Reference: The Story of Philosophy
This paper presents Chapter XI Section 2.2 from the book THE STORY OF PHILOSOPHY by WILL DURANT. The contents are from the 1933 reprint of this book by TIME INCORPORATED by arrangement with Simon and Schuster, Inc.
The paragraphs of the original material (in black) are accompanied by brief comments (in color) based on the present understanding.
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II. WILLIAM JAMES
2. Pragmatism
The direction of his thought is always to things; and if he begins with psychology it is not as a metaphysician who loves to lose himself in ethereal obscurities, but as a realist to whom thought, however distinct it may be from matter, is essentially a mirror of external and physical reality. And, it is a better mirror than some have believed; it perceives and reflects not merely separate things, as Hume supposed, but their relations too; it sees everything in a context; and the context is as immediately given in perception as the shape and touch and odor of the thing. Hence the meaninglessness of Kant’s “problem of knowledge” (how do we put sense and order into our sensations?)—the sense and the order, in outline at least, are already there. The old atomistic psychology of the English school, which conceived thought as a series of separate ideas mechanically associated, is a misleading copy of physics and chemistry; thought is not a series, it is a stream, a continuity of perception and feeling, in which ideas are passing nodules like corpuscles in the blood. We have mental “states” (though this is again a misleadingly static term) that correspond to prepositions, verbs, adverbs and conjunctions, as well as “states” that reflect the nouns and pronouns of our speech; we have feelings of for and to and against and because and behind and after as well as of matter and men. It is these “transitive” elements in the flow of thought that constitute the thread of our mental life, and give us some measure of the continuity of things.
William James is a realist to whom thought, however distinct it may be from matter, is essentially a mirror of external and physical reality. It perceives and reflects not merely separate things but their relations too. It sees everything in a context; and the context is as immediately given in perception as the shape and touch and odor of the thing.
Consciousness is not an entity, not a thing, but a flux and system of relations; it is a point at which the sequence and relationship of thoughts coincide illuminatingly with the sequence of events and the relationship of things. In such moments it is reality itself, and no mere “phenomenon,” that flashes into thought; for beyond phenomena and “appearances” there is nothing. Nor is there any need of going beyond the experience-process to a soul; the soul is merely the sum of our mental life, as the “Noumenon” is simply the total of all phenomena, and the “Absolute” the web of the relationships of the world.
Consciousness is a flux and system of relations; it is reality itself that flashes into thought. The soul is merely the sum of our mental life. The “Noumenon” is simply the total of all phenomena. The “Absolute” is the web of the relationships of the world.
It is this same passion for the immediate and actual and real that led James to pragmatism. Brought up in the school of French clarity, he abominated the obscurities and pedantic terminology of German metaphysics; and when Harris and others began to import a moribund Hegelianism into America, James reacted like a quarantine officer who has detected an immigrant infection. He was convinced that both the terms and the problems of German metaphysics were unreal; and he cast about him for some test of meaning which would show, to every candid mind, the emptiness of these abstractions.
Brought up in the school of French clarity, James abominated the obscurities and pedantic terminology of German metaphysics.
He found the weapon which he sought when, in 1878, he came upon an essay by Charles Peirce, in the Popular Science Monthly. on “How to Make Our Ideas Clear.” To find the meaning of an idea, said Peirce, we must examine the consequences to which it leads in action; otherwise dispute about it may be without end, and will surely be without fruit. This was a lead which James was glad to follow; he tried the problems and ideas of the old metaphysics by this test, and they fell to pieces at its touch like chemical compounds suddenly shot through with a current of electricity. And such problems as had meaning took on a clearness and a reality as if, in Plato’s famous figure, they had passed out of the shadows of a cave into the brilliance of a sun-lit noon.
To find the meaning of an idea, we must examine the consequences to which it leads in action; otherwise dispute about it may be without end, and will surely be without fruit.
This simple and old-fashioned test led James on to a new definition of truth. Truth had been conceived as an objective relation, as once good and beauty had been; now what if truth, like these, were also relative to human judgment and human needs? “Natural laws” had been taken as “objective” truths, eternal and unchangeable; Spinoza had made them the very substance of his philosophy; and yet what were these truths but formulations of experience, convenient and successful in practice; not copies of an object, but correct calculations of specific consequences? Truth is the “cash-value” of an idea.
The true … is only the expedient in the way of our thinking, just as “the right” is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient is almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole, of course; for what meets expediently all the experiences in sight won’t necessarily meet all further experiences equally satisfactorily. … Truth is one species of good, and not, as is usually supposed, a category distinct from good, and coordinate with it. The true is the name of whatever proves itself to be good in the way of belief.
Truths are but formulations of experience, convenient and successful in practice; not copies of an object, but correct calculations of specific consequences. Truth is the “cash-value” of an idea.
Truth is a process, and “happens to an idea”; verity is verification. Instead of asking whence an idea is derived, or what are its premises, pragmatism examines its results; it “shifts the emphasis and looks forward”; it is “the attitude of looking away from first things, principles, ‘categories,’ supposed necessities, and of looking towards last things, fruits, consequences, facts.” Scholasticism asked, What is the thing,—and lost itself in “quiddities”; Darwinism asked, What is its origin?—and lost itself in nebulas; pragmatism asks, What are its consequences?—and turns the face of thought to action and the future.
Truth is a process, and “happens to an idea”; verity is verification. Instead of asking whence an idea is derived, or what are its premises, pragmatism examines its results.
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