General criticism of the pragmatic theory of truth, as is evident to anyone who has followed the controversy, has been principally directed against the more ‘radical’ statements of James and Schiller. Whether this is merely because these champions of the theory are more extreme, or whether they are really more prone to errors in their reasoning, we need not determine here. But it is worth pointing out that, on the other hand, if Peirce and Dewey were to be taken as the truer representatives of pragmatism a large part of the flood of recent criticism would be irrelevant. This is by no means to say that the work of Peirce and Dewey is above criticism; it is merely to call attention to the fact that most of the criticism of pragmatism is directed against principles which these two men do not happen to hold. An understanding of the doctrine in its more conservative terms, however, is certainly on the increase, and we are seldom nowadays burdened with refutations of such alleged pragmatism as that anything is true which it is pleasant to believe or that any theory of procedure is true which happens to turn out well.
CHAPTER I.
THE PRAGMATIC DOCTRINE AS ORIGINALLY PROPOSED BY PEIRCE.
Pragmatism has been described as an attitude of mind, as a method of investigation, and as a theory of truth. The attitude is that of looking forward to outcomes rather than back to origins. The method is the use of actual or possible outcomes of our ideas to determine these ideas’ real meaning. The theory of truth defines the truth of our beliefs in terms of the outcome of these beliefs.
Pragmatism as a principle of method, like the Mendelian laws of heredity, lay for decades in oblivion. It was brought to light and to the world’s notice in 1898 by William James, who by his wonderful literary style immediately gave it the widest currency. The doctrine was originally proposed in 1878 by C. S. Peirce in a paper for the Popular Science Monthly entitled “How To Make Our Ideas Clear.” This article was the second of six on the general topic. “Illustrations of the Logic of Science.” The other articles of the series were respectively called “The Fixation of Belief,” “The Doctrine of Chances,” “The Probability of Induction,” “The Order of Nature,” and “Induction, Deduction, and Hypothesis.”
In the famous discussion of How To Make Our Ideas Clear, Peirce pointed out that by a clear idea is meant, according to the logicians, one which will be recognized wherever it is met with, so that no other will be mistaken for it. But since to do this without exception is impossible to human beings, and since to have such acquaintance with the idea as to have lost all hesitancy in recognizing it in ordinary cases amounts only to a subjective feeling of mastery which may be entirely mistaken, they supplement the idea of ‘clearness’ with that of ‘distinctness’. A distinct idea is defined as one that contains nothing which is not clear. By the contents of an idea logicians understand whatever is contained in its definition, so that an idea is distinctly apprehended, according to them, when we can give a precise definition of it, in abstract terms. Here the professional logicians leave the subject, but it is easy to show that the doctrine that familiar use and abstract distinctness make the perfection of apprehension, “has its only true place in philosophies which have long been extinct”, and it is now time to formulate a method of attaining “a more perfect clearness of thought such as we see and admire in the thinkers of our own time”.
The action of thought is excited by the irritation of a doubt, and ceases when belief is attained; so that the production of belief is the sole function of thought. As thought appeases the irritation of a doubt, which is the motive for thinking, it relaxes and comes to rest for a moment when belief is reached. But belief is a rule for action, and its application requires further thought and further doubt, so that at the same time that it is a stopping place it is also a new starting place for thought. The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition.
“The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit, and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise. If beliefs do not differ in this respect, if they appease the same doubt by producing the same rule of action, then no more differences in the manner of consciousness of them can make them different beliefs, any more than playing a tune in different keys is playing a different tune.”
Imaginary distinctions are made very frequently, it is true, between beliefs which differ only in their mode of expression. Such false distinctions do as much harm as the confusion of beliefs really different. “One singular deception of this sort, which often occurs, is to mistake the sensation produced by our own unclearness of thought for a character of the object we are thinking. Instead of perceiving that the obscurity is purely subjective, we fancy that we contemplate a quality of the object which is essentially mysterious; and if our conception be afterwards presented to us in a clear form we do not recognize it as the same, owing to the absence of the feeling of unintelligibility…. Another such deception is to mistake a mere difference in the grammatical construction of two words for a distinction between the ideas they express…. From all these sophisms we shall be perfectly safe so long as we reflect that the whole function of thought is to produce habits of action; and that whatever is connected with a thought, but irrelevant to its purpose, is an accretion to it, but no part of it”.
“To develop a meaning we have, therefore, simply to determine what habits it produces, for what a thing means is simply what habits it involves. Now the identity of a habit depends on how it might lead us to act, not merely under such circumstances as are likely to arise, but under such as might possibly occur, no matter how improbable…. Thus we come down to what is tangible and practical as the root of every real distinction of thought, no matter how subtle it may be; and there is no distinction so fine as to consist in anything but a possible difference in practice”.