Contrast Between James and Dewey.
If, now, we wish to bring out the difference between the account of truth which we have just examined and the account that is given by James, we will find the distinction quite evident. Truth, for Dewey, is that relation which arises when, at an experience of fulfilment, one looks back to the former experience and thinks of its leading as now confirmed. An idea is true, therefore, when we can refer back to it in this way and say, “That pointing led me to this experience, as it said it would”. The pointing, by bringing a fulfilment, is made true—at this point of confirmation it becomes true.
Since a true idea is defined, then, as one which leads as it promised, it is obvious that truth will not be concerned in any way with incidental or accidental values which might be led to by the idea. It has no relation to whether the goal is worth while being led to or not. James speaks of truth as a leading that is worth while. For Dewey the goal may be valuable, useless, or even pernicious,—these are entirely irrelevant to truth, which is determined solely by the fact that the idea leads as it promised.
The existence of this distinction was pointed out, after the appearance of James’ “Pragmatism”, by Dewey himself.[14] After a careful discussion of some other points of difference, he says of this matter of the place of the value of an idea in reference to its truth: “We have the theory that ideas as ideas are always working hypotheses concerning attaining particular empirical results, and are tentative programs (or sketches of method) for attaining them. If we stick consistently to this notion of ideas, only consequences which are actually produced by the working of the idea in cooperation with, or application to, prior realities are good consequences in the specific sense of good which is relevant to establishing the truth of an idea. This is, at times, unequivocally recognized by Mr. James…. But at other times any good that flows from acceptance of a belief is treated as if it were an evidence, in so far, of the truth of the idea. This holds particularly when theological notions are under consideration. Light would be thrown upon how Mr. James conceives this matter by statements from him on such points as these: If ideas terminate in good consequences, but yet the goodness of the consequence was no part of the intention of the idea, does the goodness have any verifying force? If the goodness of consequences arises from the context of the idea rather than from the idea itself, does it have any verifying force? If an idea leads to consequences which are good in the one respect only of fulfilling the intent of the idea, (as when one drinks a liquid to test the idea that it is a poison), does the badness of the consequences in every other respect detract from the verifying force of these consequences?
“Since Mr. James has referred to me as saying ‘truth is what gives satisfaction’ (p. 234), I may remark … that I never identified any satisfaction with the truth of an idea, save that satisfaction which arises when the idea as working hypothesis or tentative method is applied to prior existences in such a way as to fulfil what it intends….
“When he says … of the idea of an absolute, ‘so far as it affords such comfort it surely is not sterile, it has that amount of value; it performs a concrete function. As a good pragmatist I ought to call the absolute true in so far forth then; and I unhesitatingly now do so’, the doctrine seems to be unambiguous: that any good, consequent upon acceptance of belief, is, in so far forth, a warrant for truth. Of course Mr. James holds that this ‘in so far’ goes a very small way…. But even the slightest concession, is, I think, non-pragmatic unless the satisfaction is relevant to the idea as intent. Now the satisfaction in question comes not from the idea as idea, but from its acceptance as true. Can a satisfaction dependent upon an assumption that an idea is already true be relevant to testing the truth of an idea? And can an idea, like that of the absolute, which, if true, ‘absolutely’ precludes any appeal to consequences as test of truth, be confirmed by use of the pragmatic test without sheer self-contradiction”?[15] “An explicit statement as to whether the carrying function, the linking of things, is satisfactory and prosperous and hence true in so far as it executes the intent of the idea; or whether the satisfaction and prosperity reside in the material consequences on their own account and in that aspect make the idea true, would, I am sure, locate the point at issue and economize and fructify future discussion. At present pragmatism is accepted by those whose own notions are thoroughly rationalistic in make-up as a means of refurbishing, galvanizing, and justifying those very notions. It is rejected by non-rationalists (empiricists and naturalistic idealists) because it seems to them identified with the notion that pragmatism holds that the desirability of certain beliefs overrides the question of the meaning of the idea involved in them and the existence of objects denoted by them. Others (like myself) who believe thoroughly in pragmatism as a method of orientation as defined by Mr. James, and who would apply the method to the determination of the meaning of objects, the intent and worth of ideas as ideas, and to the human and moral value of beliefs, when these problems are carefully distinguished from one another, do not know whether they are pragmatists or not, because they are not sure whether the ‘practical’, in the sense of the desirable facts which define the worth of a belief, is confused with the practical as an attitude imposed by objects, and with the practical as a power and function of idea to effect changes in prior existences. Hence the importance of knowing what pragmatism means by practical….
“I would do Mr. James an injustice, however, to stop here. His real doctrine, I think, is that a belief is true when it satisfies both the personal needs and the requirements of objective things. Speaking of pragmatism, he says, ‘Her only test of probable truth is what works best in the way of leading us, what fits every part of life best and combines with the collectivity of experience’s demands, nothing being omitted’. And again, ‘That new idea is truest which performs most felicitously its function of satisfying our double urgency’. (p. 64). It does not appear certain from the context that this ‘double urgency’ is that of the personal and the objective demands, but it is probable…. On this basis, the ‘in so far forth’ of the truth of the absolute because of the comfort it supplies, means that one of the two conditions which need to be satisfied has been met, so that if the absolute met the other one also it would be quite true. I have no doubt that this is Mr. James’ meaning, and it sufficiently safeguards him from charges that pragmatism means that anything that is agreeable is true. At the same time, I do not think, in logical strictness, that satisfying one of two tests, when satisfaction of both is required, can be said to constitute a belief true even ‘in so far forth’”.
