“All that the pragmatic method implies, then, is that truths should have practical consequences. In England the word has been used more broadly, to cover the notion that the truth of any statement consists in the consequences, and particularly in their being good consequences. Here we get beyond affairs of method altogether; and since this pragmatism and the wider pragmatism are so different, and both are important enough to have different names, I think that Mr. Schiller’s proposal to call the wider pragmatism by the name of ‘Humanism’ is excellent and ought to be adopted. The narrower pragmatism may still be spoken of as the ‘pragmatic method’.
“If further egotism be in order. I may say that the account of truth given by Messrs. Sturt and Schiller and by Professor Dewey and his school … goes beyond any theorizing which I personally had ever indulged in until I read their writings. After reading these, I feel almost sure that these authors are right in their main contentions, but the originality is wholly theirs, and I can hardly recognize in my own humble doctrine that concepts are teleological instruments anything considerable enough to warrant my being called, as I have been, the ‘father’ of so important a movement forward in philosophy”.[8] (Italic mine).
“I think that a decided effort at a sympathetic mental play with humanism is the provisional attitude to be recommended to the reader.
“When I find myself playing sympathetically with humanism, something like what follows is what I end by conceiving it to mean”. (Italics mine).
Such is the conservative tone in which the article is begun. Yet before it is ended we find these passages: “It seems obvious that the pragmatic account of all this routine of phenomenal knowledge is accurate”. (p.468). “The humanism, for instance, which I see and try so hard to defend, is the completest truth attained from my point of view up to date”. (p.472).
In a supplementary article, “Humanism and Truth Once More”, published a few months later in answer to questions prompted by this one, the acceptance of humanism is entirely definite. And here James finds that he has been advocating the doctrine for several years. He says, “I myself put forth on several occasions a radically pragmatist account of knowledge”. (Mind, v. 14, p. 196). And again he remarks, “When following Schiller and Dewey, I define the true as that which gives the maximal combination of satisfaction …”. (p.196).
The Theory of Truth in ‘Pragmatism’ and ‘The Meaning of Truth’.
In 1907 when he published his book “Pragmatism”, James, as we all know, was willing to accept the new theory of truth unreservedly. The hesitating on the margin, the mere interpreting of other’s views, are things of the past. From 1907 James’ position toward pragmatism as a truth-theory is unequivocal.
Throughout the book, as I should like to point out, James is using ‘pragmatism’ in two senses, and ‘truth’ in two senses. The two meanings of pragmatism he recognizes himself, and points out clearly the difference between pragmatism as a method for attaining clearness in our ideas and pragmatism as a theory of the truth or falsity of those ideas. But the two meanings of ‘truth’ he does not distinguish. And it is here that he differs from Dewey, as we shall presently see. He differed from Peirce on the question of the meaning of pragmatism—as to whether it could be developed to include a doctrine of truth as well as of clearness. He differs from Dewey on the question of ‘truth’—as to whether truth shall be used in both of the two specified senses or only in one of them.
The Ambiguity of ‘Satisfaction’—The double meaning of truth in James’ writing at this date may be indicated in this way: While truth is to be defined in terms of satisfaction, what is satisfaction? Does it mean that I am to be satisfied of a certain quality in the idea, or that I am to be satisfied by it? In other words, is the criterion of truth the fact that the idea leads as it promised or is it the fact that its leading, whether just as it promised or not, is desirable? Which, in short, are we to take as truth,—fulfilled expectations or value of results?