this fact is how we apply it. Is it applied in a heliocentric or a geocentric manner? In order to answer that question, more facts are needed. From more facts, a truth can be understood. A truth can be made and believed by the facts that are currently known. James is suggesting that the truth that we know can change as more facts are added to the equation. To take these two passages together and synthesize what James is saying would go something like this: there are facts in the universe that are observed and are put into philosophic frameworks to make sense of all the facts together. As more facts are added, the system and beliefs behind them can change. Names are arbitrary and yet solid once agreed upon. This synthesis does make the foundation for truth unsteady because the facts can change. This is how James deals with this potential downfall.
On the topic of truth, James knew that the main opponent to his view on truth would be the rationalist because James is agreeing with the empiricist view on truth. James does have an example and response to the rationalist objection.
When, namely, you ask rationalists, instead of accusing pragmatism of desecrating the notion of truth, to define it themselves by saying exactly what they understand by it, the only positive attempts I can think of are these two:
1. ‘Truth is just the system of propositions which have an unconditional claim to be recognized as valid.’
2. Truth is a name for all those judgments which we find ourselves under obligation to make by a kind of imperative duty.
The first thing that strikes one in such definitions is their unutterable triviality. They are absolutely true, of course, but absolutely insignificant until you handle them pragmatically. What do you mean by ‘claim’ here, and what do you mean by ‘duty’? As summary names for the concrete reasons why thinking in true ways is overwhelmingly expedient and good for mortal men, it is all right to talk of claims on reality’s part to be agreed with, and of obligations on our part to agree. We feel both the claims and the obligations, and we feel them for just those reasons. (48)
James starts with looking and agreeing with how a rationalist would summarize and explain the concept of truth. The rationalist view has some holes in their definition though that James exposes with his rhetorical questions. The unconditional claim of truth is made by the agreement among people and the duty is the path that one is to act on in order to do what is right. Within their own definition of truth, the rationalist agrees with James as soon as the rationalist applies his truth to real life. The objection to the pragmatic view only works within the ideal system and breaks down as soon as it is applied to real life.
This is the point of James’ philosophy. While there are differences between all the philosophical systems, once they are broken down and applied to life, the differences disappear. The rationalist and the empiricist do look at the world from opposite perspectives. Both perspectives do make valid points about the world. When it comes to how to apply these philosophies to life, the point, or perspective, from each system that wins is the point that is of most useful to the individual. This does not negate objective fact or truth but breaks down the barrier of a singular system and looks to what is useful and practical. It unites people behind cause and action rather than segregating them behind belief and religion. This philosophy calls people to deal with reality within their ideal.
Works Cited
James, William. Pragmatism. Philosophy and Religion: Selections from the Twentieth Century. Great Books of the Western World. Ed. Mortimer J. Adler and Philip W. Goetz. Second Edition. Vol. 55. Chicago: Robert P. Gwinn; Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1990. Print.