It seems to me admirably suited to compare the pragmatist method and the pragmatist attitude with that of scientific realism and of absolute idealism.
I think, and I shall endeavour to show, that there is a serious defect in the pragmatist statement, and that these misconceptions are in a great part due to it.
The term Intellectualism is used by pragmatist writers to include all theories of knowledge that do not agree with their own, very much as the Greeks called all who were not Greeks, Barbarians.
He rejects, as the pragmatist does, the notion of a reality independent of human nature that forces upon us the changes that our conceptions undergo.
It was therefore a postulate, called forth by a need--so far we may adopt the pragmatist account.
The pragmatisttheory therefore is that truth is made.
The pragmatist maxim is--would you know what any idea or conception means, then consider what practical consequences are involved by its acceptance or rejection.
Let us now examine some attempts to solve this problem, and first of all let us take the pragmatist solution.
To this the pragmatist reply is that reality is only our objectification of truth; it possesses no meaning divorced from human purposes.
But even so, the pragmatist will urge, is its truth anything else but its usefulness as shown in the practical consequences of believing it?
Before I examine the pragmatist argument, I ought first to explain the meaning and origin of the word.
It is also very important to add that in declaring that truth is verification, the {48} pragmatist does not set up a purely practical or utilitarian standard.
The pragmatist would, then, conclude that the watch which was always inaccurate gave truer results than the one which was sometimes accurate.
In this conclusion the pragmatist would seem to be correct, and this is an instance of how the false premisses of pragmatism may give rise to true conclusions.
The pragmatist recoils with a certain mixture of horror and amusement from the conception of an all-inclusive divine insight.
Yet these are not the pragmata of the pragmatist, for it is only the despicable intellectualist that can arrive at them; and the bed-rock of facts that the pragmatist builds upon is avowedly drifting sand.
Hence the odd expressions, new to literature and even to grammar, which bubble up continually in pragmatist writings.
Thus all creeds and theories and all formal precepts sink in the estimation of the pragmatist to a local and temporary grammar of action; a grammar that must be changed slowly by time, and may be changed quickly by genius.
The pragmatist tells a man to think what he must think and never mind the Absolute.
The mere existence of the idea, all by itself, if only its results were satisfactory, would give full truth to it, it was charged, in our absurd pragmatist epistemology.
To begin with, when the pragmatist says 'indispensable,' it confounds this with 'sufficient.
For the anti-pragmatist these prior timeless relations are the presupposition of the concrete ones, and possess the profounder dignity and value.
This notion of a reality independent of either of us, taken from ordinary social experience, lies at the base of the pragmatist definition of truth.
Why, because if on the one hand you elect to say that there is a truth, you thereby surrender your wholepragmatist theory.
But when the pragmatist speaks of opinions, does he mean any such insulated and unmotived abstractions as are here supposed?
So far the pragmatist is hardly less abstract than the ordinary slouchy epistemologist; but as he defines himself farther, he grows more concrete.
But I suspect that in the anti-pragmatist mind the two notions sometimes swap their attributes.
Mr. Russell next joins the army of those who inform their readers that according to the pragmatist definition of the word 'truth' the belief that A exists may be 'true' even when A does not exist.
You say that my ideas have formed the real centre de ralliment of the pragmatist tendencies.
But it ill becomes a pragmatist to condemn a system that works so well as the British, whatever theoretical objections may occur.
Schiller says that "Professor Santayana, though a pragmatist in epistemology is a materialist in metaphysics.
But the pragmatist is more interested in finding out how and in what way an assertion comes to be called true and how it makes good its claim after it has been asserted.
The farther I went the more interested I became, for I soon discovered that I had been a pragmatist all my life without knowing it.
Then he went on-- "The central position of the pragmatist philosophy and the Ritschlian theology is that truth and usefulness are identical.
In fact, I expect you're a pragmatist already without knowing it.
If you'd been familiar with thepragmatist philosophy it would have saved time.
If it bores you to hear an explanation of the pragmatist theory of truth, I won't go on with it.
Once more, either hypothesis is legitimate in pragmatist eyes, for either has its uses.
I for my part refuse to be persuaded that we cannot look beyond the obvious pluralism of the naturalist and the pragmatist to a logical unity in which they take no interest.
On the pragmatist side we have only one edition of the universe, unfinished, growing in all sorts of places, especially in the places where thinking beings are at work.
