Now in the transformation from this tensional situation into a harmonious situation, there is an experience either of fulfilment or disappointment. If there is a disappointment of expectation, this may throw one back in reflection upon the original situation. The smell, we may say, seemed to mean a rose, yet it did not in fact lead to a rose. There is something else which enters in. We then begin an investigation. “Smells may become the object of knowledge. They may take, pro tempore, the place which the rose formerly occupied. One may, that is, observe the cases in which the odors mean other things than just roses, may voluntarily produce new cases for the sake of further inspection; and thus account for the cases where meanings had been falsified in the issue; discriminate more carefully the peculiarities of those meanings which the event verified, and thus safeguard and bulwark to some extent the employing of similar meanings in the future”. (p. 93). When we reflect upon these fulfilments or refusals, we find in them a quality “quite lacking to them in their immediate occurrence as just fulfilments and disappointments”,—the quality of affording assurance and correction. “Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience or thing, in and of itself or in its first intention; but of things where the problem of assurance consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments and non-fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth, as to the reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or class of meanings. Like knowledge itself, truth is an experienced relation of things, and it has no meaning outside of such relation”. (p. 95).
Though this paper is by title a discussion of a theory of knowledge, we may find in this last paragraph a very clear relating of the whole to a theory of truth. If we attempt to differentiate in this article between knowledge and truth, we find that while Dewey uses ‘knowledge’ to refer either to the prospective or to the retrospective end of the experimental experience, he evidently intends to limit truth to the retrospective or confirmatory end of the experience. When he says, “Truth and falsity are not properties of any experience or thing in and of itself or in its first intention, but of things where the problem of assurance consciously enters in. Truth and falsity present themselves as significant facts only in situations in which specific meanings and their already experienced fulfilments are intentionally compared and contrasted with reference to the question of the worth, as to reliability of meaning, of the given meaning or class of meanings”, it seems that truth is to be confined to retrospective experience. The truth of an idea means that it allows one at its fulfilment to look back at its former meaning and think of it as now confirmed. The difference between knowledge and truth is then a difference in the time at which the developing experience is examined. If one takes the experience at the appearance of the knowing odor, he gets acquaintance; if one takes it at the stage at which it has developed into a confirmation, he gets truth. Knowledge may be either stage of the experience of verification, but truth is confined to the later, confirmatory, stage.
Truth, then, is simply a matter of confirmation of prediction or of fulfilment of expectation. An idea is made true by leading as it promised. And an idea is made false when it leads to refutation of expectation. There seems to be no necessity here for an absolute reality for the ideas to conform to, or ‘correspond’ to, for truth is a certain kind of relation between the ideas themselves—the relation, namely, of leading to fulfilment of expectations.
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’”.