CHAPTER IV.
Summary and Conclusion.
Writing as a scientist and publishing his work in a scientific journal, Peirce proposed in 1878 a new method for making our ideas clear. He was attempting a description of the logic of the sciences. He believed himself to be showing how the greatest of our modern thinkers do make clear to themselves their ideas of the objects with which they work. The meaning of anything, said Peirce, consists in the actual or possible effects which it might produce. Our idea of the thing is clear when we have in mind these sensible effects. This theory of clearness he called pragmatism.
No one, it seems, paid any especial attention to this theory at the time. But twenty years later James brought the subject to the forefront of discussion by explaining it anew in his exceptionally lucid way and by making a particular application of it to religion. But for James the method for clearness very soon grew into a new theory of truth, and in this way, in spite of the fact that the method had been proposed by a scientist as a description of the procedure of science, he seems to have lost for it the support of science. The reason for this outcome was his introduction of value as a criterion for truth. This, James recognizes, was counter to all the scientific ideals of many of the workers in science, for the essence of their procedure, as they saw it, was to put all desire as to outcomes behind them and to try to find out how things actually prove or test out to be, quite apart from how we would like them to be. To introduce the general value of an outcome, then, as a criterion for truth, seems to destroy what the scientist had been thinking of as ‘pure research’, and to involve control by an outside influence that would determine which things are or are not valuable and worth investigating. It was sufficiently well known to the scientist that most of the greatest scientific discoveries were made by men who had no appreciation or interest in the general utility of the outcome, and whose results were applied only much later and, as it were, by accident. To say, then, that the truth of an idea was influenced by its general value was to run afoul of all the sorely sensitive ideals which the scientist had acquired in his recent contest with the domination of the church. It is hardly to be wondered at, therefore, that the interpretation of pragmatism given by James was not popular with persons of a scientific temperament.
Further, if the value or desirability of an idea has an influence upon its truth, then truth will vary from person to person, for desirability varies with the taste of the person concerned. Peirce had warned against individual standards of truth in his discussion of the Methods of Fixing Belief. The scientific conception, as it had differentiated itself from other conceptions of truth, had attempted to secure a kind of truth not determined by what we would like or by what can be made to seem desirable by oratory or by what can be made to win out over other opinions by skill in debate, but by some criterion quite apart from desire and opinion. Peirce had attempted such a criterion in his postulate of an unchanging eternal reality. Instead, that is, of consulting with each other, of debating with each other to find the truth, we ought to consult this reality. In other words, to undertake scientific experiment. Such had been Peirce’s description of the scientific and modern method of attaining truth as contrasted, as he says, with that of the medievalists.
Now the difficulty in Peirce’s method, as we have seen, was that this postulate of an external reality unaffected by our opinions would not endure the test for clearness. Every object, says Peirce, reduces to the sum of its effects. The only effect of real things, he says again, is to produce belief. From these two propositions it would seem to follow that reality is a sum of beliefs. But this, of course, eliminates any unchanging reality independent of our opinions about it.
We saw further that Peirce defined both belief and meaning as habit and made no distinction between them. Now as belief and meaning are obviously not the same, we are in need of new definitions for these terms.
At this point we turned to the interpretation of Dewey. For Dewey the distinction would seem to be that while meaning may well be defined as habit, belief is to be defined as expectation. If we believe in anything, this means that we expect certain results from it. To believe is to suppose that if we were to come into relation with the thing we would find certain effects to come about.
From this conception the Deweyan theory of truth would seem to follow immediately. If belief means a sum of expectations, the truth of a belief would mean the verification of these expectations. A true belief simply means one that fulfils expectations.
The Deweyan development of the pragmatic method is obviously very much more in harmony with the procedure of science than that of James. James seems to have ‘left the track’ in his interpretation of the pragmatic method when he related truth to the predominantly valuable. Truth we have found to have no necessary or invariable connection with general value, for many ideas would be acknowledged to be perfectly true while at the same time being either useless or harmful. For Dewey this matter of value has no place in relation to the test of the truth of an idea, for its truth means nothing more than its ability to lead as it promises.
We seem, then, it may be said in conclusion, to be confronted with something like the following alternatives:
If we believe that Dewey could not have made a correct deduction from the pragmatic method when he developed it into a theory of truth making truth dependent upon fulfilled expectations alone, then very obviously the next step in this investigation is to find the point at which his inference went wrong. This means a re-examination of each step in his reasoning.
If we believe that Dewey does make a correct deduction from the pragmatic method in this development toward truth, then we are confronted with the alternative of either accepting the Deweyan theory of truth or of rejecting the Peircian theory of clearness. That is, if we begin with Peirce on method, we must then go clear through to Dewey on truth. And if we reject Dewey, while believing that Peirce gave a correct description of the method of science, then it seems that we must conclude that the method of science and the method of philosophy are not the same.