This pragmatist talk about truths in the plural, about their utility and satisfactoriness, about the success with which they 'work,' etc.
A radicalpragmatist on the other hand is a happy-go-lucky anarchistic sort of creature.
The pragmatist clings to facts and concreteness, observes truth at its work in particular cases, and generalizes.
For instance I receive this morning this question on a post-card: "Is a pragmatist necessarily a complete materialist and agnostic?
The most fateful point of difference between being a rationalist and being a pragmatist is now fully in sight.
I regard the writer of this letter as a genuine pragmatist, but as a pragmatist sans le savoir.
The pragmatist is the last person to deny the reality of such abstractions.
The pragmatist must consequently say that the two theories, in spite of their different-sounding names, mean exactly the same thing, and that the dispute is purely verbal.
When the pragmatist undertakes to show in detail just WHY we must defer, the rationalist is unable to recognize the concretes from which his own abstraction is taken.
I can not speak officially as a pragmatist here; all I can say is that my own pragmatism offers no objection to my taking sides with this more moralistic view, and giving up the claim of total reconciliation.
Such is the large loose way in which the pragmatist interprets the word agreement.
On pragmatist principles therefore, a dispute over self-transcendency is a pure logomachy.
The pragmatist is in the position of one who is charged with denying the existence of something because, in pointing out a certain fundamental feature of it, he puts it in a strange light.
Habitual associations aroused by the word "pragmatic" have been stronger than the most explicit and emphatic statements which any pragmatist has been able to make.
A pragmatist as well as a rationalist may reply that it makes no difference retrospectively only because we leave out the most important retrospective difference).
As a good pragmatist I myself ought to call the absolute true in so far forth then; and I unhesitatingly now do so" (p.
The liveryman expressed his disapproval of the pragmatist in profane terms as we entered the grounds.
To sum up then: I think there is no doubt that Professor James' interest in "the pragmatist theory of truth" is largely due to the fact that he thinks it tells us what distinguishes true ideas from those which are not true.
In Lecture VI he professes to give an account of a theory, which he calls "the pragmatisttheory of truth;" and he professes to give a briefer preliminary account of the same theory in Lecture II.
In conclusion, I wish to sum up what seems to me to be the most important points about this "pragmatist theory of truth," as Professor James represents it.
Now the principle of the pragmatist is that anything that does not make any difference to anything else is not real.
The satisfaction upon which the pragmatist dwells is just the better adjustment of living beings to their environment effected by transformations of the environment through forming and applying ideas.
Only if the pragmatist held the intellectualist’s position, would he appeal to other than what is ultimately a practical need and a practical criterion in endeavoring to convert others.
Surely the pragmatist does not live up to his reputation of having a sense of humor when he claims assent to his theory on the ground that it is true.
But the pragmatist holds that the act of finding out that ideas are true creates the thing that is found.
To criticise the pragmatist by reading into him exactly the notion of experience that he denies and replaces, may be psychological and unregenerately “pragmatic,” but it is hardly “intellectual.
The intellectualist almost always treats the pragmatic account as if it were, from the standpoint of the pragmatist as well as from his own, a denial of the existence of truth, while it is nothing but a statement of its nature.
Nevertheless, the pragmatist is always appealing to the judgments of others to corroborate his own judgment.
Well, of course, knowledge of the past is very mysterious, but how is the pragmatistany better off?
But then a curious reservation is introduced; the experimental process finds, it is said, that an idea is true, while the error of the pragmatist is to take the process by which truth is found as one by which it is made.
Now, the pragmatistdoes not apply his principle to this field.
When the pragmatist emphasizes the necessity of accepting ideals and living by them, he is doing us a service.
The pragmatist would join with the rest of us in condemning the Turk or the Christian who would simply will to believe in the rise or the fall of stocks, and would refuse to consult the state of the market.
This fact is construed by the pragmatist as a significant indication of the way out of the epistemological impasse.
From this difficulty the pragmatist alone escapes, by assuming his premisses provisionally and arguing forwards, in order to test them by their consequences.
But our struggles will not have been in vain if they have left us with a willingness to try the pragmatist alternative, and convinced us that it is not a wanton innovation, but the only path of salvation for the scientific spirit.
One cannot resist the temptation of thinking that just here the great Pragmatist has been led astray by that very philosophical pride he condemns in the metaphysicians.
Science is the prerogative of the few, and the large masses of mankind will always be of a pragmatist type.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "pragmatist" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
