James’ Exposition of Peirce.
James in expounding the doctrine of Peirce explains the pragmatic principle as a method of investigating philosophic controversies, reducing them to essentials (clear meanings), and selecting those worthy of discussion.[2] “Suppose”, he says, “that there are two different philosophical definitions, or propositions, or maxims, or what not, which seem to contradict each other, and about which men dispute. If, by assuming the truth of the one, you can foresee no practical consequence to anybody, at any time or place, which is different from what you would foresee if you assumed the truth of the other, why then the difference between the two propositions is no real difference—it is only a specious and verbal difference, unworthy of future contention…. There can be no difference which does not make a difference—no difference in the abstract truth which does not express itself in a difference of concrete fact, and of conduct consequent upon that fact, imposed upon somebody, somehow, somewhere and somewhen…. The whole function of philosophy ought to be to find out what definite difference it would make to you and me, at definite instants of our life, if this world-formula or that world-formula be the one which is true”. (p.675).
This doctrine is illustrated by using it to secure the essence of two philosophical questions, materialism vs. theism and the one vs. the many. If we suppose for an instant, he suggests, that this moment is the last moment of the universe’s existence, there will be no difference between materialism and theism. All the effects that might be ascribed to either have come about.
“These facts are in, are bagged, are captured; and the good that’s in them is gained, be the atom or be the God their cause.” (p. 677). “The God, if there, has been doing just what the atom could do—appearing in the character of atoms, so to speak, and earning such gratitude as is due to atoms, and no more”. Future good or ill is ruled out by postulate. Taken thus retrospectively, there could be no difference between materialism and theism.
But taken prospectively, they point to wholly different consequences. “For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, though they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have evolved…. We make complaint of |materialism| for what it is not—not a permanent warrant for our more ideal interests, not a fulfiller of our remotest hopes…. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; theism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope. Surely here is an issue genuine enough for anyone who feels it….
“[And] if there be a God, it is not likely that he is confined solely to making differences in the world’s latter end; he probably makes differences all along its course. Now the principle of practicalism says that that very meaning of the conception of God lies in the differences which must be made in experience if the conception be true. God’s famous inventory of perfections, as elaborated by dogmatic theology, either means nothing, says our principle, or it implies certain definite things that we can feel and do at certain definite moments of our lives, things that we could not feel and should not do were no God present and were the business of the universe carried on by material atoms instead. So far as our conceptions of the Deity involve no such experiences, they are meaningless and verbal,—scholastic entities and abstractions, as the positivists say, and fit objects for their scorn. But so far as they do involve such definite experiences, God means something for us, and may be real”. (pp.678-680).
The second illustration of the pragmatic principle—the supposed opposition between the One and the Many—may be treated more briefly. James suggests certain definite and practical sets of results in which to define ‘oneness’, and tries out the conception to see whether this result or that is what oneness means. He finds this method to clarify the difficulty here as well as in the previous case. In summarizing he says: “I have little doubt myself that this old quarrel might be completely smoothed out to the satisfaction of all claimants, if only the maxim of Peirce were methodically followed here. The current monism on the whole still keeps talking in too abstract a way. It says that the world must either be pure disconnectedness, no universe at all, or absolute unity. It insists that there is no stopping-place half-way. Any connection whatever, says this monism, is only possible if there be still more connection, until at last we are driven to admit the absolutely total connection required. But this absolutely total connection either means nothing, is the mere word ‘one’ spelt long, or else it means the sum of all the partial connections that can possibly be conceived. I believe that when we thus attack the question, and set ourselves to search for these possible connections, and conceive each in a definite and practical way, the dispute is already in a fair way to be settled beyond the chance of misunderstanding, by a compromise in which the Many and the One both get their lawful rights”. (p. 685).
In concluding, James relates Peirce to the English Empiricists, asserting that it was they “who first introduced the custom of interpreting the meaning of conceptions by asking what differences they make for life…. The great English way of investigating a conception is to ask yourself right off, ‘What is it known as? In what facts does it result? What is its cash-value in terms of particular experience? And what special difference would come into the world according as it were true or false?’ Thus does Locke treat the conception of personal identity. What you mean by it is just your chain of memories, says he…. So Berkeley with his ‘matter’. The cash-value of matter is just our physical sensations…. Hume does the same thing with causation. It is known as habitual antecedence…. Stewart and Brown, James Mill, John Mill, and Bain, have followed more or less consistently the same method; and Shadworth Hodgson has used it almost as explicitly as Mr. Peirce…. The short-comings and negations and the baldnesses of the English philosophers in question come, not from their eye to merely practical results, but solely from their failure to track the practical results completely enough to see how far they extend”. (pp. 685-6).
It will be at once observed that James, as well as Peirce, is at this point saying nothing about a new doctrine of truth, but is concerning himself only with a new doctrine of clearness. Meaning and clearness of meanings are his only topics in this paper. Thus he states, “The only meaning of the conception of God lies in the differences which must be made in experience if the conception be true. God’s famous inventory of perfection … either means nothing, says our principle, or it implies certain definite things that we can feel and do at certain definite moments in our lives”. And again in speaking of the pluralism-monism controversy, “Any connection whatever, says this monism, is only possible if there be still more connection, until at last we are driven to admit the absolutely total connection required. But this absolutely total connection either means nothing, is the mere word ‘one’ spelt long, or else it means the sum of all the partial connections….”
But as we all know, James did afterward embrace the new pragmatic theory of truth. While he did not in 1898 use the word pragmatism to designate anything except a new method for securing clearness, yet it can be shown that he had been developing another line of thought, since a much earlier date, which did lead quite directly toward the pragmatic theory of truth. It may be well at this point then to go back and trace the growth of this idea of truth through such writing as he had done before this time. It will be found, I think, that James’ whole philosophic tendency to move away from the transcendental and unitary toward the particular was influencing him towards this new conception.